Chapter Two: A Series of Bad Ideas


"I can't find anything in here," Harry complained as he made his way up the stairs. "What is it? Did you find the dead guy's secret bondage room or something?"

"Not quite," Draco said sympathetically. "But there's a dead body."

Harry rushed past Draco and into the bedroom, elbowing him out of the way as he did.

"Fuck," Harry swore and took a look around the room. "Nothing else seems weird, though. I mean, aside from this entire house."

Draco nodded in silent agreement. "Look at his face, though. Ugh." The elderly man's face was frozen in an expression of utter horror. His glassy dead eyes were wide and his mouth was open in a silent scream. His hands were held out in front of him in a gesture of self-defense, and the fingers were curled in a claw-like state. It made Draco's stomach turn and the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Whatever killed the others wasn't what killed him. "And the smell in here, like the air after a thunderstorm. This was the killing curse."

"Let's spread out and have a look around up here, maybe there's a clue as to who did this," Harry ordered.

Draco didn't hesitate and was already casting a series of wandless charms to analyze the crime scene. One of his charms illuminated an invisible set of foot prints that lead to the open window.

"The killer left through the window," Draco noted. Weird. Why would a wizard climb out a window when they could just disapparate? He cast another charm to see if anything had been moved lately, a glowing light appeared in an empty spot on the large bookshelf that was against the far wall. As he approached the light, he noticed that it took the form of a small statue – just like the Kirin he'd noticed in the previous house. "What...?" He mumbled and searched the shelf that was full of nothing but old muggle books, and a pile of dusty business cards from antique shops. Draco took a quick look through them, and put them back.

"There's nothing," Harry said, appearing back in the door way.

"We need to go back to the other house," Draco said and showed Harry the glowing apparition of the Kirin statue that had been moved. "There was a sculpture that looked just like this there on her mantle."

"So you were paying attention," Harry quipped.

"Of course I was. The conversation wasn't important; I was looking for clues," Draco growled, and Harry grabbed his arm, apparating them both back to the previous house. Draco stumbled and nearly fell on his arse as he gasped for breath.

"Warn me next time you feel the need to do that, Potter," He snapped and shoved Harry out of the way to knock on the door. There was no reply. Harry and Draco shared a pained glance before Draco unlocked the door. Draco grabbed the back of Harry's shirt as he made to just barge into the house. "Be quiet, you fucking moron! We were here two hours ago; the person attacking these muggles could still be inside," He whispered, and Harry jerked out of his grip.

"Which is why we need to hurry!" He snarled and ran into the house, reaching for his wand.

"Fuck's sake!" Draco cried in exasperation and followed with his wand drawn. How was Potter even still alive? No wonder the ministry didn't trust him with anything dangerous.

A quick search of the house revealed that it was empty. ...Aside from the dead body of the widow. She was laying face-down in a pool of her own blood on the living room carpet, clutching a frying pan in her limp hand. At least it looked like she'd tried to put up a fight, not that it was much use. Draco crouched beside her and tried to see if anything was out of place, aside from the Kirin statue that was missing from the mantle. So, what then? Did the attacker give it to the victims, and then come back for it and kill whoever was in his way? If so, why? None of it made a lick of sense to Draco. He searched the woman's pockets while Harry tried to scour the rest of the house in a pitiful attempt to hide how distraught he was. Draco, however, grounded himself by focusing on the task at hand. The front door was locked, so the attacker had probably apparated – which meant he knew exactly where he was going. Did he have some sort of history with these muggles? That seemed unlikely. In the woman's pocket he found a small receipt book, which he leafed through while Harry dug through the drawer of a side table behind him. One of the ugly poodle pictures fell on the ground face up next to Draco. He made a face at it, and kicked it away. The receipt book was full of records for an antique shop, more accurately the expenses of running it. Draco shoved it back into the woman's jacket and went upstairs.

The first room he meandered into was a homely little office of sorts. There he found more receipts and a ledger for the antique shop. It was another part of the puzzle, at least. There wasn't much to find about the man who had died in the fire, but these two at least had an obvious connection. The owners of the mansion were obviously antique collectors, possibly dealers. This man had owned his own shop. Draco flipped open the sales ledger and found what he was looking for. Dated for a week prior was an entry for the purchase of several items from another shop, including a 'Chinese statue' among other odds and ends. His luck held out as he turned the page and found a business card for the other shop, Hidden Treasures, tucked into the ledger. He pocketed it and went to look for Potter. He found Harry rifling through a pile of mail on the kitchen table.

"This is where we need to go," Draco said showing him the business card. "There's a receipt for a 'Chinese statue' in the ledger upstairs, and this same card was on the bedside table in the mansion. That must be where they bought the Kirin statue from."

"What's a Kirin?" Harry asked, looking at the business card.

"Well, they're sort of like a unicorn with scales and they're supposed to bring good luck. How do you not know that? Even muggle mythology talks about them," Draco explained, wondering how Potter had passed history of magic.

"Not very lucky for these poor sods, though," Harry observed astutely.

"No, I'd say not," Draco agreed. "Shall we check out this shop, fearless leader?"

He disapparated on the spot, leaving Harry behind. He found himself standing on the sidewalk in front of a small pawn shop with hand written signs that seemed about as legit as Rita Skeeter's rèsumè. The place looked like someone had emptied the contents of the mansion they had visited, and simply dumped it all in the shady little shop. Draco did not relish the idea of actually having to go in there.

Harry appeared a few seconds later. "You know, part of working a case with a partner is communication," He snapped irritably. "And not just vanishing into thin air whenever you feel like it."

"Shut it, Potter. We need results, or there's going to be more dead bodies and it'll be our fault for not solving this. Maybe you haven't got anything to prove, idiot who lived, but I do!" Draco snarled. "Wait here, I'll talk to the guy in the shop, just in case he recognizes you."

"He's probably a muggle; why would he recognize me?" Harry argued.

"We don't know that." Draco explained, almost at the end of his patience. "If he's selling cursed objects, or using it to trace the buyers so he can take it back, he might not be a muggle. Besides, one of us should stay here just in case the killer apparates. Do you have any muggle money so I can try to buy the stupid thing if he has it?"

Harry gave him a glare that could have withered the whomping willow. "No," He said after a few moments. "And I don't trust my transfiguration enough to try to make something passable. Try offering him a galleon. They're real gold and this place looks shady enough to take it for barter."

"If this doesn't work, I am going to literally kill something," Draco muttered under his breath and entered the shop. Navigating the place was tricky at best. Seemingly useless muggle junk was stacked in piles that looked like they would topple over if he breathed on them. It was really was just junk. A broken, one-eyed porcelain doll sat on a shelf, and beside it was everything from a rusty coffee tin to some kind of mechanical contraption that was most likely not in working order. Did muggles really buy this crap? Draco wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he imagined that this was probably what Arthur Weasley's wet dreams looked like. He approached the shop keeper, a large balding man that smelled of too much cologne, and cleared his throat loudly.

"Can I help you?" The man asked warily.

"Perhaps," Draco said smoothly. "I am looking for something that was stolen from my home, and I was wondering if you would be able to tell me if it had turned up here at all."

The man studied him with his beady dark eyes for a moment before replying. "If you're on about stolen property, you can bugger right off and get the bobbies; I'm not telling you shit."

"I don't see the point in involving the bobbies if you don't have my item," Draco told him, wondering what the hell a bobby was. "That would be a waste of your time, and mine."

"Fine," The shop keeper replied sourly. "What are you looking for?

"A small statue of the Chinese Kirin, solid brass, about as tall as that absolutely horrifying doll there," Draco told him, pointing at the one-eyed doll that he was relatively sure would make an appearance in his next nightmare – right along with Potter's pants that were starting to chafe his tender bits.

The color drained from the man's face as Draco spoke. "You want that thing? Take it! Take it and get out of my shop! That fucking thing is cursed! I don't know how it keeps coming back here, but the last couple of blokes that bought it went barmy and killed themselves!" He shouted, gesturing wildly for Draco to take a large, plain black lacquered box that was sitting on top of a stack of mildewed old books. Draco heaved a sigh and carefully lifted it, as it was much heavier than he thought it would be. He flipped the lid open to make sure it was indeed the Kirin, and there it sat looking innocent as could be on a bed of red velvet. Draco left without so much as even thanking the seedy pawn broker. The way Potter glared daggers at him made it worthwhile, at least. There was still something normal in his life if he was managing to piss Potter off.

"So, he took the galleons?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Nope. He begged me to take it then told me to get out," Draco drawled. "Shall we head back to the Ministry to get a proper look at this bloody thing?"


Draco was a lot less cranky back in Harry's office. He was in his own clothes, and had a cursed artifact to analyze, which happened to be his specialty. He was vaguely aware of Potter watching him like a hawk as he very carefully used a levitating charm to lift the Kirin from its lacquered box. Draco had to actually swat Harry's hands away, as he just thoughtlessly reached the statue. Rule one to dealing with magical items, Draco knew, was to never touch them unless they were first deemed not to be a threat. Granted, he couldn't really hold it against Potter for being an idiot. Unlike everyone else who wanted to be an Auror, he had been allowed to bypass all the formal training – perks of killing the Dark Lord, apparently. He almost pitied him. Draco reigned in his thoughts on the task at hand. All the standard charms for curse detection turned up nothing. After throwing everything he knew at it, Draco was forced to accept that it was just a worthless hunk of brass. There wasn't the faintest hint of magic on it, aside from very weak residual traces of a tracking charm that had since been removed.

"It's clean," Draco said in disappointment. "There was a tracking charm on it at some point, but nothing else."

"What type of tracking charm?" Harry asked, picking up the Kirin to look at the bottom of it – which was bare aside from a small label that said 'made in China'.

"Standard, nothing special," Draco explained in a bored tone. "The caster would be able to locate the statue within a certain area, probably not much further than a few kilometers – if that. It was mediocre spell work at best, and isn't working anymore."

Draco hated to admit it, but aside from the verbal sparring and Potter's lack of caution, they actually worked relatively well together – almost instinctively. Hoping to find something of use, Draco examined the box more closely and checked it for magical signatures as well. The box was also clean, other than smelling of sage incense. There was a small parchment scroll tied with a bit of red ribbon that had apparently been tucked underneath the Kirin. Curiously, Draco untied the ribbon and read the scroll. It was instructions for some sort of ridiculous ritual to bring luck. He rolled his eyes and tossed the ribbon over his shoulder to Princess who gleefully snatched it, and pranced behind the couch with it hanging from her mouth. Harry read it as well, reacting in a similar manner.

"Pointless muggle nonsense," Draco whinged.

"Pretty much," Harry agreed. "Wanna try it, you know, for shits and giggles?"

"It's a waste of good potion ingredients," Draco pointed out, snatching the scroll back. "But we do have all of them in the storage cabinet down the hall. I guess we might as well. Maybe it has something to do with the deaths, and does serve a purpose. Worst case scenario, nothing will happen. ...Or someone will find out, and take the piss out of us about it for the rest of our lives, because this is that stupid."

"Right, I'll get the stuff. Clear a spot on the desk," Harry said, and vanished into the hall.

Draco tried not to have a breakdown. He could only imagine his father's reaction if he'd seen him now, never mind how he would have felt about him becoming an Auror. Maybe he should send an owl to Azkaban. What would he say? 'Hello father, I've become everything you warned me not to, and now my entire future depends on being Potter's little bitch' – Something like that, Draco supposed. Lucius didn't matter, not really. Draco still felt like his opinion held some weight, even though he knew full well that that his father was a selfish twat, who asked too much of others and not enough of himself. He only wished he'd realized it sooner. He really hoped Potter would just come back and dismiss him for the night, because it was getting late and Draco had tolerated enough of his shit for one day.

Swishing his wand a little too violently, he levitated the majority of the paperwork cluttering the desk onto the couch. Princess hissed at him in protest as a stack of scrolls landed on her head and scattered all over the floor. She darted under the desk, and growled at him as he worked. Draco flicked his wand at the scrolls he'd dropped, adding them to the pile on the couch. He wondered if he should buy a new wand, if anyone would even sell him one. It was never quite right after Potter returned it. Even the simplest spells sometimes failed, though his last instructor in the Auror training program had blamed him. Hawthorn, apparently, is temperamental and the fault lies with him alone for not being able to master it. That was what they told him, anyway. Draco wasn't sure what to blame, but it was about as useful as that broken piece of refuse Weasley had used in the second year at Hogwarts, and here he was supposed to be a bloody Auror. Of course, he didn't dare tell Potter he could barely cast a summoning charm. If nothing else, he'd gotten very good at wandless magic, and making it look like it wasn't wandless to keep others from asking questions.

"Can't anything be easy?" Draco muttered to himself and plopped the Kirin statue down on the center of the desk, leaving the box open on the couch. Princess dove inside of it and curled up, making sure to watch him with a venomous stare. "You're a miserable little cunt, you know that?" He said to her and flopped gracelessly into Harry's armchair. She mewled in reply, and turned around so that her arse was facing him instead. He barely managed to fight down the urge to hex her, or turn her fur orange, but only because he knew there was a good chance of it backfiring on him. "I'm having a pissing match with a fucking kneasle," Draco lamented and dropped his head down onto the desk.

"I do that all the time, she's about as agreeable as you are. But sometimes she snuggles with me, so I guess I don't hate her." Draco ignored Harry as he shut the door behind him and deposited the spell ingredients on the desk. "So, it says to draw a pentacle in chalk on the surface first, then sit the Kirin in the middle of it. After that we make a mixture with a consecrated oil base and pour it over the statue."

"What type of oil?" Draco asked without looking up.

"It doesn't say, so we're using mandrake oil. That's all there was that's 'consecrated' anyway," Harry explained, shoving that statue aside so he could draw the diagram outlined in the scroll.

Draco rested his head on his arms and watched. "This is stupid," He drawled, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, it is, but I'm bored and out of ideas," Harry answered. "Would you mind grinding those aye aye bones to a powder?"

Draco emptied the contents a small bag into the marble mortar Harry had brought with him. "Aren't those things a symbol of death for muggles?" He asked, slowly grinding the bits of bone to dust. The bones were so dried out, Draco wondered how long they'd been in the store cabinet. "Seems odd for a luck spell."

"Probably because they are magical. I mean, they're not really a threat, but they do have dark powers. Insignificant ones that can cause nightmares, but that's it really," Harry replied, reaching for a glass jar containing a pickled owl heart.

"Owls are also symbols of death in some muggle cultures," Draco commented, frowning. "I think this is a bad idea."

"Well, it's not like it's asking for graveyard dirt or the fingers from a hand of glory," Harry quipped. "But yeah, it is a little weird."

Draco sighed and shoved the mortar full of bone dust across the desk to Potter. "What's next?"

"Ugh, gross, grind up the owl heart into a pulp with the bone dust," Potter said, wrinkling his nose. "Then squish in four raven's eyes, mix in the oil, and add a few drops of our blood."

"Nope, not mine. Your blood, Potter," Draco countered. "No way."

"We're in this together now," Harry replied, mushing the owl heart which made an absolutely grotesque squelching sound.

"That's disgusting," Draco complained. "And no, this was your moronic idea."

"Come on, Malfoy. Don't be a wuss. This isn't even going to work anyway," Harry pressed.

"Only if it will make you stop talking, and you swear on your life that you won't tell anyone that I was involved in this muggle idiocy," Draco retorted, too tired of his crap to care anymore. He was probably right. The mixture wasn't exactly a potion. Without any real method to how the components were added, and maybe using the right oil, the odds were pretty good that it really was just a waste of time and ingredients. Rare ingredients. When was the last time he'd even seen aye aye bones or claws? He knew for sure he'd never used them. He had a jar at home in his potions lab full of their eyes that had been a gift from Snape in his fifth year, but he'd never seen a potion recipe that called for them. He shook his head and spooned four shiny black raven's eyes into the mixture as Harry mushed it into a thick paste.

"All right, add the oil," Harry said, carefully pouring the mandrake oil into the large mortar.

Draco watched wordlessly as he mixed it together, and pulled a silver knife out of his desk drawer when it was done. Draco considered once again refusing to add his blood to the mixture as Harry pricked the tip of his thumb, and squeezed a few drops of blood into the sludge they'd created. He handed the knife to Draco, and he took it without comment. After an agonized sigh, he pressed his index finger against the blade and let a few drops of blood fall into the mortar. What was he going to do? Let Potter think he was scared of some stupid muggle hoodoo? Still, Draco had a bad feeling about this, and he knew better than to ignore his gut. He licked the blood from his fingertip, tasting iron on his tongue.

"Now what?" Draco asked as Harry stirred the blood into the concoction.

"We pour it over the statue, then light the oil on fire," Harry explained. "I already fire-proofed the desk. Let's do this. You pour it; I'll light it up."

Draco held the mortar above the statue slowly started pouring it over its head. Harry lit the oil with a swish of his wand, and Draco counted it as a fucking miracle that his sleeves didn't catch fire. He sat the empty mortar beside the statue and watched in silence as the flames burned away the oil mixture, slowly diminishing into a thin haze of steam coming off the statue.

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Draco groused, leaning over the statue. "It smells like a troll's arsehole in here now." Princess mewled in agreement and shoved her face into the couch cushions.

"Ugh," Harry groaned and pinched his nose. "Yeah, let's call it a night. That was stupid. We're never speaking of it again, agreed?"

"Completely. Now throw that thing in the bin where it belongs," Draco said, waving at the statue. Harry levitated it back into its box, and dropped it next to the waste paper basket.

"See you in the morning, Malfoy," Harry said curtly.

"Whatever, Potter," Draco quipped and was out of the door before the words even finished leaving his mouth.