Happy birthday, leochi! -Albatross Around His Neck, PG-13, 1/4
Title: Albatross Around His Neck
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and her associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~30,000
Warnings: Violence, profanity, unusual Animagus transformations. DH Spoilers but ignores epilogue.
Summary: When an unregistered Animagus commits murder, Harry Potter investigates the agency that trained him, Malfoy’s Magical Menagerie (“Discover your inner animal in two days, become one over a lifetime!”) Things would be so much easier if he was not growing disillusioned and if Malfoy were less intelligent.
Author’s Notes: Happy birthday, leochi! Thank you for the wonderful art you gifted me with. Your request was I’m not very interested in dark themes or smut. My favourites are credible stories with lots of psychology and inner developments. Accordingly, this story has no smut or extreme darkness, although it has some violence, and focuses a lot on both Harry and Draco’s inner perspectives. Hope you enjoy it!



Albatross Around His Neck

The façade of Malfoy’s Magical Menagerie was meant to overwhelm. It loomed twice as high as the front of any other shop in Diagon Alley, with the gaudy, flashing letters of the motto marching around the doorframe and the windows in curlicues of red and gold on black that Harry thought George Weasley must have designed. The windows showed elaborate scenes of running wolves, foxes, stags, and lions in stained glass. Some magical effect Harry hadn’t seen before and couldn’t track to its source made the whole building shimmer as if it stood in moonlight instead of sunlight.

Discover your inner animal in two days! proclaimed the lettering. Become one over a lifetime!

Harry scratched at the stubble that remained from yesterday—he’d felt too tired to use the Shaving Charm that morning—and tilted his head back to study the top of the building. Yes, it had honest-to-God battlements, probably because Malfoy was always living in the shadow of Hogwarts and needed some psychological connection to the most important place of his life. There also appeared to be a flat green space on the roof where winged Animagi could practice their takeoffs and landings. As Harry watched, a plump brown bird of a kind he didn’t know took off and skimmed over the grass, struggling the way that no bird would. A few moments later, it sank out of sight, and Harry saw a feather drift up into the air. He smiled briefly as he imagined it crashing.

Only briefly.

He lowered his gaze and fixed it on the front door again, made of some frost-blue stone with a knocker as dark as obsidian. The knocker was in the shape of a hawk, wings flung back as it alighted in a dramatic pose Harry was willing to bet was not copied from nature. He didn’t want to knock on the door and go in there.

But then, he rarely wanted anything to do with Auror cases these days, and yet he took them anyway, because what else did he have to do with himself?

Efficiently, Harry banished the thoughts. They occupied the time he spent in his flat and his pub. They weren’t allowed to interfere on the job, where he had prided himself for the last ten years on acting like a professional.

He stepped towards the door and knocked with his fist instead of the hawk. He heard several bells go off at once, like fireworks. Harry pushed his hair back from his forehead, perfectly willing to use the scar, in this case, to awe whatever shop clerk answered the door. Merlin knew it would have no appreciable effect on Malfoy.

But of course, Malfoy himself opened the door, and his gaze flickered to Harry’s forehead in a way that said he understood the effort Harry had made with the scar and was unimpressed.

Nothing ever goes the way I plan it.

Whinging wasn’t allowed on the job either, Harry reminded himself, and made his voice like iron, as heavy and as inflexible. But polite. He could do that. “Good afternoon, Malfoy. I’m here in my official capacity as Second Auror. I wondered if I might ask you questions about a recent student at your school.”

*

Potter would be a lion, Draco decided immediately. No other answer for it. The Chosen One had grown taller but hadn’t otherwise changed, as his ridiculous stunt with the scar showed, and he would have been a lion Animagus if he’d chosen to undertake the training in school, because what else could so pure a symbol of Gryffindor change into?

Then Potter shifted, perhaps because Draco hadn’t answered him inside one second, and Draco caught his first glimpse of those shadowed green eyes. He paused. It seemed thirteen years of looking at crime scenes, if only ten as a full-fledged Auror, had taken their toll on that Gryffindor purity. Perhaps he would be a wolf. Draco had trained his share of wolf Animagi in his time, because it was felt to be a symbolic animal and one’s form depended in large part on what one already thought of one’s soul.

You can’t be an animal you’ve never heard of, and you can’t be an animal that you feel indifferent to, was the way one of Draco’s trainers had phrased it.

“I really don’t see what one of my students might have done to require the attention of the Aurors,” Draco said, his voice perfectly respectful. Potter didn’t react one way or the other. Draco found himself stepping closer and adding a touch of insolence to his tone before he thought about it, because that indifference was just so disappointing. “Of course, you’ve always been ready to believe the worst of anyone associated with me, haven’t you?”

The shadows in Potter’s eyes glided into motion. Draco hoped he was remembering one of the times Draco had seriously threatened or changed his life. There was the presence of his hawthorn wand in Potter’s hand during the final battle with Voldemort, of course, but Draco didn’t think enough people remembered that.

“In this case,” said Potter, “it was an unregistered Animagus. It was only by carefully scrutinizing a few of his letters in recent weeks that we learned he trained at your school.” He reached into his robe pocket and started to pull something out. Draco took a step back to put distance between them, again without thinking about it.

Potter paused and glanced at him. Draco was sure his mouth twitched.

“Impossible,” he did manage to say. “All my students are required to register the day they transform for the first time.”

“And this is someone who didn’t,” said Potter. “Exceptions exist all around us, Malfoy.” He finished pulling out the object he’d reached into his robe for. Draco lowered his glance and realized he was confronting a familiar photograph. The young wizard in the picture blinked up at him from behind large glasses and then grinned shyly, waving a hand before he looked towards the far side of what seemed to be a Hogwarts courtyard.

Septimus Gully. Yes, if anyone was going to do something like that, it would be him.

Draco swore under his breath, then stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”

*

The inside of the Magical Menagerie was dimmer than Harry had expected it to be, with all the magical lighting on the outside and the enormous windows. It was also filled with drifting scents that didn’t seem to come from potions. As his eyes adjusted, Harry made out candlewicks floating in pools of glimmering liquid, shedding small trails of smoke and the scents of new-mown grass, raked leaves, wet earth, and the salt of the sea.

“It comforts the students the first time they transform,” said Malfoy matter-of-factly, stepping around him so he could gesture Harry towards a chair. “Most of them are confused and overwhelmed by their new senses, and they need something that smells like home to their animal bodies.”

Harry nodded, and watched Malfoy for a moment. He had changed, but what hadn’t in the years since the war? He had a guarded, listening face and stripped-down movements, as if he wanted to accomplish everything he did with the least waste of time and energy possible. His hair hung in fine, loose strands past his ears, cropped at an angle that made the ears look almost pointed, and his robes were entirely white, to point up the pallor of his skin. When he looked back at Harry, his eyes had a flinty shine that the sunlight had hidden when Harry stood on the doorstep. In fact, if Harry hadn’t been forsworn from intimacy for a great many excellent reasons, he might have—

Once again, Harry banished the thoughts that didn’t belong on the job, and sat in the chair Malfoy offered him. “How well did you know Gully?” he asked.

Malfoy sat down opposite him and gave him an oblique look. “Why don’t you start by telling me what he’s supposed to have done?”

Harry sighed once, and then nodded. That was only fair, he reckoned, especially because Malfoy looked to have no idea what this was about. Harry had made such quick judgments before in his experience as an Auror, and they rarely failed him.

“His Animagus form is a scorpion,” Harry said, recalling the details from the file he’d been handed with an ease born of long practice. Malfoy stirred in his chair but said nothing to contradict him, so Harry thought he was safe to continue. “He’s discovered a way to fill his sting with more powerful venom; we know that because the poison that Councilor Ferguson died of was not natural to a scorpion. On the other hand, there were signs of his having been stung by one.”

Malfoy was sitting straight up, his face pale. “Ferguson?” he asked. “Gerald Ferguson?”

Harry let a faint smile touch his mouth. At least that had got a reaction out of Malfoy. “As in Gerald Ferguson the Wizengamot member, yes,” he said. “Did you not hear of his death?”

“I read an article that he was sick and had been taken to hospital.” Malfoy closed his eyes and bowed his head. It made his face look much more pale, his hair tumbling like a fall of snow across his brow. Harry flicked a whip of discipline and banished the inappropriate thoughts again. “I was busy right after that, helping a student who had changed into her quail form and couldn’t change back. I never read the end of the story.”

“He did die.” Harry half-closed his eyes and stared at a candle. If his brain would insist on taking note of things it had no business taking note of, then it could take note of a spot of light instead. “We didn’t think it was murder at first, but then one of his secretaries reported seeing a scorpion.” He bared his teeth in an expression Malfoy could take as a smile if he wanted to. “It didn’t take much time to come up with a report of Gully in the area shortly thereafter. And then we managed to find people who confirmed that he was a scorpion Animagus, and that he had trained here.”

“I don’t see what information I can give you.” Malfoy’s voice had dropped the politeness he’d greeted Harry with at first and now crackled with old ice and old animosity. “You know more about the crime than I do.”

Harry didn’t turn a hair. He had prepared himself by doing all his complaining in his head before he actually entered the shop, or the school, or whatever it was. “I’m told that you know more about his personality,” he said. “That you must, because you were his teacher and the teacher learns a student’s soul whilst he coaches him to become an Animagus. Sometimes he has to guide him in the right direction and teach him to envision the animal he actually is, rather than the animal he wishes he was.” He looked at Malfoy, his breathing calm and steady. “Is that true?”

*

Draco’s perception of Potter’s possible Animagus form was rapidly changing. Not a bear, because though he had the same coiled danger about him now as a bear did when emerging from his den, he didn’t have that slowness of temper. He was quicker, more lithe, more deadly. A bear would often be satisfied once it had chased the initial threat away. A leopard, perhaps? Those striking, wary green eyes would fit one.

It had been a while since he had such a challenge. Draco regretted that it was Auror business which had brought Potter to the Magical Menagerie. Had he entered as a student, Draco could have had fun belittling him, laughing at him, and tugging him in the right direction against his will. No doubt he would have wanted to believe he was a stag, like his Patronus, or some neat compact animal like a house-cat. Not anything dangerous. Potter had never wanted to be dangerous to anyone but Voldemort.

At least he’d done some research before he came, or got Granger to do it for him. “Yes, that’s true,” Draco said. “But Gully was one of my more puzzling students. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a scorpion. He came to me when he was barely out of Hogwarts, wide-eyed and begging to become an Animagus. He was humble and learned from his mistakes, although he didn’t learn quickly. He never seemed dangerous or aggressive, which is usually the case for those who become venomous animals, no matter how small.”

Potter gave a small frown and lifted his head. The candles made dancing flames appear in his glasses and his eyes. Draco was startled to feel his stomach tighten with want. Then he shrugged and dismissed it. Well, why not? He’d always been attracted to bright eyes, and he’d never minded green.

“I did some reading on scorpions, too,” Potter said.

Granger did some reading, Draco translated in his head. He nodded wisely.

“I didn’t think scorpions were aggressive. Is it possible he was a better fit for his form than you expected?”

Draco snorted. “And beetles like Rita Skeeter aren’t naturally nosy.” Potter frowned. Draco took pity on his small intellect and explained. “What is important is what the students think of the animal, Potter, and not what they actually are. Natural snakes don’t have a great deal of cunning, either, or ambition. But many of my Slytherin students to whom House pride was important become snakes of one sort or another, because they’ve been taught to associate snakes with qualities inherent in them. Had the lion been our symbol, I would expect many lion Animagi among them.”

Potter smiled faintly. “It’s been a decade and a half, Malfoy,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “Do you think you could let the grudge based on House points go?”

Draco stared at him. Suddenly the brilliance in Potter’s eyes and the stubborn lack of knowledge he was revealing couldn’t hide the fact that Draco didn’t know him anymore. He had up and changed his soul in those fifteen years, and that made speculations about his possible form based on their shared past useless.

I resent that, Draco thought, and then wondered why. Surely he should have known Potter would move on without him.

“Very well,” he said, aware that that wasn’t much of an answer to Potter’s statement, and not caring. “But it’s the students’ own perception that’s important, that and the students’ knowledge of themselves. Sometimes they take months or even years to transform because they’re clinging to one perception of themselves and they have to come to see that they’re not actually as clever or brave or strong as they thought they were.”

“Could Gully have seen himself as secretly venomous, then?” Potter leaned forwards. “How fast did he transform? How accurate was his perception of his soul?”

Stop demonstrating brains, Draco thought, intensely irritated. His perception had shifted again. No, Potter couldn’t be a leopard; he was no longer restless or monofocused enough.

“You may have something there,” Draco said. “His transformation itself, once he got past his learning mistakes in the process, was swift. I thought it was simply because he accepted the form of the scorpion the first time I suggested it to him, rather than arguing with me, as others have done when they didn’t want to believe themselves venomous.”

Potter nodded. “And do you happen to know who visited him during the time he was training here?” He spoke as if he thought it highly possible Draco wouldn’t remember every odd visitor his students had.

Draco glared at him. “As a matter of fact, yes, I do. His sister visited him, and a woman he called his Aunt Medea.”

Potter snarled. Draco flinched before he could help himself, but then he realized Potter’s eyes were trained past him on the far wall and his hands were clenched into fists, aiming his wand at someone who wasn’t there.

“That wasn’t his aunt, Malfoy,” Potter said absently. Draco felt a dim surprise. Most of the Aurors he had known wouldn’t have bothered explaining. “Neither of his parents has any siblings. That’s almost certainly Medea Shrivelfig. We’ve been after her for months. She’s trying to overthrow the Ministry—“

“Is she?” Draco laughed. It seemed to him a saner goal than trying to assert blood purity as Voldemort had done. “Good luck to her, then!”

“—and set herself up as sole dictator in its place,” Potter finished, with a sidelong glance at him, “allowing the use of Dark magic. She wants to use Transfiguration and experiments to make Muggles into various species of magical creatures to serve wizards.”

“Oh.” Draco kept his acknowledgment to that simple word and saw the faintest shadow of amusement slide over Potter’s face before he rose to his feet.

“Please write down every bit of information you can remember about this ‘Aunt Medea,’ and send it to us with a post-owl,” said Potter. He stood with his head bent for a moment, his hands clenched at his sides, and Draco could feel his magic gathering in his shoulders and arms, as if he were preparing himself to charge out and arrest Shrivelfig immediately. “I’ll need to report to the Minister himself, and don’t have more time to stay and collect your testimony.” He began to stride across the room towards the door.

“Wait!” Draco wasn’t entirely sure why he scrambled to his feet and called after Potter, except that he hadn’t encountered someone whose Animagus form he couldn’t narrow down to within a few possibilities in months. “Why do you need to report to the Minister? Is it something that could damage the reputation of my school?”

Potter looked back at him with his eyebrow raised, a hand balanced on the doorframe and a foot uplifted. He seemed utterly unconscious that he was assuming a strange stance. For a moment, Draco saw the grace of a hoofed animal about him, the shadow of antelope or deer, and then that faded as he caught sight of the shadows in Potter’s eyes again.

“A threat of treason goes beyond the Aurors,” said Potter. “And that’s really all I can tell you if you don’t want your school implicated.”

Draco nodded slowly. He watched as Potter opened the door, not bothering to shut it behind him, and stepped out into the middle of the street. He Apparated by seeming to spring forwards into space, as if he were about to take flight.

A winged form, maybe? Considering how much he loves Quidditch, that might make the most sense.

Draco shut the door of the shop and sat down for long moments. He knew this mood in himself, and it was useless to try and work on anything else until he solved the puzzle. He would decide what Animagus form would best suit Potter, and then he would go and investigate other documents, to prove to himself that Gully could have no further connection with his school.

*

Had the Ministry’s senior advisers not been sitting around one end of a round table, and had Harry not been looking directly at them when Kingsley began to speak, he might have missed the very small headshake from Acheron Hidefell.

The Wizengamot member was an enormous wizard, both tall and big, though Harry would have been wary getting into a wrestling match with him; more of his weight was muscle than fat. He wore blue and silver robes, apparently the official heraldic colors of his family, and a tall pointed hat that rivaled McGonagall’s. His long flowing dark hair and beard almost obscured his face. Harry, who had always needed to look someone in the eyes and read his expressions to tell if he was being honest or not, objected to this on principle.

And because he had shaken his head at Kingsley, Kingsley said something different than what he otherwise would have said; Harry was sure of it.

“That’s very interesting news, Auror Potter, and we will be sure to follow up on it.” Kingsley nodded twice and shuffled some papers in front of him. Harry had known for some time now that was a distraction technique for the Minister, designed to make him look busy and dignified when he was neither. “For the present, however, we will need to turn to the case of the Obliviators in South London. They’ve been overzealous, and destroyed the memories of several Muggleborn wizards and Squibs visiting relatives as well as those of the Muggles who actually witnessed the explosion of a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheeze.”

Harry leaned forwards, interrupting the attempt of the Head Obliviator to defend herself. “Minister,” he said, working hard to control his voice and his temper and make them both sound calm and unruffled, “I’ve just given you evidence of a possible treason plot, and you want to discuss what’s essentially a political squabble?”

Kingsley looked at him with cautious eyes, the expression he always wore when trying to handle the dangerous political commodity that was the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry closed his hands into fists behind his back. He wouldn’t be dangerous or a mere commodity to Kingsley if he was allowed to use his influence to actually protect the wizarding world, or if Kingsley listened to him instead of people like Hidefell, who probably wanted the matter of Shrivelfig swept under the carpet because it connected to his business or a relative.

“This is more than a political squabble, Auror Potter,” Kingsley said, a warning note in the back of his voice. Harry didn’t give a bloody damn for his warning note. “It involves the human rights of Squibs and Muggleborns, which I’m sure your friend Mrs. Granger-Weasley would be interested in—“

“Well, yeah, I’m not her.” Harry leaned forwards and only became aware then that he was quivering like a bow strung too tight. Well, fuck that. If it made the Wizengamot members and the others underestimate him, it was all to the good. “I want to know why we aren’t pursuing Shrivelfig more closely, why Councilor Ferguson’s murder has been shuffled away and kept as quiet as possible, why—“

“You only have the evidence that a woman called Medea visited this Gully at an Animagus school,” Hidefell interrupted, his voice soft as always. “It could have been an assumed name. It could be an entirely innocent coincidence. It could be a red herring. It has not been hard for the enemies of the Ministry to learn that you are impulsive, Auror, and to use that to their advantage.” He paused delicately, and if he had ended there, then Harry could perhaps have forgiven him, but no, he just had to keep going. “I believe there was the matter of two Aurors who died because you simply had to charge ahead and try to rescue a little girl who turned out not to exist?”

Harry stared at him. The air around them grew thick and syrupy, and then two of the legs of Hidefell’s chair broke and he sat on the floor with a rather sudden thump.

“Harry,” Kingsley said sharply.

“I know, I know,” said Harry, keeping his eyes on Hidefell’s flushed face as the man scrambled to right his chair. He was also glaring at Harry, or Harry thought he was, though it was rather hard to tell in all the mass of hair. “I’m a political liability when I’m not doing exactly as you tell me to. I already understood that.”

Hidefell looked at him contemplatively, one hand locked on the back of the chair. “I suggest you control yourself, Mr. Potter,” he said. “You do not understand how many lives might be made harder because you chose to exert your strength where it was not wanted.”

Harry snorted. “Is that a threat? I’m sorry, I can’t give you a fair hearing for one. I’m afraid Voldemort spoiled me for lesser performances.” He watched in intense satisfaction as Hidefell flinched at the name, and then turned back to Kingsley, who was slowly rubbing his brow as if he were trying to ease the headache forming there. “Sir, what do you want me to do about Gully?”

“You treat the case as an ordinary murder case,” said Kingsley, opening one eye. “That, and nothing else.”

Harry felt his mouth tighten. “Sir, beyond the name of this aunt who visited him at Malfoy’s school, there are some other oddities we’ve discovered. Correspondence during his Hogwarts years with an owl that matches the description of the one that delivered Shrivelfig’s threats to several of her targets, for example. And his family is related to one of the Wizengamot members who lost the election ten years ago. We think he may have entered this plot believing it would give his family a chance to—“

“That is enough, Auror Potter.” Kingsley leaned forwards with his hands splayed on the table like a newborn foal’s legs. “Do you understand me? You have nothing but your intuition and a series of coincidences as evidence. You cannot base an investigation on a resemblance of owls and family connections.”

“Sometimes,” Harry said, eyes never wavering from the Minister’s face, “I can.”

Kingsley flushed deeply. He was likely remembering, as much as Harry was, the evening six years ago when someone had made an assassination attempt on him. Harry had figured it out because his intuition had told him something was wrong with a witch in a long sweeping set of violet robes and wearing a unicorn earring who had passed him several times.

That was why they couldn’t simply dismiss him and refuse to take his concerns seriously, though Harry knew they would have liked to; most of the “new” Wizengamot and their compatriots considered that Harry was too wild and crass for serious politics. His brand of uncanny guesses and half-madness had saved not only the Minister’s life but the lives of various other people around this table many times.

“Not in this case,” said Kingsley. “This is not a targeted assassination plot, Potter.” It was the first time the Minister had neglected to call him Auror in months, Harry noted absently. That probably didn’t bode well for his chances to investigate the case. “Insisting on dragging innocents into this—“

“You really think Gully is innocent, sir?” Harry had perfected a tone that made it seem as if he agreed, with sarcasm lurking so obviously under the surface that most of the time people couldn’t resist calling him out.

“I do not.” Kingsley hung onto his temper with a death grip, if the glare he gave Harry was any indication. “What I do think is that innocent people, Hogwarts students especially, follow Medea Shrivelfig in fun, because they don’t understand what she believes and it gives them pleasure to call themselves rebels or anarchists. Until we have a better idea of what plots she is and is not involved in, especially whether she has any connection to Councilor Ferguson’s murder—“ He shook his head. “I will not rip innocents up by the roots and demand the names of their playmates from them, especially when questioning those people might not produce anything concrete.”

Harry breathed lightly, his eyes locked on Kingsley’s. There had been a point when Kingsley trusted him to investigate on his own and to follow up on any lead, but that had ended, because Harry had made his mistakes just like anyone else and acted sometimes on insufficient evidence. With the authority of the Minister’s office behind him, those mistakes became Kingsley’s own. And when Kingsley began to gain real political support and not simply the thundering popular tide of the moment that had elected him because he was associated with the revealed Order of the Phoenix, he had become less willing to take risks. He had explained to Harry several times how those pointed, sweeping investigations Harry made disrupted the lives and livelihoods of the people he targeted.

Of course they do, Harry longed to say. That’s what they’re meant to do. The innocent can stand a bit of questioning and a bit of suspicion. The wizarding world is like a weighted candle. It always wobbles back to equilibrium in the end, except for the truly guilty, and people who stared hard at their neighbors one day are nodding to them the next.

But Kingsley had long ago ceased to believe that. Probably about the time he had gained the backing of influential people who didn’t like trouble, Harry thought.

“And if I bring you concrete evidence, sir?” Harry asked at last. “Would you let me open the investigation further if I could prove that Shrivelfig is once again trying to stir up animosity against you?”

“I believe I understand the young man,” said Hidefell, before Kingsley could respond. “He grew up in a time of conspiracies and active double agents, and of course he would see shadows around every corner when he had become an adult as well, because there was a time when ignoring them would have cost him his life.” He gave Harry a sympathetic smile. “He does not realize that circumstances have altered, and our world has come to political maturity. We don’t have to worry about Dark Lords any longer, because the average wizard knows better than that. There’s only one madman seeking immortality every few generations, and thanks to the efforts of wizards like Potter and Albus, the majority of us will never have to battle them and can live normal lives.”

It always burned Harry when Hidefell spoke as if he had known Dumbledore as a personal friend. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to try that with Harry. He narrowed his eyes and curved his lips into a false smile that was good enough to pass in photographs and memories, which was all the Ministry required. “But the existence of those madmen is remembered and imitated, Councilor,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether Shrivelfig really has the power to become a Dark Lady. The point is that she’s trying, and this murder will upset the balance of the Wizengamot and necessitate the election of a new member. She’ll try to slip in someone who has ties to her.”

“Ties to a rebellion are not always evil,” said Hidefell, and then made a real mistake: he tried for jollity about Harry’s past. “After all, during the period when You-Know-Who was taking over the Ministry, someone could have been called a rebel for supporting you? Eh?” He made a movement as if he would nudge a companionable elbow into Harry’s ribs, and then stopped, perhaps because he’d just now taken in Harry’s real expression.

“Harry, that is enough.” Kingsley’s voice was soft and furious. “I am removing you from the Shrivelfig case as well as the Gully one. And I don’t want you to investigate on your own, either.” Harry tensed; that took away the silent permission to do so that removing him from a case had once constituted. “You’ve already caused more trouble than this murder is worth.”

Harry laughed bitterly before he could stop himself. “More trouble than a murder is worth, sir? Are you only doing this because Ferguson was your political opponent? I agree, the man was a pompous arse, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

Kingsley’s face froze, and Harry understood that his careless words might have inflicted a wound between them that would not heal.

“I care about justice, Potter,” Kingsley said. “Get out.”

Harry bowed and went.

Of course, he had no intention of dropping the Ferguson case or his pursuit of Shrivelfig, especially when he found an owl waiting on his desk.

Potter:

You’ll need to come by the school again. I’ve uncovered information about Gully and another student of mine that I think you should read.

Malfoy.

Part 2.