InsaneJournal

My Own Holiday Fic
Today was my last full day of work until the second of January, which means a much-needed long break for me and a surfeit of Fic From Frayach for you. The following is a WIP that will be completed by the end of the holidays. And, yes, I know I'm being foolhardy posting it now during the midst of a million fests, but it's seasonally appropriate and, well, hey, I just want to, damn it. Hopefully, it won't get lost in the shuffle. I'll post it in small enough installments to make it easy to follow.

A Mitigating Circumstance
Pairing: Harry/Draco and implied Harry/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Someone is hunting down and killing former Death Eaters, one by one, and it is only a matter of time before he (or she!) gets to Lucius and Draco.

Later, Harry learned that even a couple of the seasoned Aurors had lost their lunches, but at the time, he’d only been aware of his own stomach turning over and then the desperate search for a tree or a corner or a bin where he could be sick and not immediately be discovered and teased for his “delicate constitution.”

“What the fuck is this?” Dawlish gritted out between clenched teeth. “A werewolf kill?”

Robards crouched over the body, his breath smoking in the frigid air. “We can’t know for certain until we have McGinniss and his people take a look, but I don’t think so.” He prodded the half-frozen corpse with his wand. “These wounds are too clean.”

Harry spat into the snow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You all right there, Potter?” Savage called.

“Yeah,” he said, spitting again before he stood up straight and moved away from the rhododendron, garnished now with the curry he’d had for lunch as well as spatters of frozen gore.

“Well, it would appear that someone’s got it in for former Death Eaters,” said Williamson conversationally. “One of their victims perhaps?” He’d just finished scanning the vicinity for magical signatures, and the air still crackled around him.

“Or what about another Death Eater? This could very well be the result of some nasty little in-fight,” said Robards as he stood and wiped his wand abstractedly on his thigh like a dirty knife.

“Or a splinter group,” said Savage.

“Or a splinter group, yes,” Robards acknowledged. “Potter!” he barked. “Find anything useful in that shrub?” Everyone chuckled good-naturedly.

Harry shrugged. This wouldn’t be the first time that the other Aurors’ cavalier attitude had bothered him. He looked at them with as impassive an expression as he could muster. Around him, the snow was stained with blood in a twelve-foot radius, and something that looked suspiciously like an intestine trailed like an overly large umbilical cord from beneath the man’s thick, fur-lined cloak. He could never have imagined a human body held so much blood, yet here was the irrefutable evidence. He felt his stomach roll over again.

Robards turned and peered intently into Williamson’s face. “Anything useful?”

Williamson shook his head. “Nothing. No magic has been used in this place for a week at least.”

“Gotta be a werewolf, then,” growled Dawlish. “Vicious fuckers.”

“Mmm, yes. Some of them are,” said Williamson. “But this is no werewolf kill.” Squatting, he used his wand tip to push back the corpse’s chin, exposing its throat. “Whoever did this didn’t have claws. But he sure as shite had a straight razor.”

“Or she,” said Dawlish. “Could’ve been a bird, you know.”

Harry saw Savage and Williamson roll their eyes at this, but Robards (consummate politician that he was) nodded solemnly.

“Right indeed,” he said. “Good catch, Dawlish.”

“I was using ‘he’ in the general sense . . .” said Williamson.

“Well, that’s sexist then, isn’t it?” countered Dawlish.

“Lads,” said Robards amiably. “We’re not conducting a sensitivity seminar here. We’re trying to investigate a murder.”

“As I see it, the bastard got what he deserved, didn’t he?” said Dawlish. “Fucking McNair. Poetic justice, that is. A throat-cutting for a throat-cutter.”

“Should have sent those people to Azkaban,” said Savage. “If not for the rest of us, then at least for them. Strip ‘em of their wands and the ability to do even defensive magic, and you’re basically asking for something like this to happen.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the new Minister of Justice for you,” said Robards darkly. Everyone knew that given his years working with Kingsley Shacklebolt, he’d thought himself a shoo-in for the interim appointment and held precious little regard for Arthur Weasley. “Fucking bleeding heart.”

Harry coughed, and they all turned to him with varying degrees of guilt reflected in their faces.

“My apologies, Potter,” grumbled Robards. “My opinion bears entirely on his job as Minister of Justice and not as your future father-in-law.”

Again, Harry shrugged. He had little desire to engage Robards in a philosophical discussion about justice and mercy and other such shite when they were standing in a neglected park and looking at what may or may not be pieces of a human liver in the trampled blood-stained snow. He squinted up at the sky and waited for the brief moment of awkwardness to pass. It had been overcast for days. Overcast and cold. The kind of cold that made the insides of your nose hurt when you breathed and numbed your fingers before you could say a warming charm. God, how he wished it would snow.

“Well, at least we have footprints,” said Williamson. “Maybe my training in Muggle forensics will finally come in handy.”

“Is there a print distinct enough to make a cast?” Savage asked, peering dubiously at the ground. “And even if there is, how will we know it belongs to the perpetrator and not McNair?”

“Because,” Harry drawled, “the imprint of the tread won’t match the tread on the soles of McNair’s boots.”

“Brilliant deduction, Potter!” Robards exclaimed, clapping him robustly on the shoulder as though he hadn’t just said the most obvious fucking thing in the world. Clearly, none of them had ever seen a Muggle crime drama.

“That’s our Potter,” Williamson murmured into his sheepskin collar. “A veritable Sherlock Holmes.” He sent Harry an amused glance, and Harry found himself smiling. Williamson – and, on a good day, Savage – were pretty much the only two people in the Division he could stand. He couldn’t wait until his classmates from Hogwarts completed their training. Because of who he was, he’d been permitted to skip the preparatory academy, but that had only meant he was everyone’s junior (and thus their coffee-fetching lackey) by at least five years. He missed people his own age. People who hadn’t yet grown hardened to the suffering and death this job brought one in contact with nearly every day.

“Over here!” called Savage, beckoning to them. “These look fairly good.”

Making his way carefully around the circumference of blood, Harry followed the other Aurors up a handful of icy, stone steps. The path they followed contained footprints made by at least a dozen different treads. Clearly, the park was a shortcut to some other, more desired, endpoint. But just before the path exited onto the street it passed beneath a dilapidated pergola, and it was there that Savage stood, pointing with his wand at a clear set of distinct prints.

“Boots,” Williamson murmured. “If these belong to our chap, he wasn’t wearing shoes.”

“He or she wasn’t wearing shoes,” said Dawlish.

“All I can say is she’s one big-boned bird, then,” said Williamson, scratching his temple absently with the tip of his wand.

“Or maybe these don’t belong to our perp at all because she’s a she and not a he, and we’re looking at a bloke’s footprints.”

“Dear Merlin,” muttered Williamson.

“Now, now, lads,” said Robards. “No time for a row, we’ve got to get this scene secured before the Muggle authorities turn up.”

“Plus I’m freezing my arse off,” said Savage.

“Plus Savage is freezing his arse off,” added Robards. “So, Williamson, since you’re the foreskin expert . . .”

“Forensic,” said Williamson.

“Whatever,” said Robards. “Just hurry up and make a cast of those prints. The rest of the lads will help me deal with the body. Right, lads?”

Everyone grumbled and began backing away as Williamson knelt in the snow and started slicing, with a thin blade of heat from his wand, a square containing both footprints.

“I’ll need another pair of hands,” he said without looking up. “Potter, why don’t you stay here with me?”

Harry nodded and drew his wand, trying to conceal his relief behind an expression of earnest concentration.





“So, someone’s offing Death Eaters, eh?” asked Ron, his apprentice Auror robes open at the collar and his mouth full of shepard’s pie. “Couldn’t happen to a better bunch if you ask me.”

“In fact, no one did ask you,” said Hermione darkly. “No matter what McNair may have done, he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“I agree,” said Mr. Weasley, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes wearily. “And even worse, I’m beginning to agree with the editorials that put the responsibility for his death at my doorstep.”

Harry looked up from his plate. “You think the Death Eaters should have been sent to Azkaban, then?”

Mr. Weasley shook his head. “I don’t know, Harry. I didn’t believe so at the time, but after something like this, I certainly start to wonder. After all, it’s not like I have any expertise in law or even law enforcement . . .”

“You did the right thing, Mr. Weasley,” Hermione said firmly, reaching across the table to cover the top of his hand with hers. “Imprisoning them would have just given the purebloods . . . er . . . I mean Voldemort’s supporters another reason to seek revenge.”

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Weasley. “The one thing those people don’t need is another grievance, another imagined indignity for them to avenge once they got paroled. No. What we really should have done is execute the bastards . . .”

“Molly!” Mr. Weasley gasped.

“I’m sorry, Arthur. You know I’d never speak about it in public, but I have a right to my opinion in my own house. Those people were responsible for murdering our son and others as well. They were responsible for maiming Bill and killing Remus and Tonks and very nearly our daughter and Harry as well.” She stopped speaking as the angry tears welled in her eyes. Harry looked back down at his plate and wondered, for the umpteenth time, when things were ever going to start feeling normal again.

“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I’m sorry to be such a vengeful, hateful person . . .” Mr. Weasley reached an arm around her shoulders and tried to pull her into an embrace, but she resisted. “No, Arthur, I don’t feel like being comforted. I feel like being angry. I know you can’t understand, but it’s true. I’m angry. No scratch that. I’m furious. Those people dared to touch my children. My children! As far as I am concerned, death would be too good for them.”

Mr. Weasley dropped his arm and bowed his head. Although part of him agreed with Mrs. Weasley, Harry felt truly sorry for him. He knew how much Mr. Weasley had struggled with his recommendation not to incarcerate the remaining Death Eaters who’d survived the Battle of Hogwarts. He’d seen him sitting at this very table, night after night, the lamps burning low and his eyes unfocused, visibly struggling with some unimaginable emotion. It had been over Christmas break, during the last days of 1998. Harry had come to the Burrow with Ron and Ginny and Hermione, fresh from their exams and an unexpected Quidditch victory. As soon as he’d stepped foot over the threshold, he’d felt it. Mr. Weasley’s silent all-consuming battle with his own conscience. Even though he hadn’t been sure (and still wasn’t) as to what his own decision would have been if he’d been in Mr. Weasley’s shoes, Harry deeply respected the soul-searching that had gone into it. It was this, more than any possible future familial relationship with Mr. Weasley, that made him so angry at people’s flippant criticism.

“Were there similarities between this murder and the Malfoy incident? Is it possible the same person – or people – were involved in both?” Mr. Weasley asked quietly, turning his attention to Harry after Mrs. Weasley pushed her chair away from the table and began levitating their empty plates into the kitchen and dropping them, with a jaw-tensing clatter, from an unnecessary height into the sink .

Harry frowned, considering the question. The “Malfoy incident,” as Mr. Weasley had so delicately called it, had occurred during the final week of their seventh year, right after exams. Of course, he hadn’t yet been an Auror at that time, but he still recalled the facts in vivid detail. How could he not? After all, Narcissa Malfoy had saved his life, and no matter what her motivation was for doing so, Harry would never forget it. So, when he’d heard she’d been discovered in her own rose garden . . .

“Mrs. Malfoy wasn’t a Death Eater,” Harry replied.

“Well, we know she wasn’t Marked,” said Mr. Weasley. “But we don’t know . . .”

“She wasn’t a Death Eater,” Harry said again.

The table was quiet for several minutes before Mr. Weasley cleared his throat. “I only meant to discover if there were any similarities. I didn’t mean to impugn her name.”

Feeling chastening, Harry shook his head. “No, not really. Mrs. Malfoy was poisoned. Whoever wanted her dead didn’t want her to suffer . . .”

“Whereas whoever wanted McNair dead made sure that he did,” Mr. Weasley concluded.

“Exactly,” said Harry.

“Who wants dessert?” Mrs. Weasley called from the kitchen, her voice overly brittle and bright. With deliberate movements, Mr. Weasley smoothed the tablecloth before him as though wiping away all vestiges of the conversation they’d been having.

“I do, sweetheart,” he called.

Beside Harry, Ginny pulled out a chair and sat down in a flurry of apprentice robes and winter chill. “Have I missed dessert?” she whispered breathlessly.

He turned to smile at her. “No, just some very awkward conversation.”

“Well, I’m glad our practical ran over, then,” said Ginny. “Were you with the team that investigated the McNair murder today?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, but just so you know, the McNair murder was the cause of that awkward conversation I just mentioned.”

Ginny grinned and kissed his cheek. “Hint taken,” she said and then turned her attention to the wedge of apple tart with clotted cream that her mother was levitating toward her.

“Brilliant,” she said appreciatively. “I’m staving.”




Evan Rosier had been, perhaps, the only former Death Eater who’d made a nearly seamless transition to a Muggle lifestyle. Harry sighed as he glanced around the newly renovated factory space where Rosier had set up an antiques shop and tried to avoid the Chippendale chair where his corpse sat, like a man waiting for a shave at the barber, with its head thrown back and its stiffened fingers clutching the velvet cushion, its mouth gaping in a rictus of terror. Just like McNair, his throat was cut from side-to-side, the resulting wound resembling nothing so much as second scream-shaped mouth.

“Cadaveric spasm,” said Williamson from where he crouched examining Rosier’s hands.

“Come again?” said Robards.

“Cadaveric spasm. A rare form of muscular stiffening,” Williamson replied. “A kind of rigor mortis, except it happens at the moment of death, not later. Usually associated with violent deaths accompanied by intense emotion.”

Harry looked around, taking mental note of the over-turned globe stand and its globe, cracked like enormous blue and green egg. Pieces of a Ming vase crunched beneath his boots like bits of shell on the beach. Unlike McNair, whose killer appeared to have taken him by surprise, Rosier had known he was about to die and put up a fight.

“Does it look like anything was taken?” asked Savage.

“Won’t know until we have a chance to compare his inventory records with the stuff here,” said Robards. “But this doesn’t look like a burglary to me. Too messy. This chap’s primary aim is revenge.”

“So, we’re going with the vigilante victim angle then, are we?” asked Savage.

Robards nodded, scanning the room with a practised eye. “For now, that’s our best guess. Potter, find anything interesting?”

Harry straightened and turned toward his boss, holding up the article he’d just glimpsed beneath an overturned settee draped over the tip of his wand.

“Ah ha! I told you bastards so,” cried Dawlish. “It is a bird we’re looking for!”

“Hold on,” said Robards. “Not so fast. Potter, bring that here and let’s have a good look at it.”

Picking his way through broken bits of furniture and shards of porcelain, Harry crossed the room with the single elbow-length white satin glove.

“There’s blood on it,” said Robards when Harry was close enough for him to take a good look.

“Er, actually, no,” said Harry. “That’s lipstick.”

Robards looked disappointed. “Really? Are you sure.”

Harry nodded. “I can even tell you the brand. It’s Madame Delphi’s Mouth of a Muse.”

Dawlish guffawed. “Never knew you were an expert in ladies’ cosmetics, Potter.”

Harry didn’t even bother looking him and instead addressed his reply to Robards. “It’s the only kind of lipstick that uses an animal, rather than a plant, base for its colour. Crushed carmine beetles. I cast a component-sorting charm on it when I found the glove.”

“Still doesn’t explain how you know its name,” wheedled Dawlish.

“For the love of Loki, Dawlish,” said Robards. “Will you let the lad speak? In case you’ve forgotten, we’re trying to investigate a murder here.”

“I know its name,” Harry said with exaggerated calm, “because my girlfriend and best friend are trying to organise a holiday boycott of Mouth of a Muse because carmine beetles are endangered.”

“Sure,” said Dawlish, drawing out the word into a long provocative purr.

Harry rolled his eyes. Dawlish had been needling him since his first day on the job fifteen months ago, and it had been obvious, even to Harry, that the only reason he did so was because he felt threatened. A ridiculous notion, considering Harry was an inept Auror at best. As it’d turned out, hunting Horcruxes and vanquishing Voldemort constituted poor preparation for a career in criminal law enforcement. He wouldn’t have known what a cadaveric spasm was if it had popped out from behind one of Rosier’s Louis XIV chairs and bit him on the arse. The lipstick thing had been merely blind luck – that, and the fact he and Ron had been trapped at a table at Madam Puddifoot’s the weekend last while Ginny and Hermione discussed their plans to picket outside Twilfitt and Tattings the week before Christmas.

“May I?” Robards enquired.

Harry passed the glove from the tip of his wand to Robards’.

“Hmmmm,” Robard said after a long moment of close scrutiny. “This may have been in our perp’s possession, but if it was, it didn’t belong to her. Look here. The seams on each of the fingers have been stretched near to bursting.”

“Our bird not only has big feet, but big hands as well,” said Dawlish.

“Perhaps,” Robards murmured. “But the more interesting question is why didn’t the owner of this glove magically resize it? And why, for that matter, didn’t she Accio it before leaving? Either this glove belonged to one of Rosier’s Muggle customers, in which case how did she acquire a tube of magical lipstick, or it belongs to a witch who couldn’t or wouldn’t use magic . . .”

“Well, just like McNair, Rosier wasn’t killed with magic,” said Williamson. “Our perp likes to do it the Muggle way . . .”

“More like the Sweeney Todd way,” said Savage, shuddering as he glanced toward the corpse with its of nimbus of dark blood at its feet. “Come on, lads. Let’s get this poor bastard to the morgue.”





“I’m sorry, Harry, but I’m sick and tired of staying home on the weekends playing Exploding Snap . . .”

Stung, Harry turned away from his girlfriend and squinted towards the horizon at the low snow-covered hills with their embroidery of leafless hedges.

“We played Exploding Snap twice, Gin.”

“All right,” she conceded. “But we’ve stayed home every weekend since the summer bank holiday, and I’m about ready to tear out my hair in boredom.”

Harry jammed his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. “Sorry that it’s such an ordeal spending time with me,” he said petulantly.

Ginny sighed. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

Harry stopped in the middle of the lane and turned to her. “Are you sure?” he asked coldly.

Ginny pulled the candy cane from her mouth and jabbed it in his face like a red and green stripped wand. “Don’t you give me that self-pitying shite, Harry Potter.”

Harry leaned away from her peppermint-scented assault and glared at her.

“Why would I want to go clubbing in London when everything I want is right here?” he asked, gesturing around at the fields dotted with cows and the occasional custard-coloured sheep. “Why would I want to hang out with a bunch of people who spent most of their time at Hogwarts treating me like a freak when I could be here at the Burrow with you and Ron and Hermione?”

“Ron and Hermione want to go too,” said Ginny. “It’s not just me who’s bored out of her mind.”

“Well, fine,” said Harry. “Go with them, then.”

“Maybe I will.”

Without waiting to see if she still intended to accompany him, Harry started walking again in long brisk strides. Let her trot if she wanted to keep up, right now he didn’t care. He knew he was being unreasonable, but that didn’t mean he didn’t also feel hurt and rather angry. Ginny, Ron and Hermione were still students. Yes, they worked hard at their studies, but they also took off whole hours at a time to meet in cafes with their friends and walk to the wizarding district in Edinburgh to shop, or in Ginny and her friends’ case, play Muggle pub games. Once, having an unexpected couple of hours on his hands, Harry had decided to meet her at The Hollow Leg, where Ron said she’d probably be, and he’d discovered her with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, a pint of lager and blackcurrant in one hand and a dart in the other. It had been eleven o’clock in the morning. Granted, she’d been with a group of girlfriends and upon seeing him, she’d immediately snuffed out the fag, given her half-drunk pint to one of her friends and run into his arms, but still. The whole thing just hadn’t sat right with him, and even now, a month later, it still gnawed on the edges of his thoughts like a crup on a graphorn bone.

Then there was the unavoidable fact that while Harry spent twelve-hour days analysing two grisly murders, desperately fighting the clock before another victim was killed, Ginny spent her days reading, revising and doing carefully-controlled practicals. It wasn’t her fault, of course. And knowing how ill-prepared he felt for his job as an Auror, he certainly didn’t begrudge Ginny her schooling, but he couldn’t help but be reminded of how she’d remained at her (relatively) sheltered sixth year at Hogwarts, while he’d partook in a year-long suicide mission. It was not something they’d ever discussed in-depth and rarely mentioned, but it always seemed to float to the top of his mind every time they had a row, like noxious sediment in a boggy pond. He shouldn’t be angry at something that wasn’t her fault. He knew that. But his brain and his heart had never quite agreed in the past, and leaving adolescence hadn’t changed that fact.

“Harry,” she said breathlessly at his elbow, her bubblegum-pink knee-high boots clicking on the pavement like the hooves of some kind of exotic antelope. “Please, don’t be like this. You know, you can lighten-up a bit without it killing you.”

“Let’s hear you say the same thing after you’ve spent two days removing organs from a cadaver, dissecting them, and then dipping the pieces in magical residue-detection potion.”

Ginny shuddered.

“Why do they have you doing such a disgusting task?” she asked incredulously. “You’re Harry Potter after all.”

Tongue-tied by the breezy arrogance behind her question, Harry merely shook his head.

“I want to be alone,” he said dully. “Go to London with Ron and Hermione. Have fun. I’ll see you when you get back.”





No one, it seemed, was surprised by the third gruesome murder of a former Death Eater, but everyone, especially Harry, was surprised by Robards’ reaction.

“Bleeding fuck!” he bellowed as they pushed open the glass paneled doors and tromped into the Ministry’s new Auror Headquarters, tracking clumps of snow behind them. “The last two times could be considered Weasley’s fault. But this time, it’s ours!”

“But, Boss, . . .” Dawlish countered.

“Shut it,” growled Robards. “Aurors!” he yelled down the plushly carpeted hall of offices. “Five minutes! My office!”

Harry shrugged apologetically at their receptionist and directed a sequence of super-heated drying charms at the floor.

“Was it bad?” she breathed, glancing nervously after the swirl of Robards’ wine-red robes as he disappeared into the break room to bark at whoever he found there.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Well, worse actually.” He grimaced as he recalled the closely grown thicket of briars decorated, as though in a perverse parody of a Christmas tree, with red strips of flayed flesh.

“Worse?” she breathed, her hand rising to cover her mouth to unconsciously mimic Harry’s own response as he’d pushed aside the snow tangled branches, trying desperately to see the face, praying all the while that it wouldn’t be someone he knew.

Harry nodded and pulled off his cloak. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “Or at least don’t mention who told you. I don’t need Robards hacked off at me.”

“Five minutes is up!” bawled Robards.

“Good luck,” said the receptionist quickly.

Painfully aware of his junior status and the favouritism that had got him the job in the first place, Harry squeezed himself into Robards’ office and stood against the back wall, trying to take up the least amount of space possible.

“The door, Savage,” Robards said as the last of the Aurors trickled in. “And cast an Imperturbable while you’re at it. I don’t want the staff knowing everything.”

Harry fidgeted uncomfortably. He and the receptionist, Dora, got along well, and he doubted she’d give away her source, but if she did, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d stuck his foot in it. Absently, he wondered if Ginny, Ron, Katie and Denis were receiving training in Office Politics 101 and, if so, whether he could audit it. Maybe if it were at night, he could . . .

“Right, then,” said Robards. “Here’s the bottom line. Someone’s hunting Death Eaters.”

“Where can we enlist?” called out a voice to muted guffaws and murmurs of “hear, hear!” Robards glared in the direction of the potted palm.

“That’s your one allotted crack, Bunker,” he said, his voice icy. “Hope it was worth it.”

The ripple of mirth quickly subsided into a tense quiet.

“Anyone else care to make light of what might very well turn into a dangerous conflagration that could threaten our hard won peace?” Robards looked around, his eyebrows bristling. “Anyone? All right, then. Here are your assignments. I want everyone in this room to know what everyone else is doing, but you won’t know the how’s, why’s, or when’s unless I deem it necessary. Each one of you will receive his or her specific orders in private.”

Somehow, the room grew even quieter. Harry felt a ring of sweat start to tickle beneath his collar as he watched Robards pace back and forth behind his desk, his meaty hands clasped at his back and his eyes studying the carpet beneath his feet.

“Since my attempt to . . . reason with the Minister did not succeed, and thus we will not be escorting the remaining Death Eaters to Azkaban, that leaves us with only one viable option. Williamson, you and Savage will be guarding the surviving Lestranges. Broadstone, you get Nott. Quentin, I know you were planning to take the whole month of December off, but I need you to look after Rookwood. Barkston, you’ll be guarding Gibbons. McLowery, I want you to guard Jugson. Bunker, you and Castlebury will take the Carrows. Proudfoot, you will have Goyle. Hecklebush, you take Crabbe. Beckworth, I’m assigning you to Dolohov, and Plimpton, you get Mulciber. Spence and O’Brien, you’re assigned to Yaxley and Travers, respectively. Edwards, you take Wilkes. And Dawlish, you and Potter take the Malfoys. Now, did I miss anyone?”

“Yeah, that bastard Avery,” someone said.

“That’s because it was Avery’s skinned corpse we found by the river this morning. Any others?” Robards asked. No one answered. Harry, if he hadn’t been left reeling by his assignment, might have counted all the known Death Eaters on his fingers, but as it was, all he could think was, “Why? Why can’t I seem to escape that confounded pointy git?” In practical reality, he knew the answer to that question, but it still didn’t adequately address the existential Why me?

“All right there, Potter?” asked Dawlish, chewing on a pumpkin pasty and dropping crumbs on Robards’ carpet.

Harry nodded, too numb to reply.

“Don’t worry, old boy,” Dawlish said in-between mouthfuls. “I’ve got your back. Smart of Robs to give the new fellow to me. Got more experience than most of these toss-pots put together,” he whispered confidentially, gesturing with a dismissive jut of his chin at his fellow Aurors as they trailed dejectedly from the room.

Harry merely nodded again. He’d hoped to spend the holidays at the Burrow. In fact, he’d been planning for months to ask Ginny to marry him on Christmas Eve, after everyone else had gone to bed. Now, it seemed just as likely that he’d be holed up with John Dawlish and Lucius and Draco Malfoy.

“Well,” he said under his breath as he trailed Dawlish into the hall. “Doesn’t this just take the prize for the second worst Christmas ever.”

“Huh?” asked Dawlish, turning and spattering the front of Harry’s shirt with bits of pasty.

Harry sighed. “Nothing.”





Stripped of all its magic, Malfoy Manor looked even bleaker than Harry remembered it. Which was saying something, considering the last time he’d found himself inside its walls was during Voldemort’s brief stint as its chief occupant. Harry stood for a moment, recovering from his Apparation, and surveyed the house and its environs unsparingly. Most likely, some people would think it grand, but to Harry it just seemed hulking and grey, its windows like sightless eyes reflecting the setting sun. Slowly, Harry began walking down the long hedge-lined driveway, his boots crunching on the thin, icy crust of snow. The only sign of life he could detect were narrow tyre tracks, which could have been made by the wheels of a motorcycle or a carriage. Considering the distinct lack of hoof prints or manure, Harry suspected it was the former. The occasional spray of gravel thrown haphazardly across the snow at random intervals also suggested as much, and Harry found himself smiling as he tried to picture Lucius astride a Harley Davidson.

His musings were interrupted by the harsh crack of Dawlish’s Apparation behind him.

“Oi there!” he yelled. “Potter, what in the name of Circe’s cunt are you doing?”

Harry stopped, cringing at his companion’s vulgarity and hoping that the sound of his voice hadn’t carried through the Manor’s slightly gaping front door. Draco already believed him to be an uncultured slob and being accompanied by Dawlish, who had a mouth on him like a chav, was only bound to bolster that perception.

“Er, walking towards the house,” Harry replied with deliberate obtuseness.

Dawlish frowned and brushed at his robes dramatically as though he’d galloped through Wiltshire on an unbroken stallion instead of simply Apparating from his bland three-bedroom flat in Manchester.

“I trust you’ve checked for hexing wards, then,” he said darkly.

Harry stopped himself just in time before rolling his eyes.

“The Malfoys are expecting us.”

“All the more reason to check for hexing wards, then,” said Dawlish, scowling. “Rule number one, Potter: Never take your safety – or your partner’s – for granted.”

Swallowing back a choice retort, Harry drew his wand and tapped it against his thigh restively.

“The Malfoys can’t use magic,” he said. “They’re incapable of it, remember? If they even attempt to cast so much as a cleaning charm, they’ll be petrified on the spot and instantly Portkeyed to Azkaban. This house has even been rendered plotable. There isn’t a shred of spellwork left here.”

And it was true. The very air around them felt dead and inert as though something vital, something critical, had been removed from the atmosphere. Holding up his wand, Harry whispered Lumos and felt the spell pulling off his own power with a perceptible tug. The effort it took him to sustain the bright flare of light was immense, and he ended it with a quick Nox after only half a minute. Clearly, whatever the Unspeakables had done to this place it had worked. He and Dawlish would have to use their own magic sparingly so as not to exhaust themselves.

Still blinking away the phantom spots of light left behind by his Lumos, Harry didn’t see the approaching figure until it was almost upon them, and even when he did, he blinked again, believing for an instant that the eerie white of Lucius Malfoy’s hair was nothing more than an optical illusion.

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

“Evening,” said Dawlish gruffly. “Senior Auror John Dawlish, and the young chap here is Harry Potter.” He reached out his hand to Lucius, who let it remain extended for an awkward half-second too long before reaching out his own hand and turning his attention to Harry.

“Mr. Potter and I have had occasion in the past to become acquainted with one another,” he said in that deadly, quiet voice of his. “He was in the same year at Hogwarts as my son, you see.”

“Oh, right, of course,” blustered Dawlish, his breath smoking in great clouds before his face.

Lucius’s eyes remained on Harry’s, and he smiled ever so slightly, nothing more than a ironic twitch at the corner of his mouth. Harry felt an entirely unexpected sensation of solidarity pass between them, fleeting but nonetheless real. Within two minutes, Lucius had already cataloged Dawlish as a ineducable fool, but as for Harry? Well, if nothing else, that invitation to shared amusement meant the verdict was still out.

Smiling into his collar as he and Dawlish followed Lucius back toward the house, Harry found he could live with that.


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