Disclaimer: I don't own anything. And I'm not making any money. Don't sue.

Pairing: Drarry

Warning: To anyone familiar with my work, updates are going to be slow, but are speeded up by reviews.

Notes: I'd love a beta for this story. Please PM me if you're interested

Strike Back

Chapter Three: The Assassination

"You're here early, aren't you?" Harry's auror partner asked as soon as he walked into his office and saw Harry stooped over some files. He took a sip of his tea before striding over to Harry's desk and looking over his shoulder at the files. "Seth Snape?" he asked, looking over at Harry.

Harry nodded at Dean Thomas, but didn't bother to look up from his files. "It's an odd name, don't you think? Pansy said it was a pen name. Who would choose that name? Even people who used to be Death Eaters are trying to get as far away from their past as humanly possible. This guy … it's like …" Harry finally looked up from his files to catch Dean's eye. "It's like he's embracing it."

Dean shrugged before going over to his own desk and slumping down. "I don't know. I don't follow the guy. Still, we haven't seen any Death Eater activity in over five years. Even if this guy somehow had a connection to Snape, that doesn't mean it's Death Eater related."

"You think someone actually liked Snape enough to create a pen name after him? Doubtful," Harry grumbled before diving back into the files in front of him. "There's something there, Dean. I know it."

"You sure this isn't just you trying to find some excitement?" Dean asked. "I know you've been restless, especially lately. Maybe you're just trying to see something that isn't there. All of his books have been Ministry-approved; not a single dark potion among the hundreds he's researched."

"So maybe it's something else then," Harry replied, his attention still lost in the file. "Like, maybe his books have some sort of code to them? To get messages to other Death Eaters?"

"What other Death Eaters, Harry?" Dean snapped, rolling his eyes. At first he had been ecstatic to learn that Harry was going to be his auror partner. Then he started to work with him. Harry was the type to always look for a plot. He always thought something else was going on behind the scenes. The more and more he was wrong the more and more despondent he became. "You're cracking up."

That made Harry finally look up. "Not you too," he said, frowning. "I have a feeling here, Thomas. The guy was acting shifting the whole time at his awards ceremony. He's gotta be hiding something."

"Right. Nothing to do with the fact that the guy hasn't been seen out in public, oh … ever in his entire life," Dean snapped back. He rolled his eyes as he forced himself to calm down. Dealing with Harry through anger was never a good approach. "Research the guy all you want; I won't stop you." He picked up a file and threw it over to Harry's desk. "But work is for work, and we've got things to do that don't involve Death Eaters masquerading as hermit-authors."

Harry reached for the file and tried his best to hold back a sigh when he saw that they were going to help rescue a muggle babysitter who was being chased by a teddy bear.


"You worry much too much, Draco," Pansy scolded as sat on Draco's couch and sipped at her tea.

"No, Pansy, I worry just the right amount," Draco snapped back. He was pacing back and forth in front of his childhood friend, occasionally stopping to run his hands through his hair. "Did you see his face last night? He knew, Pans! I know he did!" He scrunched his face up, as if the thought alone brought him pain.

If she was being addressed as 'Pans' then Draco was very emotional, indeed. Still, she hid her surprise and put her nose in the air. It wouldn't do to indulge her friend's paranoia. "I don't know who you're talking about or what this person knows," she insisted. "But if you're trying to get out of going to the next ceremony you don't have to bother. I already told you that you could skip the next one."

Draco ran his hands through his hair again as he turned towards his editor. "This isn't about the next fucking ceremony, you dunce. This is about Harry fucking Potter knowing who I am!"

Pansy calmly took another sip of her tea. "Oh, please, Draco. He had no idea. He was just caught up because of your pen name." She put her tea down on the inn table and walked over to Draco. She put her hands on his shoulders and guided him over to the couch before continuing on. "Word around the Ministry is that the golden boy's finally cracked. Keeps seeing Death Eater threats that don't exist. Is constantly on the lookout for conspiracies. He's been crying werewolf for years now."

Draco ran a hand through his hair yet again, except this time he was breathing a little easier. He looked up at Pansy from his hunched over position on the couch. "He's cracked, you say?"

Pansy nodded as she sat down next to her best friend. "Yes, dear. He's an absolute nutcase now. The only reason he's still working for the Ministry is because they're afraid of the bad publicity it'd cause if they fired him. Even if he knew for a fact who you were, no one would believe him."

Harry Potter had cracked. That alone was enough to give Draco's anxiety pause. The great wizard, the supposed "savior" of the wizarding world was finally being seen for what he was: an absolute and utter nutcase. If only people had seen it sooner. If everyone knew Harry was a loon during school Draco could have gotten along a lot better. Maybe he would have made better choices without the golden boy around to always propel him in the opposite direction. Maybe it wouldn't have taken him so long to see the error of his ways. Or maybe he wouldn't have even had to see the error of his ways.

Draco frowned at that thought. Probably best if he didn't go down that path. It was pretty sinister. And all in all it was probably for the best that Draco had seen the error of his ways. He had been an angry little shit back in school. He was a lot calmer now. Though whether he was a lot calmer because he no longer had anyone around to annoy him or if it was because he was a happier individual he couldn't really be sure.

"Draco! Are you even listening to me?"

Draco jerked slightly as he was pulled from his thoughts to see Pansy standing right in front of him, hands on her hips and looking cross. "Of course, Pansy, darling," he answered, schooling his expression into one of indifference. "I just didn't care about it."

"You're an ass," Pansy snapped before turning away. "You fret for hours about how Harry Potter's figured you out, and the second I give you reassurances that he hasn't you zone out. You're impossible."

Draco smirked at her. "Impossible and yours, my dear."


It was several hours later that they finally received the news they were waiting for, It was a much longer wait than Draco had prepared for, and he loudly moaned the loss of his Potions research time.

"You're practically forcing me to to lose money, Parkinson!" Draco snapped, no longer emotional and more than annoyed enough to call her by her surname. "You're supposed to be my editor! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that it meant you were supposed to be helping me get more money, not lose it."

"If everything goes right then we'll both be getting a great mountain of money, my dear. You have yet to appreciate how popular Blaise has become," Pansy replied before frowning. "I'll chalk your ignorance up to the fact that you never leave the house."

"And we both know the why behind that, don't we?" Draco snapped right back. He had resumed his pacing from earlier. While Blaise's tardiness had helped him tremendously the night before, today he wanted to strangle him for it.

"Draco, please for once in your life can you listen to me? There's no sense making a potion if you're going to have to be pulled away from it before it's finished. You'll be angrier than you already are; I've witnessed it firsthand," Pansy said before striding over towards him and directing him back towards the couch. "Can you just relax for once in your life? All you ever do is work. It's quite annoying, if you're asking me to be honest."

"I've never once asked you to be honest," Draco grumbled. Still, he allowed himself to be pulled onto the couch, and he tried his best to get his mind off all the time that was passing him by.

"You're an impossible man, you know that?" Pansy huffed, hands on her hips as she looked down at him. "Can you just trust me for once, darling? This is important."

"Oh, and my potion making isn't important then?" Draco snapped back. He leaned forward on the couch, but didn't get up.

"You can be such a child sometimes, you know that? You had a much better grasp on how everything works back in school," Pansy replied, frowning at her friend before turning away and starting to pace. "Potions aren't everything, you know. It's the publicity that really gets the job done. You get people talking and they'll buy anything of yours just to say they have it."

"So I might as well just give up creating new potions and instead start publishing books about how to get into Blaise Zabini's pants, shall I?" Draco asked as his fireplace flared to life.

"I wouldn't bother with that, my darling Draco," Blaise said, a huge grin on his face as he stepped out of the fireplace and threw a handful of magazines onto his friend's coffee table. "After the absolute mayhem you helped me cause last night I'm not going to have eyes for anyone but you for a long time." He strode over to Pansy and picked her up, spinning her around. "And this wonderful woman right here? A magnificent genius! Pure and simple!"

Draco leaned over to look at the top magazine. 'Blaise Zabini Finally Settling Down?' read the first one. He scoffed as he looked through the rest. 'Seth Snape Makes An Appearance With Playboy Blaise Zabini', 'Zabini and Snape Cause An Uproar', 'Blaise Zabini: Gay?'. "This is the type of rubbish that passes for news these days?" Draco asked, finally getting up from the couch to get away from the magazines. "I think I'm glad I've been confined to my home all these years."

"Self-confinement, you mean," Pansy corrected as Blaise set her down.

"Something that must change, Draco, darling," Blaise said, picking up the first magazine and shoving it under Draco's nose. "Look at these. I haven't been this popular since I accepted the job as an Unspeakable. This is absolutely brilliant!"

Draco ripped the magazine away from his friend and threw it into his fireplace. "It's absolute rubbish is what it is. You two are making me into a laughing stock!"

"Accio magazine," Blaise said, fanning the fires away from the magazine as it was pulled from the fire. "We're making you into a household name, Draco!" he said, frowning at the damage that had been done to the pages in front of him. "Think about how many more books you could sell if your name was on everyone's lips."

"The numbers will speak for themselves," Pansy spoke up, hands on her hips as she glared at her stubborn author. "Give it a week or two, and we'll compare book sales. You'll thank us for this, darling."

"This ploy at being famous isn't going to get us anywhere," Draco argued. "I create potions for a living! My readers don't care about who's shagging who, Parkinson. They're scholars, for Merlin's sake."

Pansy rolled her eyes. Honestly, after all this time as his editor she would have thought some sort of trust would have developed. "Give it a month, Draco. If your book sales don't double I'll leave it alone. But if they do …"

Blaise swung his arm around Draco. He smirked. "That's when the real fun can begin, eh, Pans?"


A month later Harry Potter was pouring over the same magazines that had been on Draco's coffee table. He had been looking at them all month. Trying to find some personal information about Seth Snape that didn't turn into a dead end. It was true he had published in America before coming to Britain. It was also true that Pansy Parkinson had been his editor throughout the course of his pen name. So, if he had been born in America exactly when had he met Parkinson? As far as he could find she had only ever made trips to America after Seth Snape had started publishing.

"You still looking through those gossip magazines?" Dean Thomas asked as he walked into their office holding a manila folder in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. "Give it a rest, will ya? People are starting to think you're cracking up, you know. And anyway," he said, dropping the folder on top of all the magazines scattering his partner's desk, "we've got real work to do."

Harry glared up at his friend for the interruption before flipping open the folder that was now in front of him. "The Bulstrodes?" he asked, looking back up at Dean. "They were pardoned after the war, weren't they?"

Dean rolled his eyes, but he was fighting a smirk. "Yeah, I thought you'd latch onto that pretty fast. But calm down, killer, and keep reading. They aren't suspected of anything; we're just doing a light house call. They were supposed to attend a Gala last night and never showed. Apparently it's very unlike them."

"What kind of Gala?" Harry asked, finally rising out of his seat. He took the folder and strode out the door, Dean following close behind as he kept reading.

"Nothing Death Eater related, Mr. Paranoid," Dean replied, putting a hand on his partner's shoulder and steering him out of the way of a concrete post. "It was Ministry funding. Completely on the up and up."

"Maybe that's why they didn't show up," Harry muttered under his breath.

Dean rolled his eyes again. It was hard not to with a partner like Harry. "Or maybe they just drank too much the night before and slept through it. Or maybe they forgot about it altogether. Or maybe they only accepted the invitation to be polite and never intended to show up in the first place. Let's just get to the apparition point and ask them, shall we?"

Harry finally glanced up from the files to frown at his partner. "You have to admit that this is a little fishy."

"Fishy how?" Dean snapped back. "Fishy, like, Seth Snape has been around for years, finally makes a public appearance, and then a month later a pardoned Death Eater family skips a Gala? Sounds more like you're trying a find a cause and effect that doesn't exist. Or trying to find hidden motives behind innocent acts. You really miss the war that much, Harry?"

Harry's frown deepened as his feet tripped him up. He quickly recovered. "Of course I don't, Dean. It's just …" His brows furrowed as he handed the manila folder off to his partner and stepped up to the apparition point.

The bright halls of the Ministry were quickly replaced with an overcast road leading up to an even drearier looking mansion. And Harry quickly picked up his triade as Dean appeared on his right side.

"It just doesn't make any sense that someone … some potions master would pick up the name Snape. Even if he didn't know Snape (which seems unlikely), surely Parkinson would have told him when she became his editor? And of all the first names he could have picked … Seth? … Appointed by? Surely that wasn't just a coincidence."

"Harry, mate," Dean sighed as he walked up to the dreary mansion. "Give it a rest, yeah? You said it's been his pen name since Parkinson's been his editor. So maybe she picked it out. Mate wanted to be anonymous, Parkinson suggested the name, and he didn't know enough to say no. Where are the holes in that theory?"

"Parkinson willingly named someone as 'Appointed by Snape'? That seems pretty disrespectful, don't you think? Especially if the guy had never met Snape in his life. Is it a joke to play on people? Or to play on this Seth guy? Did Parkinson not think he was going anywhere and slapped an offensive pen name on him?"

"I don't know, Harry," Dean sighed as they approached the door. He arched an eyebrow at his partner. "But can we drop it until this case is settled? Or for another month so my sanity doesn't break? Seth Snape hasn't been seen since his awards ceremony. And since then he's published another book and is helping Hogwarts up their Potions curriculum. You really think he has time to be running around in the shadows and doing …" He frowned before knocking on the door in front of him. He turned towards Harry. "Exactly what is it that you think he's doing, again?"

"I told you: I don't know!" Harry snapped as he turned to face his partner head on. "Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I just know he's not who he says he is! And I expected you of all people to believe me! Remember Hogwarts? When I was dubbed crazy multiple times a year just to end up right in the end? You think this is different? Not to mention the fact that you're supposed to be my partner!"

"Harry, these are different times, god damn it!" Dean argued back, just as loud. "There are no more crazy warlords trying to kill half our population! No one's hiding in the woodwork anymore. You made sure of that!" Dean sighed as he forced the glare off his face. "And you raising red flags all over the place?" he asked, now speaking in a quieter voice. "That's just making people think that you wanna bring the dark times back. No one wants to hear it, okay, mate?"

"So just because people find it unpleasant I'm supposed to ignore it?" Harry asked, not bothering to drop his own volume. "What if that had happened during Hogwarts? Just because people find it unpleasant doesn't mean it's not happening!"

"I know that!" Dean yelled back. "I lived through it too, remember? But just because you think something's off or someone's doing something doesn't mean you need to alert everyone to it, okay? You need to gather evidence so the dots connect! You can't just go around accusing people of things you have no proof on!"

"So what am I supposed to do? If I hadn't acted on hunches before we wouldn't be here right now! We'd either be dead or answering to Voldemort!"

Dean couldn't stop himself from flinching at the name, even after all this time. "I know that, okay, Harry?" he said quietly, looking around them. "Could you calm down, please? You're going to alert the whole neighborhood at the rate you're going."

Harry frowned at him before looking ahead to the door in front of them. "That's a good point, actually," he said, his voice now a lot more even. "Why do you think no one's come to the door? Surely they would have heard us by now?"

Dean matched his partner's frown, but pointed it at the door. "Yeah, that is odd. Maybe they went out of town?"

Harry tried the door to find it unlocked. "No wards," he told his partner, brows furrowed. "Be on your guard."

Dean nodded before drawing his wand and following in behind Harry. "Mister and Missus Bulstrode!" he called in a loud voice. "We're arurors from the Ministry! Some of your neighbors were worried concerning your whereabouts! We mean you no harm! But your door was open, so we're coming in!"

Harry glanced around the entrance before advancing on a crouch, his wand in front of him. "Mister and Missus Bulstrode! Please answer for your own safety!" he warned. As soon as he turned the corner to the main living room his wand dropped.

In front of him were three bodies. Above them in their blood read 'For He Who Betrays Shall Not Live'.

"So, this would be considered evidence, yeah?" Harry asked as soon as Dean stopped beside him.

"Hey, I never said that you were wrong that something was going on, mate," Dean answered, dropping his own wand. "I'll call it in. You comb the rest of the house."

TBC


A/N:

Thank you all for the reviews! Please keep it up! Haha.

I'm having a good time with this story, and I hope everyone's enjoying it as much as I am.

You guys sure are hard on Harry (and not in the good way *wink wink* *nudge nudge*). Draco's just as stuck in the past; it's just affected him differently than Harry. They're both nutcases about it, but, I promise, they will both eventually get better. Just be patient with them; it's hard to break a decade-old habit.