Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Harvest Moon ❯ Go ( Chapter 1 )

WARNING: Parts of this story will be bloody and disturbing. If you can't handle that, do not read this.

 

***

Her heart was pounding so hard it felt as though it would beat right through her chest, mouth dry, lungs heaving to draw air, muscles in her legs screaming from the exertion. It felt like she'd been chased for days. The dreams had haunted her even before she'd started being hunted in the real world. She already knew the outcome of this, she was running even though she knew it would do her no good. She was already dead. The dreams had shown her that early on. They had built the terror night by night until she was afraid to sleep anymore. Someone or something was going to kill her. But she wasn't going down easy. She hid behind a huge tree, trying to catch her breath as a shouted avada kedavra sounded in the cool night air and a flash of green light sped by her. What the hell was that, she wondered for all of five seconds before the second flash of green light caught her in the side of the head and she was falling into nothingness.

 

***

 

“Granger,” a drawling voice called from her office door. “Do you ever go home?” He glanced around the dark and somewhat grungy office. Files were piled neatly on just about every available surface in the room and there was a soft glow from several glass cases marked “Evidence”. The ones illuminated were the works still in progress and he bent down to study a piece of torn parchment pinned to a blood soaked rag doll in the far corner of one of the cases. He shook his head sadly. It was always the cases involving little ones that haunted them.

 

“I hardly think that's any of your business, Malfoy,” she said, grinning slightly at her friend and partner. Amazing how much would change in ten years. Malfoy had become a good friend and confidant over the years, he had been the one to push her toward the Magickal Investigations branch of the aurors at the Ministry. They had eventually been partnered because they worked well together, seeing things from various angles that the other might have missed. Their solved case ratio was 99%, the one percent being cold case war crimes that had eventually been chalked up to Voldemort or his minions. Hermione hadn't been happy with letting it go but she'd been told to drop it officially. That didn't mean she hadn't worked those cases on her own though.

 

“It is if we're ever going to make dinner at the restaurant. After all, we have to put in an appearance for the retirement party,” he said, standing up from his crouch by the case.

 

Hermione snorted and waved a hand dismissively at him. “As though anyone will miss me. They'll be too busy drinking firewhiskey and celebrating to notice who's there and who isn't.”

 

“Still, one really must keep up.”

 

“You're still a snob, Draco.”

 

“Hmpf. Hardly,” Draco said, coming to sit on the edge of her desk. Flicking casually through the piles for their various cases both solved and unsolved. “I would have thought you knew I'd reformed my ways by deeming it necessary to go to a muggle university. My father, on the other hand, is still a snob.”

 

“And always shall be,” Hermione said.

 

He laughed. “Of course he will. One of us has to uphold the name of Malfoy to proper status. Gods know I'm not at the moment according to my mother and father both considering I dig around in murder cases with you all the time. Not that I care at this point.”

 

“There was a time when that was all you cared about,” Hermione couldn't resist poking him a little.

 

“Yes, but you will allow that I've changed over the years. Otherwise, I'd have hexed you into oblivion at University.”

 

Hermione snorted and shuffled some papers into one of the files on her desk. “Why would your mother care about your status as a Malfoy anymore? She isn't married to your father at this point.”

 

“True,” he said thoughtfully. “I think she just wants to use me as a buffer for her and my father when they go to the same parties.”

 

“I would imagine that is rather awkward for them.”

 

“True. They didn't exactly part on good terms. Put that away and let's go before something happens and we can't . . .” Draco stopped in mid sentence. “Too late.”

 

Kingsley Shacklebolt ducked to come through the small doorway to the office. “Sorry to interrupt your plans for the evening but something had happened which requires your singular expertise.”

 

Hermione frowned. “What is it?”

 

“There has been a muggle murder,” Kingsley said, sounding grave.

 

“Doesn't that fall under the muggle's jurisdiction and not ours?” Draco asked.

 

“It would if it weren't for the fact there are traces of magick on the body. It seems as though someone cast avada kedavra on her initially before they took her apart. We've never seen anything like this in the wizarding world.”

 

Hermione nodded and stood up to follow Kingsley and Draco out the door. This would be something the aurors had no idea how to handle. She was glad she had gone to both muggle university in the United States, then to one in the wizarding world back in the U.K. Oddly enough, it had been Draco who'd pushed her to study in the States, saying that as more of the muggle world crossed over into the wizarding one there would be a need for those who were familiar with both methods of law enforcement and investigation. Studying at the world renown Forensic Anthropology Facility at the University of Tennessee had taught her much about death and curiously about life as well and Merlin U. had made her come face to face with the ghosts of her past through studying magickal murders. Goddess knew she'd seen enough of them during the war but it was somehow comforting to see them when they weren't close friends or family.

 

She sighed heavily and put her hand on the portkey Kingsley was holding. She had the uneasy feeling this was going to be particularly bad.