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Black Magic	By : waymay Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 3905 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or the characters written in this story; everything belongs to the wonderful J.K. Rowling. I don't make any profit from these stories!

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
A/N: Hi everyone! It's been a long time coming with this series. I've had a hard time picking this one back up after my life-funk, but since Empire is getting easier and easier to pick up, I figured I'd do the same and get the ball rolling with this one as well. Thanks for being patient, and I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!
Thank you Mr. Benzedrine for proofing as usual! :)
Chapter 3
Foul Play
"I don't understand what we're looking at," Draco muttered as he shut the door behind him. "This is... the body?" He glanced over towards his partner with a vacant stare.
Hermione responded with a shrug. "Apparently so."
"Why wouldn't the others not tell us it wasn't human?" Draco palmed his hand over his gelled hair, making sure there weren't any strands sticking out -much unlike his counterpart, whose hair looked as if a tornado had just blown through it.
Hermione shrugged; her eyes were glued on the carcass in front of them.
"Then again, the MACUSA division didn't tell us much of anything," the wizard huffed, obviously annoyed at the not-human body. "Why don't they like us?"
Another shrug came his way. "Something about the Ministry covering up the first real attack. Our government thought it was just a hoax -some tricks pulled from digital effects, swept it under the rug, and said nothing about it."
"Odd. Aurors didn't try to investigate more?"
"As far as I know, the reason why they didn't do anything was because there were no bodies to investigate the first time around."
"So, this is the first case where there was a body?" He folded his arms across his chest, leaning against the back wall. It wasn't his first time being around a dead body, but this... this was really unsettling.
"Correct."
"Then why in the bloody Hell are they pinning the blame on us?" Draco muttered, now scratching the base of his chin. "It's not like our Aurors knew this would develop into something more."
Hermione sighed. Her partner was asking good questions -even she (the Miss "know-it-all") didn't have the answers.
When silence fell, they stood close to each other, uncomfortable in the space which the prior event took place. The room looked exactly the same as it did in the video they'd watched over and over -practically ingrained in their memories- though there were some things knocked over. Perhaps some sort of tussle happened after the recording ended. It was Hermione's best guess, at least.
Save from however the room looked, the other changes, Hermione noted, where the items used to 'conjure' the boy's grandmother were gone. Instead, it was replaced with a dead, rotting flesh -to which both Draco and Hermione covered their nose.
The blonde wizard made gagging noises, unable to handle the horrid stench, and pinched his nose, opting to breathe through his mouth, though it did no good.
She glanced over towards her partner, noting a green complexion to his usually pale skin. "Why don't you take the photos? Make copies for us to study later and copies to send back to Cattermole." Hermione pulled a pair of latex gloves out from her bag, slipping on the rubbery mitt, and snapped it against her wrist once her fingers were fit, tight and snug.
Usually, Draco would have something to say about his partner ordering him around, telling him what to do -no one dictates a Malfoy's action- (well, with the exception to his boss, of course) but he didn't want to get any closer to that... thing anymore than he had to, not even with a ten foot pole. So, he nodded to Hermione's suggestion (how he dignified it), and pulled out the ancient looking camera from the same bag Hermione carried.
She would have preferred bringing a digital camera or at least something more modern, but since they were doing this under government regulations, it was better to use wizarding cameras.
Hermione slipped off the sterling silver ring and pulled out her wand, pointing its end towards her own nose and quickly spelled her nose so she didn't have to take in anymore of the rancid smell. She took a step towards Draco as he was fumbling around with the camera, never actually having used it before, and reached her hand out.
"What are you-" he started, startled as she gently gripped his chin towards her. Quickly, she enchanted his nose just as she did herself and took the camera out of his hands.
"Have you never worked with one of these?"
Draco straightened out his outfit, uncreasing whatever wrinkles that had set in during their ride in the car. "No," he responded, haughty. "Malfoys never take the photos. We're always the subject of them." He watched her as she simply flipped the switch at the bottom of the camera and handed it back.
"You're welcome." She glowered at the wizard when he failed to show gratitude. As the witch slipped her magic suppressant band back on, she could feel her abilities waning, becoming dormant within her. Hermione hated the feeling but without it, the muggles would know, too easily, there was something different about the two of them.
"I could have figured it out," Draco muttered, lifting the equipment in front of his face and peered through the small lens at the back. His right pointer finger, resting on top of the shutter button, triggered it with light pressure, causing the device's front lens to quickly shut and open, capturing the uneventful moment, and a flash temporarily blinded his partner. "Oops."
Hermione blinked a few times, bright white orbs clouding her vision as she tried to will it away. Her brows were furrowed as she tried to regain her sight.
"Shouldn't have stood in front of me."
"Do you want to deal with the dead body, Mister I-can't-handle-this-shite?" Hermione snapped, rubbing her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. She never really enjoyed applying cosmetics on her face, but there were times where being an adult required it, unfortunately.
Draco looked over at the body, wrinkling his nose in disgust, and shook his head. "Nope."
It was surprising how anyone who visited the room previously didn't lose their lunch. What's even more surprising is that Draco's still standing, Hermione thought as she imagined the genteel wizard falling over dramatically at the sight of the creature. The brunette bit back a smirk as she braced herself -after all, she was the one who was about to get up close and personal with the corpse.
The carcass laid on the carpeted floor, fallen over on its side. The creature's mouth, locked open in rigor mortis, showed off its teeth -the entire set made of canines. A ripped piece of cloth hung from one of its front incisors but there were no traces of blood. It was the boy's -Brad Michelsen- shirt.
Though very dead, Hermione wondered, terrified, if the creature would suddenly jump back on all four legs and bite her face off. Its eyes were wide open, nearly bulging out of its sockets, staring vacantly at nothing. They were red, and it reminded the witch all too much of the monster she and her friends fought for years when she was still a mere teenager. She shuddered at the thought as she heard another click of the camera and its mechanical parts whirring for more film. It snapped her out of the weird trance, and her partner muttered, frustrated.
Hermione reached a hand out, touching the monster, only to hear another attempted vomit-sound from Draco standing behind her. She whirled her head, sending him another glare. "What?"
"It's...That's just so gross."
She rolled her eyes, exhaling loudly through her nostrils and turned her attention back towards the creature.
Her brows furrowed as she tilted her head to the side, studying the animal -was it okay to call it that? Hermione scanned the animal: it looked very much mammal. The head and body reminded her of a dog, or whatever else walked on all four legs, though it had no visible fur, just skin -but then again, even that was hard to tell. The body was burned, but there were also no signs of fire ever existing in the room.
A sigh escaped her lips. It seemed the more she took in detail about the creature, the more questions popped up.
"Merlin," Draco muttered, pulling Hermione's attention towards him once more. "I can smell the decay even with the charm!"
"Oh, deal with it," she snapped, whipping her head back towards the corpse. But, just as she did, she noticed a faint gleam in the creature's mouth. Hermione barely caught it. "Draco-" she paused as he took another picture, "can you hand me a pair of tweezers?"
"Tweezers? You brought tweezers?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, you can never be over prepared for these kinds of things."
"But we have magic," he mentioned as a matter-of-factly. Draco set the camera onto the same table, rummaging through her bag. "We can transfigure things. Oh, there's also wingardium leviosa- I remember you quite liked that spell during our first year."
"Can you hurry?" Hermione frowned. "It almost seems like you want to be here longer! Get with it now." She held her hand out, palms facing the ceiling, and shook it a few times, urging him to find it faster. "Why don't you just accio tweezers?"
"Why don't you?!" He huffed, glowering at the witch, who knelt a meter away. "Here!" He nearly threw the tiny tweezers at her. "Draco do this. Draco do that." He muttered mockingly, emulating the witch's voice.
"I do not sound like that."
"I do not sound like that."
"Pain in the arse, you are."
"If I recall correctly, you quite like my arse."
She couldn't see him, but she could imagine the haughty smirk plastered across his face as he made the statement, rendering her nearly silent. "Leave me alone-I need to focus."
And he did just that -absolute silence, with a great big grin.
Hermione held the tweezers in her right hand and the left gripped onto the bottom of the creature's mouth, holding it tight and steady. With amazing precision and steadiness, she stuck the pincers into its opening, clamping down on the object hidden within the confines of its jaws. "Paper?" she muttered once she pulled it out.
"Why would there be paper in its mouth?"
"I don't know."
"Is there anything on it?"
She unfolded it: a piece of parchment no more than five centimeters in length and width. "Yes," Hermione said, finally. "I'm surprised the earlier team didn't catch this..."
Draco made his way over towards his partner, peering over her shoulder. "Is that a rune?"
On the paper was a once meticulously drawn charm, blurred from having been in the creature's mouth. Both of the investigator's faces were scrunched in concentration as they stared, recounting all the runes they'd learned from their past, but nothing came to mind. Hermione flipped it over, but there were no other hints for them.
"Should we tell MACUSA?"
"Why?" his voice oozed with disdain for the American team. "They didn't help us one bit. In fact, they did the opposite of that."
"Yes, but this is pretty crucial evidence. What if this happens in other parts of the world? This would just be more icing on the cake for them to blame us." Hermione refolded the paper, holding it gently in one hand while the other, with her hand, cast a stasis charm upon it.
The blonde shrugged, going back to his camera. "Since they're already pinning this on us, we might as well figure this out on our own instead of pulling in incompetent, undetailed investigators to further muck things up."
She pursed her lips as she dropped the charm into her bag. Her rubber gloves came off, and instead of placing them into the satchel, she incendio'd it. "We'll inform Unspeakable Cattermole of the find and see what he thinks of it -how about it?" That way, if the Ministry decided it was their information only, then it wouldn't be Hermione and Draco's head on the chopping block if it was to leak that they withheld information from the other teams.
After a few more snaps of the corpse from different angles and distances (while getting constant urp sounds from Draco), the two Ministry workers wrapped up their investigation, finally stepping out of the room.
The American division had long since left, leaving without a word to the two, though they were hardly acquainted with the group. Not that Hermione or Draco cared for it.
When they stepped back outside of the house, the cops from earlier were still there. The two of them were rather bored: one was fumbling around with his phone while the other talked at his partner incessantly without even noticing the other had stopped paying attention. Hermione chuckled; it reminded her much of her partnership with Draco.
"Excuse me," the witch approached the two muggles. They turned to look at her, though saying nothing. "The boy who lived in that room," she gestured towards the upstairs left window. "Where is he now?"
The two police officers looked at each other, waiting for the other one to answer, but instead, the officer who had given them grief earlier spoke up. "Last I heard, he was shipped off to the looney bin."
"Looney bin?" Draco pushed his head back a tad, looking at the man, confused.
Hermione glanced over at him, answering for the cop. "Slang for mental facility -like Janus Thickey Ward, of sorts."
The blonde gave her a silent 'ah.'
Turning her attention back towards the officer, Hermione asked in her sweetest tone, "Would you mind if I get the location from you?"
The older man nodded, pulling out a small notepad from his back pants pocket and a pen from the breast pocket, quickly jotting down the name of the hospital. "Here you are, ma'am." Hermione thanked him as he handed the sheet of paper to her. "Are you two all done up there?" There was a hopeful glint in his eyes as he asked it.
"Yes, thank you for your cooperation," she smiled before she turned away and headed towards their rental car.
"Why are we visiting this kid?" Draco asked after they reached the car. He rested his hand on the handle as his counterpart fumbled with the keys, unlocking the door with two clicks of the fob.
"To see if he saw anything after the video ended," Hermione frowned at Draco before slipping into the driver's seat. "Are you sure you were an Auror? You sure ask an awful bunch of questions that even amateur PI's would know." She slipped the key into the ignition, turning the metal object forwards, and the car rumbled to life.
Despite being a proud pureblood, Draco was immediately excited that such a simple action could bring a large object to life. "I dealt mostly with chasing down ex-Death Eaters, you know -not solving weird mysteries like Sherlock Holmes."
"You know about Sherlock Holmes?" a surprised hitch sounded in her voice. Honestly, she was half-expecting him to ask her what 'PI' stood for.
He buckled himself in and shut the passenger door. "Of course. Just because I think the wizarding world is more superior doesn't mean I can't enjoy some muggle literature from time to time."
Hermione smiled, a hand reaching down to the gear shift. Despite having known the man for years -since they were eleven years old- he never ceased to surprise her.
For the first hour of their drive, Draco studied the paper found in the creature's mouth. It looked somewhat familiar to him, but he was unable to pinpoint where. For a little bit, he became intrigued by the scenery in California -never in his life had he seen so many cars zipping about. At one point, he even complained to Hermione to drive faster -that she drove like a hag in comparison to the rest of the vehicles.
During the second half of the road trip, Draco fell asleep; his head bobbing down every few seconds. He'd wake up from time to time, startled by their surrounding before drifting back to sleep.
Hermione smiled. It was cute seeing the so-very-proper wizard unguarded.
They arrive at the mental facility, Hillmont Psychiatric Center, roughly two hours away from where they were staying. Draco woke up as soon as she parked the car, stretching his arms; the palm of his hand pressed against the ceiling while his legs tried to extend as much as possible in the cramped space. While it was fun riding in the car, it became uncomfortable after a while. He needed to stretch out his legs before they cramped.
Unfortunately, when Hermione and Draco arrived at the front desk of the facility, they were denied entry. The receptionist said they didn't carry proper paperwork to prove it was an urgency, and even so, the boy was still a child, and they would need approval from the parents before being able to interrogate the boy.
Not wanting to have to jump back into the car after having stepped out just two minutes prior, Draco tried pulling his charms on the woman -to which Hermione rolled her eyes in disgust- but it was to no avail, and the handsome blonde turned away, cheeks red with embarrassment.
"You really thought that would work?" Hermione nearly sneered as he walked back, dejected.
His grey eyes snapped to her warm chocolate ones, a newfound smirk stretched across his lips. "Do I hear jealousy?"
She straightened out her back, "Of course not."
And just as the two of them were about to give up and call it a day, Hermione noticed a couple walking out from behind the restricted area. A husband was consoling his wife. His arms were wrapped around her trembling shoulders, and the woman sniffled, eyes puffy and red from crying.
She dabbed away the stray tears and spoke to her husband. "Do you think Brad will ever be normal again?"
The man was silent, unsure how to answer his wife.
Hermione glanced over towards Draco, who wasn't paying attention, and nudged him.
"What?"
"I think those two are Brad's parents."
"What makes you say that?"
"They said his name."
"That makes it the same Brad we're looking into?"
She shrugged. "We won't know unless we ask." With that comment, Hermione made her way towards the grieving couple, determined to find out whether they were the parents, and hopefully get some sort of headway in the investigation.
Draco didn't say anything, watching the brown haired witch walk off. He already knew it was a bad idea, though, he was curious to see how it would all play out.
"Excuse me," Hermione started, interrupting the two.
They looked up, blinking a few times at the witch.
"I don't mean to be rude..."
The blonde wizard rolled his eyes and snorted. That's always a good start.
"...but are you two Brad Michelsen's parents?"
"Yes?" the man said, pulling his wife closer towards him. "Can we help you?"
Hermione went off to explain her and Draco's role in everything. He'd been looking away, not wanting to be pulled into the whole situation. Though the witch tried her best to be as sensitive about the circumstance, they wanted nothing to do with her.
"We just said our goodbyes to poor Brad today," the woman sobbed into her napkin. "Can't ya'll leave us alone? Just give us a day to grieve before you come down our throats for more information?"
The husband held his wife closer, "Why don't you fuck off? We've given the police everything we know."
Hermione stiffened at his comment, rendered speechless. The man waited for a moment, watching her reaction before pulling his wife towards the door, exiting the facility.
She sighed; a frown had settled onto her face as she stared at the photos Draco developed earlier.
They were back at their motel. The sun was long gone with a full moon illuminating the otherwise dark night. The two of them had pushed their bed together, transfiguring their twin beds into a single queen. Draco was under the sheets, his eyes closed, though far from asleep.
As much as they enjoyed their work, learning all they could, sometimes, it was hard to just let it be that. More often than not, Draco and Hermione, both, had tendencies to take their work back home. Often times, it haunted them in their sleep. When they woke up, and they lived it while they worked. A vicious obsession neither really noticed.
"I can't sleep," Hermione whispered, setting the photos down onto her lap.
"Mmm..."
"It...Just, something seems so weird about this case," she picked up the photos again, flipping through it all for the twentieth time. Hermione didn't need the photos; the image was already engraved in her mind, but it felt good to just look at something rather than stare stupidly at the telly.
The blonde shifted in their bed, turning to her, eyes finally opened. "Your brain is going to explode from worrying so much."
She scoffed. "Please, this isn't even anything. Our sixth year in school -when Harry was somehow better at Potions than me? My brain nearly exploded."
"I was better than you at potions-"
"-As if!"
The blonde grinned, sitting up to lean against her, pressing his bare shoulders against hers. "I wager if we brewed something right now, I would beat you." When the witch responded with a roll of her eyes, his grin turned into a smirk. "Too scared to take the bet, Granger?"
"You're not worth my time, Malfoy," she stuck her tongue out and the wizard leaned in, pressing his forehead against hers, his lips only centimeters away. Hermione, quickly, pulled up the photos, sticking them between their face, preventing their lips from touching. "I don't think so- after flirting with the receptionist?"
"I knew you were jealous," he laughed, yanking the pictures out from her hand and setting it onto the nightstand on his side of the bed. And in one swift motion, Draco pulled Hermione down onto the bed and tugged the bed sheet over their heads. He planted a gentle kiss on forehead. "We have tomorrow and the day after that -and however long it'll take for us to figure this out."
She sighed through her nose, grumbling under her breath, though ultimately agreeing with the wizard. Hermione wrapped her arms around the wizard, nuzzling her face between his neck and collarbone.
"Goodnight, Granger."
- 2
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Black Magic