Nighthawk

Chapter Five

Hermione's morning was not going well. The rain was cold and heavy when she left her flat, and she Apparated directly into a giant puddle at the back of the brewery. The wind blew her umbrella inside out, and she couldn't fix it properly until she was well out of range of prying Muggle eyes. Chris was back at the counter, but with an extra speculative gleam in his eyes - most likely due to her soaking wet, clingy clothes - and he'd messed up her order. Twice.

When she finally stepped into the office, Zabini gave a mocking wolf-whistle. He leisurely eyed her up and down, and then settled his gaze on the steaming cups of coffee in her hands. "For me? Aw, Granger, you'll ruin me for other girls."

Hermione pulled a childish face as he took one of the cups from her, and glanced down at the spreading puddle of water on the carpet, her one trouser leg splattered with mud. Muttering a quick drying spell, which naturally failed to completely dry her thick hair, leaving it to cling to her cheeks and forehead in damp ringlets, she started for her office.

Alice was busily chatting on the phone and she held up a hand, beckoning her to wait. "I'll let her know, thanks officer." She hung up the receiver and ripped off the top sheet of her notepad, handing it to Hermione. "Bufford's car was found by patrol overnight. Same tags and make, different color." She smiled. "They didn't bother doing anything with it, since it hasn't strictly been reported stolen."

Hermione glanced over at Zabini. "Want to check it out with me?"

He shrugged, but gave his coffee cup a longing look, closing his eyes as he brought the steaming liquid to his lips.

"You can take it with you, you know," she said, a hint of exasperation in her tone.

"Just give us a minute," he said, cradling the paper cup between his hands almost reverently.

She sighed. "I'm leaving." Turning, she called over her shoulder, "Now."

With a bit more grumbling than was strictly necessary, Zabini followed her out the door.

******

The car was parked in front of a small bookstore and the two of them stood gazing at it from the curb, huddled under a single umbrella. Hermione wondered how that precise shade of mustard was even possible and she could practically hear Zabini's heart breaking as he stared at it with sad eyes.

"It's a crime against humanity," he muttered, a scowl firmly in place.

"It's a car," Hermione retorted.

Unlocking the doors with a simple spell, they searched the auto for anything helpful. Hermione riffled through the glove compartment, coming up with Bufford's owner's papers, an ice scraper, a flat black hair comb, and a Muggle handgun.

Zabini, crouched in the back with his hand under the seats, came up with only food wrappers and trash. "Nothing."

"Could be unregistered," Hermione said, gesturing towards the gun, "or registered to someone other than Bufford."

"Pop the boot," he said, sliding out of the back seat.

Hermione pulled the lever, and then scrambled out after him, tightening her raincoat about her body as she rounded the back of the car. He caught her arm before she could peer inside.

"You don't want--"

"Oh my God." Hermione clamped her hand over her mouth and nose. "What's that horrid...?" she trailed off, her eyes widening at the sight of the crumpled body. "Is that...?"

The hair color was about right, but she couldn't be sure; the face of the corpse was turned away from her. One of the woman's arms was bent oddly behind her back, the other straight against her side with the fingers frozen in a fist. Dark bruises marred the pale skin of her bare arms and streaks of rusty, dried blood fanned outward from her scalp.

Hermione didn't have a weak stomach, but the smell was enough to plow anybody over. "How long do you suppose she's been in there?" she asked, staring in equal parts horror and fascination.

"Days at the least," he replied, his own hand now across his mouth as well. He cursed under his breath. "We better bring in the Aurors."

"Merlin," Hermione coughed a bit, trying to dislodge the scent from her nose and taste glands with little success. She wished she could simply perform a containment spell on the body to seal in the smell, but knew that her magical imprint would contaminate the scene. It was bad enough that they'd used magic to unlock the doors. At least they'd opened the boot manually.

While Zabini Apparated back to the office to Floo the Ministry, Hermione sat in the passenger side of the auto, her mind flashing through images of the body. She was fairly certain it was Hannah, which put them in a sticky situation. Their main suspect, of course, was Bufford. They now had a Muggle implicated for the death of a witch. This, under current law protecting Muggles, forced the Ministry to have hard, unequivocal evidence before even approaching the suspect.

It wasn't long, perhaps twenty minutes, before Zabini appeared at the car again. And it took only seconds after that before the place was swarming with Aurors. Since they were in a Muggle neighborhood, they threw up temporary wards around the area, securing that no one unauthorized would stumble upon the scene.

Hermione spotted Harry among the number and shouted his name as she made her way towards him.

"Hermione," he said when she sidled up next to him and another Auror. He rubbed his forehead tiredly and ran his fingers through his regulation short hair - which, he admitted, even after two years he still wasn't quite used to, habitually trying to push back the messy curls that had been a constant in his youth. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

She arched a brow. "I can't say this made my day," she said. "Hannah was never my favorite person, you know, but I'd really rather she hadn't ended up in the back of my client's car."

"He'll never get rid of the smell," Zabini said, strolling up to them. "Potter." He nodded politely.

Harry's mouth tightened. "Zabini."

Hermione glanced at Harry in surprise. He'd never before shown any dislike for the man. In school, he'd pretty much been ambivalent towards him, and was even friendly, on occasion, just to tease her.

"So you think it's really Abbott?" Zabini asked casually, hands stuffed in his pockets.

"Won't know for sure until we check her files, but initial impression? Yes."

There it was again. That tense disapproval. She stared hard at Harry's eyes and when he shifted to look at her, she saw a spark of worry pass over the green irises. He hadn't seemed this concerned before, when she'd told him that Zabini was helping her out at the office. In fact, he'd been rather amused by the whole situation.

Before she could ponder more about the strange shift in his attitude, though, another Auror approached, asking if Harry wanted them to move the body itself or remove the entire car.

"You can move the body to the morgue, but I want the car impounded. Have Davies and Monarch go over it piece by piece and let me know if it's been tampered with magically. Taking into account Zabini and Hermione's imprints," he added.

"Must you, Potter?" Zabini asked, eyes locked on the Corvette.

Harry raised his brows. "You don't want to be cleared?"

"Not that," he said. "Can't you refrain from dismantling her? Have you no appreciation?" At Harry's incredulous assessment of the auto, Zabini added, "Disregarding the current color, of course."

"Of course," Harry echoed dryly.

Zabini shook his head. "A travesty. She'll likely never recover."

"You said yourself that the smell probably won't come out, Zabini." He cocked his head, gazing intently at it. "Still, I suppose she has a certain sort of style."

"For Merlin's sake," Hermione cried, "it's a car. And there's a dead body in the boot."

Zabini reached out and patted her shoulder. "She's been through a lot, hasn't she?"

Hermione greatly suspected he was simply trying to make a dreadful situation more bearable. Either that or he was losing his mind.

They watched silently as the team of Aurors covered the body with a white cloth and prepared to transport both it and the auto to the Ministry's crime unit.

Zabini sighed somewhat forlornly.

"Never thought you'd be so attached to something Muggle," Harry commented.

"I have hidden depths."

Harry gave him a searching glance. "That's what I'm afraid of."

******

Hermione perched herself on the edge of Harry's desk, watching Zabini circle the room restlessly, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

The office was much more orderly than Colin's, despite the presence of just as many photographs and pictures. Zabini stopped in front of a large painting of Hogwarts, and she could see a curve tug at the corner of his lips. She always had much the same reaction when studying the work of their old school, the majestic castle perfectly replicated with each brush stroke, each layer making it feel more alive. She particularly enjoyed it at night, when sunlight no longer streamed into the office and each window of the castle flickered with candlelight and the impression of passing shadows.

The door swung open and they both turned anxiously towards Harry as he strode into the room, a harried smile at his lips. "Sorry about the wait," he said, rounding his desk and squeezing Hermione's arm affectionately.

Zabini dropped into a seat and Hermione slid off the edge of the desk to sit beside him. "Any results yet?"

Harry nodded. "Definitely Abbott."

"I've come up with a short list of suspects," Hermione said, handing over a file folder with a small piece of parchment attached to the front. "And these are the rest of my notes on Bufford. I figured you'd want as much information as you could get on the man."

He glanced down at her hastily written list. "Macmillan?"

Alice would kill her for putting Ernie on the list. "Last person to see her alive, as far as we know. Smith is on there because I can't shake the coincidence of her disappearing right around the time he was released."

Harry rubbed his forehead and sighed. "And Bufford?"

"Definitely her husband - he was legally married to a Corrine H. Abbott - and the car's registered to him. The gun, too." She leaned forward suddenly, hands clasped over her knees. "How did she die?"

For a moment, she didn't think he was going to answer her, but finally, he said, "Gunshot. No magical residue as of yet, but the coroner isn't finished all his tests."

"Sounds to me," Zabini said slowly, leaning back and crossing his ankles, "like the perfect frame-up."

Hermione frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Bufford reports his wife missing, then his car missing and they both show up together, no apparent magic involved in Abbott's death."

"He could have reported both missing as a preemptive attempt to divert suspicion off of himself," Hermione pointed out.

"But why?" Zabini asked, giving her an expectant look, eyebrows raised.

Hermione worried her lip and tapped idly on the arm of her chair. "If he really did do it, he wouldn't risk telling us because of the lack of magic."

"Exactly," Zabini said. "He'd be first on our list; is first on our list," he amended, nodding towards Harry's hands.

"There's always the chance that he doesn't know you're a Wizarding business. And there's also the fact that even if he did know, he could be familiar with the laws protecting Muggles," Harry stated. "As it is I'm going to have to get all the prints off the car and gun, match the bullet..." Suddenly, Harry grinned widely. "This is going to be a little more fun than normal."

Hermione shook her head. "Will you let us know what you find?"

"I'll tell you what I can," Harry said, shrugging. "But as of right now, you can consider this case closed on your end."

"What about Bufford?"

"Do what you can... falsify information, stall him. Just don't let him know anything about his car."

They got up to leave, and although it was highly unprofessional, Hermione hugged Harry and asked, "Lunch next week?"

Harry chuckled and squeezed her back. "I'll let you know."

Zabini was quiet as they stepped outside the Ministry. It was still chilly, but it had ceased raining at some point that morning, rays of sunlight breaking through the lingering gray clouds. Puddles that had formed in the street were already starting to dry up.

He stood there, held tilted up towards the weak sun and Hermione found herself mesmerized by a patch of smooth skin below his collarbone, idly wondering what he would taste like, salt and sun and bittersweet. Her fingers itched to touch him, slide down under his shirt, press her palms against his abdomen, skim a fingertip over the scar that ran along his hipbone and... Damn it, Alice was right!

Years later and she was still picturing him naked. She remembered the exact position of that bloody scar, the exact shape and color. And she remembered the nerve shaking compulsion she'd had to lick it, to run her tongue along the ridge and follow the line downwards and... her breath sped up.

He glanced down at her, brow cocked and a strange gleam in his eye. "Ice cream?"

Ice cream? He was thinking of ice cream? "Sure," she forced out, her voice slightly thick.

She spent a torturous half-hour watching him eat an ice cream cone in the most sensual way possible. She couldn't help but watch the path of his pink tongue as she fidgeted in her seat across from him at Fortescue's, her own cup of mint chocolate chip melting into soup.

Her thoughts were suddenly thrown back to Alice's words - you'll be fine once you've shagged him. She was starting to think the blonde had the right sort of idea.

Maybe he just had an incredibly perfect body and she couldn't help but admire it. Maybe it was just a smidgen of residual lust left over from her repressed teenage years. After all, she'd never even got to touch him that day by the lake, and for that she felt somewhat slighted.

"Erm... Zabini?"

A bit of vanilla smeared his upper lip as he looked over at her. "Yes?"

You've got some ice cream on your mouth, mind if I licked it off? "Nothing," she said, then lowered her gaze to her now inedible puddle of ice cream, fiddling with her spoon.

"All right, Granger?" Zabini asked curiously, leaning back and crunching into the sugar cone.

Hermione offered him a weak smile. "Guess dead bodies and ice cream don't mix well with me."

"Ice cream goes with everything."

The slightly teasing light in his eyes eased some of her tension. "I'm well aware of your disturbing sweet tooth," she said. And just about everything else about him, unfortunately.

He frowned at her bowl. "I thought you had a rather large sweet tooth as well."

"Why would you think that?" Hermione asked, startled.

"Sugar quills. You used to eat them by the bagful."

"Only around exam time," she replied, then added before she could stop herself, "You noticed?"

Zabini gave her an amused half-smile. "Of course. I always knew when you'd been into them... your eyes glazed over and you'd be skittish as a pixie."

He'd noticed that? "Um... I try to lay off the sugar now. Wasn't good for my nerves." She glanced off down the street, then back over at him. "So... we should probably get back."

"Right," he said, and she thought she detected a flicker of disappointment in his eyes before they went carefully blank.

******

It was late when Hermione finally shut down her computer, stretching her arms above her head and yawning wide. A glance up at her glass-paneled door showed the outer office cast in darkness, Alice having left hours ago. Zabini, she assumed, had done the same.

Sighing, she slid open her bottom drawer and pulled out a small bottle of Ogden's Own, splashing a few fingers of it into a stout rocks glass.

It had been a long day.

First Hannah, dealing with Harry and the necessary paperwork down at the Ministry, and then the stupid Ice Cream Incident, as she'd taken to calling it. Any camaraderie between her and Zabini, real or imagined, had disappeared when she'd suggested they get back to work, and they'd returned to the office in pained silence.

Zabini was possibly the most confusing man she'd ever come across.

She quickly drowned any morose thoughts out with a large swig of fire whiskey, wishing desperately that Seamus was there to share the bottle. Drinking alone, getting sotted alone, she amended, was highly pathetic.

A green light flashed in the hall and the door to the office next to hers slammed shut. Zabini? What is he doing back?

Whatever he was doing, he was doing it loud, obviously under the impression that she'd left for the night. The only thing betraying her presence was a small desk lamp that apparently didn't make enough light to spill out of her office.

Curious, she got to her feet and moved to their common wall, just as Zabini barked a rough laugh. She cocked her head to the side. She'd never heard him laugh quite like that before, open, with honest humor. Quickly, she swallowed the rest of her whiskey and placed the glass against the wall, pressing her ear up to it. The words were still muggy, though, so she pulled out her wand and performed a clarifying spell, wishing she'd accepted the package of Extendable Ears the Weasley twins had presented as an office warming gift, 'a must have for PI's.'

The spell worked relatively well, though, and Zabini's voice vibrated through the glass, clear as a bell, and she realized he was speaking on the phone.

"I know," he drawled, his tone slightly patronizing. "If it's worth my time, though, it's worth doing it slow."

It had to be the alcohol that caused a slight dizziness at his words.

"She doesn't suspect a thing."

That statement had Hermione's ears pricking, and she leant into the glass, straining to hear every bit of the one-sided conversation.

"Of course she's smart; she's bloody brilliant. Which is why we decided to use me, remember?" He chuckled, almost slyly. "I make her nervous."

He did not make her nervous. Her cheeks flamed. Oh Merlin, he'd noticed that he made her nervous?

"Yes, yes. I know... I'm not going to do anything, prat."

What? What? Dear God, who on earth was he talking to? She was beyond mortified, contemplating never coming to work again, when his next words caused her to freeze up with something akin to fear.

"Everything's going as planned, Draco, although I don't think it's necessary to shut her down at this point."

There was a slight pause, in which Hermione held her breath.

"Yes, Abbott's body's just been found. A bit messy I'm afraid, although the Muggle aspect has Potter humming happy tunes." A sigh, then rhythmic tapping and a huff of breath. "Not sure. Granger must carry the notes around, although I know she's given something to Weasley. Creevey can find out easily enough." His chair creaked. "No, I already said she doesn't suspect," his voice was a hedge above agitated. "And as long as she doesn't put two and two together, there's no reason to risk a Memory Charm."

Memory Charm? Hermione's fingers tightened around the glass.

"I'll handle her as I see fit," he added, low and controlled. She suspected he was close to losing his temper. "Besides, I thought you had your own agenda to see to. However ill-advised, I might add."

Hermione took a shaky step backwards, staring in horror at the blank cream wall. What did it all mean? Walking in a daze back to her desk, she fumbled with the glass and it dropped, crashing onto the corner of the wood before breaking into pieces and falling to the thin area rug. Cursing under her breath, she hastily bent to clean it up, hoping the noise hadn't alerted Zabini to her presence.

The door flung open a second later, banging loudly against the wall, and Hermione flinched, catching her thumb on a shard.

"Granger, what...?" He paused in the doorway, his wand out. "I thought someone had broken in."

"Um... no," she said thickly. Clearing her throat, she went on, "The glass slipped out of my hands."

He strode towards her and she refused to look up at him, continuing to pick up the broken pieces as carefully as she could.

"Let me do that," he said briskly.

"No, no, it's fine. I'll just... um..." She stood up and moved for her wand, but he beat her to it.

"Reparo." Picking up the glass, he placed it on her desk and gave her a long, unreadable glance. "What are you doing here this late?"

Hermione dropped her eyes and she gestured lamely at her computer. "Work."

"Granger," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

She instantly froze. "What?"

"You're bleeding," he pointed out calmly.

"Oh," she said, relaxing minutely and shifting away from him.

He tightened his grip to stay her. "Granger," he said again, his voice so soft it sent shivers down her spine. "Let me see it."

He reached for her wrist, but she wrenched out from under his hand. "It's nothing," she said. "Healing Charm will take care of it... can't even feel it, really..."

Quick as a Seeker, he snatched a hold of her arm and wrapped his hand around hers. "Don't be stupid, Granger. You can't heal it until you've checked the wound."

"I know," she snapped, some of her fear dissipating in the wake of irritation.

He arched a brow, and then leant over her palm, prodding her thumb with his fingers. "Doesn't seem to have any splinters," he said. He shifted his eyes up to her face. "Hurt?"

"N-no," she stuttered slightly. Eyes that color should really be banned. Not quite blue, not quite green; and completely emotionless.

With a slight quirk of his lips, he bent to her thumb again and murmured a Healing Charm, knitting her skin together and leaving only a pale pink mark where she'd been cut. And then the wound started throbbing like a bitch.

She sucked in her breath with a hiss. "Ow," she said softly.

"You know," he said, dropping her hand and leaning a hip against the edge of her desk. "You really shouldn't drink at the office."

"I wasn't..." she trailed off when she saw him nod towards the open bottle of Ogden's Own on her blotter. She sighed and capped it, returning it to her bottom drawer. "I'm leaving. Thanks for..." she waved her still stinging hand.

He shrugged. "Not a problem."

He was so calm, so collected, and she knew that on the inside he was having a good laugh at her for being so flustered around him. Some small part of her wanted to goad him into revealing that, push him so he'd laugh right in her face, no matter how hurtful it would feel in end. She just couldn't stand him being so bloody impassive.

What would happen if she confronted him about the phone call? If she came right out and demanded to know what he was planning? She swallowed hard. There was every possibility that he would harm her, or at the very least, Obliviate her memories of the incident.

Fingers shaking slightly, she gathered her things together; her briefcase, a few case files she wanted to glance over, her wand.

He watched her intently, his eyes narrowed. "All right, Granger?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice. Straightening, she tried her very best to look him directly in the eyes, but faltered somewhere around his chin. Flashing a small parody of a smile, she turned and walked out of the office, her pace deliberately slow to hide her nerves.

It wasn't until she reached the Floo that it really hit her that Zabini had been talking to Draco Malfoy, who'd been dead for six years. She paused with her hand in the Floo Powder jar, her mind skittering almost as wildly as her heart. Malfoy?

Aware that Zabini's eyes were still on her, following her every movement, she hastily stepped into the Floo and called out her flat.