Like a Kneazle With a Bone

The crater was dark and seemingly endless. A hooded figure peered down into the murky depths of moist earth, cloak held tight around a slim frame, all bone and no brawn.

The moon was high in the sky and full: the perfect conditions for werewolves. As if on cue, a wolf howled into the night, its cry long and mournful.

But the figure hadn't come all this way for werewolves.

-----

"Zombies."

The suspect shook his blonde head in the affirmative, and Harry Potter's lips puckered like he'd just sucked on a lemon drop without the candied coating.

"Right. You expect me to believe that zombies did this?" He indicated the scene before him with the tip of his wand, hardened gaze sweeping over the river of scarlet to glare back at the man in front of him. Harry used the term 'man' liberally, for he was certain the person who'd called him here today had never and would never be a man; in the true sense of the word, anyway.

Draco Malfoy glared right back at him, not giving an inch.

"That's what I said."

Harry nodded. He tried to make the gesture as condescending as he could. His weathered hands brushed over his shiny new Auror's robes, and he made sure to catch his Auror's badge in the light, so Malfoy could better appreciate the brilliant sheen of gold around the name 'Potter.' His wand hand twitched. He was just itching to fire out a curse, to send the Slytherin prince sprawling face-first into the mess of his own doing.

Malfoy scoffed but didn't say anything. It was a small sense of accomplishment; Harry grinned.

The call had come in about 3AM. Harry was busy dreaming about a group of Hufflepuffs beating Voldemort down with a fuchsia feather boa when Kingsley Shacklebolt's head had appeared in his fireplace, snapping him back to reality with the sharp crackle of an ember in the grate.

He had to admit he hadn't really been listening to what Kinsley had to tell him at the time. All Harry recalled hearing were the words 'Malfoy' and 'murdered' in the same sentence, and he knew, just like he'd known back in sixth year at Hogwarts, that the pureblood was behind whatever horrors he would find at number 48 Kensington Terrace.

Harry Potter, after all, was rarely wrong.

"It's not what it looks like, Potter," Malfoy tried to argue, exasperated.

Harry bristled. If anyone was going to feel infuriated, it should be him: Saviour of the Wizarding World, and here he was, cleaning up a Malfoy's mess. Again.

"Sure it is, Malfoy," Harry chortled. "You" – and he scrunched up his nose as he bent closer to the nearest body – "What… Cut open their heads with some sort of… crude scalpel and… Gnawed on their brains some?"

He bit back a scathing laugh. "Couldn't wait to get them in a frying pan, huh, Malfoy?"

The latter turned almost green.

"That's not how it went at all," Malfoy said, grimacing.

Harry decided to indulge his former classmate. The sun was just peaking up over a dense cover of low-lying storm clouds, too afraid to drop their bundle of icy water while the Chosen One was present. The streak of light that broke through the shadowed barrier was milky and pretty, a kiss of pale amber that was strong enough to brighten the room, illuminating the offending pool that wafted sourness on the gentle breeze trickling through the open window.

"So, zombies?" he said, and raised an eyebrow.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "What's the point? You don't believe me."

"Well, you have to admit," Harry replied, "it's a little far-fetched, even for you."

"What do you mean, 'even for me'?"

"You always were a bit of a drama queen, Malfoy," Harry commented lightly.

Malfoy's sickly hue became a rich shade of puce. He spat his next words out, literally; a line of spittle clung to the side of his mouth once he'd finished.

"I'm telling you, Potter, zombies broke into my home, pulled my friends from their beds and ripped the skin from the tops of their skulls with their bare hands, and – stop laughing, Potter!"

Harry couldn't help it. The nerve of Malfoy, thinking he could fool the youngest Auror recruit in over a hundred years with such a cock and bull story – it was positively laughable! So he did laugh: bent over backwards doing so, in fact, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes.

Zombies. Really. And pigs could fly.

"U-huh. And then the tooth fairy flew in through the window to barter for their teeth. You're the only one not touched by this so-called zombie – honestly, what do you expect me to believe?"

"This is serious, Potter!" Malfoy cried.

Harry leveled him with a glare. "You're right there."

He saw the first inkling of fear flicker across the Malfoy heir's features. The blonde licked his lips, nervous, the skin so dry that Harry could have sworn he heard them split as the other man smacked them together.

"If you saw what they could do…"

"Please!" Harry rolled his eyes, sticking his chest out so his Auror's badge glowed like a beacon in the soiled room. "Vanquisher of the Dark Lord here, remember?"

Malfoy found his nerve again. His cheeks coloured a more natural hue, and his pointed chin jutted out defiantly.

"So take me in then, oh Chosen One. I dare you."

Harry had Malfoy safely locked away in the filthiest of the Ministry's holding cells within the hour, paperwork filed and all. He doubted anyone in the Auror corps could be even half as efficient, or as dedicated to the job.

Malfoy, meanwhile, was too busy picking at a hangnail to notice.

-----

That night, Harry dreamed of brain-devouring monsters, their skin as green as a Slytherin, limp hands as cold as death that could snap a neck in two at the mere touch.

Bloody Malfoy.

It was the fourth body that week, and Harry, to be perfectly honest, was growing mighty tired of the monotonous nature of the crime: brainless carcass resting in a pool of its own blood.

So ho hum. So tedious.

He wanted a challenge; craved the thrill of the chase, the kind he got back when he was still technically a student at Hogwarts, before he signed the scrolls that made him a Ministry man, the youngest in over a century to join the Auror ranks.

Although Harry didn't want to admit it, Malfoy had been right. This was serious: seriously boring!

Harry huffed as Auror Ferguson went over the latest victim's injuries, one mind-numbing detail at a time.

"…and the head was torn open as if by human hands and the brain eaten straight from the skull cavity, blah, blah, blah," Harry added, tone laced with sarcasm.

Auror Ferguson blinked. He was twice Harry's age, and not very bright. In a way, the man reminded him of Crabbe or Goyle: and thinking of Slytherin's favourite goons made him, in turn, think about Malfoy.

Harry scowled.

When Ferguson didn't respond, other than to blink slowly twice more, Harry sighed and folded his arms over his chest, wand poking out ominously, covering the pretty sparkle of his nametag.

"So, what's your theory, then?" he posed.

"Zombies."

Harry just stood there. Ferguson blinked.

"Zombies?" he repeated, disbelieving.

"Aye. Zombies."

The Boy Who Lived threw his hands in the air.

"Well, that's just flippin' great!"

-----

Beware: Zombies, the sign read.

It was the same sign that had been plastered at five-meter intervals on every building in greater wizarding London, and here it was, on plain view in the centre of the notice board of 'The Leaky Cauldron.'

Harry grunted into his schooner of firewhisky. Some people would believe anything the press threw at them; like a kneazle with a bone, they were.

A husky voice sounded near his ear, making him jump on his barstool.

"Constant vigilance, Potter, or the zombies'll get you," the voice tsked.

"Malfoy," Harry intoned, without enthusiasm.

"Don't sound so excited to see me, Potter, or you'll have me swooning," Malfoy joked.

It occurred to Harry how ironic his life had become, for he was sitting here in full view of the public joking about zombies, and with Draco Malfoy of all people.

He needed another drink.

Harry downed the glass he'd been cradling for the better part of a half hour and slammed it upside down on the bar. He slapped his hand against the wooden surface; two sharp smacks to inform the barkeep that he was more than ready for his next drink.

"Make it a double, mate," he slurred.

"And here I thought our Boy Saviour had more class than that," Malfoy smirked.

"Shut it, Malfoy, or I'll drag you out to the dumpsters and de-brain you myself!"

The blonde paled significantly, but his expression turned smug. "Is that a promise?" he asked, batting his eyelashes in an attempt to appear nonchalant. Harry wasn't fooled by the act.

"Who let you out?" he demanded.

Malfoy squinted like he was trying to remember some important slice of information. After a few moments of pointed consideration, he shrugged delicately, boney shoulders barely rising.

"Dingus-someone," he said casually. "Or maybe it was your boy Weasel, the one with the freckles on his–"

Harry cut him off with an abrasive hand. "That's awfully close to slander, Malfoy," he reminded him, a warning evident in his tone.

The other man nodded brusquely; but instead of taking off like Harry had non-too-kindly suggested, the former green-skin proceeded to plant his skinny behind on the stool next to Harry's.

He was about to flip his one-time schoolmate the bird and tell him to sod off when he recalled something of Malfoy's arrest: the sickly hue to the blonde's skin, the way his stomach had curdled at the sight of his decapitated housemates, while Harry had simply scoffed at the bloodied mess at his feet.

"So, zombies," Harry commented, taking a sip from the fresh glass of firewhisky the barkeep placed in his hands.

Malfoy's fingers clenched over the rim of the bar. "I told you," he snarled, though there wasn't the usual amount of venom present in his words.

This somehow left Harry feeling a might triumphant. The spawn of Lucius Malfoy was already looking at him when Harry turned to snap out a jibe of his own.

"Scared, Potter?"

Harry's lips curved up in a pleasing smirk. Finally, there was a break in the monotony. And he owed it all to Malfoy and his flippin' zombies. He lifted his glass in a salute.

"You wish."

-----

The gravestone was an elegant one, all polished marble and embossed in pure gold.

Here lies Lucius Malfoy
Beloved father and husband.

The wolf's howl had died long ago, not lost on the wind as it should be, but cut off, silenced with a brutal grinding of bones and wet snap as ligaments were torn in two. If the cloaked figure strained his ears, he could almost hear the telltale slurp-crunch as flesh and brain matter were devoured somewhere in the depths of the little alcove of trees on the outskirts of the cemetery.

The ground at the man's feet was wide open, devoid of the casket and the body that had been buried there three months ago to the day.

A strong wind whipped through the leaves of the trees, scattering the strange noises so the sound became magnified, seeming to be all around the solitary figure standing by the open grave. The force of the breeze pushed down the dark hood of the cloak, and a head of electric white caught in the dim moonlight.

The pale man shivered, pulled the heavy fabric more tightly around his lithe frame, and then Draco Malfoy slunk off into the night.