Hey guys!

I'm SORRY I made you wait for this long! Honestly.

Now I'm back from vacation, but the fall semester just started, so there'll be lots of assignments, tests, etc...
I promise to keep writing this though, even though you may have to wait a little longer for the chapters to come out.

My editor (bless her soul) almost killed me for taking so long on this chapter, but (believe me) it's pretty difficult to live up to the expectations after the bombshell I dropped on you in the last chapter. That was why I took so long on this chapter.

Hope you like it! Please review, the reviews really mean a lot to me, and they're the reason I'm continuing this :)

- Ana

Nikita could feel the alcohol buzz kicking in as she took another sip of rum straight from the bottle. She knew that it was probably a bad idea to be resorting to Ana's methods of dealing with her issues, but it helped.

At least for the time being.

After their shift in the yearbook room ended, Nikita and Dan decided to take an hour to themselves, then meet by the Black Lake - an hour which Nikita decided to spend on a contemplative stroll around the Hogsmeade Village. Perhaps that would help clear her head. After all, even the idea of Richard Castle being a wizard seemed preposterous - the man was so entirely muggle that even the best aurors couldn't have identified him as a magical being - however the all the facts spoke against him. She wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up in the Hog's Head, but (almost against her own will) she found herself buying an entire bottle of dragon rum from the pub.

When her hour was up, she headed back to the Black Lake and, perhaps because she didn't have anything else to do, she started drinking. Which was how Dan found her a couple minutes later.

"Drinking on the job I see?" he raised an eyebrow incredulously. "I didn't think you were capable."

"Oh shut your face," she muttered back, beyond caring what her Captain thought of her at that moment.

"Well if you won't listen to my orders, at least recognise that it's quite rude to be drinking alone."

Silently, Nikita handed him the bottle, and he took a swig. Then he immediately spat it out.

"What is this crap?"

"Rum. This one is Ana's favourite actually," she explained. "Try it."

Cautiously, Dan lifted the bottle to his lips and took a careful sip.

"Interesting," he pondered. "It's not too bad, very…frosty."

He took a full on swig and continued, "still though, why are you drinking on the job?"

Nikita turned her gaze away from the lake to glance at her Captain.

"People lie," she said curtly.

"Well of course they do, for some of us it's in the job description," replied Dan.

"That's not what I meant."

"In that case please care to elaborate," he took another swig of her drink and lay back on the grass, patting a spot next to him as an invitation – one which Nikita, being used to following her Captain's orders, accepted without a second thought.

Lowering herself onto the ground beside the Captain, she plucked a white flower from a spot between them and immediately shredded it in her fingers. Dan didn't move, she knew he was waiting for her to speak.

"Sometimes you meet people and, for no reason at all, you feel like your life suddenly makes sense. You feel at home with them, no matter where you might be, and you feel like they can never disappoint you or break your trust, to the point where – when they do break it – you want to forget all about it and start over."

Dan turned his head to look at her, his usually lifeless dark eyes glinting with some unrecognisable emotion.

"Sometimes the only people you should trust are the ones who are unable to betray you."

That statement was so unexpected that Nikita pushed herself up on her elbows to get a better look at the man lying next to her. Dan's face, as usual, betrayed nothing. The calm expression with which he was chewing on a flower stem gave away no clues, but Nikita could still sense that something was amiss in the man's heart – perhaps that same something which made him the impersonal robotic character he was.

But all that contradicted the strange, almost human, declaration that had escaped his lips moments ago, and despite her own issue hanging fresh over her head, Nikita's curiosity was sparked.

"Like who?" she asked, laying back down and looking up at the passing by clouds, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Like me," came the reply, "like Travis, like Ryan."

He broke off.

"Like Ana?" added Nikita after a moment of silence.

The Captain snorted loudly.

"No, definitely not," he chuckled. "Like Vanessa perhaps, but not Ana."

What.

"Why not?"

"She's a Slytherin through and through," he explained. "Never trust a Slytherin if you value your life and reputation."

"You're a Slytherin as well," she retorted.

"Yes," he agreed, "but I'm also an auror, and that says a whole lot more."

"I don't associate with liars and manipulators," Nikita declared after another moment, "and I don't trust people lightly. But when I do trust someone, I expect them to follow through."

"Liars and manipulators are quite good at pretending to be trustworthy people," Dan chuckled, "that's really what our jobs are based on."

Nikita sighed and rolled over onto her stomach. It seemed her mind had entered a state where comprehension and analysis were having a rather difficult time, and she simply couldn't strain her brain any longer. She needed a break.

She sat up, reached for her now half-empty bottle, and looked around. It was getting dark and the first stars were beginning to show their presence in the sky. The Hogwarts castle was visible in the distance, magnificent as always with its magical lights and enchanting towers. It's been years since she'd last sat here staring at it, and only now she realised how much her life had changed since then. Her family was gone – dead within a short few hours of her eighteenth birthday celebration, the freak accident driving her into a spiral of life-changing decisions. Pursuing a career in law enforcement, moving in with Ana, and throwing herself into a vengeful cycle of sleep-eat-work were perhaps the main landmarks her life had pinned down ever since she'd left Hogwarts.

"This was your home as well, wasn't it?" Dan's quiet voice broke the silence. He sounded almost…human.

"Still is," she replied. "It feels like I know everything about this place, but the mighty Hogwarts still holds on to its secrets."

"I haven't been back since we graduated," said Dan thoughtfully. "I wonder if my common room has changed any."

"Isn't Katie the head of Slytherin?"

The Captain shrugged and got up from the grass. Nikita followed his lead.

"I believe so. She still gets to feel attached to her home…she gets to protect this little haven while we go off to protect the rest of the world."

Nikita could sense something akin to jealousy in the man's voice, and for the first time in her life she saw him not as her almighty captain, not as a cocky heartthrob, but as a tired and broken man who hid behind a mask of confidence to protect himself from the world. He was only human. Just like herself, just like Vanessa and Ana, just like...Castle.

Castle. She felt like he betrayed her, broke her trust, but what if there was something more to his strange act? What was hidden beneath that facade? Was it possible that he was protecting himself, or was it something more…criminal?

She stopped in her tracks as a realisation hit her. They hadn't known that Castle was a wizard. The trace didn't register it, which meant that the Ministry had no records of this man in their system. And yet he had gone to and graduated from Hogwarts, and his daughter had magical abilities.

Nikita turned to Dan and opened her mouth to speak, but stopped short. If she turned Castle in, that would be the end of their companionship. On the other hand if she didn't, she'd be breaking her oath as an auror, and (as Dan had put it only a few moments earlier) an auror was the one person who wouldn't dare to break somebody's trust. Did she really have a choice?

"You know," said the Captain as they began walking back towards the village, "keep trusting, Niks. You're lucky enough to still be able to trust, even after the horrible tragedies of your past that have been eating away at your soul. This trust you have, it's a sign that you're still alive."

And she had her answer.

###

Nikita entered the Hog's Head once more with her heart in the right place and her mind made up.

Dan led her into the pub and headed straight for one of the tables in the back where Katie's bright green head was poking out from between two booth dividers. Travis, Ryan and Kellan were also sitting at the table, Travis already halfway through his (presumably second) pint of mead.

"You know, there has got to be some lead with all the work we've done today and all," Katie was saying in an overly cheery tone, which also probably stemmed from the half empty glass of firewhiskey on the table in front of her.

"As if you did any work," scoffed Dan.

"I WILL HAVE YOU KNOW," bellowed Katie, half-standing from her seat and waving her fists about, then immediately collapsed back into it and gave a sigh of defeat.

"Katie, honey, move over so that Niks here can sit down," Ryan tugged on her sleeve. Once both she and Dan got seated, he continued. "As the most sober man here, I demand that you all stop drinking. We have business to discuss."

Travis put his glass down and stared at his friend.

"Mate, did you just suggest we stop drinking?!"

Dan raised a hand, "First talk, then drink. First off, there's the matter of our second murder, who followed up on that?"

Travis raised his index finger in the air.

"Aye Cap'n. Her name was Angela Browman, age forty five, a real hot chick back in her day – Alden, you should really check out those photos man – she used to be a model in her early twenties," he flicked a toothpick across the table at Ryan, who dove out of the way into Katie's lap to dodge it. "When she turned thirty, her father, the famous Senator Sidney Browman, granted her a job as a Junior Minister of City Development, and died later that year in a rather suspicious elevator shaft accident, the details of which were quickly buried by the Scotland Yard never to be mentioned again."

"What does that have to do with our vic?" interrupted Katie, her hair turning from green to flaming red and back to Slytherin-green within a matter of seconds.

Travis shot her an annoyed look. Nikita had long noticed that Travis was only annoyed by Katie when both had had a lot to drink.

"Nothin' yet sugar pie, I'm simply setting the bearings on her background," he scratched the bridge of his nose and continued on. "Anyways, Angela was moved up to Senior Minister, a position she stayed in for the next fifteen years, before she too was pickled off by the same spell as our first vic."

"And there's no connection to the wizarding community whatsoever?" piped up Kellan who, until this moment, had been quietly absorbing the story, periodically raising his own pint to take a sip.

Travis opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short as the cute waitress came up to their table carrying a tray of fish and chips. She set the tray down on the table and took out her notepad.

"Anything else you'd like?" she asked, giving everyone a once over, her eyes lingering on Dan for much longer than Nikita thought appropriate.

"No thank you," she said curtly, dismissing the girl with a wave of her hand. The waitress nodded and left, her lacquered black heels clicking against the wooden floor surface as she went.

Nikita leaned back in her seat and surveyed the group. Katie smirked and raised an eyebrow as Nikita looked at her, but thankfully didn't question her further.

"So as I was saying," Travis continued, evidently displeased by the interruption, "there ain't any connection. The vics are exceptionally muggle, not a trace of magical blood. And they don't know any wizards and aren't aware of the wizarding world. That's what stumps us."

"So basically you don't know the motive, and without the motive you can't go any further," simplified Kellan, twiddling his thumbs subconsciously.

"That's right bro," nodded Travis.

"What if there isn't any?" said Kellan thoughtfully.

Katie's ears grew as she took a gulp of her drink.

"Isn't any what?" she asked in a slightly slurred voice, leaning her body into Ryan's side to stay upright. He put his arm around her shoulder to stabilise her as she swayed from side to side.

"Isn't any connection," Kellan continued. "What if they are purely muggle and they don't know anything about our world? What if they were killed for an entirely different reason, unrelated to them as people?"

"Which would be…?" came Dan's voice from beside Nikita.

Kellan scrunched up his eyebrows.

"Lemme think about that one," he replied, his eyes darting towards a booth across from theirs for a moment. Nikita followed his gaze and saw two cloaked figures with their heads bent closely over the table seemingly in a heated discussion. It was impossible to tell who the people under the cloaks were, as all Nikita could see were the tips of their shoes poking out from beneath the long robes. Bright red ladies' shoes and black mens' combat boots. Those are some nice shoes too, she thought.

"So what will we do with today's investigation, Cap'n?" Travis' voice broke Nikita out of her observational exercise. Damn, that'd be the first time she'd ever gotten distracted at a business meeting. Or whatever the hell this was, considering that this was the first time they were having an auror meeting in a pub.

"You guys are already done in the Yearbook Room?" came Katie's inquiry, her head now buried in Ryan's chest which muffled her usually loud voice. Her eyes were already closed and she looked utterly exhausted and helpless.

"Well, we have a list of the exceptionally nerdy ex-students, but we don't quite know where to start yet," answered Dan to the both of them.

Katie replied with a loud yawn, and buried her head deeper into Ryan's chest. Travis rolled his eyes.

"You better take her up to the castle before she falls asleep completely," he nodded at the snoozing girl. "And I don't know where to start either. What do we do, question them all at random?"

Well…

Nikita took a big gulp of air, and raised her voice above the drunken bellows of the people around them.

"I think I might know something."