A/N: Hi everyone, sorry for the long wait, it's been ages since I've updated this story. The truth is after this first chapter, I had no idea how I would proceed with the story, and there was no spark of life that came to me like when I started initially. I reread my work, and decided that I didn't like how I built the plot line for Hermione to meet Draco. That's why I rewrote the whole second half, and made some revisions to the first half. I hope you enjoy the story, and I promise that the second chapter will be up soon!

XXX, VegaOne

I.

Hermione splashed her face with cold water. The droplets snaked down her neck and began to soak her shirt, though at this point she was beyond caring. The slew of homicide cases she had been working on over the past month had the consistency of a serial killer - the same modus operandi in every case - despite none of the victims seeming to have any connection. To Muggle authorities, it was apparent that there was a psychopath on the loose; a bloodthirsty criminal, who, with no rhyme or reason, spilled the blood of unlucky individuals as a sick, twisted form of catharsis. However, she couldn't help but notice each incident's proximity to uncanny locations that were portals to another world…

Hermione firmly shook her head. It had been a long time since she'd left that world, it was meant to be buried deep in her past. She glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked like hell. There were dark shadows cast beneath her eyes, and her slipping elastic clearly wasn't doing its job. She sighed and tugged the supple black ringlet from her tangled coffee tresses, and as she attempted to wrestle it back into a ponytail, the elastic suddenly decided to abort mission and snapped. She brought it eye-level, growling at its limp-noodle transformation.

She tossed the cursed thing into the wastebasket, and grabbed several sheets of the agency's sandpapery towels to dry her face. This was ridiculous. She had just bought a superpack of 32 drugstore elastics, only for their supplies to be expended in the span of a week. If there was one thing Hermione despised, it was when the unruly mop of keratin fibers atop her head got in the way while working.

With a resigned sigh, she fingered a couple of strands into some semblance of decency before walking back to her office. She'd have to buy more. Just as she was rifling the desk drawers for her keys to head to the drugstore, a knock sounded at her door.

"Come in," she said.

In walked Inspector Adam Chalk, from the London Homicide Division. With pale green eyes and dark brown hair, his colorings were just off from a certain old friend. Maybe that was why she had come to trust him so much over the past month working together.

"Here's the latest," he said somberly, handing her a manilla folder, "Early this morning, Near Water Lane."

Hermione paused, looking at Chalk meaningfully, "That's awfully near Leadenhall Market."

"Yes," he replied, "It is quite unsettling that the killer could evade detection when in such close proximity to the masses. Whoever they are, they must be a highly skilled assassin." Hermione nodded in agreement, but her mind had wandered toward the fact that Leadenhall also housed a different sort of market. Hair forgotten, she scanned the files intently.

"You look like you're considering a visit," Chalk inquired in surprise. Hermione always rationalized cases from her desk, having the virtuosity to pick out small details on paper, which often led to case-closing deductions. In the event that she would go to a crime scene, it meant that the information given was incomplete.

Chalk had noticed, however, that despite the lack of progress in the recent murders, Hermione seemed reluctant to investigate.

His suspicions were confirmed when a look of apprehension briefly flashed across the brown-haired woman's face, and she quickly shook her head. "I have all the information I need here."

Chalk looked as though he were about to say something, but decided against it and simply nodded his head. "I'll take my leave now," he said, starting towards the door, "you should get some rest, Granger. You look like hell."

Hermione nodded with a slight smile, bemused by his frankness. The door clicked shut, and her smile fell as she returned her attention to the case file. She buried her hands in her face, then made a decision.

From the coat rack adjacent to the door, she strapped her gun holster around her waist, and carelessly draped her coat over her shoulders. Just as she was about to step out the office, she paused. There, in a charmed hidden compartment of her desk, was her 10¾", vine wood, dragon heartstring wand. She hadn't touched the thing in years, and internally she struggled with herself on whether she should take it.

In the end, apprehension of her past ultimately won out, and she turned her heel and took brusque steps to her worn blue Beetle. She had the means to replace it, but something about it, despite its horrible gas mileage and general unwillingness to start, gave Hermione a warm sense of comfort and nostalgia.

After several turns of the ignition key, the car grumbled to life, and so began Hermione's slow journey towards her destination, stopping a few more seconds than necessary at every stop sign. She knew she was stalling, but despite her work ethic, couldn't quite bring herself to remedy it. What was a few more minutes in a month-long case?

When she arrived at the scene, she didn't bother to kill the engine. This would be quick enough, or at least she hoped. Before she could gather her wits and exit the car, a robed figure approached the scene. Hermione immediately recognized the robes as Ministry attire, and she narrowed her eyes. Even without his dress, wizards always had this inexplicable pull about them. Being formerly part of that world, she was all too aware of it.

Muggles paid no heed to him, likely because he had cast a Disillusionment charm- albeit weak since it took little to manipulate Muggle perception. Once he reached the yellow tape that sectioned off the crime scene, he raised his wand, and Hermione watched as his lips moved to form a spell. Abruptly, the officers surrounding the scene departed in their cars, the area left vacant.

He stepped under the tape, and performed a few more spells. Not two minutes later, he left as soon as he came, and Hermione released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. It was all she could do to keep herself from speeding away. That had been close. Too close. It was exactly what she had feared, coming to this place. To her, the wizarding world was obscured in a shroud of darkness, and should she come near, it would swallow her whole.

Shaking off her thoughts, a sense of propriety took over. Hermione had failed to take to necessary steps for this case because of her fears, and it had potentially cost the lives of innocents. The sooner she could solve this case, the faster she could once again, distance herself.

So she resolutely made her way to the same place the wizard just left. She steeled her nerves, and made her way under the cautionary tape. From there she was all business, and took all the procedural cautions, starting with the snap of rubber gloves against her wrist. She carefully observed the white tape that outlined where the body had been.

The file indicated that the victim had been stabbed in three select places-the jugular, between the ribs just shy of the heart, and the sternum-with puncture wounds that indicated a long, thin needle, somewhat reminiscent of a Japanese senbon. The same as every other killing this past month.

So far, there didn't seem to be any evidence of magic, until a silvery glint caught her peripherals. Hermione glanced up at the wall adjacent, and frowned when she noticed a black smudge that had the chromatic sheen of crude oil. She pulled out a magnifying glass, and her suspicions were confirmed when she observed how it shifted with small, swirling crystals, as if alive. Thestral Blood.

Her heart began pounding in her ears, when she noticed the way the smudge was shaped as if rubbed off of one's fingertip. From her breast pocket she removed small black journal and began to furiously scribble down observations. She returned to the case file tucked in her arm, and frowned when not a single picture offered any view of the victim's palms and fingers. Wrapped up in her thoughts, Hermione startled when a small 'pop' resonated between the walls, like the sound of a cork being pulled of a champagne bottle.

It was a familiar sound, universally heard during Apparition. Hermione whirled around, wide-eyed as she met the gaze of the same wizard that had came before. Now that she was closer, she observed that he was young, likely recently graduated from wizarding school. He held a certain stance that indicated inexperience, as if he were trying to prove himself.

Evidently prepared to Obliviate an unsuspecting Muggle who just happened to witness his unusual entrance, Hermione shouted the first thing that came to mind:

"Avada Kedavra!"

Hermione awoke bound to chair with enchanted ropes. As her vision cleared, she noted that her gun holster and all other personal effects had been confiscated, and her surroundings were much like that of a Muggle interrogation room.

However, instead of a one-way mirror that allowed investigators to observe from the outside, there was a floating glass orb that she suspected served a similar purpose. There was also a lack of any entrance or exit, though she supposed that one could enter with a spell of some sort.

It was impossible to tell how long she had been there, enclosed in the stone four walls with harsh, fluorescent lighting. As the minutes ticked by, the brown-haired woman grew irritated when no one came to question her, or at least offer explanation as to what would be done with her. She grimaced as she recounted how she had ended up here in the first place.

Hermione refused to acknowledge the psychological implications that came with the fact that the first spell she had thought of was the killing curse. It seemed to have done the trick though, the young ministry wizard was frozen in place, eyes wide with fear. He quickly recovered from his shock, however, and his expression soon morphed into one of mistrust.

"Who are you?" he demanded, jabbing his wand at her threateningly, "a dark witch? A Tom Riddle sympathizer perhaps?" Hermione thanked whatever higher power out there for small blessings, the wizard had yet to recognize her.

She slowly raised her hands in the air to show she was unarmed, mind racing to formulate a plan that might alleviate the situation. Her mind drew a blank- all possible courses of action involved her wand. With each passing minute she regretted her decision to leave it behind more and more. Or to ever come here in the first place. She'd left her car running, and if only she could create a distraction and escape... But it would be no use. Hermione would be no match against the wizard without a wand, and making a run for it would only worsen the situation.
"I'm neither," she finally said, deciding to answer truthfully.

The young wizard wasn't convinced. "Yeah, well Unforgivables seem to come quite naturally to you. "
Hermione winced. "I can promise that I mean you no harm. I'm without a wand, and I'm here on the authority of the London Police Department. "

"That's a Muggle association," he said, narrowing his eyes. "Just who are you?"

"Alicia Spinnet," Hermione rushed out, her former Gryffindor house mate suddenly coming to mind. She had rarely spoken to the dark-haired girl, and as far as she knew, she hadn't held much significance during the war for her name to be recognized. Her own name would have have led to further complications, and Hermione would be damned if she were so easily dragged back into the world she had worked so hard to evade. "Like I said, I'm working with the London PD. They hired me as a private investigator after they got in a rut about the murders that have been happening for the past month and a half."

This information was in fact true. She had somewhat gained notoriety in the Muggle world for being London's modern day Sherlock Holmes. However, unlike her novel counterpart, she had been hired by the government as opposed to individual detectives from the police force, and her work was given credit for in the papers.

To gain some credibility, she gestured toward the case files abandoned on the floor. The wizard slowly circled around her to reach the folder, and slowly descended to collect them, never allowing gaze nor wand point to leave her.
He quickly glanced at the files and Hermione noted how his brows furrowed as he skimmed over certain pieces of information. Whether it was the large, bold-faced 'CLASSIFIED' stamped over the pages, or the London PD seal officiating the documents, the wizard at last seemed to acknowledge that there was truth in her claims.

His skeptical demeanor still hadn't changed, however, although his emotions were easy to read. The young wizard was perplexed. He frowned, lip twitching in a nervous tick.

"I'm going to have to take you to the Ministry," he said, although uncertainty seeped into his tone, unsure of what to do.

"You can't," Hermione said, trying to remain calm, "I'm... I'm a Muggle you see."

The ministry wizard's frown deepened. "Well, you seem to know quite a bit about magic," he said, "It seems unlikely that a Muggle would be so knowledgeable about the Wizarding world."

"How do you know that perhaps I have a sibling who is a Muggle born witch?" Hermione countered, thinking of Petunia Dursley's awful treatment towards Harry in part due to the fact that her sister had magical abilities, which she lacked, "I may have learned of magic from them."

"I suppose that could be a possibility," said the wizard, eyebrows scrunched, "but that doesn't change the fact that you are invading on a crime scene of Ministry jurisdiction."

"Need I remind you that I have the clearance to investigate as well?"

"Yes, well, under normal circumstances that's true, but considering the fact that I took precautions to clear the area from Muggle interference means that you shouldn't be here at all," he said, "the usual protocol would be to erase your memory if you are indeed, a Muggle."

Hermione had to refrain from uttering a colorful string of expletives, she was now back to square one.
"Wouldn't that be unnecessary, considering the fact that I already have prior knowledge of the Wizarding World?"

"That doesn't change the fact that you have been exposed to sensitive Ministry information. We would still have to obliviate you, witch or not."

Hermione chewed her lip in thought, "What if I could aid you in your investigation? It seems that the Ministry has been interested in the same homicides as the London PD, and I've discovered some clues that may be valuable to the investigation."

Of course, the Ministry may already be aware of what she had uncovered. She was bluffing, stalling for time so she could think of a plan to escape. If she were obliviated, it might save her the risk of reentering the Wizarding world. But that would mean that she would lose any leads that could help resolve the homicides once and for all, and Hermione intended on saving as many lives as possible.

The young wizard looked torn, clearly lacking the experience for handling this situation. Hermione decided to give him a push.

"I can tell you that the man murdered was a squib, and that the murderer was precisely 179 centimeters tall."
The wizard's eyes widened in shock, "How could you possibly know that? You must be bluffing! "

The corner of Hermione's lips quirked into a slight smile. "I'm not bluffing," she said, "The logic is quite simple, you see. The man has floo powder near the fireplace, and yet there is a dishwasher in his kitchen. Now, if one has magical ties as indicated by the floo powder, why would they invest in a Muggle device to clean dishes when they could easily perform a quick Scourgifying spell? The simplest answer is that they are a squib. They may not be able to perform spells, but their magical heritage still allows them to indulge in some Wizarding means.

"As for the height, let's just leave that as a lucky guess for now and I'll divulge some of my findings once I gather more evidence." Hermione already had an explanation for that as well, but for the meantime, the wizard looked a bit gobsmacked and seemed to need no further convincing.

"I suppose that's true enough," he said, rubbing the back of his neck as he let slip a sheepish grin at how obvious and simple the deduction had seemed once Hermione had revealed her train of thought. His face now held something akin to reverence and awe. It was perhaps the reason why he made no move to secure her when he went to contact his superior via Floo.

Hermione couldn't make out the face in the fire, since it was distorted and partially obscured by the ministry wizard's back. She frowned, something about that voice seems oddly familiar.

Hermione found that she quite liked the young wizard, if simply for his inexperience and boyish charm. That still didn't change the fact that she had no desire to go to the Ministry. So she took this opportunity to inch toward the entrance of the building, slowly turning the doorknob.

However the sound of the rusted door hinges was unavoidable, and a loud screech pierced through the air. The wizard turned and let out a cry, scrambling for his wand from his waistband.

Abandoning all efforts to be discreet, Hermione flung open the door as it reverberated against the wall with a harsh bang. She bolted across the street to her awaiting beetle, nearly reaching the door handle before she felt a jinx hit the small of her back and everything went dark.

Hermione's attention was brought back to the present when a wooden door suddenly materialized on the far corner of the right wall. A click resounded through the small room, and it swung open. The first thing Hermione noticed was the sleek black pair of Oxfords belonging to a long legged individual dressed in opulent robes. Her eyes trailed up the figure, and her stomach dropped.

Honey brown met steely grey as her gaze locked onto a pale man with sharp, aristocratic features and platinum blond hair.

"Draco Malfoy."

"Hermione Granger."