"Draco…"

The voice called softly to him…she was there. She had to be.

"Draco…"

He looked around widely, trying to find the mass of brown curls, the deep brown eyes that he could get lost in…she was there. Wasn't she?

His body spasmed and a cry escaped past his lips as the pain seared through his body and her voice was pulled further away from him. He tried in earnest to keep the screams in, letting out only a brief strangled cry as his ears were assaulted with wicked cackling.

"Draco," his aunt crooned and she finally let up on the curse, "Draco, Draco…it pains me to do this. But you have to be prepared. You have to suffer…. Crucio!"

His head slammed back on the cold floor and his world went black.

Snow crunched under dragonhide boots. Wind whipped viciously against a thick, wool clock that skimmed just the top of his boots. To say it was a cold day in February was an understatement. But when you're summoned to the northernmost part of Scotland, you try to pay the weather no mind. Silver eyes quietly surveyed the scene in front of him and what a grisly scene it was. His team of Aurors were silently setting a stasis bubble that spanned a 50-foot diameter around them to ensure no evidence was disturbed or blown away by the godawful wind.

The Medical team was carefully cataloguing while forensic Aurors were photographing and bagging up the various entrails that lay scattered about. Based on the number of shredded organs, there were at least 2 victims this time. But in pieces-again.

Arms and legs strewn on opposite sides of the stasis bubble; the Medical team had to split into groups to account for all of the pieces. The torsos were haphazardly thrown in a pile along with hands and feet. There were no heads to be seen. There never were. Identification wasn't going to be easy but at least there seemed to be more leftover than the last time…

Grisly. No, morbid might be a better phrase, he thought as footsteps stopped next to him.

"Heads, hearts, and livers missing again," the dark-haired man grumbled as he filled out a notebook. "They're both Muggles so Adrianna thinks she can get an ID on them easier this time since we have the hands..."

"How are you planning to address this with the Muggle authorities? This is the 3rd one in less than 2 months and the 4th time that Muggles have been mauled."

The dark-haired man sighed and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. "Honestly not sure on that one. You would think that 5 years after his death, his followers would give it up already, especially after we've arrested most of them..."

"Yes, Potter, but don't forget that these are not the usual Death Eaters. Greyback may not have been marked but he and his packs were fiercely loyal to their Dark Lord. Considering the increase and severity in attacks, I would say they're gearing up for something soon. And that their numbers have grown exceptionally..."

Harry Potter shook his head and turned to fully look up at the man next to him. Time had been good to Draco Malfoy. The platinum man had grown to be a full head taller than Harry (much to his chagrin and now having to look up at Malfoy of all people...). During the Malfoys' trials, Harry had come to appreciate exactly what the Malfoys had done for the Order during the war. Harry had been privy to Draco and Narcissa's statements about the events that had happened over the three-year period that Voldemort occupied Malfoy Manor. If anyone else had told him that the Malfoys, of all people, had been secretly working against Voldemort, he would've thought they were Imperiused. But Narcissa had opted to take Veritaserum and with Harry's support, both Malfoys were cleared.

Although, Harry was more than irritated to learn which of those in the Order had known all along that the Malfoys had been helping...and one of those people had been missing since the Battle of Hogwarts had ended, almost five years ago.

"Neither of them are her at least," he said quietly so only Malfoy could hear. "We've been lucky every time that it hasn't been her."

"One of these times, Potter...it's going to be her. I don't fancy finding her corpse or skeleton."

"And you think I do? Fuck's sake, Malfoy, it's been-"

"I know," he snapped in a hiss, turning his head slightly. "I know how long it's been. You don't need to remind me. Have Blaise finish cataloguing everything and deliver his notes when finished. I'm going back to the office. I'm sure you have everything in hand here."

Draco didn't bother waiting for a reply before he deftly turned and strode out of the stasis bubble before Apparating away. He appeared in his office in the lower levels of the Department of Mysteries. One of the perks of working alongside Harry Potter, he could Apparate directly into his office and avoid all of the plebeians. He was also thankful that his office was located in the Department of Mysteries instead of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Though it was mostly due to the fact that Draco's team dealt primarily with Dark incidents, it was a perk because the Department of Mysteries rarely had visitors flouncing through and office gossip just wasn't a thing. Draco sighed as he sat behind his desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a glass along with a bottle of whiskey. He relaxed in the high back chair and slowly sipped at the burning liquor, letting his mind wander.

Five years. Five long years and he still hadn't found her. How could she have just dropped off of the face of the earth? He still didn't have an answer and he was running out of ideas. He, Potter, and Weasley had looked for months after he'd been acquitted; the two men finally trusting him after revealing that he had been working with Hermione Granger in secret for the previous three years. Potter and Weasley swore repeatedly that Granger would never keep such a secret from them. When Draco started putting all the dates of their meetings in front of them, they conceded that even their best friend had kept secrets. Why she did, they wouldn't know until she was found. The last anyone had seen of Granger was at the final battle but no one could specifically remember seeing her afterwards. It was like she just disappeared-as if she was never there. The only timing that everyone agreed to seeing her was when Voldemort had stood in the courtyard announcing that Potter had died. Then everything was a blur and she disappeared.

After months of searching had given them nothing, Draco joined Potter and Weasley for Auror training, despite his mother's numerous objections. Narcissa had tried everything to convince Draco to not join. She despised the idea of him going into the fray again but after many long discussions, she finally relented when he told her his reasons why. He needed to make up for the war; needed to make up for his part in it; needed to track down the remainder of Voldemort's followers; ultimately, he needed to find Granger.

As he gave his last reason, Narcissa had accepted with tears in her eyes.

"Find her, Draco" she said softly as she held her son's hands, "We owe her so much..."

"I know, mother. I know. I'm doing everything I ca-" he was cut off as his mother buried her face in his chest and silently wept.

"I'm so sorry about your father and everything he did to you...Miss Granger was the light that we needed and we...we..."

Draco stiffly hugged his mother as she stumbled over her words, still not fully accustomed to open affection like this from her. As she continued to quietly sob against him, Draco stared into nothing while holding his mother.

After that, Narcissa was a staunch supporter of her son and had watched from the crowd proudly as he had graduated from Auror training right next to Potter and Weasley. If his sixteen-year-old self had been told that one day he would be somewhat friends with Potter-and by proxy, Weasley-of all people, he would've scoffed and sent a hex their way. As it is, searching for Granger and Auror training had brought the three men together. Not best friends by any means, but he would classify it as friends nonetheless. Even Blaise and Theo tolerated the other two men but three snakes could only handle two lions for so long. And work hours were normally long enough for all of them.

Draco took a long drink from his glass as he read through the reports on his desk for the fifth time. His team had been given lead on the mauling cases. For the last two years, an extreme mauling would occur every few months. There was no consistency in locations, victim backgrounds, time between murders, not even cause of death. The only connection was the fact that the hearts, heads, and livers were always missing. Oh, and the bodies were dismembered, mutilated, and strewn across the area. Their main suspect was Fenrir Greyback. The werewolf had avoided being apprehended after the Battle and in the years since. There had been sightings across Europe but nothing leading to an arrest. Although the werewolf hadn't publicly taken credit for the maulings, Draco recognized his signature at each one: the missing pieces.

During his time at the Manor, Greyback was notorious for mutilating victims in one of the cellars. He would spend days torturing the poor souls, their screams muffled into a quiet whisper spreading through the Manor. Draco would lock himself in the library whenever Greyback had a new victim, determined to stay as far away as possible. The werewolf would still be covered in blood and other…things…when everyone would convene for dinners in the dining hall. He would gloat to the others in attendance of his newest "experiment", as he called it. Bellatrix would crackle and spur him on anytime a Mudblood was the subject. Draco swore that she would even join Greyback in the torture sometimes but that was just conjecture.

Draco had the unfortunate task one time of cleaning up after Greyback was finished with one of his victims. It was beyond nauseating. The cellar had been turned into a torture chamber of sorts: chains along the walls, a table equipped with cuffs toward one side of the room, another table with various crude instruments tossed about. In one corner was a pile of…

Oh god…

Draco had to turn away as he retched. The sight would be forever burned in his memory. Could it even be called human anymore? The poor Muggle had ended up a pile of…well, parts in the corner of the room. The man had been torn limb from limb; long strips of skin had been flayed; muscles pulled in strings from the bones; every organ had been removed and shredded apart and tossed to the top of the pile.

The head was missing.

Draco looked around the dim cellar and could only see the pile of remains along with blood and other fluids smeared across the walls. He slowly started to look up and sighed in relief that Greyback didn't have an even worse sense of humour. No heads were hanging from the ceiling. At least today. Bellatrix had confiscated his wand before assigning him this task…telling him that manually cleaning up would help to harden him as his parents had let him grow up soft. He had added this task to the long list of reasons why he hated his aunt… It had taken him several hours to properly dispose of the remains as he had to carry it all out to a remote part of the grounds and burn it.

Draco had been assigned to clean up a few more times after that and noticed that not only was the head missing but also the heart and liver. He didn't know much about werewolf appetites at the time but had later confirmed with Lupin via Granger that it was strictly a preference of Greyback's. With each mauling found, all three were always missing. The Medical teams spent hours putting every victim back together as best as they could but there was only so much that even magic could do. By the third occurrence, they had alerted Potter and Draco of the disturbing detail of the missing pieces that matched with each victim. Draco immediately suspected it was Greyback.

But what was he playing at, Draco wondered.

It was a few years after the Battle, Darkness had lost, a majority of Voldemort's supporters were locked up or deceased—what was the motive? Out of the nine victims, so far, only four of them had positive ID's. Five of them were unknowns. The bodies were too mutilated to get any identifying marks or even fingerprints to try Muggle methods. There were no threats or markers being left at the crime scenes. No one had reported any direct threats either–it was as if they were randomly murdering and tossing the pieces.

And then there was the increase in attacks. Draco reviewed the timeline of the most recent murders. It was usually at least two months between victims being found. But lately, it had shortened to less than a month and the number of victims at each scene had increased. Although one scene had one and a half victim. The team assumed the remaining half of victim Six would not be found…ever.

Draco sighed for the umpteenth time, closing his tired eyes and running a hand through his blonde hair, freeing some strands from the short, loose ponytail. He thought dismissively that maybe it was time to get a haircut but decided it wasn't worth the time.

Glancing over at the clock on the floor to ceiling bookshelf, he estimated that by now Blaise would be done collecting all the necessary evidence from today's scene. It would be another few hours before Blaise and Theo had reviewed everything and one would present a summary. He was beyond thankful that he had been approved to decide who would be on his team. He was thankful to not have to work awkwardly around others who were skittish because of his past. Although many people were still wary about Draco and his "reformation", they were even more wary of having three previous Dark wizards as an Auror team.

Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott, like Draco, had been acquitted of all charges thanks to Potter and Weasley. They hadn't been secretly working with Granger for three years but they had done enough in the background assisting the Order that the Wizengamot had agreed to extend them the same decision as Draco. It also helped that Potter and Weasley had been extremely adamant that all three wizards would be more beneficial to society outside of prison and had suggested the Auror training as a penance. Much to the chagrin of the Wizengamot and anyone else who had doubted the three young men, Blaise, Theo, and Draco had graduated and tied for top marks of their trainee group. Within a year, Draco had been promoted to lead Auror and had requested his best friends when given the opportunity to create his own team. The final approval for the team had to come from the Minister and Kingsley Shacklebolt happily signed off on the creation of the Emerald Squad (as Weasley jokingly called them).

The three men worked seamlessly together. They had achieved a top record for solved cases and eventually were exclusively given charge of cases involving any remaining Dark wizards or of a Dark nature. Which is how they constantly found themselves pouring over all of their notes and reports from the last two years of murders, frustrated that they couldn't find any solid leads and had practically nothing to go on other than human remains. Blaise's specialty was magical creatures but even he couldn't conclusively say whether these had been victims of just werewolves. There were markers for werewolves on some, hags on others, and he swore there was the bite mark from a giant on a leg. But there was no consistency in any of them and as far as they knew, none of these creatures stayed in close proximity to each other. In fact, there were multiple incidents that showed, without influence, that the creatures would kill each other. Yet here was evidence that they were murdering together.

Which brought Draco back to his line of thinking: what was Greyback's gameplan?

Just as Draco had predicted, hours later Blaise stepped through his office door. With a huff, he tossed the folder on Draco's desk before unceremoniously dropping himself into the chair across from Draco. The Italian was beyond irritated.

"Both are Muggles; both are in the same state as we've found the other. You know, the usual. But here's the kicker: now we have bloody vampires!" he growled while eying the bottle of whiskey on Draco's desk.

Without asking, Draco poured his friend a glass and held it out for him. He raised a brow as he glanced through Blaise's report. "The torsos were drained of blood? You're sure it was vampires?"

Blaise scoffed as he took a drink. "Of course it is. There was no blood left but vampire saliva leaves behind minute traces in the blood vessels. It took four tries before the Med team could conclusively say there were traces of vampire saliva. But it was only the torsos. Everything else was still bleeding…" he took another drink, "Theo is still finishing checking everything for curses and charms. Med team says dismemberment was done via a Severing charm this time but Theo thinks there's something else there."

Draco hummed in acknowledgment and continued reading through the report. His team was absolutely thorough in collecting details and evidence. If they thought something was off, they were generally right. Theo's specialty flourished in examining curses, charm work, and magical maladies. Considering his father had forced him to be a test subject and also participate in creating new curses during the war, Theo's expertise was unmatched and anyone who questioned his conclusions generally would be proven wrong. If Theo thought there was more at play than just a Severing charm, then their troubles were about to get even worse.

Draco closed the folder and slid it to the side of his desk as he observed Blaise. The man was tired, he could see it in Blaise's eyes and how he didn't even crack an inappropriate joke about the newest murders. Since the increase in murders, they had been working overtime to try and find anything, just anything that would lead them to stopping Greyback. But it was no use–somehow the bastard was elusive as ever.

"Blaise," the tired man's eyes shifted to his boss at the sound of his name, "Let's call it a night, shall we? It's 3 am. Take the weekend to recover. You're no use if you're overworking yourself. Get Theo and tell him to head home as well. Everything will be here when we return on Monday."

Blaise opened his mouth to argue but stopped for a second. He closed his mouth and nodded before finishing his drink.

"Drake," he said softly. "I'm sure Potter has already said it but–"

"He did. I lost my temper for a brief moment with him." He propped his elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his folded hands. "It's almost another year gone and still nothing. Maybe she really is gone…"

"Don't say that. Brightest witch of our age, remember? I'm sure she's alright. Although I would love to know what she's been up to all this time."

Draco shook his head. "Get in line, Zabini. We'd all like to know what the fuck has been going on. I know she kept secrets from me but hell, from Potter and Weasley too? Even Kinglsey doesn't know what happened." He rubbed his hands over his face and sunk back into his chair, "I've gone back through everything I can remember to see if I'm missing something. Anything that could give a clue to what happened. And I can't find a damn thing. And then I can't help but think…but wonder if any of it was real."

Blaise gave a nod and a small, apologetic half-smile towards his friend, "I'm sure she's out there, thinking of you, mate. I saw you two–that was real. I'm sure she has a good reason for disappearing on us. I just hope it was on her own accord is all."

Draco closed his eyes and images of soft skin and brown eyes filled his thoughts, "Me too Blaise, me too.

A shadow quickly darted across the moonlit snow, leaving no footprints. The shadow stopped at the edge of a forest, a nose going up towards the air, whiskers twitching as a scent was caught. The shadow abruptly turned to the left and quickly ran along the edge of the tree line. Brown eyes flicked around, taking in all of its surroundings. Up ahead was a hollowed-out tree trunk with the smallest opening possible. The shadow quickly darted inside just before thunderous footsteps bounded through the tree line. Howls and snarls came with the thunder. The nose and whiskers twitched as its body pressed as far into the tree as it could, barely letting out a breath. The thunder stopped and for a brief second it seemed all was clear. Then there was a howl right next to the tree. Shuffling sounds came next followed by a nose and teeth appearing at the tiny entrance to the shadow's hiding place.

Time stood still. The shadow held its breath until the nose and teeth gave a snort and the thunderous footsteps got further and further away. The shadow gave a long sigh of a breath and inched towards the entrance. The clouds parted above and moonlight flickered down to the edge of the forest.

The shadow slowly took form into a small red fox. The small canine lay down, its head resting between its black paws just inside of the hollow trunk. Eyes flicked back and forth, surveying every detail imaginable; ears twitched, alternating forward and back, straining to hear those terrible howls again. All was silent. The fox could relax, if just for a short while. Its brown eyes looked up at the partial moon with a wistful stare.

If only…so long it's been…if only.

A tear silently slid from its eye and a shudder that sounded like a sob escaped from its mouth as it looked through its memories again. They should be soothing but instead they caused pain, heart-wrenching pain.

Memories of two boys: one dark-haired, one fiery red. Laughter and teasing had filled the air. Another memory of crying and yelling–they had fought with each other. Hugs and apologies had followed.

Then another memory….one of a tall boy with silver eyes and blond hair.

Of hiding in a hidden corridor at Hogwarts, the boy holding back tears…then seeing him standing outside of a dark house.

Secret meetings for years.

Secret kisses for months…

Another shudder and tear escaped and a new thought entered: Maybe it was finally time to go home?