Chapter Text
For ten years, without fail, Molly and Arthur Weasley had hosted a family dinner on Sunday evening at The Burrow. Some weeks, everyone in the "family" would attend and on others, less than half of them would be able to make it. That was simply how things worked when your family held some of the most influential people in the country. Still, Molly and Arthur cleared the kitchen and the living room before extending the table so that it could fit upwards of twenty people before Arthur then vacated the house for a few hours so that Molly could cook without murdering her husband.
At first, the invitation for these weekly meals had gone out to just the Weasleys as a way to mourn Fred's loss. While Harry and Hermione had been invited, they had both agreed that the Weasleys needed some time to themselves. Around two months later, Harry and Hermione both attended for the first time and had hardly missed a Sunday since then. As time went on, more and more people were added to the invitation list. Soon after, Andromeda and Teddy had been invited and around March of the next year, Kingsley had been granted an open invitation. Over the years, as the family had grown, Arthur had openly considered ending the dinners since they were such a massive effort to do, especially for Molly.
At that suggestion, Molly had invited Minerva McGonagall, Hagrid, Luna, and Neville to join them. In order to accommodate everyone, Arthur, Ron, and Harry tore down the exterior walls of the first floor and, over the course of a long weekend, nearly tripled the size of the ground floor of the Burrow. Even still, no normal dining table could fit everyone, requiring Arthur to design a new one that could be magically extended, which he had been glad to do. Now, when all twenty-six of the "Weasleys" sat down for dinner, they could all fit at the largest dinner table Harry had ever seen outside of Hogwarts.
Harry did love these Sunday meals. Most of Harry's typical week involved long hours at the Ministry. While he loved his job, it was a hard one and it often kept him away from his friends and family more often than he wanted. Harry was dedicated to his job in a way that he knew was likely unhealthy. If he was owled at two in the morning, he would usually come right in to work, even if his presence wasn't necessary until the next morning. His dedication, along with his obvious skill, were two of the reasons that he was already the heir apparent to become the next Head Auror once Robards quit (or got fired, although Harry wasn't particularly hopeful that second one would happen anytime soon).
However, his subordinates knew that if they contacted him on a Sunday evening, they had better be reporting the return of Tom Riddle or else Harry would personally ensure that they were on desk duty for the next year. It was the only time each week when he knew that he got to see most of his friends. However, as time had passed and new families had begun to form from the Weasleys, attendance had fallen slightly. Now, it was rare for them to eclipse twenty people and two of their members, Neville and Kingsley, rarely appeared anymore, both due to their extremely busy work schedules.
Kingsley had been an admittedly aloof Minister of Magic at the beginning of his tenure. Prior to his appointment to the Minister's position, he had been an Auror, not a politician of any kind, and he had expressed a disinterest in politics a number of times over the years before his appointment at the end of the war. Of course, that is why he had been given the job. As time had passed and the Ministry's focus slowly pulled away from the war and its aftermath, Kingsley had a choice to make. He could resign and allow a more political person to be appointed to replace him or he could dig in and involve himself in the politics of the Ministry.
He chose the latter and as time had gone on, Kingsley had gone from being a wartime Minister to an effective Minister in his own right. He had lead the charge in ensuring the rights of non-Pureblood witches and wizards along with non-human beings (Hermione at his side, of course). Over the last few years, he had pressured the Wizengamot to enact legislation that would disband the assembly in the year 2010 when it would be replaced by two smaller bodies: The Senate and The Court. Each body would consist of nine elected officials who would serve the Ministry by making laws and deciding criminal cases, respectively.
Needless to say, running a country, even one that was being run well, was an intense job and as a result, most of Kingsley's non-political social life had gone by the wayside, including his dinners with the Weasleys.
Almost at the same time, Neville's life had been flipped upside down. After the war, Neville had joined Ron and Harry in enlisting in the Auror Training Program. Not surprisingly, he had passed the final tests with flying colors. In fact, Neville would have owned the highest score in the history of the test if not for the fact that Ron and Harry also took the test that year. In fact, all three of them shattered the previous record for the highest score ever obtained in the test with Harry becoming the first person to ever earn a perfect score.
While Ron had left the Aurors after three years, it had taken Neville six years before he found something else to do. During that time, Neville was widely regarded as one of the best Aurors in the Office. While Harry and Ron had served on a number of special teams in the search for the Death Eaters, Neville had instead been chosen to serve as an interrogator. His sharp mind and generally poor reputation among the Death Eaters made it easy for Neville to manipulate them by allowing them to think that they were in charge. Only when Neville had gotten the information that he had wanted did they know just how wrong they had been.
Neville had been a great Auror and seemed like he was on track for a leadership position. That is until it was made public that Pomona Sprout would be retiring from Hogwarts. Less than twenty-four hours later, Neville had already submitted his resignation from the Auror Office, having won the job by literally taking his application to Hogwarts and explaining in excruciating detail why he was the best person for the job. It had taken McGonagall about ten minutes after he had left to send him a letter, offering him the job.
Two weeks later, he started at Hogwarts. By all accounts, if he had been a good Auror, he was an excellent teacher, especially once his students learned that, despite being a hero of the Second Wizarding War, he had not been a particularly talented student in his own right.
About a year ago, Neville had been named the Head of Gryffindor House. From that day on, Neville's social life had disappeared as he was now required to stay at the castle during the school year. Apparently, the professors of Hogwarts had mostly lived in Hogsmeade and been able to leave as they wished, assuming they were not assigned castle patrols that evening. However, the four Heads of Houses were required to stay at the castle with the exception of a few hours on Sunday afternoon. Considering Neville had his own grandmother to visit, he had been unable to come and visit the Weasleys at all during the last year.
With those two missing, they still numbered at least twenty-four who could reasonably be expected to attend on any given Sunday. That particular Sunday, a hot, humid day in early June, there were exactly twenty of them. Apparently, Teddy had come down with a fever earlier in the day and Andromeda had decided to keep him home. The other two missing members were Hagrid, who was on vacation in France with his "not-wife" Olympe Maxime, and Charlie, who was in Romania for a month coordinating with the dragon reserve he had previously worked at, this time as an emissary for the British Ministry of Magic.
Still, even with all those people missing, twenty people was not a small number at all. As dinner began and everyone took their seats, Harry looked around the room and couldn't help but smile. Ten years earlier, this group had numbered only eight after Fred's death. Now, they were more than three times that number, an already massive family surrounded by others who loved them. Arthur and Molly, whose hair had finally gone completely grey over the last decade, sat at their usual places at the end of the table. To their left was Bill and Fleur, who held their youngest child, a widely adventurous three-year-old named Aimee, in her lap. Brian, who looked like an eight-year-old version of his father and Dani, a five-year-old carbon copy of her mother, sat next to their parents, each of them doing their very best to annoy the other.
Past them was Percy and his girlfriend, Elizabeth. This was Percy's fourth girlfriend in as many years. Unfortunately, all of them seemed to have the same complaints: Percy was boring and worked too much. At first, Percy had been angry at the slight. Now, he knew that it was true. Thankfully, Elizabeth, who worked with Percy in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, appeared to be just as dedicated and boring as he was, a perfect fit.
Ron and Gabrielle sat next to them, Ron chatting with Viktor as Hermione talked at Gabrielle about some new piece of legislation for centaurs she was working on. The moment when Ron and Gabrielle had "revealed" that they were dating had been one of the funniest moments in Harry's life. From the moment Gabrielle, invited to dinner by her older sister, had sat next to Ron, it was clear to everyone in the room that they were interested in each other. Gabrielle and Fleur's mother had passed away just a few years after the end of the war so Gabrielle, along with her father, had moved to England just after she had finished school where she had gotten a job with Department of International Magical Cooperation.
For months, Ron and Gabrielle had danced around announcing their clearly developing relationship. They would often both disappear for long stretches of time during family dinners and Harry had even walked in on the pair of them in an incredibly compromising position in the broom closet by the grove where they had played Quidditch as children. Needless to say, Harry did not need to ride one of those brooms ever again.
When they did finally make the announcement, everyone breathed a sigh of relief for two reasons. First, they could finally admit that they all knew about Ron and Gabrielle. But second, everyone was relieved that Ron had finally moved on. For two years after the war, Ron and Hermione had dated. They had even moved in together, living in a small flat near the Ministry. Unfortunately, things just didn't seem to work out and they eventually decided that they should each go their separate ways.
Both Ron and Hermione had publicly stated that their break-up was mutual. However, Harry knew for a fact that their breakup had not been mutual, although the true reason behind the dissolution of their relationship was a secret that he would likely take to his grave. In the end, it didn't matter what they had said; Ron's behavior told everyone all they needed to know.
For months after they had separated, Ron had hid himself away from the world, only making the rarest of appearances. It was clear that he still held a candle for Hermione. He even refused to come to Sunday dinners for nearly three months, out of fear that he would see Hermione, although, of course, he never admitted that to anyone.
Ron's relationship with Gabrielle had been his first since Hermione and was a sign that maybe he was finally able to move on from Hermione. It had taken quite a while but his relationship with Hermione had eventually recovered. Now, things between Ron and Hermione were as good as they had ever been.
On the other side of Molly and Arthur sat Angelina and George along with their two children, Fred and Kat. Fred was seven and every bit the troublemaker that his father had been while Kat was only two and a half years ago. Still, she was already every bit as charismatic as both of her parents. To be honest, Harry was more concerned about Kat's propensity for trouble-making than her brother's.
There had been a point in time where it looked as if George would never have the family that he had today. After Fred's death, he sank into a deep depression, one that his family worried he would never come out of. For months, no one other than the Weasleys themselves saw George and even then, they only saw him for a few minutes a week. As time passed and George showed no sign of improvement, the family repeatedly attempted to reach out to him to no avail.
Thankfully, Ron ran into Angelina in November of that year and when she asked him how George was doing, he had been honest with her. That night, Angelina showed up on George's doorstep. To this day, no one knows exactly what she had said to him. All anyone knew was that the next day, he showed up to work at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes for the first time since early June. He showed up the day after that as well and eventually, he returned to work full-time, bringing the venture that he had started with his brother back from the brink of bankruptcy.
At the same time, Angelina's intervention in George's life had seemingly shaken him out of his malaise. Their first date had occurred roughly a month after Angelina's visit to George's flat. Their wedding day was two years later: December 21, 2000. For nearly three months after their wedding, George and Angelina traveled the world, visiting Peru, Brazil, and Argentina before returning home.
While they had been away, George had an idea: he wanted to start distilling his own firewhiskey. Apparently, Fred had always wanted to own a bar that served his own homemade firewhiskey. So, to honor his brother, George opened The Jester, a high-end wizarding establishment in the heart of Diagon Alley. Unlike other high-end wizarding establishments, the bar was open to anyone and had no rules regarding the Blood Status of their patronage. One year later, George debuted Fred's Finest, the one and only firewhiskey to be sold at The Jester.
Harry had tasted many a firewhiskey over the years but none compared to Fred's Finest. Whether it was the actual taste or the meaning behind its very existence, Harry had never had a drink quite like Fred's Finest. Which was exactly what he had told George, who immediately asked Harry if he could use that line to advertise. Now, the bottle came with the words "You've never had a drink like it" under the title and Harry's face adorned most of the advertising for the bar and firewhiskey.
At the same time that George was opening his bar, Angelina had finally been signed to a professional Quidditch contract. At first, she had played for the Pride of Portree, who barely played her at all. After two years of sitting on the sideline, she was signed to a contract with the Wimbourne Wasps and immediately made the starting lineup for the club. Angelina did her best to ensure that Portree regretted ever letting her go. She had been on her way to an excellent first season when she had discovered that she was pregnant with Fred.
After Fred's birth, she had returned to the pitch with a passion. Since joining the Wasps, Angelina had completed five seasons with two shortened by the birth of Fred and Kat. In all five of those seasons, Angelina had been named one of the Top Chasers in the British and Irish Quidditch League, something that only one other player could claim.
Of course, that other player was also in the room. While Angelina had won two League Championships with the Wasps, there was no question who the League's best Chaser was. Ginny had signed with the Holyhead Harpies just days after the Battle of Hogwarts. Despite the fact that she had missed the first third of the season, she ended up sixth in goals scored. In every year since then, she had finished either first or second in goals scored and had been the League's Most Outstanding Player four times, including the last three years in a row.
Harry couldn't help but be happy for Ginny. Her dream had always been to play for the Harpies and she had achieved that. Unfortunately for Ginny, one of her other dreams had been to marry Harry Potter and that hadn't quite turned out the way anyone had expected. After the war, Harry and Ginny had immediately gotten together. If you asked Harry today why they had done that, Harry was quite certain that neither of them would give you an answer besides "it's what we thought we had to do."
Unfortunately, that's not a good enough reason to stay together. While Ginny was blowing up the Quidditch League, Harry was becoming the youngest Senior Auror in the history of the Auror Office. Likely because of their mutual success, their relationship floundered. They barely saw each other and when they did, they were often too tired to do anything more than eat dinner and then fall asleep. They never got angry or fought, not anymore than any other normal couple would.
Instead, one day about a year and a half after the war had finally ended, Harry and Ginny looked at each other and realized they weren't in love anymore. Certainly, they loved each other and they always would. To this day, Ginny was one of his closest friends, something that he earnestly hoped never changed. But, the fact remained that they were no longer the couple they had been when they were sixteen. Too much had changed over that time.
When their relationship had ended, Harry had almost been relieved. Then, nine months later, she married Dean Thomas in a private ceremony in Holyhead. While Harry never said it himself, more than one person wondered if Ginny had been unfaithful. Harry refused to acknowledge their comments but inside, he did ask the same question. Finally, Harry came to the conclusion that it didn't matter. She may have cheated on him, she may not. But their relationship had been over far before they had officially ended it and they both had known it.
A month after Ginny's wedding, Harry invited her out to lunch and from that day on, they had been as close as they had ever been.
Things were as stable as they had ever been for the Weasleys and their adopted family. Of course, there was one problem left in the eyes of quite a few people in the room: Harry was "alone." Nevermind the fact that he had more family and friends than he knew what to do with. Nevermind the fact that if Harry wanted to do something, he had a list of over twenty people he could owl and within an hour, he would get a response with a time that he could come over. No, Harry didn't have a wife or a girlfriend and for some, that was a problem. Of course, Hermione wasn't bothered by that because she knew that Harry preferred a more solitary existence. Luna was also fine with it because it meant that she wasn't the only one who came to these gatherings without a date.
Of course, Harry had noticed that Luna lived alone and no one seemed to bother about it. Harry assumed that had more to do with the fact that Luna still had her father to nag her about getting married whereas Molly, in particular, viewed Harry as her son in everything but blood. Almost every single Sunday, Molly would attempt to dig into his personal life, trying to see if he had gone on a date. It had gotten so bad that Arthur had nearly yelled at her to leave him alone on one particularly memorable Sunday about two years earlier.
In truth, Harry wasn't seeking a partner. To be honest, he had them already in Hermione and Ron. If he needed anything, they were there, just as they had been since Halloween 1991. More than once, Harry had owled Hermione after a particularly hard day at the office. While anyone else would have ignored his owl at such a late hour, Hermione showed up within ten minutes without fail. And on a bi-weekly basis, Harry and Ron blew off some steam by grabbing a drink at The Jester and then going to a Cannons game. As usual, The Cannons usually lost but their mission (an evening each week out of the house to relax) was accomplished with ease.
As dinner finished up, Viktor, who had practice early the next morning bid everyone farewell as did Bill, Fleur and Charlie. At the same time, Ginny and Dean moved into the living room for a game of Exploding Snap. So, while Percy and Arthur talked about some relentlessly boring Ministry edict that Percy had barely managed avoiding throughout dinner (a rule had been established years ago that no Ministry talk was to occur during dinner) and Molly cleaned up (over the years, there had been multiple attempts to help her clean up. Unfortunately, she usually ended up forcing everyone out of the kitchen for ruining her incredibly organized kitchen), Harry and Ron marched out to the pond, followed by Luna, Gabrielle, and Hermione.
"How's business?" Harry asked.
"It's slowing down. Summers are always rough for us. Of course, George's shop will pick up the slack."
"It'll be nice to have him home before dinner," Gabrielle replied. Unlike her sister, Gabrielle had been exposed to English society early enough in life that her accent was almost impossible to place.
"What's that like?" Harry asked as he made his way to his usual place among the chairs at the edge of the pond. Harry and Ron, no matter the time of year, always spent some time after dinner by the pond, usually with a bottle of Fred's Finest. Tonight, however, Gabrielle had brought a bottle of wine given to her by her father a few months earlier.
"You'd find out if you worked less," Hermione commented. "Also, you could accept my dinner invitation."
"First, I resent the idea that you think I work more than you," Harry said, his finger pointed at Hermione in jest. "Second, I work late because that's when most of the wizarding world decides they need to do stupid things and third, I don't accept your dinner invitations because neither of us can plan a time to do them."
"That's not true. I had dinner at home three times last week."
"At what time?"
"What does that matter?" Hermione asked, clearly deflecting the question.
"Because we both know that you had dinner at nine o'clock before climbing into bed so that you could be back at the Ministry at five in the morning."
"What's your point?"
"First, dinner at nine o'clock is hardly dinner. It's basically a midnight snack," Harry said. When Hermione went to interject, he pressed on. "Second, I work until ten or eleven most nights. Last time I checked, it would be frowned upon for the most Senior Auror in the Office outside the Head Auror to leave in the middle of an investigation into the sale of an incredibly dangerous dark artifact to go home and have dinner."
"You investigate that kind of thing every day?" Luna asked.
"Usually it's an accident," Ron replied. "Someone gives their granddaughter some family heirloom and it turns out to be cursed. Lots of paperwork and lots of headache for almost no excitement."
"That's why Ron got out." Harry added. "No excitement, much like Ron himself."
"Tosser," Ron growled while everyone chuckled at Harry's remark. Then, he turned back to Luna.
"It wasn't only that. I was tired of being broke. Auror pay is shit," Ron replied to the uproarious laughter of everyone gathered. As they reached the pond, Harry and Ron withdrew their wands and, with a quick flick, conjured a chair for each of the others and then lit a small bonfire in between them. Gabrielle took the bottle of wine and split it among the five of them, conjuring beautiful crystal glasses out of thin air.
Even though it was the end of May, it was a remarkably chilly evening with a fog already beginning to roll over the water in front of them. To that end, Harry found himself incredibly thankful for the fire and the wine to keep him warm.
"Speaking of your work," Ron said as he finished his first glass, "what have you been up to, Hermione?"
"Nothing much."
"Isn't that what she said when she got Kingsley to pass the House Elf Rights Bill? Nothing much?" Harry asked Ron, pretending to ignore the roll of Hermione's eyes.
"I think that is pretty much what she said. She had only changed the lives of every house elf until the end of time but it was nothing much."
"Pity we can't all be Hermione Granger, savior of non-humans everywhere!" Ron said as he raised his empty glass to the heavens before pretending to down it. When he came up for air, Harry quickly reached over and refilled his glass.
"Oh, har har, you two are hilarious," Hermione said dryly as she spoke over Harry and Ron's childish chuckles. "In all seriousness, I'm between projects at the moment. I just got finished proposing a series of changes to the Wizard's Code to better reflect our society."
"You mean you're getting rid of all of the Pureblood nonsense that was in there before?" Gabrielle asked.
"How do you know what's in the Wizard's Code?" Harry asked.
"I work for the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Half of my job is telling foreign dignitaries about how screwed up your laws are."
"Hey, you're English too!" Ron replied.
"Technicality," Gabrielle counted. "I may be a British citizen but when I have to go and explain the ridiculous nature of your laws, I suddenly return to my French roots."
"Traitor," Ron muttered into his drink with a smirk. That comment got him flipped out of his chair and dropped onto his back, courtesy of some fancy wandwork from Gabrielle. Ron hit the ground hard, spilling his drink all down the front of him as the rest of his friends simply sat and laughed at his misfortune.
It was moments like these where he felt as far away from May 2, 1998 as he had ever been. To this day, Harry still struggled with the war. He struggled with the guilt he felt over the dozens of deaths that had occurred before Harry had been able to stop Riddle. More than once, Hermione had told Harry that it wasn't his fault. Harry knew that she was right but apparently his subconscious disagreed.
But on Sunday evenings, surrounded by those that he loved, he could almost let that feeling wash away. He knew that it would never truly be gone. He knew that he would struggle with those demons for the rest of his life. But for a few hours, once a week, he could let them go for a few hours.
That is until the rest of the world came barging back in to disrupt that sensation of freedom. As Harry laughed at Ron's attempt to get up without spilling the rest of his drink, Harry felt his pocket vibrate. Immediately, Harry cursed to himself as he stood up and walked away from the rest of the group before pulling the mirror out of his pocket. Over the last few years, the wizarding world had begun to adapt some Muggle technologies into their world. One such adaptation had been the cellular telephone. While telephones were still not a thing in the wizarding world, they had adapted small hand mirrors, much like the one that Sirius had given Harry years earlier, to be their magical counterparts. Each mirror could be charmed to contact other mirrors, assuming the recipient accepted the contact.
The mirror in Harry's pocket was attached to only a few other mirrors and none of them were friends or family. Harry held the mirror up in front of his face as he got outside an earshot of the others and then nodded his head, the signal that Harry was allowing this "caller" to access his mirror. Not surprisingly, the mirror immediately displayed the image of one of his Junior Aurors, Elaina Andrews. Elaina had been an Auror for going on five years now and was one of Harry's favorite co-workers. She was intelligent, engaging and had enough of a sense of humor to get him through the day.
"Yes?" Harry growled, not bothering to hide his annoyance. He knew that Elaina wouldn't have contacted him if it wasn't important. She was well aware of what had happened the last time someone had wasted Harry's time during a Sunday dinner.
"I am incredibly sorry to bother you, Auror Potter, but we need your assistance," Elaina replied, clearly bothered by something.
"With what?"
"There's been a...death."
"A death?" Harry asked, looking over his shoulder to ensure that none of his friends had heard him before taking a few more steps away from them. "What do you mean, a death?"
"To be honest, I'm not certain. This is something I've never seen before."
Harry cursed silently to himself. The life of an Auror was not particularly exciting but even still, Elaina Andrews was not the kind of person to say something like that without meaning exactly what she said.
"Write the address on the mirror. I'll be there in five minutes."
"Yes, sir," Elaina said before her image disappeared and the address for her location, somewhere in Oxford, displayed on the glass in her traditionally perfect handwriting. Harry took a moment to compose himself before going back to the others, all of whom had immediately noticed his absence.
"Is it bad?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah, it's bad," Harry confirmed. "Sorry, I have to go."
"We understand. Nature of the job, right?" Ron suggested.
"Right." Harry said before quickly hugging everyone and then walking to the edge of the wards, which were still up, even ten years after the war, and Apparating to the address Elaina had given him. Immediately, Harry noticed that they were only a few blocks away from Oxford University. Considering the issues they had with some of the intellectuals from Oxford nearly discovering the wizarding world over the years, the area surrounding Oxford was effectively a no-go zone, meaning that no witches or wizards were supposed to be living in this area, something that immediately made Harry wonder what he was doing here.
However, it was easy to spot the rest of his colleagues. While out in the Muggle world, the Aurors were tasked to look as much like Muggles as humanly possible. This meant that they were ordered to leave the cloaks and robes at home (which were falling out of style among magical folk anyway, thank Merlin) and dressed similar to Muggle detectives. Still, they each wore a badge with the Ministry of Magic symbol on it, which had Muggle repelling charms on them telling them that they worked for a special branch of Scotland Yard.
Standing outside the front door were two Rookies, Aurors just out of the Auror Training Program, a six month slog through hell. Four out of five people who applied for the Program were rejected and another three out of five would fail to make it through the Program. Once they were done, they were made a Rookie Auror for three years, where another three out of five would drop out before they were promoted to Junior Auror. This was done to ensure the competency of everyone who became an Auror. Without a war on, there was no need for a massive magical police force. Instead, Kingsley and Gawain, in one of the few times that Harry had agreed with his boss, had decided that they would simply be the best, even if there were fewer of them than usual.
The moment Harry started up the steps of the brownstone, the two Rookies snapped into place, which caused Harry to laugh internally. The Aurors were not a military organization, not since the end of the Second Wizarding War anyway. They were detectives, tasked with solving puzzles, conducting interviews, and observing minute details that anyone else would have missed. So, there was no requirement that they snap to attention when a Senior Auror walked by. No, instead this was something they only did whenever Harry walked by.
It was no secret that every Auror wanted to be selected to be a Junior Auror under Harry. At the end of their three years as a Rookie, all the Rookies would be put through their paces in front of the five Senior Aurors. When their week of testing was over, two results were possible, failure or selection by a Senior Auror. The first was rare but did happen and it meant that they could either return to the Rookie Auror rank for another year or they could drop out of the Aurors entirely.
Most Rookies were selected by a Senior Auror and then became a Junior Auror underneath them. Considering that Harry was the highest ranking Auror outside of Robards himself and a legend in his own right, every Rookie was vying for a spot on Harry's team of Junior Aurors, who would most often be assigned to the most exciting and high profile cases, hence the snap to attention as Harry walked through the door.
As he entered the home, he was immediately greeted by the entirety of his Junior Auror team, a team of three who often worked side by side with Harry on his toughest cases. The fact that all of them were here was not a good sign. Harry stood in the doorway and waited for Elaina to come to him, flanked on one side by Manuel Collins, a Junior Auror of less than two weeks time, and Emmett Davies, the younger brother of Roger Davies and an Auror of four years.
"Where are we?" Harry asked the young trio.
"In here," Davies said softly, his voice low as he turned and marched into the next room. Immediately, Harry's eyes began to wander, picking up as many details as he could gather. The room itself was traditionally decorated, matching the classic exterior of the brownstone style house that was popular in the area. Harry could also tell that the owner of the home was a relatively meticulous owner, even among the magical population. Organization was far easier when you could use magic to do this but Harry noticed that her collection of Muggle records, which sat just below her player, was alphabetized, something that could only be done by hand.
However, all of that paled in comparison to the image above the fireplace. There, suspended by the wrists with a set of manacles that had been hastily mounted to the ceiling, was a woman who could have been no more than five years older than Harry himself. Her arms were spread wide and her head hung low, the light in her extinguished forever. As Harry stepped closer to the corpse, he immediately noticed a series of scratches on the mantle of the fireplace, clear indications of where the woman had attempted to rest her feet on it, despite the fact that it was only roughly seven centimeters in width.
The next thing Harry noticed was bleeding and bruising on her wrists, which was visible even from Harry's place on the floor. It was clear that she had attempted to pull herself out of the shackles, even pulling the skin back in places.
"Name?" Harry asked softly.
"Helen Greene," Manuel replied. "She worked at the Ministry."
"Department?"
"Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures," Collins fired back as he looked down at the files in his hands. "She had worked there for about six years. Graduated from Hogwarts in '93. Spent three years working in Administrative Services before getting transferred to Magical Sports and games in early '97. She worked there until she took a new job with Magical Creatures in '01."
"What do we know about her?"
"Not much yet, sir," Elaina said firmly. "We know that her mother and father live somewhere in Devon. We'll work on getting a meeting set up with her."
"Don't bother. I'll take care of that," Harry replied.
"Are you sure, sir? I know that you have a lot on your plate."
Harry turned and looked at the three young Aurors, his hand still resting on his grey-bearded chin.
"Do you know how many magical murders there were last year?" Harry asked rhetorically before instantly moving on to answer the question himself. "Six. Six magical people were murdered last year. In all six instances, the perpetrator used clear magical means to kill their target, whether by the Killing Curse or some other Dark spell. On the other hand, this woman, Helen Greene, was crucified."
"Crucified? What is that?" Emmett asked.
"It's a Muggle technique, one used centuries ago to execute criminals," Elaina replied in horror. "The victims were tied or nailed to a cross and then hung in the air. Eventually, they would weaken and their body would collapse, closing off their airway. For hours, they would fight to keep themselves upright. As time passed, they would slowly feel their strength leave them, pushed on by the fact that they were getting less air than usual. Finally, when they couldn't fight it anymore, they would collapse, suffocate and then die a horrible, slow death."
"Merlin…" Emmett muttered to himself.
"Exactly," Harry growled as he turned back to Helen's corpse, looking up at her face. Even in death, Harry could see the awful pain that she had been in when her body had finally been drained of its oxygen, the pain that had eventually lead to her death.
"Above everything else, we need to make sure that it is done right and that means I will be handling this personally. The most important matter is our killer's motive. What could someone have done to possibly deserve this?"
Harry noticed that the room had gone silent at that moment. Turning around, Harry saw that each of his Junior Aurors was pointedly looking away from him, as if they were all afraid to tell him something, which, of course, was their exact fear.
"What is it?"
The three Junior Aurors looked at each other before Manuel and Emmett pushed Elaina forward, urging her to tell Harry whatever it was they had to share. Nervously, she stepped forward and presented Harry with a piece of parchment.
"What is this?"
"Before you got here, we had one of our experts run the usual checks on her wand. Something strange came up."
"Like what?" Harry asked.
Elaina hesitated for a moment, clearly uncertain how exactly to phrase her next sentence.
"The last spells that she cast with her wand were two Banishing Charms, a Hover Charm and two Locking Charms. There was no evidence of any other magic cast in the home at the time and the Apparition Office has no record of anyone Apparating to or from this house. We coordinated with the Muggle police and they used their security cameras to confirm that no one else had been in or out of this house."
"What's your point, Andrews?" Harry barked impatiently.
"Sir, we believe that it was Helen Greene who put those manacles up. She Banished the two anchors into the ceiling before levitating herself into position and then locking the shackles around her wrists."
"And then what?"
"Then nothing, sir. She locked herself into position and then sometime within the next eight to twenty-four hours, she asphyxiated and died. At the moment, everything that we have, all our evidence, it points to Helen Greene doing this to herself."