~Chapter 4~
~Smoke was billowing out of the bookshop. From the writhing, monster-like shapes it was forming, Agent Granger knew it was from Fiendfyre. Some stupid idiot had obviously gone and lost control of their magic, and with all the books around who knew how quickly it had all gone up? Now she had a sleepless night ahead of her involving freezing charms and potentially body-counting. Not that there was too much of the night left, now. The sky had begun to lighten to an indistinct grey. Coupled with the smoke drifting through the street, visibility was at an all-time-low. However, even if it had been noon on the clearest day in Knockturn Alley, she still would have missed the Unspeakable-trained Harry, as he slunk away from the blaze.~
Agent Granger swept her hair back into a prim bun with a flick of her wand, and bent slightly to examine a cigarette butt smouldering on the ground.
"Familiar," she mumbled. And indeed it was; she had come across these exact immaculately- rolled stubs before. Diagnostics (conducted through idle curiosity and in her own time) had revealed them to be a curious blend of Peruvian darkness powder, mandrake leaf and finest Columbian Gold. Too particular a taste for your typical Knockturn Alley denizen.
Granger had never been able to put a face to this particular vice, though.
After instinctively bagging it, she moved cautiously up to the bookshop and gripped her wand tightly in the approved manner.
Crack! Agent Granger spun and kicked the largest piece out of the smouldering ruins of the door.
Luckily for Harry, the boot-kick masked the sound of his disapparation.
Granger cast the Bubble Head charm on herself to protect from the waspish fumes still gusting from the store and gritted her teeth as she stomped right on in. In her peripheral vision she could see the disjointed fragments of broken spells; she counted several newly dead wards before noticing the crispy, blackened body of the store keep. She cooled, preserved and levitated the body in less than three seconds with three different spells, at the same time assessing the rest of the shop and approaching the secret-entrance.
She emerged thirty minutes later, the unidentified body bobbing along slowly behind her. She was absolutely covered in soot and decorated with a dark scowl on her face. The entire place contained nothing of use to her investigation; the Fiendfyre had done its obvious job of scouring the hideout of any recognisable bodies or information. Yet, Granger couldn't help shake the idea that Death Eaters were involved. The convenient location of the hideout certainly helped her in that. But what really niggled at her brain was whether the Death Eaters were the culprits, or the victims. Agent Granger had been very aware of the series of random-seeming 'attacks' that had been occurring without logical purpose over the last 18 months. It had coincided with the graduation of Hermione from Hogwarts, and she damn well knew this was related. A putrid smell of burnt human flesh entered her nostrils at that moment, dislodging that train of thought temporarily as she remembered the body floating faithfully behind her. She cursed silently in French, and apparated with the body to the morgue.
Returning to her desk at the Ministry, several floors above where she had deposited the burnt body to be identified, she thought hard about the reports gathered so far about the mystery mage who was supposedly spontaneously responsible in bringing down whole dens of Death Eaters, then irrationally, blowing up innocent pubs reputedly for not carrying a certain type of whiskey. That particular thought brought the young witch to the desk drawer in front of her, and she pulled out the half-gone bottle of golden-coloured whiskey. Pouring out a generous shot she took a bullet from the gun she always carried under her robes (constant vigilance). Grimacing, she popped the shell into her mouth and chugged back the alcohol. For some, it would take the edge off of clear thinking but for Granger, it seemed to amplify what she already had. Her thoughts turned once more to the events of the early morning and the knowledge that the person responsible was still on the run, and still completely a mystery to her and her department. If there was one thing that Hermione God-Damn Granger did not like, it was a wild card.
Agent HJ, as her friends called her – or rather, as her respectful acquaintances and slightly jealous co-workers called her – Agent HJ was a strong believer in laying out all the facts before reaching a conclusion.
For that reason, she spun in her seat and regarded the wall opposite. The entire surface was festooned in colourful scrawls and questions, feebly struggling post-it-notes, and case files joined up with little flags and multicoloured string. They all related in some way to the Mystery Mage.
"Dozens of explosions, scores of deaths, hundreds of violent assaults," she said aloud, taking a thoughtful nip from the whiskey bottle, and feeling her Vim and Imagination rising rapidly.
"Some of those assaults aggravated, many inexplicable. All attributed to a dark-haired 'fightin' drunk'. Can glass someone really artfully, by the reports. Foul-mouthed and smoking and filled with raw, brutal, animalistic sexual energy." She hated men like that.
Perusing the wall in detail, she frowned at a scrap of parchment that just said: "UNSPEAKABLE?" and shook her head restlessly. There was no way that could be right. Fingers drummed on the bottle; a stray ray of sun began to slowly make its way through the shutters and down the wall.
Granger's pretty peepers travelled to one set of paperclipped notes in particular: the earliest she could possibly link anything back to the mysterious man in black, and thus the highest on the timeline which sprawled across her office wall like the web of some insane bureaucratic spider.
These notes related to the disappearance of Ron Weasley in mysterious circumstances on the very day their class graduated. Death Eater attack? Spontaneous combustion? Ran off with an ugly fisherman's daughter? Nobody knew for sure.
Nobody knew, but everybody had cared. They had even dared to blame Hermione for his disappearance, it seemed to make sense to the Law Division's Head of Department at the time that a jealous and rejected mudblood would easily plan and carry out a murder.
With Harry's advice, she had challenged the smug Enforcer to a duel, and had blasted him apart like a worthless ragdoll. 'You keep what you kill' was the slogan carved into the door above her office, and it rang true for the department. Instead of being arrested, Hermione had acquired the most dangerous job in the entire Ministry, and boy did she revel in it.
(On a more literal level, she had also kept the bastardly Enforcer's skull, finding it was perfect for keeping pencils in after they got too stubby to be found easily).
What was kept secret from everybody, however, was that two people had died on that duelling court. The stupid and obnoxious Enforcer, along with sweet little Hermione J Granger's innocence. The memories had hit her unbidden, like a sledgehammer, and she took another long pull from her whiskey bottle, swaying slightly as she got up from her seat. Staring morosely at the spider web of information pinned in front of her, she thought of poor young Hermione.
Then she snorted. More like Hermy-ninny. There wasn't enough left of that Hermione to fill a teaspoon. Now she was Hermione God-Damn Granger, the Ministry's Terrier, full of piss and vinegar and quite capable of knotting a man's arms behind him.
Not that she would. It was still By The Book Or Nothing for Agent Granger. But still, it was important to have a backup plan.
So yeah... Ron Weasley could suck it, was probably what came out of that particular bit of introspection, she thought, weaving unsteadily around the room on what now looked to her like three left feet.
Wait... who was it who used to say "suck it" all the time?
Inspiration hit her like a bolt from the blue. Another piece to the puzzle! Not much more than a suspicion, but it was a hefty one. It was beginning to make sense now! And she hadn't heard from him, either, in... well, in so long!
Hermione lurched towards the wall with her notes, drunkenly intent on imposing an entirely new pattern on the puzzle contained therein, when the room span and the carpet came up to meet her like a fist to the jaw.