Chapter One

Hermione sat at her desk, flipping through a few pages of information on a new case she and Greg had been working on for a few days. Greg sat at his own desk across the room, eyeing the same papers, hoping that either one of them would fall into some sort of conclusion.

"So our suspects are Regina the maid, and Garret, the maid's husband," Greg stated plainly.

"Yes, but we can't rule out the victims kids as well as all of their friends." Hermione came back at him.

Greg rubbed his head. "We have ruled out most of those, though."

Hermione shiften through the papers to the suspect sheet, she walked over to the corkboard they had pinned to a wall and pointed her wand at it. "Regina," as she said it, the picture of and old, gray-hair woman popped up. Above the picture was the word 'Suspects' "Claims to have been in the guest house with her husband." She tapped the board again and the husband appeared in the picture with her.

Greg walked over and tapped his own wand under the picture of the couple. A picture of a young attractive blonde appear. "the lovely Cherille Brandy was with her boyfriend Tod in a hotel in the Hamptons." The picture moved to the left of the board and the words 'Cleared' appeared over it. "Hotel staff confirms this."

Raising her eyebrow at Greg, Hermione added, "Plus... you really really like her, right? So that cleared her off the bat." She smirked a little. Greg had a major thing for bimboish blonde women. "Now Jennifer Brandy who reported the murders" She tapped the board and the woman's picture appeared. Older than Cherille but with much of the same features. "She checked out. Spending the weekend with her own boyfriend. When she returned home she had found her parents dead."

"The gardener... he had no alibi. Simply, sitting alone in his house all night. He did make one phone call that happened between the time the murders supposedly happen." A old, bald mad appeared and floated to the middle of the board between 'suspect' and 'cleared'.

"Manny Jones," Hermione said with a tap. A dark Italian man's face appeared on the board. "He's a close friend of their's. Reportedly came to the house a few hours before the murders. He was let in by the maid and no one saw him leave. He says he left an hour before the murders occured, but has no alibi."

Hermione stopped and watched the picture float to the suspects side, to the top of the pictures. He was the most likely suspect at the time.

"It's getting late, Hermione. I really need to get home and sleep a little."

She checked her own watch. It was nearly midnight. "Yeah... I have to send an owl to my friend anyway."

Greg smiled. "Want to go get some coffee before we head in our separate ways?"

Hermione shook her head. Greg seemed to tease her a lot with the possibility of the two of them having a relationship out of work. He had asked her out on several dates. The one time she accepted she had ran into him and his newest love interest at the park. Ever since then, she didn't even go for coffee with him, unless there was paperwork in hand.

He frowned. "We can skip the coffee, go to my place."

"I thought you needed some sleep."

"We can do that too..."

She turned away from him and started for her desk which she sat at, patiently waiting for him to leave. We he finally closed the door behind him, she pulled out a pen and paper and wrote Harry a letter back and then pulled out her journal.