The Pretender

This is the prequel to 'And Hope to Die', set about four or five years before it. For anyone who likes to know -I always do- timeline-wise this takes place during the last years of You-Know-Who's first rise to power, whereas 'And Hope to Die' was set in the lull time before his return. I had to mess a bit with the ages, Break only six years older instead of the much larger gap in the manga and Sharon is also a little older too, just to make things work out more neatly.

So without further ado or nervous exposition:

Chapter 1


Xerxes Break had snuck away from the Auror office and was currently hiding in the stairwell. He had gotten thoroughly tired of the stares of the other Aurors, it was not as if he was the first Auror to have lost an eye, he was just the most recent. But it seemed as if his co-workers were fascinated with the piece of gauze taped over his empty socket, they seemed to stare at it at every opportunity.

A person couldn't really blame them, loosing bits of your body was a fact of the job for an Auror, they all lost something eventually. The ones that stared were no doubt wondering how long it would be before they too sported bandages over missing parts of their own body once they ran afoul of the wrong Death Eater.

He fished in the pocket of his robe, locating the packet of cigarettes that had been another reason he had come to the stairwell. These days almost all of the office smoked, though the Ministry was taking steps to try to stamp out the habit; already lighting up on Ministry premises had been banned.

But Aurors had a well known habit of ignoring the more annoying Ministry decrees which no one ever bothered to call them to task on. Not long after the ban had made itself know every Auror that had picked up the habit began quietly sneaking onto the stairwell to furtively smoke, the small spots of ash on the wall gave evidence to the fact that many Aurors had put out their cigarettes there. The upper ranks of the Ministry would be very annoyed if they knew.

Who would tell them? Who wanted to get on the bad side of almost the entire Auror division? No one, that's who, so the higher echelons of the Ministry were blissfully unaware of the decree dodging.

Break removed a cigarette and hid the box back in his pocket, feeling vaguely guilty about this and not because it was against official office rules. If his partner had been here she would have been angry at him for smoking, she had been trying to get him to quit for the entire time they had worked together but… Tamara wasn't here to protest now.

She wasn't anywhere now.

Grumpily he lit the cigarette with a flick of his fingers, again glad he had learned that trick from… who had it been, Shacklebolt? Maybe, he couldn't remember at the moment.

In the meantime he enjoyed the simple pleasure of sneaking a cigarette, which, for reasons he couldn't really explain, seemed to make the ache in his missing eye lessen, something about the nicotine, perhaps? Who knew.

The glowing cherry of the cigarette was practically the only illumination in this back stairway; there were lighted lanterns at the next landing down before the switchback and one next to him but they were dim, running low on oil, and did not do much to make the stairwell visible.

Which was why, when he heard the faint groan, Break was not immediately sure of where it had come from. With a faint frown he cocked his head to the side, listening intently. Now that he was listening very, very close he could swear he could hear breathing, ragged, pained breathing, somewhere nearby.

Withdrawing his wand from his pocket he murmured, "Lumos."

In the sudden light cast from his wand the stairwell became fully illuminated and the source of the breathing was clear. There was a crumpled body on the landing.

Anyone else but an Auror would have immediately rushed to the body, registering only another human being in pain. But Break only let himself advance as far as the top of the steps, raising his wand so the light he cast hit the body more evenly. Training made him take in the entire scene before he did anything.

The body was a man, a young man, more specifically, whose robes were tangled around him. One of his arms was twisted under him in a way that meant it was either massively out of joint or broken, the other was thrown out to the side, and it lay in the middle of a pool of blood. A dark line, across the palm of that hand hinted at the blood's source. There was more darkly glinting blood under the man's head, though the wound had come from was not visible. One of the man's legs was twisted backwards, clearly broken.

From the middle of the steps a pair of glasses glittered back at him, probably fallen from the man's face.

There was no sign of a trap or any deception, this looked like someone had just fallen down a rather long flight of stairs and not landed well. He took all this in, giving himself time to fully register it. The scene of an accident, not a trap for an unwary Auror.

Then Break rushed to the body, dropping his cigarette on the landing and forgetting about it the moment it left his fingers. He reached out and searched for the pulse in the neck, not wanting to risk moving an arm. It was there, not as strong as he would like but there.

Now that he was closer he thought he recognized this man from the office, it was… Lunettes? Something like that. He couldn't recall the man's first man, which was slightly embarrassing since he was pretty sure he had dumped paperwork on his desk for checking over several times. He was just another face in the office before; Break had never been especially good at amiable office relations.

He would have checked the man's breathing, basic Auror medical training said that was the next step but there was no need when he could hear the man's rasping breath easily. It was true he knew some healing, but this wasn't something he thought he could deal with when there were other options available.

Briefly he let his hand rest on the man's shoulder, "I'm coming back with help." he told him, on the off-chance that he was able to hear him. "Hold on."

Then he drew himself to his feet and dashed down the stairs to the next level. There was a division of the healers assigned just to the Aurors, since they got themselves injured on a regular basis in the course of their duty, along with a rudimentary infirmary which Break was heading for.

He burst through the doors with his trademark grin nowhere is sight, smacking his elbow hard on his blind side as he misjudged the placing of the door in his haste.

The only healer in the narrow infirmary jumped and whirled to face him. She was one he didn't know, pretty, short, but far too young to be a full healer. An apprentice then.

"Get your kit, now." he snapped at her. "Everything you need for a fall victim."

She blinked at him, "W-what?"

"Kit." he repeated impatiently. "Fall victim. Get moving."

The apprentice appeared to come to herself with a jolt. "Of course," she hurried to one of the cabinets at the walls and pulled a bag out. "Where?" she asked.


Less than three minutes later the apprentice healer, who had told him her name was Sharon as they had hurried up the stairs, was kneeling by the wounded man with her wand out. She was murmuring spells that Break couldn't catch, her other hand on the man's shoulder, the air between them sparking with magic.

He was just tucking in the ends of the bandage she had set him to putting around the man's sliced hand when she turned to him. "He's safe to move, can you help me carry him?"

Just as he was about to ask whether she was sure about that a voice from the top of the stairs said, "What the hell is going on down there?" and John Dawlish came trotting down the stairs. Somehow in the process of explaining the situation Dawlish ended up being the one to pick up the man and carry him down to the Auror's infirmary. It probably had something to do with the fact that Break had a gaping hole where his eye used to be, that made people jump to help him do things since he had returned to the office. Even things he really didn't need help with, which was just beginning to get annoying.

All the same, if Dawlish wanted to carry pure death-weight downstairs for him he wasn't going to complain. Or even follow, for that matter.

With a healer alerted and the man being taken to infirmary there was nothing else Break could contribute to the situation. He climbed the stairs, pausing only to scoop the man's glasses up. At least now he knew the man's name, the healer had gasped it when she had first seen him -he was on first name basis with a healer. That was odd. Perhaps his fellow Auror was accident prone.

His name was Liam. Liam Lunettes. It was definitely a name he had heard before, but Break was fairly sure he'd never had much contact with the man, beyond tossing some paperwork on his desk. He'd remember if he'd ever done fieldwork with him, those sort of things stuck in the head.

All this was mostly background thought to the prevailing thought in Break's head, which was, namely: Where the hell was this man's partner? Partners were supposed to look after one another (there was a bit of a lurch in his heart as his mind threw up an image of Tamara), they were suppose to notice when their partner didn't come back to his desk for a long time and go see what had happened to them. Where had Liam Lunettes' partner been while he lay bleeding at the bottom of a flight of stairs?

It was a little of an assumption that he had a partner at all but the higher ups liked to keep Aurors in partner groups for their first ten years on the job, unless they proved that they worked better on their own. Things worked better that way. A partner looked after you, had your back (or was supposed to) and that was nothing to be dismissed lightly. His partner had been- Break shook his head to banish that line of thought.

He headed back to the office, though no one would have noticed if he'd just gone home since it was almost the end of his shift. But there was something he wanted to do first. "Hey," he said to the first Auror he ran into in the office, "Who's Liam Lunettes' partner?"

The Auror he had accosted blinked at him, then said, "Vincent Nightray." with a grimace. "Why?"

"Lunettes went a-tumbling down the back stairs," Break replied lightly.

"Is he alright?"

Break shrugged. "Not sure. Have you seen Nightray lately?"

Wordlessly the Auror pointed across the room, to where the coffeepot was enthroned on its own table. Two men were currently standing by it, mugs in hand. Both had long blonde hair but Break knew which was which even from this distance. With a nod of thanks to the Auror he'd been talking to Break made his way between the cubicles, not taking his eye off his target.

By the time he'd gotten to the coffeepot Nightray was watching him out of the corner of his eye, having noticed that he was being rather intently focused on. Nightray didn't have his blonde hair pulled back in a tail like the man he was talking to, loose it reached almost past his shoulder-blades. Strangely - well, strange even for an Auror- Nightray was known to carry a pair of scissors in a holster in his side, rather like a muggle would carry a gun. He also gave anyone who spoke to him a mild case of the creeps, which was probably from the sensation of being stared at by one gold eye and one red eye.

"Nightray." Break greeted the man, who offered a smile that was slightly too sly for Break's liking in response. "Your partner had an accident on the back stairs. He's hurt."

For a moment Vincent Nightray was very notably not surprised, and then his face smoothed over into an expression of concern. "What happened to him?"

"He fell down the stairs." Break replied shortly. "Dawlish took him to the infirmary."

"How… unfortunate." Nightray said, his voice as careful as his wording. "I do suppose I should check on him." He put his mug, still half filled with coffee, back on the counter and said to the other Auror he had been talking to, "We'll have to find that old chessboard, Vessalius. Sometime later, of course."

"Of course," Oscar Vessalius said and when Nightray had departed he raised an eyebrow at Break. "You look like someone just smacked you in the head with a board."

"I'm not surprised. This is very much not a 'surprised' expression."

Oscar chuckled into his coffee, he was one of the few people Break had gotten to know well after he'd been assigned to help Tamara and him on a few past missions. "I wasn't saying you looked surprised. I was saying you look angry. Not everyone is as close to their partner as you were. Though in this case…" Oscar snorted and went back to his coffee.

"What is in this case?" Break asked cautiously, lowering his voice. "Whatever you just thought to yourself, tell me."

"A bit of office gossip, and an old one at that." Taking in Break's interested glance Oscar shrugged and went on, "Back before Lunettes partnered with him no one wanted to be Nightray's partner."

"Why?" Break asked.

Taking a sip of coffee Oscar swished it thoughtfully around his mouth before he swallowed it, apparently thinking intently as he did so. "I remember most of the people Nightray got partnered with would ask to be transferred pretty quickly after they were assigned to him, Lunettes is the only one who's stuck with him."

"Is he that bad of a partner?"

"It's not that, it's more that he insists of sleeping with whoever he's partnered with. Or trying to at least." Oscar gave a wicked grin, "When Shuntley told him that he'd chop off his important bits and shove them in the furnace if he tried it it was Nightray who asked for a transfer. So if they won't sleep with him he asks for a new partner."

"Interesting," Break fished his own mug out of the tangle on the table and tapped the coffeepot with his wand. He poured himself a mug of, now steaming, coffee and tapped the little machine again with his wand when he put the empty pot back. The coffee pot rumbled into reluctant life to refill the pot. Whoever it was who had gotten a coffeepot to work around so much magic was probably a minor office hero for a while. "You're saying Nightray and Lunettes are…" he raised his eyebrows at Oscar who shrugged again.

"Well, they've been partnered for two years now."

"You'd think he'd show a little more concern for his lover." Break glowered in the direction Nightray had left in.

Romance in partnerships was stupid, he and Tamara had established that one between them early on, that kind of thing only made missions more complicated.

"I never said they were lovers," Oscar had his voice at half volume, the way all the best office gossip was passed on. "Just that Nightray was probably sleeping with him. Anyway," he returned his voice to a normal level, "Is Lunettes alright? How badly did he fall?"

"I didn't see the fall, I only saw the aftermath. It looks like he broke his arm, maybe his leg too, and he cut his hand open rather nastily."

"Cut?" Oscar echoed, "On what?"

Break opened his mouth to reply and then frowned, instead saying, "You know, I'm not sure." He remembered the cut across Lunettes' palm, it hadn't seemed odd at the time, but now something about it was niggling at his mind. Very carefully he didn't focus on it, lest the hunch fade before it was even fully formed. Instead he dropped his voice back down to gossip level and asked, "So why don't you think Lunettes and Nightray are 'lovers' exactly?"

"Talk to Lunettes for about ten minutes." Oscar replied promptly. "I do not believe those two make a happy couple, it just can't work."

In Break's personal experience Oscar was a good judge of character; if he thought that, there was a good chance it was true. "So what are you saying that that relationship is…?"

"Placation, probably. Pity for Lunettes though, he's a decent enough fellow. You'd know this too if you ever paid attention to anything other than you next mission."

"I like it that way." Break said. "Tamara always deals with the paperwork anyway so I don't have to-" he trailed off as he realized he'd done it again; referring to his partner in the present tense was a hard habit to shake. He took a large gulp of coffee, scowling like he hated the stuff.

"I'm sorry about that, by the way," Oscar said, looking pointedly at the gauze taped over his eye. "You two were close. It must be hard."

There was a thin smile on his lips, he could tell. "Time moves on, Vessalius. I've got work to get to. Later." That was an outright lie, but Oscar didn't know that, and if he could tell that it wasn't necessarily the truth he didn't comment as Break took his coffee back to his cubicle.

Tamara smiled down at him from the dozen or so pictures he had pinned up, she even waved at him sometimes while his photo self skulked off to the side. They were all taken at Tamara's insistence, she loved wizard pictures, since she had been muggle-born she'd not grown up with them like most wizarding kids would. These were all copies she had insisted he put in his cubicle because she had claimed it looked far too bare otherwise.

There was the past tense, creeping in.

But this, here, in these pictures, this was what a partner should be. Not…

Break propped his left elbow on his desk and stared at his palm. He'd gotten a good look at that wound Lunettes had, since he'd been the one to bandage it while that healer had checked for internal injury. The edges had been as straight as the cut itself, which didn't make sense for a fall. It hadn't been an abrasion, which you would expect from a fall, the skin had been cut cleanly, not worn away.

How would a man get a cut like that falling down a flight of stairs?

For some reason a picture of Vincent Nightrays scissors, always by the man's side, presented itself to his mind. His hand clenched into a fist. Surely no partner would… and no Auror would…

There had been no surprise on the man's face when he had told him about his partner. None at all.

Getting to his feet Break peered over the partition that separated his cubicle from Oscar's to see if he was there. He was but he was bent productively over his work, quill scratching away. Break reached into his pocket.

When the piece of candy bounced off his desk inches away from his inkwell Oscar leaned back in his chair to glower at Break. "What?" he asked.

"How long had you been talking to Nightray before I came up?"

"Only a minute or two. Why?"

"No reason." Break ducked back down into his cubicle. He stared at his palm for a few more moments, letting the theory grow. It almost seemed possible, when one took their morals and wound them down to sewer rat level.

Break waited until the shift was over and the night shift was coming in just to be sure he wouldn't run into Nightray and then headed down to the infirmary with something from his desk to confirm something for himself.


Keep you in the dark

And so it all began

(The Pretender~ The Foo Fighters)


TBC