June 25th, 1995

Sunday, 10:21 a.m.

London

"Not that you're unwelcome, but why are you here?"

To anybody else witnessing this exchange from a perspective that did not belong to either participants in the conversation, they might have been compelled, and even right, to reach for the phone and dial for professional help. Indeed, even if the large black dog at the doorstep had taken his human form, it would still have been much a cause of concern, seeing as his face had been published on wanted posters as a mass murderer escaped from prison. And, even if one did not know this for a fact, his human form would've scared any average passerby into gripping their valuables just a little tighter; his face was gaunt, his long, untamed hair limp, and his piercing grey eyes clouded over with a fearful, predatory mistrust, not to mention, his apparel tattered and hanging limply off of malnourished limbs. He looked like a man who had walked through the gates of Hell and had now descended to Earth with a furious vengeance.

He wasn't, however, in his human form, and this only transferred the suspicion onto the other participant of the conversation. Quiet, polite, and reticent, Rodney Luckinbill was a familiar face in the neighborhood as a man who kept to himself, but was nice enough if one wanted to borrow some milk from him. He didn't seem to have any kind of steady job, but the vicinity didn't really care; their downtown neighborhood wasn't exactly the most glamorous place for anybody who wanted to make a name for themselves anyway. While his sanity was not in doubt, it might have definitely been so now as he spoke from his doorway to the large dog hunched over his doormat, a damp newspaper held between its teeth.

The dog, stripped of muscle as every stray tended to look in such an area of overcrowded inhabitants and unclean alleyways, gazed blankly at Mr. Luckinbill, with the air of an animal who knew he would eventually be given shelter if he behaved himself. Indeed, Mr. Luckinbill let out a stern sigh after studying its pitiable face for a while, and even went so far as to drop to his knees and scratch behind its ears. The dog whined hollowly, feebly flicking its dampened, muddy tail.

"Don't get my couch dirty," he told it flatly, but his tired face looked almost nostalgic in its grim countenance. It was almost as if he knew the animal intimately. He stepped aside, and the wet, dirt-covered black dog slunk quietly into the small flat.

No sooner had Mr. Luckbill shut the door of his tiny, withering flat that he heard a small pop and, turning around, saw a human man in the very spot the weary looking dog had been just moments ago.

They two men looked at each other calculatingly for a long time. Finally, Remus broke the familiar silence.

"Hungry?" Remus asked gently.

Sirius shook his head.

Aware that this was the first reunion since a year ago when Remus, in his werewolf form, had been tackled down by the very same black dog and driven into the Forbidden Forest in response to a situation that nearly resulted in the death of three students, the very man before him, and Professor Snape, and allowed for the escape of the traitor Peter Pettigrew, Remus spoke again with a loaded caution.

"Well?"

The circumstances of the reunion didn't seem to really bother Sirius however, who looked at his old friend wordlessly for a few seconds before answering. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and grated, like he hadn't used it for a very long time. "Have you read the Prophet?"

Remus shook his head. He hadn't managed to acquire the last two days' copies. He felt himself tense up in foreboding however, because while he had expected that at some point Sirius would turn up at his doorstep in his animagus form, he didn't think it would be so soon or so sudden. If it was on Dumbledore's orders, something was obviously very wrong.

Sirius tossed the battered newspaper that had previously been in his mouth at Remus. He caught it deftly, smoothing it out before unfolding it, careful not to rip it at the spots where it was damp. Where Sirius had acquired this copy, he had no idea, the fact that he'd found it necessary to carry it all the way here lent it significant importance. Without permission, Sirius threw himself onto Remus's limp, worn armchair, the crusted mud of his boots scattering in debris across the coffee table. Remus gave Sirius a disapproving look before turning to the paper, and Sirius ignored it. Something in the familiarity of this exchange broke the tiny thread of strain that still distorted the air between them. But the dark foreboding remained. Sirius sat limply in the chair, hair falling over his eyes so that all that was visible through the dirt and grime on his face was his aristocratic nose and the grim line of his mouth.

The room was unbearably quiet as Remus read the front, his eyes flying across the page and his brow furrowing with each passing second. By the time he reached the bottom, his face was slightly pale, and he met Sirius's eyes with an equally matched distress. "Gods."

"I'd say," Sirius muttered darkly, picking at the arm of his seat.

"Diggory's son…but that's dreadful," Remus said faintly, slightly unsteady on his feet as his pale face continued to register shock. He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow in intense thought. "An accident? That's unlikely."

"That's because it wasn't an accident. Diggory was murdered," Sirius replied stonily.

Having collected himself, Remus folded the paper and tossed it to the side, his eyes fixed on Sirius. He walked to the couch directly facing Sirius and lowered himself on to it gingerly.

"How?" he asked simply.

"The cup was rigged as a portkey," Sirius said.

"Where did it lead to?"

"The graveyard where Tom Riddle Senior was buried."

Remus inhaled sharply. His eyes flashed, "And Harry…?"

"Yes, that's how we know. He reappeared on the grounds with Diggory's body."

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose, and the familiarity of this reaction made Sirius grip the armchair harder, bringing back painful memories of a time long gone in an entirely different world. Not noticing the impact of his action, Remus continued to pinch his nose in his usual expression of hidden distress and gestured to Sirius. "Explain."

Grimacing and pushing down the sudden constriction in his throat, Sirius launched into Harry's account of what happened in the graveyard, about Wormtail murdering Diggory, the Death Eaters, Priori Incantem…his throat tightened further when it came to James and Lily, and Remus pursed his lips and looked away, but Sirius ploughed on, determined to finish his story.

By the time he was done, the morning sun had migrated to the middle of the sky, the afternoon breeze making the flimsy curtains in the lounge flutter soundlessly like ghostly apparitions. The silence rang in the room. Remus had buried his face in his hands. Sirius sat back, fingering a loose thread on the old armchair. When Remus looked up, his face was worn and tired and the grey in his hair was more prominent than ever. It suddenly struck Sirius how old Remus really was, how old they were, how utterly broken their lives had become and how many years had passed.

"Voldemort is back."

The statement hung heavy in the air. Both men felt the grim foreboding of it. They remembered what the First War had been like, remembered like it was yesterday, because it had haunted their dreams and shattered their lives so completely, and taken from them nearly everything they had to live for. They remembered everything they had lost to the war, all the years that had disappeared in the darkness of the aftermath never to come back again, all the devastation, and all the pain.

And now, dark times had descended upon them once more.


July 10th, 1995

Monday 7:47 a.m.

The Tonks Household

"What do you think, Dad?"

There was a thud as the newspaper landed on the center of the table, the black-and-white men in the picture on the front page shouting indignantly as all three toppled over onto each other from the impact. Ted Tonks looked up from his journal, eyebrow raised as his daughter continued to stare him down appraisingly.

"What do I think about what?"

Dora gestured vaguely at the newspaper. "This."

The paper was folded back and flipped to page 4, where approximately half the space was dedicated to a cover of Auror Scrimgeour's press release from the day before. It was basically the entire parcel and package that Scrimgeour had put together for the auror hearing, only, sugarcoated and embellished in big media words like 'justice' and 'security,' and tied with a garish ribbon of 'heartfelt condolences' to assure the wizarding population of Britain that indeed Diggory's death had been a legitimate one. It hadn't been Scrimgeour, of course, who'd been interviewed for the article, but a face that was nicer to look at and a voice that was easier on the ears. The Ministry's poster boy smiled dazzlingly from the quarter-page photograph that accompanied the writing.

Ted eyed the paper with the kind of wary mistrust he reserved for Tonks herself. "Do I have to think anything about it?"

His wariness increased tenfold as Dora leaned forward conspiratorially, slamming a ring-studded hand over the winning face of 'Jerome Crawley.' Her exuberance always put him on the edge for he was a rather peace-loving sort of man, and marrying into the Blacks itself had been exciting enough for him to last a lifetime. He could never keep up with his daughter, as fond of her as he was, not her thoughts, not her ambitions, not her hair, and even now as she grinned maniacally at him from across the table, ready to tell him exactly what she thought about 'this,' he sighed with the air of a man resigned to his fate.

"Go on, then," he said, settling back in his chair, grinning in spite of himself.

"I think the Ministry is lying," she said with surprising calmness. "I think they're feeding us crap, pulling one over everybody, if you will, because Dumbledore's theory has too much consequence involved. And. I don't think Cedric Diggory was killed by Barty Crouch Junior."

Ted eyed his daughter, picking absently at the tablecloth hanging of the edge of the table. In spite of himself, he frowned at her in curiosity, "Why?"

Dora tapped her lips thoughtfully. The kettle whistled feebly in the kitchen in those few seconds of silence. Dora lowered herself into her chair. "They say Crouch was trying to kill Potter, deluded into thinking he was following orders from You-Know-Who. Which makes sense, because he did try to harm Potter, it's why he disguised himself as Mad-Eye to begin with. If he was a mad lunatic out to kill people off the streets he wouldn't have gone through the pains of coming to Hogwarts covertly. That established, my question is, why would he wait till the third task to kill him?"

Dora leaned back, her chair balancing on its hind legs. "If I were Crouch, and I wanted to kill Potter, my primary aim would be to do so without being caught. Obviously. In which case, I'd want to either make sure it was pinned on somebody else, or that it was accidental."

She frowned. "Obviously, as Crouch, I didn't frame it on someone else. Maybe Mad-Eye. He did keep Mad-Eye alive after all, so that could've been his plan. Especially if I believed I was to kill Harry Potter on the orders of You-Know-Who. But that would be complicated, and doing so under Dumbledore's nose, since he and Mad-Eye are pretty familiar with each other..."

Ted watched Dora with amused curiosity. She often resorted to thinking out loud to him. Absently, she tapped her finger on the wooden table rhythmically. "Honestly, my best bet would be to kill him during the Tournament. If it were made to look like an accidental death during one of the tasks, it would be impossible to trace it back to me. So it makes sense if I were to rig the Goblet of Fire so that Harry Potter's name was chosen as well. After that, it would be easy. If not the first task, because that might seem obvious, I'd try to kill him off during the second."

Now Dora's penetrating gaze was on her father, and there was a triumphant gleam in it. "But I didn't. Why didn't I? What sense would it make to wait for the third task to try to kill Potter? Why, when I had the chance twice to kill Potter, why didn't I? Why the third task?"

"Perhaps he did try," Ted shrugged. "How would you know he didn't?"

"I don't, not really," Dora admitted. "But the probability of him failing to get Potter killed twice during two extremely dangerous tasks versus the probability of him not trying at all... you'd have to have really, really bad luck to not be able to get a champion killed during a task. And Crouch wasn't your average Joe wizard either, because it's not a walk in the park, being able to hoodwink the Goblet of Fire."

"So you're saying," Ted said, "that the Crouch had a specific reason to wait till the third task to kill Potter. Which means, you don't think it's driven solely by an insane homicidal urge or pure delusion."

Dora picked fervently at the tablecloth alongside her father. "I'm saying it doesn't make sense. Under his delusion of following You-Know-Who's orders, what was so special about the third task? What actually happened in the maze, and why did Cedric Diggory end up dead? There's something fucked up about it all. Something happened in that maze. The Ministry is lying."

Ted debated internally over what to address first, his daughter's language or her brash declaration. He opted for the latter. "Heavy accusation you make there, kiddo."

"They're true." Dora said, sitting back in her seat and staring at the newspaper with dislike. "There's something fishy, in any case, and I'll get down to it, you'll see."

Ted shuddered, and it was too conscious a shudder to pass off as someone walking over his grave. It was the shudder of a man who looked away from his charge for a moment too long at the grocery store and had a bad feeling that when he turned back around the child would be gone. It was the shudder of a man who could almost feel his wife's gaze boring into the back of the neck, telling him to put in a word of caution to his daughter before she did something stupid.

"Er, Dora," Ted began hesitantly, "that's a rather serious statement to make against your employers."

Dora snorted in response. "Stupid bastards. If Fudge thinks they can hold their own against Dumbledore he's got one coming."

Ted almost snorted in agreement, but pulled himself back from indulging his daughter at the last minute. He cleared his throat and gave her a stern look instead. "Be that as it may. It's not a good idea to compromise your career on a whim."

"But you agree with me," Dora grinned.

"You never heard me say that," Ted said calmly, a hint of a smile on his face as he picked up the newspaper and disappeared behind it wordlessly.


July 10th, 1995

Monday 8:11 a.m.

The Yates Household

"Gods."

'Gods' was quite the understatement. The place was in a mess, people swarming in and out of the tiny, worn-down flat that Tonks had walked past three times before she noticed it tucked away in a drab building behind an array of lavish suburbs. The press had already managed to arrive before she did, and cameramen from the Daily Prophet, the Barrington Post and the Wands Weekly snapped away with unchecked fury, the flashing lights assaulting her eyes with an almost seizure-inducing intensity. Tonks was surprised to note that even the Quibbler had sent a man; the press was all over it.

Not without reason, if their years of reporting had taught them anything about identifying the really gritty stories. Right now the Ministry was shaken, still trying to layer the problem with coatings of damage control that did nothing but hide the real facts. In the face of what Dumbledore was offering in explanation, any kind of crimes of violence against Muggles, while always topping the headlines whenever they did happen on such a scale, were all the more essential to account for now. She could see the reporter from the Prophet rapidly taking notes, nodding in response to what Crawley from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes was saying. Made sense to avoid the on-field Aurors and take the angle of the office boys, if Fudge's influence over the Prophet wasn't a farce. Gingerly, she stepped past people, squeezing through masses of officials, healers and colleagues to get to the epicenter of the action.

"Tonks, he's out at that corner."

Tonks turned over her shoulder. The blond-haired girl in a beige overcoat who had tapped her shoulder pointed in a general north-east direction, towards the far corner of the room. She, at least, looked like she had gotten a night's sleep. It didn't seem like she had arrived on the scene much earlier than Tonks herself.

Tonks nodded at her colleague. "Thanks."

The girl nodded back. "I've been sent as the substitute. If you need anything, shout out. It looks like there's going to be a lot of paperwork."

She was smiling without amusement. Recalling the overview she'd received of the crime in the morning mail, the details of it fresh in her memory from having read it over on her way here, Tonks exchanged a look of grim foreboding with her colleague.

"Ta, Wendy."

"See you in a bit."

Indeed Tonks saw who she was looking for in the far corner of the room, and she grimaced further as she always did at the idea of having to work with him once more. He was surveying the scene with cool calculation, huddling over what looked like a blueprint of the apartment with an old bald wizard in baggy robes. Pushing the urge to hex his shiny head of black hair into a carnival toy, she attempted to concentrate on trying to recollect all the facts of the case she was dealing with.

Raymond Yates, age fort-three, banker at Gringotts and a strong advocator of Muggle-wizard equality and reforms for social security coverage for non-magic spouses of employees of the Ministry of Magic. He'd been a part of a political group that was pressing for the passing of this law for the last seven years. He'd recently been promoted, his first in ten years and a significant boost in his meager income. His Muggle wife, Bertha Yates, age forty, was a chef at a small Italian restaurant, and walked two blocks to work every day. His fifteen year-old son, Matthew Yates, was not born with magical abilities and went to a Muggle high school ten minutes away from where they lived. They were lower middle-class in terms of financial conditions, and they lived in a sub-par flat on the expensive side of town because it was in proximity to the old age home where Mrs. Yates' aging father was currently living, suffering from Alzheimer's, most of his memory gone with no recollection of his daughter or her family.

Less than twelve hours ago, the entire family had been murdered.

No signs of struggle. The house had yet to be given a complete strip-down. They were still testing for more descriptive traces of magical residue, but there was enough to prove that a magical intervention had caused these deaths.

The black-haired Auror looked up sharply from the blueprints as Tonks approached, fixing her with a look of critical aloofness. "You're late."

"By a margin of thirty-five seconds," Tonks replied coolly. "Update me."

"Actually, the press got here nearly an hour ago..."

"Just update me, Randall," Tonks cut in snappily.

Randall cleared his throat primly, face impassive. "They're interviewing the neighbors right now, I haven't heard from that unit. There's another unit whose talking to his Gringotts colleagues, but I haven't heard from them either. Once the information is accumulated we can head back to office and consolidate the paperwork. Right now I was looking at the blueprints of the apartment; Birch and I doing a more thorough magical imprint analysis."

He pointed at the bald man holding the paper next to him as he spoke. Analyzing for magical residue was the first course of action taken at a scene of crime that involved the use of magic. Every spell left a special sort of pattern that lingered in the air and surroundings as residual magic. A special Ministry units of workers trained to analyze these aftereffects of magical use and work alongside Aurors to help solve cases could read these magical residues almost like fingerprints, where each layer narrowed down the nature of the spell, hex, potion or curse that was used. Naturally, this was hugely useful in piecing together to sequence of events in a crime.

"And there was no sign of struggle at all? Nothing remotely suspicious in the way their bodies were found?" Tonks asked, frowning. If it was a hate killing, the murderers would've left behind a message, symbolic or scripted, in some form of the other. Simple murder without much incentive or motive was plain odd. The chances of a wizard breaking and entering the house of a harmless Gringotts banker, killing the entire family but leaving the bodies otherwise untouched didn't make much sense. From his profile, Yates didn't seem like the kind of man that had enemies hiding in bushes to gun him down.

Randall shrugged. "Take a look for yourself."

He reached into his coat pocket and tossed a small package of neatly stacked photographs, tied together with twine. Tonks unwound the binding, pocketing it, and sifted through the moving pictures.

"They've already moved the body, then?" Tonks frowned, holding up one particularly gruesome picture to the light, angled to capture the family of three sprawled dead in front the hearth and the wall behind them, right up to the ceiling.

"They arrived here three hours ago. They only just came back thirty minutes to eight to clear the bodies. We kept the fellow, Yates, however. Told them the usual, that his work was with our top-secret organization, and that we had a lead," Randall answered. He gave her a nettled look of condescension. "What're you ogling, there's nothing in that picture. We already checked."

"Well then I don't see the harm in me looking over it again," Tonks said, lowering the picture, and then sliding her fingers to reveal two of the same, hidden one behind the other, a small grin on her face, "especially if 'we' fail to notice that in the Muggle polaroid version of the picture you have here, the wallpaper behind the mantlepiece has flowers that are missing a petal."

Randall snatched the pictures out of her hand furiously, juxtaposing the two in midair as his eyes flickered between them. Birch, eyes wide, leaned in to look.

"There are seven in these instead of eight," Birch muttered in surprise, pointing at the still Muggle picture. Indeed the tiny navy flowers printed evenly and methodically upon a blue backdrop seemed not to match with the ones in the picture taken two hours after.

"Impossible," Randall drew in a sharp breath, "It's been tampered with."

"The picture? I doubt it. As offensive as disfigured flowers may be, I'd turn them into owl droppings if I wanted to pull one over you."

"The wallpaper," Randall snapped back at Tonks' cheeky remark. "The wallpaper has been tampered with!"

"But that means..." Birch stuttered, failing to complete his sentence.

Randall and Birch exchanged a look of dawning comprehension. Only for a brief moment they were frozen in surprise, before both sprung into action with renewed vigor, Birch rolling up the blueprints hastily and Randall shouting out to the nearby Ministry imprint analysis unit which was investigating a suspicious-looking magical instrument on a coffee table in the back of the room.

"Oi, we need two of you here, now," Randall barked. They looked up at him, exchange looks of surprise, and two of the workers, a man and a woman, stepped towards him. Both were dressed in blue jumpsuits, hands and feet hidden in gloves and shoes that glowed with an insulating charm which allowed them to move about without the fear of disturbing magical residue. The woman carried with her a bulky roll of parchment, quill tucked in behind her ear.

"Sir?" The woman asked, slightly annoyed at having been drawn away from her work.

"Was that wall inspected for magical residue?" Randall demanded, pointing at the hearth.

The man and the woman exchanged a look. The man answered, "Yes, it was, it's the first part of the house we covered."

"And was there trace of magical residue?" Tonks interjected.

"Yes," the woman said almost patronizingly, "There was a good amount, actually."

"That's pointless, there would be since the murder happened there. The killing curse is powerful enough to have masked whatever other traces that might have been left behind by other activities," Randall scowled darkly.

Tonks nodded sharply in agreement. She turned to the man and woman. "Would it be possible to re-inspect the area?"

The man shrugged and the woman sighed and nodded, neither believing anything useful would come out of the activity. However, they were bound to obey the Aurors on duty, and they followed Randall, Tonks and Birch as the trio approached the wall in question with tense briskness.

"Move aside," Randall demanded, and the circle or spectators, press reporters and Ministry workers widened with a wave of murmurs to allow them to pass. Tonks walked up to the wall, slipping her right hand into one of the gloves that the woman worker handed to her. Reaching out, she ran her fingers lightly down it.

The woman spoke from beside her in a professional tone. "If there's magical residue, it should generally be in the cracks and kinks."

Tonk's fingers dropped to the mantlepiece, where the wallpaper began to crack, cut off where the wooden surface met cement. "How about at the ridges here?"

"Good place to start," the woman said, swiping her own gloved finger against the junction. She retrieved her hand, looking down at it as she rubbed her fingers together. "Nothing different form what we first accumulated, mostly residue from the killing curse that got the three of them."

"Hm," Tonks hummed, staring thoughtfully at the wall. "But that doesn't eliminate the presence of other spells, right?"

The woman said reluctantly, "Well...no..."

Tonks gazed appraisingly at the wall. It didn't quite look suspicious, but the wallpaper had definitely changed, the picture was proof of that. Her attention again fell to the ridge of the mantlepiece where the wallpaper ended, and she picked at it till it began to chip off. The surface below was plain white. She frowned.

"So the paper hasn't been manually replaced," Tonks muttered to herself.

The woman stepped up suddenly beside her, swiping her finger again at the curve of the wall.

"Well, there's definitely residue," the woman muttered. A few feet away, Randall and the man were leaning in towards the wall, pointing at a spot where the wallpaper had peeled slightly, curling inwards. He seemed to have come to the same conclusion, judging from the way he jabbed accusingly at the patch of wall revealed under the peeling paper. As if feeling Tonks' gaze upon him, Randall turned and caught her eye. They exchanged a nod.

"I want this wall subjected to a complete, thorough investigation," Tonks heard Randall instructing the two workers as she pulled off the glove on her hand, handing it to the woman, "I want every ounce of residue accounted for. If there was a concealing charm put in place, it would leave behind enough residue for it to show up in the analysis."

"Yes sir," the man said. He turned and beckoned to some of his other fellow workers who had been watching them from the coffee table. Tonks, Randall and Birch stepped away, retreating to a quieter corner as they watched the Ministry workers swarm around the wall.

"What does this mean?" Birch whispered frantically the moment they were out of earshot, twiddling with the rolled-up blueprints in his hand.

"If the wall has been tampered with, it's not very possible that it was the work of the murderers themselves," Tonks said grimly. "The polaroid was taken by the Muggle police at about five in the morning, and the one we have with us, at about seven, before your or I got here. Someone external who had access to the area has tampered with it."

Randall looked sharply at her. "Watch who you're accusing, Tonks."

"Keep your pants on, I wasn't talking about you," she said in irritation.

"No, but you're getting carried away," Randall snapped. Birch gazed from one face to the other, lost. Randal had caught on to what Tonks was implying. The only people who had had access to the scene of the crime between the arrival of the Muggle authorities and that of the wizarding press were the Ministry workers themselves.

"You know I'm right," Tonks snapped back, incensed at his patronizing tone, "Just because you're too chicken to voice it-"

"You're so fucking childish, you know that?-"

"Yeah, you're real mature, arriving on time, what a hero-"

"Tonks."

Tonks whirled around in her irritation to see who'd called. Randall scowled and fell silent. They always did this, bicker like little children, ever since she'd first tripped him up outside the Charms corridor as a dare from Charlie Weasley back in her first year at Hogwarts, and the documented history of their momentous quarrels after that could fill volumes. It still made Tonks' blood boil remembering some of the nastier things Randall had done and she was pretty sure he wanted nothing more than to set her on fire for her equally acid retaliation.

Stupid fuck, Tonks growled mentally, as Randall patted down his immaculate black hair in the corner of her eye, the familiar animosity stirring in his impassive face. She hated the bastard. But she was stuck with him, like it or not, for their fierce battle to outperform the other since the moment they'd stepped into the same class in school had led them to pursue the same intense career, the same rigorous back-breaking competition to be the best in their field, and now, placed them in the same Auror unit, working under their mutual boss, Roy Sinha.

From the far end of the room, the very same boss was stalking towards her, looking somewhat nettled as his long, lanky hair fell into his thin face. Tonks winced, mentally going over every possibility behind his looking this irked, and wondered if he'd finally found out who had spiked his ginger at last Christmas's office party. Her habituated mind immediately presented her with a colorful set of excuses to use as he came nearer.

"Randall," he nodded curtly. "Situation under control?"

"Yes sir," Randall replied.

"Good. I'll hold you to it, then. Tonks, got a minute?" He asked, eyebrow raised. The collar of the stiff black macintosh robes he always made a habit to wear stood up around his neck, thick black hair blending with the spotless shoulders of the apparel. He looked tired, borderline sardonic, but that wry smile was a distinct characteristic of Roy Sinha. At least a foot taller than Tonks, gazed down at her appraisingly.

"Why?" Tonks asked.

"Because I'm your boss and it wasn't really a question. I need a minute," he said, grasping her upper arm and dragging her to the side of the room, weaving through cameramen and sleep-deprived investigators. Tonks stumbled and made an admonishing noise at her superior, glaring at him balefully. He gave no notice.

"Well what is it?" she asked flatly, dusting off her robes in indignation.

Sinha handed her a sheaf of papers, face stoic. "Your new assignment."

Tonks blanked out for a few seconds. "Eh?"

"You new assignment," Sinha repeated, waving the papers under her nose. She grabbed them and stared, reading the top of the page rapidly.

"Fergal Donaghey," Tonks repeated blankly. "What, that git who was witness to the Dominican Base robberies?"

"Upper management thinks you'd be good for the job," Sinha said, suddenly preoccupied by his nails. Tonks simply stared at him, dumbstruck. It was a simple locate and find job, the man wasn't even a dangerous criminal, just a small-time con artist who'd stumbled into something bigger than he could handle, and was now on the run from the Ministry, too afraid to share crucial knowledge he allegedly possessed.

It wasn't even a real case, there was nothing to solve.

"Rubbish," she said, tossing the file back at him, "I'm not taking on some rookie's first break, anybody on the benches can take this case. Why is it even still on the table?"

"Because they still haven't caught him," he said with slight annoyance, her disdain having rubbed him in the wrong way. He tossed the file back at her, which she caught. "He's important to some other people in upper management too, they have other cases pending till the Dominican Base Robberies is sorted out, so they want to get it wrapped up quick."

"And why me?" Tonks asked with an undertone of bitterness. Staring at the papers in her hand, she hazarded a guess that this was happening on Scrimgeour's orders. Still see me as a threat, eh? Tonks felt a spark of smug satisfaction at this attempt to keep her too busy to further her investigation. It was definitely a frustration to her, what a bother to have to put up with this kind of ridiculous, unimportant drudgery, but at least she'd be able to get it out of the way fast. it wasn't a difficult case. Perhaps it could be used to her advantage if she played it right; extra resources and an excuse to use her badge for more fieldwork investigation would be pretty useful.

Still, it placed a cloud of irritation above her head. Sinha seemed to have sensed this, for he spoke with a placating tone. "Look Tonks, I'm sure it won't take much time, we already have leads. Get it over with and I'll try to divert any more cases that come your way."

Good old Sinha.

"Yeah, Yeah, I'll do it," Tonks muttered.

"Good girl," Sinha said approvingly. "We have new aurors in since last month. Bloody incompetent. Told one off for overlooking the murderer's hair under the carpet of the victim's house and he nearly peed himself. Ever since Moody got himself retired the place is a fucking carnival."

Tonks snorted out loud at the glowering pout on his face. "Don't go too hard on them. They've come in at precisely the wrong time."

"The right time," Sinha corrected dryly. "The Ministry's in chaos, you'd think they'd be thrilled to be given actual cases instead of being sent off to corner batty old women who've shirked paying their taxes."

He gazed out at the gaggle of reporters and investigators moving through the room in borderline pandemonium. "Get Wendy Snider to do the paperwork here. I called her in today specifically for that. I don't see why you can't work three cases at once so long as you can give me a weekly report of your progress on Dominican Base. Randall can handle this business."

That stung. Her's and Randall's long-standing feud had its claws deeply set in her ego. Tonks scowled darkly. "That'll make his day."

"Tonks, it's not a promotion, he's just working this case," Sinha rolled his eyes.

"You know as much as I do how much each case counts," Tonks shot back.

Sinha eyed her appreciatively. He placed a hand on her shoulder and gripped her with the camaraderie of one whose ambition to excel was just as fiercely consuming as hers. "You'll catch up. Mad-Eye didn't endorse you for nothing. But don't make this about you and Randall. It's not worth the competition."

He gave her a significant look. Tonks huffed, but nodded, knowing that if nothing, Sinha would put in a good word for her when it came to it.

"Watch your back, Tonks. Don't do anything stupid." Sinha said in parting as he upturned his wilting collar and buried his hands in his pockets. A spasm shot through Tonks at the unexpected warning from him, more accurate than he was personally aware of it being. It was almost like an omen, especially since she'd already finalized her next move just that morning after her conversation with her father. There was no working around it; while scavenging through old articles was a productive enough method of uncovering details of the happenings that immediately succeeded the death of Cedric Diggory, it was too slow of a process for her patience to make peace with. As the hysteria and mistrust and foreboding escalated about her inside the Ministry, outside the Ministry, even on the sidewalks where clumps of witches and wizards whispering urgently to each other, meeting in secret, eyes darting with an unnerved air under the blanket of the Ministry's façade of everything being under control, Tonks knew her leisurely side-investigation would not get her answers fast enough. It was the time for drastic action.

She would acquire the Diggory case file, even if she had to resort to breaking and entering to steal it.