AN: My first try at a mystery. Do tell me people, how it was. Thank you all! :D
"What does it look like? Suicide?" The Auror leaning over the body of the man asked the Healer sitting by the head of the man in a bored voice.
Healer Abbot looked at the man with distaste in her eyes.
"It's pretty well clear that this is not a suicide!" She said, surveying the Auror with distaste.
"Aww Merlin…..another fucking murder case then…" The Auror muttered to himself, shaking his matted, sandy hair out of his eyes.
"Auror Anderson, don't you think you've done enough skiving off your responsibility?" The Healer said in a hard voice.
"Sweet Merlin, Healer….don't give me that look. They work us overtime, you know that. War ended my ass! The big players fight out ideologies while common fuckers like us have to deal with the lingering mess…..""
"Careful, Auror." Abbot said.
"Yes, yes, I am. Nobdoy's gonna hear me at any rate. Listen, did you find out how he was murdered? 'Cause I haven't got any clue. It was no killing curse that did it." The Auror said, rubbing his tired eyes.
"Yes, it seems…somebody branded….Oh Merlin..something…onto-onto his heart." Abbot's voice trembled.
The Auror's eyes went wide, and he dropped to his knees, looking at the body carefully, for a few seconds, and then looked up at Abbot. He said in a determined voice, all weariness slipping away. "Show me."
The Healer sent up a prayer before she cut open the chest of the dead man with a quick diffindo. She maneuvered the ribs, and gently pushed aside a lung to expose the still heart to the gaze of the Auror. Then both of them gasped as the heart seemed to be lit up with an eerie green glow.
Which came from a mark that seemed to have been burned onto the heart. The mark of a skull with a serpent coming out through the hole which was its mouth.
(line break)
"Listen, Mom wants you at the Burrow in the evening. She says she'd like to check up on how thin you've got since the time she hasn't seen you. She still thinks you starve yourself." Ron Weasley said with a yawn as he lounged on the chair in front of the desk on the opposite side of which sat a man, with messy black hair and emerald eyes, and a very faint lightning scar on his head.
Harry Potter adjusted his glasses and indicated at the pile of papers on his desk. Ron's eyes flickered to it and with a grin, he said, "Still getting fan mail?"
Harry's expression became disbelieving for an instant, and he said with a twisted smile, "Yeah mate, too much. Help me answer some."
And he passed the top paper to his red-haired best friend who was currently the goalkeeper for the Chudley Cannons and who possessed the best clean sheet in the past five years. Harry often argued that it was because of Hermione Granger's "inspiring" presence in the stands that Ron ever managed to achieve such a feat, while Ron often argued back that it goalkeeping was more a matter of keeping the eyes on the ball, not on his girlfriend.
But getting hit with bludgers was nothing compared to seeing a vivid photo of a dark mark branded on the heart of a person.
And so Ron promptly turned purple and then to green, and Harry quickly tore the paper from his hands and shot a scourgify towards Ron's mouth, and the outcoming vomit was choked by soap water.
Ron made some ineligible sounds, trying futilely to get both soap and vomit off his mouth, continuously making some very rude hand gestures towards Harry, who returned them with interest. It was at this moment, that Hermione Granger entered Auror Divisional Head Harry Potter's office, with a "Harry, do you know of this strange thing-" only to be greeted by this sight. They both looked up at him, and Ron's hands immediately abandoned making gestures and shot to his mouth in order to get the soap and vomit off, and Harry, not understanding what he might do with his hands, nervously tried to flatten his hair and adjust his glasses at the same time, which led to none of them really happening.
Hermione took a look at the pair, and asked in a tired voice, "Might I ask a question? Why is my boyfriend's mouth stuffed with soap-water and why, Harry, are you trying to do a job which you never really will be successful at?"
"Er, you see-" Harry started nervously, but Hermione had already snatched up the paper that Harry had torn from Ron's hand, and said in a surprised voice, "So you got the memo already?"
Harry and Ron looked at her with stupefied expressions.
And the vomit in Ron's mouth managed to overcome the soap-water and fell, directly splashing on Hermione's pristine shoes.
Moments later, when Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic, would enter Harry Potter's office to discuss the same issue, he would find his finest Auror petrified on his own chair with a frozen, laughing expression on his face, and Ron Weasley, keeper for the Cannons, sweating profusely, being made to learn how to polish off vomit from something without using scourgify, by his own girlfriend, who was also the Head of the Minister's Department for Relations between Magical Creatures.
(line break)
"Knockturn Alley was where this happened, you say?" Harry interrogated Auror Anderson, who was squirming on his seat before the war hero.
"Yeah."
"Do you and Healer Abbot have something going between you two?" Harry asked suspiciously.
Anderson's eyes got wider, and he squirmed more. "Is this part of our questionnaire?" he asked in a low voice.
"Fuck, man. Your Divisonal Head just asked a question. Answer it." Harry said in a cold voice.
"Oh-kay. Nah, she's out of my league." Anderson said wearily.
"I've seen you watching her posterior." Harry said.
"Are you now spying on men watching women, Sir?" Anderson said with a straight face.
"No, you blockhead. I'm trying to understand how long you might have been staring at her chest to miss such an important clue." Harry said, clenching his teeth.
"What clue?" Anderson said, nonplussed.
"Did you, Auror Dungbrain Anderson, ever miss a clue? No, you don't!" Harry said, admiring his own sarcasm, "How could you miss. That. The Heart. Was. In. The. Wrong. Position. Not towards the left lung. But. Towards. The. Right!"
"Awh." The Auror had his face in his hands.
"Get up, man." Harry said dangerously. "You're on probation."
"What?!"
"Yeah. Your only chance of getting through this probation is asking out Healer Abbot."
"What?!"
"Quit imitating a goldfish. You will ask her out. Whether you get accepted or rejected isn't my concern. Enough of this dilly-dallying! Clear this mess up with your mind, and with this cardiac case, or I will make sure that it will be your heart that will be on the wrong side if you fail! Out!" Harry bellowed. It was a wonder how these people managed to get him more worked up than either Dumbledore or Snakeface himself.
As Anderson scrammed out of his office, Harry leaned back into his chair and rubbed his forehead. It seemed he'd not be able to return to Ginny today.
Kingsley had talked of a man who had been in the Auror Department, and had been an excellent Auror, but who had once used an unforgivable on a suspect, and though not sent off to Azkaban, had had his entire reputation shredded by the media and the wizarding world, and now lived in Knockturn Alley in seclusion, cutting himself off from the world. The Minister had said that that man had a knack for solving these kinds of murders, and might point the right directions for Harry, provided Harry managed to convince him to do that.
Since he had no clues at all about the murder and Hermione had been unable to help, Ron even worse, he had to flunk Mrs. Weasley's order to be at the Burrow this evening, and risk the wrath of Ginny for not keeping his word to meet her.
Jobs suck.