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[watchesthewatchers]

A man named Mundt goes missing. He's Dolohov's sister's fiancee, and loyal, though not particularly bright. News never comes of his arrest or his murder, and in the current political climate, a victory on that front would certainly have been publicized. No one in the Order even seems to know about it, from the snatches that come through to Voldemort's growing camp.

It bears investigation, is the ultimate verdict, investigation but not outright alarm or panic, so dear, reliable, young Severus is dispatched to see what could possibly have happened.

Mundt, it transpires, had been from West Berlin initially and keeping temporary rooms on the outskirts of town. He'd been a cruel and stupid man, and had murdered his landlady and then failed to keep up any paperwork for the abode, and there had been a string of other attacks on muggles in his surrounding neighbourhood besides. He'd had a nasty habit of breaking into a home, killing the inhabitants messily and for sport, at his leisure. Muggle authorities had ascribed the work to a vicious serial killer in the area, and had been somewhat distressed when the killings had stopped cold several weeks ago. Relieved, certainly, because no deaths were good news, but afraid that the man may have gone dormant, slipped their grasp, perhaps even left the country...

He hadn't even had the good sense to really be afraid of the gun, and Peter's bullet, got off between curses, had taken him square between the eyes.

With no magic, they certainly have no ability to follow the man's trail to a lovely little home on the outskirts of the same outskirt where Mundt had been living, or to the young gentleman who spends that Sunday morning laying a lovely new bed of petunias out front. Peter isn't much of a gardener under normal circumstances, as evidenced by the trousers he's wearing, the rolled up shirt sleeves, the clean fingernails and the rather shiny and new look of the trowel he's wielding, but it's a lovely excuse to dig a hole that is good and deep.

Normally he'd hide the body a lot further afield, but after the trouble he had with this one he half expects him to come back to life. It isn't an anxiety he can explain to his coworkers, who would normally be the ones to take care of something like this for him, and anyways, he wants to be the very first one to know if reanimation occurs.

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[snarkypotions]

Investigation, it seems, is what Snape's life consists of nowadays. Ever since that fateful night on the cold, windy hilltop, the newly appointed Potions Master has had to dance between his two masters, sniffing out certain choice morsels of information and passing it on as instructed. Both are harsh taskmasters, and the young, disillusioned Death Eater-turned-spy has had to quickly learn to adjust. The Dark Lord's moods are always difficult to predict, especially with the threat of the prophecy looming on the horizon, and Snape has suffered under the Cruciatus curse or the bite of the lash many times for not bringing in anything useful. It's a result of working for Dumbledore. The headmaster does not trust him, nor has he earned that trust, and more often than not, Snape has had to return to the Dark Lord with nothing to report.

Sometimes he wonders if this is the old wizard's way of making him pay penance for the many sins he's committed.

So here he is in West Berlin, dressed in a black Muggle shirt and matching trousers. His wand is neatly tucked up the sleeve of his jacket, waiting only for a sharp flick of his wrist to slide out of its holster and into his hand. A convenient charm is in place to keep observant eyes away from the slightest bulge near his elbow, and Snape keeps himself Disillusioned for most of his travels. There are a few instances where he has to... question some of the inhabitants of the town, but Snape keeps his presence well-hidden otherwise. Dolohov may have kicked up enough of a fuss over his missing sidekick in Muggle baiting, torture and murder for the Dark Lord to initiate a search, but Dumbledore's orders are clear: find the man, extract any information he may have, and then dispose of him to prevent any more Muggle deaths.

Trying to think up a way to reconcile the two conflicting orders has left him with a mild headache that the last few days of travel has done nothing to assuage, and it's certainly showing no signs of easing up by the time he tracks Mundt's trail to the house with the new petunias.

Standing in the shadow of the lamppost across the road, Snape takes a moment to study the gardener that's hard at work on his budding garden. Little things don't add up, details the Potions Master notices from his experience cultivating certain ingredients, and his frown grows more severe, deepening the furrow between his brows. Mundt had certainly been enjoying himself in this town (he had recognized the handiwork on the victims), and there was no doubt that his trail of carnage had ended here, but the question currently bothering Snape is why? The other Death Eater is not the sort that's smart enough to stop while he's ahead, nor is he good enough to hide from Snape's tracking spells, so it stands to reason that with no news of his capture or recall to England, the other man is most likely gravely wounded or dead.

The new trowel across the street flashes in favor of the latter hypothesis, but surely a mere Muggle can't have managed to kill Mundt. Unless, of course, he isn't a Muggle...