Do You Still Believe?

you know my name
you know my face
you'd know my heart
if you knew my place
I'll walk straight down
as far as I can go
-- Breaking Benjamin - Follow
-o0o-

When Harry returned to the office, he saw that Malfoy had set up some sort of triangular sign on his desk. It read, in large bold letters, Don't Question Authority. They Don't Know Either. It wrung a brief chuckle out of him, and he sensed someone at the door just as he was reaching for it to flip through the other messages.

"I heard you saved Malfoy's life," Sinder said breathily. Harry didn't have to force the scowl that slipped over his face at the sight of her turquoise blue hair.

"Shouldn't that have worn off by now?"

She touched it, primping slightly. "I found I rather liked it. People keep mistaking me for Tonks, though."

Harry's scowl deepened. "What do you want?"

The smile that flit across her face was wholly unpleasant for the entire split-second it was evident. "While you were off performing your heroics in the face of the Death Eater remnants, another body turned up." She watched as Harry absorbed this, and then dropped out of sight, returning to her own cubicle.

He got to his feet and stretched, then glanced at Malfoy's empty desk. The sign had apparently been charmed to change, as it blurred and new words formed while he watched. When I Want Your Opinion, I'll Beat It Out Of You. He flashed the sign a grim smile, and then strode purposefully out into the hall.

Luna nearly crashed into him. The file she was holding spilled onto the floor, and the two of them knelt to pick it up. "Oh, Harry, it's another one," she said.

"I know," he said, and snuck a quick glance at the file.

"It's going to be terribly dangerous, with Malfoy still in the hospital and - I'm sorry, a broomelly just got into my ear. Did you just say you know?"

He turned his attention back to her, and nodded. "What's the matter?"

"Harry, we've only just found the body. There's no way you could possibly know. Kingsley doesn't even know." There was a frightening clarity in her eyes as she studied him. "We'll discuss this later. I'm going with you as your temporary partner, as there were signs that the killer was still on the scene. We have footprints, Harry."

She sounded almost excited by it. For the first time in a long time, Harry was reminded that they'd both gotten into law enforcement willingly. No one had shoved Luna into being an Unspeakable. No one had held a wand to Harry's head when he'd gone through Auror training, so many years ago. The slow stalk, the chase, the thrill of capture, the joy of knowing there was one less Dark wizard out in the world harming people - it was what they both lived for.

Ron would have loved it, he thought, and for the first time in years, the thought of his best friend and surrogate brother didn't bring with it a surge of pain. As he stood there, facing Luna in the corridor of the DMLE, hands full of papers and a dead body waiting for him on the other side of the Apparation, he felt the last few chinks of armoured ice surrounding his heart crack and fall away. With a grin to answer her tone, he took her by the elbow. "What are we waiting for, then? Let's go get them!"

She smiled blindingly at him. "Welcome back, Harry," she whispered, and Apparated them both to the scene of the crime.

-o0o-

Colin Creevey was there, carefully photographing everything. He stepped gingerly around the prints, capturing a shot of them from every conceivable angle while waiting for Luna to arrive and take casts of them.

Twin cracks alerted him and the Unspeakable whose name he didn't know to the arrival of Potter and Luna, and he waved to them. "Over here," he called.

The pair jogged over to him, and Luna immediately began filling the foot prints with a magical plaster pouring out of her wand. Potter crouched beside the body.

"A field," he said, looking around. The ground was muddy from the rain, and the grass was trampled in the immediate vicinity of the body. "Any ID on the vic?" he called to Luna. She raised her head and shook it, her blonde hair falling into her eyes.

"Not yet, Harry," she called back. Colin stopped with the footprints, and slid over to the body and began taking pictures of it.

"Nasty business, this," he muttered. Potter looked up at him, startled.

"Don't you work for the paper?"

"Freelance," he said. "I actually work for the Ministry. Unbreakable vow of silence over what I see on this job, though." He was surprised; he and Potter usually missed one another when they were working the same cases, but even the times they'd been on the same scene at the same time, Potter never really noticed him. "Malfoy's been really good for you," he commented.

Potter's reach for the body stopped midway, his body seemingly frozen. "Pardon?"

Colin had no compunction about repeating himself, and he even snapped a picture of the slightly stunned, slightly warm expression on the other man's face. "Malfoy. Your partner? He's been good for you. I don't think you've ever even noticed I was around before-" the guilty expression that stole over Potter's famous features told him that he was absolutely correct, and he laughed it off. "He's still in the hospital, right?"

"He took a direct hit from the Killing Curse and survived," Potter bit out.

Colin awarded him a searching look. "Not so direct," he said quietly. "If the rumours are anything to go on. You stopped it with a Patronus charm."

Potter looked as though he didn't particularly relish being reminded of that. "How did you know?"

"Just because I'm bound to silence with what I do here doesn't mean I can't talk about what I overhear at the Prophet's office." He shrugged one shoulder, and peered down at the body Potter was inspecting. "Truly nasty," he commented. "How someone could do this to another human being..." He trailed off, uncomfortable finishing his own sentence. Potter gingerly lifted the shredded remains of the teeshirt the victim had been wearing when they were attacked, and something caught his eye. "Hey now, what's that?"

Luna joined them as he pointed to it, and she pointed her wand at the corpse and mumured a quiet spell. A bubble formed around a section of the shirt and lifted into the air. Encapsulated within it was a strand of blond hair.

-o0o-

Harry stared at the hair - combined with the footprints, they were almost sure to capture the person committing these horrible atrocities. It was all he could do to keep the smug grin off his face at the sight of it. The only troubling thing was, looking at it floating there in a magical bubble it could have belonged to any number of people. Luna, Creevey, Malfoy...

He watched as Luna packed it away in a special bag designed to hold evidence, and then turned his attention back to the body. Creevey muttered something about being finished with the photographs, and Disapparated. She turned to him, eyes brilliant with emotion.

"This could be it, Harry," she said softly. "This could be the last one. We might solve it with these."

-o0o-

Oh gawd. I've been reading Left My Heart by Emma Grant. Absolutely wonderful story, even if it is old as the hills. Thing is, I'm going to try to take a leaf out of her book, and ratchet up the suspense in this. You guys don't have nearly enough to work with, and I'm desperate to hear what ya'll think. Lots of suspects lining up now~

I've been desperately trying to keep some length to these chapters - especially after the disastrously short chapters from earlier in the story - but this one absolutely refuses to go any further for now, and it's better to pick it up later, in the hopes that it'll start flowing again. The good news is that I've written out the scene of their first kiss! Drarry on the way! Huzzah! The bad news is that it's not for at least two or three more chapters. But it'll definitely be there; I promise.

polka dot: So do I. Hope it's mysterious enough for you!

Jennifer: Reviewers like you are the reason I write. ♥ Thanks so much! *huggles*

Yuutousei: The only thing occupying my time right now is writing, which is both to my detriment and gain at the same time, which is rather strange at times. Ah, RPing. I can only do one thing or another at a time; if I'm writing fanfics, I don't have any brain left over to spare for RPs and vice versa. The computer crashing when you reviewed anonymously, though, that would be off-putting, so I totally understand that. LMFAO @ WK and DN AND HP. I write Bleach, too, though not as much. You make me squee, reading both Weiss and HP. And not necessarily just MY WK and HP. X3 Just the fact that you like those two things makes me happy.
And if I can find out anything else to throw into their paths, it's going to get a lot more difficult before it gets easier. :3 I've heard the three-act-novel-writing trick is simplified as this: Act 1: Get your hero up a tree. Act 2: Throw rocks at him. Act 3: Get him down again. So at the moment, our intrepid young heroes are currently up the tree, and I'm still looking around for the biggest, baddest rocks in the yard to throw at them before I get them down again.

SecondStoreyStairwell: *bakes you cookies* You make me so happy~

thrnbrooke: It's a secret! But I'll get this chapter and the next up to you as fast as I possibly can. ♥

Anathema: I saw your name and the first thing I thought of was Anathema Device. XDD And certainly~ I'm as happy to present more as you are to receive it, I imagine. ♥ And they're getting there; Harry's got eight years of antisocial habits to overcome; a few weeks with Malfoy just aren't enough yet. But I can promise that they'll get there eventually~

Mr Spears: Haha~ I suppose it might look that way from the outside, but living here's actually quite boring.