Do You Still Believe?

Never gonna stop
Never stop anything at all
Repeat all that we do
Let's start from the beginning
-- A Skylit Drive - City on the Edge of Forever
-o0o-

It had been two weeks since Malfoy had waltzed into the Aurors department and upended Harry's life - starting with the cubicle - and he still couldn't stand the man. Sometimes he was pleasant, almost friendly, and then in the blink of an eye he'd reverted to form and became insulting and waspish. Just when Harry thought they might be settling into a routine as partners - something he'd rarely allowed in the past, but made concessions for this time as he knew it wasn't permanent - Malfoy was shaking it up, bringing something new to the table.

It was driving him mental. In response, he'd withdrawn from contact. It had been a week since he'd made the decision, a week of discussing nothing with Malfoy but the latest case the other Aurors were working on, or whatever happened to be their problem at the time. He utterly refused to discuss even the time of day with the other Auror, much less anything more substantial, and he had the feeling that his reticence was beginning to wear on the blond the same way his irritability wore on the partners he'd had in the past. He just worked better alone, and he knew it. He'd also finally gotten over his fear of using his publicity in his favour, and had used his station to wrangle concessions out of the department of Magical Law Enforcement that other Aurors couldn't even have dreamed of. The lack of a partner was one. If there was an uneven amount of people on duty, the odd one out was commanded to stay in the office and handle minor complaints.

Harry had forced himself to be the exception to this. He refused to be an 'office flunky', and he refused a partner. Then he'd gone out and proved himself to be among the best Aurors they'd ever seen, and that, combined with his hero-status, had promised him the concessions he'd wanted. And now, for whatever reason, Shacklebolt had decided that he had to not only take on a partner, but he needed Malfoy as a partner. He was certainly the most qualified, work-wise, but he knew there were at least four other Aurors - including Tonks - who were better at dealing with people. Especially the types of people who so often made their way into the Aurors by default, and weren't prepared for the reality. The public often so only the glamourous side of the Auror corps. The pretty press pictures of the Aurors who'd cast quick appearance charms to erase the dirt and tangled hair and torn robes just before the photographers snapped pictures of them hauling the Dark wizards into custody. The part where the Aurors were crawling through mud, sticks, and other, less defineable things in order to get to those Dark wizards was not often publicised.

To Harry's private dismay, Malfoy seemed to be completely at ease with crawling through mud, and was proving it now. They'd been sent to ferret - Harry had been hard pressed to keep his laughter in check after Shacklebolt let that one slip - out a man who'd been selling poisonous candy to children. Fortunately, he didn't make much of an effort to hide himself. Unfortunately, his base of operations was only accessible through the trunk of a very large tree, and it had been raining steadily for days. The wards around the tree had tipped them off to the fact that their target was aware of his hunted status, and they'd approached cautiously from there.

This was how Harry found himself crawling through mud with Draco Malfoy at two in the morning. A weak point in the wards was discovered near the ground, and it was possible to literally slip under them. To Harry's annoyance, Malfoy had shown no great disinclination towards getting down on his stomach and wriggling his way towards the warding that surrounded the arboreal entrance to the underground lab.

A small voice from beside his ear nearly made him snap at Malfoy to shush, when he realised it wasn't Malfoy. "Crazy human things, trying to move on the ground. Don't they realise it's cold down here?"

He looked down, pausing in his forward movement in order to find the source of the voice. A small brown snake was winding its way through the muddy grass that surrounded the immense roots of the tree, and his lips twitched. He hissed back at it in Parseltongue.

"What do you know of the man who lives under this tree, little snake?" Beside him, Malfoy jerked so hard in apparent surprise that he nearly set the wards off.

"What the hell are you doing?" he hissed in a low voice. Harry held a finger up to his lips, hushing him. The snake turned towards them interestedly, making its way closer.


"Aaah? It speaks," the little creature said pleasantly. "I know much of the thing that lives beneath my tree. It is constantly creating things that smell so horrific that I am often tempted to find a new tree. However, this one is perfect to my needs, and the smells often dissipate after a few darks."

Harry translated 'darks' to mean 'nights', and nodded. "He's in there now, right?"

The little tongue flickered out once, twice, and then the snake nodded almost imperceptibly. "Still within," it admitted. "There is a new smell, one I do not recognise. Take care, worthy one."

Malfoy huffed. "What are you doing, Potter?" he asked, pushing his hair out of his face and leaving a large streak of mud across his forehead. Harry watched the snake continue on its way, and then flicked a glance at his partner.

"Checking on our target," he explained simply. Malfoy huffed again.

"Fantastic," he muttered. "We're getting intelligence from a snake." He seemed more out of sorts than he normally did, and Harry tucked it into his mind in the same place notes from cases went, noting that it could be important.

"Better intelligence from a snake than none at all. How would you feel if we went through all this trouble and he wasn't there after all?" Harry was mildly gratified by the horrified look that overtook Malfoy's refined features. "Relax. The snake said he was still inside."

"Right. Well. The snake said. Of course." Malfoy's discombobulation confused Harry, but he forcibly wrenched his attention back to the job. "Did the snake also say how to get inside?" the blond asked, a second before the wards ripped themselves wide open and a figure appeared at the base of the tree, less than three yards away from them. Harry acted immediately, stunning their target and disarming him in what felt like one movement. Malfoy was right behind him, casting Incarcerous in case he managed to come out of the stupefication. Harry activated a Portkey set to send their target directly back into a holding cell in the Ministry, and laid it on the man's shoulder. Three seconds later, it flashed, and he vanished. Harry stood up, trying to dust himself off but only succeeding in smearing the mud around.

Giving it up for lost, he approached the hole the man had left in the tree cautiously, wand held out in case there were any more surprises. Malfoy lay in the mud a moment longer, and then climbed to his feet. "That was entertaining," he said, and followed Harry into the chambers below.

Within, they found a rather cohesive potions laboratory - the cause of the smells the little snake had mentioned, Harry guessed. Malfoy's nose wrinkled. "Do you know what he's been brewing?" he asked, drawing away from one of the still-bubbling cauldrons.

"Better for him if I don't," Harry said honestly, thinking how much Malfoy looked like Mrs. Malfoy when he made that face. It reminded him of the World Cup in fourth year, the first time he'd ever laid eyes on the Malfoys as a cohesive family, instead of one on one encounters. Feeling considerably better about everything, he recalled what the snake had mentioned about an unfamiliar smell. "Is there anything in here that's immediately dangerous?"

"Aside from, oh, I don't know, any one of these many highly toxic potions?" The tone was facetious, and Harry shot him a dark look. Malfoy rolled his eyes, and then resumed his check of the cauldrons while Harry poked through the collected books and odds and ends. Most of it seemed to make no sense, but he figured the Unspeakables would have days of fun figuring out how they worked.

"We'll have to get the Department of Mysteries in on this," Harry decided autonomously, turning to check his decision with Malfoy. He caught the barest glimpse of a flash from one of the cauldrons, and years of Auror training kicked in before his rational thought did, and he tackled Malfoy to the ground, Apparating them outside as the potion exploded violently, the ground shaking under them as they completed the fall from inside the building. Malfoy stared up at him through golden lashes, astonishment written plainly on his face.

"You saved me," he said dumbly. Harry shoved himself away from the other man, disgusted but unable to pinpoint exactly what it was directed towards - himself, the potion, Malfoy, or the man who'd been creating the potions in the first place.


"Standard Protocol," Harry assured him tersely, and then ducked back into the tree. The damage had been extensive, but only to the various potions. Most of the artifacts he'd been eying were still intact. He felt eyes on his back, and glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder. Malfoy stood in the doorway, an inscrutable emotion in his eyes. Harry ignored him.

-o0o-

Draco couldn't understand Potter. In the same breath, he all threatened to kill him, and then acted as though they were the best of friends. And then the dramatic rescue and subsequent shrugging it off - it was like trying to read a book backwards and upside down. He literally just didn't know what Potter would do next.

To someone accustomed to being able to read people easily, this was enormously disconcerting. And now he'd walked right back into the scene of a massive explosion, supposedly just checking out the merchandise - it was, after all, worthless to the Ministry if it had been destroyed - but Draco saw it for what it was. A desperate attempt to put some space between them. He followed the other man back into the tree and down the steps, but for once respected someone's wishes other than himself, and remained just outside the threshold of the room.

When several minutes went by, and Potter still hadn't noticed him, he cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said simply, and then turned and walked back out of the tree. Protocol stated that he had to wait for his partner in case the dangerous party or parties remained in the vicinity, but he trusted Potter's ability to take care of himself. He Apparated back to the Ministry to begin the paperwork on the mission.

-

Not even a week after the incident with the potions in the tree, Draco came into the office an hour early, intending to catch up on the work that was piling up. He'd known that the department generated a lot of paperwork, but the sheer vast amounts of it were almost staggering. He reeled under the knowledge that Potter had subsisted on letting it all go for a week, and then doing it all at once; he'd only left two days of paper work to pile up, and it was already a massive stack on his desk. He stepped through the boundary line of their shared workspace, and was startled to find the paperwork gone, and Potter asleep on his desk. He'd only stopped for a moment, and there was someone else at his side.

A delicate-boned blonde girl strode into the cubicle as though she owned it. From the back, she was petite, but sure of herself, walking in a manner that brooked no argument. He heard the indrawn breath, and was half-expecting a full, throaty voice to come out of a body that moved that way. When it came, her voice was another shock. Soft, dreamy almost, she reached out and shook Potter's shoulder, saying, "Harry. Harry wake up, there's been another one. We need you out there right away."

Potter jerked awake, his wand in his hand before his eyes had finished opening. Draco was impressed, but kept it to himself. "Luna? Another one?" He was on his feet while the other blond occupant of the cubicle was still registering what was going on.

"Wait, another what?" he interjected as Potter shrugged into his robes and wiped his eyes. They both turned to him at once as if just noticing his presence. Two pairs of eyes, one steely and one vacant, widened.

"Murder," Potter said quickly. "It's our man. We're leaving now, come on." They both strode past him, discussing the details. Draco recognised a routine of long habit, and suppressed a sigh as he followed them. Potter turned towards him as they walked. "This is Luna Lovegood. She was in Ravenclaw during school, and is currently an Unspeakable with the Department of Mysteries."

Draco connected the dots in his mind, surprised that "Looney" Lovegood had moved past the petty jokes of her house-mates and into M.L.E. "Good to see you again, Miss Lovegood," he said formally. She smiled absently.

"Luna, please, Draco," she said evenly, not breaking stride with Potter who was walking as though he would simply mow down anyone who happened to be in his path and didn't get out of the way soon enough. "I do wish we could have met under more auspicious circumstances. I'd heard that Harry had a new partner, and that it was causing ripples through the entire department. I love what you've done with that dreadful cubicle," she added. "It looks much nicer now. I've told Harry for years that his cubicle needs a woman's touch, but he simply won't listen to me."

The dig was so subtle that Draco didn't even recognise it at first. "Begging your pardon, Miss Lovegood," he said frostily. "I happen to be a man."

"And exactly what Harry needs in his life," Luna said mistily. Potter apparently had no problems with the two of them discussing him in that way, for he said nothing and simply continued on his way. Draco shoved that cryptic remark to the back of his mind as they reached the door.

"It's Anti-Apparational, so we'll be taking the portkey," Luna said, producing the cap from a bottle of butterbeer in the palm of her hand. Potter and Draco obediently put their fingers on it. "Abre," Luna whispered, and the tug behind his navel signaled the activation.

The portkey took them directly into a room coated in blood. Draco's nose wrinkled automatically at the metallic stench that was almost palpable - I didn't realise there was this much blood inside the body, much less that it could be spread so thickly, - and focused immediately on the lifeless, bloody body in the center of the floor.

"Who called?" Potter asked with clinical dispassion.

"Mr. Fliven's estranged aunt contacted him a week ago, and asked to meet him for dinner. He agreed, but when he didn't show up last night, she notified us that he might have gone missing. Apparently, being estranged for five years didn't make him any less inclined to miss an important dinner date without notice."

Draco interjected suddenly, interrupting whatever Potter had been about to say. "Wait, Fliven? Rafe Fliven?"

Luna turned her startlingly large eyes on him. "You knew the victim?" Draco shook his head.

"Not well. We were friends as children by way of our parents meeting once a month for a dinner party." He knelt beside the corpse, careful to touch nothing. He'd fallen out with Rafe over something childishly inconsequential, never dreaming that the next time he'd see the boy would be at the scene of his murder, fifteen years later. The body was almost unrecognisable; large chunks of flesh had been excised off of it, and the smell of dark magic was ripe in the air. "This was done by way of the Dark Arts-" he started, and then stopped. No, it hadn't been. "Wait," he said softly, peering closer at the wounds. "Not Dark Arts." His nostrils flared with the unpleasant smell of death. "See, there is crushing of the skeletal structure here, and the flesh around the wounds is ragged. Someone did this with a knife in their hand."

He glanced up at his two companions for confirmation, and found pale horror in their faces. The stench of the Dark Magic was almost overpowering, and he backed away from the body. "The Dark magic was used to torture him before the actual murder," he deduced. Potter cast a spell, and suddenly dark purple streaks of light leapt to life around them. It startled Luna, who cried out suddenly and stepped back. The writhing bands of magic, streaked with poison green, proved his theory. Fliven had been tortured mercilessly, possibly for hours, before a messy, painful death.

"This fits," Potter said. Draco started.

"Nothing else was mentioned about torture," he said, and Potter shook his head.

"The magical signature is the same," he pointed out. "No one else has been with me on these cases, so I had no way of proving it, but whoever is doing these killings, they're leaving the same trace behind." He gestured the magic, visible in bursts of colour and winding around them. "Now the only question will be finding out who it belongs to. This isn't something that they're going to advertise."

-o0o-

kori is listening to: Lustra - Scotty Doesn't Know

I've realised that there's a desperate problem with my writing, something I'm trying to correct (so bear with me, if you please). I have absolutely no problem with dialogue - witty repartee, pleasant banter, steamy flirting... dialogue falls out of my brain like rain out of a black cloud. It just pours forth unendingly. What I have a problem with is the meaty part of a story. Actions, descriptions, placements, they all fall short in the face of the dialogue. One of my friends had the exact opposite problem; she was fantastic at movements, and descriptions, and going on undendingly about what was going on, rather than what was being said, and had trouble wringing conversations out of whomever she happened to be writing.

So I'm actively going to force myself to spend as much time on what's going on, as well as the dialogue, and it's probably going to show through in my writing (IE, if you notice large clusters of dialogue followed by no dialogue at all as I realise they're talking too much) and I apologise for that, and thank you all in advance for taking my wild swings and rolling with them.

L_C: Started on this chapter the minute I had the last one posted. x3

bloodsoakedninja: Interesting is an understatement. Thanks for reviewing!

SP777: Aha, you must have been the originator of Harry's 'Martha Stewart' comment. It came to me when I was lying down, trying to sleep, and I just reread your other comment, and you said something about the Martha-Stewart-esque remodeling of the cubicle. XD Anywho, Of course Draco had the nerve to smile like an angel. XD He's a man on a mission.
LMFAO. I won't deny a thing. I adore Lomonaaeren's fanfics. Almost as much as I adore Maya's, but as Maya's not posting fics any more, I have to content myself with those who are.

hieisdragoness18: I knew someone would. x3 That's why I put it in there. Thank you for commenting on it~! I love it when people tell me specific things they like about what I write. Enjoy this newest chapter!