Harvest Moon

Slytheringriffindor21, Meankitty69, Heidi191976, Lex and Taz: Glad you\'re all still enjoying.



Barbossas_Boots: Welcome aboard, hope you like the ride.



margaritama: You\'ll find out about access to the manor later. Maybe.



Voracious Reader: I see you have an interest in the field. You\'ll get more glimpses into the killer\'s head as we go along.



To everyone else reading, I hope you enjoy.



***





Hermione stepped from the fireplace in hers and Draco’s office and almost ran directly into the very person she’d come to look for. She felt suddenly very small and definitely grubby next to the other woman. Arabella Smythe was lovely and poised as usual. Her long blonde hair was swept up into an elegant chignon at the back of her head and she looked positively stunning in the cream colored, silk Escada suit she was wearing.



“Ah, the very person I was looking for,” Arabella said. “Would you care to join me for tea, Investigator Granger? I’d like to speak to you concerning this case you’re currently investigating.”



“Which case?” Hermione asked, though she knew perfectly well which one.



Arabella smiled. “Why the one involving Lucius, of course.”



“Naturally,” Hermione said. She glanced down at her sooty and besmudged attire and almost groaned aloud. “I wanted to speak to you about a few things as well. Ah, give me a few moments to clean up if you would.”



“Certainly. I’ll wait outside of your office, shall I?”



“That would be lovely.”



“You might want to change as well. The place I have in mind requires formal attire.” At Hermione’s look of horror, Arabella smiled. “Don’t concern yourself, I invited you, therefore it is only proper that I buy,” she said, walking out of the office door.



Hermione stood for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts. She used a cleansing charm to clean herself and her clothing then cast a glamoury to make it appear she was wearing something much nicer before walking out to meet Arabella.



***



Lucius sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes when he realized he’d read the same paragraph four times and wasn’t getting anything out of it. He was tired and distracted. What Tazura and later he himself had found going through his own copies of the DVDs from the Gilded Lily kept running through his mind. He sighed and shoved his hair back from his face. Oddly enough this whole thing with the non corpus potion had started him thinking about his brother. Something he hadn’t really done in ages.



Had he lived, Liren would be the one sitting at this desk going over the family business ledgers. Liren who would have married Narcissa. Liren who would have had all the pressures of making certain the family stayed toujour pur. Liren who would have without a doubt been one of the most vicious death eaters ever known simply because he never forgot a slight and who had always made those who crossed him pay dearly. Ah, and had Liren lived, Lucius would happily be living at the family estate in Skye and enjoying his life, he thought. But that hadn’t been what fate had in store with one of its crueler twists.



Their father had blamed Lucius for Liren’s death, though no moreso than Lucius himself had at the time. Daily he would look at his younger son and ask “Why not you instead?” Lucius shook his head. Best to let those memories rest with all the other ghosts.



Lucius rolled his shoulders and stood up, intent on simply stretching his legs with a walk in the gardens. He walked outside, enjoying the fall colors and found that he had eventually wandered to a place he’d never wanted to go near again after his mother’s passing. The family mausoleum. The massive marble and granite structure encompassed four acres of land and had had to be built onto over the years. It was now bigger than the manor house, a rambling monstrosity that Lucius had deliberately avoided for decades.



Unlike most families, the Malfoy’s did not inter their dead in any normal manner. At least not anything that would be considered normal by current standards. No, the Malfoys had for centuries preserved their dead in some way relating to the life the person had led via spells and various other methods. Sitting up with a book in hand and surrounded by bookcases had been the way one of their long past ancestors had been put to rest. Lucius had always thought that wouldn’t be a bad way to spend eternity. He and Liren had sneaked into that particular part of the mausoleum when they were in trouble, which had been often when they were young. Their usual dare was to touch the bodies. It had been very strange to them to find them hard and cool, almost like statues.



He thanked whatever aspect of the divine might be listening that his mother had put a stop to “bringing out the dead” for the Samhain celebrations. Just looking at his great, great Aunt Mabel across the dinner table when he was six had given him nightmares for weeks.



Lucius smiled a little thinking of the changes he had implicated when he himself had become the head of the family. First and foremost, his father was not among the ancestors in the mausoleum. His father had wanted a huge room because he wanted himself preserved on horseback. It hadn’t mattered to him that they might have to kill the horse because his father had absolutely hated the animal, it threw him every single time he’d tried to ride it. He’d only kept the beast due to the fact it was a purebred black Arabian and earned him ridiculous stud fees. When his father had died, however, Lucius had implemented a new tradition in the way of family departures being dealt with. It had given him great satisfaction to have his father cremated and to ride the animal he’d been so intent on taming into eternity to scatter the old man’s ashes. Narcissa had said it was cruel to refuse his father’s last request and he supposed it was to an extent. But it had been his final “screw you” to a man who’d made his life miserable.



He shook himself out of the past and walked up to the doors of the mausoleum, they opened easily at his touch, swinging noiselessly inward. His boots rang hollowly on the marble floors as he walked along them, searching for one room in particular. Lucius shivered a little in the cool, stale air of the death house. He hadn’t seen his brother’s body for at least thirty years, hadn’t wanted to see the mirror of himself at sixteen forever frozen in death. Liren had been held in stasis while standing, the double swords he’d so loved poised in either hand, looking ready to strike at any moment.



Lucius wasn’t sure why but an odd sense that something was just wrong pushed him along the corridor.

He braced himself when coming to the proper door. He pushed it open and stepped inside only to freeze in place. Decades of dust covered everything in the room. Everything except the body of his brother. Which was gone.