Author's Note:

Obviously no HP characters are my own, I just love them. So, here is my first attempt at a fanfic.

Cheers.

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Chapter 1: A New Assignment

Harry Potter shifted his position quietly, verifying for the hundredth time that he was safely concealed behind some dilapidated crates. He and his team had been sitting in hiding for three hours, hoping to catch a gang of traffickers. He looked away from the overgrown field he had been watching to see if he could catch sight of another member of his team. About 100 meters away he could just see McDarrow's shoulder behind some molding hay bundles.

Another 15 minutes passed before a series of pops broke the evening silence, announcing the apparition of five people in heavy black cloaks. Harry slowly pushed his bangs out of his face, readying his wand. The figures below spoke quietly to one another, their wands also readied. Almost as if they were expecting -

Another pop and a sixth figure, the buyer, appeared a short distance away from the rest of the group. Now that all expected suspects were present, the anti-apparition spell should have been activated by one of Harry's aurors, sealing off the area.

"You're late," the familiar voice of the leader said. The response was evidently not what the leader wanted to hear from the newcomer, as she raised her wand to point towards the wizard. He raised his wand in response which prompted the rest of the original five to raise their wands.

Harry frowned. They had been tracking this group for nearly three years with covert and undercover operations, all coming to a head today. He needed this deal to happen so the ringleader would reveal where and how they concealed their headquarters. There was an old farmhouse on the property as well as assorted smaller sheds and the like, but none of them could house the operation they knew to be there; something had to have been magically shrouded. So far the buyer didn't seem to be doing anything other than antagonizing the leader.

As more words were exchanged, Harry adjusted the extendable ear he wore, trying to pick up more voices. It was a newer model they were testing thanks to the Weasley's; each person on his team was wearing one, and theoretically they should triangulate a network together and hear whatever was spoken in the center of their combined locations. It still needed some work.

Harry picked up some more words involving "galleons" and "agreement" and a flicked wand by the buyer produced a heavy bag that fell to the ground in front of the ringleader. With a slight wave of her wand, she looked inside the bag and appeared to be satisfied with what she saw there. Wands were lowered, and she walked forward to shake the buyer's hand.

The leader turned around and raised both her hands towards the open field and muttered an incantation. There was a slight glimmer in the air that lasted momentarily before what appeared to be a bunker materialized on the field. It was constructed out of a barn combined with muggle shipment containers.

The buyer walked up next to the ringleader. He was immediately surrounded by the four guards that had arrived with the leader initially. The leader reached out and touched the main door for the bunker. She must have uttered some spell or password because with another wave of her wand the door disappeared.

"PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!" Harry bellowed as he leapt out of hiding, queueing his aurors to follow suit.

The fight took maybe 30 seconds to resolve, ending with one auror stunned, and all six criminals body-bound. While Harry first made his way to the shipment containers, his aurors assembled the traffickers into kneeling positions. Harry looked inside the container, and sure enough, there were about twenty terrified muggles, tied together and chained to the walls. The shipping container wreaked of excrement and urine.

"McDarrow," Harry said quietly, "Please see to the victims."

"Sir."

Harry walked back around the group to stand in front of the gang members. Their faces were concealed with conjured white masks, not dissimilar from the Death Eater masks from ten years ago. All of the members were on their knees in front of Harry, bound and wandless. One of the guards was standing, his hand on the leader's shoulder, white mask now gone, revealing a young face.

"Good work, Tenley," Harry said to him. Tenley was a senior auror in the Muggle Trafficking department who had been working undercover for over a year. There was a grunt from the woman on her knees in front of Tenley, probably her only reaction to this reveal because she couldn't move.

"Thank you, sir," Tenley responded with a nod back to Harry.

Harry started on the left, working his way down the line. He flicked his wand at each gang member, dissolving their masks as he confirmed their identities.

"Jugson, Amycus and Alecto Carrow, Crabbe, Grayson, and LeDent."

Harry looked back at Alecto Carrow in the center of the group, the leader. Harry didn't know much about LeDent other than he was a trader, but he wasn't the one they were there for. Just an added bonus.

"Amycus and Alecto. It's been a long time," Harry said, standing in front of them. He felt a deep hatred surge, long dormant since the Battle of Hogwarts.

Amycus Carrow eyed Harry with a smile on his face, able to speak because Harry allowed it through the body-bind. "It certainly has, Potter."

"I understand you were attempting to expand your operation to America."

"Oh, Harry. We're not going to confess our plan to you," Alectro interrupted with a smile. "Once our lord is ready, you will understand."

Harry frowned. "Your lord?" He straightened, raising his wand cautiously.

"Yes. Our lord wanted to see you very much but he has more important work to do, so he couldn't be here today. Oh, we are to congratulate you on your recent promotion, however." She eyed Harry. "Head Auror, now. In charge of the Auror Department. Oooh, very impressive. Still doing field work, though, I see?"

Harry looked at Tenley who stood over Alecto Carrow's shoulder. "Take them to the ministry," he said, knowing they wouldn't get anything out of them here.

After a pause, Tenley said, "Sorry, sir." His hand emerged from his pocket clenching a small coin in his hand.

"Tenley, NO!" Harry shouted, whipping his wand up to stun Tenley, just missing him as he and Alecto Carrow vanished.

"Fuck!" Harry yelled. He looked at his other aurors. "Go!"

Each other auror, armed with their own portkey, activated them, returning back to the ministry with their captives.

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Well over a week later, Harry sat in his office, watching his quill dance across the paper as it added the finishing touches to his dictated report. They managed to bust the muggle trafficking ring, but only captured one of the siblings leading the enterprise. Harry considered this a failure as the sister would surely go to ground. The media and ministry for both the muggle and wizarding world on the other hand, were celebrating the end of the long nightmare of disappearing muggles. They considered it completely resolved as the aurors had discovered the headquarters of the operation and dissolved it. However, Harry couldn't forget that Alecto Carrow still remained free.

"Our lord wanted to see you very much," Carrow had taunted before Tenley port-keyed her out of range. Harry wasn't sure if Tenley was turned to the Dark or if he was under the effects of the Imperius curse, but either way, it was a blow to lose him from their department. He was a talented and hardworking auror.

Well, before he started taking orders from a former Death Eater, anyway.

Harry looked up to a knock on his door by his deputy auror. "Sir, the Minister wants to see you in his office," he said.

"Thanks, Trevor," Harry said, standing. He waved the parchment and quill back into a safety compartment in his desk. He glanced at the huge stacks of paperwork regarding their investigation that he had yet to parse through. He walked away from them, always content to leave paperwork for another time.

He didn't regret accepting the promotion to Head Auror, but he did wish it came with less paperwork and more field work. As Alec liked to remind him, he was almost 30 and knew that he couldn't run around catching former Death Eaters for the rest of his life. Harry felt the need to still remain connected to his work, which was why he insisted in participating in all major raids and operations his office executed. It irritated some of his Captains and senior aurors, but he felt it necessary to stay on top of his form.

On his way out the door, Harry paused for a reminder from Trevor regarding his 3:15pm press conference concerning the suspects they had arrested. His statements were already prepared, so he wasn't concerned about making it back from the minister's office in time. Entering the lift, Harry nodded to an archivist he had spent a lot of time researching with on a previous case. They exchanged pleasantries until the grate opened, allowing Harry to exit to the floor labeled in floating gold letters as: THE MINISTER'S OFFICES.

Harry made his way towards the minister's secretary and she waved him into the room without a word. Harry frowned a little, and knocked once on the heavy, dark redwood door. He felt a slight tingle of magic on his knuckles, the first test for entry.

"Enter," came the deep voice from within.

"Minister," Harry greeted as he opened the door, shutting it again behind himself. "You wanted to see me?"

"First off, Harry, congratulations again on your successful raid," Minister Shacklebolt said with a smile as he stood to shake Harry's hand.

"All thanks to my aurors, sir," Harry responded with a smile.

Seeming to decide that this was enough of a greeting for their meeting, the minister picked up a case file and considered it for a second before holding it out to Harry.

"I have an assignment I would like you to support MACUSA on." He gestured to the chair on Harry's right side. "You might want to sit for this one," the minister added, taking a seat himself.

Harry looked down at the folder, opening it to the front page. His jaw dropped slightly as he looked at the slightly-moving photograph clipped to the front page of the file.

He sat down.

"Sir," Harry started, still staring at the photograph, "when did this happen?"

"At the beginning of term at the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, September 27th."

"Why have I not heard of this before?"

"The Congress wished to keep it quiet until now."

"Death Eaters?"

"We have tracked none in Massachusetts as of yet." Shacklebolt gestured to the file again. "Keep reading. It gets better. Now, today is Friday, and I wanted to give you the weekend to get your personal affairs in order. You will find your ticket in there for a week from today."

Harry looked up at the minister and stood up. "Thank you, sir." He noted that the minister mentioned just one ticket and no options.

Alec is going to love this, Harry thought as he turned to leave the office, closing the door behind himself. As he walked down the hall back towards the lift he opened the file to look down at the picture again. It was a scene of a school hallway, presumably in Ilvermorny, that was eerily familiar to Harry. Written with a sticky-looking red substance on the wall were the words:

THE CHAMBER OF TRUTH HAS BEEN OPENED.

ENEMIES OF THE TRUE HEIR...BEWARE.

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Harry sat in his study, slowly swirling a glass of fire whiskey. It was well past ten, and he had been home for several hours pouring over the case Kingsley had given him. It appeared to be a pretty standard copy-cat situation, borrowing many significant events from the rise of Voldemort. It started the previous year with a series of murders, all with very similar MOs. Each crime scene had subtle differences, almost as if the suspect was testing something out, trying to perfect it.

Each murder featured a family of three in quiet respectable neighborhoods spread all over the New England region of America. Each setup was the same. A small two-story house was broken into, the father and mother murdered first, then the baby. The baby was always a boy, found in his crib, dead. Carved on each baby's forehead was a small lightning bolt.

Some scenes were modified - like the killer had murdered the family in different parts of the house but rearranged them so as to stage the events of a night that Harry still occasionally dreamed about. There were a total of eight murders spread over exactly one year, always on the 31st of the month, skipping the months that didn't include a 31st day. There were varied amounts of Dark magic detectable on the scenes, and it seemed clear that the murderer was probably trying to achieve something.

The first murder happened on July 31st, 2007, Harry's 27th birthday. The rest of the murders happened on the following 31st day of that month: August '07, October '07, December '07, January '08, March '08, May '08, and then finally ending with the last one in July, 2008, a year after the first murder. That was two and a half months ago from today, meaning he or she intentionally skipped August; Harry suspected it was because the killer had probably accomplished their goal.

Harry pushed his glasses up off his face with the back of his hand as he rubbed at his eyes. He heard the front door of the flat unlock and open followed by the clatter of keys falling into the dish by the door and a couple thuds as shoes and bags were dropped to the floor. Silence followed for a few seconds before he heard his name called up the stairs.

"I'm up here, Alec!" he called back, returning his glasses back in place.

Harry was sitting in his favorite stuffed chair in the corner of his study facing the door so he looked up when Alec walked in. "Hey, Harry,"he said as he crossed the room, leaning down to kiss Harry on the cheek. He was taller than Harry, with short well-kept hair, and an easy smile. "How was work?"

Harry closed his case file and set down his drink, settling back in his chair. "I need to talk to you about something."

"That never sounds good."

"Please, sit."

"Wow, that really doesn't sound good," Alec said. Harry smiled as he watched his partner sit on the couch opposite of him. He flicked his wand at the fireplace to light it, realizing it had gotten cold in the room as the sun had gone down hours before. Alec watched his movement, smiling a little.

Alec always liked when Harry performed magic. As a muggle, Alec had no idea the wizarding world existed until Harry entered his life, and still found all the conveniences of magic fascinating. It did make it rather difficult to explain to his muggle friends why they couldn't come over to their flat (which he said was always under "construction"), or why he never answered his cell phone at home (sensitive technology like that tended to malfunction around magic, but he explained this by saying he just didn't get coverage at home). They had been living together for over a year.

"The minister is sending me to America to assist on a case."

"For how long?" Alec asked after a pause.

"...I don't know."

Alec leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, threading his fingers together. "Where in America?"

"New England, I believe. Predominately New York state and Massachusetts, though I may probably travel as far west as Michigan."

"Can I visit you? I have always wanted to see New York."

Harry hesitated for just a second, thinking about a name he had read on the report sitting in his lap. He smiled. "Of course."

"What is the case? Can you you tell me about it at all?"

Harry looked down at the closed folder thoughtfully. "It appears as if someone wants us to think that we have a new Dark Lord on the rise," he said.

"Bloody hell," Alec said, leaning back. "Like Voldemort, right?"

Harry nodded, pushing his black bangs out of his eyes. "You will have protection from the Ministry while I am gone," he said, knowing full well that Alec would scoff at this, which he did.

"I guess that is what I get for being with the famous Harry Potter."

"This is serious, Alec."

Alec nodded, his smile fading slightly. "It always is. When do you leave?"

"The end of next week."

"When are you going to tell Teddy?"

Harry looked down at his file. He honestly hadn't decided. Harry knew Teddy would be off to Hogwarts in two years' time, but he had wanted to spend as much of that time with him as he could until then. Currently, he was with his guardian and grandmother, Andromeda Tonks.

Alec interpreted Harry's pause correctly as indecision. "Okay, I guess we should do something special this weekend then, hm?"

Harry smiled, watching Alec stand up. He walked over and gave Harry a gentle kiss before resting a hand on his shoulder. "Just come home safe to me."

"Always."

As Alec left the room, Harry's eyes landed on the framed Daily Prophet article that Alec insisted they hang on the wall because he said it amused him. The paper featured the main article THE CHOSEN ONE CHOOSES A MUGGLE by: Rita Skeeter which had come out shortly after the two of them were officially together. Alec liked it because it demonstrated that the wizarding community was more scandalized that The Boy Who Lived should end up with a muggle than they were concerned with him settling down with a bloke.

He looked back down at the folder in his lap, opening it. For the hundredth time he re-read the header on the case file. The file had been prepared and signed by lead American auror: Captain Draco Malfoy. Harry sighed deeply to himself, rubbing his eyes again.

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Author's Note: Thank you to Amista and Tharshalaya for the comments!

After completing this story, I went back and re-read the whole thing, fixing errors, and closing a couple loose ends. It isn't perfect by any means, but I am pretty excited about it. It has a bit of a slow start, but I hope you like building crime dramas!