One day earlier, London...
The Auror Department took up the entire 3'rd floor of the Ministry. This was sufficiently high to deter any straggling visitors that perpetually swarmed the Ministry with complaints or petitions, but low enough to permit Aurors quick access to the entry floor should direct methods of travel – like apparition or floo – become unusable. In fact, only this floor and the Minister's office allowed for such alternative means of transportation; the rest of the Ministry was warded tightly against outside access, and everyone had to enter it the way one usually enters buildings – through the foyer.
These were all somewhat recent developments, as the whole Ministry had been redesigned after the war. This included moving the Auror department down from the 8'th floor to the 3'rd and even installing what everyone called the 'stable' – a wide loading bay with a several dozen brooms should the aurors ever need them.
The stable circled around the length of the floor, allowing for easy access from the interior areas. For the errant ministry visitor, those began in the center, where they would exit the system of lifts that cut through the ministry carrying passengers much like a circulatory system ferries blood across a body. For this floor, the lifts exited onto a large reception area, where requests could be logged by filling out one of many forms. Further publicly-accessible areas were down in the East Wing.
The West Wing housed everything else: lock-up, evidence storage, a small owlery, interrogation rooms, training areas, and, of course, the bullpen.
The bullpen was a wide, open space filled with cubicles and haphazardly placed desks: workspaces for the majority of aurors. Ringing the room were a number of private offices delegated to ongoing investigations as well as the Auror command and control structure, including offices for the Head Auror and his deputy.
Harry and Ron's desks were both in the bullpen with the other auror's; they also had access to several of the private rooms, where the two young men were part of a team that was leading the inquiry into Hermione's disappearance. That investigation was still in progress, as they had concealed all news of recent events.
Technically, this could be called impeding an official investigation and obstruction of justice, but with the loyalties of their colleagues under question, this was the only viable path forward for the moment.
Therefore, Hermione was still missing to the rest of the world, while Harry, Ron and Ginny were trying to solve the ministry angle of the conspiracy. Devoting all of their time to this mission, however, was impossible. Every auror had several concurrent cases running open at a given moment, and dropping them would arouse suspicion.
Still, their current positions of employment provided them with several options to follow. One of them was uncovering why the Muggle Crimes Unit was effectively dissolved after the war. This unit was separate from the Auror Department, just one more branch under the wide umbrella of MLE – Magical Law Enforcement. According to the protocols Harry and Ron had dug up, the people working in it usually handled small issues like pranks and mischief (one of the most famous cases being a wizard spelling toilets to regurgitate their contents). If they ever stumbled onto evidence of a truly heinous crime – the murder or torture of a muggle at the hands of a witch or wizard – they would pass it on to the Auror Department, which would then open its own investigation.
That hadn't happened in years, because the Muggle Crimes Unit now employed only two people, neither of which could be called competent in any sense of the word. Tracking down almost everyone else who had worked there had proved to be problematic. Records requests on personnel files were notoriously slow to process, and that was even if you had authorization for them. Without disclosing the reasons why they needed this information, neither Harry nor Ron were capable of getting it.
Fortunately, there was one person they knew who had actually worked at the MCU before it was gutted. That person was Rawlings.
Gus Rawlings was a pudgy-faced man with small, beady eyes and a mop of oily brown hair on top his head. He was the most junior auror in the department despite being in his mid-30's; he had transferred in just over a year ago. His desk was in one of the corners of the room, beneath a wide poster board that held the faces of wanted criminals, many of them Death Eaters that had fled after the final battle and were still at large.
As he walked towards Rawlings' desk, Ron stared into the malevolent scowls of individuals he had fought against in the war: Yaxley, Dolohov, Greyback, Rockwood, and a number of mid- and lower-tier Death Eaters. All of them on the run, hiding out. They had successfully used the chaos after the final battle to escape. Now, some of them had returned – carrying with them the seeds of a war everyone thought was over.
"Rawlings!" he greeted the older auror with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. It came out sounding a little forced.
The man sitting at the desk just grunted in response. Ron hadn't expected an amiable conversation – they didn't particularly like each other, and Rawlings was probably still pissed about Ginny hexing him several weeks ago. Of course, that would have never happened had he not been a misogynistic cunt, but then you have what you have.
"What did you need, Weasley?" Rawlings said, rapping his knuckles against his desk with impatience.
"Came across some details on one of my cases," Ron stuck to a plausible story. "They lead to the muggle world – into MCU's jurisdiction."
"So go bother MCU," the seated wizard shot back.
"They're not in at the moment, something about staffing. You used to work there, right?"
"Before I transferred here."
"You know why they cut everyone from the department?"
Something flitted across the older wizard's face. Ron didn't catch the look – he was tired after missing out on several days of sleep. The three of them – Ron, Harry and Ginny – had spent their nights apparating around the country to various city morgues and testing corpses for traces of the virus. So far, there had been an abundance of hits, and they had taken samples to Dr. Frackenburger for analysis. The professor was hopeful he could pinpoint the moment of infection, allowing them to form a timeline of events for the victims. By cross-referencing the location and time of infection, maybe they could detect a pattern that would lead to the perpetrator's disposition.
So Ron just noticed Rawlings frown for a second and then answer, "As far as I know, there weren't enough cases to justify all the funds."
"No cases, huh?" Ron clarified. "That calm the muggle world?"
"As far as I know," Rawlings repeated, glowering at the freckled wizard.
Ron considered that moment. No cases was bullshit – he knew that now. Muggles were dying for quite some time now, falling victim to You-Know-Who's virus. He felt a tingle of suspicion in his spine: something didn't add up to what Rawlings was saying. Unless Rawlings knew nothing about them? So many questions. He needed to ask someone else who had worked in MCU… if he could find them.
Drumming a beat against the side wall of Rawlings's cubicle with his fingers, he asked, "So then, you still have any contacts from your time over there? Anyone I can ask?"
Rawlings pivoted his full form towards Ron and crossed his hands across his chest. "How would an old MCU contact help with a current case?"
Ron scratched his chin; he needed to shave. "Just answer the question, Rawlings!" he snapped. "I'm following a lead. Unless you're too busy with the Berkins case."
Rawlings looked like he was about to swear.
Martha Berkins was a 86-year-old witch who haunted the Auror Department. Not in the direct sense (she wasn't a ghost), but the Auror Department had become something of a monthly pilgrimage for her ever since her husband died thirteen years ago. Every visit, she sported a variety of complaints: a poltergeist in her shed, the neighborhood children setting fire to her gnome decorations, inappropriate displays of affection by young couples in Diagon Alley, The Prophet slandering her late husband, etc, etc.
The jewel of these mostly baseless accusations occurred three years ago, when Martha had come in insisting that someone had broken into her home, gone through her knickers drawer and stolen her favorite pair.
Agin Kort, the Head Auror, had the unlucky fortune to be passing nearby when Martha was recounting this story to the bored clerks in the reception area. His broad form was widely recognized, and Martha latched onto it like a leech, refusing to let go until the Auror Department did something to rectify this despicable situation perpetrated by the vicious knickers nicker.
Desperate to rid himself of her nagging, Head Auror Kort had yelled out the names of two of his subordinates, ordering them to escort the witch back to her house and not return until they had closed the case – one way or the other.
Several hours later, both aurors returned detailing how they had searched the musty old home top to bottom finding no signs of a break-in or of the cursed missing knickers. This may have continued for an indeterminate amount of time, but luckily for the aurors, Ms. Berkins felt an urge to visit the loo. There, she discovered that the allegedly stolen underwear was actually on her own person – she had accidentally put on two pairs in the morning and forgot.
Basically, Martha Berkins was a batty old woman that had been stopped being taken seriously decades ago. The past year she had been coming in with the same complaint: someone was breaking into her home (again), stealing food from the pantry and toilet paper from her bathroom.
The Department was obligated to investigate every complaint, so this case (dubbed 'the toilet paper investigation') was promptly issued to the most junior auror – Rawlings, who was forced to endure her droning whenever she returned.
Needless to say, it was a bit joke to everyone except Rawlings.
"No-I-don't-have-anything-for-you-is-that-all?!," he ground out, his face turning into spectacular shade of boiled lobster. The vein on his temple was throbbing so hard that Ron was afraid it was about to burst.
"Alrighty, then," he said cheerfully. "Always a pleasure, Rawlings!"
The other wizard returned his farewell by wishing for him to go screw a herd of belligerent hippogriffs, which made Ron chuckle on the way back to his own desk. It didn't take long for the mirth to fall off his lips, however, as he pondered the inconsistencies in what Rawlings had told him. And he hadn't kept up with any of his buddies from MCU? Yeah, right.
No matter, though: he could get the names of MCU personnel from the records department… even if it did mean borrowing Harry's cloak. Something also had to be done about all the financial documents Hermione had stolen and stashed in her house. So far, none of them had been able to parse the legions of numbers within those files – they were dead stuck, and a team of forensic accountant was what they needed. But who could you trust?
Ron, caught up in these thoughts, didn't see Rawlings suspiciously glaring at his back. He didn't notice how the other auror glanced around the bullpen and then quickly quilled a small note. When Ron was seated back at his desk and not paying any attention to the man he had just spoken with, Rawlings got up and walked over the owlery – just another auror doing his job –, and then sent his missive to an unknown destination.
Had such an unpleasant case of writer's block with this one that I penned the start to another story. Go check it out :D
As always, a deep thank you to my dear reviewers.