Chapter Text
Will is standing in the middle of the Entrance Hall, staring at blood seeping through the cracks on the floor. The hall is almost empty, and he has only a few minutes before he has to be in the common room. He’s still dressed in his uniform, but his black robe with blue and bronze is on his bed. He only vaguely remembers putting it there after class. He has spent most of the evening outside. Away from people. It’s easier. He is very aware of how his appearance and his skittishness make him stand out. And the way he zones out, becomes unaware of his surroundings, talks to himself. He makes people uneasy. He’s more or less fine with that; being around people made him uncomfortable, too.
He is interrupted in his thoughts by a large hand on his shoulder. He turns to see Headmaster Crawford eyeing him. He’s interacted with Crawford in the past. He wonders why the man wants him now. He always seems to ask a lot of him: he encourages Will to take Divination, to go into law enforcement with his “gift”. Crawford seems to be under the impression that it’s simply strong divination. It’s not. It’s so much more than that. It’s a magic nobody really understands.
Despite Crawford, though, Will plans to become an Auror. He knows he can help people. But he refuses to take Divination. He doesn’t want to be any more of a freak than he is. He remembers the one year he took it, and the looks people gave him when he gave clear, vivid (and accurate) pictures of the future. How he predicted that girl’s death. How he then, without any crystal ball or any tea leaves, told Crawford why it was done while students were still crowding around the bloody display in the Great Hall.
“Mister Graham, will you please follow me.” It’s an order barely disguised as a request.
Will glances at the floor, and the blood is gone.
He trails behind the headmaster until they reach his office. In one of the seats in front of the desk, there is an unfamiliar man. He doesn’t bother looking at the man, but gives him a small nod. He hates meeting new people, but he decides it’s not worth the trouble of protesting when Crawford gestures towards the chair. He keeps his eyes busy, studies the room, and tries to ignore the feeling of the stranger’s eyes boring into him. There is a distinctly clinical feeling about the observation he is under. He hates it.
“Mister Graham, this is Hannibal Lecter,” Crawford says. “He is a Healer- he prefers doctor, though, because he treats muggles too- who specialises in the mind. I have informed him of your... unique way of thinking, your brand of divination. I want you to speak to him. I know it can’t be easy, thinking like you do. ”
Will grimaces. Clenches his fists. “Does it matter if it’s easy?” he asks in barely more than a hiss. He does not want to talk to this stranger about himself. He doesn’t want to be psychoanalysed, especially not by magical means.
“You are not fond of eye contact, are you?” Lecter says after an awkward moment of silence. His accent is strong, and Will can’t place it, but it’s oddly soothing. He doesn’t speak in the same way other people in his profession do to Will; he doesn’t approach Will as though he is a wounded animal. It’s refreshing.
So he replies, and when he glances at Crawford, he knows that the headmaster counts it as a win.
-
He finds a small comfort in knowing that his sessions with Lecter are not official, off the record, and not obligatory (though Headmaster Crawford does not take no for an answer).
Dr Lecter uses muggle techniques in his work. It is unusual, but a relief. As a Muggleborn, Will is more familiar with Lecter’s methods, and more comfortable. He doesn’t want somebody poking around in his head with magic. He shudders to know what they would find.
He finds himself quickly trusting the doctor. After their first meeting, he does not psychoanalyse him. In his office, which Will Floos to every week, he can open up to the man as much as he wants. As little as he wants. He chooses what he tells the man about the way he thinks, about the girl whose murderer he helped catch when he was just thirteen, about his dreams and nightmares. He keeps many of the details to himself, but he gives Lecter just enough for the man to have a decent idea of who he is. Sometimes in their “sessions”, however, he just walks around the elegantly furnished office, observing things, looking at the library. Lecter doesn’t seem to mind. He simply watches Will with his steady gaze in a way that’s almost curious. Like he’s curious about Will outside the crazy boy who can read people all too well. Doctor Lecter allows Will an escape, a place to vent, and gives him tools to deal with some of the more troublesome things his mind does to him. Someone to have real, human interactions with that aren’t based around school or his mind. Will is grateful.
-
Dr Lecter cooks for him one night and over a gourmet, home-cooked meal and high-class butterbeer, Will finds himself talking about the murder of the girl in his third year with little prompting.
“I told Headmaster Crawford it was just a dream, how I knew she was going to die. And that I could tell the way the murderer thought just by looking at things nobody else thought were relevant...” Will tells Lecter, who is gazing at him calmly, but with a disguised intensity Will is not sure is there or not from his few seconds of eye contact. “But it’s not true. Not completely.”
“How did you know, Will?” Lecter asks evenly.
Will feels slightly sick. He stares down at his meal and shrugs. “I... became... the killer,” he manages shakily. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, grimacing. “Doctor Lecter, I re-enacted the entire murder in my head, from the point of view of the killer.”
“I see.”
With Will’s head down, eyes trained on his lap, he doesn’t see the small, dangerous smile of the face of his unofficial psychiatrist.
-
“Sometimes I sleepwalk,” Will says as he stares at a text called Sleeping Disorders and Their Effect on Magical Ability on one of Doctor Lecter’s bookshelves. “I didn’t even realise it until a week ago. I should have known, though.”
“Why is that, Will?”
“I’ve been waking up in places I shouldn’t be, like the commonroom. I assumed I just fell asleep there.” He pauses, and lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “I think I hallucinate while I sleepwalk, too. It’s like I’m half-aware of it, almost.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been seeing a stag. It follows me. Watches me. The first time I saw it, I think I was sleep-walking, just about to wake up.”
“Oh?” There’s something in Lecter’s voice that Will can’t place.
“Now I see it everywhere. In the halls, in my dorm. But mainly when I’m outside at night. In the forest. It’s clearer then.”
-
A teacher is found dead on the outskirts of the Forest, pinned to a tree without magic. Naked, with the look of someone who has been crucified. His heart is carved out, leaving a dark, gaping hole in his chest. Will, among the Care of Magical Creatures class who finds the professor, stares. The pendulum swings three times. And he becomes the killer.
“I take the man out of his office. He has it open. He just finished giving a detention. I can still hear his students chattering down the hall, on their way back to their common rooms. I am under an invisibility spell. This man, this pig, does not make a sound. I have wandlessly gagged, bound and silenced the man. He is invisible to all but myself. I take him deep into the Forbidden Forest where I undress him, then carve his heart out of his chest while he is still alive, screaming silently under my powerful spell. I take his heart and admire it. I deserve it much more than he does. He is dirt beneath my feet. An animal. In this form, dead, he is of much more use to the world.”
“Mr Graham?”
“I nail him to the tree where I know students will see him. Where I know many will see him. I have turned him into a piece of art. It is unfortunate that few will admire my medium.”
“Will, snap out of it. The aurors need everybody to move.”
“This is my design.”
“Will!”
His eyes snap open. Crawford and his classmate Beverly Katz are standing over him. Aurors are staring at him out of the corners of their eyes as they try to set up boundaries around him. He is sweating, and a headache pounds in his skull.
Crawford is looking at him curiously. “Will... what do you see?”
-
Barely fifteen minutes later Will is sitting in the Headmaster’s office explaining the murder to Jack Crawford. Like he’s an Auror, and not a seventeen year old unstable student who shouldn’t have seen the crime scene anyway.
“The murder... it was the Ripper, right? With the artful display, the taken organs. I’ve read about him.”
Jack nods. “I believe so, yes. Why do you say artful?”
“The Ripper... he sees what he does as art.” Will takes a deep, shaky breath, and downs a vial of potion he has for headaches. “The victims are... are pigs to him, and he’s giving them a use. They’re his canvas. He thinks... he thinks they deserve it.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. Will shrugs. “From what I could see, anyway.”
“Okay, Mr Graham. You can leave now; I have an appointment with the board about this. I’ve owled Dr Lecter and he says you can Floo over if you need to. You can use my fireplace.”
-
Will is sitting on a couch in Hannibal Lecter’s office, but he is not listening to what the doctor is saying. Instead, his attention is focused the corpse of the dead professor he saw not an hour ago, standing against the wall at the back of the room. The dead man, a History of Magic teacher Will never bothered learning the name of (even after his death) is staring at Will knowingly, a smile on his face. The cavity in his chest is oozing dark, almost black blood.
“Will?” The boy startles up to look at Lecter with wide eyes. Lecter has gotten up and placed his hand on Will’s shoulder. His face is a foot away from the empath’s; his eyes and the set of his mouth indicate concern. “Will, are you with me?”
Will can’t meet Lecter’s eyes. Instead, his gaze jumps around the doctor’s face. The corpse is closer, leaning over Lecter as Lecter leans over Will. The empath can almost smell rotting flesh and the metallic tang of blood. He closes his eyes and when he opens them, the corpse is the stag brushing his nose against Lecter’s neck.
“Will, listen to me.” The doctor’s hand grasp either side of Will’s face as the boy starts shaking violently. “It is twelve minutes past ten am. Your name is Will Graham. You are in London, England. You are in Hannibal Lecter’s office. You are safe. Repeat that, please, Will.”
“I...” For a few moments, Will is focused; focused on his shakes, on the sweat rolling down his back, on Dr Lecter’s dark eyes and his firm hands on his face. “It’s ten twelve,” he whispers. “My name is Will Graham. I am in London, England, in Dr Lecter’s office. I am safe.”
“Say it again.”
“I...” Will’s body convulses, and he yanks his head from Lecter’s grasp as he leans over the side of the couch and vomits. When he finishes, he looks up, and the professor and the stag are gone.
He lets his head fall into his unofficial doctor’s chest and allows the man to take him through breathing exercises that aren’t half as effective as that smooth, accented voice in his ear.