chapter II.

Hey there :)

I´m back :) Sorry, it took so long - but I decided to study for my exams instead of continuing my fanfiction, so forgive the delay ;)

Hope, you will enjoy reading this chapter - have fun :))

Disclaimer: I do not own the world of Harry Potter, alls characters recognizable are the very own property of J.K. Rowling.

The next morning as I woke up, my head felt twice its normal size.

There was a clattering noise coming from the kitchen and the smell of eggs and bacon reached my nose. The second I recognized the arome, I ran to the bathroom.

When I came back into the kitchen, Dom patted my head patronizingly.

„There now. You should eat something - it is like a hangover. You feel sick first, but once you have some breakfast, you will feel a lot better. I still remember Gran telling us that…"

My brain was working really slowly still, but once her words had fully reached me, realization dawned on me.

„You drugged me, you bitch!"

Casually shrugging her shoulders, she hopped onto the counter and started digging in her scrambled eggs.

„I had to make sure, you would not bolt again - we really need you for this case. Also I intend for you to stay a little bit longer. By the way, I did not even use that much of the dreamy -" ignoring my death glare that must have looked confused, she added „ - dreamless potion. Just a few drops to make sure, you would sleep nice and deep and would not be bothered by any nightmares."

Snorting annoyed, I grabbed some bacon, making sure to sit down on the chair as far away from her as possible.

Of course she did not care, pushing a huge steaming cup of coffee wordlessly into my direction, when suddenly there was a noise from the front door.

Actually, it was more of a loud crashing rumbling, followed by some pretty nasty swear words.

„For God´s sake, Dom! What the French?!"

„Language, Scory-hon, language!"

With that she hustled towards the hall, stopping in the door to turn around and stage whisper over her shoulder:

„Had to make sure, I would notice, if you decided to run, no matter of the potion. Didn´t you use to sleepwalk…? Oh by Merlin´s earwax, Scorpius, just shut up."

When they came back together, Scorpius was still swearing and rubbing his nose, stopping dead and in midsentence, when he saw me.

„What the hell is SHE doing here?!"

Only rolling her eyes, Dom pointed towards a chair commandingly.

„SHE is here, because she has nowhere else to go yet, until she gets a flat of her own."

She ignored my objection, that I pretty well had even my own house - in Ireland, thank you very much - and continued in a singing voice:

„I decided, we could share some brilliant rebounding time!"

I nearly choked on my coffee and glared at her accusingly.

„You drugged me! I am so not rebounding with you!"

My cousin just shrugged her shoulders, murmuring something that sounded a lot like „details…", before turning to Scorpius, who decided to pick on me instead.

„She drugged you? Stop whining, she broke my nose!"

This time him being the one to receive my glare - that once again did not really seem to make a big impression to be added - I was about to bring up, Dominique breaking my nose the night before, but was cut short by said person.

„Get over it, both of you. We have to plan how we will continue in this case, because I think, we really have a problem here."

I swallowed my objections together with my bacon and moved closer against my obvious antipathy.

Two pairs of eyes lay on Dom, one stormy grey, the other the color of green amber.

With a deep sigh she stretched out her long legs under the table and looked at both of us seriously.

„We need to get Lily as informed as possible and I did not want to do that in the auror office. I believe we have a mole."

Scorpius sat up straight, but before he could interrupt, Dominique looked him deep into the eyes and added: „I am pretty sure. Frey had to go undercover, because the triad discovered her being our double agent."

That piqued both our curiosity and we jiggled closer again.

When she finally continued, Dom sounded sad and unbelievably tired.

„I do not know, which of our aurors it is and I do not know, how we will be able to find out, who he - or she - is. It is nearly impossible to smuggle somebody into the office - after all, there are regular checks, that you can neither avoid nor trick."

As I cocked my head unbelievingly, Scorpius filled me in on the regular blood tests, the patronus´ checks and several other control mechanisms that would make it nearly impossible to abduct and replace an auror.

After a couple seconds of silence, I dared to voice my thoughts.

„What if they had not replaced an auror, but got some of their own people into the training program? Of course, that would cost a lot of time, but then - time is, what the triad have. They existed for hundreds of years. In England they have been active since around 1930.

There could be thousand of members, who do not look like they belong to any triad, but secretly might be insiders."

For a moment Scorpius did not look at me with contempt, but nodded in agreement.

„You are right, but then again - how do we find out, who works for them? I mean, we can´t arrest any Chinese, any Asian or however ANYBODY without being sure.

We do not have the smallest clue how to identify them…"

Dominique looked as if her mind would burst out her head in a second, if she tried to think any harder, but staid silent.

Suddenly she burst out:

„Professor Chang!"

I was sure, we both looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

„Yes, Dom, you know, I hated that stupid transfiguration bitch, but then again - that´s not a good enough reason to ship her off to Azkaban…"

„Neither is her looking Chinese… I do not even know, where her family used to be from exactly," Scorpius added with the roll of his eye.

She shook her head violently.

„No, I mean, she might know some more Chinese wizards. And even though I think, we should trust as little people as possible - I bet, she counts to the ones we can actually rely on not being a part of the British triad…"

Scorpius did not look very pleased and I was not too happy either, but

Dominique looked at us with so much determination, that I decided to better not interrupt her plan.

Still I had the feeling, that we were far away from any kind of success.

„Scorpius, you were not right with your comment about us not having a clue about their identification.

Their sign is the dragon and they do have secret symbols and communicate by a fingercode."

He shrugged his shoulders and an arrogant annoyance clouded his glance once again, when he glared at me.

„Yeah, fine - but it are SECRET symbols and that fingercode? Well, it is a damn CODE, so we are as far as we used to be ten seconds ago."

I shrugged my shoulders, mimicking him and casually leaned back in my chair.

„Fine. Good to know, that you do not care about me knowing some of the

secret symbols and being able to communicate with that fingerCODE."

All eyes were an me and suddenly there was hope in them, too.

We had decided not to tell the team about our fear of a spy in our own rows - after all, that would have made everybody very mistrustful and had warned said spy - or spies.

Dom had also got us to agree, to not speak about me knowing a good part of the triade´s fingercode. We agreed, that nobody knowing about this little core competence of mine, might come in handy later on.

So as we all sat around the big meeting table in the conference room once again, Scorpius was presenting the information they all had collected up to that day.

„There are a couple of thousand triades in China, who form alliances whenever helpful to their cause.

Since the 1930s they came over to Britain, especially smuggling and dealing with opium. The muggle and wizard triades have been working separately mostly, but used to commit mostly the same crimes:

Extortion, money laundering, prostitution and trafficking - whereas the muggle triades obviously stayed with human trafficking and slavery, the wizard triades also engaged in occasional dragon trading, which market has expanded over the last century."

With a short nod into my direction, he continued.

„Obviously this is the reason for Ms. Potter to join in on our investigations.

On top of the expanding problem of dragon trade circles, we have to deal with the expansion and danger of a new drug. The underground drug cartels, mostly clustered in Nocturne Alley, use the name liúxīng - which basically means shooting star.

This new drug stands out for its massive inebriant effect, as well as its extremely high potential for addiction. Use it one or two times - there is no way out."

A couple of the aurors around us murmured nervously, obviously only Wood and his murdered partner had investigated in that matter and so he seemed to be the only one fully aware of its effects.

After a second, he looked up and with a dark rumbling voice spoke his thoughts:

„This stuff… the addicts lose their minds within not even four months. It starts with extreme nervousness, nausea and forgetfulness. They continue to use that shit - and they do, they always do - and the effects go further: The forgetfulness gets stronger, they get confused and you can see their eyes going hazy. It looks like their pupils get milky."

He had to swallow hardly, before he continued.

„With that physical effect come hallucinations and the confusion obviously also is caused by estranged vision. I have not met anybody in my underground experience, who got out after that stage. They have not more than two months left after they reach that level of addiction - needing the stuff daily in expanding doses to overplay the effects."

It looked like he was not able to continue, so Dom took over.

„As Hunter discovered, we are not sure, what is worse: Dying from that stuff after four months or trying to get it out of your system.

The withdrawal symptoms are almost as bad as the symptoms of the drug:

The confusion gets worse due to the rapide deterioration - the vision gets worse without the drug, the addicts go blind. Also the physical pain that comes with abstinence seems to be far worse from any drug the healers ever encountered."

Hunter´s eyes looked haunted and he fixated the middle of the table, chosing not to look at anybody. I suddenly was spooked by the thought of what he might had to see during his investigations.

After a couple of seconds, Scorpius spoke up again:

„Our mole had to go into hiding. Her identity seemed to have gotten out, but she made it to safety. She went undercover, which is good of course.

But now, we do not have any informant left in the triad."

A nervous murmur went through the aurors sitting at the table and it took a couple of seconds until Dom had everyone´s attention again.

„I know, that throws us back a lot. And I will be honest to you - at the moment, all we can do is try and investigate more in that drug dilemma, Hunter just explained. That is our only option for the moment.

The dragons that were stolen from China years ago - we cannot investigate in that anymore, neither were we there when it happened, nor can we go back to those old files. The Chinese do not really cooperate that well with us. Also a lot of cases concerning the triades simply get dropped there - the corruption and influence is immense."

Without anybody expecting it, Ty Carter - the second auror who lost his partner, as I recalled - jumped off his chair and banged his fist on the table.

„YOU! IT IS ONLY YOUR DAMNED FAULT!"

You could hear everyone breathing nervously, nobody daring to break the silence.

Before Dom or Scor could say anything, Carter continued with a tense voice, that barely contained his fury:

„You are responsible for Jacob´s death. For Ben Cole - for Collins and Prince. It is your fault and both of you know it. You are not experienced enough to be level A aurors, the only reason you got that position, are your family connections to Potter."

The silence felt so thick, I was not sure if I could continue breathing. Right

before I dared to take in a shaking breath, his voice - deadly serious and so accusingly, it made my heart hurt for the two young aurors standing in the front - cut through the quietness again.

„This whole investigations - it will lead to nothing. There is no concept behind all of this - you two do not know, what you are doing.

The triades have been existing for hundreds of years, there is no way we can stop them. They always are one step ahead and there is no way, YOU of all people will stop them.

YOU send us into battle, into undercover missions, that already got four of us killed. And if - and I really doubt it - there will be any progress or success, the two of you will boast and glow with your leading capabilities, your bravery and the results.

Guess what: Your whole career - it is built on our and our partner´s corpses and neither of you cares!"

With that he knocked over his chair, got up and left the room with determined strides.

All he left was a pondering silence that none of us dared to break.

I had been standing in front of my father´s office door for almost five minutes already, but had not dared to knock yet.

After Carter had left and the displeasing quiescence had started to spook all of us, Dominique had cleared her throat awkwardly and addressed the whole

team on the matter.

In my opinion, she had done brilliantly - or at least as brilliant as you can do, after being accused of literally murdering your whole unit to get promoted.

She had expressed her regret about the four dead aurors once more and also her repentance over Carter´s accusation. That this case was horribly frustrating and she and Scor were just as dissatisfied about it as everybody else.

Also she had stated, that it made her unbelievably sad, how Carter seemed to have gotten the impression, they did not care for the team´s loss - and how he deeply misunderstood their determination to continue the investigations against all odds.

She had insisted, that in her opinion giving up now, would only mean that they did not value the deaths of their comrades and that she was not willing to let that happen - even if she would be the last and only auror to decide and work on that case.

Insisting on everbody to leave who felt like Carter that Scorpius and her were not suited for their position, she had openly forced anybody to speak up, if they mistrusted her.

When nobody did - her speech had not only proven her leading abilities, but had been scary as hell as well - the team had been divided and send to Nocturne Alley to investigate and collect more information about that new drug.

Once everybody beside Scor and me had left, Dom had sunken down on a chair like a marionette, whose strings had been cut.

In that moment I had felt so much pity and pride at the same time, that I was unable to word either of it, but her partner had not been so out of words.

As if he was repeating the words, whispering them right into my ear, I could hear Scorpius´ slightly hoarse voice in my head:

„Dom, that was probably one of the bravest things, I ever saw you do."

She had simply buried her head in her hands and a soft shaking of her shoulders was the only sign for her silent tears.

Within a heartbeat Scor had stood by her side, hugging her to his chest and swaying her back and forth.

The moment had been so intimate, that I had left the room quietly, assured that Dom was in the best hands to comfort her.

Also I knew, I had to do something important.

With a deep breath, squaring my shoulders and telling myself to calm the fuck down, I raised my hand for the fifth time - this time not stopping in mid motion, but knocking lightly on the mahogany door.

When a familiar voice asked me to come in, I took another breath and finally decided to not longer run, but start and make things right.

With that I stepped into the room, trying to leave my fears behind by telling myself I was not facing a Hungarian Horntail, but only my biological father.

And even though I would have preferred a dragon at this moment, for once I did not turn around and flee, but stepped into the room with a shaky breath.

Hey guys,

I hope, you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I did writing it. Things finally start to get going after all :)

I can´t wait for it to continue.

Nevertheless I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions - so if you could sacrifice fifteen more seconds after reading to leave even the tiniest little sentence of criticism or praise, you would be forever in my heart ;)

Seriously, writing this story is a lot of fun and I do write it for myself of course - but then, I also do write it for the people, who read it and I would appreciate it a lot, to get even the smallest response.

You can even leave a comment anonymously - even if you´re not registered.

Thanks anyway,

Lots of love,

xxNim