FIC: "Thicker than Water," by r_becca
To: chantefable
Title: Thicker than Water
Author: r_becca
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~8,900 words
Summary: Ginny tries her hand at investigative journalism, and a routine murder investigation turns up more questions than answers for Harry. The Potters are caught in a net, but who's pulling the strings?
Author's Notes: Many thanks to magglenagall for beta-reading. chantefable requested conspiracies (big ones!), the Ministry of Magic, and Harry and Ginny at least 30. I think I managed to incorporate those things here -- I hope you enjoy!
Without taking her eyes off the newspaper, Ginny reached across the table, groping here and there for her coffee mug.
"Looking for this?" Harry pressed the mug into her hand, his fingers brushing hers deliberately as he did so. The stoneware was warm: he'd refilled it for her.
"Mmm, thanks." She put down the Prophet and took a long sip. "Leaving already?"
"It's that time again," he said, smiling. "You know, when people with jobs generally begin doing them?"
"Hey, I work," she said, repeating the lines in a well-rehearsed scene. "Just not--"
"First thing in the morning," he chimed in. "I know." He pressed a kiss to her brow and peered over the top of her head at the newspaper on the table. "Anything good in there?"
"Just the Muggle report."
"Why do you read that? It only makes you angry."
"This guy is such a hack," Ginny insisted. "It could be a good column, with real news. It would be if anyone besides Arbuckle were writing it."
"Why don't you write it?" Harry asked.
"What, from the sports desk?"
"Do a follow-up or something. You could show him how it's done." Clearly satisfied that he'd solved all his wife's problems, Harry stole a piece of buttered toast off her plate and went to the Floo humming. "Love you. See you tonight."
"Love you," she answered absently as he stepped into the fireplace and whirled away.
As the fire in the grate flared away, and the clock on the wall ticked over from 'traveling' to 'working,' Ginny stayed in her seat, not moving a muscle. Harry's words seemed to hang in the air. Show him how it's done. What had seemed like a silly, trite suggestion at first was sounding better and better with each passing moment.
Resolved, she summoned a red pen and began making notes in the margins. Arbuckle's article on the Muggle practice of "donating blood" lacked depth or detail, and was frankly boring. Even after years of sticking strictly to the sports desk, Ginny knew she could write a better article in her sleep. And she would.
----------
A slim, crisp file landed on Harry's desk before he was finished with his morning coffee. He looked up to find Victor Flint, head of the Investigative Division, standing over him.
"Morning, Vic," Harry said mildly. "Nice weather we're having." Vic was old enough to be his father, and in fact he'd had a son at Hogwarts with Harry, a Slytherin Beater who'd been a worthy but vicious opponent. Vic was famously brusque and did not indulge in pleasantries of any kind, a fact which inspired most of his subordinates to heckle him with chit-chat constantly.
"Take a look at that and come see me," Vic said, ignoring Harry's greeting entirely.
Harry grinned as Vic stomped off, and then reached for the file.
There wasn't much in it -- just another sad story about a young witch who'd gone missing. The reporting Auror had stuck strictly to the facts. There weren't many. Recent Hogwarts graduate, Ravenclaw house. There was a photo of the girl; she was pretty, in a fresh-faced, schoolgirl way. She'd been reported missing by her parents, who said she had no enemies. Well, the parents always thought that. Down at the bottom of the page was the one detail that explained why Vic had given a file on such a routine missing-person matter to one of the top Aurors in the department. The witch, one Cora Ann Marchbanks, worked as an under-secretary to the Minister for Magic.
Harry knew without asking what Vic wanted to talk about, and he knew it was serious. He shut the door behind him when he walked in.
"Potter," Vic said gruffly. "Read the Marchbanks file?"
This was as close to small talk as Vic ever got. Harry raised his eyebrows. "Yes, sir."
"I don't have to tell you that we need some discretion in this matter. This girl had friends in high places, and maybe enemies."
Harry just looked at him. He wanted to know what he was agreeing to before he signed on to this.
"Don't get your dander up, Potter. I ain't telling you to cover up for anyone. But you might uncover some bad news that ain't related, and ain't strictly illegal. If there's anything of that nature, we don't need it getting out, all right?"
"You want me to look into this girl's disappearance," Harry repeated. "Without pursuing any unrelated leads?"
"Merlin's balls," Vic said, rubbing one hand vigorously over his eyes. "Is that what I said? No. Pursue any leads you want. Just don't make any statements about anyone unless you're certain they're behind her death, and be discreet. If the Minister was sleeping with this girl, or anyone else, I don't want to know."
"I think I can handle that, sir." Harry had had his own problems with the press over the years, and he wasn't inclined to slip them tips and scoops the way some Aurors did.
"Good, now get out of my office."
Harry made a sketchy salute with the file and went back to his desk. It was just one desk in a large open room full of Aurors working, memos flapping and circling above, quills scratching on parchment and the low hum of earnest conversation. Years of seniority had earned Harry a spot next to a wall, but he still had at least thirty more years of service left if he wanted to earn a coveted corner desk. It'd be easier for him to get elected Minister for Magic than it would be to get that corner desk away from Savage.
Minister for Magic. Harry'd always avoided Ministry postings. They brought in glamorous cases, got an Auror's face on the front page. Harry'd had enough of the front page to last him a lifetime. The Ministry was a cauldron of eels, and one he'd never wanted to climb into. He looked at the file once again. It seemed he had no choice this time.
----------
Ginny rolled up her sleeve and watched the young woman curiously. She seemed to have a wide variety of tubes and bags and paperwork, all for such a simple procedure as extracting a bit of blood.
"Where does the blood go?" she asked, balancing a small notebook on her lap. Normally she would dictate to a Quick-Quotes Quill, but in a Muggle environment like this, she'd opted for one of Harry's silly felt pens instead.
"It goes into this bag right here," answered the young woman -- Ginny knew she wasn't a mediwitch, but what was the proper terminology?
"Erm, yes," Ginny answered. Interviews were so much easier in sport, when you could just ask about the zone defense or the team's chances at a championship. None of these bags and tubes. "But where does the bag go?"
The woman turned to face Ginny and really looked at her for the first time, and Ginny was able to see her nametag. Nurse Amanda Baker. "We send it up to the clinic for testing, just to make sure it's clean, and then it goes on to the blood bank," she explained. Ginny made a few notes on her pad.
"And once it's at the Blood Bank--" she began to ask. The only bank that Ginny was familiar with was Gringott's, but she thought that Muggles wouldn't store their blood in goblin vaults. At least, probably not.
"Oh, are you a reporter?" Nurse Amanda asked. "Sorry, it's just that we've got a whole press package already prepared for these questions. I'll get it for you in a moment."
"That would be wonderful, thank you," Ginny said with a smile.
"Now, this will just hurt for a moment," the friendly nurse said, and produced a very large needle at the end of yet another rubber tube.
Ginny sighed and closed her eyes. Needles. What would these Muggles think of next?
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"Sorry I'm late!" Harry called as he unlocked the front door. When he stepped inside, he found a darkened living room. Lily was already in her second year at Hogwarts, but it still surprised him to come home to an empty house. He checked the clock in the living room. The kids' hands pointed to 'studying,' 'studying,' and 'none of your damn business,' respectively. Harry grinned and made a mental note to call Neville at Hogwarts and check up on James. Ginny's hand pointed to 'working.'
He picked up the Muggle phone in the kitchen and ordered some curry before heading upstairs. He found Ginny in the room he still thought of as the nursery, which had been converted into an office several years ago. Her hair was scooped up in a messy bun and stuck through with an old quill, and she was bent over a piece of parchment, scribbling away. When she looked up and turned her face toward him, Harry could see a streak of ink across her forehead.
"Hi," he said, and bent down to kiss her on the lips.
"Hi." Ginny smiled up at him. "What time is it? I got a little caught up here--"
"It's after eight. I got caught up myself." Then, because he didn't want to talk about his own day, about the painful experience of talking to Mr. and Mrs. Marchbanks, who didn't know whether to cling to hope or begin to grieve, Harry asked, "How was your day?"
She grinned and rolled up her sleeve, revealing a piece of pink medical tape wrapped in a big X shape around her elbow. "I donated blood."
"What, the Muggle way?"
"There isn't a wizard way, as far as I know." At this, Ginny turned back to the desk and scribbled something on a parchment already packed full of notes.
"So what brought this on? Planning some major surgery you haven't told me about?"
"Surgery? Erm, no. This is for that article. We talked about it."
"Oh, the Muggle desk? That's great, Gin, it's--" Harry was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. "Come downstairs and tell me all about it over curry, yeah?" Harry headed down the stairs toward the door, stopping to scrounge up some of the Muggle money he kept on hand for this very situation. When the kids were at home, he and Ginny tried to cook nutritious meals, but during the school term they tended to eat an awful lot of take-away curry. He carried the cartons into the kitchen and set the table, pouring two tall glasses of lager to go with the food, dishing out rice and curry and lighting a couple of candles.
Ginny joined him in a moment, her eyes gleaming with excitement. She still had that streak of ink across her forehead, and Harry couldn't suppress a smile at the sight.
"What are you grinning about over there? You look like the kneazle that swallowed the snitch."
"Nothing." If he told her, she'd wash her face, and then he wouldn't get to enjoy the sight any more. "You were going to tell me about Muggles and their blood... things."
"Oh, yes! Harry, there's so much more to it than Arbuckle put in that half-arsed article. They have this whole ingenious system worked out. They take blood using a system of tubes, and store it in little baggies..."
She kept talking, but Harry really wasn't listening closely. He was watching the way the candlelight reflected off her hair, brick-red with strands of copper and silver mixed in. Her eyes danced animatedly, and as she emphasized her story here and there, her eyebrows moved up and down and wrinkled the inky smear on her forehead. It really was adorable. Harry thought maybe that wasn't an appropriate word to apply to a woman of nearly forty, but it was certainly the one that sprang to mind.
As Ginny talked and Harry sat and listened with half an ear, he felt the tension of the day drain away. He let the Marchbankses, the Minister and poor Cora Ann slip to the back of his mind. It was probably a simple case, he told himself. Cut and dried. He'd have it taken care of in a day or two, and then maybe he could take Ginny away somewhere for the weekend. Wouldn't that be nice?
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"And here is the facility where we test the blood," the young man said, pointing through a plate-glass window into a large, sterile laboratory. Three people were working inside with a number of impressive-looking Muggle machines. Ginny dutifully took notes, although she knew her readers wouldn't care much about the details of the machines.
"What is it that you test for?" she asked.
"We test to determine the donor’s blood type, obviously," the healer -- no, Muggles called them doctors -- said. It seemed far from obvious to Ginny, but she wrote it down anyway.
"I see," said Ginny, although she didn’t. "And is that important?"
The doctor looked surprised, as though this were something that Ginny ought to know. This Muggle reporting was harder than it seemed from her kitchen table. "The donor’s blood type must be compatible with the patient’s," he explained. "For example, your blood is type A-B positive, which is very rare. We have quite a shortage of this blood in the banks at present, and so your blood is in high demand. In fact, your donation is already being rushed to a patient in hospital across town."
"Oh, well that’s… wonderful," Ginny said. She felt both pleased and rather guilty, because the donation had been only a ploy to gain information for her article, not an intentional effort to help someone.
"It is," the doctor said, smiling at her. "Blood types generally run in the family, you know. I hope you will consider encouraging your relatives to donate as well."
"Oh, certainly," Ginny said calmly, but her mind was spinning. She was related to half the wizards in Britain. Could they share her blood type? If it was a wizard type, it would be rare in Muggle banks indeed. The chance that any wizard would be willing to donate their own blood to needy Muggles was slim at best, but perhaps if the recipient were another wizard, or even a Squib, they would consider it. This sounded like it might be the angle she needed for her article.
"This shortage of my blood type," she asked. "Is it any worse than usual?"
The doctor removed his eyeglasses and began to clean them with a soft cloth. "We are always in need of donors, but the need at this time is greater than ever before, especially in certain blood types. I’m afraid that the need for A-B positive is especially dire. Patients have even had to be turned away from hospitals due to lack of supply."
Ginny raised her eyebrows. "Any idea what's causing the shortage? An increase in demand?"
"Ah, that is--" The doctor's hands slipped and his eyeglasses clattered to the floor. He bent to retrieve them, and then took his time cleaning them again and placing them on his face. When he finally looked back at Ginny, there was only a tiny tremor in his voice when he said, "It’s rather gruesome, I’m afraid, but there has been some theft at the blood banks recently. Much of our A-B positive has gone missing in the last six months, but new security procedures are in place and we’re confident that we’ve stopped the, er, leak. Please, if you could encourage your readers to donate blood, there are many patients at London hospitals who could benefit."
"I'll make sure to include the instructions in my article," Ginny said, her face solemn. "I’m sure my readers will be interested." Missing blood -- especially if it were wizard blood -- meant big trouble. Only the darkest potions called for blood, and by the sound of it, quite a lot had been taken. If it wasn’t for potions uses, the alternatives were even worse.
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"Harry Potter is here to see you, Minister." After announcing him, the shapely secretary sashayed across the room and resumed her position at the desk. She wore tight robes and high-heeled shoes that looked impractical for just about anything. Harry wondered if she'd taken the place of the unfortunate Miss Marchbanks.
Minister Varney let Harry cool his heels in the lobby for a while before calling him in. Harry had expected it a bit. Sometimes men in high places thought it showed their importance to keep an Auror waiting when he came to question them. Harry had his own thoughts on the matter, which were that it was petty and stupid, and allowed more time for gossip to spread through the office. Everyone was entitled to their own opinion.
Finally, the door to the inner office opened, and the secretary at the desk looked up at Harry, a bored expression on her pretty face. "The Minister will see you now."
Harry stood, collected his coat and small notepad, and entered the office. As soon as he had taken two steps into the room, the door swung silently shut behind him and closed with a decisive click. Harry squinted against the sudden gloom, willing his eyes to adjust. Although the room had four long windows that were normally magicked to display the weather outside, the shades were pulled tight and no sunlight made its way into the large office. Instead, the room was lit only by magical lamps set here and there, which gave off very little light.
At the end of the long, dim room, Minister Varney sat behind a large desk. He was a tall man with a narrow face, his skin pale and pasty as though he spent most of his waking hours at work rather than out, enjoying the prestige of his position. "Auror Potter," he said, putting a little emphasis on Harry's title, as if to express that he understood the reason for the visit. "Do come in, sit down." A chair pushed back from the desk and swung around to an accommodating position. Harry wondered if the furniture was pre-charmed or if the Minister was wasting his energy on showy wandless magic just to make a point. "What can I do for you today?"
"I need to ask you a few questions about Cora Ann Marchbanks, Minister."
"Yes, yes of course." Varney assumed an expression of sadness and concern. "We all miss her terribly, of course. She was a great help to this office and the entire Ministry."
Harry, who detested politicians and found that the sentiment was usually returned, ignored this canned speech and pulled out a Quick-Quotes Quill. "D'you mind?" he asked. When Varney agreed, Harry set up the quill and spoke to it. "Let the record reflect that the Minister for Magic has agreed to the use of a recording device."
"Now, Minister, can you tell me how Miss Marchbanks came to work in your office?"
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"Ginny, good to see you," Padma said with a smile, brushing a loose hair away from her face. "Come to see the laboratory?" Padma’s laboratory, a premier source of medical potions for St. Mungo’s, looked like nothing so much as a huge kitchen, covered with gleaming tile and marble surfaces. Everywhere, cauldrons bubbled and smoked, each one with a complex-looking chart hanging on the wall next to it.
"Yes and no," Ginny said. "Actually, I need to consult a mediwizard for an article I’m working on, and I was hoping to ask you a few questions."
"Of course," Padma said, perching on a tall stool. "What do you need to know?"
"I’m working on an article about Muggle blood donations," Ginny said. "Kind of a follow-up to last week’s." Padma nodded, her dark eyes focused, and Ginny was reminded of why Padma was so well-respected. "A Muggle doctor told me about blood types, and I was wondering: is there a wizard type?"
"Most wizards don’t even know there is such a thing as a blood type," Padma said with a laugh. "Yes, there is a certain type that is the most common in magical communities. Not everyone is the same, of course."
"Is it A-B positive?" Ginny asked, consulting her notes.
"That’s the one," Padma confirmed.
"Do Muggles have it, too?"
"A few," Padma said. "Squibs, and their descendants and so on."
Ginny looked down at her notepad, where she’d written the words Wizard blood type -- missing? She circled the notation now and wrote next to it YES.
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Harry walked through the door and paused to take off his cloak near the front door. He was half-in and half-out of it when the Floo burst to life and Vic Flint's head appeared amidst the flames. "Potter!"
"Right here. What's going on?"
"I need you to come down here. We got a report of a body found in Diagon. Aurors on the scene think it might be the Marchbanks girl."
"I'll be right there," Harry said, already pulling his cloak back on.
"And listen, Potter. You've got to keep this one quiet, all right?"
"Yeah, discretion. We already--" Harry stopped as the flames died down, realizing he was talking to an empty grate. He turned to go just as Ginny came down the stairs.
"I thought I heard you," she said, turning her face up for a kiss.
Harry gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "Vic just called. I have to go out to a crime scene."
Ginny just nodded. After more than a decade and a half of marriage to an Auror, she was used to his uncertain schedule. "I'll leave a plate for you," was all she said, before Harry was out the door and Disapparating off to Diagon Alley.
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Harry found the crime scene without much trouble. A pair of Aurors were already in position beside the body; Harry followed the brief illuminations of a camera's flash to the scene, in a darkened alcove behind Slug & Jiggers Apothecary. There were a few steps leading down from the shop's back door, three rubbish bins, and all that was left of a young witch in the prime of life.
The Marchbanks file was sitting on Harry's desk, but he didn't need it. The photo inside of a smiling, healthy girl would not have helped him identify this body. Whatever had happened to Cora Ann Marchbanks, she bore little resemblance to that photo now. Her cheeks were hollowed out and full of wrinkles, body shriveled and dessicated, skin pasty white.
Harry stood off to the side of the roped-off area and looked down at the body.
"You ever seen anything like this, Potter?" the Auror on duty asked. He was a young wizard, just a few years out of training. Probably not much older than the victim. Harry had at least ten years' experience on him. Beside the stairs, his partner stood with the camera. She was older, closer to Harry's age, but she still looked over and followed their conversation with her eyes. This was the kind of case that didn't come along every day.
"Once." Harry remembered that case well, usually in more detail than he wanted at three o'clock in the morning.
"Yeah?" asked the young Auror eagerly.
"Send the body to St. Mungo's for a post-mortem," Harry said. "They'll tell you it's drained of blood." He stepped over the rope that marked off the crime scene and walked around the body, careful not to disturb anything. Just as he'd expected, there were two matching puncture wounds on the victim's neck, barely visible now that the skin had dried up and shriveled like a raisin in the sun. No question about it: Cora Ann Marchbanks had been killed by a vampire.
"Sure will," the Auror agreed, but his voice wavered a little. Whether it was disgust or fear, Harry couldn't say. Sometimes the two went hand-in-hand in this job.
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Ginny arrived at the Prophet bright and early the next morning, a thick sheaf of parchment rolled up and stuffed in her bag. As soon as she stepped into the office, she made a beeline for her editor's desk and dropped the parchment into the box labeled 'finished articles - in - and they'd better be in on time, this means you!!!' Pleased with herself, she went off to make a cup of tea and look over the morning edition.
She was just halfway through a story about the Wimbourne-Puddlemere trade of Oliver Wood when she heard her name. "Weasley?"
"Perks," Ginny said, looking up with a smile. "Want to get lunch later?"
"That depends," Josie Perks, features editor and one of Ginny's closest friends at the paper, answered. "On just what the hell this is." She held up Ginny's bound parchment.
"That's an article, Jo."
"It's a feature article."
"Nothing gets by you, huh?" Ginny grinned, but Josie only raised her eyebrows and said nothing. "Erm, it's a follow-up to Arbuckle's story on Muggle blood banks. I... just happened across some new information on the topic."
"New information." Josie rolled her eyes, and Ginny tried not to laugh. After many long lunches together, she knew that they shared the same opinion of Arbuckle's investigative efforts. "New information on..." She lifted the parchment in front of her face and read from the first paragraph, "A rash of illicit withdrawals from Muggle blood banks, creating a deficit of a rare blood type, may be linked to the wizarding world." She raised her eyebrows. "Serious stuff, Gin."
"Yep," Ginny said. "What do you think?"
"Think? This is terrible."
"Terrible?"
"If I steal you away to features, the sports editor will thrash me with a beater's bat. But... it might be worth it."
"Otherwise?"
"The article’s fantastic, Gin. Front page material. Lunch is definitely on me today."
"In that case, we're going to Fontaine's."
"Deal, but you have to write some sports pieces so I don't end up in St. Mungo's, all right?"
"Deal," Ginny agreed. She was sure she could swing an exclusive interview with Oliver Wood about the recent trade, and Josie was only partially joking. She'd need an exclusive interview to make things up to her regular editor. Pushing Muggles and their ridiculous medical practices firmly out of her mind, she did her best to concentrate on Quidditch.
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"That's the guy?" Harry asked, peering down a short corridor and through the metal bars in the lock-up at Magical Law Enforcement. In a small cell at the end of the corridor sat Cora Ann Marchbanks' apparent killer: a middle-aged man, of average weight and height, with no facial expression. He wore shabby clothes and had three days' worth of stubble on his face.
"Yep. Bertram Blott." Vic shook his head. "Came in this morning and confessed. Said he couldn't live with himself, knowing what he’d done."
"Came in this morning?" Harry asked. "With the sun up?"
Vic's eyes met Harry's, grim and knowing. He nodded.
Harry turned back and watched the wizard in the cell. The victim's body had been entirely dessicated, with two puncture wounds right at the neck. Wizardkind was capable of a lot of atrocities, and Harry had seen most of them. But no ordinary wizard was capable of this. Blott was no vampire, just a regular wizard.
A confession should have brought an end to the investigation. Instead, Harry had one more question to add to the list: why would Bertram Blott confess to a crime he'd never committed?
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"Weasley." Josie's voice was serious.
"What? Oh, is it time for lunch already?"
"I need to talk to you in my office."
Ginny looked at her half-written list of questions for Oliver Wood, who'd agreed to an exclusive interview, and back at her friend. They never talked behind closed doors unless there was juicy gossip. "Can't this wait?" she asked. "I have a lot to do for this interview, and--"
Josie just shook her head. "Come on," she said, and turned and walked back in the direction of her office. Ginny shrugged and followed.
Inside the small cube of an office, Ginny shut the door. "So?" she asked eagerly. "What's the dirt?"
"You might want to sit down for this." Josie stepped behind the desk and sat stiffly in her chair, folding her hands in front of her on the desk. She looked more like she was about to have an unpleasant business meeting than a cheerful gossip session.
"Must be pretty big news," Ginny said with a smile. She pulled out one of the straight-backed wooden chairs in front of Jo's desk and sat. "What's going on?"
"Listen, I don't want to tell you this, but better me than someone else," Josie said, her blue eyes locked on Ginny's the entire time. "You've been suspended from the paper."
"I... what?" Ginny let out a disbelieving laugh. Only a few hours before, Josie had threatened to fight the sports editor to get Ginny in her section, and now she was firing her? It didn't make any sense.
"The boss asked me to tell you. Suspended."
"For how long? What is this about?"
"Thirty days at least, but maybe longer. I'm sorry."
Ginny slumped back in her chair for a moment, and then sprang up so quickly that the chair toppled over and hit the wall. "Cuffe thinks he can suspend me for no reason, without even saying so to my face, just because he's the managing editor? I'll--"
"Weasley, don't." Josie stood and came around the desk to grab Ginny's elbow. "Listen, it wasn't Cuffe's decision, either, all right?"
"What aren't you telling me, Jo? Why would Cuffe want to suspend me, and why now?"
"He got a call earlier from the owner, all right? And just after that, he asked me to suspend you."
"Prophet?" Ginny asked. "Mr. Prophet called Cuffe and then he decided to suspend me?"
Jo nodded. "And you know that Prophet never gets involved with the paper if he can help it. He's too involved with that ridiculous airship of his."
Ginny nodded. Prophet was the owner of the newspaper, but he also owned half of Diagon Alley and most of Hogsmeade. He didn't involve himself in the running of any of it, preferring to devote himself to the Oak Moke, an airship that most people believed would never fly. If Prophet had actually gone to the Floo to get her suspended, it must be over something big. Something a lot bigger than a spelling error in a player's name or a misplaced team in the standings.
"Whatever this is, it must be something big," Jo said, echoing Ginny's thoughts exactly. "You should stay out of it. Go home, relax, take that hardworking husband of yours on a holiday."
"Something big is going on, all right," Ginny agreed. As for the rest of it, Jo was dead wrong if she thought Ginny was going on holiday. Whatever this was, if it was big enough to get her suspended from the paper, it was big enough for a front-page story. Ginny was just the reporter to write it.
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"I just don't understand it," Ginny said, sitting in her favorite squashy armchair and clutching her mug of tea in both hands. "Why would Cuffe want to suspend me now? And why does Prophet care about me at all?"
"Quidditch Monthly is lucky to have you," Harry said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head and then stepping out of immediate wand-range. He'd learned the hard way how to deal with his wife when she was upset.
"Of course they are. You should have seen the editor’s eyes light up when I walked through the front door with an exclusive interview on the year's biggest trade."
"It couldn't have been Wood’s interview; you hadn’t even done it yet," Harry said.
"What, then?" asked Ginny. "You think Prophet was upset about the blood bank story?"
Harry rested one hip against a bookcase. "Has it gone to print?"
Ginny shook her head. "But it would be a couple of days until it made it into the paper, with editing and everything..."
"Besides the interview with Wood and the piece on Muggle blood banks, do you have anything else that hasn't been published yet?"
"Just a couple of little things for the sports section, stadium maintenance in Appleby and that ridiculous uniform mix-up in Wimbourne."
"It had to be the blood bank story," Harry said, running one hand through his hair. He hated to see Ginny upset like this, and both his protective instincts and his Auror instincts were pushing him to investigate and figure out her problem. "Do you still have a copy of that article? Was there anything in there that could have been controversial?"
Ginny looked a little sheepish. "Maybe I should’ve told you first, but I wanted the scoop. It turns out that a specific type of blood that’s mostly found in wizards has been stolen from the Muggle blood banks."
"Blood is being stolen from Muggles?" Harry asked, standing up straight. "Wizard blood?" This was hitting a little too close to his own case for comfort. Vampires needed a regular blood supply, and what could be more regular than a Muggle blood bank?
"Yeah," Ginny said, looking glum. "Padma told me that most witches and wizards have a certain blood type. That’s the kind that’s being stolen. I was going to do a follow-up piece, maybe look into dark potions suppliers." Harry shook his head at the idea of Ginny investigating the shady underground world of dark potions suppliers. She would be the death of him yet.
"I don’t think it’s for dark potions," he told her firmly. "Call it a hunch."
"All right," Ginny said slowly. "But why would Prophet be upset about an article on missing blood?"
Harry considered the question. Prophet was a notorious recluse; could he be the vampire in question? No, not with that airship of his. He’d need to be out in the daylight tinkering and testing it all the time. Still, he was a powerful man with a lot of connections. Prophet had certainly gone out of his way to keep any speculation on what -- or who -- might be causing a shortage of blood out of the newspaper.
"Maybe he cares about it and maybe he doesn’t," Harry said, speculating aloud. "Find out what Prophet got in return for squashing your story, and you'll know why he cares."
----------
An internal memo, printed on thick parchment and folded into the shape of a buzzard, flapped its wings twice and glided across the Auror office to land on Harry's desk. He unfolded it quickly, ignoring its squawks of protest, and read it closely. After a moment, he sat back in his chair and gazed at the mess of photos, notes and diagrams strewn across his desk. It might have looked like a mess to a passer-by, but there was a specific method to the chaos, one which symbolized the case in Harry's mind.
Abruptly, he stood and walked across the office, the new memo in his hand.
"Potter. News?" barked Vic, when Harry opened his office door.
"Yes," Harry said. "But you're not going to like it."
Vic grunted. Harry stepped inside and shut the door behind him. "Apparently our confessed killer had a son in Azkaban," he told Vic. "He was released right after we got the confession to Cora Ann's murder. In return for his confession, Blott received a ministerial pardon for his son. He was paid off, by someone high up in the Ministry."
"As it happens, I wanted to talk to you about that case, Potter," Vic said, speaking in a halting voice. He sounded entirely unlike himself, and it worried Harry. "The Senior Undersecretary for Magical Law Enforcement sent me a memo today. She congratulated us on catching Miss Marchbanks' killer, and would like to commend us for bringing this case to a speedy conclusion," Vic went on. "We have both been offered the Order of Merlin, second class, as a reward for concluding the case." His face was expressionless as a stone wall; he didn't look proud enough to have just won Thursday-night bowling, much less the Order of Merlin.
Then again, the Order of Merlin didn't mean much to Harry, either. He already had two sitting in a drawer somewhere -- first class -- but that wasn't why he wasn't in a tizzy to write his acceptance speech now. He had other things on his mind, things like Cora Ann Marchbanks. "That's it?" Harry asked. "Just like that, I'm to stop investigating the case? You and I both know there's no way Blott is really behind this, and that means that the real killer is still out there somewhere."
"According to Magical Law Enforcement, the case is closed," Vic said, carefully enunciating the last four words. He leaned forward and rested both forearms on the desk, linking his hands in front of him. "But, as I'm confident you're well aware, Potter, no case is ever permanently closed. Auror Office policy still stands that if a compelling reason is found, a closed case can be reopened at any time."
"I see," Harry said. "Of course, we wouldn't want to make an exception to department procedure."
"I'm glad we understand each other," Vic said serenely. "Now, get back to work."
----------
Ginny might've been suspended, but she was still a reporter through and through. And a reporter knew how to get to the bottom of a story.
She performed cosmetic charms at home before setting out, giving her still-bright red hair a dark brown tone, concealing her freckles and the fine lines around her eyes. She put on garish turquoise eyeshadow and a pair of small wire eyeglasses, and donned a pair of drab grey robes from Malkin's newest line. When she was done, she bore a superficial likeness to Portentia Parkinson, one of the junior reporters in Jo's section.
The likeness was not perfect, but when she stepped into Prophet's business office in Diagon Alley, no one would see a Senior Quidditch Correspondent looking for revenge; all they'd see was a naive girl trying to put together a routine story.
Prophet's office was tastefully decorated in a style that had been popular in the 1970's, which was likely the last time that he'd used it. Low kelpie-hide couches in mustard yellow sat along the walls, and the floor was covered with fluffy carpeting the color of avocados. The only things that were new in the entire office were the huge frames that dominated one wall, containing elegant line-drawings of Prophet's airship, the Oak Moke. The airship looked more like an overstuffed aubergine than something that might be expected to lift off into the air, but she had seen stranger things fly in her life.
Behind a small desk in one corner sat a bored-looking woman with silver hair swept up in an elaborate bouffant. The nameplate in front of her read Araminta Abercrombie. "I'm sorry, Mr. Prophet is not available today," she told Ginny, giving her a look that said her intelligence was in doubt for even asking. Prophet was a famous recluse, after all.
"Oh, damn," Ginny said. "I was hoping to get a quote from him on this article we're doing, about his airship."
It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed like the right place to start. The entire wizarding world knew Prophet for three things: the newspaper, his vast piles of Galleons, and the airship. Surely there was more to the man, but without a lot of time for research, Ginny had to trust her instincts.
"Oh, isn't it exciting?" Araminta asked, her heavily-powdered face breaking into a big smile. "We’re all just giddy over it."
Her shot in the dark had struck its target dead on. Ginny did not try to hide a smile. "Yes, it's wonderful," she agreed. "Congratulations."
"He's been trying to get approval for years and years now," Araminta indicated the drawings on the wall with one hand. "And then yesterday, the stars must have aligned or something, because word finally came through from the Minister's office."
Ginny nodded, as if in agreement. "The stars aligned, after all those years," she repeated. "So you have no idea what brought on the approval so suddenly?"
Araminta frowned. "The Minister finally came to his senses, is all. It’s a magnificent ship, you know."
"Yes, magnificent," Ginny agreed faintly. So, after years of Prophet lobbying for his pet project, it’d finally been approved just after he’d squashed her story about the blood banks. The timing was too precise to be a coincidence.
Find out what Prophet got in return, Harry had said. Well, he’d gotten a favor directly from the Minister, by all appearances. But why should the Minister for Magic care about Muggle blood banks?
----------
When Ginny arrived home, still in her disguise, Harry was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of Ogden's in one hand and the bottle sitting at his elbow. He had Auror Office files spread out before him in an uneven pattern, parchment in official type marked UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL, grisly crime-scene photos and pages and pages of notes in Harry's own untidy handwriting.
It wasn't the first time that he'd brought a case home in the literal sense when he needed a quiet environment to think over all the evidence. Normally Ginny gave him space, and tried not to pry. She had a feeling this might not be an ordinary case.
Harry looked up with surprise when she walked through the door. "Gin?" he asked.
"It's me," she replied. "Weasley sinks thirty-eight goals in victory over Puddlemere; all-star status assured for league leader." It was the password to assure her identity, and had been ever since the Prophet published the headline over fifteen years earlier. Saying it never failed to make Ginny smile, even under the worst of circumstances. Harry grinned too.
Ginny ducked into the loo and removed her cosmetic charms before joining Harry at the table.
"DMLE--" he pronounced it 'dimly' "--closed my case," Harry said, indicating the papers in front of him.
"Shouldn't that be the supervising Auror's call?" she asked.
"Yeah," Harry said, looking back at the papers and taking a drink of firewhiskey. As his lips curled into a bitter smile, a small trail of smoke escaped from the corner. Ginny summoned a glass and poured some for herself.
"The Ministry's been busy," she told Harry. "They approved the Oak Moke yesterday."
"Yeah?"
"Prophet had me canned, and in return the Minister approved his pet airship. A fair trade."
"For Prophet. All he had to do was make one Floo call."
"Well, sure, but why would the Minister care about me, or Muggle blood banks?"
Harry shook his head, looking down at his papers. "It's not about you. It's about what was in that article. Gin, I've been over these papers a dozen times, and every time it all leads to the same place."
"All right," Ginny said, standing up and moving around to the other side of the table, so she could read the documents spread across the scarred wooden surface. She sat beside Harry, pressing her thigh against his and swirling the smoking alcohol in her glass. "Why don’t you show me what you have?"
Harry slid a set of photos across the table toward her. One showed the smiling face of Cora Ann Marchbanks in the same photo which had been plastered across the Prophet for weeks. The other showed a darker image of what was left of the girl dumped beside three rubbish bins; this picture had never made it into the Prophet. "She worked for the Minister," he said. "A junior undersecretary."
Ginny reached out and picked up the crime scene photo. She'd avoided looking closely at it before, but even on a cursory inspection it was obvious that Cora Ann's body was shriveled and dried out. Harry offered no explanation, but he didn't need to. Ginny didn't consider herself an expert on death, but she'd seen enough of it during the war to know that normal exposure didn't do that to a decomposing body.
She rifled through the paperwork in the Marchbanks file, but didn't find what she was looking for. "Where's the coroner's report?"
"Must've got lost in the mail," Harry said, and drained his glass. "Her body was drained of blood."
Ginny raised her eyebrows and looked back at the photo. "How does that happen?" she asked.
"Puncture wounds in the neck." They both knew what that meant; it wasn’t anything a spell could do. She didn't say the word vampire, and Harry didn't suggest it, but their eyes met and Ginny shuddered at the thought.
"I thought some wizard confessed to the killing," she said. She shuffled through the notes scribbled in Harry's hand, until she found one labeled 'confession' and 'Azkaban pardon,' with heavy black arrows drawn connecting the two.
"Bertram Blott," Harry confirmed, then pulled a memo out of a stack of papers. "Right after he did, his son was pardoned out of Azkaban."
"Paid off," Ginny commented. "Pardons have to come from the top, right?" Harry only nodded.
"Then there’s your article," Harry said, pulling out the copy that Ginny had given him. It was covered with notes in the margin, and the paragraphs about the missing blood were circled. "Blood goes missing from Muggle banks, and it’s all one type: the wizard blood type."
"Specific tastes," Ginny said. She felt bile rising in her throat, and took a heavy sip of Ogden’s to cover it.
"Someone didn’t want that news to get out," Harry said. "Prophet stopped publication on your article, and got you out of the way. In return, the Minister approved his pet project."
"The Minister's got his fingers in a lot of pies," she said, looking with new eyes at the documents spread out before her. A young woman's body drained of blood. The coroner's report missing. An Azkaban pardon in return for a false confession. A shortage at the Muggle blood bank, and the news kept quiet in return for a personal favor.
"Looks that way," Harry said. "And the window shades in his office are shut tight."
Ginny met his eyes, bright green behind his glasses. He looked as tired as she felt. "You think the Minister..."
"Either him or someone close to him," Harry said. "Have you seen him in daylight since he was elected?"
They were both silent for a while. Finally Ginny shook her head. "This... Harry, this is huge. This is... we have to do something."
"It's not as though we can call up the Magical Creatures squad and have them take him away, he's the bleeding Minister," Harry said, then winced at his own words. "If DMLE squashed my case, Magical Creatures hasn't got a chance."
Ginny frowned down at her marked-up manuscript. "Luna could publish an expose in the Quibbler," she suggested. "But no -- she'd only get dragged into this with us, and then where would we be?"
"Up to our eyeballs in wrackspurts and snargalumps, no doubt."
"People deserve to know what their Minister's become, Harry. How can we shed some light on this without involving a publisher?"
Harry smiled at her, and nudged her with his elbow. "You can take the witch out of the newsroom, but you can't take the newsroom out of the witch, eh?"
"Damn right," she said. "So?"
"I don't think the usual methods will work this time," Harry said. "We're going to need an alternate plan."
----------
It had been over twenty years since they last broke into the Ministry, but this time they had a major advantage: many of the security systems had been designed or updated by Harry himself.
It was night, and the building was dark inside. Only a few lights here and there illuminated the enormous lobby. Harry and Ginny, dressed all in black and aided by Disillusionment Charms, crossed the marble floor unnoticed.
Harry led the way through a small door that Ginny had never noticed before and into a narrow stairway. They climbed quickly, without speaking; if anyone should chance upon them in the stairwell, there would be nowhere to hide or escape.
When they reached the first floor landing, Harry cast a spell on the stairway door that turned a small section transparent. The small window showed a long, dim hallway lined with doors, and other hallways branching off at intervals. A few signposts or banners lined the walls, promoting various Ministry activities, a wilted potted plant stood near the end, and a single wizard sat dozing in a chair near one doorway.
Ginny met Harry's eyes and held up her wand in the old Duelling Club gesture of readiness. He returned the salute. Slowly, he twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open a few inches. Pressed against the stairwell wall, Ginny extended her arm so that only her wand, hand and wrist were outside the door. Watching through the spelled window, she aimed carefully and whispered a sleeping spell.
The guard never saw it coming. He slumped to the side as if he'd suddenly fallen asleep, and then slowly toppled over until he lay curled up on the floor.
Not daring to breathe, Harry and Ginny dashed down the hallway to the fallen guard. Just as he'd done before, Harry cast a spell and peered through the door. This time, the room beyond was empty. He cast three separate unlocking charms, and then pushed open the door.
They stepped through into the reception room. No light showed under the door of the Minister's inner office, but Harry knew that Varney did not need light to see. Carefully, he peered through the wall and saw nothing. They crept inside and set to work.
Harry examined the drawn shades and examined them to determine what spells were already in place, then removed each spell systematically from each window shade. There were spells to keep the shades drawn at all times, spells to prevent light from seeping through, and even protective magic in place to stop rips and tears in the fabric. Some of the spells would need to stay in place, while he would replace others. It was technical work, not at all what he usually dealt with in the Auror Office, but Harry had practiced on the drapes in his living room until they were reduced to shredded bits of string. He was confident he knew what he was doing.
Meanwhile, Ginny examined the windows themselves. Although the entire Ministry was located below ground, windows all over the building were bespelled to show a reasonable facsimile of the sky, controlled by Magical Maintenance. It wasn't real sunlight, but based on the series of spells set on the curtains, it seemed as though the Minister feared it as much as if it were real.
Not trusting to deductive reasoning, Ginny carefully removed the complex spells on the first window, until she could see the stripped stonework beneath the panes of glass. Then, she traced her wand slowly around the window's frame, murmuring "caelum revelio," over and over again as she worked. When she had completed the circuit, the glass gleamed with a faint blue light, and then faded. When the light was gone, she could see a velvety blue-black sky, dotted with bright stars and bleeding with the dim orange glow of Muggle lamps at the edges. This was no simulation; the window now revealed a true glimpse of the sky overhead.
She took a deep breath and let it out again slowly, feeling something inside her stomach relax just a little. The spell, nothing more than a decorating tip from an old copy of Witch Weekly, worked. It really and truly worked. They were going to take down the Minister for Magic by simply redecorating his office. Ginny felt a laugh bubbling up inside her chest, and swallowed, keeping it firmly inside. She had work to do.
The sky outside the re-spelled panes of glass was already beginning to lighten with the dawn when Ginny finished the last window. As soon as she was done, she pulled down the shade and stood back. Harry walked the length of the room, tapping each window shade with his wand in turn, and murmuring a time-release spell. If all went according to plan, the window shades would spring open in the midst of the Minister's morning staff meeting, bathing the entire group in a burst of strong sunlight.
As soon as he finished the spell, Harry stepped back breathed a sigh. Ginny stepped up to his side and clasped his hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. He returned the gesture, and they left the Minister's office hand in hand.
----------
As soon as they arrived home through the Floo, Ginny wrapped her arms around Harry. "We did it," she said, still whispering after hours of keeping her voice down for fear that someone would hear.
"We did, love. Now there's nothing to do but wait and see."
"Oh, I can think of a thing or two to occupy the time," Ginny said, and drew Harry close for a long kiss.
----------
DAILY PROPHET
BREAKING NEWS ITEM, by G. Weasley-Potter, Staff Reporter:
Minister for Magic still missing! Special Session of the Wizengamot will convene tomorrow to select a temporary replacement. Auror Office appoints Special Commission to investigate disappearance, headed by Distinguished Auror Harry Potter, Order of Merlin First Class (twice).
Additional Author's Notes: Inspiration for this fic provided by the following: hard-boiled detectives of all stripes, Nick & Nora Charles, Woodward & Bernstein, Veronica Mars, Howard Hughes and his "Spruce Goose" A-4 Hercules airplane. My deepest apologies to all. Minister Varney is no doubt related to Sir Herbert Varney.
Title: Thicker than Water
Author: r_becca
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~8,900 words
Summary: Ginny tries her hand at investigative journalism, and a routine murder investigation turns up more questions than answers for Harry. The Potters are caught in a net, but who's pulling the strings?
Author's Notes: Many thanks to magglenagall for beta-reading. chantefable requested conspiracies (big ones!), the Ministry of Magic, and Harry and Ginny at least 30. I think I managed to incorporate those things here -- I hope you enjoy!
Without taking her eyes off the newspaper, Ginny reached across the table, groping here and there for her coffee mug.
"Looking for this?" Harry pressed the mug into her hand, his fingers brushing hers deliberately as he did so. The stoneware was warm: he'd refilled it for her.
"Mmm, thanks." She put down the Prophet and took a long sip. "Leaving already?"
"It's that time again," he said, smiling. "You know, when people with jobs generally begin doing them?"
"Hey, I work," she said, repeating the lines in a well-rehearsed scene. "Just not--"
"First thing in the morning," he chimed in. "I know." He pressed a kiss to her brow and peered over the top of her head at the newspaper on the table. "Anything good in there?"
"Just the Muggle report."
"Why do you read that? It only makes you angry."
"This guy is such a hack," Ginny insisted. "It could be a good column, with real news. It would be if anyone besides Arbuckle were writing it."
"Why don't you write it?" Harry asked.
"What, from the sports desk?"
"Do a follow-up or something. You could show him how it's done." Clearly satisfied that he'd solved all his wife's problems, Harry stole a piece of buttered toast off her plate and went to the Floo humming. "Love you. See you tonight."
"Love you," she answered absently as he stepped into the fireplace and whirled away.
As the fire in the grate flared away, and the clock on the wall ticked over from 'traveling' to 'working,' Ginny stayed in her seat, not moving a muscle. Harry's words seemed to hang in the air. Show him how it's done. What had seemed like a silly, trite suggestion at first was sounding better and better with each passing moment.
Resolved, she summoned a red pen and began making notes in the margins. Arbuckle's article on the Muggle practice of "donating blood" lacked depth or detail, and was frankly boring. Even after years of sticking strictly to the sports desk, Ginny knew she could write a better article in her sleep. And she would.
----------
A slim, crisp file landed on Harry's desk before he was finished with his morning coffee. He looked up to find Victor Flint, head of the Investigative Division, standing over him.
"Morning, Vic," Harry said mildly. "Nice weather we're having." Vic was old enough to be his father, and in fact he'd had a son at Hogwarts with Harry, a Slytherin Beater who'd been a worthy but vicious opponent. Vic was famously brusque and did not indulge in pleasantries of any kind, a fact which inspired most of his subordinates to heckle him with chit-chat constantly.
"Take a look at that and come see me," Vic said, ignoring Harry's greeting entirely.
Harry grinned as Vic stomped off, and then reached for the file.
There wasn't much in it -- just another sad story about a young witch who'd gone missing. The reporting Auror had stuck strictly to the facts. There weren't many. Recent Hogwarts graduate, Ravenclaw house. There was a photo of the girl; she was pretty, in a fresh-faced, schoolgirl way. She'd been reported missing by her parents, who said she had no enemies. Well, the parents always thought that. Down at the bottom of the page was the one detail that explained why Vic had given a file on such a routine missing-person matter to one of the top Aurors in the department. The witch, one Cora Ann Marchbanks, worked as an under-secretary to the Minister for Magic.
Harry knew without asking what Vic wanted to talk about, and he knew it was serious. He shut the door behind him when he walked in.
"Potter," Vic said gruffly. "Read the Marchbanks file?"
This was as close to small talk as Vic ever got. Harry raised his eyebrows. "Yes, sir."
"I don't have to tell you that we need some discretion in this matter. This girl had friends in high places, and maybe enemies."
Harry just looked at him. He wanted to know what he was agreeing to before he signed on to this.
"Don't get your dander up, Potter. I ain't telling you to cover up for anyone. But you might uncover some bad news that ain't related, and ain't strictly illegal. If there's anything of that nature, we don't need it getting out, all right?"
"You want me to look into this girl's disappearance," Harry repeated. "Without pursuing any unrelated leads?"
"Merlin's balls," Vic said, rubbing one hand vigorously over his eyes. "Is that what I said? No. Pursue any leads you want. Just don't make any statements about anyone unless you're certain they're behind her death, and be discreet. If the Minister was sleeping with this girl, or anyone else, I don't want to know."
"I think I can handle that, sir." Harry had had his own problems with the press over the years, and he wasn't inclined to slip them tips and scoops the way some Aurors did.
"Good, now get out of my office."
Harry made a sketchy salute with the file and went back to his desk. It was just one desk in a large open room full of Aurors working, memos flapping and circling above, quills scratching on parchment and the low hum of earnest conversation. Years of seniority had earned Harry a spot next to a wall, but he still had at least thirty more years of service left if he wanted to earn a coveted corner desk. It'd be easier for him to get elected Minister for Magic than it would be to get that corner desk away from Savage.
Minister for Magic. Harry'd always avoided Ministry postings. They brought in glamorous cases, got an Auror's face on the front page. Harry'd had enough of the front page to last him a lifetime. The Ministry was a cauldron of eels, and one he'd never wanted to climb into. He looked at the file once again. It seemed he had no choice this time.
----------
Ginny rolled up her sleeve and watched the young woman curiously. She seemed to have a wide variety of tubes and bags and paperwork, all for such a simple procedure as extracting a bit of blood.
"Where does the blood go?" she asked, balancing a small notebook on her lap. Normally she would dictate to a Quick-Quotes Quill, but in a Muggle environment like this, she'd opted for one of Harry's silly felt pens instead.
"It goes into this bag right here," answered the young woman -- Ginny knew she wasn't a mediwitch, but what was the proper terminology?
"Erm, yes," Ginny answered. Interviews were so much easier in sport, when you could just ask about the zone defense or the team's chances at a championship. None of these bags and tubes. "But where does the bag go?"
The woman turned to face Ginny and really looked at her for the first time, and Ginny was able to see her nametag. Nurse Amanda Baker. "We send it up to the clinic for testing, just to make sure it's clean, and then it goes on to the blood bank," she explained. Ginny made a few notes on her pad.
"And once it's at the Blood Bank--" she began to ask. The only bank that Ginny was familiar with was Gringott's, but she thought that Muggles wouldn't store their blood in goblin vaults. At least, probably not.
"Oh, are you a reporter?" Nurse Amanda asked. "Sorry, it's just that we've got a whole press package already prepared for these questions. I'll get it for you in a moment."
"That would be wonderful, thank you," Ginny said with a smile.
"Now, this will just hurt for a moment," the friendly nurse said, and produced a very large needle at the end of yet another rubber tube.
Ginny sighed and closed her eyes. Needles. What would these Muggles think of next?
----------
"Sorry I'm late!" Harry called as he unlocked the front door. When he stepped inside, he found a darkened living room. Lily was already in her second year at Hogwarts, but it still surprised him to come home to an empty house. He checked the clock in the living room. The kids' hands pointed to 'studying,' 'studying,' and 'none of your damn business,' respectively. Harry grinned and made a mental note to call Neville at Hogwarts and check up on James. Ginny's hand pointed to 'working.'
He picked up the Muggle phone in the kitchen and ordered some curry before heading upstairs. He found Ginny in the room he still thought of as the nursery, which had been converted into an office several years ago. Her hair was scooped up in a messy bun and stuck through with an old quill, and she was bent over a piece of parchment, scribbling away. When she looked up and turned her face toward him, Harry could see a streak of ink across her forehead.
"Hi," he said, and bent down to kiss her on the lips.
"Hi." Ginny smiled up at him. "What time is it? I got a little caught up here--"
"It's after eight. I got caught up myself." Then, because he didn't want to talk about his own day, about the painful experience of talking to Mr. and Mrs. Marchbanks, who didn't know whether to cling to hope or begin to grieve, Harry asked, "How was your day?"
She grinned and rolled up her sleeve, revealing a piece of pink medical tape wrapped in a big X shape around her elbow. "I donated blood."
"What, the Muggle way?"
"There isn't a wizard way, as far as I know." At this, Ginny turned back to the desk and scribbled something on a parchment already packed full of notes.
"So what brought this on? Planning some major surgery you haven't told me about?"
"Surgery? Erm, no. This is for that article. We talked about it."
"Oh, the Muggle desk? That's great, Gin, it's--" Harry was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. "Come downstairs and tell me all about it over curry, yeah?" Harry headed down the stairs toward the door, stopping to scrounge up some of the Muggle money he kept on hand for this very situation. When the kids were at home, he and Ginny tried to cook nutritious meals, but during the school term they tended to eat an awful lot of take-away curry. He carried the cartons into the kitchen and set the table, pouring two tall glasses of lager to go with the food, dishing out rice and curry and lighting a couple of candles.
Ginny joined him in a moment, her eyes gleaming with excitement. She still had that streak of ink across her forehead, and Harry couldn't suppress a smile at the sight.
"What are you grinning about over there? You look like the kneazle that swallowed the snitch."
"Nothing." If he told her, she'd wash her face, and then he wouldn't get to enjoy the sight any more. "You were going to tell me about Muggles and their blood... things."
"Oh, yes! Harry, there's so much more to it than Arbuckle put in that half-arsed article. They have this whole ingenious system worked out. They take blood using a system of tubes, and store it in little baggies..."
She kept talking, but Harry really wasn't listening closely. He was watching the way the candlelight reflected off her hair, brick-red with strands of copper and silver mixed in. Her eyes danced animatedly, and as she emphasized her story here and there, her eyebrows moved up and down and wrinkled the inky smear on her forehead. It really was adorable. Harry thought maybe that wasn't an appropriate word to apply to a woman of nearly forty, but it was certainly the one that sprang to mind.
As Ginny talked and Harry sat and listened with half an ear, he felt the tension of the day drain away. He let the Marchbankses, the Minister and poor Cora Ann slip to the back of his mind. It was probably a simple case, he told himself. Cut and dried. He'd have it taken care of in a day or two, and then maybe he could take Ginny away somewhere for the weekend. Wouldn't that be nice?
----------
"And here is the facility where we test the blood," the young man said, pointing through a plate-glass window into a large, sterile laboratory. Three people were working inside with a number of impressive-looking Muggle machines. Ginny dutifully took notes, although she knew her readers wouldn't care much about the details of the machines.
"What is it that you test for?" she asked.
"We test to determine the donor’s blood type, obviously," the healer -- no, Muggles called them doctors -- said. It seemed far from obvious to Ginny, but she wrote it down anyway.
"I see," said Ginny, although she didn’t. "And is that important?"
The doctor looked surprised, as though this were something that Ginny ought to know. This Muggle reporting was harder than it seemed from her kitchen table. "The donor’s blood type must be compatible with the patient’s," he explained. "For example, your blood is type A-B positive, which is very rare. We have quite a shortage of this blood in the banks at present, and so your blood is in high demand. In fact, your donation is already being rushed to a patient in hospital across town."
"Oh, well that’s… wonderful," Ginny said. She felt both pleased and rather guilty, because the donation had been only a ploy to gain information for her article, not an intentional effort to help someone.
"It is," the doctor said, smiling at her. "Blood types generally run in the family, you know. I hope you will consider encouraging your relatives to donate as well."
"Oh, certainly," Ginny said calmly, but her mind was spinning. She was related to half the wizards in Britain. Could they share her blood type? If it was a wizard type, it would be rare in Muggle banks indeed. The chance that any wizard would be willing to donate their own blood to needy Muggles was slim at best, but perhaps if the recipient were another wizard, or even a Squib, they would consider it. This sounded like it might be the angle she needed for her article.
"This shortage of my blood type," she asked. "Is it any worse than usual?"
The doctor removed his eyeglasses and began to clean them with a soft cloth. "We are always in need of donors, but the need at this time is greater than ever before, especially in certain blood types. I’m afraid that the need for A-B positive is especially dire. Patients have even had to be turned away from hospitals due to lack of supply."
Ginny raised her eyebrows. "Any idea what's causing the shortage? An increase in demand?"
"Ah, that is--" The doctor's hands slipped and his eyeglasses clattered to the floor. He bent to retrieve them, and then took his time cleaning them again and placing them on his face. When he finally looked back at Ginny, there was only a tiny tremor in his voice when he said, "It’s rather gruesome, I’m afraid, but there has been some theft at the blood banks recently. Much of our A-B positive has gone missing in the last six months, but new security procedures are in place and we’re confident that we’ve stopped the, er, leak. Please, if you could encourage your readers to donate blood, there are many patients at London hospitals who could benefit."
"I'll make sure to include the instructions in my article," Ginny said, her face solemn. "I’m sure my readers will be interested." Missing blood -- especially if it were wizard blood -- meant big trouble. Only the darkest potions called for blood, and by the sound of it, quite a lot had been taken. If it wasn’t for potions uses, the alternatives were even worse.
----------
"Harry Potter is here to see you, Minister." After announcing him, the shapely secretary sashayed across the room and resumed her position at the desk. She wore tight robes and high-heeled shoes that looked impractical for just about anything. Harry wondered if she'd taken the place of the unfortunate Miss Marchbanks.
Minister Varney let Harry cool his heels in the lobby for a while before calling him in. Harry had expected it a bit. Sometimes men in high places thought it showed their importance to keep an Auror waiting when he came to question them. Harry had his own thoughts on the matter, which were that it was petty and stupid, and allowed more time for gossip to spread through the office. Everyone was entitled to their own opinion.
Finally, the door to the inner office opened, and the secretary at the desk looked up at Harry, a bored expression on her pretty face. "The Minister will see you now."
Harry stood, collected his coat and small notepad, and entered the office. As soon as he had taken two steps into the room, the door swung silently shut behind him and closed with a decisive click. Harry squinted against the sudden gloom, willing his eyes to adjust. Although the room had four long windows that were normally magicked to display the weather outside, the shades were pulled tight and no sunlight made its way into the large office. Instead, the room was lit only by magical lamps set here and there, which gave off very little light.
At the end of the long, dim room, Minister Varney sat behind a large desk. He was a tall man with a narrow face, his skin pale and pasty as though he spent most of his waking hours at work rather than out, enjoying the prestige of his position. "Auror Potter," he said, putting a little emphasis on Harry's title, as if to express that he understood the reason for the visit. "Do come in, sit down." A chair pushed back from the desk and swung around to an accommodating position. Harry wondered if the furniture was pre-charmed or if the Minister was wasting his energy on showy wandless magic just to make a point. "What can I do for you today?"
"I need to ask you a few questions about Cora Ann Marchbanks, Minister."
"Yes, yes of course." Varney assumed an expression of sadness and concern. "We all miss her terribly, of course. She was a great help to this office and the entire Ministry."
Harry, who detested politicians and found that the sentiment was usually returned, ignored this canned speech and pulled out a Quick-Quotes Quill. "D'you mind?" he asked. When Varney agreed, Harry set up the quill and spoke to it. "Let the record reflect that the Minister for Magic has agreed to the use of a recording device."
"Now, Minister, can you tell me how Miss Marchbanks came to work in your office?"
----------
"Ginny, good to see you," Padma said with a smile, brushing a loose hair away from her face. "Come to see the laboratory?" Padma’s laboratory, a premier source of medical potions for St. Mungo’s, looked like nothing so much as a huge kitchen, covered with gleaming tile and marble surfaces. Everywhere, cauldrons bubbled and smoked, each one with a complex-looking chart hanging on the wall next to it.
"Yes and no," Ginny said. "Actually, I need to consult a mediwizard for an article I’m working on, and I was hoping to ask you a few questions."
"Of course," Padma said, perching on a tall stool. "What do you need to know?"
"I’m working on an article about Muggle blood donations," Ginny said. "Kind of a follow-up to last week’s." Padma nodded, her dark eyes focused, and Ginny was reminded of why Padma was so well-respected. "A Muggle doctor told me about blood types, and I was wondering: is there a wizard type?"
"Most wizards don’t even know there is such a thing as a blood type," Padma said with a laugh. "Yes, there is a certain type that is the most common in magical communities. Not everyone is the same, of course."
"Is it A-B positive?" Ginny asked, consulting her notes.
"That’s the one," Padma confirmed.
"Do Muggles have it, too?"
"A few," Padma said. "Squibs, and their descendants and so on."
Ginny looked down at her notepad, where she’d written the words Wizard blood type -- missing? She circled the notation now and wrote next to it YES.
----------
Harry walked through the door and paused to take off his cloak near the front door. He was half-in and half-out of it when the Floo burst to life and Vic Flint's head appeared amidst the flames. "Potter!"
"Right here. What's going on?"
"I need you to come down here. We got a report of a body found in Diagon. Aurors on the scene think it might be the Marchbanks girl."
"I'll be right there," Harry said, already pulling his cloak back on.
"And listen, Potter. You've got to keep this one quiet, all right?"
"Yeah, discretion. We already--" Harry stopped as the flames died down, realizing he was talking to an empty grate. He turned to go just as Ginny came down the stairs.
"I thought I heard you," she said, turning her face up for a kiss.
Harry gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "Vic just called. I have to go out to a crime scene."
Ginny just nodded. After more than a decade and a half of marriage to an Auror, she was used to his uncertain schedule. "I'll leave a plate for you," was all she said, before Harry was out the door and Disapparating off to Diagon Alley.
----------
Harry found the crime scene without much trouble. A pair of Aurors were already in position beside the body; Harry followed the brief illuminations of a camera's flash to the scene, in a darkened alcove behind Slug & Jiggers Apothecary. There were a few steps leading down from the shop's back door, three rubbish bins, and all that was left of a young witch in the prime of life.
The Marchbanks file was sitting on Harry's desk, but he didn't need it. The photo inside of a smiling, healthy girl would not have helped him identify this body. Whatever had happened to Cora Ann Marchbanks, she bore little resemblance to that photo now. Her cheeks were hollowed out and full of wrinkles, body shriveled and dessicated, skin pasty white.
Harry stood off to the side of the roped-off area and looked down at the body.
"You ever seen anything like this, Potter?" the Auror on duty asked. He was a young wizard, just a few years out of training. Probably not much older than the victim. Harry had at least ten years' experience on him. Beside the stairs, his partner stood with the camera. She was older, closer to Harry's age, but she still looked over and followed their conversation with her eyes. This was the kind of case that didn't come along every day.
"Once." Harry remembered that case well, usually in more detail than he wanted at three o'clock in the morning.
"Yeah?" asked the young Auror eagerly.
"Send the body to St. Mungo's for a post-mortem," Harry said. "They'll tell you it's drained of blood." He stepped over the rope that marked off the crime scene and walked around the body, careful not to disturb anything. Just as he'd expected, there were two matching puncture wounds on the victim's neck, barely visible now that the skin had dried up and shriveled like a raisin in the sun. No question about it: Cora Ann Marchbanks had been killed by a vampire.
"Sure will," the Auror agreed, but his voice wavered a little. Whether it was disgust or fear, Harry couldn't say. Sometimes the two went hand-in-hand in this job.
----------
Ginny arrived at the Prophet bright and early the next morning, a thick sheaf of parchment rolled up and stuffed in her bag. As soon as she stepped into the office, she made a beeline for her editor's desk and dropped the parchment into the box labeled 'finished articles - in - and they'd better be in on time, this means you!!!' Pleased with herself, she went off to make a cup of tea and look over the morning edition.
She was just halfway through a story about the Wimbourne-Puddlemere trade of Oliver Wood when she heard her name. "Weasley?"
"Perks," Ginny said, looking up with a smile. "Want to get lunch later?"
"That depends," Josie Perks, features editor and one of Ginny's closest friends at the paper, answered. "On just what the hell this is." She held up Ginny's bound parchment.
"That's an article, Jo."
"It's a feature article."
"Nothing gets by you, huh?" Ginny grinned, but Josie only raised her eyebrows and said nothing. "Erm, it's a follow-up to Arbuckle's story on Muggle blood banks. I... just happened across some new information on the topic."
"New information." Josie rolled her eyes, and Ginny tried not to laugh. After many long lunches together, she knew that they shared the same opinion of Arbuckle's investigative efforts. "New information on..." She lifted the parchment in front of her face and read from the first paragraph, "A rash of illicit withdrawals from Muggle blood banks, creating a deficit of a rare blood type, may be linked to the wizarding world." She raised her eyebrows. "Serious stuff, Gin."
"Yep," Ginny said. "What do you think?"
"Think? This is terrible."
"Terrible?"
"If I steal you away to features, the sports editor will thrash me with a beater's bat. But... it might be worth it."
"Otherwise?"
"The article’s fantastic, Gin. Front page material. Lunch is definitely on me today."
"In that case, we're going to Fontaine's."
"Deal, but you have to write some sports pieces so I don't end up in St. Mungo's, all right?"
"Deal," Ginny agreed. She was sure she could swing an exclusive interview with Oliver Wood about the recent trade, and Josie was only partially joking. She'd need an exclusive interview to make things up to her regular editor. Pushing Muggles and their ridiculous medical practices firmly out of her mind, she did her best to concentrate on Quidditch.
----------
"That's the guy?" Harry asked, peering down a short corridor and through the metal bars in the lock-up at Magical Law Enforcement. In a small cell at the end of the corridor sat Cora Ann Marchbanks' apparent killer: a middle-aged man, of average weight and height, with no facial expression. He wore shabby clothes and had three days' worth of stubble on his face.
"Yep. Bertram Blott." Vic shook his head. "Came in this morning and confessed. Said he couldn't live with himself, knowing what he’d done."
"Came in this morning?" Harry asked. "With the sun up?"
Vic's eyes met Harry's, grim and knowing. He nodded.
Harry turned back and watched the wizard in the cell. The victim's body had been entirely dessicated, with two puncture wounds right at the neck. Wizardkind was capable of a lot of atrocities, and Harry had seen most of them. But no ordinary wizard was capable of this. Blott was no vampire, just a regular wizard.
A confession should have brought an end to the investigation. Instead, Harry had one more question to add to the list: why would Bertram Blott confess to a crime he'd never committed?
----------
"Weasley." Josie's voice was serious.
"What? Oh, is it time for lunch already?"
"I need to talk to you in my office."
Ginny looked at her half-written list of questions for Oliver Wood, who'd agreed to an exclusive interview, and back at her friend. They never talked behind closed doors unless there was juicy gossip. "Can't this wait?" she asked. "I have a lot to do for this interview, and--"
Josie just shook her head. "Come on," she said, and turned and walked back in the direction of her office. Ginny shrugged and followed.
Inside the small cube of an office, Ginny shut the door. "So?" she asked eagerly. "What's the dirt?"
"You might want to sit down for this." Josie stepped behind the desk and sat stiffly in her chair, folding her hands in front of her on the desk. She looked more like she was about to have an unpleasant business meeting than a cheerful gossip session.
"Must be pretty big news," Ginny said with a smile. She pulled out one of the straight-backed wooden chairs in front of Jo's desk and sat. "What's going on?"
"Listen, I don't want to tell you this, but better me than someone else," Josie said, her blue eyes locked on Ginny's the entire time. "You've been suspended from the paper."
"I... what?" Ginny let out a disbelieving laugh. Only a few hours before, Josie had threatened to fight the sports editor to get Ginny in her section, and now she was firing her? It didn't make any sense.
"The boss asked me to tell you. Suspended."
"For how long? What is this about?"
"Thirty days at least, but maybe longer. I'm sorry."
Ginny slumped back in her chair for a moment, and then sprang up so quickly that the chair toppled over and hit the wall. "Cuffe thinks he can suspend me for no reason, without even saying so to my face, just because he's the managing editor? I'll--"
"Weasley, don't." Josie stood and came around the desk to grab Ginny's elbow. "Listen, it wasn't Cuffe's decision, either, all right?"
"What aren't you telling me, Jo? Why would Cuffe want to suspend me, and why now?"
"He got a call earlier from the owner, all right? And just after that, he asked me to suspend you."
"Prophet?" Ginny asked. "Mr. Prophet called Cuffe and then he decided to suspend me?"
Jo nodded. "And you know that Prophet never gets involved with the paper if he can help it. He's too involved with that ridiculous airship of his."
Ginny nodded. Prophet was the owner of the newspaper, but he also owned half of Diagon Alley and most of Hogsmeade. He didn't involve himself in the running of any of it, preferring to devote himself to the Oak Moke, an airship that most people believed would never fly. If Prophet had actually gone to the Floo to get her suspended, it must be over something big. Something a lot bigger than a spelling error in a player's name or a misplaced team in the standings.
"Whatever this is, it must be something big," Jo said, echoing Ginny's thoughts exactly. "You should stay out of it. Go home, relax, take that hardworking husband of yours on a holiday."
"Something big is going on, all right," Ginny agreed. As for the rest of it, Jo was dead wrong if she thought Ginny was going on holiday. Whatever this was, if it was big enough to get her suspended from the paper, it was big enough for a front-page story. Ginny was just the reporter to write it.
----------
"I just don't understand it," Ginny said, sitting in her favorite squashy armchair and clutching her mug of tea in both hands. "Why would Cuffe want to suspend me now? And why does Prophet care about me at all?"
"Quidditch Monthly is lucky to have you," Harry said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head and then stepping out of immediate wand-range. He'd learned the hard way how to deal with his wife when she was upset.
"Of course they are. You should have seen the editor’s eyes light up when I walked through the front door with an exclusive interview on the year's biggest trade."
"It couldn't have been Wood’s interview; you hadn’t even done it yet," Harry said.
"What, then?" asked Ginny. "You think Prophet was upset about the blood bank story?"
Harry rested one hip against a bookcase. "Has it gone to print?"
Ginny shook her head. "But it would be a couple of days until it made it into the paper, with editing and everything..."
"Besides the interview with Wood and the piece on Muggle blood banks, do you have anything else that hasn't been published yet?"
"Just a couple of little things for the sports section, stadium maintenance in Appleby and that ridiculous uniform mix-up in Wimbourne."
"It had to be the blood bank story," Harry said, running one hand through his hair. He hated to see Ginny upset like this, and both his protective instincts and his Auror instincts were pushing him to investigate and figure out her problem. "Do you still have a copy of that article? Was there anything in there that could have been controversial?"
Ginny looked a little sheepish. "Maybe I should’ve told you first, but I wanted the scoop. It turns out that a specific type of blood that’s mostly found in wizards has been stolen from the Muggle blood banks."
"Blood is being stolen from Muggles?" Harry asked, standing up straight. "Wizard blood?" This was hitting a little too close to his own case for comfort. Vampires needed a regular blood supply, and what could be more regular than a Muggle blood bank?
"Yeah," Ginny said, looking glum. "Padma told me that most witches and wizards have a certain blood type. That’s the kind that’s being stolen. I was going to do a follow-up piece, maybe look into dark potions suppliers." Harry shook his head at the idea of Ginny investigating the shady underground world of dark potions suppliers. She would be the death of him yet.
"I don’t think it’s for dark potions," he told her firmly. "Call it a hunch."
"All right," Ginny said slowly. "But why would Prophet be upset about an article on missing blood?"
Harry considered the question. Prophet was a notorious recluse; could he be the vampire in question? No, not with that airship of his. He’d need to be out in the daylight tinkering and testing it all the time. Still, he was a powerful man with a lot of connections. Prophet had certainly gone out of his way to keep any speculation on what -- or who -- might be causing a shortage of blood out of the newspaper.
"Maybe he cares about it and maybe he doesn’t," Harry said, speculating aloud. "Find out what Prophet got in return for squashing your story, and you'll know why he cares."
----------
An internal memo, printed on thick parchment and folded into the shape of a buzzard, flapped its wings twice and glided across the Auror office to land on Harry's desk. He unfolded it quickly, ignoring its squawks of protest, and read it closely. After a moment, he sat back in his chair and gazed at the mess of photos, notes and diagrams strewn across his desk. It might have looked like a mess to a passer-by, but there was a specific method to the chaos, one which symbolized the case in Harry's mind.
Abruptly, he stood and walked across the office, the new memo in his hand.
"Potter. News?" barked Vic, when Harry opened his office door.
"Yes," Harry said. "But you're not going to like it."
Vic grunted. Harry stepped inside and shut the door behind him. "Apparently our confessed killer had a son in Azkaban," he told Vic. "He was released right after we got the confession to Cora Ann's murder. In return for his confession, Blott received a ministerial pardon for his son. He was paid off, by someone high up in the Ministry."
"As it happens, I wanted to talk to you about that case, Potter," Vic said, speaking in a halting voice. He sounded entirely unlike himself, and it worried Harry. "The Senior Undersecretary for Magical Law Enforcement sent me a memo today. She congratulated us on catching Miss Marchbanks' killer, and would like to commend us for bringing this case to a speedy conclusion," Vic went on. "We have both been offered the Order of Merlin, second class, as a reward for concluding the case." His face was expressionless as a stone wall; he didn't look proud enough to have just won Thursday-night bowling, much less the Order of Merlin.
Then again, the Order of Merlin didn't mean much to Harry, either. He already had two sitting in a drawer somewhere -- first class -- but that wasn't why he wasn't in a tizzy to write his acceptance speech now. He had other things on his mind, things like Cora Ann Marchbanks. "That's it?" Harry asked. "Just like that, I'm to stop investigating the case? You and I both know there's no way Blott is really behind this, and that means that the real killer is still out there somewhere."
"According to Magical Law Enforcement, the case is closed," Vic said, carefully enunciating the last four words. He leaned forward and rested both forearms on the desk, linking his hands in front of him. "But, as I'm confident you're well aware, Potter, no case is ever permanently closed. Auror Office policy still stands that if a compelling reason is found, a closed case can be reopened at any time."
"I see," Harry said. "Of course, we wouldn't want to make an exception to department procedure."
"I'm glad we understand each other," Vic said serenely. "Now, get back to work."
----------
Ginny might've been suspended, but she was still a reporter through and through. And a reporter knew how to get to the bottom of a story.
She performed cosmetic charms at home before setting out, giving her still-bright red hair a dark brown tone, concealing her freckles and the fine lines around her eyes. She put on garish turquoise eyeshadow and a pair of small wire eyeglasses, and donned a pair of drab grey robes from Malkin's newest line. When she was done, she bore a superficial likeness to Portentia Parkinson, one of the junior reporters in Jo's section.
The likeness was not perfect, but when she stepped into Prophet's business office in Diagon Alley, no one would see a Senior Quidditch Correspondent looking for revenge; all they'd see was a naive girl trying to put together a routine story.
Prophet's office was tastefully decorated in a style that had been popular in the 1970's, which was likely the last time that he'd used it. Low kelpie-hide couches in mustard yellow sat along the walls, and the floor was covered with fluffy carpeting the color of avocados. The only things that were new in the entire office were the huge frames that dominated one wall, containing elegant line-drawings of Prophet's airship, the Oak Moke. The airship looked more like an overstuffed aubergine than something that might be expected to lift off into the air, but she had seen stranger things fly in her life.
Behind a small desk in one corner sat a bored-looking woman with silver hair swept up in an elaborate bouffant. The nameplate in front of her read Araminta Abercrombie. "I'm sorry, Mr. Prophet is not available today," she told Ginny, giving her a look that said her intelligence was in doubt for even asking. Prophet was a famous recluse, after all.
"Oh, damn," Ginny said. "I was hoping to get a quote from him on this article we're doing, about his airship."
It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed like the right place to start. The entire wizarding world knew Prophet for three things: the newspaper, his vast piles of Galleons, and the airship. Surely there was more to the man, but without a lot of time for research, Ginny had to trust her instincts.
"Oh, isn't it exciting?" Araminta asked, her heavily-powdered face breaking into a big smile. "We’re all just giddy over it."
Her shot in the dark had struck its target dead on. Ginny did not try to hide a smile. "Yes, it's wonderful," she agreed. "Congratulations."
"He's been trying to get approval for years and years now," Araminta indicated the drawings on the wall with one hand. "And then yesterday, the stars must have aligned or something, because word finally came through from the Minister's office."
Ginny nodded, as if in agreement. "The stars aligned, after all those years," she repeated. "So you have no idea what brought on the approval so suddenly?"
Araminta frowned. "The Minister finally came to his senses, is all. It’s a magnificent ship, you know."
"Yes, magnificent," Ginny agreed faintly. So, after years of Prophet lobbying for his pet project, it’d finally been approved just after he’d squashed her story about the blood banks. The timing was too precise to be a coincidence.
Find out what Prophet got in return, Harry had said. Well, he’d gotten a favor directly from the Minister, by all appearances. But why should the Minister for Magic care about Muggle blood banks?
----------
When Ginny arrived home, still in her disguise, Harry was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of Ogden's in one hand and the bottle sitting at his elbow. He had Auror Office files spread out before him in an uneven pattern, parchment in official type marked UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL, grisly crime-scene photos and pages and pages of notes in Harry's own untidy handwriting.
It wasn't the first time that he'd brought a case home in the literal sense when he needed a quiet environment to think over all the evidence. Normally Ginny gave him space, and tried not to pry. She had a feeling this might not be an ordinary case.
Harry looked up with surprise when she walked through the door. "Gin?" he asked.
"It's me," she replied. "Weasley sinks thirty-eight goals in victory over Puddlemere; all-star status assured for league leader." It was the password to assure her identity, and had been ever since the Prophet published the headline over fifteen years earlier. Saying it never failed to make Ginny smile, even under the worst of circumstances. Harry grinned too.
Ginny ducked into the loo and removed her cosmetic charms before joining Harry at the table.
"DMLE--" he pronounced it 'dimly' "--closed my case," Harry said, indicating the papers in front of him.
"Shouldn't that be the supervising Auror's call?" she asked.
"Yeah," Harry said, looking back at the papers and taking a drink of firewhiskey. As his lips curled into a bitter smile, a small trail of smoke escaped from the corner. Ginny summoned a glass and poured some for herself.
"The Ministry's been busy," she told Harry. "They approved the Oak Moke yesterday."
"Yeah?"
"Prophet had me canned, and in return the Minister approved his pet airship. A fair trade."
"For Prophet. All he had to do was make one Floo call."
"Well, sure, but why would the Minister care about me, or Muggle blood banks?"
Harry shook his head, looking down at his papers. "It's not about you. It's about what was in that article. Gin, I've been over these papers a dozen times, and every time it all leads to the same place."
"All right," Ginny said, standing up and moving around to the other side of the table, so she could read the documents spread across the scarred wooden surface. She sat beside Harry, pressing her thigh against his and swirling the smoking alcohol in her glass. "Why don’t you show me what you have?"
Harry slid a set of photos across the table toward her. One showed the smiling face of Cora Ann Marchbanks in the same photo which had been plastered across the Prophet for weeks. The other showed a darker image of what was left of the girl dumped beside three rubbish bins; this picture had never made it into the Prophet. "She worked for the Minister," he said. "A junior undersecretary."
Ginny reached out and picked up the crime scene photo. She'd avoided looking closely at it before, but even on a cursory inspection it was obvious that Cora Ann's body was shriveled and dried out. Harry offered no explanation, but he didn't need to. Ginny didn't consider herself an expert on death, but she'd seen enough of it during the war to know that normal exposure didn't do that to a decomposing body.
She rifled through the paperwork in the Marchbanks file, but didn't find what she was looking for. "Where's the coroner's report?"
"Must've got lost in the mail," Harry said, and drained his glass. "Her body was drained of blood."
Ginny raised her eyebrows and looked back at the photo. "How does that happen?" she asked.
"Puncture wounds in the neck." They both knew what that meant; it wasn’t anything a spell could do. She didn't say the word vampire, and Harry didn't suggest it, but their eyes met and Ginny shuddered at the thought.
"I thought some wizard confessed to the killing," she said. She shuffled through the notes scribbled in Harry's hand, until she found one labeled 'confession' and 'Azkaban pardon,' with heavy black arrows drawn connecting the two.
"Bertram Blott," Harry confirmed, then pulled a memo out of a stack of papers. "Right after he did, his son was pardoned out of Azkaban."
"Paid off," Ginny commented. "Pardons have to come from the top, right?" Harry only nodded.
"Then there’s your article," Harry said, pulling out the copy that Ginny had given him. It was covered with notes in the margin, and the paragraphs about the missing blood were circled. "Blood goes missing from Muggle banks, and it’s all one type: the wizard blood type."
"Specific tastes," Ginny said. She felt bile rising in her throat, and took a heavy sip of Ogden’s to cover it.
"Someone didn’t want that news to get out," Harry said. "Prophet stopped publication on your article, and got you out of the way. In return, the Minister approved his pet project."
"The Minister's got his fingers in a lot of pies," she said, looking with new eyes at the documents spread out before her. A young woman's body drained of blood. The coroner's report missing. An Azkaban pardon in return for a false confession. A shortage at the Muggle blood bank, and the news kept quiet in return for a personal favor.
"Looks that way," Harry said. "And the window shades in his office are shut tight."
Ginny met his eyes, bright green behind his glasses. He looked as tired as she felt. "You think the Minister..."
"Either him or someone close to him," Harry said. "Have you seen him in daylight since he was elected?"
They were both silent for a while. Finally Ginny shook her head. "This... Harry, this is huge. This is... we have to do something."
"It's not as though we can call up the Magical Creatures squad and have them take him away, he's the bleeding Minister," Harry said, then winced at his own words. "If DMLE squashed my case, Magical Creatures hasn't got a chance."
Ginny frowned down at her marked-up manuscript. "Luna could publish an expose in the Quibbler," she suggested. "But no -- she'd only get dragged into this with us, and then where would we be?"
"Up to our eyeballs in wrackspurts and snargalumps, no doubt."
"People deserve to know what their Minister's become, Harry. How can we shed some light on this without involving a publisher?"
Harry smiled at her, and nudged her with his elbow. "You can take the witch out of the newsroom, but you can't take the newsroom out of the witch, eh?"
"Damn right," she said. "So?"
"I don't think the usual methods will work this time," Harry said. "We're going to need an alternate plan."
----------
It had been over twenty years since they last broke into the Ministry, but this time they had a major advantage: many of the security systems had been designed or updated by Harry himself.
It was night, and the building was dark inside. Only a few lights here and there illuminated the enormous lobby. Harry and Ginny, dressed all in black and aided by Disillusionment Charms, crossed the marble floor unnoticed.
Harry led the way through a small door that Ginny had never noticed before and into a narrow stairway. They climbed quickly, without speaking; if anyone should chance upon them in the stairwell, there would be nowhere to hide or escape.
When they reached the first floor landing, Harry cast a spell on the stairway door that turned a small section transparent. The small window showed a long, dim hallway lined with doors, and other hallways branching off at intervals. A few signposts or banners lined the walls, promoting various Ministry activities, a wilted potted plant stood near the end, and a single wizard sat dozing in a chair near one doorway.
Ginny met Harry's eyes and held up her wand in the old Duelling Club gesture of readiness. He returned the salute. Slowly, he twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open a few inches. Pressed against the stairwell wall, Ginny extended her arm so that only her wand, hand and wrist were outside the door. Watching through the spelled window, she aimed carefully and whispered a sleeping spell.
The guard never saw it coming. He slumped to the side as if he'd suddenly fallen asleep, and then slowly toppled over until he lay curled up on the floor.
Not daring to breathe, Harry and Ginny dashed down the hallway to the fallen guard. Just as he'd done before, Harry cast a spell and peered through the door. This time, the room beyond was empty. He cast three separate unlocking charms, and then pushed open the door.
They stepped through into the reception room. No light showed under the door of the Minister's inner office, but Harry knew that Varney did not need light to see. Carefully, he peered through the wall and saw nothing. They crept inside and set to work.
Harry examined the drawn shades and examined them to determine what spells were already in place, then removed each spell systematically from each window shade. There were spells to keep the shades drawn at all times, spells to prevent light from seeping through, and even protective magic in place to stop rips and tears in the fabric. Some of the spells would need to stay in place, while he would replace others. It was technical work, not at all what he usually dealt with in the Auror Office, but Harry had practiced on the drapes in his living room until they were reduced to shredded bits of string. He was confident he knew what he was doing.
Meanwhile, Ginny examined the windows themselves. Although the entire Ministry was located below ground, windows all over the building were bespelled to show a reasonable facsimile of the sky, controlled by Magical Maintenance. It wasn't real sunlight, but based on the series of spells set on the curtains, it seemed as though the Minister feared it as much as if it were real.
Not trusting to deductive reasoning, Ginny carefully removed the complex spells on the first window, until she could see the stripped stonework beneath the panes of glass. Then, she traced her wand slowly around the window's frame, murmuring "caelum revelio," over and over again as she worked. When she had completed the circuit, the glass gleamed with a faint blue light, and then faded. When the light was gone, she could see a velvety blue-black sky, dotted with bright stars and bleeding with the dim orange glow of Muggle lamps at the edges. This was no simulation; the window now revealed a true glimpse of the sky overhead.
She took a deep breath and let it out again slowly, feeling something inside her stomach relax just a little. The spell, nothing more than a decorating tip from an old copy of Witch Weekly, worked. It really and truly worked. They were going to take down the Minister for Magic by simply redecorating his office. Ginny felt a laugh bubbling up inside her chest, and swallowed, keeping it firmly inside. She had work to do.
The sky outside the re-spelled panes of glass was already beginning to lighten with the dawn when Ginny finished the last window. As soon as she was done, she pulled down the shade and stood back. Harry walked the length of the room, tapping each window shade with his wand in turn, and murmuring a time-release spell. If all went according to plan, the window shades would spring open in the midst of the Minister's morning staff meeting, bathing the entire group in a burst of strong sunlight.
As soon as he finished the spell, Harry stepped back breathed a sigh. Ginny stepped up to his side and clasped his hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. He returned the gesture, and they left the Minister's office hand in hand.
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As soon as they arrived home through the Floo, Ginny wrapped her arms around Harry. "We did it," she said, still whispering after hours of keeping her voice down for fear that someone would hear.
"We did, love. Now there's nothing to do but wait and see."
"Oh, I can think of a thing or two to occupy the time," Ginny said, and drew Harry close for a long kiss.
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DAILY PROPHET
BREAKING NEWS ITEM, by G. Weasley-Potter, Staff Reporter:
Minister for Magic still missing! Special Session of the Wizengamot will convene tomorrow to select a temporary replacement. Auror Office appoints Special Commission to investigate disappearance, headed by Distinguished Auror Harry Potter, Order of Merlin First Class (twice).
Additional Author's Notes: Inspiration for this fic provided by the following: hard-boiled detectives of all stripes, Nick & Nora Charles, Woodward & Bernstein, Veronica Mars, Howard Hughes and his "Spruce Goose" A-4 Hercules airplane. My deepest apologies to all. Minister Varney is no doubt related to Sir Herbert Varney.