DISCLAIMER: THE BOOK BELONGS TO J. I HAVE ONLY BORROWED BOTH CHARACTERS AND PLOTLINE.
CHAPTER 50
"Dray, seriously man, you have got to do more than just changing your hair color, you look pretty obvious you know?"
"Dammit Harry! I hate glamour that makes me look like an old and ugly man, even if it's not true."
"Bloody narcissist!" Harry said sounding half bemused and half frustrated, getting up to muss Draco's now jet black hair "You look too noticeable right now, people will be able to remember your features quite easily."
"You saying I look unforgettable now, Potter?" Draco said waggling his eyebrows comically.
"Yes Dray, "Harry said sighing "you're a regular Adonis! But…" Harry said pulling his wand out suddenly and quickly putting glamour charms on him before Draco could say anything "This is something you have to do."
"Harry!" Draco said indignantly pulling away from him, now looking unrecognizable like any nondescript man in his thirties.
"Suck it up you wuss!" Harry said running away to protect his own, now older appearance, from the rain of blows that Draco tried valiantly to bestow on him.
He knew that Draco was feeling rather tetchy since last night, because his father had called and told him about a letter that they had received from his aunt Bellatrix bearing the words "He will rise again soon, be prepared!"
Draco knew that that was a call to all death eaters and he had felt a black fear coiling at the pit of his stomach, he disregarded his father's fear for his safety knowing that the school was perfectly safe, but felt afraid for his parents. He hoped that this time around his father would choose wisely, even if it meant running the heck away from the war that he could feel approaching.
They were standing at the edge of the village which held the answer to their questions, hopefully today they would learn a bit of the truth that would prove Harry's theory about Peter's escape right. Looking completely different and unrecognizable, they asked a few people along the way for directions and headed towards the area that the murders had taken place in.
Looking around they spotted a small grocery store at the corner of the lane and made their way over to it quickly, standing at the counter smiling benignly at them was a chubby, jovial sort of looking woman.
Harry knew that this woman would be good to interrogate as she looked like quite the gossip monger, standing in front of her Draco picked up a packet of chips and placed it on the counter simultaneously drawing out an official looking detective's badge that Miss Venus had taught them to transfigure when needed.
"Could you tell us what you saw on the night of the two murders Madame" he asked her in polite clipped tones "We think we have just made a new breakthrough regarding the case but we need to be absolutely sure about our facts."
She looked quite thrilled when she saw the badge and holding the chips bag she leaned over the counter beckoning them to stand closer, "I knew those two gentleman Sir, fine men they were too, in fact one of them was rumored to be engaged to Miss Veronica Cooper only this summer, but a week before their deaths he came to my shop to buy a cigarette pack looking like a completely different person!"
"What do you mean different" Harry asked looking quickly at Draco,
"Well Sirs, on the day that I saw him, he was trembling and stuttering incomprehensibly and quite a few times I even saw him muttering to himself looking terribly frightened about something. The pallor on his face was unmistakable; he had lost half his weight in too short a period of time. Sir, he looked like a haunted man."
"Where did the murders take place exactly?" Draco asked trying hard not to smile at the woman's exaggerated gestures.
"They say the bodies were found burnt at the edge of the woods which are at a walking distance from here Sir" she said billing the packet and handing it over to Draco.
Thanking her for her co-operation they left the shop and walked towards the woods.
They saw an old man standing beside the trees gently ushering a dog beside him to keep walking while shooting suspicious looks into the thickening of trees,
"Sir" Draco said pulling out the badge again and flashing it, thoroughly enjoying him-self, "could you tell us what happened here on the night of the murders?"
Harry had been listening to the man speak, he was saying almost the same things as the shopkeeper, when he felt his mind being invaded by a foreign presence, turning around sharply he looked for the intruder and heard a small hissing sound coming from the ground at his feet, looking down he saw a huge garden snake looking up unblinkingly into his eyes and suddenly images came barreling past his mind's eyes.
Harry gasped when he saw very clearly in all images the men standing at these very woods looking crazed with some inner turmoil and then screaming against some kind of invisible pain, burst into flames. From within their bodies a dark spirit rose and Harry shuddered when he recognized the shadow of Lord Voldemort with that malevolent aura.
Thanking the snake Harry turned to Draco who had finished questioning the man unable to hide the fear threatening to overwhelm him, "You okay Harry? You're looking really pale there, did you have breakfast this morning?"
"Yeah…no…I'm fine Dray" he stammered and looked shiftily at his friend wishing he could just tell him what he saw.
"Okay" Draco said looking unconvinced "tell you what I saw a little restaurant down this lane, let's feed you first and then go back home, I think everyone is going to tell us the same thing over and over again. Something definitely weird is going on here, both people we spoke to made it seem that those men were acting completely out of character like they seemed to be possessed, I sincerely hope you're wrong Harry the alternative is too scary to think about." A shiver passed through Draco and as if steeling himself against something he said "Let's think of the next step while we eat, yeah?"
Harry nodded and followed him to the restaurant. Sitting at a table and scarfing down large quantities of food Draco asked "So what's next on the agenda, let's say you little hypothesis is right, how are we going to connect it all to the death eater scum."
Harry stopped eating and tried to dispel the images of the burning men from his mind "Next we have to look up the Aurors that might have been possessed."
Draco looked blankly at him so Harry explained more "In Azkaban, Auros have to go on rounds of the prison cells once in the morning and once at night, every day. My dad said that those were the worst duties they'd ever had, they do it two people at a time working around a fixed schedule. What we have to do is somehow find out which two Aurors had their shift that day and try to extract information from them."
"You're nuts you know?" Draco said shaking his head "Why on earth are we even doing this, what does this have to do with our lives?"
"Dray, Bellatrix and Peter are two vicious death eaters and right now they are roaming freely about the place and worse your aunt has just warned your family already of coming dark times. All this has something to with Voldemort rising again, I can feel it. If we can track them down and find out the whole story maybe we can do something about it, like anonymously tipping my father about our discoveries."
Draco kept silent and then said "I think I can help you find out which two Aurors it was on that day."
"How?" Harry asked interested.
"Have you heard of the Obscurus book house?"
"Yeah, they are the official publishers for all our school books."
"Right, but that is not all that they do, below the main building they have a huge vault that holds all of the Ministries records and registers that they keep filed away after binding them, kind of like a secret warehouse or library if you will. I know this because dad has access to those books any time that he wants due to his high ranking position in the Ministry."
"He has a key that allows him to enter that vault any time that he needs to like a pass of some sort, so what we have to do is get the key and I don't know, maybe swallow polyjuice potion or something to impersonate dad and get a look at those registers. I think if we can get Dobby to help us out, since he knows everything about my house we may be able pull it off."
"You're brilliant" Harry said looking at him in awe, while Draco colored a bit under the praise, "this is amazing news and I'm sure Dobby would love to help."
"Of course he would, he's in love with you after all" Draco said ducking away from a tomato that Harry had launched his way, all the while making sick kissy noises at him.