“No bloody luck either.” Edward Pratt grumbled as he dropped a heavy file onto the desk of his now not so new partner in a huff. A keen eye may have even registered a thin cloud of dust emerging from the file upon impact. The file was leather bound and bursting at the seams, paperwork protruding from it in every direction possible and held shut by a thin aging elastic band that looked as if it was about to give, fling into the air and take an innocent victim’s eye out. If only that eye had been Tamis Raynor’s.

Across the file large letters were printed in thick black ink:

REMBEMBERING DAY MURDERS CASE FILE

The dirty blonde haired auror sat himself on the edge of Roh’s desk much resembling a teenage boy who’d just been told he would be getting detention for the next month for putting polyjuice potion with Angus Filch’s hair in the morning pumpkin juice. He crossed his arms and spread long legs out in front of him, scowling at the floor before green eyes finally settled on his partner.

“She’s as willing to listen as a Quidditch player is to amputate themselves.” Eddie had hoped that if he waited at least a month after Roh had presented her case that Raynor might be more inclined to accept they weren’t happy to be working together. It would show they’d tried it and were not fitting into such roles very well. His idea had failed miserably and he was stuck with Zora Roh for the foreseeable future. “And what’s more, Roh, she’s assigned you on my other case. What you can bring to it that I can’t I ‘ent got a clue.”

A trainee swept past the cubicle entrance and the grouchy auror reached a hand out, grabbing the trainee’s sleeve with a tight grip, yanking the poor soul backwards to stare at the older wizard with confusion. “2 coffees, black, ye got 60 seconds.” The trainee scurried off and Eddie turned his attention back to his colleague. “Can you kindly enlighten me?”

"Damn!" 

Zora had already made a pass at Raynor, requesting she cut her loose from Pratt so they could both get on with their careers, but apparently they were just to awesome of a match to split asunder.  Clearly they were so amazingly talented and twixt them their individual reknown would be redoubled twice over.  Bloody shame they were ill-matched partners, each harboring deep-seated pet peeves that interlapped with the others equally deeply-seated loves.  For example.  Eddie enjoyed voicing his opinions.  And Zora enjoyed not listening to them.

Only in their efforts to rid themselves of each other were the two Aurors united.  Zora broke the pencil in half and tossed the pieces against the cubicle wall. "Damn," she said again. 

And then another beast reared it's head.  The damn Remembering Day Murders.  Zora leaned forward and cracked into the thing as she spoke, flipping through pages and smaller files trying to get a sense of the details.

"Lovely, lovely, lovely... Thousands of witnesses... Gibson turns up dead...What a bloody mess..."

Over a year ago now, some maniac had rushed up on stage apparently attempting to kill Theodora Kingstreet, but instead killed and Auror and a Wizengamot Elder.  All apparently by some troubled teenager.

"Just another wonderful part of being your partner, Mr. Pratt..."

"So if it wasn't Gibson you figure it was Polyjuice?  Who'd frame some kid?"

“I know it was polyjuice potion, Roh.” The dirty blond haired auror corrected his new official partner. He decided to ignore her sarcasm for the moment; Zora was no doubt brimming with excitement to work with him on the case. She certainly was an enthusiastic auror, he couldn’t deny that. And while her gusto proved annoying in general conversation, perhaps she would be of use in this investigation. One thing that was clear was how different she was to his last partner.

Hands were buried into Eddie’s trouser pockets as he surveyed the witch sat at the desk.
“That pencil did nothing to you.” He quietly commented as green eyes flashed to the broken writing implement now lying on the floor.  Eddie didn’t take her irritation at having to work with him personally. He felt the same way about her. Being stuck with a partner was a pain an auror could do without. Putting two strong personalities together to work was a risky gamble and Ed had always hated how their boss chose to lay her cards down. He didn’t want to spend the next year being treated like a naughty school boy by the older ballsy female auror.

As if by magic the trainee returned with two full cups of steaming coffee and Eddie removed his hands from his pockets to take them off the trainee. “Thanks, lad.” He muttered and placed one down in front of Roh, not caring if she took her coffee black or not.

“A kid’s a great type of person to frame if ye think about it. They have little idea of how to fight those accusations, get scared and some run which is what Gibson did. He was perfect.”

"Well his family history didn't help us look the other way..." Roh said, still reading.   "His brother apparently killed the rest of his family in '07, Mark Gibson." [1] 

She took up the black cup of coffee and sat back away from the file to drink it.   There was so much amassed on the case already - it was a year old by now and getting colder each month.  So much time had been spent tracking down Gibson and only to find that he was dead and now very likely framed.  And Zora was fresh to the case - she wanted to start fresh.  And boyoboy would Pratt love that. 

She twitched her eyebrows up, still staring over her coffee at the file.  "Are we framing the kid because he pissed somebody off? Or are we framing him because he's a convenient mark?  We've got to look into him.  Difficult to come by a reagent for the Polyjuice Potion considering he's at Hogwarts all year.  Did he go home for the holidays? Maybe spent time in Hogsmeade, but Hogwarts has got to be the place to start."

Zora leaned forward again, set her coffee down, and went back into the file.  She shuffled through until she found the clipped stack of all the student interviews - fellow classmates who Aurors had talked to about Gibson.  She flipped through them. 

"Huh, look at that.  Fauna Blake - she's one of ours now.  We can have a talk with her, pose the Frame Job Theory see if she remembers anything.... Huh, looks like we talked to Devlin Matthews too.  That little snake who we've got now for being Kingstreet's dogsbody."  She pulled out those two interview reports as well as a couple of others.

"Stop me anytime, Pratt," she glanced up at him.  "Stop me if you're heard this one before..."  She didn't want to re-tread ground he'd already covered, but he wasn't going to tiptoe around his feelings.

1.	Murder In the Blood, Daily Prophet, 20 May 2009

Have a talk with Fauna Blake. Oh joy!

Eddie remembered the last ‘talk’ he’d had with this particular trainee. It hadn’t boded particularly well and now she had been affectionately dubbed by him as Fauna ‘you’re a creeper’ Blake, the prissy teenage girl with a dislike of cupboards. She was a weird one and since their delightful little escapade in the storage cupboard he hadn’t had much to do with the blue eyed hormone fuelled youth.

Roh could deal with that one. Eddie had long since decided he didn’t understand a single thing a teenage girl did or said. They were a species he was never going to comprehend.

The idea of reinterviewing the students certainly didn’t make Eddie feel enthusiastic about the new partner on board with this case. Ed had done it all. He’d done the ground work, he’d spent hours upon hours upon days collecting all of this information, sifting through it, losing sleep over it for it to go cold, unanswered and unsuccessful. And Roh thought that by speaking to people again, a year later they would remember things? Eddie was no confident.

“I’ve heard it all before, Roh,” Pratt responded, doing nothing to conceal his displeasure at the idea of going over it all again, “in their interviews.” He glanced down into the coffee mug, green eyes watching the black liquid for a few seconds. “What makes you so sure they’re gonna’ remember more a year on?”

Of course he was defensive.  Zora abandoned the file, leaned back in the chair and swiveled 90 degrees to face him.

"Come down off it, won't you?  We've got to start somewhere.  If we're going to track down this theory that Gibson was framed - and it's the best notion we've got - then we need to look at everything again under that lens," she said.  "They might have new answers because we've got new questions."

She took up Blake's interview transcripts and referred to them.  "Instead of 'had you ever seen Kyle Gibson do anything violent before' we can now ask 'who'd have reason to want him to suffer'."  She set the transcript down again.

Zora sighed and moved her thick, curly hair away from her face with her fingers.  "It's going to be a right toil, but we should start there.  Else we try and track down a Polyjuice Potion?  Or maybe you've got an alternative?"

Zora couldn't hide her testiness, but this was actually the kind of work she liked.  She liked being an Auror, tracking down leads, wrapping her brain around the strategy.  So even with the tension between her and Mr. Crybaby, at least the work was interesting.

Another generous gulp of coffee was taken as Eddie studied his partner through bright green eyes. Eddie had spent many long nights toiling over the case files, reading every interview from start to finish, grasping at straws for a direction, a motive, a suspect. In a year the only thing he’d come up with was that Gibson had been framed and that had become obvious shortly afterwards when the lad’s body had turned up in a harbour in Yorkshire one morning before Christmas. That had sealed off any chances of coaxing the boy back out of hiding, of speaking to him.

The case was going cold and Eddie felt terrible because of it. His mind hadn’t been on the case since April. Not since his attention had been firmly set on MacDuff, on the murder of his parents. He had failed Carter and Timmins.

Perhaps a new fresh mind on the case would be helpful. However annoyingly...enthusiastic she was.

Eddie had decided. Zora Roh was like vinegar. She was okay in a few drops on your chips but too much and she made your eyes water.

“Polyjuice potion?” Ed questioned before putting his coffee down on the desk and twisting the heavy file around the face him. A few sheets of parchment escaped and fluttered down onto Roh’s lap. Ed snatched one up from atop of her thighs and smoothed it down upon the file. “Here I spoke to several apothecary owners. Ruled out these four, they don’t stock the potion at a decent enough strength.” A finger slid down the page to several addresses that hadn’t been crossed out and he frowned. Dates beside the checked shops finished on the 12th of April. The day before every case Ed had had become ignored.

Zora took the sheet - it was thorough.  It listed apothecary owners all over Britain and Ireland, anywhere whoever set up the murders could have gone.  She bit her lip thinking on it.  There was the trouble with a potion like Polyjuice, though.  It wasn't impossible for the home cauldron - just challenging.  And the potion used would have had to have been very good to  have lasted so long and fooled so many witnesses for as long as it had. 

"Good.  Need to look into the Black Market on that as well..." she mumbled, this time daunted herself by the task.  "Polyjuice isn't illegal, but going with an underground brewer could have helped cover their tracks.  I'll have a trainee get into the archives and pull dossiers anyone on record who brews for the Black Market..."

She looked up at Ed then and furrowed her brows. He'd lost that dismally cheerful smirk he often had on. 

A head bobbed by their corridor and Zora interrupted her own thoughts to call out, "Oi! Get Blake over here, yes? Need a chat with her."

After a gulp and a moment's hesitation, Fauna nodded when an older trainee told her to head to Roh's desk. She hoped she hadn't messed up her filing, or forgotten to bring her coffee earlier. It was the second day of the week. She'd survived Monday. She'd also survived her first few months of Auror training, and planned on sticking around, if she could.

When she caught a glimpse of a familiar blond head of hair next to Roh's dark one, her steps slowed. Roh was intimidating, to say the least, but Fauna hadn't yet had any issues with her. Those two, together? That could not be a good sign.
 
"You asked to see me, Auror Roh?" Fauna focused most of her attention on the woman and refrained from glancing at Pratt. If she couldn't see him he didn't exist, and whatever evil plan he had in store for her didn't exist either!

She glanced at the files on the desk, a habit of any trainee when they could get away with it, and frowned slightly at the large, black print. Remembering Day murders. That felt like forever ago, though she remembered the moment the Aurors were killed on stage clearly.

Merlin, they were young.  Fauna Blake didn't look a day older than Zora's daughter, Waverly.  If there was something dreadful about being a parent and an Auror it was considering that one day her child would grow up, and as they did, just reminded you more and more of the Trainees and the offenders.  Auror Roh had relatively little dealings with the Trainees, so she didn't know them well.

"Blake," she greeted not aware of the awkwardness between her and Pratt.  "Come in here."  She scooted her chair back to make room in the cubicle.

"Pratt and I are on the Remembering Day Murders and been going over old evidence.  Need to speak with you again about when you got interviewed last year.  Now you're a Trainee, there's no need to get proper about it."

That wasn't completely accurate, but the nuance escaped Roh. Even Aurors and Trainees had the right to a proper interview with the appropriate legal protections, but Roh didn't have shadow of a suspicion that Blake would have anything to hide, so the thought didn't cross her mind to offer to do it by the book.

"Says you knew Kyle Gibson," she said, referring to the old interview.  "Well, we're looking at it differently for the moment.  Think he might've been framed.  Got any thoughts on that?  Anyone you know might've had motive or means to set him up?  Did he ever say anything about being in trouble with someone?"

Even as she was asking questions, Zora was inking up a quill.  Then she looked back to Blake.

Fauna grabbed an extra chair from another cubicle and sat in the small office area with Roh and Pratt, sadness and surprise crossing her features when Roh asked about Kyle. She didn't think to make their meeting official either. Fauna hadn't known Kyle well, and doubted she would have much to say, but she would help if she could.

The news that he was framed came as no surprise. Back in January, the Daily Prophet had said a wizarding terrorist group had likely been behind the Remembering Day murders, like they'd been behind Gawain Robards' murder and Akiva's kidnapping[1]. Anything to do with Akiva tended to stick out in Fauna's mind. 

"No, I don't think so," she tried to think past her initial surprise that they thought she might know someone who would have framed Kyle. "He didn't really talk about that."

Fauna paused, and looked at them questioningly. "All the trouble I know of was at school, with other students. Typical stuff, I guess. But he got into a lot of fights and duels. He was always fighting with someone."

It didn't occur to Fauna to name any names. Kyle fighting during his seventh year was about as regular an occurrence as Fauna getting bullied back then, up there with the house elves' cleaning schedule and professors piling on essays.

1.	Press Conference Confessional

The cubicle seemed even smaller with the third body in it, especially considering it was Miss ‘You’re a creeper’ Blake who Eddie was convinced still hated him. He hadn’t had to deal with her since the incident and he didn’t seem to have hit it off with the other trainees. No veteran had. They were a bunch of useless flobberworm offspring with troll’s ball for brains. And this blue eyed offspring was just plain prissy and teenaged.

Still sat on the edge of Roh’s desk, Eddie crossed his legs at his ankles and rested his hands on the wood at his sides. Green eyes intensely studied Blake and he made no move to take a quill and ink. Roh could do that, there’d only be moaning about legibility afterwards if he played scribe.

“So our lad Gibson had lots of enemies would you say? Or rivals?” This wasn’t going to be even close to simple if Gibson had spent his days arguing with people and causing trouble.

“What do ye class as typical, Blake? A few barnies, a small dispute or duelling on the verge of dangerous? Who in particular?"

"Both, I guess?" Fauna answered when he wondered about enemies or rivals. So they really did want to know about students. She started to feel vaguely unsettled.

"Well, there was a group," she said slowly, guilt flaring up. She didn't owe Devlin anything. Yet she felt bad throwing his name out there, even if it was just about silly student fighting.

Fauna took a breath, "The Snarks - Gavin and Alex. And... Devlin."

"They’d give Kyle a hard time about his family because they knew it would set him off. It was a lot of... dueling. Minor dueling? Fist fights over dumb things, like girls and thrown food."

Noticing the intent look Pratt was giving her, Fauna assumed he was privately critiquing her answers. She glanced at him, remembering he had asked if Kyle had been involved in anything that verged on dangerous.

"There was this time when Kyle kind of blew up a few trees because he was pissed off about a fight he had…" she trailed off, unsure if that was relevant enough for her to continue talking about it.

At the time it had freaked her out, and judging by the volume of Greyfriar’s bellowing when he’d discovered the burnt trees, it had bothered others as well.

Zora visibly scoffed at the mention of the name 'Devlin'. 

"Devlin Matthews...?" She asked, and Blake confirmed. 

"Hell, I do hate hearing about that little cuss," she said, not hiding her contempt at all from Blake, and underlined something on her note pad three times.  That rotten little sod was apparently as much when he was in school as well.  Devlin had been arrested last December and charged with a stack of messiness and had disappeared into the system.  She wasn't sure exactly how he was charged, but Zora knew he wasn't in Azkaban although he bloody well should be.  Dog's body for Theodora Kingstreet? Wretched little blighter...  She'd taken O.A.F's three times over to teach him a well-needed lesson.

Mental rant aside...

"Fine, we'll talk to them all again," she said, including the two Snark boys in as well.  Name of Snark was interesting lately as well what for the disappearance of Analiza Snark.  Small world it was...

"Going back to the trees, how bad was it? Who'd he been fighting with? What was he off about? When was that?"

Perhaps with another witness, Zora might apologize for such detailed questions about something that might have well been nothing, but no use sparing Zora's limited supply of niceties on Trainee Blake.  If she didn't understand about all stones being turned, she would soon enough.

Oh shite. Roh, muttering darkly, spelled out certain doom for Devlin Matthews with a heavy hand on parchment. Fauna grimaced and pushed away the guilt. He was the one who got himself into these things, she reminded herself. Besides, the worst that could happen was that they'd question him, see that it was silly student stuff, and then get to finding the real person who framed Kyle.

Fauna thought back, shifting nervously in her chair. "The end of April." Bad timing.

"When I found him - Kyle," she clarified. "He... was really upset.  The trees, um... they looked pretty bad off. I don't know what spell he used, but," she hesitated. "I don't think it was anything he would have learned at Hogwarts. Reducto wouldn't do that."

Fauna paused. "I saw he had a broken nose and I asked him what happened, and he said that... he and Devlin had gotten into a fight. Over a girl," she shook her head."Nicola? Nicola and Devlin had been snogging, I guess. She was Kyle's best friend. But she dated Gavin. It was... weird."

She shrugged, feeling certain that the typical Hogwarts drama wasn't going to help them solve the case.

"He said stuff like... Devlin's lucky he didn't end up like the trees," she glanced down.  "It bothered me, but I don't think he would have... I mean, Kyle was nice to some people," she went on with an earnest kind of regretfulness.

He'd been nice to her. Now that time had passed and she was no longer such an easily ruffled teenager, she felt able to tell the Aurors details she hadn't thought to say the first time they had interviewed her.