The first thing Draco noticed was the bloody heat.

Immediately staggering from the portkey, he felt as if the breath had been sucked from his lungs, replaced with hot, dry air. It felt… oppressive. Sputtering a bit, he looked around, noticing the stone fountain in front of them and the intricate designs in the concrete beneath his feet. There are trees here, at least, he thought as he eyed the large oaks shading the wooden benches along the walkway. The glass doors of the white Spanish-style building in front of them read Magical Congress of the United States of America: South Region.

MACUSA.

It'd taken him almost a decade, but he'd managed to trade the immature snobbery of his youth for a much more dignified sense of refined condescension. However, it was moments like this, when he was overwhelmed with the injustices of the world, that the blasted sneer made its grand reappearance.

"It's not that bad," Hermione said, running a hand through her unruly curls, now whipping around her face in what he supposed was wind, though wind was meant to be cold. This dry armpit of hell, known by the locals as Texas, didn't have real wind. It had the hot breath of Satan blowing across your face.

"I didn't say anything." Draco dusted off his dragon-hide boots, but it was no use. Red dust seemed to coat everything in the primitive courtyard where they were standing.

Hermione scowled at him, twisting her hair up into a knot at the nape of her neck. "Your face looks like it did when we were twelve. You don't have to say anything."

"I can't control my face with this…smell in the air."

"It's the San Antonio River. It's"—she took a deep breath, wafting a hand in front of her face to smell—"nature and wildlife and—"

"It smells like death."

Hermione sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose like being trapped in the middle of the bleeding desert was only exasperating to him. "You're acting like a baby. Are you going to do this the whole time we're here?"

"I haven't decided yet." He shielded his eyes from the blistering sun.

The doors banged open and out walked a woman in a knee-length pencil skirt and what Hermione always called "no-nonsense heels." Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun that would have given Professor McGonagall a run for her money, and the look on her unduly tanned face suggested that she, like the Hogwarts headmistress, was not a woman to be trifled with.

As she got closer, Draco could tell she wasn't nearly as old as he thought at first glance. Her matronly style of dress and rigid hairstyle made him think she was his mother's age, likely due to her resemblance to McGonagall. However, when she stopped in front of them, he thought she couldn't be much older than he was.

"I'm Detective Brown," the woman said, reaching her hand out first to Hermione and then offering it to him. "I'm leading the Rune Killer case, so I'll be your main point-of-contact here." Draco expected a deep southern accent like those silly films Hermione forced him to watch throughout their last five years as partners, but the woman's voice came out strong and almost completely free of any southern dialect except for the 'your,' which sounded much closer to 'yer.'

She crossed her hands across her chest and surveyed them both. Something about the way her eyes narrowed and the tension in her shoulders said that they didn't quite measure up somehow. Despite being an inch or so shorter than Hermione, she made quite the imposing presence, and Draco couldn't help feeling immediate respect for the woman… even if she was a Texan.

"I'd start off by saying I don't think we need your help, but we all know I'd be wasting my breath." Detective Brown tapped lightly at her wand holster.

"Yes, you would," Hermione said, just as matter-of-factly, and Draco had to bite his tongue to keep his smirk at bay. He had a feeling these two would be snapping at one another in no time—the detective's wide-legged stance was currently toe-to-toe with Hermione's tilted head and customary hand on her hip—and it was going to be a sight to see when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

"I can assure you, Detective Brown," Draco cut in, causing the woman to look him over once more when her eyes fell on him, "neither of us wants to be here either, but we were sent for a reason. If we work together—"

"We'll be out your hair in no time."

Detective Brown pursed her lips before nodding once and turning to lead them inside the building.

*****

24 hours prior

Hermione plopped a Starbucks cup onto Draco's desk in front of him before sliding out her own chair and taking a seat across from his desk.

"Apologies for being late?" Draco asked, leaning backward and lifting an eyebrow at her, trying to be intimidating though it never worked…well, not on her, at least. How he thought that he could still do that after half a decade as his partner was astounding. Even so, she was currently running on about three hours of sleep, so explaining to him that he looked less intimidating and more adorable was probably not the best use of her energy at the moment.

"Sure," she said, pulling the files across her desk. She'd been pouring over them since the day before, the reason she'd been there until after six before sprinting to the closest floo to make it to Ron's on time.

"You look like hell," Draco said, clearly intent on making the morning as pleasant as possible. He tossed his old coffee cup into the bin, empty by the sound of it, and took a sip of his recompense for making him give the welcome brief to the new trainees this morning alone.

She sighed. She knew good and well how horrid she looked this morning. Trying to wrangle screaming toddlers at six a.m. after being up all night with the "I'm thirsty"s and "one more story"s and "there's a banshee under my bed"s tended to do that to a person, or so Padma's constant disheveled state would make her believe. It was also enough to cement in her mind that she was absolutely not at all ready to be a parent—maternal clock be damned, she thought, regarding the last disgruntled debate she'd had on the topic with her mother.

"Well, thank you for that," she said, clenching her teeth to keep from throwing something at his stupid face. "I babysat for Ron and Padma last night. It was…trying," she added with a forced smile. "You look…" Hermione tried to think of something snarky, but she wasn't really on her A-game this morning. The longer she looked at him, her lips thinned and eyebrows raised, the more smug he became, finally lifting his arms and lacing his fingers behind his head as he reclined in his chair. A smarmy smile on his face as he basked in her inability to find a flaw in his appearance.

"Stupid," she finished finally, her gaze falling back to the files in front of her—a double homicide in Kent, no suspects, no prints, no magical signature—but she could feel Draco's eyes on hers as she read over the meager list of clues again.

"Potter said we're to come to his office when you get in. Special assignment." She looked up, and Draco was already standing, taking his jacket from the back of his chair and sliding it on over his white button-down, covering the double wand-holster that sat on either side just beneath his chest.

"You couldn't have said that when I first came in?" She closed the file again, a bit more forcefully, as she stood as well, strolling around her desk to walk out the door he was holding open for her.

"More fun this way," he said with a grin.

Plucking the coffee cup she'd brought for him out of his hands, she put it to her lips and drained the rest of it in one go.

He snatched it back and shook it, scowling at her when he found it empty. "Rude."

"Arse."

"Were you saving that corn flake in your hair for later?" Draco said, sauntering past her with a chuckle when she stopped to search for the offending piece of cereal in her mane.

She found nothing. Growling to herself, she rolled her eyes at his back as he knocked on the door marked Head Auror Potter. "I hate you."

"No, you don't," he said with a smirk just as Harry instructed them to come in.

Draco opened the door and tossed his second now-empty cup of coffee into Harry's rubbish bin as they walked inside. Harry sat jotting a memo to the Beast division, if the purple parchment was any indication, mumbling, "Just one second," as Hermione and Draco took a seat.

At thirty years old, Harry was the youngest Head Auror the department had ever seen, and, though Hermione was sure being The Chosen One certainly factored into that decision, there was no denying that Harry was the right man for the job. It'd taken him less than a year to work his way through the entire training regimen, a task that had taken even Hermione almost 18 months.

Over the last decade in the Department, Harry gained a new level of leadership that even his time fighting in Dumbledore's Army and the war couldn't touch. The few who had doubted him, those in the Wizengamot and with the Daily Prophet, quickly realized their error and hailed his promotion as the largest crowning achievement of the Auror Division since the war. It hadn't been easy though. Hermione had stuck by his side, having no desire to do anything other than continue to stoke the fire of fighting the Dark Arts that Harry helped ignite in her when she was eleven years old.

Harry lay down his quill and flicked his wand at the parchment on his desk which immediately folded itself into a paper airplane and shot out of the room.

"How were Auggie and Hugo last night?" Harry asked, his bottle-green eyes meeting hers beneath his still unkempt mop of black fringe. He may have stubble now and faint specks of grey at his crown that he liked to pretend weren't there, but he still couldn't do a thing to keep his hair in check.

"Fine." She cast her eyes to the ceiling once at Harry's look of skepticism and amended with, "They were little tyrants. Adorable but tyrants nonetheless."

Harry gave a knowing smile. "Sounds much more accurate."

"Not at all like Lily and Albus," Hermione said, glancing at the photograph of Harry's three children on his desk. Albus sat shyly at one corner of the couch, a nervous smile on his tiny little face, Lily grinning wildly beside him. James, the oldest of the three, was standing on the couch, alternating from standing on his feet to his head, and dropping his trainers down onto his siblings on more than one occasion.

"I'd like to point out that she only mentioned two of your children," Draco cut in, crossing one ankle across the opposite knee.

"I said what I said." Hermione never took her eyes off Harry. He already knew that James raked on everyone's nerves; Hermione's comments were nothing new. Harry chuckled to himself, and Hermione asked, "So what's this about a special assignment?"

"Where to this time? Switzerland?"

"No, not again. We've been there twice already," Hermione said, cutting her eyes at Draco. They'd been working together to root out any growing threat of serious dark wizards for the last three years, and that had led them to destinations all over the world. Turning back to Harry, she added, "Tell me it's Turkey. We haven't been there yet. I want a warm climate for a change, Harry. Sunny, beachy."

Harry shook his head, and the look on his face—a sympathetic look of consternation—said it all. "You know I have no control over where these fanatics decide to start amassing followers. Next time, try telling them you want a nice warm vacation, yeah?" Harry turned, grabbing the blue folder from a stack of similar ones. He slid it across his desk to Hermione, who tapped it once with her wand to duplicate it, handing the other to Draco before inspecting the front.

"It is warm, at least," Harry said, consolingly.

Draco, however, found no comfort in this. "The States? Texas, no less!" He spat the word, and Hermione wasn't sure if he was more shocked or disgusted. "Have you met me, Potter? I give it three hours before I look like a lobster."

"Buy a hat," Harry said, no sign of remorse whatsoever at Draco's pasty plight. "I'm fairly certain everyone wears them there anyway, if the films are to be believed."

A laugh escaped Hermione before she could bite it back, and Draco glowered at her. "Sorry… I'm just trying to imagine you in a cowboy hat."

The image popped up unbidden in her mind. The giant ten-gallon hat was entirely comical, of course, but the accompanying tight-fitted jeans made her swallow—perhaps she'd watched too many Spaghetti Westerns with her father. The image of the sun glinting off shining silver guns hanging from leather holsters at his hips, his storm-cloud eyes half-shielded by a much nicer Clint Eastwood hat... She cleared her throat, noticing that Draco and Harry were still looking at her strangely.

"Send Finnigan."

Harry shook his head at Draco's request. "No, Seamus is too hot-headed for this. We need the best, and, as loathe as I am to admit it," Harry said, staring pointedly at him as Draco lay a hand across his chest in adulation, "that's you two."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, Potter."

Harry turned to Hermione. "Read the file. You'll understand."

Hermione wasn't particularly excited about traveling to the States when there were places on this side of the world still left unexplored by her. She'd already seen the coasts and New York City, but it might be nice to see something different for a change. And Texas was certainly different from everywhere else in Europe, that was for sure. She prodded Draco with the tip of her wand when he failed to move, causing him to mumble under his breath, but he opened the file nonetheless.

Hermione followed suit, and words jumped out at her as she read—Dark, blood magic, Muggles—and she quickly thumbed through a stack of photographs, blessedly non-magical and hanging from the folder by a paperclip. All showed variations of the same thing—a dead body, naked save the runes carved across every visible inch of their skin. The similarities ended there, however; each photo showed slight differences, indicative of more than one event. Some women, some men, and all in different settings. One showed an alleyway, broken bottles and bits of rubbish lay around the body. Another in a kitchen, green striped tile visible beneath the corpse. Grass-covered ground, parking garage, dingy beige carpet, a dozen, at least, all in various settings but showing the same type of crime.

"Do you see the similarity between them all?" Hermione asked.

"No blood," he said, never looking up as he turned one photograph to the side, trying to decipher the runes running up the length of a woman's arm before ending abruptly in a deep gash, nearly severing the woman's head.

"No blood," she repeated. And Hermione's first thought as she tried to read the runes was that the poor woman now matched Nearly Headless Nick. You couldn't work in this field as long as Hermione had without developing a sense of gallows humor; you'd go mad otherwise. Still, she shook the thought away, chastising herself for the callousness of it, and looked up at Harry.

"Yes, no blood at any of the crime scenes, not a single drop. All the victims have been completely drained, and the runes speak to some sort of heavy Dark Magic."

"Immortality, destruction, curse…" Draco read, flipping through the photos and twisting them to turn the runes right-side up on the victims.

Hermione did the same, trying to get inside the killer's mind. "Soul, eternal, oath…"

"Resurrect," they said simultaneously, each of them turning to face the other, and, though neither of them spoke a word, she could feel it. Regardless of his strange abhorrence for all things American, she knew they'd be taking the case. Neither of them were capable of turning down a challenge, and, based solely on the photographs, that's exactly what they were looking at.

"So, what makes this one any different?" Draco asked as he looked back toward Harry. "I'm assuming there has to be something else you haven't told us, something that isn't in these files, otherwise MACUSA would handle it themselves."

The thought had crossed Hermione's mind too, and she began flipping through the pages again, searching for whatever it was they'd missed. Harry's reply cut through her like an icepick, halting her hands and sucking the air from her lungs.

"Horcruxes."