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Number 12, Grimmauld Place
London, England
Sunday, 2nd November
The buzzing on Harry’s wrist drags him uncomfortably back to consciousness. It’s new, this method of Auror communication, only recently deployed after years of development in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and sometimes - like right now, when the sun is just barely struggling up over the horizon and Harry’s bed is so warm and soft - it takes him a moment to recognize it for what it is. With his eyes still shut, one hand grappling for his glasses on his nightstand, he holds the other up to his ear to listen.
“ Attention, Special Victims Unit ,” comes the cool, near-robotic voice issuing from the small gold disc on the back of his watch. “ Report to the premises at number one, Diagon Alley immediately for a possible homicide. Repeat, all Special Victims Unit report to the premises at number one, Diagon Alley immediately… ”
Well. He’s certainly awake now. With the back of his watch still buzzing urgently against his skin, Harry hauls himself out of bed and shoves his glasses on his face to bring the disarray of his bedroom into focus. He finds his uniform in a crumpled ball on the armchair in the corner and pulls it on, then makes a cursory attempt at smoothing out the tousled mess that is his hair, though he’s not sure why: this isn’t the first time he’s rolled out of bed and rushed off to a crime scene, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Diagon Alley is quiet, a crisp autumn chill in the air, when he arrives outside the heavy oak doors to the Leaky Cauldron. But he’s not alone: Ginny is there waiting for him, her long hair scraped back into a messy ponytail that hangs over one shoulder. In her hand are two paper cups of tea, and wordlessly she presses one into his hands.
“How-” Harry stops, clears his throat. “How did you beat me here?”
Ginny narrows her eyes at him. “The alert’s been going off for twenty minutes, we’ve just been waiting for you.”
“Twenty minutes?!”
Ginny shakes her head in disbelief. “That stag do really did a number on you, didn’t it?”
Without waiting for a response, she hauls open the door to the pub, and he has no choice but to follow her inside. The dank scent of beer and woodsmoke stings his nostrils as they wind through the maze of wooden tables and step behind the bar. Next to a row of dusty liquor bottles is a small door that Harry, admittedly, has never noticed before, but Ginny turns the knob to bring them to a cramped, dirty alleyway.
“Shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose,” says Ginny with a sly grin over her shoulder, “considering it was for Dean and Seamus.”
“They’re horrible influences,” Harry agrees. He takes a sip of tea, welcoming the burn of it on his tongue. It’s strong, with just a splash of milk and no sugar - exactly the way he takes it. Until now, he hasn’t realized that Ginny knows this about him.
When she left the Holyhead Harpies to join the Auror training program a few years back, he thought it would be - not awkward, necessarily, but something that would take getting used to - to be in such proximity, working so closely all the time. He remembered all too well the puppy-love crush he had on her back at Hogwarts, the way she invaded all of his fantasies, the way he was so certain, in that way only teenagers can be, that success with her was linked inextricably with success in the Quidditch cup. So when they’d lost…
Anyway. It turned out to be for the best, considering he would have needed to end it just a few weeks later after Dumbledore died. It’s ancient history now, and now when he looks at Ginny - watches the swing of her fiery ponytail as she walks, and the way her brown eyes darken as she studies a case file - he just sees his best friend’s sister, his colleague, his partner. His friend.
Further down the alley is a swarm of people: officers from the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol; medical examiners from the forensics department; Tom, the proprietor of the Leaky Cauldron, who rushes over to them as they approach.
“Thank Merlin you’re here.” Tom looks as distressed as Harry’s ever seen him, his careworn face lined with worry, hands twisting in front of him. “Was jus’ bringin’ out the rubbish this morning when i found her - couldn’t believe it at first, thought I must’ve been imagining things, or that I was dreamin’- and I kept tellin’ the patrol officers, we need some proper Aurors here-”
“We’re here now,” says Harry bracingly as they reach the crowd. Flashbulbs pop, the light searing Harry’s retinas. “We’re going to do everything we can.”
A patrol officer steps back from the crowd, and Harry’s stomach turns over at the sight before him. He’s seen dead bodies before - death has been a regular part of his life since he was a baby - but he expects he’ll never fully acclimate to it. The woman lying on the damp pavement in front of them is young. Her blonde hair is matted to her head and streaked with blood, and angry, purple bruises mar the fair skin of her neck.
He glances at Ginny - her face, too, is pinched with discomfort.
“Have you identified her?” Ginny asks the medical examiner, a squat witch with grey hair pulled into a tight knot at the base of her head, whose camera flashes continue to light up the alley.
“Fortunately, she had her Apparition license with her,” replies the medical examiner. “Eleanor Branstone. Twenty years old. There’s a patrol officer on the way to notify her family now.”
The medical examiner is no-nonsense, clinical as she shares what she’s gathered thus far. Eleanor - who, Harry recalls from one of the few sorting ceremonies he was able to witness at Hogwarts, was in Hufflepuff, a few years below him - has been sexually assaulted, strangled, and left to die in this cold, dirty alley. Based on her body temperature, she’s been dead no more than a few hours. Harry’s cup of tea goes cold in his hand as he and Ginny attempt to interview the increasingly-distraught Tom.
“Do you remember seeing Eleanor in the pub last night at all?” asks Ginny, a notepad in her hand.
“Oh, you know what Saturday nights are like,” laments Tom. “Can barely keep up with all the customers. I’m sure I must’ve seen ‘er, but I don’ remember seein’ anything out of the ordinary.”
Tom is quite plainly wracked with guilt, and Harry can’t blame him for that. Things like this simply don’t happen at the Leaky Cauldron, at least not since the end of the war. It’s the place families go for lunch on summer afternoons, where excited eleven-year-olds enter Diagon Alley to shop for their first term at Hogwarts. And what’s more is that the same guilt is beginning to grow within Harry, a cold, hard pit in his stomach, because he was here last night too. He doesn’t remember seeing Eleanor at the pub last night - and there’s no reason he should, he tells himself, because he was off-duty - but the fact remains that there was a murderer in his vicinity, and he hadn’t known.
“We’ll need to determine who was in the pub last night,” says Harry, receiving an anxious nod from Tom in response. “If we could see a list of everyone who opened a tab-”
“Yes, yes, of course, right this way.”
Tom beckons Harry and Ginny toward the door to the pub and holds it open so they can pass through. As he bustles about under the bar, Ginny leans toward Harry.
“Don’t you think,” she begins, her voice low and furtive, “that whoever did this probably didn’t want his name on record?”
“Probably,” Harry confesses as Tom thunks a leather-bound ledger on the bar. “But we’ve got to start somewhere.”
Together, heads bent over the thick parchment, they examine the list. Harry isn’t sure what he’s looking for, exactly - perhaps a name he doesn’t recognize, or an unpaid bill - but by the time they’ve read through it all, he has to privately admit to himself that Ginny’s right.
She usually is. In the six months that they’ve worked together in the Special Victims Unit, Harry’s been impressed by her aptitude for investigation, by the way she allows her instincts to guide her to near-perfect results. Not that he’s particularly surprised. In all the years he’s known Ginny, he’s never known her not to accomplish what she’s put her mind to.
By the time they find a moment to breathe, it’s nearly one in the afternoon. “Go ahead and go,” Harry tells Ginny, swirling the last dregs of his cold tea in his cup. “Your mum’ll be expecting you at the Burrow for lunch soon.”
“Oh, I suppose you’re right. Though I can’t say I’ve got much of an appetite at the moment.” She takes one last sip of tea and lobs the empty cup into a rubbish bin behind the bar. “Will I see you there?”
“Erm…”
He wants to go. Really, he does. The Weasleys are like his surrogate family, and despite the horribleness of the morning, he imagines some roast chicken and Yorkshire puddings will take the edge off. But something tells him that this isn’t their usual case, that they can’t just follow a trail of Dark Magic until they find their perpetrator. Something tells him to keep sorting through his hazy memory of the night before, to look past the shots of firewhiskey and pints of beer, until he finds what they’re looking for.
“You go ahead,” he says finally.
“Oh come on. You know Mum, she likes when all the kids are there. Especially you,” she adds in a moment of sudden realization. “You might be her favorite of all the kids.”
Despite the macabre scene around them, Harry grins. “She just worries I’ll starve, living all by myself the way I do.”
“All right.” Ginny’s eyes lock curiously onto his as she slides off her stool. “You know there’s not much we can do until the ME’s report comes back-”
“Yeah, I know. I just, er-” He swallows. “You were right, it was quite the stag do last night. I need to recover for a bit.”
“Suit yourself.” Ginny holds up her wrist, pointedly tapping the simple gold bracelet hanging there. “Let me know if anything comes in, will you?”
Harry nods. “Of course.”
•••
Ministry of Magic
4 Whitehall Place, London, England
Monday, 3rd November
There are two items of note on Harry’s desk when he walks into the Special Victims Unit that morning: a crisp manila folder with the words Medical Examination Report in red ink across its cover, and a ceramic pie dish.
“My mum sends her love,” says Ginny from the desk opposite Harry’s as he drops into his chair. “And she’d also like to know if you ever plan on coming to Sunday lunch again.”
“I’ll try to make it next week.” Peeling back the parchment paper on the pie dish, he lets the heady scent of treacle and buttery shortcrust waft over him. He forgot about dinner entirely last night; by the time he noticed his own hunger, it was just gone nine, and he settled for a bag of crisps from the Ministry canteen. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Treacle tart?” quips Ginny. “I’d have thought you could recognize it by now-“
“I mean the report.” He picks up the folder, inwardly steeling himself for what are sure to be graphic, disturbing images inside. “From yesterday?”
“Yeah, they just dropped it off a few minutes ago.”
“Have you looked at it yet?”
Ginny shook her head. “I was waiting for you to get here.”
And so, as they often do, Harry places the folder so that it bridges the narrow gap between their desks, draws a bracing breath, and opens it. Ginny’s hair is flowing loose today, and as she leans in to read the report, a lock of her hair falls between them and he catches the scent of something light and floral. The scent tugs him back to being sixteen, to playing Quidditch on long summer days in the apple orchard, to when he first realized he shared a connection with Ginny that was unlike anything else.
“This is strange,” remarks Ginny, snapping Harry’s attention back to the report at hand. “The cause of death is lack of oxygen due to strangulation, and there’s clear signs of sexual trauma, but no defensive wounds at all.”
“So she was unconscious, then.”
“Right, but how? Because look-“ Ginny points to a line at the bottom of the page. “Her blood panel doesn’t show any of the usual sedatives. No Draught of Drowsiness, no Soporific Solution, nothing. And not nearly enough alcohol to cause her to pass out.”
“And no signs of any Dark Magic, no Unforgivables either,” Harry observes as he keeps reading. “That is really odd.”
“Could be something Muggle,” Ginny muses, her eyes fixed on the images of Eleanor Branstone lying pale and still in the morgue. “Hermione’s always saying that we don’t test for nearly enough Muggle substances, maybe she’ll know of some-”
“Excuse me?” comes a soft, feeble voice from the doorway. Harry spins in his chair to see a woman in black robes standing just inside the threshold to the department. Her face is pale, her eyes swollen and red. “Is - is this the Special Victims Unit?”
“Yes,” says Harry. The woman took another step toward them. “Is there something we can help you with?”
“Oh, yes, I-” Her voice breaks off. “My name is Charlotte Branstone. My daughter, Eleanor, she - she-”
As Mrs. Branstone pulls a cloth from the pocket of her robes to dab at the corner of her eyes, Ginny jumps up from her seat and hurries over to the woman. He’s never more grateful for her than in times like this. Where he’s awkward and tongue-tied, Ginny is kind, warm, and overflowing with empathy.
“We are so sorry for your loss,” says Ginny, guiding Mrs. Branstone over to an empty chair near their desks. Quickly, Harry flips the medical examination report shut. “We’re doing everything we can to find out who did this.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Branstone sniffles. “I don’t want to take up your time. I just hoped I could have Ellie’s ring back.”
Harry and Ginny exchange a glance, and then Ginny says, gently, “her ring?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Branstone pulls a photograph from her purse and sets it on the desk. The image moves on a loop, over and over again: Eleanor tucking her hair behind her ears before blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. “This was her seventeenth birthday,” says Mrs. Branstone, eyes welling up as she gazes at the photo. “My mum gave her an old family heirloom as a gift, you can see it, just there - it’s quite an unusual ring.”
Harry peers closer, now noticing the gold ring on the third finger of Eleanor’s right hand. Inlaid in the center is a large yellow stone, surrounded by smaller purple ones so that they vaguely resemble a flower.
“I understand that it may be - erm - evidence,” says Mrs. Branstone, “but we had hoped to - to bury her with it-”
“Right,” says Harry hurriedly (and God, Hermione really has been right all these years - he’s horrible with displays of emotion). “Let me just see what we’ve got.”
He picks up the medical report, strategically angling it so that Mrs. Branstone doesn’t have to see images of her daughter’s chest split open, and flips to the back to find a list labeled Personal Effects . Harry reads the list of the clothing she was found wearing and the contents of her purse, but the further his eyes travel down the page, the more disappointment and dread wash over him. The report does mention jewelry - Eleanor had been wearing a pair of gold earrings and some sort of sparkly pin in her hair - but the ring is nowhere to be found.
“I’m so sorry,” says Harry carefully. “Unfortunately we don’t have her ring.”
“Perhaps she wasn’t wearing it that night,” adds Ginny with a note of desperate optimism in her voice.
“We’ve checked her flat.” Mrs. Branstone blinks back more tears. “She had to have been wearing it.”
Over the top of the report, Harry’s eyes meet Ginny’s for the most fleeting of seconds, and he knows they’re both thinking the same thing: Eleanor’s killer has the ring.
“If it turns up,” says Ginny, “we will be sure to notify you.”
Mrs. Branstone nods as the reality of this new loss sinks in. “I understand. Thank you so much for your time.”
As she proceeds slowly from the department, Ginny reaches across the desk and snatches the file from Harry’s hands. “One way or another,” she says darkly, “we’re getting that woman’s ring back.”
•••
The Burrow
Ottery St. Catchpole, Devon, England
Sunday, 9th November
Harry presses the tines of his fork into the remains of roasted parsnips on his plate. Around him, the kitchen is buzzing with activity: little Victoire clambering from chair to chair, demanding attention from her many aunts and uncles; Molly, putting the finishing touches on an elaborate English trifle; Percy boasting about the improvements to the international Floo system with only Arthur and Hermione nodding politely along.
He loves it here. Loves this kitchen, this house, these people, even the gnomes skittering about in the garden, but today it all washes around him, lost to the flurry of thoughts in his mind. Never before has he had a case this baffling before. All week, he and Ginny have bandied theories back and forth, pored over the evidence, interviewed the victim’s family and friends and every employee at the Leaky Cauldron.
And there’s just… nothing. No known magical poisons or spells used to subdue young Eleanor Branstone before she was brutally strangled. Not a trace of the perpetrator on the victim. Not a single soul that night who saw anything out of the ordinary. He’s always had something to go on, and sure, the trail has gone cold every once in a while - there’s not an Auror in all of Britain with a perfect solve rate - but the sense of helplessness has never before been so acute.
If Ginny’s as discouraged as he is, she isn’t showing it. All week, she’s been the picture of dogged determination, bringing case files back to her flat and poring over interview notes until the night cleaning crew sweeps through the office. Even now, as Harry turns what was once a respectable Sunday lunch into baby food, Ginny moves purposefully through the kitchen, setting dishes to wash themselves in the sink and fixing a cup of tea for Fleur, who is heavily pregnant and therefore miserable.
“Harry?” comes Ron’s voice from the seat across from him. “What do you think?”
“Erm…” It occurs to him, with a wave of guilt, that Ron’s been talking to him for quite a while and he, Harry, has been watching Ginny measure out a teaspoon of sugar. “Yeah. Yeah, sounds great.”
At the worktop, Ginny rises on tiptoe to fetch a box of teabags from a cupboard; her long hair brushes against the small of her back.
“You know, and then I figured after the match,” Ron continues around a casual sip of butterbeer, “I’d just go ahead and ask Hermione to marry me.”
Harry nods as he watches Ginny clamber up onto the worktop. “Mmhmm.”
“She’d like that, right? Being proposed to at a Cannons match?”
“Oh, yeah,” replies Harry, though the only words that registered with him are ‘Hermione’ and ‘Cannons’. “Definitely.”
“But I don’t know if that’s special enough, y’know,” Ron goes on, while Ginny ignores her mother’s protests to stop climbing all over the kitchen counters. “So then I reckoned I’d get some house elves to join in. Maybe a singing quartet-type-thing. You think that’s romantic enough?”
“Of course,” says Harry as Ginny hops down from the counters, box of Earl Grey in hand, and opens up the cooling cupboard. “Makes sense.”
Harry can’t understand how she’s able to do this - to fix tea for her irritable sister-in-law and joke around with George and tuck away the horror and hopelessness of their latest case into a corner of her mind where it cannot consume her. And it’s not that Harry isn’t used to this, either. His life has been defined by death and darkness and pain since he was a toddler. He lost more loved ones by the time he was seventeen than most lose in a lifetime. But he’s always been able to take action, to right the wrongs, to stop the needless suffering… until now. Now, he’s got nowhere to turn.
“Harry!” interjects Ron, clicking his fingers just inches away from Harry’s nose. “You haven’t heard a single thing I’ve said, have you?”
“Course I have-”
“Yeah?” Ron leans back in his hair, butterbeer bottle dangling from his fingertips. “‘Cause you’ve just said I ought to use a singing quartet of house elves to propose to Hermione.”
“Well, y’know,” Harry stammers in a feeble attempt to save face, “you know her better than I do, so-”
Ron bursts into raucous laughter. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been out of it all day.”
“Nothing, er - just that case, you know, that murder from last weekend.” As Ron nods his understanding, appropriately sober, their conversation finally registers in his muddled brain. “Are you really going to ask her to marry you?”
“No - well, I mean, yeah, but not - I haven’t got a ring or anything yet, so-” But his words break off as the object of his affection bounds down the stairs and approaches the table. “So you still haven’t got any evidence in that case, huh?”
“You aren’t supposed to be talking about this with him, Harry,” Hermione interrupts as she seats herself beside Ron. “He doesn’t have security clearance anymore.”
“She’s right,” says Ron, deadpan. “I’m on my way to the Prophet with this insider information now, actually.”
With a roll of her eyes, Hermione goes on, “I guess now's a good a time as any, then, to tell you that I’ve been looking into testing for Muggle sedatives.”
Harry’s stomach flipped with anticipation. “And?”
“Well, it’s quite a lot of red tape just for us to obtain the testing equipment.” Hermione’s disappointment is clear on her face. “Apparently, murder isn’t a good enough reason for us to just go directly to Muggle law enforcement, and there’s all sorts of confidentiality paperwork to do - but honestly, Harry, I don’t know if it’s worth it.”
His words leave his mouth before he can stop them. “So you don’t think murder’s a good enough reason either?”
“Of course I do, but if they used something like rohypnol or GHB, then strangled their victim, they haven’t used magic at all.”
“Right, because we’re absolute shit at investigating things like this - obviously-“
“But just think about it.” It’s easier, Harry knows, not to argue when she gets on a roll like this, and he can use all the help he can get anyway. “You were raised as a Muggle for eleven years, enough to assimilate into society, but they have almost no record of you existing, not since you were in primary school. You don’t own property, you haven’t got a driving license-“
Ron snickers. “Or an Apparition license-“
“-so if you went out to a Muggle pub and committed a crime, it’d be nearly impossible for them to trace it back to you.”
Hermione gives a decisive nod and leans back in her chair.
“Even if that’s true,” says Harry, “wouldn’t it work better the other way? To use magic that Muggles don’t even know exists?”
He catches the scent of something flowery in the air just before Ginny drops into the chair next to him. “Maybe,” says Ginny as she sets a plate of biscuits in the middle of the table, “if he just wanted his victim dead, but I don’t think…” Her lips purse as she pauses to collect her thoughts. “Strangling someone is a choice, isn’t it? It’s not quick and clean like a killing curse or poison or a gunshot. You don’t strangle someone just because you want them dead, you do it because…” She swallows. “Because you want the experience of killing them.”
Harry thinks back on all the dark wizards and witches that he’s had the misfortune to encounter, the ones who savored the cruelty of torture, who relished in the pain of their targets. Ginny, too, is no stranger to this; Harry’s experience is nothing compared to what she’s endured. As their eyes meet, an unspoken understanding passes between them, and they know they’re up against something they’ve never encountered before.
And that, of course, is when the back of his watch buzzes against his wrist.
•••
Ministry of Magic
4 Whitehall Place, London, England
Friday, 14th November
Ginny suppresses a yawn, her hands plunged into her tangled hair. By now, she has every word of this latest medical examination report memorized, because since the moment it landed on her desk - or maybe it was Harry’s, she can’t remember anymore - she’s spent her time dissecting every detail, studying the crime scene photos until the image of nineteen-year-old Sophie Clarke on the rain-sodden concrete behind the Leaky Cauldron began appearing to her in her dreams.
Like Eleanor before her, Sophie sustained no defensive wounds in her final moments. She shows clear signs of assault, but none of spell damage or poison. Her last moments were brutal and violent, with such pressure put on her neck that bones had cracked in her spine.
But unlike Eleanor, there has been no grieving mother visiting the Ministry in search of one last relic of her daughter. Sophie was an orphan of war, recently aged out of the foster care system, and the only sign that her killer took a tangible piece of her (to accompany everything else that he stole: her autonomy, her right to refuse him, her future, her life) was a small drop of blood on one of her earlobes. Earrings, Ginny expects, have joined Eleanor’s topaz and amethyst ring in his sinister collection.
Heavy footsteps draw her attention to the doorway, where Harry, stony-faced, has just entered the department. They’re the only ones there; all the other Aurors with any sense left hours ago. Of course, thinks Ginny bitterly, their colleagues haven’t been assigned such a mystifying case.
“No surveillance,” Harry announces. Dark circles surround his eyes, and his hair is more disheveled than usual.
“Are you serious?!”
“Dawlish says there isn’t room in the budget.”
“Oh, but there was room in the budget when he wanted new desk chairs last month?”
Harry shakes his head in disdain and drops into his chair. “At least Kingsley had the good sense to shut that down.” He picks up Eleanor Branstone’s file, opens it, and then closes it again. “Look, Gin, you ought to just go home. We’re not going to make any progress tonight.”
Nobody calls her Gin. She’s Ginny to everyone she knows, unless her mum is chastising her, and then she’s Ginevra. But she likes how it sounds, coming from Harry, the easy familiarity of a casual nickname. It harkens back to the spring of her fifth year at Hogwarts, before everything went sideways, when he’d wait outside the Quidditch changing rooms to walk with her back to the castle or fly over to chat during lulls in practice. He’s been her colleague for nearly six months, and his years of experience mean he’s technically her superior… but he’s also her friend.
“Are you going to go home?” she counters, brows raised in a challenge to him.
“I will if you do.”
“Yeah, right.” Despite her exhaustion, a smile twitches at the corners of her mouth. “You’re going to sit here and stare at these files until you drive yourself mad, aren’t you?”
He allows himself a weary smile. “You know me too well.”
They lost track of each other a bit, after the war. Following a summer filled with funerals and rebuilding, she went back to Hogwarts and he threw himself fully into his new career as an Auror. And sure, there were holidays at the Burrow and nights out at pubs with Ron and Hermione, but the connection they developed at Hogwarts had frayed somewhat. Not until she finished her training as an Auror did they spend significant time together, and it’s only been six months, but she does know him. And not just the little things, like how he takes his tea or his favorite flavor of crisps. She knows the way his jaw sets when he’s frustrated, and the way his head tips down when he laughs. She knows that he hates when cases go cold, and that he’s prone to sulking. She knows he’d do anything for the people that matter to him, that he hates feeling ineffective, and that he’ll never actually admit it, but he despises living alone in Grimmauld Place.
“All right, how about this,” Harry goes on. “I know you haven’t eaten anything since lunch, why don’t we at least go out and get some food? It’ll be easier to think that way, anyway.”
“The canteen’s closed-“
“Yeah, I know. I’ve got another idea.”
Five minutes later finds them sat in a late-night diner, greasy paper bags of chips covering the Formica table between them. The scent of salt and vinegar is sharp in Ginny’s nostrils as she flips through the Leaky Cauldron’s ledger, on loan to them by a deeply distressed Tom.
“I mean, this is basically just a list of everyone we went to school with,” laments Ginny as she teaches for a chip. “And I still think that whoever’s doing this isn’t going to be on record as having been there on the nights of the murders. Actually…”
Harry pops a chip in his mouth. His green eyes bore into her. “What?”
“I hate to say it, but we don’t even have any proof that he met these women at the Leaky. That’s just where they were found.”
Harry slouches in his seat, his long legs stretched out before him. “Yeah,” he mutters. “You’re right.” With a chuckle, he adds, “you’re always right.”
“I know,” replies Ginny with a grin, though the feeling of mirth leaves her as quickly as it came. “Have you ever had a case like this? Where there’s literally nothing to go on?”
“Nothing this bad. I mean...” Morose, Harry bites off the end of a chip and chews. “When I first started, there were still a lot of Death Eaters, but they weren’t - they didn’t want to hide that it was them doing it, because they thought ‘the Dark Lord’ would be back before they knew it, and they wanted to prove their loyalty.” He mutters a word under his breath. “But this is different. This isn’t because they’re brainwashed or prejudiced, this is just…”
“It’s about control.” Ginny pauses as a hoard of intoxicated teenagers ambles past them, laughing and shoving each other. “It’s a way of getting exactly what he wants without allowing them any free will.”
“And that’s why he takes the jewelry.” Harry twists the cap off his bottle of soda and swirls the liquid so that carbonation pops and hisses against the plastic. “It’s proof that he won.”
Ginny nods her agreement and picks up a napkin to wipe the salt and grease off her fingers. There’s an uncomfortable, nagging feeling in the back of her mind, like an itch she can’t quite scratch. This means something to her, this intense desire to emerge the victor no matter the cost, but she can’t pinpoint it.
“You’ve really got an instinct for this, you know,” says Harry after a moment spent in quiet contemplation. “You sure you’ve only been on the job for six months?”
“I’m sure it must help when you’ve actually gone through the whole training program-“
Harry lobs a wadded-up napkin at her, and laughter erupts out of her.
•••
St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
362 Oxford Street, Mayfair, London
Sunday, 16th November
Harry’s just finished fixing two cups of tea when he spots Ginny making her way down the hall toward him. He has to suppress a smile when he sees her: it’s four in the morning and she has somehow managed to look effortlessly perfect. Thin tendrils of hair have escaped her ponytail and now brush her flushed cheeks, and the jacket of her Auror’s uniform is just slightly twisted around her waist. Which, of course, just draws his eyes to the curve of her hips and down to her legs-
He distracts himself with a sip of tea and scalds his tongue in the process. He should be over this by now. He was over it. He had, over the course of the past several months - and years, really - carved out a special little place in his life just for her as his friend, fellow Auror, and best mate’s sister. He can’t allow her to occupy any more space in his life or in his mind.
“Any idea why - oh, thank you.” Ginny’s fingertips brush his as she accepts the cup of tea. Her hands are cold from the late autumn chill, and Harry is struck with the impulse to envelop them in his own to warm her up. “Do you have any idea why we’re here?”
Harry shakes his head. “A Healer’s meant to come get us, but I haven’t spoken to anyone yet.”
It’s not uncommon for them to visit St. Mungo’s in the course of an investigation, but they’re usually there to visit the morgue or the Spell Damage ward. They’re almost never summoned to the Accident and Emergency wing, and certainly never in the middle of the night.
“I wonder if-“ Ginny pauses, brows knitting together. “What’s on your face?”
“Huh?”
Her finger trails down the side of his cheek, and try as he might, he can’t stop the gooseflesh from popping up along his arms. “You’ve got some kind of red line right here.”
“Oh, that.” His cheeks grow hot. “I was at Ron and Hermione’s, and I, erm, I fell asleep on the couch. It’s probably from the throw pillow.”
He catches Ginny’s eye as she chuckles. “Wow, quite a wild Saturday night for you, isn’t it?”
“So you’ve been out living it up, have you?”
Ginny affects sheepishness. “Actually, I was helping Demelza with her wedding invitations.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“Almost as thrilling as losing to Ron in chess, like I assume you were doing-“
“Excuse me,” comes a voice from the opposite end of the hall. A tall, slender woman in white Healer's robes hurries toward them. “Are you the Aurors? I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, there’s always loads of paperwork when a victim of a crime’s been brought in-“ She stops in her tracks. “You’re Harry Potter.”
“Yes I am,” he replies, glossing easily past the moment, “and this is my partner, Auror Weasley. We’re with the Special Victims Unit.”
“Healer Watson, pleasure to meet the both of you. Have they told you about the poor dear they brought in tonight?”
“Nobody tells us anything,” says Harry, his fatigue apparently getting the better of him. To his right, Ginny stifles a laugh.
“Found in the alley behind the Leaky Cauldron.” Healer Watson shakes her head, somber. “Now, I must warn you, the poor dear’s in pretty rough shape, but thank Merlin she’s awake now-“
“Awake?” Ginny interjects. “You mean she’s alive ?”
“Yes, of course she is.” The Healer looks to Harry as if seeking confirmation that Ginny should have already known this, but he’s just as stunned. “It’s a bit tough for her to speak, what with all the bruising to her vocal cords, but she’s ready to tell you as much as she can.”
They follow Healer Watson down the corridor, through a pair of swinging double doors, into a vast room with vaulted ceilings. Healers and mediwitches bustle back and forth between the beds that line the walls, each of which is afforded a modicum of privacy by a pale green curtain. Their victim - survivor, Harry corrects himself with a rush of relief - is at the very back. There’s a scraping of metal hooks as Healer Watson slides open the curtain.
“Georgia, dear,” she says, her voice low and calm, “the Aurors are here to speak with you if you’re still up to it.”
A pause, and Healer Watson steps back to allow Harry and Ginny inside.
A thick brace encircles the neck of the young woman in the bed before them. One side of her heart-shaped face is puffy and purple with bruising, and her eye is swollen completely shut. Streaks of blood have matted her wispy brown hair to her scalp. Beside her bed, a tray bears a variety of multicolored healing potions.
Harry is no stranger to these sorts of injuries, but most of the time, he’s reviewing autopsy photos or visiting the morgue, and that comes with a detachment that he’s only now appreciating.
“Hi, Georgia,” says Ginny, warmth emanating from her words. “I’m Auror Weasley, and this is Auror Potter. I understand it’s a bit difficult for you to talk right now, but anything you’re able to tell us will be very helpful in our investigation.”
As Georgia gives as much of a nod as she can, Ginny seats herself in the chair beside the bed. Understanding that Ginny is far better suited to this than he is, Harry leans back against the wall to observe.
“So, what can you tell us about last night?” Ginny begins. “Where did you go?”
Georgia licks her chapped lips. “The Leaky Cauldron.”
Her voice is quiet and hoarse, but clear as day.
“About what time did you get there?”
“Ten, I think.” Georgia’s forehead creases in concentration. “Hard to remember.”
“That’s all right, that’s helpful. Who were you there with?”
“My cousin. But she left early, she wasn’t feeling well - she gets migraines,” explains Georgia. It’s clearly taking nearly all her energy to speak, and though her words are soft, there is immense strength and determination behind them. “She told me I should stay though, because I’d starting chatting to - to him- “
It’s nearly imperceptible to anyone but Harry as Ginny leans forward in her chair. “And who was he?”
“I-“ Georgia clears her throat. “I never got his name. He never told me. He asked mine, and before I could ask his, he was asking me other things, and - and I don’t know.”
“That’s okay. What did he look like?”
“Erm - well, just a normal bloke, I suppose. Dark hair, dark eyes. Not particularly tall, just… average. But it’s strange, I - I don’t quite understand it.”
“Understand what?”
“At first when he began chatting me up, I thought he was, y’know, nice, but not really my type. But then suddenly he was asking me back to his and-“ She reaches out a slim, shaking arm to take a cup of water from her bedside table. “And that’s not me, I don’t meet men at pubs and go back to their flats with them, but I felt like-“ She brings the cup to her lips, wincing as she drinks. “Like I couldn’t bear having him out of my sight, I felt obsessed with him. I should have said no, I - wanted to say no, I had this-“ She broke into a sputtering cough and drank again from her cup. “This voice in my head saying ‘you barely know him, you don’t want this, tell him to stop’ but I also felt like I wanted to do anything he wanted me to, and - I should have said no.”
“This isn’t your fault.” Ginny’s small hand covers Georgia’s and squeezes. “You understand that, don’t you? You didn’t ask for this and you didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
Georgia makes another attempt to nod. “It sort of wore off a bit - you know, after - and I knew my mum would worry if I didn’t come home all night, so I told him I had to leave. I still felt a bit off and I didn’t feel like I could Apparate, so he said he would walk me home - oh, God.” Her face drains of color and her non-swollen eye widens with horror. “He knows where I live, I told him where I - if he knows I’m alive, he might come back for me-“
“We won’t let that happen,” Ginny assures her. “The Daily Prophet’s never been particularly interested in printing the truth, I don’t see why they have to start now.”
Some of the worry melts from Georgia’s face, and Harry, despite it all, feels a smile work its way onto his face. Gratitude for Ginny swells up inside him until he feels he could burst from it; she’s brilliant, far more than she realizes.
“So what happened next?” Ginny urges gently. “After he said he’d walk you home?”
“He - it’s a bit of a blur, honestly. I remember he shoved me, and I smacked my head. I just knew if I wanted to survive, I had to play dead so I just went limp, and, well.” She blinks in rapid succession. “I suppose it worked.”
“Do you remember where his flat was?” asks Ginny. “Even just the general neighborhood-“
Georgia shakes her head. “He Apparated us directly into the building, I never saw the outside and then when we left, I was still so disorientated from all of it that I didn’t even-“ She shakes her head, even as it causes her to flinch with pain. “I still don’t know why I went with him, I never should have-“
“Georgia, listen to me.” Ginny leans closer, her hand still gripping Georgia’s atop the knitted blankets. “I know you want to blame yourself, believe me, I understand. It’s so easy to look back and think of everything you could have done differently, but he’s the one who was wrong, and-“ Ginny draws a deep breath. “We’re going to find the person who did this to you. I promise you, we’ll do whatever it takes.” She exhales, then rises from her chair. “Excuse me.”
The pale green curtain billows in the wake of her exit, leaving Harry alone with Georgia and Healer Watson, both of whom look expectantly to him.
“Thank you so much,” he manages after a few moments of awkward silence. “We’ll be in touch if there’s any other questions.”
He half-walks, half-jogs through the A&E wing and shoves through the double doors. At the end of the corridor, he catches a glimpse of long red hair disappearing into what he can only guess is a supply closet.
And he’s not sure what makes him do it. Hermione’s been telling him since he was fifteen that he’s terrible with feelings, and he wholeheartedly agrees with her. But something draws him down the hall, causes him to press his ear against the door and rap his knuckles against the wood.
“It’s me,” he says, hesitant. “You all right?”
The knob turns, and Harry steps inside to find Ginny seated atop an overturned bucket. A single lantern flickers weakly on a top shelf, next to bottles of Mrs. Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover and clean bedsheets.
“You did great back there,” he tells her in an attempt at reassurance. “We’re really not supposed to make promises like that, though.”
Ginny looks up at him. Even in the wavering light, her brown eyes are bright and intense. “I was good at Quidditch.” Her voice is steely, words careful and deliberate. “I was the youngest starter on the Harpies in three hundred years, but I left after one season. To do this. I went through three years of Auror training, which not all of us had the luxury of skipping, and for your information it isn’t exactly a picnic in the park. And once I was done, I asked specifically to be in SVU. Have you ever wondered why?”
“I - Ginny, I wasn’t trying to criticize - you really did great-“
“We had this team trainer that went with us to all of our matches,” she continues, ignoring his platitudes. “He said it was part of his job to make sure we were ‘physically fit for competition’ and he had a very… loose interpretation of what that actually meant.” Harry’s shock must register on his face, because she adds, “I nearly broke his arm when he tried his bullshit on me, but at that point I’d had enough, I had to do something. I might not have been through exactly what that girl has, but I know what it’s like to have your free will taken from you, and to be manipulated and violated and to come out the other side and still feel like you did something wrong. For years, I thought Tom Riddle was my fault somehow.”
He knows he must look like a fool - he feels like one, truth be told - but all he can do is blink at her. “You were eleven years old - you were a child- “
“I know. But it didn’t stop me feeling that way, and - and I don’t want anyone else to feel that way, ever again. So yes, I made her a promise. I intend to keep it.”
Harry sits down across from her, on a cardboard box full of potion ingredients. “So do I.”
“Good, because I’ve got an idea…”
•••
The Leaky Cauldron
Number 1, Diagon Alley, London, England
Saturday, 22nd November
Ginny can’t stop touching her hair. With the aid of Hermione’s exemplary Transfiguration skills, her pin-straight red hair has been rendered dark and curly. Her eyes are hazel now as opposed to brown, and her nose is longer, slimmer. Even the arch of her eyebrows has been sharpened. And she just hopes, as she edges through the crowd toward the bar, that her impulse to toy with her curly locks is interpreted as flirtatious rather than a giveaway.
Harry’s at the back of the pub, joined by Ron in an attempt to make his presence inconspicuous. She can feel his eyes on her with every move she makes, though a bit of subtlety would be preferable: the last thing she needs is their culprit thinking she’s got a jealous boyfriend.
When she finally reaches the bar, she orders a lemonade and slides onto a stool near the wall. Using the skinny cocktail straw to stir the ice in her glass, she surveys the scene. Dark hair, dark eyes, not particularly tall. Gemma’s description of her assailant could match half the blokes in Britain… but it’s the best they’ve got.
Just like the plan for tonight, which is far from perfect, not to mention being executed without the knowledge or consent of the Ministry. This bit hardly bothers her. She would rather risk her job than stand idly by while more women are attacked. More concerning are the pieces of the plan that depend almost entirely on luck and Ginny’s ability to fend off a predator.
The bracelet on her wrist buzzes, and dutifully, she puts it to her ear.
Harry’s voice is low and tinny from the transmission. “How’s it going?”
She glances across the pub to see him sitting with his chin in his hands. A casual observer would never realize he’s speaking into the small gold disc affixed to the back of his watch.
“Fine,” Ginny mumbles back, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Not much happening.”
“Let’s test the volume again.”
“Harry,” she hisses. “We’ve tested it five times. It works. ”
“Once more, c’mon - Ron’s making me-“
“Oi!” Ron’s sudden protest blasts into Ginny’s ear. “Don’t let him blame that on me-“
“Oh my God, fine.” She twists a small heart-shaped charm on the bracelet to boost the range of audio that transmits to Harry’s watch. “Is that better?”
“Yeah, that - that seems good. Actually, just leave it like that.”
A small part of her wants to argue, but a larger part would prefer to maintain the appearance of sanity, which means not talking to herself in the middle of a crowded pub. “Fine. Now leave me alone.”
Harry laughs, and despite the physical distance between them, it’s like he’s right there next to her, and a chill races up her spine.
Which she quickly shakes off, because she’s got to focus. It won’t do to allow her thoughts to wander to what it might be like if he really was next to her, if his laughter were to rumble out of his chest with his lips close to her ear-
The thought is literally knocked out of her as something, or someone, collides with the back of her stool. “Shit,” exclaims a male voice. “I’m so sorry, you all right?”
With a hand still locked on the end of the bar to keep herself from tumbling to the floor, Ginny turns and looks directly into the eyes of one Michael Corner.
It’s been over five years since she saw him last - which, she recalls, was when he was escaping Hogwarts at the outset of the final battle. It enraged her then, and it still sparks resentment now. Still, she opens her mouth to greet him in that cordial way she always does with people she hasn’t seen since Hogwarts and realizes just in time that she’s in disguise. He’s not Michael Corner, her ex-boyfriend from a million years ago. He’s just some bloke who bumped into her in a pub.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she replies. “No worries.”
“Well, let me buy you a drink anyway.” He slides onto the stool next to her, and before she can refuse him, he’s flagging down the barman. “What’re you drinking?”
“You really don’t have to, I’ve still got this one.”
She lifts it up, to demonstrate that it’s still nearly full, but as it nears her face, the scent of it makes her stomach flip. It no longer smells of lemon and sugar, tart yet sickly sweet; her senses are flooded with broomstick polish and fresh-baked biscuits and something clean and minty that calls to mind her desk at the Ministry. It’s so alluring that she’s tempted to swallow down the entire glass, but then she looks back up at Michael.
And all the pieces - everything she has known all along, since she first arrived on the scene of Eleanor Branstone’s murder - fall perfectly into place.
“You know, on second thought,” she says, subtly squeezing the charm on her bracelet three times in a row, “a drink sounds great.”
•••
Harry hasn’t felt an adrenaline surge like this in a long time. He’s not actively dueling Death Eaters anymore; so much of his work with the Special Victims Unit takes place after the fact. But when the back of his watch buzzes three times against his wrist, he’s ready to leap over the table and rush to Ginny’s aid.
He can’t - of course he can’t, not if he wants any chance of catching their perpetrator in the act - but his whole body thrums with unspent energy as he sets his chin on his hand, his wrist near his ear so he can listen.
“What’s going on?” asks Ron, swallowing the last drops of beer in his glass.
“It’s him,” Harry mumbles, never once taking his eyes off Ginny. “She’s sent the signal, it’s him. She found him.”
Ron sits up straight, his eyes now trained on Ginny and her acquaintance. Harry presses his wrist a little closer to his ear.
“So what’s your name?” The man’s question is nearly drowned out by the din of the other pubgoers.
“Jennifer,” replies Ginny’s voice. “And you-“
“That’s an interesting bracelet,” the man interrupts. “Gift from your boyfriend?”
Harry can’t help rolling his eyes. With a flirtatious giggle, Ginny responds, “oh, no, I haven’t got a boyfriend. It’s an old family heirloom, actually.”
She starts showing him the little details they added to her bracelet with the hopes of cementing it in his mind as the sort of trophy he’d like for himself, and as their heads bend together, Harry’s heart lodges itself in his throat.
This all seemed like a good idea when they were planning it in that supply closet at St. Mungo’s. The best way to build a case, and subsequently sentence him to a miserable eternity in Azkaban, was to catch him in the act. Only now, with Ginny thrown to the wolves, does he realize just how much can go wrong.
“Oh, shit,” says Ron beside him. “You realize who that is?”
“Ron, shut up-“
“That’s fucking Michael Corner,” says Ron, incredulous. “Remember him? That little shithead from Ravenclaw? I always knew he was bad news-“
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Harry snaps, waving his hand at Ron in an attempt to quiet him. “I’m trying to listen to this.”
Ginny must have boosted the volume again, because Michael’s voice comes through the watch unobstructed by the other guests. “So, what do you do?” he asks. “Where do you work?”
“Oh, well-“ Ginny giggles again. “Nowhere at the moment, I’ve just finished Hogwarts and-“
“Yeah?” Michael is excellent at feigning interest. This, Harry understands, is his strategy. The more interest he shows in his target, the more they’ll trust him. “What house were you in?”
They've devised a rich backstory for Jennifer Wells, Ginny’s alter ego, so it’s no surprise to Harry when she says, “Hufflepuff.”
“No kidding, so was I!”
Harry rolls his eyes again. “Fucking liar.” As he and Ron watch, hardly daring to blink lest they miss a moment, Ginny leans toward Michael and places a hand on his arm.
“This is amazing,” she gushes. “I really feel like we have a connection, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I think we do.”
“It’s amazing.” Ginny is literally on the edge of her seat, her face far closer to Michael’s than Harry is strictly comfortable with. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”
“Neither have I. Look, maybe it’s a little soon, but… do you want to get out of here? Maybe come back to mine?”
“Yes.”
Ginny is breathless; Harry’s stomach churns. This isn’t what they’ve discussed, this isn’t how the plan is meant to go at all. She’s meant to catch him in the act of whatever obscure magic he’s doing to render his victims compliant, but she’s gazing at him like he hung the moon, like she’s ready to elope to Gretna Green.
But she can’t possibly - there’s no way she’s actually into him, is there? Harry’s chest tightens with horror, underlaid with a twinge of jealousy that he doesn’t have time to analyze, because she’s sliding off her stool now, and allowing Michael to lead her toward the exit of the pub, her hand in his.
Her hand in his. Ginny, hand-in-hand with a rapist. A killer. A monster.
(Also her ex-boyfriend, but there isn’t time to dwell on that .)
“What the hell?” Ron rises up halfway out of his seat to watch as they proceed to the door. “Why’s she-“
“Yeah, I don’t know - look, I’ve got to go-“
It takes everything Harry has to remember that he’s an Auror, and he’ll blow the whole investigation if he follows his impulse to grab Ginny and Apparate her to safety. He has to trust her - he does trust her - but the thought of Michael laying even a single finger on her makes his stomach shake.
So instead, he lets an older couple walk in front of him as he winds around the tables crowding the pub, though his eyes never leave the dark curls cascading down Ginny’s back. They’re talking and laughing, and Ginny’s positively beaming at Michael, and just as Harry’s wondering what sort of consequences he’ll face if he were to tear Michael limb from limb with his bare hands, they vanish.
Without a way to follow them, but loathing the prospect of standing still, Harry starts down Charing Cross Road. The back of his watch buzzes again so he slips it off and holds it up to his ear.
“Oh, wow,” Ginny’s saying. “This flat is amazing. I hope it’s not too forward of me to say this, but I can just see us living here together someday-“ More giggles trill out of her. “Someday soon, I hope-“
“I hope so too.”
Silence. The silence is bad for Harry. His imagination races with scenarios, each more horrible than the last. If Michael catches on to the ruse, there’s no telling what he’ll do.
“Sorry,” Ginny giggles. “I just need to, erm - well, freshen up a bit-“
“Nah, you’re perfect the way you are.”
“Oh, no, I’ll only be a moment.” Is it Harry’s tendency to catastrophize, or is her voice shaking? “All that lemonade, you know - went right through me. Is that the loo?”
Some footsteps, the click of a door locking, and then the gush of running water.
“Harry.” Ginny’s voice is barely a whisper. “You there?”
“Get out of there,” he tells her at once. “Seriously, this was a bad idea, just fake an excuse and-“
“I can’t, I’m so close. I’ve just got to find the jewelry-“
“We can come back with a search warrant-“
“Which we need evidence to get - listen, where do boys hide stuff they don’t want anyone to find? God, this place is a mess-“
“Ginny,” says Harry again, no longer bothering to disguise the urgency, no longer above begging her to keep herself safe. “This isn’t worth it, he’s going to get suspicious.”
“Seriously, I’m fine. Just let me do this.”
“Ginny - Gin, come on.”
Nothing. The sound of running water is accompanied now by an ominous rustling and the occasional light thump. Which, Harry rationalizes, could just be Ginny searching through the cupboards. It has to be. Surely, he’d have heard voices and signs of a struggle if Ginny were in danger.
“Ginny?” he tries again. “At least send a signal if you’re all right-“
Hinges creak. Harry’s stomach plummets. This is it. Michael’s found her, and there’s nothing that he, Harry, can do to help.
“Harry.” Ginny’s voice is definitely trembling now. “I’m going to call for backup, all right? Come as fast as you can.”
There’s no time to question it before the face of his watch begins spinning. As he touches the tip of his wand to the glass, he turns on the spot, hoping with everything he has that Ginny’s safe.
He lands in a drab, dingy flat along with about half a dozen Magical Law Enforcement Patrol officers. Ginny has Michael pinned against a scuffed-up wall, his hands bound behind his back by magical handcuffs.
“Michael Corner,” Ginny declares, her magically-induced curls swinging against her back as she struggles to keep her suspect in place. “You are under arrest for the rapes and murders of Eleanor Branstone and Sophie Clark, and the rape and attempted murder of Georgia Ratliff. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court…”
The patrol officers close in on Michael and Ginny to assist in subduing him. In the end, it takes a Leg-Locker Curse and three officers to render him still enough to Apparate to the Ministry. They disappear with an ear-splitting crack, and Harry and Ginny are left in the ringing silence that remains.
She turns to face him, and even under her altered features, her light shines through. Harry’s mind swims with questions, but when he opens his mouth to speak, all that comes out is, “you’re amazing.”
Ginny beams back at him.
•••
Evidence Lockup, Ministry of Magic
4 Whitehall Place, London, England
Sunday, 23rd November
“So he still won’t talk, huh?”
“Nope.” Harry presses his wand against a sensor on the door to unlock it. “He’s got himself a solicitor and everything, as if he thinks he’s got a chance.”
Michael Corner has been in custody for the past twenty-four hours, which have been a whirlwind to say the least. they’ve attempted to interrogate a silent, expressionless Michael; they’ve fast-tracked a search warrant and collected a veritable fuckton of evidence from Michael’s; Hermione has already begun drawing up legislation to classify Amortentia as a Class C non-traceable substance. And sometime around dawn on Sunday morning, when the dust finally began to settle, Ginny explained exactly how the events leading up to the arrest unfolded. She told him how she smelled the potion in her drink at the pub and knew it must be him. How, on a whim, she opened the medicine cabinet in his bathroom and found Eleanor’s ring, Sophie’s earrings and Georgia’s necklace lined up neatly on the top shelf.
It was enough for an arrest; now, they just need to secure a conviction.
And the thing about Harry is that every single employee review since he joined the Aurors has indicated that he “struggles to delegate”. He knows it’s true, because he’d rather just do something himself than trust anyone else, and he has been trying to work on it. He trusts Ginny, after all.
But with a case this important, with this much on the line, there is no way he’s trusting anyone else to register the evidence. Even one mislabeled item could allow Michael to walk free. So, despite the fatigue tugging on his eyelids, he and Ginny traverse the narrow, winding staircase to the evidence storage room.
Shelves bearing cardboard boxes stretch farther than the eye can see. On a long wooden table between two of the shelves sit several tamper-proof containers along with a stack of adhesive labels and a self-inking quill. They set to work cataloguing everything they collected from Michael’s flat, falling into an easy rhythm: Ginny addressing labels, since she has accurately described Harry’s penmanship as “chicken scratch”, and Harry, inspecting each item before levitating it into its own container.
Silence falls between them. It’s not unusual; Harry’s lost count of the times they’ve worked late together with only the sound of scratching quills and rustling parchment in the empty department. He’s always appreciated their ability to simply exist together, without needing to fill the space with small talk, but today it feels different. Tense, somehow, almost charged, like there’s something building and growing between them.
They’ve logged in all of Michael’s potions ingredients along with his cauldron, which still contains traces of Amortentia and fills Harry’s nose with the tantalizing scent of broomstick handles, treacle tart and a fresh, flowery aroma. It used to remind him of the Burrow, but it now calls to mind the young woman standing beside him, dutifully affixing labels to boxes and setting them aside.
Eleanor Branstone’s topaz and amethyst ring floats into the air and hangs, suspended, with lantern light glinting off its many facets, before Harry guides it into a box.
“Her mum may have to wait a bit longer to bury her,” says Ginny softly. “Until after the trial.”
“It’ll be worth it, though,” Harry replies, thinking back on grief-stricken Charlotte Branstone. “When she’s able to do it the way she wants.”
Ginny nods as she inks the case number onto a label. A contented sigh escapes her lips. “We really did it, didn’t we? We actually solved it.”
“We really did.”
Years ago, Harry had linked success with Ginny and success in a Quidditch match, with the former dependent on the latter. He thought he would need that unbridled glee, the sense of invincibility that comes from victory, to make his move. Today’s is a quiet sort of triumph: there is no raucous party, no gleaming gold cup, no bunting or banners. Just the understanding that they’ve achieved what once felt impossible.
He wants to keep doing the impossible.
“I never asked you,” Harry begins, his heart thrumming in his chest, “how you knew it was Amortentia.”
“Oh.” A flush rises on her fair cheeks. “Well, you can smell it, can’t you? It certainly didn’t smell like lemonade anymore.”
“Right.” His wand still held aloft, with one of Sophie Clarke’s earrings hovering in mid-air, Harry angles himself to face her. “I suppose I was wondering what it smelled like to you.”
Though it’s quite a personal question, Ginny is unfazed. “Erm, well - biscuits, which I suppose is because it reminds me of home. And broomstick polish.”
“Makes sense.”
“And you,” she adds, her voice a bit louder now, a bit stronger. “You must use some sort of minty shampoo or something because I - I smelled that, and at first it made me think of my desk at work.” The words are tumbling from her lips as of their own volition. “But that didn’t seem right, I can’t be that enamored with my job, and then I realized that it’s because we’re always together at work, and-“
Harry kisses her. He doesn’t stop to consider if this is the right moment - if the circumstances have finally warranted him allowing himself a moment of happiness. All he knows is that he’s been wanting this since he was sixteen, and he doesn’t want to wait another second.
His wand clatters to the floor as her lips press back on his, warm and eager, her hands slipping behind his back.
“And just for the record,” he tells her between breaths, “I smelled you in mine too.”
“And treacle tart, too, right?”
“Obviously.”