CHAPTER ONE
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-: the department of aurors :-

── IN WHICH BODIES ARE DISCOVERED

. . .

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN HAPPENED HERE?"

Neither Harry nor Ron looked around when they heard the exclamation behind them; it was common on these sort of scenes. Not that they knew - this was only their second. The first hadn't been this bad though, so it was just a little more surprising. 

They did look to the side when they heard footsteps on the wood, letting out simultaneous sighs when they saw Phoenix, the new trainee who had and still was the best friend of Draco Malfoy. They hadn't particularly happy about that arrangement, but there was nothing they could do, realisitically.

"Take a guess." Ron grumbled, gesturing at what he and Harry had been greeted with upon arriving there. Two bodies lay side by side in a pool of blood, clearly lifeless. 

Phoenix stared down, nose wrinkled at the sight, tilting her head and looking towards the two higher-ranking Aurors. "If this is a muggle killing then why are we here?" She asked seconds later, not exactly feeling so comfortable that her reflection was shining back at her in a pool of blood. "Your coffee, by the way."

She held out a tray to the two, who took the takeaway cups with their names on it, leaving the third one to the intern.

"Because it isn't a muggle killing. Both are dead because of the killing curse." Harry turned away from the bodies, finally feeling the numb, lack of emotion that always hit him upon seeing sights like this finally melt away with something that actually felt human. 

"What's with the blood then?" Ron mumbled, proposing the question not only rhetorically to himself, but to the other two either side of him. 

"His wand showed only two spells, and both of them was the killing curse." Harry held up a plastic bag in his glove-covered hand. "You know, I'm not really supposed to be doing this.. I usually take the active cases." He could barely even look at the blood stained wand. 

"Suck it up Potter." Phoenix rolled her eyes, using Ron's shoulder to take a neat step over the bodies and puddle of blood, standing besides Harry and taking the bagged wand. 

"You're only an trainee.. not supposed to be handling evidence." Ron pointed out, expression not changing when the Crowe girl looked back at him. "What - it's true!"

"And how else am I supposed to learn except experience?" She questioned. And it was a good question at that; Ron fell silent. "Potter, Weasel..y - Weasley. Tell me what you knew about me at school."

"Malfoy's best friend.. Zabini's girlfriend."

"Merlin something other than the people I'm friends with. Granger would not be glad to hear that you've reduced someone down to those characteristcs." Phoenix tossed the bagged wand back onto the couch, clapping her hands together. "Go one, more about me, not my associates."

"Bit of a bitch, if I'm honest." Ron admitted, although Harry was more hesistant. "How is it that I was going to step down next week and go to work with Fred and George and now I'm staring at a dead body with Phoenix Crowe trying to get me to describe her?"

"That's more like it." Phoenix actually smiled at it. "I've always valued honesty Ronald - and it's two bodies by the way.. Orson and Nellie Mayden. Now Harry, you're turn."

"You're trying to get me to describe you when there are two - now named, I didn't know their names - bodies in front of me." Harry rose an eyebrow, confusion behind the glasses. 

"Come on, we were all incredibly desensitised to this stuff when the war was going on. My parents - thanks for putting them in prison by the way, absolute lifesaver after I turned my back on them at the Battle - made me help Malfoy try and kill Dumbledore after good old Tom had killed Charity Burbage in front of me. And then all those.. died at the Battle." Phoenix turned a little more solemn. "But really, I'm surprised that you of all people don't get that."

"Do we have the power to get her to go to one of those.. therapy people that the Ministry employed?" Harry turned to Ron. "Maybe get her pyscho-analysed.. or permanently shut up."

"Alright, I understand that I was never your favourite person at Hogwarts, Potter. And I get that, I really do." Phoenix nodded to Ron. "Like he said, I was a bit of a bitch. So go on, describe me."

"I guess you were pretty smart. Hermione said once about it was you, her and Malfoy fighting for top of the class constantly." Harry grumbled a response, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Thank you! God, finally. That took a while to get out of you." The Crowe girl tucked hair behind her ears and pulled on a pair of gloves, crouching down beside the bodies. "Was he always this stubborn?" She asked Ron, who begrudingly nodded. 

"Yeah.. I.. sorry mate." The Weasley boy shrugged at his friend, before following him down to the girl. "Hey - what are you doing?"

Phoenix had dipped her index finger and thumb into the pool of blood, then pressed them together and brought them apart, before repeating. "From the thickness.. this blood has been here for five hours, thirty seven minutes and.. fifty six seconds. And that's thirty eight minutes." Harry and Ron continued to watch, a Quick-Notes Quill appearing by Harry's shoulder and scribbling all this down. "He was stabbed in the neck.. blood on his hands and around his jaw suggest that he could have done this himself - but the fingerprints are far too dainty.. too feminine. Have you got crime scene photos?"

"What? Yes?" Harry nodded, slightly in awe of what the Crowe girl was doing. He wasn't lying, he had no reason to. In recent years, they had taken on several muggle techniques, which included a lot more photography.

"Good. Because look." Phoenix, without hesitation, reached over and picked up Nellie Mayden's hand, pulling it over to her dead husband's jaw, easily aligning the marks up. "It suggests a domestic attack." 

"But where's the knife?" Harry asked, brow crumpled as he crouched beside her, looking at the wound in Orson's neck. "The only other spell that night on the wand was Incendio." Slowly, their heads turned towards the fire. "Ron?"

"Got it." The red-head nodded, and seconds later was now crouched by the fire, lighting his wand and peering into the remains of charred wood. He retrieved a shard of metal. "There you have the knife." 

"Which means that Nellie stabbed him.. then one of them was killed by the other, who then killed themselves." Phoenix straightened up. "You should get the experts in to check which was which for your report." 

"Yeah.. I will do." Harry discarded of the now blood-soaked gloves as he stood up. "But Phoenix - how the hell did you know all that, if you don't mind me asking."

"Muggles have a lot of rather interesting crime shows. Now that I live in that god-awful manor with nobody but a house-elf to keep me company, I need something to play in the background." Phoenix shrugged. "They also didn't say the smell would be this bad... and I said I didn't really feel all that emotion you're supposed to when you see a dead body after the war - but now I really need to throw up." 

"There's a bathroom just down the hall, on the left." Ron told her, both of the men watching as the Crowe girl stumbled out, gloves thrown into the trash and hands now covering her mouth. "Well she hasn't changed a bit, has she?"

"She's less of a bitch." Harry shrugged. "Just as smart though." 

"And still pretty. Hermione agrees with me, before you start on me. We saw her in the Atrium after work last night." Ron added.

"Yeah, still pretty." Harry agreed. 

It seemed that despite their initial disagreements with the situation, Phoenix Crowe was going to be rather fun to work with.

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