A/N: Okay, so I'm updating a bit better these days. I cut my work hours down by about half (because I'm pregnant! Ahhh! AAAHHHH!) so I hope to have more time to get more writing done in general! This is a short chapter, to be fair, but it's leading up to something better.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As the months go by, I start to almost get used to the long hours and hard work that comes with Auror training. In fact it seems to become easier the more I learn. Father is even grudgingly proud that I've kept it up all this time. I might not be excelling at every class, but if I do know something, it's how to fake it until I make it. I barely passed the Loyalty class (but in my defense, I was paired up with Finnigan and they only caught me throttling him once), but I did really well in Organisation and Transport, which we had to do a test on in the middle of Muggle London for crying out loud. Thankfully I had experience on their underground railway (coins in, and jump over the turnstile. How hard is that?). Next week is Stealth and Tracking, which I'm sure I'll be excellent at as well.
Right now it's my first weekend off, so I'm enjoying the cool September air and taking a walk around the grounds at the Manor. I even nod a greeting at the gardener, who seems shocked, and turns around to busy himself with our roses. Maybe this whole new leaf idea of Mother and Father's wasn't so bad. I'm getting paid more money than I know what to do with, so it's just accumulating in Gringotts, and my life seems far more stable now than it ever has before. I'm starting to see a future for myself. If not as an Auror, then anything.
Though I came into the whole Auror thing assuming I'd fail at every hurdle. I didn't even think they'd want me to start with, let alone consider me as doing well a month later. Maybe I can actually do it, if the next three years goes smoothly.
I've even made what you might call friends, though they never do anything I tell them to, and they make fun of me just as much as I make fun of them. And I refuse to hang out with them outside work. If you can even call that friendship. Most people I started with have all been dropped, so less than fifteen of us remain.
The sun peeks out from behind the clouds all of a sudden, illuminating the day, and I suddenly feel rather chipper. So I impulsively decide I will go to the pub after all, even though I declined the invite that went around on Friday. That's what normal people do on Saturdays, right? I don't even bother to tell Mother where I'm going. That's how impulsive I feel.
I stroll happily out of the gates of Malfoy Manor and Apparate straight to the doorstep of the Leaky Cauldron. Stepping inside, the smell and the décor bring back memories of the shopping trips I used to have to take before school started, and how much I hated them. A wave of nostalgia hits me and it's not altogether unpleasant.
I spot the group of Auror trainees around a table in the corner. There's Vanessa with her back to me, bloody Finnigan, whose first name I can never remember, and a few others milling around and chatting.
I step up to them and drawl, "So, whose round is it?"
I receive a chorus of greeting, and am informed that it is, in fact, my round. So I call them all bastards and saunter over to the bar.
Coming back with a tray loaded with drinks of every kind, I pluck out a glass of Merlot for myself and raise a silent toast, but everyone's too busy clambering for their drink and guzzling it down to notice. Savages.
Watching them all chatting to one another, laughing and pointing, telling stories about each other and giggling, I can't help but feel like they're the strangest bunch of people I've ever had to associate with.
Then all of a sudden I feel a lurch in my stomach as I think of Vince and Greg. Things weren't great between the three of us towards the end, but we were all good mates for years. I try to imagine their reaction to me now, working as an Auror and hanging out with bloody Gryffindors. They'd call me an idiot, or a faker, or not even know what the word Auror meant. Zabini was a prat, but he made me laugh sometimes. I remember he used to have a crush on that Weasley girl. Nott was the runt out of all of us, but he had this complex that only really short people seem to get, like he wanted to be the leader.
And Parkinson hasn't spoken to me in well over a year. I think the night I was supposed to kill Dumbledore was going to be the night we finally went all the way, but she dumped me when I couldn't pull it off. As though my sexual prowess was somehow determined by my ability to murder incapacitated old men. Maybe I've matured, or gone soft, but I cringe when I think about how I used to act, and how everyone else around me acted. We were stupid little kids, really.
As I'm taking my last sip of wine, the back door of the Leaky Cauldron bangs open and no one in the world barges through it except Ron bloody Weasley. Ugh. I've managed to successfully avoid him lately, since I hate him and he hates me. But he's like a rash that won't go away. A bright red rash. I should tell him that.
I open my mouth to impart a scathingly witty greeting, but he takes a couple of steps towards us all, flops down on the nearest chair and hides his head in the crook of his arms with a groan that sounds suspiciously like "women".
"Trouble in paradise already?" Says Finnigan.
"Shut up Seamus." Comes Weasley's muffled voice. "Get me a drink."
Seamus, I knew that. Thankfully I only called him Sean one or two times.
Weasley's sour mood seems to immediately affect everyone at the bar. Most of them seem to think he actually has authority over them, and they even follow his orders at work. Just because he defeated the Dark Lord by proxy, for Merlin's sake. So no one wants to seem cheery in front of him, and they start to talk in whispers.
Except Finnigan, of course, who has probably known Weasley for years and doesn't put up with his crap.
"All's fair in love and war you know, mate." Finnigan says bracingly as he plops a beer in front of Weasley.
"I don't know what idiot came up with that phrase," replies Weasley, sitting himself up to nurse his beer. "But they obviously never met Hermione."
"What did you do this time?" Finnigan asks, blithely.
"I didn't do anything." Weasley replies, affronted. "She's the one who wants to go bloody camping. I mean, as if this past year has just been 'good practice' and now we have the skills to 'camp properly'! We almost died last time, is she stark raving mad?"
"She always was a bit odd, mate." Shrugs Finnigan, and I can't help letting out a snort.
Weasley turns to me and immediately pulls a face that resembles a slapped arse. "Oh, it's you."
"Yes." I say as scathingly as I can muster. "It is."
"Well bugger off would you, I don't want tomorrow's headlines to be detailing my marital issues."
"Oh come off it Weasley," I spit. "Your boring life wouldn't even make page twelve."
Weasley starts reddening, and I feel a familiar pang of victory. Everyone else starts to silently back away from us.
Weasley sits back and pushes himself up from his chair in a very aggressive manner, and my feeling of victory sinks like a stone into my stomach. Yikes.
Time to exit stage left. I make a show of checking my nails and smoothing my hair. "Well, I think my work is done here. See you tomorrow, fellas."
I make a short bow and whirl around to leave through the front doors. Keeping my pace even but hurrying the hell up, I push through the doors and breathe a sigh of relief as I step out into the cool wind.
All of a sudden I hear the pop of an Apparition and before I realise it, I've run into the newly Apparated Potter with an oomph.
"Bloody hell, Malfoy." Says Potter, rubbing his chest and looking pained. "As if Apparating isn't bad enough, I don't need you barrelling into me. What are you running from?"
"Nothing." I say quickly. Just then, Weasley storms out behind me, sees Potter, and his face clears a little.
Potter does a crooked smirk, as if it all makes sense now. "I thought you two were getting along better these days, but I knew it wouldn't last."
"He's a prat, he'll always be a prat, and he's not even trying to hide it that he's the one leaking stuff to the Prophet-" Weasley starts, but Potter cuts him off with a glare.
"What's being leaked to the Prophet?" I put in, trying to sound innocently curious. Maybe this will help me get to the bottom of this.
"Oh, erm, you know…" Weasley backtracks pathetically. "About you two having your little… whatever."
"That's not a leak." Potter says, deadpan.
"That's a bloody haemorrhage." I put in darkly.
"Anyway," Potter turns back to me. "We might as well tell you the truth. The inner workings of the Auror department are being leaked to the Prophet, and we're completely clueless about who's doing it."
"Yes, so we should keep it quiet, don't you think?" Weasley says through his teeth.
"I already told you, I know Draco's not doing it. Firstly, he doesn't have that kind of network any more, and secondly, that night you noticed the parchment disappear was the night I was at Malfoy's house having dinner. No one can be in two places at once."
Weasley looks like he's tired of having this argument, but Potter remains steadfast.
"Well you believe what you want, but we're no closer to knowing anything about it. And all the while, more and more stuff keeps disappearing and showing up as news." Weasley says.
At this point I really wish I'd been reading the papers. If I knew what was being leaked, I could probably talk to a few people and find out what's going on. I might not have much of a 'network' any more but I am still capable of being charming. I suppose I can always grab some old copies of the paper from the makeshift library set up in Hogsmeade while Hogwarts is being re-built.
I excuse myself from Weasley and Potter's conversation, which has turned into a round of speculation over who it could be, but each person either has an alibi, or they were at their own training session that night. Your attendance has to be 100% or you're failed and expelled from the course. I make my way back into the Pub and ignore the hoots of the Auror crowd as I grab some Floo Powder, head straight to the fireplace and call out, "The Three Broomsticks!"
After giving it about a nanosecond of thought, it becomes quite obvious how the 'two places at once' trick could be pulled off. All you'd need is an alibi in a different class schedule. You just make your alibi attend their own class as themselves, then attend your class as you. Either using self-Transfiguration or some kind of potion.
But obviously I can't explain this to Potter and Weasley, because it'd be the equivalent of admitting my own guilt. I have to let them come to their own realisation somehow, and perhaps point them to the perpetrator at the same time. If I can figure it out. But first, I need to actually find out what's been happening, so I extricate myself from the crowd at The Three Broomsticks with difficulty, and head down the lane, past all the rinky-dinky little shops I never deigned set foot in, and end up outside the old empty storehouse that's being used as Hogwart's library for the time being.
I'm all of a sudden grateful for my mother. As much as she concerns herself with silly things, and is cavorting with all the wrong people, she does have her finger on the pulse of society. I wouldn't have even known about this place if it weren't for her endless daily ramblings. I'm glad I have the sense not to tune her out all the time.