During his daily paperwork session, an auror burst into Harry's office. "Good morning," he said jovially, not looking up from his desk. "Thank you for knocking," he said somewhat sardonically. The auror didn't speak. Finally looking up, Harry found Chloe looking stricken. "What?"
"Another victim, Harry; you'd better come." Harry jumped up and followed the investigative auror to where Vicky, the forensics expert, Maggie, head of witness care within their team, and three other investigative aurors from their team were waiting. In Ken's hand was a portkey.
"Let's go," Harry said, grim-faced. Activating the portkey, Ken led them all to the Shambles, a street in York which blended magic and muggle wares effortlessly. The street was so haphazard that spells to hide magical shops went unnoticed by muggles. However, on this occasion, there was no one to be seen. The whole area had been cordoned off.
The police were already on the scene. Harry pulled out his fake police badge and approached the officer examining the male body that lay dead on the floor. "Cause of death?" Harry asked. The officer shrugged, perplexed.
"We think drugs, but unsure until there's been a post-mortem," she replied, the dazing charms on Harry's badge making her trust him immediately.
"That's our department," Harry said with an easy smile. "We'll take it from here." Not even batting an eyelid, the officer called away her team and they returned to their vehicles. The wonders of magic. In the corner of his eye, Harry saw a flash of Chloe's peroxide blonde hair as she came to kneel next to him.
"The witch who reported it reckoned she recognised the symptoms," Chloe informed him in low tones, adjusting herself on the cobblestones.
"Or recognised this?" Harry said grimly as he pulled a small potions vial from the dead man's jacket. It was the same type of potions bottle as Vicky had sent to have examined by forensics last week. Harry sighed, scratching the back of his head. "Wallet?" he questioned as Chloe fiddled around in the man's pockets. Chloe nodded, successfully retrieving a wallet.
"ID says Donald Michael Butcher, aged 19," Chloe said, not bothering to reprimand her boss as he swore. 19-years-old and dead. "From Thirsk, just down the road," she told him. Harry nodded.
"Vicky, do what you need to do. The rest of you, look around for anything. Ask the crowd if they saw anything, how it happened," Harry ordered them, before taking another look at the body and swearing.
XXX
"He breaks all the fucking patterns!" Harry said, punching the whiteboard. "Not only is he not from London, he's younger than usual, without a job, without the money to buy the drugs really. He's a muggle by all accounts - no wand found on the body. We're searching the close-to database as we speak."
"Vicky's speaking to them about the magical signature, Harry," Ginny said, striding in towards the end of Harry's rant. Harry didn't even allow himself a glance at her. "She said they'll have something within the hour."
"But it does seem to be the same signature as on the first bottle?" Harry checked, not looking away from the board, looking, searching for clues.
"Yes," she replied.
"It's odd we've only found two, isn't it?" Lewis pondered. "Where do the other bottles go? If it's taken as a potion, rather than as a pill, how long is it before they die?"
Stacey spoke up, "it seems to be about twenty minutes, but maybe it affected Butcher faster and that's why he was still in the middle of the busiest street in York."
Harry collapsed onto a chair. Ginny said that she'd go and make a batch of coffee and Harry waved her off. Did Butcher want to make a statement by dying in the oldest street in Britain, on one of very few streets where magic and muggle came together? They'd published the name of the potion and what it contained days ago, so anyone who was buying it knowingly was suicidal, surely, because it killed. Unless they'd not seen any papers. So did Butcher know what it was? Did he want people to see him die?
Or were they not telling them what the potion contained? Was it being sold as something else? A cure for something perhaps? Was it murder? Were the victims being targeted? Harry threw his head back. If only they could find out what these people had in common, then they'd know. But, so far, that appeared to be nothing, other than that they'd got the potion from London.
But Butcher hadn't. Had he travelled to London to get this thing, this possible cure? Was it rare and well-advertised by this new gang in London? Or had the gang been unnoticed and spread as far as York? Were there dealers all over the country, over the world? Who knew.
"News, boss," Vicky's voice came from the door. Harry stood up immediately. Every auror in the room looked up from what they were doing. "The signature is from the manufacturers," she told him and her tone told Harry that she knew that he was going to be disappointed. Harry swore. "Obviously it's the same manufacturer because it was the same signature, so they seem to be from the same batch, provided that we don't believe in coincidences."
"Which we don't," Harry sighed. "Fuck!" he swore, slinging the file across the room.
Where it proceeded to hit Ginny right in the face, making her spill a jug of coffee down her legs. "Shit!" Harry swore again, jumping up. "Ginny, oh my life, I am so sorry," he begged, drying her off immediately. He fixed the jug with barely a thought. Her face was bright red and she didn't seem able to speak. "Ginny, I'm so sorry," he continued, leading her over to a chair. She shook her head, ginger head shaking and eyes clearing.
"It's fine, Harry," she replied, staring down at her jean-covered legs. "My legs don't even hurt," she said slowly in a confused tone. Harry's eyes were tracing the pattern on the carpet.
Maggie chuckled from her seat in the corner, "You wouldn't believe how often we spill that jug, girl. It's charmed."
"Oh," Ginny said, her face still ridiculously red. Looking up, Harry saw and found her endearing. She tucked her hair behind her ear. Harry wanted to pull it back out. "Well, that was embarrassing," she said with a giggle.
"I'm so sorry," Harry said again, in pleading tones. "Are you okay?"
Ginny laughed and nodded. "Harry, it's fine. All is, I'll probably have a black eye tomorrow. You threw that file with some force, Harry," she admonished him. Harry laughed and wrapped an arm around her, placing a kiss on the top of her head.
As he would to any of the women in his department, he assured himself. The lack of surprise from anyone in his department assured him of this, also.
"Drinks are on me tonight," he promised and Ginny cackled.
"A win as far as I'm concerned."
XXX
With a 12-8 the next day, HPHPHP were at the Chimera that evening. Frustrated by dead end after dead end, alcohol was top on their list of things that would fix it. Harry got the first round in and the team collectively sighed as the first taste hit their lips. There was nothing worse than a case that would not open up for them.
"I'm gonna get fucked," Ruby announced, downing the vodka orange that Harry had bought her.
"Here, here," Ginny said, clinking her pint glass together with Ruby's and sharing a laugh.
"I don't even want to think about the case for the next few hours. I want to pretend it does not exist," Harry told them forcefully. Ginny tittered next to him. "Someone tell me something interesting. Alex! Bet you've got a story for us," he demanded of the Mexican-born auror, hitting him on the back. Alex coughed slightly.
"Oh, well, I guess this is as good a time as any," he said, scratching his head. "Amelia is pregnant!" Alex announced. Gasps and cheers lit up around the table. Harry clapped him on the back and called over a waiter to bring a bottle of champagne.
"Alex, mate, that is fantastic," Harry told him genuinely, "that has properly cheered me up." Alex gave him a grin that split his face.
"Does your wife not want you at home tonight? How long have you known? Are you having a boy or a girl? What are you going to name them?" Chloe asked in rapid succession, desperate for more information. Harry snorted.
"Someone's broody," he jested in a sing-song voice. Chloe threw a nut at him and he caught it swiftly.
"Are you allowed to be broody if you're single?" she questioned, lifting her drink as if in toast, and Ken chuckled, patting her shoulder.
"Chloe, darling, you're barely thirty!" he protested and glared at Lewis, Cameron and Ruby as they started to make clock noises.
"She's a witch! She can have children until she's like ninety!" Stacey said and Chloe snorted.
"Cheers for the back up, Stace, but I'd rather not leave it til then." Ginny giggled, finishing off her drink.
"Don't worry, Chloe, we can be single pringles together," she said, grasping hands across the table, Ginny's plain fingernails rather paling in comparison to Chloe's long red fake ones. They giggled as Chloe left a kiss on Ginny's knuckles.
"Are there really only three of us?" Harry said, his mouth dropping slightly. "Well, I feel like a failure!"
"Harry, you're 26 and the Deputy Commissioner of the Magical Law Enforcement department of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," Chloe declared dramatically, "I'd hardly call you a failure."
Harry rolled his eyes and began to pour out the champagne for everyone. "Still live alone, though," he groused. Ginny punched him in the shoulder.
"We're trying to be happy here! Alex's wife is pregnant. Someone else give us some news!" Ginny demanded.
"You're awfully demanding for a new girl, you know," Maggie commented dryly.
"Yes, well, I am new, so you should be kind to me," Ginny said, shrinking slightly with a giggle. "Let's play a game!"
XXX
Harry and Ginny stumbled into their building at two o'clock in the morning. They'd stayed at the pub until closing time, then blindly stumbled around Liverpool for a while, as members of the team gradually left. By the end, it was just Harry and Ginny, sat on the steps outside Lime Street station with a portion of chips and gravy - a first for Ginny.
"Does this mean you're indebted to me for life then?" Harry said when they had locked the door behind them. Passing the empty living room, they headed straight to the lift.
"Just for introducing me to chips and gravy?" Ginny scoffed. "Pal, you hit me in the face with a file today!"
Harry snorted as he pressed the button for the lift. "That's not fair, darling, that was an accident! I purposefully introduced you to the wonder that is chips and gravy," he slurred. Ginny giggled, leaning against him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and placed a kiss on her messy hair. "Your hair's a mess," he commented.
She shoved him in the side. "Mean!" she said, pouting. Harry chuckled and poked her in the side. She gasped in shock and poked him back. Poking turned to pushing and soon enough, two very drunk aurors were lay on the floor outside the lift, which had arrived quite a while ago at this point.
Ginny began to laugh raucously. "I never had this much fun before, you know, Harry," she declared when she'd got all of her laughs out.
He propped himself up on his elbow and turned at her. "Really?"
She shook her head. "I loved the Academy and I love my mates, but this is like real life fun, you know?" Harry chuckled. "Hey, don't mock me."
"But it's so easy," Harry faux-whinged. Ginny pouted, leaving Harry to reach across and brush it with his thumb.
"Harry," Ginny whispered. Who knew who moved first? They were kissing before they even noticed that they were. Lips against lips and bodies against bodies. They would never know how far they would have gone.
A cough broke them apart. Ginny's face flamed red as she looked up. It was a woman from the building, fifth floor, about sixty years old. "I have been on a plane for eight hours! Is this what I need to come back to?" she screeched. Harry covered his ears with his hands.
"Could you speak a little bit quietly?" Ginny asked politely. She pointed at Harry as she said, "he's old, so his ears are sensitive." Harry broke out into giggles.
The lady, with her suitcase and massive pink handbag, harrumphed and got into the open lift. "I shall be reporting you to the landlord!"
"Have fun with that!" Harry called back with a snort. "We should go to bed, Gin," he said, jumping up and offering her a hand. Ginny nodded and Harry nodded too. "Separate beds."
"Separate beds," Ginny repeated.
XXX
At 12 o'clock, Harry greeted Ginny at her desk with a mug of coffee - dash of milk and no sugar - and leaned against the divider between her desk and Robin's. "Good afternoon," he said and she looked up at him. Spotting the coffee, her eyes flashed.
"You're too good to me," she said, taking the huge mug of caffeine and blowing him a kiss. "I'm just gonna write up my report from my visit to the family member of that victim and then I'm free to run leads," she replied and Harry grinned. She really was fitting in well.
"Awesome, I want you and Robin to go and speak to the every shop or market stall owner on the shambles. See if anyone knows him. All I know is that he's got a cousin who's a muggleborn - she's a poor witch so she gave up on magic and works at a primary school in Leeds. Ken's visiting her this afternoon," Harry informed her, easily responding to each question that he anticipated from her.
"I'll be in my office if you need-"
"Harry!" Vicky called from her desk on the other side of the office. "There's an LEA from AM here to see you."
AM. Anna McLaughlin. Witness Care.
Lead.
Calling for Maggie, Harry walked as fast as possible over to the young law enforcement assistant (LEA) who was waiting by his office door. Quite tall and falsely attractive, the young man seemed to be like most LEAs, who thought they were aurors and helped the department massively. Of course, there were many who were good and could actually do things without help. But there were far too many who lived up their own arseholes.
Harry shook the LEA's hand nonetheless and asked for his name on the walk to the witness care department. He provided it - Benji. Benji wanted to be an auror but didn't get the grades at Hogwarts. Like most LEAs. Rather than get the grades, you could work for five years as an LEA and receive a reference if you still wanted the job. Most dropped out.
Upon arriving in Witness Care, Harry dispensed with Benji's unnecessary accompanying service and found Anna swiftly. Maggie entered the room while Anna filled Harry in on the facts: the young woman in the interrogation room knew Clara Beddon and Joe Sitter. The only two victims that they had seen conversing.
Tuning into the room, Harry watched as Maggie greeted the girl, whose name Anna provided Harry with: Eliza Beddon, sister of Clara. As Maggie worked, Harry once again appreciated the need for someone like Maggie in every department. She was easily the best at what she did, perhaps beaten only by Anna.
Within twenty minutes, they knew the whole story. Margaret and John Beddon had three daughters and a son: Clara, Eliza, Joanna and Peter. On Joanna's eleventh birthday, when her older twin sisters were fourteen, they received a visitor and, the next September, Joanna was swept away to Hogwarts. In her third year, Peter got cancer. When Jo came home for Christmas, they had already told them that it was terminal. The whole family pleaded with her, over and over, to do something, to use her magic. Jo couldn't and the whole family, except Eliza, blamed her. Jo moved out the next summer and they never saw her again, until her seventeenth birthday, when the family she had moved in with told her that she had killed herself.
Eliza watched Clara deteriorate. Their parents both died within the next three years and it was just Eliza and Clara left. Clara would make comments. If only she had magic. She could bring them back from the dead, etcetera. They could be together again. Eliza knew this wasn't true. Jo had told them that even magic had its limits.
Anyway, Eliza sent Clara to meet the family that had looked after Jo when their own family hadn't. That family, too, was muggleborn. Their son, Joe, had fallen in love with their Jo and, when they killed each other, blamed himself. Clara and Joe started spending more and more time together. They started seeing each other, or Eliza had thought so at least. Then, a week after Eliza had spoken to her sister about how odd it was that she was dating her dead sister's boyfriend, Clara turned up dead. And then so did Joe.
"Wow," Harry muttered. Eliza was officially alone in the world, no family. She was unmarried, unengaged in any sort of relationship. Harry had thought that he was hard done by, at times. There was no comparison to a woman who had lost her brother, two sisters and both parents.
Harry wandered back to HPHPHP, Maggie by his side, head full of thoughts. "I organised Eliza some therapy," Maggie said in the corridor entrance to the main HP common room. Harry nodded.
"Good."
"Harry, stop wallowing," Maggie ordered. "Let's go in and discuss what this means."
Harry chuckled and laid a hand on his colleague's shoulder. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Okay, Mags. You lead the way," he said, smiling.
XXX
"So, you think it was some sort of joint suicide?" Ginny shouted through Harry's apartment that evening.
"What did I say about leaving the case at work?" Harry called back from his bedroom. Ginny nodded, pondering her surroundings. It was obviously much nicer than her apartment, hers being empty and all. Her back was starting to ache from sleeping on the couch downstairs. Harry had caught her there too many times now and she didn't want him to find out what a desperate state she was in.
"Who is our landlord?" was Ginny's next question. Harry emerged at his bedroom door, in full quidditch gear, finally. Ginny had been waiting fifteen minutes.
"Why do you ask?" Harry asked suspiciously.
"The other night, you mentioned something about that lady not being able to contact them," Ginny replied, biting her lip. Harry scratched the back of his neck.
"Oh, well, the thing is, I own this building," he said, dragging out the first five words. Ginny's jaw dropped.
"You what?"
Harry shrugged. "My parents left me some money and the goblins said that investing in property in London was a good idea. I own twenty buildings throughout the city, but this penthouse was my favourite," he informed her, picking up the case of quidditch balls from the table.
"So, I pay my rent to you?" Ginny questioned, fully away that he wanted the conversation to be over.
Harry sighed, stopping by the door. "Ginny, please don't make this weird. I'm no different just because I've got money, you know. It doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter to you because you've got it," Ginny grumbled. Sighing again, Harry put down the heavy case and approached Ginny, putting a hand on either shoulder.
"Ginny, I don't want this money. I would give you the whole lot, if you wanted it, just so you don't fall out with me over something so silly," he told her. Ginny smiled.
"The whole lot is unnecessary," she replied. "An Indian takeaway after training will do me just fine," Ginny said, giggling as Harry shoved her away jokingly.
He sighed dramatically. "If that is the price of your friendship, I will pay it a thousand times," he told her and, giggling, Ginny dragged them out of the apartment.
A/N: Good afternoon! I'm submitting this in the university library as a very annoying couple are flirting next to me. Library dates are the worst (I am not bitter at never having been asked on one, whatsoever). ANYWAY, here is a new chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. I LOVE REVIEWS. So, if you fancy it, it actually will make me write faster because I know I'm writing for someone else. Thank you so much for reading and I'll see you soonnnnn (probably. depending how fast I'm writing).