Ginny's feet were propped up on her desk, and she was leafing through the Daily Prophet, the Quibbler sitting untouched by her feet. She heard her partner before she saw him, as stealthy as he was. And she'd better, or she wasn't worth the training that had been spent on her.
Draco plopped his arse on the desktop right next to where Ginny had her feet propped up. He was munching on a dough-nut, and seemed to have more in a bag which he offered to her. She shook her head. Her stomach was on edge with the newest article on their latest killing that had just gone down. Ginny was quite sure that both she and Draco were about to be called in for a lecture. A lecture that truly wasn't warranted.
Ginny and Draco had been partners for six months, and they had solved every unsolvable case that had been sent their way. And there had to have been at least ten big ones. Not to mention the fact that Draco and Ginny were known as the dynamic duo.
Ginny had looked at Draco the day they had assigned him to be her partner and said, "Look, I don't care about the past. I care about doing my job damn well. So if you care about the same thing, we will have an easy enough time working together."
And they had. They were a powerhouse team when it came to hunting down fugitives and killers. If anything, Draco's past helped him, and Ginny's brush with Tom gave her a shrewdness that surprised them case would go unsolved if you handed it to them.
No case other than this one, Ginny lamented. It had started with Pansy Parkinson being brutally murdered. Not just murdered. BRUTALLY. Almost every inch of her body was covered in cuts and bruises, as though the killer had taken his time. Some cuts were healed, their Muggle forensics expert (who they kept having to Obliviate) guessed at a month. His best explanation was that she had been restrained and slowly tortured over time.
But Muggle torture was so crazy. Pansy had been a witch. She could have taken on any Muggle who got the drop on her. Even Ginny, who highly disliked the woman, knew that much about her.
The thing that made Ginny's stomach really turn was that Pansy had been raped with a knife. It was all so terrible, and neither her or Draco had ever seen anything like it. It was horrendous and despicable. Ginny didn't see how one human being could do that to another.
Before Ginny could read what the Daily Prophet had to say about this still unsolved murder, Draco had snatched the paper out of her hands and dropped it into the rubbish bin where he always claimed it belonged anyways.
"Why, Weasley, do you feel the need to torture yourself with that filth?" he demanded as he sipped a cup of coffee Ginny hadn't noticed.
"If we," she gestured between the two of them "are going to be yelled at for letting this go three weeks with absolutely no leads or clues, I damn well want to know what the enemy is saying."
Draco chuckled. "The Prophet isn't the enemy, at least not anymore. It just states public opinion, which is that we should have found the killer by now."
Ginny snorted. "If it's so easy, why don't they come do it themselves and save us the time and effort?"
Draco smirked. "There is my feisty Weasley. And they won't because they can't. All they can do is run their mouths. Not even The Chosen One could find anything on this case."
Ginny grunted.
"I'll take that as a 'Why don't they give him a hard time like they do us?' Well, dearest Weasley, The Chosen One does no wrong," Draco explained.
Ginny just glared at Draco. If looks could kill…
"Too soon?" Draco asked.
"The end of the world would still be too soon to mention that my fiance decided to leave me because he is suddenly gay and in love with my big brother Charlie. And for the thousandth time, no Draco, I did NOT see it coming," Ginny said in a frustrated voice.
Draco looked like he wanted to laugh, as he did every time they discussed Harry these days. But like always, out of what Ginny assumed was respect for her, he contained himself. But just barely.
Still, Draco Malfoy made an effort. While the rest of the world assumed Ginny was being homophobic for not just accepting that Harry had cheated on her with her brother, Draco sided with her. While it was tentative, the two had formed a friendship. One which allowed Ginny to go to Draco's flat on holidays for food, because there was no way in hell she could watch Harry look at Charlie with lovey-dovey eyes and not stab him to death with a bloody fork.
Ginny still had to interact with her ex-fiance to a degree. He was head of the Auror Office. So if Ginny and Draco were about to be lectured it would be coming from the last person Ginny wanted to speak with.
"Aren't you rumored to have already moved on?" Draco quipped.
Ginny shrugged. "I'm not sure because you threw my paper away."
Draco handed her a cup of coffee.
"You're so defensive without coffee in you. Did you wake up late?"
Ginny nodded. She had also stayed up late pouring over notes on this case, trying to find something that would help them. But so far there was nothing and she told Draco so.
"Jesus, Weasley. You need sleep. You've been running yourself into the ground. You can't solve this case if you can't think properly. You also can't solve it without your charming and stunning partner; me," Draco informed her.
Ginny rolled her eyes.
"Weasley, you wound me," Draco said seriously, one hand clutching his chest.
"You'll live, Malfoy," Ginny promised.
There was a rap on their cubicle wall, and the two looked to their right to see Harry Freakin' Potter standing there. Ginny turned her eyes to the heaven, wondering what she had done so terrible to warrant this punishment from the Gods.
"Look, Malfoy, Ginny-"
"It's Weasley," Ginny corrected.
Harry plowed on as though he hadn't heard her.
"I know this is a tough case. There are no leads, no witnesses, no Muggle DNA evidence that suggests whether our killer was Muggle or Magical, and the papers are pestering us for answers. Nothing this terrible has happened in awhile. The public is scared out of their minds. Just find me something small I can give them to show that we are making progress on the case," Harry pleaded.
Malfoy arched a brow. "Weasley here just pulled an all-nighter pouring over the file trying to find something, anything, that could help. I spent yesterday in Knockturn Alley hoping to find something for a bag of awfully heavy gold I was too tired to carry. We are trying," he drawled.
Harry sighed. "I know. You two are the best team we got. It's just… we can't give up on this. Not after what was done to her. She deserves better than that," he said stoically.
The mask on Draco's eyes hardened. He became very still and silent, and he exuded a calm that would have made most people's blood run cold with fear.
"You forget yourself, Potter. She was my friend since birth. I would do anything to bring her killer to justice. You can tell that to the reporters," Draco informed him, turning his back on Harry, a clear dismissal.
Harry looked as though he had more he wanted to say, but there was only so much room when it came to Draco and Ginny. To push them or make them leave would be a loss to the Wizarding world, as they were the best team of Aurors the department had ever seen. But sometimes Harry wished he didn't have to walk around on eggshells in front of them.
Of course part of that was Harry's own fault, and he knew that. As he watched Ginny resolutely ignore him and open up the case file, he realized that maybe Malfoy was the only person that could protect her broken heart.
Harry walked away. He had never meant to hurt Ginny, and he knew she was aware of that. But not meaning to hurt someone didn't hurt them any less in the end. In fact it seemed to have hurt her even more. He had been so honest with her when he'd realized he had feelings for men. At first they both thought maybe he was bisexual. But when Charlie had kissed him one drunken night all bets were off.
The rest of the Weasley's accepted it. If not Ginny, why not Charlie? Molly kept saying they made such a lovely couple every time the two of them were together, which was just another dagger in Ginny's heart he knew.
She had stopped coming to family gatherings. Sunday at the Weasley's now had a permanently empty chair. Ginny was rarely seen these days in the presence of anyone other than Malfoy. Something that Charlie had voiced his concern about.
Yes, Charlie wanted Harry to threaten Malfoy. Harry couldn't, he knew that. Ginny would be livid, and Harry had absolutely no right. Even if he did feel like her brother. That was not how she felt about him. And Malfoy wasn't too bad. He had done a lot of good teamed up with Ginny. No, Harry knew it was best to let Ginny take care of herself. She would come around eventually… he hoped. And if not, it was like Ginny had said as she threw his clothes at him; it was the price he paid for love.
A pale man was locked away in a red lighted room, known to most people as a dark room. It was the place one went to develop photographs, and this man had been able to get plenty of shots of his next victim today. But that wasn't why he was developing the film. No, he wanted to see the one photograph he had gotten of Ginny Weasley where she wasn't blurred but perfectly in focus.
He wondered how many more bodies would be discovered before she found out it was him. He wondered if Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter would complicate things. He wondered if her blood was as red as her hair, and if she'd moan more prettily for him than the ugly Parkinson cow had done.
Funny, how one Pureblood witch could be missing for a whole month and no one even seemed to notice her disappearance. Nor did they really care. Sure, people were horrified by the horror of what he had done, but it was like an art work. Parkinson's body would forever be remembered as a temple to his hatred.
He knew one thing. No matter how many women he cut, no matter how many people he killed, the thrill of it would never even compare to simply being in Ginny Weasley's presence and having her not know he was the murderer.