The Reluctant Detectives

A/N- I would like to thank everyone that took the time to review. Cookies go out to Voraciousreader for being the only one to guess our villain was a man with a need to make himself a hero! Thanks for reading and please, for my state of mind, REVIEW!


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Chapter Twenty-seven


Now that they had a suspect, they needed to connect the dots. That’s if there were dots to connect, Hermione reminded herself as she went about gathering together the evidence she would need to prove that it might be the auror in question.


The investigation of one Hero Metropolis (Hermione still had a hard time believing that was his name) was complete and about as thorough as one could get without giving him a cavity search. Hero was a Greek muggle born who moved with his family to Wales when he was a child. A history of his time in Hogwarts was unimpressive.


“He barely got by,” she muttered. “I don’t even know how he became an auror.”


“What do you mean?” Severus asked, taking the papers from her that she held out to him. Reading them he muttered, “He wouldn’t have. There is no way he could. He only received one NEWT and even then that one wasn’t one he needed to go into the field.”


They got a hold of Kingsley Shacklebolt and had him come over on the pretence of having tea. He had Hero’s records with him, but hadn’t signed them out nor did he inform anyone that he had them. Between the three of them it was figured out that the wizard had faked and/or lied about pertinent facts.


“You didn’t check his school record?” Severus demanded.


Kingsley squeezed his eyes shut as he muttered, “You have to understand.” He looked up at them. “We were desperate. So many aurors were killed, imprisoned, or went missing, and, I suspect, are long dead. At the point that he was hired on to the training program, they would have hired a witch claiming to be Merlin himself and taken it as fact.”


They went over the auror’s record since he had been hired. It was one failure after another. Him struggling to achieve the heights and rewards he thought should come with being a top auror, but never achieving them. They ended up putting him on desk duty. After he pushed and pushed to be reinstated as an active auror they finally did. It was because the failures of his past could be explained by his youth. But if one read between the lines as well as the very thick file of letters that was sent by Metropolis they gave in to his demands, as they were sick of dealing with him.


“They more than likely didn’t want to see another letter from him again,” Hermione murmured, as she read the letter. “Listen to this, ‘I was made for great things. By you allowing me back to being an active auror, it shows that you have excellent insight.’”


“Merlin, what an egotist,” Severus muttered.


“You aren’t what anyone would call modest,” Kingsley told him.


“No, he isn’t, but he, unlike Metropolis here, has what it takes to back up his arrogance,” Hermione told him, her voice hard. “And before you can ask, so can I.”


Hermione took several the letters that were written to the higher ups at the aurors department and compared them to the letters that Harry received. Using a spell to see if the writing matched, she discovered that it did.


“He’s the bomber,” she murmured. “I want this case airtight.”


“How do we do that?” Kingsley asked her.


Worrying her lower lip, she replied. “I don’t think he was the one that followed me. Which means that he has an accomplice, correct?”


“Or at least someone he pays,” Severus said. “By the looks of his records, the boy doesn’t have friends. None that admitted to it at the time of this interview at any rate.”


“We need that man,” she told him. “And as he killed the only other accomplice that we know of…”


“We only suspect her of being so at the moment,” Kingsley told Hermione.


“That is something I plan on solving just as soon as this meeting is over,” Hermione said. “I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to go through her trunk or question Miss Templeton’s friends.”


“Excellent idea,” Kingsley murmured. “What if he’s tampered with her travel case? Or at the very least stolen any sort of evidence she had?”


“I might have thought that was a possibility if we hadn’t of sequestered her belongings until such time as to be able to do as I just said,” Hermione told him. “Time isn’t on our side. So taking liberties such as putting away what could be considered important is a necessity.”


“Of course,” Kingsley murmured, getting the feeling for the first time that Hermione Granger could very well run the department if she had an interest in doing so.


***


“What pray tell are we looking for?” Snape asked her as they went through Miss Templeton’s things.


“He was big into writing letters,” she told him. “That’s where I would start and go from there.”


They went through everything from scraps with notes written on them from friends in class to a lint ball. Finally Hermione found a locket and within it was a baby picture. It was a baby with dark brown hair and equally dark brown eyes.


“That isn’t her,” Hermione told Severus. “We can do an age progression on it and know who it is.” He took it from her and bagged it up.


Hermione went back to looking for a letter, but what she found instead was a diary. Sealing it, she looked it over and found that it had no writing in it. Could this be like Tom Riddle’s diary, she asked herself. Taking a chance, she wrote on a little corner of it. Nothing happened even after five minutes. Sighing she closed it to look over the cover as well as the bridge of the book. Embossed on the cover were the words “Made for a Hero”.


Smiling to herself, Hermione pulled out her wand and tapped the book with it saying the words. The next time she opened it, their entire correspondence was written out waiting for them to look over.


“I guessed the wrong magical item,” she said. “I thought of the Riddle diary when I should have thought the Marauder’s map.”


“That was painfully straightforward,” Severus murmured.


“Think of who we are speaking of,” Hermione explained to him. “Painfully simple spells for the painfully simple.”