Celebrate the Season Request for Trillian (2/2)
Celebrate the Season fic request for Trillian/ (Part 2/2)
Author: Anya/dancinggoldfish
Title: Rancor Between Coworkers (2/2)
Rating: PG/PG-13 (I'm terrible at picking out
Disclaimer: All recognizable places, objects, and people belong to JKR. I only wish I owned them :D
Author's Notes: Probably different than what you were expecting, and there is some slight angst I suppose, but I did try to keep it fun :D
Summary: Muggleborns are being targeted for murder, and Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Draco must work together to catch the killer, no matter how much they might hate it.
They Apparated back to the Ministry, to the alleyway alongside it, then hurried over the threshold of the door, through the corridors, up the stairs to the corner office they’d commandeered with their charts and maps and diagrams and post-it stickies. The last - little yellow and blue and green and pink squares of paper - were from Hermione. She was the one who always had a pad of them nearby to scribble ideas on.
The wall was lined with whiteboards - a little strategic transfiguration on the part of Harry and Ron before Draco joined them - and the whiteboards were lined with picture after picture, note after note, map after map, chart after chart. Cluttered, barely organized in any discernible way, this is where the four worked furiously, if not peacefully, to find the killer.
Seventeen dead in six weeks. Dark-haired, light-haired, tall, short, skinny, fat, dark-skinned, fair-skinned, man, woman, child - the killer struck indiscriminately. The only thing binding the deaths together was the blood status of the murdered. They were Muggleborn. No half-bloods or purebloods - only Muggleborns.
“So what now?” Ron asked as he sank into one of the chairs scattered across the room, spinning slowly in place.
“Let’s review what we know,” Hermione decided as she remained standing. “Terrence Higgs was our source, which should give us an idea of where he was getting his information from, which could then lead us to the killer -”
Draco shook his head. “Not necessarily. If I know Higgs - he was very, very careful. Whatever decisions he made, he thought them through and covered his tracks well. Which in turn would mean that we would have difficulty tracking them down. In addition,” he ticked a second point off his fingertips. “We’re working from a disadvantage. Whoever killed Higgs knew that he was in contact with you guys. He’ll be watching you - and me.”
“So are we assuming that Higgs was killed by the same killer we’re trying to track down?” Ron interrupted, tossing a miniaturized Quaffle from hand to hand.
“The kill pattern’s very similar,” Hermione pointed out.
“Yeah, but with the photos and details Cuffe ran, anyone would know how the killer made his mark,” Harry answered, leaning back in his own chair. “Were you able to get any samples from the cuts on Higgs’s neck?”
Hermione glared at him, affronted at the disparaging comment on her efficiency. “Of course I did. You want me to run a comparison with another sample we’ve got.”
Harry nodded, grinning. “We know the bastard uses the same knife every time - thank Merlin we didn’t learn that until Gulch had been booted by Cuffe - so any of the samples you run it against should work out fine.”
“You got it. I’ll go run down to the lab then.”
“I’ll come with you,” Draco said, pushing himself out of his chair.
She looked surprised, Ron and Harry looked startled, and then Ron was snickering, “Careful, Malfoy, you don’t want to go down there. Evil Muggle ideas are just waiting to trap you.”
Draco glared. “I’m so glad that you felt that need to demonstrate your inferior intelligence, Weasley,” he retorted, smoothing down the front of his robes, noting even as he did so that they needed a good cleaning charm.
“Are you coming or not, Malfoy?” Hermione demanded impatiently. He nodded and stepped through the door, nearly running into her when she turned around to address Ron and Harry. “You guys can head home if you want, or you can go digging through the files again, to see if there’s anything we’ve missed.”
Ron groaned, Harry snorted. “Gee, Hermione, you make it such a difficult choice,” he teased.
“Alright, home it is then,” Ron exclaimed, pushing out of his chair.
“Hardly,” Harry retorted. “We’re going to do another read-through of what we’ve got, then we can go.”
“Harry! Do you know how long those take?”
Hermione and Draco could hear Ron’s protest even as they shut the door behind them and walked down the corridor. The brown-haired young woman yawned. “These long hours are killing me,” she commented.
“That’s because you’re so all-fired dedicated, Granger,” Draco replied as he strolled by her side. “Are you awake enough to perform the tests?”
“Sure. It’s so easy I could do it in my sleep, no problems,” Hermione retorted even as she lost control of another jaw cracking yawn.
Draco smirked. “Do you want something to eat or drink to help you stay awake? Coffee, perhaps?”
Hermione shook her head. “I don’t dare. Coffee makes me jittery, and if I have some now, I’ll be up all night, and I have a meeting tomorrow at noon that I can’t be late for.”
“Ah.” There was a wealthy of understanding imbued in that single syllable, and Hermione considered asking him what he meant, but then she shrugged it off as an oddity she didn’t need to explore - or rather, didn’t have the time or energy to explore.
“Here we are,” she said instead, stopping in front of a door. Holes had been cut on either side of the door and all around the walls and filled with glass to create a viewing station. Those windows had been covered with Yuletide decorations, as much of the office had been, but prevalent among them was cutout red and green Christmas stockings. He noted the amusing difference between the innocent decorations and the efficiency that hummed inside the room. Inside, there was a long metal table with a variety of switches and wires coming off it, and cabinets filled with a wide variety of different shaped bottles, all filled with different liquids. It reminded him of Snape’s potions cupboard. She ushered him inside and into a chair, then bustled around the laboratory gathering the materials she needed. “So why did you want to come with me here, Malfoy?” she asked as she took the container of Higgs’s blood samples out of her pocket and placed it on the table, which was now lit from underneath.
“Figured I might as well get a feel for how all of this stuff works,” he said, shrugging.
“You’ve been working as an Auror for over four years, and you’ve never been in here before?” Hermione asked, so dumbfounded her jaw was hanging loose. Her hands continued to be busy pulling bottles of brightly colored liquid off shelves and prepping a microscope.
Draco shook his head. “Nope,” he answered. “Comfoot took care of that side of things - he’s a real nerd, you know? Classic Ravenclaw. Anyway, he loved coming in here and messing around with all his Muggle toys. I didn’t mind him doing that side of things - let me work on real investigating, so it worked out pretty evenly.”
Hermione’s lips tightened, but all she asked was a simple question as she summoned another jar similar to the one containing Higgs’s blood sample. “What made you change your mind?”
“Comfoot is in the medward, and St. Mungo’s doesn’t know when he’s going to be fit to return to active duty. I’m going to have to learn it sooner or later - might as well learn from the best,” he replied, shrugging again.
Hermione was flushing, much to her chagrin. She could feel the color seeping along her cheekbones as she snapped, “Malfoy, you do realize that you just paid me a compliment, don’t you?”
He laughed. “Does that bother you, Granger? You look very forbidding right now, all suspicious and frowning.”
“Malfoy, you had better not be flirting with me,” she retorted.
“Or what?” he asked, smirking as he lounged in the chair.
“Or I’ll kick you out of the lab, and you’ll have to learn how to work all this equipment from Ron,” she informed him.
“That’s cruel and unusual, Granger. Does the Ministry know about your sadistic tendencies?”
She snorted with laughter as she fought to keep the beaker steady. “Shut it, Malfoy, unless you want me to cause an explosion,” she warned.
That silenced him for a while, except for quick questions that he occasionally had, and she was able to finish easily. “Alright, Malfoy, take a look,” she offered, moving away from the microscope.
He raised an eyebrow, but unfolded himself from the chair. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Just look in the microscope, and tell me what you see,” she instructed, pulling together a clipboard with some parchment for notes.
He imitated her actions, bending over the microscope and pressing his eye to it. “Red and brown blood, spell residue, and other things I can’t identify.”
“Is the spell residue the same for both samples?” Hermione asked, propping the clipboard on her lap as she scribbled down what he said.
“They’re similar, although not exactly the same,” he replied after a long pause.
“Is it possible that the difference between the spell residues for the two samples is different because of the different lengths of time that we’ve had those samples? And in addition, are they similar enough to have come from the same person, or the same spell, but tempered by other spells in the vicinity?”
He was startled by her rapid-fire questions, but understand what she was reaching at. “Your theory that they’re from the same person and same spell - performed on a single object - and merely are the result of events at different times and other spells in the vicinity would make sense. They’re too uniform - too similar really, despite their differences - to have come from different people.”
“Alright,” she nodded, scribbled down the last of his points. “I’ll leave these for the official techs to deal with - we’ve got enough to go on for now.” She wrote a note and propped it up against the microscope, then cast a stasis spell. “Let’s go get these results - and the computer’s results - to Harry and Ron.”
“Computer’s results?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t seen those before.
She nodded. “Yep. We automatically get a printout of the computer’s analysis when we run a comparative diagnosis. It’s policy to double check the results manually, and I figured it would be good practice for you.”
“That’s sneaky of you, Granger. Almost Slytherin worthy,” he informed as he opened the door for her.
“Was that another compliment, Malfoy? Two in one day? I think I may just faint from excitement,” she teased as they hurried through the building towards their office. “Harry, Ron!” she exclaimed as she came through the door, only to cut herself off at the sight before her.
Ron was sprawled across one of the chairs, his feet propped up on one of the low tables they had - very convenient for dumping papers to be sorted, currently empty but for his boot-clad feet - and very fast asleep. Harry was slumped over a thick stack of reports, his glasses bumped up on his forehead so that the bridge between the lenses rested against his lightning bolt scar.
“They’re asleep,” Draco said, surprised to see his two - not enemies, but not friends or acquaintances - former schoolmates fast asleep in such awkward positions.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Hermione whispered to him. “Come on, help me move them around.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to wake them up to send them home - they’re completely out of it right now - so I’m going to transfigure two beds for them and rearrange them so they’re more comfortable,” Hermione answered. “Come on and help me. The sooner you do, the sooner you can get home and get some sleep.”
He smiled deprecatingly; not once in a million years did he think that he would be doing the closest thing to tucking Weasley and Potter into bed. With various grunting sounds and several well-placed spells, the two sleeping Aurors were rearranged, and then he was insisting that he walk with Hermione to her flat. “No arguments, Granger. I tucked your friends in, the least you can do is let me rest easy knowing you got home safe.”
“Since when do you care if the Mudblood got home safe?” she asked, raising an eyebrow even as her jaw cracked with a yawn.
He winced. “I haven’t called you that since we were seventeen,” he protested. “I don’t really think like that anymore - how could I?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, startled, even as she noticed him falling into step beside her as she headed in the direction of her flat.
“Faced with you, brightest witch the wizarding world has known in a long time - what’s this? Granger, don’t tell me you don’t read the papers? That’s your title - ‘smartest witch of all time’.” The last bit he put in air quotes as he teased her.
“I do - but it’s not like I do much more than skim the adoring platitudes,” she retorted. “I suppose you don’t though. I bet you like hearing yourself being called ‘the one who was redeemed’.”
He made a face as well. “Hardly, Granger.” They walked in silence for a while, and Draco found himself yawning more every second, and even though they were moving very quickly, his eyelids were very determined to close. “Granger,” he began as they stood outside her door, hating to admit that she was his best option at the moment, “would you mind letting me crash on your sofa?”
She looked up at him, peering fuzzily through sleep-dimmed eyes. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You must be exhausted too - I completely didn’t realize - of course you can, Mal - Mal - Mal -” She lost the battle again with a yawn. “Malfoy. The sofa’s in the living room - I’ll see if I can find a pillow and some blankets for you - I’m not sure it’s safe to be transfiguring things when you’re this tired.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, heading straight for the brightly colored couch, not even caring that its red and gold shades were offending his Slytherin sensibilities. And then he was lying his head on one of the over-stuffed, stiff pillows that everyone seemed to have on their sofas, and he was out like a light.
*~*~*~*~*
The next morning, Draco awoke to find himself rather cozily covered with several warm blankets. Two pillows were on the floor - where he had knocked them in his sleep - but even without them, he was quite comfortable. Granger wasn’t awake yet - at least, he didn’t hear her puttering around like he thought she would - so he turned over so that he was lying on his back and able to survey the entire room.
Her flat was cramped, but not uncomfortably so. She didn’t have it stuffed to the brim with furniture or useless knickknacks, but instead focused on bright colors and comfy furniture. Of course, the overall effect was somewhere mitigated by the oodles of Yuletide decorations she had up - very similar in design to those that decorated the tech lab at the Aurors’ Office.
“You awake, Malfoy?”
“Ack!” The voice in the doorway startled him - how the devil did she move so silently - and he nearly fell off the couch, tangled blankets and all. “Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded grouchily, even as he noted the coffeepot in her hand. “Please tell me that’s strong,” he begged.
She raised an eyebrow at his first question, and the left eyebrow joined the right at his second demand. “The coffee? Yeah. It’ll be ready in about five minutes, so if you want to brush your teeth or do whatever it is that you do to get ready, now would be the time to do it.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten thirty,” she shouted back over her shoulder as she disappeared into the kitchen.
He winced - he hadn’t come into work that late since he’d first starting working as an Auror almost five years ago - but he supposed staying until five in the morning excused any tardiness on his part. He cleaned his clothes as best he could, grabbed a cup off coffee, and then both of them were striding off to work, near dead-silent except for the occasional rumblings of early morning grouchiness.
“Harry, Ron,” Hermione greeted as she collapsed in a chair in their office. “Please tell me you two have got something good to report.”
“You look terrible, ‘Mione,” Ron commented. “What time did you guys head out last night?”
“Around five,” Draco said, after the two looked at each other. “It was light out when we left the building.”
Ron and Harry both winced. “Yowch,” Harry commented before he got down to business. “The tech lab dropped off a report for us this morning - IDing some DNA that was in the blood sample you found - that didn’t belong to Higgs.”
Hermione stared at him for a minute, lacking the comprehension to understand what he was saying, then her expression cleared. “DNA that wasn’t from Higgs? Have you run it through the system yet?”
“It’s running through now,” Ron replied, gesturing to the computer sitting in the corner of the room.
“Fabulous.” She dropped her head back on the edge of her chair. “Merlin, I want a nap,” she moaned.
“You’ll be able to sleep all you want once this case closes up,” Harry reassured her with a comforting squeeze of her hand. “But for now, finish your coffee and let’s get to work.”
“You’re a slave driver, Harry,” she commented even as she pulled her chair up to the big table littered with files. “Alright, what do we got?”
“We’ve got loads of lists, Hermione,” Ron replied, grinning at her. “Lists of Death Eaters who we can scratch off the list for one reason or another, lists of likely suspects, lists of the victims, lists of the connections between the victims and all of the Death Eaters - it goes on and on.”
Hermione’s eyebrows rose. “It would appear that you guys have been busy.”
“Most of the lists are from you,” Harry confessed. “We dug up a pile of them, and updated them while we were waiting for you and Malfoy to get in.”
The brown-haired girl nodded. “Alright, so what do we do next?”
“We could run endless comparisons, or we could wait for the results of the test,” Ron replied.
“Wait,” Draco interrupted. “What will the results of this test mean?”
“DNA was found in the blood samples we took from Higgs that didn’t belong to him. If the DNA doesn’t belong to any of the other victims, then we know that at the very least, it belongs to someone close to the killer - most likely the killer himself. Since we got DNA samples from most of the Death Eaters - or their relatives, we have a decent chance of figuring out, at the very least, who it’s not, and possibly, who it is,” Hermione replied. “It’s actually a bit more complex than that, as I was given to understand, but that’s pretty much the gist of it.”
“Ah. Sounds like a useful tool,” he commented.
“Just like that microscope,” she rebutted. “I vote we wait. Whatever connections we make depend on what the results of the comparison test is.”
“Alright,” Harry replied after taking a look at the other two occupants of the room who were also nodding. So they waited. They imbibed multiple cups of coffee apiece, tossed around names of possible killers or ideas as possible motives - beyond blood bias. Hermione fell asleep twice, Draco once, before they were rudely shaken awake by Harry and Ron, and Ron even made a rude comment about what they were doing when they left the Aurors’ Office.
“Actually, Ron, you’re partially right. Malfoy slept over at my house,” Hermione retorted, grinning at the dumbfounded look on the redhead’s face.
“You’re not funny, ‘Mione,” Ron retorted, glaring at her and Draco.
“Relax,” Draco insisted, hands up in the universal gesture of innocence. “Nothing happened like your sordid mind is imagining. I slept on her sofa, that’s it.”
Ron wasn’t very reassured, but at that moment, the computer began spitting out printouts. Draco managed to be the lucky one who grabbed the relevant sheet. “Miles Bletchley!” he shouted above the ruckus of snatching sheets and organizing them. “His DNA is the one in Higgs’s blood.”
That silenced the office as each of them thought on what they knew of the man - a Slytherin who’d managed to get away with hexing members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, a man who’d been two years ahead of Draco in school, and the Keeper for the team. “I suppose that makes sense,” Hermione spoke up. “From what I remember, he never had any real issues with hexing people he didn’t like when he was a kid - and I suppose it’s possible that he made the step over to killing people.”
Draco nodded. “Either way, I suppose we should bring him in then, shouldn’t we?”
Hermione, Ron, and Harry nodded and began reaching for their outer clothes. “Do you know where we can find him?” Hermione asked Draco quietly as they hurried out the door.
“I have a pretty fair idea,” he replied as he led the way. He pitched his voice a little louder. “We’re going to do some portkeying to get to where I think he is - and you guys had better disguise yourselves.”
Ron rolled his eyes. “We’ve done this before, Malfoy. I think we can figure that much out.”
It was a breathless, fast-paced journey, marked by four different portkeys and two Side-Along Apparitions. Draco led them to pubs, shacks, manors, and bars, sometimes having them wait outside, sometimes letting them inside to grab a bite to eat. Ron managed to avoid making a comment about the blond Auror’s trustworthiness, and for that Hermione was grateful.
Tensions were getting stretched as the day went on and there was no sign of Bletchley. She had images in her head of all of his victims, images of others dying because they were too slow, and she knew the others did too. Draco’s mouth took on a grimmer line as the day wore on, and Harry kept rubbing the bridge of his nose. Ron just looked preoccupied, but she knew - she could see it clouding his blue eyes, now brown in his disguise - that he was worried too.
“I think this is it,” Draco announced quietly as he hurried up to them. “The bartender says that Bletchley stops by regularly. The patrons remembered him too - one was kind enough to give me his address.”
“Great work,” Hermione complimented. “Let’s get going then, shall we?” The rest of the quartet nodded, and they portkeyed via an old beer bottle to the address Draco had.
The apartment building was nicer than Hermione’s, and that made her angry. This bastard was killing people - for kicks, or for a living, or for revenge, she didn’t know, but he was killing people - and he got to live in a nicer place than her flat? Hardly fair in the grand scheme of things.
They’d already established a plan at the first stop they’d made, and so Draco walked confidently up to Bletchley’s front door. “Bletchley!” he yelled, pounding on the door as Hermione circled around to the fire escape, Ron stationed himself out of sight and under a Disillusionment Charm as backup for Draco, and Harry circled around the back towards the windows they had spotted.
The door opened - Hermione could hear its hinges creak as she scrambled up the old metal fire escape - and conversation ensued. She didn’t know what Draco was saying; all she could hear was the low murmur of voices, masked almost entirely by her clambering up the rickety staircase - but then there was a shout and the sounds of a scuffle broke out above her.
Swearing, cursing Bletchley, the fact that she hadn’t gone running regularly, the world for getting her up after such a late night, and her own stupidity in not pulling her hair back in a braid, she sprinted up the fire escape, praying the fragile structure held. It was maddening, hearing the sounds of a fight - shouted spells, thuds, and the meaty sound of flesh hitting flesh - but not seeing what was going on.
Finally!
She was at Bletchley’s floor, and she slammed her foot through the window, thankful she’d taken the extra step of embedding ward-breakers in her boots, then flung herself through the newly-created opening, praying she didn’t cut herself on the glass. She landed on the floor, just missing a bedside table, rolled and straightened, then sprinted towards the sounds of the fight.
“Petrificus Totalus!” she shouted, swinging her wand towards the two fighting on the floor, blond hair and dark indistinguishable among the rolling bodies. She missed Bletchley - fuck - and hit Draco, snapping him into the rigid position of the curse. The short moment of opportunity presented by the distraction of her arrival and shouted spell allowed Ron time to leap onto Bletchley, knocking him unconscious with a punch to the jaw, following up by a careful stunning spell.
Harry burst onto the scene moments later, but it was all over. Bletchley had been captured - all that remained was connecting enough evidence to him that he might stand trial before the Wizengamot.
“Is Malfoy alright?” she asked Ron as she looked Bletchley over quickly to make sure the combination of being knocked unconscious following by the stunning spell hadn’t caused any serious damage.
“I’m quite fine, no thanks to you,” the aristocratic voice drawled from the corner where she’d knocked him with her spell.
“Sorry about that, Malfoy,” she retorted. “I guess my aim isn’t what it should be.”
“Yeah, we really need to work on that,” Ron added, snorting. He extended a hand to Malfoy. “Good work, Malfoy.”
“Doth my ears deceive me? Have I truly received a compliment from a Weasley?” Draco asked even as he took the offered hand.
“Careful, Malfoy, or I’ll spill your secret,” Hermione warned.
“Malfoys don’t have secrets,” Draco sniffed.
Even as the blond Auror spoke, Harry and Ron were chiming in with their curious question, “Secret? What secret is this?”
Hermione just smiled and winked at Draco.
*~*~*~*
It was all over too soon, Hermione mused as she rubbed the towel over her hair, wet from her shower. The six weeks prior had seemed agonizingly slow as they raced over the country finding victims of Bletchley left and right. In comparison, once they’d known where to look, the evidence gathering had been relatively easy, and the trials had finally ended last night, with Bletchley being sentenced to a life term in Azkaban.
She was glad that it was done, but at the same time, it felt odd, all of a sudden having all these free time ahead of her.
The doorbell pinged at that moment and she frowned as she hurried to answer it. “Malfoy,” she found herself greeting the blond Auror when she opened the door to see him standing on her threshold.
He smiled, that same arrogant smirk that made her want to smack it off his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call me Draco,” he commented as he stepped into her flat without so much as an invitation from her.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Hermione stated firmly. “What do you want?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to go out to dinner. And I’d hate to think of you sitting around home by yourself. Besides, we could use it to do something to catch up on our lives outside of work?” he said, wishing he had some sort of muzzle to shut himself up.
She smiled. “Is that a date, Malfoy?”
“Only if you can stomach calling me Draco,” he retorted.
Her grin widened until she was laughing, and she replied, “Alright, let me go change out of my robe, Draco.”
“I can wait,” he said, sitting down on her couch. “We’ve got plenty of time now.”
FIN
Three things you want your fic to include: a camera (of wizarding or muggle persuasion), a Christmas carol, green and red stockings
Three things you do not want your fic to include: angst, Hermione as a death deather, scrooge
Anything specific that you do not want to write: I have issues with hermione is really a pureblood fics and ones with draco likeing bad muggle punk music.
Thank-you for Celebrating the Season with Draco and Hermione!
Author: Anya/dancinggoldfish
Title: Rancor Between Coworkers (2/2)
Rating: PG/PG-13 (I'm terrible at picking out
Disclaimer: All recognizable places, objects, and people belong to JKR. I only wish I owned them :D
Author's Notes: Probably different than what you were expecting, and there is some slight angst I suppose, but I did try to keep it fun :D
Summary: Muggleborns are being targeted for murder, and Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Draco must work together to catch the killer, no matter how much they might hate it.
They Apparated back to the Ministry, to the alleyway alongside it, then hurried over the threshold of the door, through the corridors, up the stairs to the corner office they’d commandeered with their charts and maps and diagrams and post-it stickies. The last - little yellow and blue and green and pink squares of paper - were from Hermione. She was the one who always had a pad of them nearby to scribble ideas on.
The wall was lined with whiteboards - a little strategic transfiguration on the part of Harry and Ron before Draco joined them - and the whiteboards were lined with picture after picture, note after note, map after map, chart after chart. Cluttered, barely organized in any discernible way, this is where the four worked furiously, if not peacefully, to find the killer.
Seventeen dead in six weeks. Dark-haired, light-haired, tall, short, skinny, fat, dark-skinned, fair-skinned, man, woman, child - the killer struck indiscriminately. The only thing binding the deaths together was the blood status of the murdered. They were Muggleborn. No half-bloods or purebloods - only Muggleborns.
“So what now?” Ron asked as he sank into one of the chairs scattered across the room, spinning slowly in place.
“Let’s review what we know,” Hermione decided as she remained standing. “Terrence Higgs was our source, which should give us an idea of where he was getting his information from, which could then lead us to the killer -”
Draco shook his head. “Not necessarily. If I know Higgs - he was very, very careful. Whatever decisions he made, he thought them through and covered his tracks well. Which in turn would mean that we would have difficulty tracking them down. In addition,” he ticked a second point off his fingertips. “We’re working from a disadvantage. Whoever killed Higgs knew that he was in contact with you guys. He’ll be watching you - and me.”
“So are we assuming that Higgs was killed by the same killer we’re trying to track down?” Ron interrupted, tossing a miniaturized Quaffle from hand to hand.
“The kill pattern’s very similar,” Hermione pointed out.
“Yeah, but with the photos and details Cuffe ran, anyone would know how the killer made his mark,” Harry answered, leaning back in his own chair. “Were you able to get any samples from the cuts on Higgs’s neck?”
Hermione glared at him, affronted at the disparaging comment on her efficiency. “Of course I did. You want me to run a comparison with another sample we’ve got.”
Harry nodded, grinning. “We know the bastard uses the same knife every time - thank Merlin we didn’t learn that until Gulch had been booted by Cuffe - so any of the samples you run it against should work out fine.”
“You got it. I’ll go run down to the lab then.”
“I’ll come with you,” Draco said, pushing himself out of his chair.
She looked surprised, Ron and Harry looked startled, and then Ron was snickering, “Careful, Malfoy, you don’t want to go down there. Evil Muggle ideas are just waiting to trap you.”
Draco glared. “I’m so glad that you felt that need to demonstrate your inferior intelligence, Weasley,” he retorted, smoothing down the front of his robes, noting even as he did so that they needed a good cleaning charm.
“Are you coming or not, Malfoy?” Hermione demanded impatiently. He nodded and stepped through the door, nearly running into her when she turned around to address Ron and Harry. “You guys can head home if you want, or you can go digging through the files again, to see if there’s anything we’ve missed.”
Ron groaned, Harry snorted. “Gee, Hermione, you make it such a difficult choice,” he teased.
“Alright, home it is then,” Ron exclaimed, pushing out of his chair.
“Hardly,” Harry retorted. “We’re going to do another read-through of what we’ve got, then we can go.”
“Harry! Do you know how long those take?”
Hermione and Draco could hear Ron’s protest even as they shut the door behind them and walked down the corridor. The brown-haired young woman yawned. “These long hours are killing me,” she commented.
“That’s because you’re so all-fired dedicated, Granger,” Draco replied as he strolled by her side. “Are you awake enough to perform the tests?”
“Sure. It’s so easy I could do it in my sleep, no problems,” Hermione retorted even as she lost control of another jaw cracking yawn.
Draco smirked. “Do you want something to eat or drink to help you stay awake? Coffee, perhaps?”
Hermione shook her head. “I don’t dare. Coffee makes me jittery, and if I have some now, I’ll be up all night, and I have a meeting tomorrow at noon that I can’t be late for.”
“Ah.” There was a wealthy of understanding imbued in that single syllable, and Hermione considered asking him what he meant, but then she shrugged it off as an oddity she didn’t need to explore - or rather, didn’t have the time or energy to explore.
“Here we are,” she said instead, stopping in front of a door. Holes had been cut on either side of the door and all around the walls and filled with glass to create a viewing station. Those windows had been covered with Yuletide decorations, as much of the office had been, but prevalent among them was cutout red and green Christmas stockings. He noted the amusing difference between the innocent decorations and the efficiency that hummed inside the room. Inside, there was a long metal table with a variety of switches and wires coming off it, and cabinets filled with a wide variety of different shaped bottles, all filled with different liquids. It reminded him of Snape’s potions cupboard. She ushered him inside and into a chair, then bustled around the laboratory gathering the materials she needed. “So why did you want to come with me here, Malfoy?” she asked as she took the container of Higgs’s blood samples out of her pocket and placed it on the table, which was now lit from underneath.
“Figured I might as well get a feel for how all of this stuff works,” he said, shrugging.
“You’ve been working as an Auror for over four years, and you’ve never been in here before?” Hermione asked, so dumbfounded her jaw was hanging loose. Her hands continued to be busy pulling bottles of brightly colored liquid off shelves and prepping a microscope.
Draco shook his head. “Nope,” he answered. “Comfoot took care of that side of things - he’s a real nerd, you know? Classic Ravenclaw. Anyway, he loved coming in here and messing around with all his Muggle toys. I didn’t mind him doing that side of things - let me work on real investigating, so it worked out pretty evenly.”
Hermione’s lips tightened, but all she asked was a simple question as she summoned another jar similar to the one containing Higgs’s blood sample. “What made you change your mind?”
“Comfoot is in the medward, and St. Mungo’s doesn’t know when he’s going to be fit to return to active duty. I’m going to have to learn it sooner or later - might as well learn from the best,” he replied, shrugging again.
Hermione was flushing, much to her chagrin. She could feel the color seeping along her cheekbones as she snapped, “Malfoy, you do realize that you just paid me a compliment, don’t you?”
He laughed. “Does that bother you, Granger? You look very forbidding right now, all suspicious and frowning.”
“Malfoy, you had better not be flirting with me,” she retorted.
“Or what?” he asked, smirking as he lounged in the chair.
“Or I’ll kick you out of the lab, and you’ll have to learn how to work all this equipment from Ron,” she informed him.
“That’s cruel and unusual, Granger. Does the Ministry know about your sadistic tendencies?”
She snorted with laughter as she fought to keep the beaker steady. “Shut it, Malfoy, unless you want me to cause an explosion,” she warned.
That silenced him for a while, except for quick questions that he occasionally had, and she was able to finish easily. “Alright, Malfoy, take a look,” she offered, moving away from the microscope.
He raised an eyebrow, but unfolded himself from the chair. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Just look in the microscope, and tell me what you see,” she instructed, pulling together a clipboard with some parchment for notes.
He imitated her actions, bending over the microscope and pressing his eye to it. “Red and brown blood, spell residue, and other things I can’t identify.”
“Is the spell residue the same for both samples?” Hermione asked, propping the clipboard on her lap as she scribbled down what he said.
“They’re similar, although not exactly the same,” he replied after a long pause.
“Is it possible that the difference between the spell residues for the two samples is different because of the different lengths of time that we’ve had those samples? And in addition, are they similar enough to have come from the same person, or the same spell, but tempered by other spells in the vicinity?”
He was startled by her rapid-fire questions, but understand what she was reaching at. “Your theory that they’re from the same person and same spell - performed on a single object - and merely are the result of events at different times and other spells in the vicinity would make sense. They’re too uniform - too similar really, despite their differences - to have come from different people.”
“Alright,” she nodded, scribbled down the last of his points. “I’ll leave these for the official techs to deal with - we’ve got enough to go on for now.” She wrote a note and propped it up against the microscope, then cast a stasis spell. “Let’s go get these results - and the computer’s results - to Harry and Ron.”
“Computer’s results?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t seen those before.
She nodded. “Yep. We automatically get a printout of the computer’s analysis when we run a comparative diagnosis. It’s policy to double check the results manually, and I figured it would be good practice for you.”
“That’s sneaky of you, Granger. Almost Slytherin worthy,” he informed as he opened the door for her.
“Was that another compliment, Malfoy? Two in one day? I think I may just faint from excitement,” she teased as they hurried through the building towards their office. “Harry, Ron!” she exclaimed as she came through the door, only to cut herself off at the sight before her.
Ron was sprawled across one of the chairs, his feet propped up on one of the low tables they had - very convenient for dumping papers to be sorted, currently empty but for his boot-clad feet - and very fast asleep. Harry was slumped over a thick stack of reports, his glasses bumped up on his forehead so that the bridge between the lenses rested against his lightning bolt scar.
“They’re asleep,” Draco said, surprised to see his two - not enemies, but not friends or acquaintances - former schoolmates fast asleep in such awkward positions.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Hermione whispered to him. “Come on, help me move them around.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to wake them up to send them home - they’re completely out of it right now - so I’m going to transfigure two beds for them and rearrange them so they’re more comfortable,” Hermione answered. “Come on and help me. The sooner you do, the sooner you can get home and get some sleep.”
He smiled deprecatingly; not once in a million years did he think that he would be doing the closest thing to tucking Weasley and Potter into bed. With various grunting sounds and several well-placed spells, the two sleeping Aurors were rearranged, and then he was insisting that he walk with Hermione to her flat. “No arguments, Granger. I tucked your friends in, the least you can do is let me rest easy knowing you got home safe.”
“Since when do you care if the Mudblood got home safe?” she asked, raising an eyebrow even as her jaw cracked with a yawn.
He winced. “I haven’t called you that since we were seventeen,” he protested. “I don’t really think like that anymore - how could I?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, startled, even as she noticed him falling into step beside her as she headed in the direction of her flat.
“Faced with you, brightest witch the wizarding world has known in a long time - what’s this? Granger, don’t tell me you don’t read the papers? That’s your title - ‘smartest witch of all time’.” The last bit he put in air quotes as he teased her.
“I do - but it’s not like I do much more than skim the adoring platitudes,” she retorted. “I suppose you don’t though. I bet you like hearing yourself being called ‘the one who was redeemed’.”
He made a face as well. “Hardly, Granger.” They walked in silence for a while, and Draco found himself yawning more every second, and even though they were moving very quickly, his eyelids were very determined to close. “Granger,” he began as they stood outside her door, hating to admit that she was his best option at the moment, “would you mind letting me crash on your sofa?”
She looked up at him, peering fuzzily through sleep-dimmed eyes. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You must be exhausted too - I completely didn’t realize - of course you can, Mal - Mal - Mal -” She lost the battle again with a yawn. “Malfoy. The sofa’s in the living room - I’ll see if I can find a pillow and some blankets for you - I’m not sure it’s safe to be transfiguring things when you’re this tired.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, heading straight for the brightly colored couch, not even caring that its red and gold shades were offending his Slytherin sensibilities. And then he was lying his head on one of the over-stuffed, stiff pillows that everyone seemed to have on their sofas, and he was out like a light.
*~*~*~*~*
The next morning, Draco awoke to find himself rather cozily covered with several warm blankets. Two pillows were on the floor - where he had knocked them in his sleep - but even without them, he was quite comfortable. Granger wasn’t awake yet - at least, he didn’t hear her puttering around like he thought she would - so he turned over so that he was lying on his back and able to survey the entire room.
Her flat was cramped, but not uncomfortably so. She didn’t have it stuffed to the brim with furniture or useless knickknacks, but instead focused on bright colors and comfy furniture. Of course, the overall effect was somewhere mitigated by the oodles of Yuletide decorations she had up - very similar in design to those that decorated the tech lab at the Aurors’ Office.
“You awake, Malfoy?”
“Ack!” The voice in the doorway startled him - how the devil did she move so silently - and he nearly fell off the couch, tangled blankets and all. “Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded grouchily, even as he noted the coffeepot in her hand. “Please tell me that’s strong,” he begged.
She raised an eyebrow at his first question, and the left eyebrow joined the right at his second demand. “The coffee? Yeah. It’ll be ready in about five minutes, so if you want to brush your teeth or do whatever it is that you do to get ready, now would be the time to do it.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten thirty,” she shouted back over her shoulder as she disappeared into the kitchen.
He winced - he hadn’t come into work that late since he’d first starting working as an Auror almost five years ago - but he supposed staying until five in the morning excused any tardiness on his part. He cleaned his clothes as best he could, grabbed a cup off coffee, and then both of them were striding off to work, near dead-silent except for the occasional rumblings of early morning grouchiness.
“Harry, Ron,” Hermione greeted as she collapsed in a chair in their office. “Please tell me you two have got something good to report.”
“You look terrible, ‘Mione,” Ron commented. “What time did you guys head out last night?”
“Around five,” Draco said, after the two looked at each other. “It was light out when we left the building.”
Ron and Harry both winced. “Yowch,” Harry commented before he got down to business. “The tech lab dropped off a report for us this morning - IDing some DNA that was in the blood sample you found - that didn’t belong to Higgs.”
Hermione stared at him for a minute, lacking the comprehension to understand what he was saying, then her expression cleared. “DNA that wasn’t from Higgs? Have you run it through the system yet?”
“It’s running through now,” Ron replied, gesturing to the computer sitting in the corner of the room.
“Fabulous.” She dropped her head back on the edge of her chair. “Merlin, I want a nap,” she moaned.
“You’ll be able to sleep all you want once this case closes up,” Harry reassured her with a comforting squeeze of her hand. “But for now, finish your coffee and let’s get to work.”
“You’re a slave driver, Harry,” she commented even as she pulled her chair up to the big table littered with files. “Alright, what do we got?”
“We’ve got loads of lists, Hermione,” Ron replied, grinning at her. “Lists of Death Eaters who we can scratch off the list for one reason or another, lists of likely suspects, lists of the victims, lists of the connections between the victims and all of the Death Eaters - it goes on and on.”
Hermione’s eyebrows rose. “It would appear that you guys have been busy.”
“Most of the lists are from you,” Harry confessed. “We dug up a pile of them, and updated them while we were waiting for you and Malfoy to get in.”
The brown-haired girl nodded. “Alright, so what do we do next?”
“We could run endless comparisons, or we could wait for the results of the test,” Ron replied.
“Wait,” Draco interrupted. “What will the results of this test mean?”
“DNA was found in the blood samples we took from Higgs that didn’t belong to him. If the DNA doesn’t belong to any of the other victims, then we know that at the very least, it belongs to someone close to the killer - most likely the killer himself. Since we got DNA samples from most of the Death Eaters - or their relatives, we have a decent chance of figuring out, at the very least, who it’s not, and possibly, who it is,” Hermione replied. “It’s actually a bit more complex than that, as I was given to understand, but that’s pretty much the gist of it.”
“Ah. Sounds like a useful tool,” he commented.
“Just like that microscope,” she rebutted. “I vote we wait. Whatever connections we make depend on what the results of the comparison test is.”
“Alright,” Harry replied after taking a look at the other two occupants of the room who were also nodding. So they waited. They imbibed multiple cups of coffee apiece, tossed around names of possible killers or ideas as possible motives - beyond blood bias. Hermione fell asleep twice, Draco once, before they were rudely shaken awake by Harry and Ron, and Ron even made a rude comment about what they were doing when they left the Aurors’ Office.
“Actually, Ron, you’re partially right. Malfoy slept over at my house,” Hermione retorted, grinning at the dumbfounded look on the redhead’s face.
“You’re not funny, ‘Mione,” Ron retorted, glaring at her and Draco.
“Relax,” Draco insisted, hands up in the universal gesture of innocence. “Nothing happened like your sordid mind is imagining. I slept on her sofa, that’s it.”
Ron wasn’t very reassured, but at that moment, the computer began spitting out printouts. Draco managed to be the lucky one who grabbed the relevant sheet. “Miles Bletchley!” he shouted above the ruckus of snatching sheets and organizing them. “His DNA is the one in Higgs’s blood.”
That silenced the office as each of them thought on what they knew of the man - a Slytherin who’d managed to get away with hexing members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, a man who’d been two years ahead of Draco in school, and the Keeper for the team. “I suppose that makes sense,” Hermione spoke up. “From what I remember, he never had any real issues with hexing people he didn’t like when he was a kid - and I suppose it’s possible that he made the step over to killing people.”
Draco nodded. “Either way, I suppose we should bring him in then, shouldn’t we?”
Hermione, Ron, and Harry nodded and began reaching for their outer clothes. “Do you know where we can find him?” Hermione asked Draco quietly as they hurried out the door.
“I have a pretty fair idea,” he replied as he led the way. He pitched his voice a little louder. “We’re going to do some portkeying to get to where I think he is - and you guys had better disguise yourselves.”
Ron rolled his eyes. “We’ve done this before, Malfoy. I think we can figure that much out.”
It was a breathless, fast-paced journey, marked by four different portkeys and two Side-Along Apparitions. Draco led them to pubs, shacks, manors, and bars, sometimes having them wait outside, sometimes letting them inside to grab a bite to eat. Ron managed to avoid making a comment about the blond Auror’s trustworthiness, and for that Hermione was grateful.
Tensions were getting stretched as the day went on and there was no sign of Bletchley. She had images in her head of all of his victims, images of others dying because they were too slow, and she knew the others did too. Draco’s mouth took on a grimmer line as the day wore on, and Harry kept rubbing the bridge of his nose. Ron just looked preoccupied, but she knew - she could see it clouding his blue eyes, now brown in his disguise - that he was worried too.
“I think this is it,” Draco announced quietly as he hurried up to them. “The bartender says that Bletchley stops by regularly. The patrons remembered him too - one was kind enough to give me his address.”
“Great work,” Hermione complimented. “Let’s get going then, shall we?” The rest of the quartet nodded, and they portkeyed via an old beer bottle to the address Draco had.
The apartment building was nicer than Hermione’s, and that made her angry. This bastard was killing people - for kicks, or for a living, or for revenge, she didn’t know, but he was killing people - and he got to live in a nicer place than her flat? Hardly fair in the grand scheme of things.
They’d already established a plan at the first stop they’d made, and so Draco walked confidently up to Bletchley’s front door. “Bletchley!” he yelled, pounding on the door as Hermione circled around to the fire escape, Ron stationed himself out of sight and under a Disillusionment Charm as backup for Draco, and Harry circled around the back towards the windows they had spotted.
The door opened - Hermione could hear its hinges creak as she scrambled up the old metal fire escape - and conversation ensued. She didn’t know what Draco was saying; all she could hear was the low murmur of voices, masked almost entirely by her clambering up the rickety staircase - but then there was a shout and the sounds of a scuffle broke out above her.
Swearing, cursing Bletchley, the fact that she hadn’t gone running regularly, the world for getting her up after such a late night, and her own stupidity in not pulling her hair back in a braid, she sprinted up the fire escape, praying the fragile structure held. It was maddening, hearing the sounds of a fight - shouted spells, thuds, and the meaty sound of flesh hitting flesh - but not seeing what was going on.
Finally!
She was at Bletchley’s floor, and she slammed her foot through the window, thankful she’d taken the extra step of embedding ward-breakers in her boots, then flung herself through the newly-created opening, praying she didn’t cut herself on the glass. She landed on the floor, just missing a bedside table, rolled and straightened, then sprinted towards the sounds of the fight.
“Petrificus Totalus!” she shouted, swinging her wand towards the two fighting on the floor, blond hair and dark indistinguishable among the rolling bodies. She missed Bletchley - fuck - and hit Draco, snapping him into the rigid position of the curse. The short moment of opportunity presented by the distraction of her arrival and shouted spell allowed Ron time to leap onto Bletchley, knocking him unconscious with a punch to the jaw, following up by a careful stunning spell.
Harry burst onto the scene moments later, but it was all over. Bletchley had been captured - all that remained was connecting enough evidence to him that he might stand trial before the Wizengamot.
“Is Malfoy alright?” she asked Ron as she looked Bletchley over quickly to make sure the combination of being knocked unconscious following by the stunning spell hadn’t caused any serious damage.
“I’m quite fine, no thanks to you,” the aristocratic voice drawled from the corner where she’d knocked him with her spell.
“Sorry about that, Malfoy,” she retorted. “I guess my aim isn’t what it should be.”
“Yeah, we really need to work on that,” Ron added, snorting. He extended a hand to Malfoy. “Good work, Malfoy.”
“Doth my ears deceive me? Have I truly received a compliment from a Weasley?” Draco asked even as he took the offered hand.
“Careful, Malfoy, or I’ll spill your secret,” Hermione warned.
“Malfoys don’t have secrets,” Draco sniffed.
Even as the blond Auror spoke, Harry and Ron were chiming in with their curious question, “Secret? What secret is this?”
Hermione just smiled and winked at Draco.
*~*~*~*
It was all over too soon, Hermione mused as she rubbed the towel over her hair, wet from her shower. The six weeks prior had seemed agonizingly slow as they raced over the country finding victims of Bletchley left and right. In comparison, once they’d known where to look, the evidence gathering had been relatively easy, and the trials had finally ended last night, with Bletchley being sentenced to a life term in Azkaban.
She was glad that it was done, but at the same time, it felt odd, all of a sudden having all these free time ahead of her.
The doorbell pinged at that moment and she frowned as she hurried to answer it. “Malfoy,” she found herself greeting the blond Auror when she opened the door to see him standing on her threshold.
He smiled, that same arrogant smirk that made her want to smack it off his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call me Draco,” he commented as he stepped into her flat without so much as an invitation from her.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Hermione stated firmly. “What do you want?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to go out to dinner. And I’d hate to think of you sitting around home by yourself. Besides, we could use it to do something to catch up on our lives outside of work?” he said, wishing he had some sort of muzzle to shut himself up.
She smiled. “Is that a date, Malfoy?”
“Only if you can stomach calling me Draco,” he retorted.
Her grin widened until she was laughing, and she replied, “Alright, let me go change out of my robe, Draco.”
“I can wait,” he said, sitting down on her couch. “We’ve got plenty of time now.”
FIN
Three things you want your fic to include: a camera (of wizarding or muggle persuasion), a Christmas carol, green and red stockings
Three things you do not want your fic to include: angst, Hermione as a death deather, scrooge
Anything specific that you do not want to write: I have issues with hermione is really a pureblood fics and ones with draco likeing bad muggle punk music.
Thank-you for Celebrating the Season with Draco and Hermione!