Harry's boss was a patient witch, she had been an Auror for twenty-five years and had seen bright young witches and wizards come and go from her department in that time, but none had ever been Harry Potter. He was famous, which came in handy for recruiting and for the occasional nod to the press that a case was closed rather than ongoing. But that fame came with a heavy price, privacy was almost impossible, and more so, she felt embarrassed when she happened to fail him in any way.
She felt embarrassed now. Somehow the location of his apartment had been leaked to the Death Eaters. She had spent all morning setting up task forces and sending her best investigators, save Harry, to track down leads and try to follow through on anything they could. She was trying her best to make it up to Potter, she couldn't help but feel that somehow all of this was her fault. It had been her to make sure that Potter's residence stayed a Ministry secret. She was on her third cup of coffee and sixth regenerative concoction when she straightened her robes and headed for interrogation.
They had one of her people there, and she was there by her own orders. The head Auror walked into the room where her men were looking in on the young women in the interrogation room. There were two men inside. Peters, a tall and skinny man with ramshackle robes and spots of gray in what hair he had left and his partner Addington, short, squat, mustached and angry at the way that fated had played havoc with his genes. She had made them partners as a secret joke. Tall, thin and pleasant Peters, short, plump and angry Addington. The joke had worn thin over all these years, and she was now ashamed to admit the reason she had made them partners in the first place. She had decided to chalk it up to youth, she was young once. Peter's inclined his head when she entered.
"Mabel." He greeted.
"What's she said?" Mable asked.
"Nothing yet. We're waiting for clearance to come down from the inquisition department to talk to her." Angry little Addington spoke angry and little.
"Clearance? Why are we waiting for clearance? She's been sitting there a half an hour!" Mabel roared.
"Mab, it's more complicated than it seems." Peters shrugged.
"We went in there to talk to her when some hotshot in slick robes with one of those fucking twenty galleon smiles rolls in, slick as anything, and tells us that she's a person of note."
"Person of note?"
"It seems she's the daughter of a member of the Wizengamot."
"Hot holy hell." Mabel slammed her hand on the sturdy little table between the two Aurors, "Well, when are we to expect notification?"
"It's already been this long. We'll probably be goddamn waiting here for hours!"
"I don't like this, I don't like this one bit. I'm going to Shaklebolt." Mabel nodded her head and walked out, leaving the two Aurors inside to sigh and shrugg, and throw a loud temper tantrum respectively.
Mabel took the service elevator, newly installed to hasten rate of travel between the seven proper departments and the Minister himself, who was exactly who Mabel was on her way to see. When she got into outer office she pulled a page from Potter's play book and stormed past the secretary, throwing the double doors open and staring eye to eye with the tall dark and solid Kingsly Shaklebolt, Minister of Magic.
"Something I can help you with Mabel?"
"Don't be so calm with me!"
"Okay. You're clearly upset. What's going on?"
"I have Abby Slanton in my interrogation room."
"Slanton? As in Reginald Slanton?"
"Yeah, and you know what she's doing in there?"
"Being interrogated?" He gave her a slow and confident, but confused smile.
"Actually she's sitting there."
"Well, why is she just-"
"She's sitting there, waiting to be interrogated, but we can't because goddamn AI won't let us at her until they clear it with her father!"
"Auror Inquisition in a important branch, I can't have you in my office complaining about that branch every other week."
"She knew the address of Harry Potter flat! She crashed his birthday party there last night!"
"Last night? You mean when the attack-"
"Yes! We need to know how she learned a Ministry secret so we can either confirm or rule her out as a suspect."
"If she goes to the press we won't be able to keep the attack from going public any longer." Shacklebolt protested, "Do you have anything you can hold her on?"
"Nothing." She shook her head, "Which is why she's in interrogation and not a holding cell."
"Merlin." He put his hand to his head and leaned back wearily in his chair.
"My thoughts exactly."
"I'll she what I can do to lift the inquisition. In the meantime, I need to know where Harry is now."
"He's being relocated to a safe house."
"The Burrow?"
"No. Too public."
"Then where?"
"Sir, I'm sure you appreciate that I can't tell you that."
"Yes, yes. Of course. It's only that I worry. I've known the boy for a very long time."
"We all have, sir. One way or another." And with that Mabel was on her way back to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Aurors offices from there.
* * *
Harry was finished putting his belongings away at the safe house, a tiny little place that had likely seen it's share of squatters before he had shown up to claim it as a temporary home as well. The place was small, always seemed to be damp, and smelled badly of rotting Indian food, and these were it's charming features. Harry sat down at the little desk next to the bed and tried twice to turn on the desk lamp before he realized that the lamp was so far gone it had come back and left again. He lit the tip of his wand and set it on the desk before pulling out a quill and his notebook.
The idea that people younger than Harry were Death Eaters was troubling him. While it wouldn't be impossible to say that some of the first years that he knew when he was leaving Hogwarts were Death Eaters then, it wasn't what his gut was telling him. These kids seemed too young even for that. Which lead him to the conclusion that somehow the Death Eaters were recruiting again, and recruiting young. However with Voldemort dead and gone they couldn't truly be Death Eaters, could they? Could they still be loyal to a dead man?
Harry supposed that the Death Eaters had likely come to view Voldemort as a martyr rather than a sad old fool, and if that were the case they had acquired something that could possibly make them even more dangerous. They had turned their fear of a powerful wizard into a faith, as once Bella LeStrange had done. He shuddered at the thought of dozens of LeStranges running around. And here he hit his dead end. He had nothing left to go on. When he had owled Mabel earlier to ask that Abby be interrogated he had hoped he would have a response within the hour. The response was either late coming or the interrogation was being held up.
He decided it was going to do him no good to sit around and think himself into a stupor. He gathered his things and vanished. He reappeared in the public toilets that he had come to favor as his entrance into the Ministry. As soon as he was inside he headed straight for the Aurors offices, and from there to his desk.
Harry's desk was a mess. Not a fun mess, and certainly not a productive mess. He had piles of half done paperwork he had lost once and redone, turned in and come back only to find the old paperwork somehow mysteriously at the bottom of a stack of paperwork. He had pictures hung up on his cubicle walls and obscured forever by old case notes he had tacked up over them. He had mostly eaten lunches and dinners laying devil may care about here and there, some of which had become fuzzy, but thanks to certain spells left no smell in their unpleasant wake.
It was in the midst of this absolute mess that Harry was searching for a pen. He knew he had a few of them, tucked away in the maddening crevices and nooks, of his remarkably load baring desk. Of course he couldn't find any. He headed over to the Improper use of Magic Department, and to Hermione's exceptionally organized desk. He saw that she wasn't sitting there so he grabbed one of her pens and headed back to the Auror's offices. Once there he made a bee line for Mabel's office, rushing past her secretary and slamming open her door. She was sitting there looking completely flustered and exhausted.
"What going on with the Abby thing?"
"We're waiting for approval." She muttered, "Did you know her father is on the Wizengamot?"
"No, why would I know that?"
"Eh, curious."
"So, hey, Boss." Harry began.
"No."
"I haven't even asked." Harry said pretending to be offended.
"I don't care. Whenever you call me boss, it's because you want something."
"And in the interest of keeping the streak alive, I want something. Fancy that."
"What, Potter?"
"I want to be put on this case."
"This case is about you. That's not just a conflict of interests it's irresponsible."
"Yeah, maybe. Who cares. I want it. It's interesting."
"Well, you can't have it."
"Come on! What's it going to take?"
"You'll have to have a partner."
"But I don't like having partners."
"This is my problem exactly how?"
"You love me, Mab, you always have."
"Potter."
"I think it's my dimples, but who can tell?"
"Potter."
"Fine, I'll take the stupid partner."
"That's more like it."
"This is a one time thing though, yes?"
"We'll see."
"So, who's my new go-for?"
"Weasley."
"I take it back, you hate me and my stupid dimples."
"Oh, Harry."Mabel jested, "According to Witch World Weekly, no one hates your stupid dimples."
"Well, at least there's that."
"Are you wondering yet why it was so easy to be put on this case?"
"Not at all, we established your love of my dimples."
"Seriously, you're on this because if your name is heading the newspapers we'll get a little more leeway to explore."
"Yeah, I figured. How much longer can we hold Abby?"
"Honestly? An hour, two tops. We have no grounds to hold her, and if we don't get allowance to talk to her we have to let her go."
"I'll work on it." Harry grinned.
"Potter. Don't make a mess of this."
"Yeah, yeah. Rules and all that. Right there with you."
* * *
Ron was sitting at his desk, sneaking a second lunch between breaks when Harry sat down on his desk. Ron looked up and smiled his knowing smile before he swallowed what he was still chewing, with more than a little difficulty.
"So." Ron began, "What brings you to my neck of the woods, partner?"
"You've heard, then." Harry shrugged, "Of course how you manage to stay a step ahead of me in inter office politics and still barely chew eight meals a day is beyond me."
"It's a talent. I have others, but really when am I going to have to juggle chainsaws while standing on my head in polite company?"
"That is a conundrum."
"Whelp, partner. I guess we better dig into what we have on this already."
"Wouldn't help, we're dead ended."
"Then your visit isn't entirely social?"
"Well, I mean if you want I can leave some money behind when you do this favor for me, you know if you don't want to feel all used."
"Fifteen galleons isn't a lot to ask."
"Done." Harry reached into his wallet and fished out the money, "I need you to distract Peters and Addington for a few minutes."
"Do I really want to know?"
"Merlin, no."
"Okay, I'm in."
Harry got up and raced back to his desk. It took him several moments to remember what drawer he kept his cloak in, but eventually he found it and wrapped himself. Totally invisible he walked into the interrogation room and had a seat. He waited to hear the door to the viewing room open and close before he spoke.
"Abby, it's Harry. Don't panic."
"Where are you?"
"Doesn't matter. I have some questions I need you to answer."
"Do you ever need anything else. A girl gets the feeling that you're not interested."
"You know, out of context that's a really weird thing to say when you're visibly alone in a room."
"Noted. So, what did you want to know?"
"How did you get my address?"
"It wasn't anything sneaky or anything. I just posted the question on the bulletin board in front of the break room."
"Someone told you? Who?"
"I don't know. I was never approached. I just found a letter on my desk yesterday."
"And this didn't seem odd to you?"
"Everything seems odd to me, I make it a habit to just roll with the punches."
"Hmm." Harry debated the pros and cons of his next question carefully before he asked it, "Do you know where Draco Malfoy is?"
"Draco Malfoy? He disappeared years ago." Abby gave the air in the direction she imagined him to be a quizzical look.
"Three years and eight months."
"Why would I know where he is?"
"He disappears in the middle of starting a pure blood revolution, years later you get a letter with my address after asking in the least productive way possible and the day you arrive at my flat we all get attacked by Death Eaters. The coincidence has merit."
"Regardless, and really, Harry that is a stretch, I never even met Draco Malfoy before he vanished. I'm certainly not going over to his secret lair and paying wizard chess with him."
"Maybe. I'll look into it."
"Was there anything else?"
"Yeah, just one more. When everything went down you panicked and hid behind the couch."
"Seems like a pretty normal response from fear to me."
"It is, except that you've had Auror training. You know how to control fear in battle. Why did you fall apart?"
"Do you want the real truth or a convenient lie?"
"I don't have much use for lies at this stage."
"I wanted you to think you had to protect me. That seems to be what you go for in women. All the girls you've dated, and I read the tabloids, haven't got clue one in their pretty little blond heads."
"Just out of curiosity, what would the lie have been?"
"You just moved too quickly for me to get my bearings, gosh you're amazing." She feigned starry eyed admiration.
"Right. That's rubbish. Okay. I'm done here."
Harry got up and left. He went back to his desk and stored his cloak. He then went to Mabel to tell her she might as well release Abby, being vague about the why this was something sensible to do now when it hadn't been fifteen minutes ago. He then grabbed Ron from what seemed to be a thrilling conversation about the Quidditch world cup with Peters and Addington and dragged his new partner to the unsolved case lock up. He pulled the file on Draco Malfoy and dropped it with a heavy, and dust filled, thud on the table in the cold case room.
"Malfoy?" Ron seemed confused.
"I don't know why, but I have a feeling he plays into this somehow."
And with that Harry and Ron began to re-examine to file, and to piece together one the wizard worlds greatest mysteries.