No Going Back

Chapter Two: Found and Lost

It was the mark of a steadfast commander that Kingsley Shacklebolt neither flinched nor so much as batted an eye when his newest young Auror came barging into his office and slammed a thick manilla folder on his desk.

He calmly finished the notes he was writing, then put down his quill and folded his hands across the worn leather blotter, looking towards Draco Malfoy with one eyebrow quirked in mild amusement. He remembered what it was like to be twenty, to be fresh from the Auror Academy and full of the ambition to etch out a name for himself. No doubt the information in that folder was of the utmost importance, that simply could not go another second without being seen.

"Sir, this is of the utmost importance! I was researching for the Agatha Timms murder, and I- it's just- well I think I've really hit on something--"

Kingsley put on his best dour commander expression, interrupting the young Auror before he could launch into the details of this earth-shattering discovery of his. "I thought I had assigned you as part of security faction for the Minister at the International Conferences this week, Malfoy. I fail to see how that requires digging through old case files."

Draco impatiently brushed the casual reprimand aside, leaning over the desk to open the folder and turn the papers in Kingsley's direction. "It's been on my personal time. If you could just look-"

Malfoy had that look in his eyes again. That silver gleaming look that said, "I'm out to better the lot of you at your own game and you can't stop me, nyah nyah nyah!"

Well, perhaps Kingsley had tacked on the "Nyah nyah nyah," part on his own. With a resigned sigh, the commander pulled the papers a bit closer, skimming through them briefly. "You've got half a dozen old files from homicide in here, Malfoy. . ." he picked up the last one, frowning slightly. "Beatrice Sneegle? This case has been closed for almost three years! Just what are you on about?"

The young man's gray eyes were positively shooting sparks with his excitement. Which was an old sight indeed, because normally Draco Malfoy had about as much enthusiasm and cheer as damp socks. This could mean only one thing- he'd impressed himself with his own brilliance again.

"There's a connection between all of them, sir. I know that most of the cases have been shelved, but for each, the killer still remained unknown and at large. Look, this what I found--" At this, Malfoy pulled the papers from Kingsley's hand and proceeded to lay them out side by side, indicating the dates for suspected time of murder as he pointed to each. "There's a connection in the time of death as well as in the means, sir."

Kingsley's frown deepened. "I understand that they're all witches and wizards who died from non-magical causes- but look, Malfoy- some of these could have been accidents or even suicides. And none of the other Aurors working these cases ever noted a pattern for time of death connected to any significant event."

Draco smirked, but the press of his lips revealed very little humor. Something that was a close cousin to shame flickered in his expression before disappearing. Close, but not quite. "None of the other Aurors had a father or family friends who were Death Eaters, either."

This at last gave Kingsley reason for pause. "Do continue."

"It was with Beatrice Sneegle that I first noted it. The day of her death is the anniversary of Severus Snape's official induction into the Death Eaters. I followed a hunch, and pulled what testimony I could from the Death Eater trials- both of them. And, well, you can see here what I found."

Malfoy tugged out a paper from the packet and set it on top of the stack in front of Kingsley. It was an outline corresponding the night of murder for six of the witches and wizards to the anniversary of the initiation of a Death Eater. Kingsley absorbed this, sitting back in his chair, massaging his temple with his fingertips. Timms, the Lestranges; Abbott, Crabbe and Goyle- all the names had a match.

"That was some hunch," he noted dryly, returning the smug look to Draco's face. "Your suspicions for motive?"

"Could be any number of things," Draco answered, waving one hand composedly, as if it were obvious, or irrelevant. "But the most likely is some closet Voldemort supporter out for blood."

Kingsley blinked a little in surprise, leaning forward again. "You say his name. . . most still call him You-Know-Who, for fear of waking the dead once more."

Draco appeared to study the wall for a moment, a small half-smile on his face that contained an emotion that Kingsley couldn't even begin to read. "Call it a gesture of faith towards he who vanquished him," the young Auror murmured ambiguously.

A brief silence fell upon the room, where neither of them looked at each other, and especially not at the small black flag bisected by a yellow lightning bolt in the corner of the office window. But Kingsley couldn't help trying to measure up the Malfoy boy with a surreptitious glance. Many people had protested allowing the children of former Death Eaters (and Malfoy in particular) positions within the Ministry of Magic. But Fudge's wiser (and more forgiving) successor had stepped in to put a stop to the discrimination. The first thing the newly graduated Malfoy had done was apply to the Auror Academy.

Kingsley had first suspected he'd done it out of spite, but then the boy's testing results had come in and he hadn't given a damn, because there was enormous potential there, and he'd needed all the good recruits he could find. Now it seemed as if young Malfoy was doing his best to live up to that potential.

Kingsley shook his head blearily. "This is either genius or madness, Malfoy. Either you've made a tremendous leap in cases that older, more experienced Aurors have long since washed their hands of--"

"-Or I've succumbed to an elaborate paranoid delusion?" Draco finished for him, unable to contain his arrogant grin.

"Pretty much."

Draco leaned forward, the picture of earnestness with both hands flat on the desktop as if he were trying to press it into the ground. "Either way, sir, I need your permission to make this case mine."

"I can't control what you do in your free time, Malfoy."

"I meant officially, with the full support of the Department and all it's resources."

Damn. Who could have guessed that the pointy, pasty-faced spawn of a Death Eater would grow into a man with gumption? Kingsley's face carved itself into grim lines, reflecting the newfound seriousness of the situation. "You understand that you'd be staking your career on the outcome of these cases."

The young Auror nodded, slowly.

The feeling that he was about to make a huge mistake was clinging to Kingsley, like a shadow with substance, suffocating him. And then for the first time in his life, Commander Kingsley Shacklebolt put faith in the instinct of another before his own.

"Alright, the case is yours. But I'd better see some concrete evidence in no less than two weeks, Malfoy. Do I make myself clear?"

Once an egomaniac, always an egomaniac. Draco was grinning like he'd already found the missing pieces, even though to Kingsley's eyes the puzzle was still scattered across the table, some pieces bent or twisted, and others looking suspiciously like they'd come from another puzzle. Ah, youth.

"Crystal. Sir."

Draco eagerly snatched at his papers, stuffing them hastily back into the folder. "You might want to try Mad-Eye, first. He was on the Timms case, the original. He might have some insight that doesn't show up in the report," Kingsley interjected, masking his grin at Malfoy's horrified expression.

Nevertheless, the boy's tone was cool and collected as he took his expression back under control. "I really don't think that will be necessary, Commander."

"I disagree." Kingsley smiled a small smile that said he knew who was boss around here.

The muscles in Draco's right cheek jumped perceptibly as he clenched his jaw. "Fine, I'll meet with him. If his bloody dustbins don't eat me alive, first."

Kingsley took pity. "I'll arrange a meeting for you two at the Leaky Cauldron. Mad-Eye will emerge briefly from his reclusive retirement if I ask him." Threaten him, cajole him, beg him is more like, the Commander added privately. Malfoy only nodded grudgingly in thanks, before turning to leave, manilla folder tucked under his arm.

Brilliance or madness. You never could tell with some people.

~*~

Blackness and stars exploded in Harry's vision, as if he'd been flung out of his skin back to the beginning of all time and all matter. He fell upwards through the night. Existence was a void that surrounded him and he was alone in the miles upon miles between the stars.

He fell towards the sun, opening his arms to embrace the exquisite fire, waiting to fall into the inferno and have his body turn to ashes that would scatter across the sky. His skin was like ice that was melting, his spirit escaping like steam through his pores. Space was a frozen nothing but the sun grew nearer with every second. So warm, now. Heat wrapped him up like a warm blanket, so close, so comforting.

Soon, now, all his mistakes would be burned away and he could begin anew, somehow. . .

Except the sky was London's sky, heavy as always and gray with overcast clouds, and the night was only the darkness behind his eyes and when he opened them he was not free-falling through space but lying in a soggy London gutter.

The warmth was only from the bullet-wound in his side and the blood that seeped out from the urging press of his heartbeat. Still somewhat dazed, Harry lifted his hand from the puddle of muddy water in which it lay and pressed it there, wincing at the sparks of fire that minced along his abused nerve-endings from the contact. The shot had penetrated his abdomen just below the kevlar vest. Of all the goddamn luck.

Finally, Harry remembered one very important fact- he was in the middle of a police chase. Time and sound snapped back into sync, lights and screams and thundering footsteps driving into his aching skull. He struggled to his feet, straightening his glasses on the bridge of his nose and zeroing in like a stooping falcon on the fast-retreating figure of the gun-wielding, house-burglaring culprit.

The pain that emanated along the left side of his body died a gasping death at the hands of the resurgence of adrenaline and anger in Harry's veins. Sharp green eyes narrowed at the thief cursing and shoving his way through crowds of frightened tourists, and like an arrow flung from a bow Harry was after him again, Seeker's instincts kicking in as he wove and dodged and ducked his way through all the obstacles that barred the way between him and the bastard that had shot him.

He barely registered the wet trickle of blood down his leg, or the burning of breath in his lungs. The far-away sound of sirens as his partner finally called in backup were only a buzzing in his ears and he didn't care that he only had a tranq gun and a bally stick at his hip- he was going to lay out this sonofabitch with his bare hands.

Unfortunately, Harry was saved the trouble when the sprinting criminal greeted the opening door of a pub with his face- how the fuck could the idiot have not seen it?- and was knocked to the ground. The black-market pistol clattered across the sidewalk and the knapsack full of granny's best silver narrowly missed hitting the oblivious man who had just subdued Harry's perp with a tavern door.

Jogging the rest of the way up, he flashed his shiny new Constable's badge at the nearby onlookers and scooped up the fallen weapon before some snot-nosed kid could blow out Mommy's brains with it.

But those few seconds of in-attention had been enough to swing the tide back in the thief's favor. With amazing resilience, he'd rebounded from the impact and dug a switchblade out of some hidden nook in his clothing. Just as Harry was straightening from retrieving the gun, the burglar was bounding up and seizing upon the shoulders of the nearest passerby- the rather bemused door-wielder- and using him as a body-shield.

It was a quintessential stand-off. Harry instantly had the gun up and aimed, and they faced each other, eyes locked over the body of the civilian, each waiting for the other to make a mistake. Except Harry's grip was slippery from the blood on his hand, and the pain of the wound was a distraction, and on top of that he was still sweating from the exertion of the run and sweat was dangerously close to dripping in his eyes. The sirens were still too far away, and Harry was on his own with this. Rage burned through his veins like a corrosive acid, eating away at his self-control a thread at a time. How dare that bastard bring another life into this? How dare he force that responsibility on him? Shooting at Harry was one thing. Drawing down on a civilian was something different altogether.

"Let the hostage go," Was that really his voice? Because that voice was cool, and calm. And he was in no way calm. He was fucking angry, and he wanted nothing more than to squeeze the trigger and watch the thief's brains go flying out of the back of his head like. . .

Harry shut his eyes, forcing out the morbid imagery and breathing hard as if he'd just run a marathon. No. Oh no oh no oh no. God. That's behind me, He told himself. All that's behind me, and it's gone. It's in another world, it belongs to someone else. I am James Evans and I do NOT want to murder people just for breaking the law. But that was his internal voice, and it wasn't calm at all, it was as shaky as a leaf and twice as fragile. Anger management. Yes. He'd taken those classes. What the hell had they said? Count to ten? No way was some goddamn counting going to work. Not for this.

He looked back to the criminal. He hadn't heeded Harry's words-- not that he'd expected him to. Where the hell was Raleigh? Raleigh had experience with hostage situations. Harry had. . . well. Harry had experience with them, too. But he wasn't going to access those memories, not even for this. Those memories stayed in a tightly locked box, and the key was buried in a very deep, dark hole.

"Fuck you!" Was the thief's eloquent answer, and he and pressed the tip of the switchblade into the flesh at the hostage's neck for good measure. A pin-prick of blood emerged, trickling down like a silk thread to stain the man's stark white collar. Harry winced in sympathy. But judging by the man's tailored business suit, he was rich enough to afford a good dry-cleaner.

That's when the hostage did something quite unexpected. He slammed his foot on the burglar's instep, rammed his elbow into his solar plexus, and twisted away from his grasp.

Harry seized upon the opportunity immediately. There was a brief half-second, when his aim was dead between the thief's eyes, but training ruled over instinct, and he lowered his arms and fired a bullet that ripped through the burglar's thigh. The man howled and dropped like a stone, clutching his leg. Harry rushed forward, kicking the knife away from his hand. Then the thief did the first cooperative thing he'd done all night, and passed out.

Well. It was over. And Raleigh still hadn't shown up, the pillock. Harry kept his eyes on the unconscious thief in case he was faking, while his hand moved towards the palm-radio at his belt, with every intention of getting on it and informing his partner to get his ass over here. Except when his eyes moved over to the proactive hostage, that intention got lost and utterly forgotten.

The hostage was breathing hard, looking disheveled. That wasn't entirely surprising, considering what he'd just been through. But he wasn't even glancing at the man who'd taken him as a prisoner. His gaze was locked on Harry's face, and an expression of utter shock that had nothing to do with what had just happened was moving through his eyes like muted flash of lightning inside a cloud.

He looked, Harry realized with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if he'd seen a ghost. Which was a Muggle idiom, of course, but one that was nevertheless appropriate. Harry's own gaze drank in the disturbingly familiar features of the other man-- the aristocratic cheekbones, the lips that had so often been curved in a haughty sneer; the white-blonde hair, and the grey-blue eyes. Three and a half years, and so little had changed. Or perhaps so much had changed that Harry's brain couldn't quite take it all in.

Bloody hell. Draco Malfoy. Of all the hostages, in all the world. . . .

Draco stared at Harry. Harry stared at Draco.

It was Malfoy who spoke first, and slowly, as if he were having just as hard a time wrapping his mind around this as Harry was. "Well," he said, and Harry couldn't help but note that his voice had deepened somewhat, though why he would note Malfoy's voice at all, he didn't care to think on. "There's always been a streak of madness in my family. It's supposed to skip generations, but evidently it hasn't-- I'm having hallucinations."

Whatever Harry had been expecting him to say, if anything at all, it hadn't been this. Harry's mind raced now. God, this was a disaster. Malfoy, seeing him alive, and after all this time, and why Malfoy, of all people? What could he say, what could he do? Well, something was better than nothing. Harry carefully dressed his face in a mask of aloof detachment. Masks were good. Masks were his allies. He just wished his voice was steadier as he answered, "Don't talk nonsense. Madness? I could be drug-induced, after all." Yes, distract with sarcasm, that's always a good tactic. If Harry's mind-voice sounded a bit hysterical, well, that was minor detail he could overlook.

Those gray eyes were fixed on him. "But you are a hallucination, then?"

All Harry could think was get rid of him. Those familiar eyes from his past were bringing memories too close to the surface, and on top of the whole fiasco with the thief, he wasn't quite sure he could handle this. Wait, scratch that. He was positive he couldn't handle this. "Oh, most definitely. Run along now, seek out a good psychiatrist."

Malfoy frowned at him. "Somehow I thought hallucinations weren't this sarcastic or bossy."

Harry responded without thinking. Damn stress and blood loss. "C'mon Malfoy, this is your subconscious we're talking about."

A brief pause. ". . . Now I know I'm not imagining this. My hallucinations would never dare insult me so baldly."

Harry resisted the urge to bite his lip. Stupid, stupid. . . he cursed himself. Deciding it was too risky to allow himself to keep talking, he crossed his arms over his chest, and forced his gaze to meet Malfoy's, at the same time forcing it not to give anything away. A minute passed in silence. Harry tried to ignore the blood trickling down his leg, which his dark constable's uniform concealed. In that minute, the mood altered irrevocably, and they both sensed it. The shadows lengthened, the background noise dulled to a hum.

Malfoy's tone was very quiet. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Am I?"

"Everyone said. . . everyone. . . it was in the papers, magazines, radio. . . and you never came back. Lupin, Weasley, Moody-- they all said--" If Malfoy had noticed he was babbling, Harry was sure he'd have been appalled. He'd never seen the blonde-headed boy act this way before. So out of sorts. Stunned.

"Don't." Harry told him. His chest was clenched tightly, an ache more familiar and more abiding than the gunshot wound.

The sharpness of Harry's command seemed to have startled Malfoy. "Don't what?"

Desperately searching for words-- an excuse, a reason, anything. "I'm not who you think I am."

Malfoy's eyes narrowed, and that was very much an expression of the Malfoy he knew. "It may be dark on this street, Potter, but I'm not blind. I spent six years shooting you withering glares. I have your face memorized."

Wincing at the 'Potter', his mask slipping just for the briefest of seconds. "My name is Evans. James Evans," he snapped back, more harshly than he'd intended.

Malfoy crossed his own arms. "What sort of game are you trying to play? You called me Malfoy, you know. Do you think I'm stupid?"

Feeling his own ire flare in response to his old archenemy's, as if it were instinctive rather than habit. Habit would have been broken after three and half years. This rivalry was almost inherent. "Maybe it was a lucky guess."

Malfoy sudden let loose a torrent of words, that pelted Harry like hailstones from the sky, stinging him with their wrath. "Why are you doing this? Why the hell don't you just tell the truth? Making everyone think you were dead for all these years--"

Maybe it was just Harry's imagination, but it felt as if there was more than anger to the other boy's tone. Was that frustration, confusion, distress? But Harry cut him off again, talking furiously. "What do you want- an apology? I don't owe you a goddamn thing." Shaking his head, Harry turned away. He felt as if he had an iron band around his lungs, squeezing the breath out of him. At the quick movement, his vision swam a little. Perhaps that wound had gone a bit deeper than he'd thought--

Malfoy's hand was suddenly on his elbow, restraining him. "Don't you dare walk away from me! We're not done here."

Harry tried to shake him off. "Bugger off, Malfoy," he spat, the old phrase tripping a little from disuse.

"No, not until you tell me--" But Malfoy stopped, pausing as he saw Harry sway a little and clutch his hand to his waist. He was suddenly very pale and ashen-looking. "You're hurt."

To his own surprise, Harry reacted with a raspy, short laugh. Must have been the light-headedness. "The bastard shot me."

The hand that was elbow was now supporting, not restraining. Odd sensation. "You need to get to a hospital."

Harry didn't really hear those words. He was concentrating on trying not to breathe so raggedly, but he was very, very tired, and his vision was greying out at the edges. Bollocks, he thought wearily, preparing to greet the ground with his face. And he was wearing his new glasses, too, damn it all.

Strong hands caught Harry as he fainted. Malfoy half-sighed, half-growled, staring down into the unconscious visage of the Boy Who Had Lived, Then Died. The scar was gone. Draco wasn't quite sure what to make of that. Hell, he wasn't quite sure what to make of any of this. Potter wasn't dead? Potter was living in London? Potter was chasing down criminals in the streets and shooting them in the leg? Potter was waspish and unreadable, and fainting in his arms?

Shit. Quite sure? Draco didn't have a single ruddy clue. "Goddamn it, Potter." He muttered testily. "You always make things difficult. . ." With another sigh, this one more resigned, Draco maneuvered Harry into a more manageable position, and proceeded to haul him away.

At the far corner of the street, the police cars appeared, and the sirens trumpeted like the call of some mythological beast, heralding their arrival to be in time to do exactly nothing.

~*~