At seven o'clock in the morning after a night where neither of them had gotten any rest, the woods were definitely not so much lovely as they were dark and deep.  The sun had yet to rise in the north of Scotland, but the sky had lightened enough that it was possible to see, even without the light abounding from the tip of Radley's wand.

The scene upon their arrival at Hogwarts had been a grim one.  One student dead by gruesome means, the other apparently found with her body.  A murder scene mishandled.  Tamis dragging herself out of a hospital bed to deal with a mess that Jonas expected was going to get much worse.  With a supposed Muggle-born apparently involved in the death of his pureblood half-sister, there was no way for the situation not to end up complicated.  There were times when he definitely didn't miss the complicated politics of the Ministry, even if life had been more interesting back then.  The private investigator had been all too happy to volunteer to check the supposed murder scene with his former partner, especially since it meant escaping the growing cataclysm of emotion and potential disaster that the Hospital Hut was bound to turn into.

The spectral ruins of Hogwarts in the background made it even harder to concentrate than it should have been, especially considering that they were picking their way through the Forbidden Forest to the clearing where a girl's body had been found.  Jonas knew that he probably shouldn't find the foreboding ruins of the castle as hilarious as he did - if anyone asked, he was going to blame the constant urge to burst out laughing on sleep deprivation - but it made it unnecessarily hard to concentrate, especially since he still couldn't shake the feeling that he had forgotten an extremely important and extremely urgent meeting that required him to be somewhere very far away.

"Well, here we are," he remarked, keeping his tone as light as he could as he bent to pick a stick up off the ground.  "Searching the woods.  Again.  Because a couple of kids couldn't stay out of bloody trouble.  Again.  You know," he began cheerfully, straightening again with the stick in hand.   "I almost feel like you blokes should add this sort of thing into the advertising campaign for the Auror Office.  Probably help you meet the recruitment quotas, yeah?  I know that if somebody'd bothered to tell me about these sorts of wonderful opportunities, I wouldn't've been so quick to tell the Ministry to go to bloody h-"

A twig snapped in the woods behind him, and Jonas cut himself off, stopping dead in his tracks.  He stayed still, listening carefully, as he tightened his grip on his makeshift walking stick.  It wasn't actually much of a weapon, but if they ran into trouble, he could always pretend that it was masquerading as an extremely big wand.

Luckily, whatever had caused the noise didn't seem to be very interested in them.  A series of rustling bushes sounded as something moved off in the opposite direction, growing fainter as the distance increased.  Jonas let out a breath that he hadn't been aware that he was holding.  Whatever he'd heard sounded big enough that he didn't really care to know specifics about its identity.

"Just like old times, though, innit?" he asked nicely, keeping an eye on the lower growths as he started to walk again.  At least the chatter would warn anything untoward that they were coming.  "All we need's some old git telling us that we're not taking the latest mess seriously enough, and it'll be like '96 all over again.  Hey, you lot don't still riff on Potter jokes to irritate the veterans, do you, Leeroy?" he asked curiously over his shoulder, swinging the stick before him like it was a sword as he stepped over a particularly foreboding-looking tree root. 

"Remember that time you told the one about the hippogriff in the lunch room and Moody's eye just popped right out?"  Jonas chuckled at the recollection, swiping at a nearby low-lying bush. The branches wavered and the leaves trembled with the closeness of the blow.  "I still reckon Tait nearly heaved when it rolled across the table at him.  A proper classic, that was.  You wonder why no one ever sat with us."

The morning sun poking through rare cracks in the canopy did not illuminate the Forbidden Forest like it would have the rest of Hogwarts grounds.  No, it was like the deepest, darkest recesses of a cave in here, still dark and dank and completely unappreciated by the men who had gotten little to no sleep the night before.  Between the intense games of poker to the escape that was beyond anything Archer had ever envisioned, there was probably a little more than two hours of rest between the pair, and Archer was not in the mood to be working the beat at Hogwarts.

Of course, the scene was gruesome enough to warrant the aurors being there.  Though the crime scene, from what Archer understood, was completely decimated, the evidence (if there had been any in the first place) was likely compromised heavily, and oh, yea, they were in the middle of the bloody woods.  Archer switched his wand into his left hand momentarily to rub his eyes, a small yawn escaping his mouth.  Honestly, as they kept walking, he wished they had gotten the notification at a more reasonable hour. 

And then there was Jonas, who clearly had no concept of quiet.  While Archer understood the necessity to keep one’s self awake, he did not condone keeping anyone else awake with senseless jabber.  It seemed over the past ten years that the man who had said so very little was no making up for it hand over foot.  Rolling his eyes, Archer snorted softly though his breath hitched in his throat when he heard the snapping of a twig.

It appeared it was the only thing that was going to get Jonas to be quiet, and as they both stood stark still ended.  There was nothing to be alarmed about, probably a passing creature of some sort, though Archer knew to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.  He didn’t want to have a deadly run in with much of anything out here, and to be honest, it was why he avoided creatures all together.  Slippery, slimy things, they were.  The only one worth investing in was a krup, as he had displayed with Rufus.  “Tromp around the forest and look for completely useless evidence? Yeh, that’s likely to attract a good sort,” Archer responded with a hint of sarcasm. 

He wasn’t in charge of recruitment thankfully, though he could think of one student he wanted to put her application in.  He tried to drop that idea every time he saw her, but maybe her brain wasn’t quite as big as her eyes and she wasn’t getting it.  Maybe, eventually, it’d pan out. 

When Jonas mentioned the old days, Archer glanced over at him.  The light from lumos was brightening up both of their faces and Archer could not help but crack a small grin.  “Slightly different, mate,” he disagreed with good humor.  Raising his eyebrows, he watched as Jonas almost tripped over the tree, “Serves you right, Gimp,” he snorted, clearly in response to the Leeroy comment.  Archer had seen the video Trevelyan was referring to – he made sure to show both him and Eleor.  That was never going to go away. 

But with a smirk, he shook his head.  “Potter jokes…” he laughed to himself, remembering the days where he and Jonas had tossed them around just to ruffle feathers.  Moody had been a particular target, and as Jonas noted, Archer had caused him to lose his eye on occasion, which had made the more ridiculous lot laugh so hard they almost choked on their lunches.  Despite the seriousness of the situation they were in right now, Archer couldn’t help but laugh as well, the husky sound bouncing and vibrating off nearby trees and travelling through the empty space.  “It was a right riot,” Archer confirmed.  “You know I did that on purpose – didn’t want to be bothered with the serious ones cramping our style.” 

His smile was easy and comfortable now, despite the fact the forest had not gotten any lighter and the chances of running into an acromantula or a centaur.  “You know,” he looked up, “even with Potter, I don’t reckon anything like this happened – ‘cept for that Diggory bloke.  Anyone mention any unsightly scars on this one, by chance?” He quirked his eyebrows at Trevelyan, a grin tugging at his lips.  Potter jokes would never get old. 

The private investigator still kept a careful ear out as he swiped at another bush, leaving the branches trembling in his wake.  There was plenty in the woods that he didn't particularly want to encounter, even back in the days when he'd had a wand that he could use.  All signs seemed to hint that the Grosvenor girl had been killed with magic, but claws could rip someone apart just as easily as a spell could.  If something had attacked the kid in the forest, he didn't particularly want it to stumble upon them without the realization that it was coming.

The gimp comment, though, deserved some sort of retaliation.  Jonas immediately slowed his pace to a crawl, exaggerating his limp as he inched along behind Radley.  If his arse-of-a-former-partner wanted to be a bastard about things because he was still sore about the Leeroy crack, then it would damned well taken them into the afternoon before they reached the clearing that the two professors had told them about.

"Would've told us about it five times if there'd been any, yeah?" he quipped, doing quick battle with another shrubbery.  Harry Potter had - probably - not quite deserved all the cracks that they'd once made about him.  Looking back now, as the father of two of his own children, Jonas almost felt bad about the relentless running commentary that they'd kept going through the worst of the war, but back then, it had seemed ridiculous.  An underaged student who kept getting into trouble, regularly waging war against You-Know-Who, who - despite being the darkest wizard of the modern era - had apparently seen fit to base the schedule for his master plan of world domination around the Hogwarts school year.  If the bastard had ever changed his mind and decided to attack in April, they would have all been taken by surprise.

"Be a shame to think that any of you blokes let them fall to the wayside once I left," he informed Archer nicely, parrying in the direction of an enormous tree before taking a few quick steps to catch up to the bigger man.  "That was me worst fear when I left, you know.  Between you, the Pratt boys, and Raynor, there'd be no one left who could take a joke.  Reckoned you'd all be dead from lack of a sense of humor by morning."

He hadn't thought much about the Ministry since he'd left.  It wasn't something that he'd ever cared to devote any time or energy to - once he was out, once he was mostly convinced that no one was going to apparate onto his doorstep, it had never seemed worth it.  The past was the past.  But here in the woods, tracing the steps they'd once taken after that damned idiotic inter-school tournament (which, considering the rising tension and the Death Eaters' seemingly continued obsession with a certain bloody student, had seemed like an awful idea from the get-go), it was hard not to think of things again.  How dark it had gotten.  How hopeless it had seemed.  Walking away had been both the hardest and the easiest thing he'd ever done.

"How long'd the war last, anyhow?"   Jonas phrased the question nonchalantly, but he glanced sidelong at the other man as he spoke, gaging his reaction.  "Never really had a chance to catch up on the history after I got back.  You and Tam came out alright, though, yeah?" he asked lightly.  "She mentioned having a hard time of it for a while, but I always reckoned you two'd be alright.  So long as someone tied you down and muzzled you," he concluded cheerfully, flashing Archer an enormous smile as he swiped at another tree with the stick.

Archer slowed to the speed of his gimpy friend with a light sigh.  He was being spiteful, of course, but Archer wasn’t going to complain too much.  The faster they got to the clearing the faster they would probably uncover oh… nothing!  He could not believe they removed all of the evidence.  The living student? Of course.  The dead one? Someone should have secured the scene – or at least the body with some repellent charms or maybe stayed, but that was neither here nor there at the moment. 

What had been done could not be changed, at least not without a time turner and those were the things of legend nowadays.  He was fairly sure most wizarding children thought they were a myth.  He supposed enough threats from parents that they would go back in time and “undo” them might have contributed.  Archer knew if he had children he would certainly (most likely) say something of the sort.  Never really considered children though, didn’t want to.  Too much hassle to plan for the future like that, it meant staying alive for the long run, and Archer wasn’t sure how successful he’d be at that.

If he kept getting dragged to Hogwarts, he was sure he’d be likely to survive based purely on the fact small children were not (usually) grounds for Auror presence and would be more likely to give him a paper cut than a substantial injury.  “I hear he’s an orphan too, though must say his parents went a rather unglorified way, not by any one near the likes of Voldemort,” he was struck in the forehead with a low hanging branch, grumbling quietly as he ducked down and rubbed the stinging spot.  Not funny, Tree. 

He did not necessarily believe in karma, but he was fairly sure the tree did not approve of his joke.  Whatever, it was only a tree anyway.  Snorting softly, he shook his head at Jonas, peering over his shoulder as he dodged and jumped between trees and branches and roots.  “Nimble there, Gimp,” he pointed out with  a grin, chuckling softly.

His laughter died in his throat though, when Jonas asked about the time after he left – the war, the rough times, being alright.  He turned his face forward and marched through the trees, quietly assessing what he was going to say.  Clearly, he did not know.  He had never heard.  Archer had been dismissed; he had been given the boot in late-September 1996.  He had been removed not because he was a half-blood, but because he was insubordinate to the wishes of those in charge, those were his charges. 

“Until May 1997,” he answered quietly, not yet addressing the second half of the question.  He was glad for the inability to look at him, trying to step over the branches and he instinctively picked up the pace.  The gimp wasn’t really a total gimp, giving Archer enough of a lead without disadvantaging the other man too much.  Just enough so he couldn’t see the terse jaw and furrowed eyebrows, the frustration at the whole thing – alright was a relative term. 

“Tamis did well; she got along,” it wasn’t easy, he knew that, but she had a name to back her up, and she was the type to work best that way – she was smart, she was sneaky.  Archer was outward and obvious.  It did not always come as a benefit to him.  “I was discharged in September of ‘96,” he continued more quietly, “Wasn’t reinstated with a clear record until the next year.  Wasn’t easy,” he concluded, continuing on in silence. 

His silence was short-lived as he tripped on a rock and cursed, perhaps more loudly than he should have – but the tension from the previous admission combined with the stubbed toe, well, it was a good release.  Cursing again, he rubbed the back of his neck as he straightened out his newly formed limp.  “How much farther is this bloody clearing?” he asked, annoyed. 

It was impossible to miss the change in Radley that was brought on by mention of the war.  Tension crept into his posture and his expression sobered; there was obviously a reason that no one had bothered to fill Jonas in before on the results.  It was lucky that the other man immediately increased his pace, because the private investigator wouldn't have been able to hide the smile that came with the revelation that the conflict had ended in May of the following year.  Apparently You-Know-Who had continued to let the Hogwarts school calendar dictate his general schedule of world domination even after Jonas had gone Muggle.
 
The private investigator's smile faded as he doubled his own pace, concentrating on both the uneven ground and the other man's words.  Judging by his sudden curtness, it seemed obvious that Archer hadn't been all right.  Jonas had never really thought much about the friends and colleagues who had been left behind to weather the worst of the war.  At the time, survival had been much more imperative; he hadn't been struck by any sort of day-to-day struggle once he'd left, but staying off the radar, making sure he'd never be found had consumed his attention.  And then, very shortly, there had been learning to navigate an entirely new world, getting married and having Gwenna in short succession.  Worrying about another world had never fit into his plans.
 
It was a little disconcerting to think that he had, in contrast to Archer, come out perfectly alright.  It was even more off-putting to realize that he hadn't even suffered the worst in the war.  Two children, nine years of marriage, and he'd gotten out from underneath the thumb of a society that acted like life began and ended with a magic wand.  Jonas slowed his pace thoughtfully, mulling the thought over as he walked.  The magical world, with its black and white morals and its ever-present shadow of something wicked lurking just unseen, was too good at promoting a feeling of victimization.  Even as things now stood with the divorce, it wasn't as if he'd want to change the decision he had made back then.  Maybe there was less of a reason to have a chip on his shoulder than he had thought.

The karmic retribution that took place between the rock and Archer's toe brought him out of his thoughts.  Jonas nearly burst into laughter, just barely managing to transform the sensation of hilarity into an extremely loud coughing fit that likely fooled no one. 

"Well, I dunno, Arch," he managed, in between gasps for breath.  "Reckon it sounded like it wasn't that much farther, but if we're both limping now, it might well be another hour or two.  Here, you want something to lean on?  Might help you pick up the pace a bit," he offered helpfully, grinning from ear to ear as he held his stick out to the other man.

Now that he was goading the Auror with taunts of speed, Jonas increased his own speed, lengthening his stride to keep up with the bigger man.  Limp or not, he wasn't going to be left behind.

"Y'know," he remarked thoughtfully, marching his former partner's pace as he walked.  "It's right eerie, some of this.  The Runespoor trade picking up again, I mean.  Knockturn's crowd on the rise.  Now we've got a death at Hogwarts."  There were plenty of other incidents that he could name that fit into the pattern: Dreogan Eleor's visions of his brother's death, the Egyptian curse, Kronos Malvivicus and his cats.  Level Two stressed and overworked.  An underlying sense of growing tension that was impossible to shake.  "Don't think it's the same thing all over again, do you?  I'd hate to think that it's all building to another mess like the last one."

“You’re a bad luck talisman,” Archer informed Jonas without the slightest hint of sympathy.  Always seemed when Jonas was about something was happening and as Archer anxiously limped, attempting to get rid of the pain., it was glaringly obvious that he couldn’t stay in one piece.  Huffing as he stretched out that leg, trying to figure out how to get rid of the pain as quickly as possible, Archer could not believe out of all of the things that modern magic could do for them, it could not find the way to get rid of the stubbed toe problem or a common cold.  Those muggle doctors were perfectly medieval, but every system had its flaws.
 
He glanced over his shoulder at the ginger and frowned, stopping to grab the stick.  Archer looked at it, balanced it in his hands for a moment, and then quickly swung it out at the side of his good leg.  “Bugger off,” he laughed, holding the end of the stick back out to him.  Physical pain to someone else was always a way to brighten his day.  And he didn’t hit him that hard, just enough to know he wasn’t going to joke about such a thing.  “Besides,” he looked at him critically for a moment, “I’d never want to steal an old ginger’s walking stick.” 

The grin on his face made the pain in his toe dull to a weak ache, and Archer was back to his normal self.  There was some solace in knowing that the pain faded so quickly.  And raising his eyebrows at Trevelyan as he started to talk about how eerie everything was, Archer wondered if Trevelyan thought it had never crossed his mind.  He stared at the WBA files all day, waiting, watching, and working to make the connections necessary to make an arrest, get someone in custody, start to take down the structure that they didn’t even know how far or wide it was spread.

Archer had his ideas, the theories that followed the standard training and conclusions that one could draw after over a decade working as an auror, but every case was different, and though there were dark shadows of cases past in every single one, Archer had thought about it a lot.  He shook his head though.  “No, it’s not like last time,” he finally said, several dozen yards from where he had stubbed his toe previously.  Hopefully the clearing would come up soon; there’d be the distraction of looking for evidence that didn’t exist. 

“It’s all different,” he continued.  “As similar as it seems, it’s different.”  His jaw was tight as he spoke and Archer thought he saw some space in the distance that seemed to have sunlight streaming into it.  The cold, winter sun like a beacon for the two men who had been traversing through the forest for a good hour or so.  Someone should have pulled a Hansel and Gretel on this, though minus the hag.  No one needed the hag. 

He glanced over his shoulder, “Don’t reckon you’d come back for another go around?” he asked, curiosity the main driving force, though sincerity also in his tone.  He had seen the confrontation between him and MacDonnell, the way people acted about it.  Archer would like to see the man come back, reestablish some of the old order and he could use a steady partner again.  Though Tamis was usually his go-to, she was the boss, and couldn’t always come to the aid of an investigative site.  “Give the chance to rehabilitate some of the poor reputation Gingers have garnered amongst the ranks,” he smirked, always at least half of a joke. 

Still grinning, Jonas accepted the stick back again, finally consenting to use it to brace himself as he adapted to Archer's pace.  If accepting a near-battery was what it took to get the big Auror back to his cheerful self, the private investigator could take the assault for the team.  Apparently good-natured violence was an acceptable substitute within the Auror Corps for a deficiency in wit.  He'd have to remember that the next time he got shown up on a crossword.

Archer's assertion, curt as it was, surprised him.  Jonas glanced at the other man, keeping his mouth shut as he mulled over his words.  'Different' wasn't necessarily reassuring, especially when stated in so dour a tone without any hint of the big man's normal good humor.  With the stakes in the magical world, society as they knew it could very well be torn asunder in an entirely new way without the results being any less disastrous.  Archer was clearly more familiar with the current troubles than he.  If he said that the current situation wasn't the same as the time when the megalomaniac with the school calendar fixation had succeeded in taking over the magical government, Jonas would have to take his word for it, although he still couldn't shake the feeling that it might not be a bad idea to make certain that his next holiday abroad coincided with the end of the Hogwarts term in May.

Either way, it took Jonas a moment to track the next statement.  Where the bloody hell did Radley think he ought to be going around to again?  The private investigator opened his mouth to ask, his eyebrows knitting, when the second part of the man's offered thought sunk in.

"Come back to the Ministry?" he asked, surprise evident in his voice as he glanced sidelong at his former partner.  At this point, considering his magical challenges, that was about as likely as asking a codfish to pull a shift on the International Space Station, but there were probably more diplomatic ways to say so.  Jonas slowed his pace, creases forming in his forehead as he considered the proposition.

"That's asking for a bit of a disaster, innit?" he asked after a beat, flashing Archer a quick smile.  "Even aside from the whole bad luck talisman bit, I mean.  Can you really see Tam suffering along with me on the team?  Last a week, that would."

Or, if he were really going to put money on it, probably less than a week.  It was unfortunate that the Head Auror likely would take great pleasure in personally planning his funeral; the emphatic recitation of 'Cause me any trouble, Trevelyan' rang through his ears once more.   Jonas gave himself even odds not to make it to lunchtime on his very first day, although the thought of having to report directly to Tamis Raynor was almost hilarious enough to make him want to give it a try.  At the very least, his eulogy could note that he'd died laughing.

Having Jonas back at the Ministry would have been something Archer enjoyed, at the very least.  He wanted a steady partner that wasn’t his boss and girlfriend.  It was getting to a point that it was distracting.  It was also not good for his decision making skills.  He knew that much and Pratt was with Frizzy – there was always Adon, actually, but he didn’t know if Tamis would actually put him with the man.  They were both not exceptionally well known for their stellar decisions.  Not that it would really matter if it was just the two of them.  Archer wanted to make good decisions, it’d probably be easier to do that with Adon as his partner than Tamis. 

But, that was providing Adon would actually get made his partner.  Until then, he was working solo and that was hard enough.  His investigation was fairly streamlined now, though in the past months he had spent good fifteen hour days at the office all of the time trying to get things together.  Then it would fall apart and then he would be there more and then it would start to look like something – at least now they had an idea.  They pretty much knew, it was the chase down phase now – well, outside of a few details like, oh, the rest of the organization. 

Small details though, Archer thought with bit of a snort, though he kept the source of his amusement a secret.  Always small details when it came to those sorts of things, the kinds of details that would hide under rocks and in every crevice of the underground.  Perhaps he needed something else to keep him amused, and glancing at Jonas and his goofy face, he could not help but laugh, shaking his head. 

Asking for disaster?  Possibly, though Archer would not admit as much.  Even if his friend was magically defunct right now, it wouldn’t do any better to have him wandering around causing trouble outside the ministry than it would having him inept inside of it.  He’d have to remember to make a comment about that… “I don’t know,” Archer tried not to grin, though it was all too difficult, “You could be Ray’s secretary?” he could not avoid laughing anymore, and slapped his right palm against his forehead, the husky laugh echoing off the nearby trees. 

“If you were as good at making tea as you are at finding your way into trouble – or winning woolongs, you might just be there for life,” Archer pointed out with an evil glint in his eye.  He was enjoying that image far too much.  “What’dya say?  Isn’t that just the most tempting offer you’ve received in a while? You know,” he slanted his friend a look, grin present on his features, “outside of a nice warm couch to sleep on in Houdini’s place.”   

Whatever suggestion he had been expecting to entice him back to the Ministry, a nomination as Tamis Raynor's private secretary was not it.  The private investigator burst into laughter, grinning from ear to ear as he rubbed his free hand over his face, shoulders shaking.  If he only stood a fifty-fifty chance of making it to lunchtime on his first day as an Auror, it was a near certainty that he'd be murdered within his first fifteen minutes of working directly for the pint-sized woman.

"Yeah," he managed at last, wiping tears from his eyes as he braced himself on his stick.  "D-don't think I can contain meself at the opportunity.  You lot are too bloody generous, you know that?" he asked Archer cheerfully, trying to regain what was left of his composure.  Being overcome by laughter certainly wasn't a problem in the normal run of things, but when they were in the middle of a murder investigation on the way to sniff out a crime scene, being seen laughing himself to tears probably wasn't the most reassuring persona to put on.  "A sofa to sleep on, a job as Raynor's s-" 

He had to break off, taking a moment to make certain that he wasn't going to burst into laughter again.  It was a close call.  "Secretary," he successfully completed at last, clearing his throat as he slanted the big Auror a bemused look.  "Way to make a bloke feel like a charity case, Arch.  Dunno how I ever got along without you and Eleor in me life."

Still grinning, he ducked his head, using the stick to brace himself as he started to walk again.  "Yeah, I'll take scrounging along as a private citizen over that kind of work," he informed Archer amusedly.  "I'm not interested in being relegated to a desk.  Besides, I've been scraping by on me own for a decade now, Radley," he added cheerfully, flashing him a crooked grin.  "Reckon I wouldn't even know how to go back to playing by the rules and filling out forms every time I had to sneeze.  Much better to leave that sort of thing to the professionals like you, innit?"

Archer was glad that there was at least some humor in these thick woods now.  Jonas could barely breathe, which caused Archer to have to uncontrollably laugh as well.  These were the types of moments where it was almost possible to forget what they were doing for a little while and just relive some of the good times.  It felt like one of those times, anyway, so when it came down to it, Archer savored what it was.  And smirking he leaned back a bit to crack one of the many bones in his back, a sound that was only getting frequent as the years continued to add up and he sighed, certainly couldn’t relive all of the old times. 

“It’s a grand opportunity for a magicless fool like you,” he pointed out trying not to laugh too hard, though the end of the sentence was garbled in a hearty amount of pleased laughter.  He could not even imagine Jonas functioning at that position.  Tamis would kill him, he was pretty sure, by eleven in the morning.  He’d probably forget her tea or something and that would be the end of it. 
 
Archer would put good money on seeing it, of course, but it wasn’t likely to happen.  “Best prospect I’m sure you’ve gotten in a while. Maybe you could even upgrade from a couch if you lined your pockets a little,” Archer snorted.  “I hear Spellpunk’s looking for a shot boy – you could always do that… get some tips…” Of course, this made Archer even more silly than before.  He was just laughing at this point, “You’d look geriatric,” he pointed out, just imaging the redhead with a limp catering to teenagers.  It was priceless.  Rubbing his face, he had to take a moment and compose himself or every time he tried to look at him he just wanted to explode into fits of laughter. 

Managing to keep it in a bit, Archer breathed out of his nose, still getting that composure.  His lips could not help but curve into a smile despite himself though.  The image was really too priceless to erase from his memory forever, even with the implications of later psychological torment, it was worth it for the time being. 

Rolling his eyes at his lame excuses, Archer snorted.  “You can still investigate with a limp wand, Trevelyan,” he pointed out.  Of course, his continued insult died in his throat when they were at a space.  The clearing smelled of blood and Archer looked around as the sun streamed in between the branches.  The sickening wash with shadows was enough to reveal that something had happened here.  It was certainly contaminated beyond recognition, but it was the crime scene. 

Sucking in a bit of breath, Archer was still, after all these years, not particularly immune to the smell of blood.  It just… didn’t sit well with him.  Frowning, he shifted uncomfortably and surveyed it with his eyes first, then took out his wand, trying to detect any other magical presence in the area, commanding it show itself.  He stood still, but nothing happened.  “We’re alone,” he commented quietly, more to himself than Jonas and waved his wand again, this time trying to see where the magical energy was concentrated.  It appeared around the heavy blood areas and Archer sighed, shaking his head.

“Gruesome, eh?”

"The limp and the wand are two different issues, thanks, mate," Jonas retorted cheerfully, coming to a halt behind the bigger man. 

It was refreshing to know that despite the seriousness of the situation, no matter how bad it was about to get, they could still have a laugh together before getting on with it.  The private investigator had no idea what Spellpunk was or how he could possibly look geriatric at 35, especially considering that the aging Radley had at least a handful of years on him, but he was willing to let both points go for the sake of good humor, at least as long as it was able to last. 

Radley had stopped short, drawing his wand as he began to examine the crime scene.  Jonas waited patiently, glancing cautiously back over his shoulder as Archer announced that the coast was clear.  Apparently the acromantula that had been courting a Dementor, or whatever that bloody sound in the bushes had been earlier, hadn't made it quite this far, even with all the blood to lure it in.

Gruesome was certainly one word for what they had found.  The smell alone was disconcerting, even without knowledge of what had likely happened here.  Jonas took a deep breath and let it out, nostrils flaring, and then mentally pushed any thoughts or hesitation away, ignoring the rusty, sickeningly sweet scent as he stepped carefully to Archer's side.  The sun had risen enough that light was trickling between the branches overhead, but it almost made visibility worse; where before there had been a constant in shadows, the hazy light of dawn made it harder to see anything, distorting perspective and obscuring any uneven points in the ground. The private investigator frowned, studying the edge of the clearing for a moment.  He normally kept a small torch on his keychain, but it wouldn't do any good here; electricity would never work so close to Hogwarts.

It was lucky that he kept his wand along for appearances.  Jonas fished it out of his back pocket, and then whistled for Radley's attention.  "Give us a light, yeah?" 

He waited to make sure that the Auror was watching and then tossed him the defunct object, waiting until it was lit and returned before turning his own attention back to the probable crime scene.

"Think the castle's that way," he said, pointing.  The trees were too thick to make out any sign of the ruins that had dogged him, but he had a fair sense of direction, and besides - every time Jonas started to take a step in that direction, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had a dentistry appointment somewhere that he ought to be at.  Raising his wand for better light, he scanned carefully over the ground.

"Yeah, you can see where the blokes from the castle must have come up.  And where the body got dragged," he informed Archer thoughtfully, more for the sake of narration than because the other man really wanted to know.  Actual physical evidence was much less important in magical law enforcement; it usually only took a casting of Revoficus or two and an Auror had everything that he needed in hand.  But limp wand or not, it was what he could contribute right now.  "Nasty spell, that was.  Awful lot of blood about."

Turning his head swiftly, almost like Rufus when someone said the word ‘food,’ at the whistle, Archer sighed.  “You really need to work on getting your magic back,” he sighed, waiting as the wand was tossed to him - a minor fumble later it was in Archer’s hand and barely had to think Lumos before the tip lit - exceptionally brightly at first and then dimmed down to a normal level.  Blinking, Archer tried to get rid of those pesky little specs that looked like fireflies for a moment before he held out the wand to his old partner, “Here,” he grunted, waiting for Jonas to take it back, glad to be rid of the thing. 

They had more important things to do than fiddle with that anyway.  The scene would have been more overwhelming if the past year hadn’t made it common place to come upon things like this.  He supposed the worst was the Katz kidnapping, at least in terms of physically disturbing.  Finding Tamis had tested every bit of logical understanding he had of his job, making it the hardest to deal with after it was over, but while it was happening, he hadn’t even been thinking - at least not about standard procedure and appropriate action. 

Here, he couldn’t think of anything but the appropriate action.  Though he did not much care who was the victim, who needed his help, the newspapers made it a point to sensationalize young people, and young people like Hogwarts students… well… it was going to be a storm.  He hoped they could get as much as they needed, but with so much tampering, he didn’t suspect they’d find much. 

Jonas was doing a decent job at narrating what he thought happened - seemed fairly consistent with what they heard already, and marks were supporting what he said.  Archer was looking for more… signs of magic though.  The blood on the ground was enough to give him some information that he needed.  The area where the students were fairly obvious, there was a puddle of blood where the young woman must have been before she was found.  Archer crouched down, the smell becoming stronger the closer he got to the ground and he frowned.  It was clear that this was where the girl was lying, but as he moved over he frowned.

Making a face, when he got Jonas’ attention, Archer pointed at the typical markings from a spell that would have been fired from a distance.  “Doesn’t look like a close range spell could have done this,” he noted as he caught some of the blood spread pattern.  The drops were small (outside of the pool she had been lying in) and anything that close range with that much power would have pumped out blots like a shrink’s test.  “Wrong time, wrong place for the boy,” Archer noted, more to himself than anything, and stood up straight (hearing a crack in his knee - not good). 

Putting his hands on his lower back, wand still poking out from behind him to provide light, Archer sighed.  “If you want to continue poking around here, I want to check this way…” he murmured as he walked in the direction he identified the spell as having come from.  Maybe… just maybe… there would be something there.  Being careful to not damage anything, Archer watched his feet as he walked through the brush, while also looking for signs of another person - and sounds of creatures.  This was the perfect place to commit a crime, that was for sure, everything was mangled and destroyed, and no one could really, truly tell what had occurred, at least not perfectly.

He hoped there would be signs of human intervention over here though, and he looked back over to Jonas, a ways off.  Cupping his hand around his mouth, he sighed.  “Make note of any other human presence!”

It was somewhat incredible how not-inconvenient losing his magic had become.  He'd gotten used to doing everything without it anyhow, so on his own, he didn't even notice; it was just one less crutch to think about.  On the rare occasions when he did need to apparate or cast a simple spell, Eleor or Radley were there.  In the back of his mind, Jonas was cautiously aware that his luck would not hold out forever, that at some point he was going to get into dire trouble that he couldn't bluff his way out of, but for the moment, it was barely mentioned in passing conversation.  It even had some unique advantages built into it - at least he'd always know where Hogwarts was, presuming he could bring himself to walk in the direction that he really didn't want to go.

He shrugged off the comment about his magic, his attention still focused on the splatters across the snow.  "Yeah, I'll get on that," he said dismissively, boots crunching as he shifted his position.

It had been years since he'd done anything as exciting as analyze blood splatters, but most of it was just logical deduction anyhow.  He bent down, mulling over Archer's words as he studied the spread.  Lots of blood, in convenient contrast with the brightness of the ground cover.  Darkest where the body had fallen, though he could follow the disturbance where it had been dragged through the snow.  Interesting that no beasts had come sniffing after all the blood; apparently the inhabitants of the forest knew well enough to leave this sort of death alone.

He glanced up briefly as Archer moved off.  Jonas frowned, glancing down at the snow again, and then lowered his wand, bending over to hold the light closer to the ground.  Moving carefully so as not to disturb any of the stains, he began to carefully examine the ground, starting near the center of the original fall and moving outwards in a spiral.

He spotted the object on his fourth pass.  It would have been easy to mistake it for a fallen stick, but the polished wood gleamed brightly enough against the light from his wand that it caught his eye.  Frowning, Jonas glanced after Archer, and then dug through his pockets for something that he could use to pick it up.  No napkins, no plastic bags; one would have thought that on the way out of the hospital, he would have been planning ahead well enough that he would have thought to grab gloves. 

With a sigh, Jonas pulled out one of his few remaining woolongs.  Ripping it carefully open, he dumped the sugar resignedly back into the pocket of his coat - the damned Ministry could pay for the dry cleaning - and tore carefully along three edges, flattening it out to give him some semblance of an evidence collection tool.

He whistled in Radley's direction again as he bent to pick it up, using the wrapper to keep his fingers from touching it.  "Got a wand, Arch."  He lifted it carefully, the broken end dangling; it had been snapped.  Not covered by snow, so it hadn't been laying here for long.  And not all that far from the location where the body had likely fallen.

Archer was being as careful as a man his size could be in snowy conditions.  He tried to find fresh snow to step in, making clear marks of his own footprints that could be ruled out as relative to the crime scene, outside of his position as an investigator.  Besides, his were not what he was engrossed in at the moment.  He thought he saw something, and following the cue of his ginger comrade and the tip of his wand lit up with a bright light. 

It was enough to cover the area he was searching and it seemed to reveal that the indents in the snow were more than just where a heavy pile of snow might have fallen off one of the branches.  No, these were footprints - and not like the ones they had seen on the way to the scene.  One was gigantic, which could not have belonged to either of the students and the other was smaller - but still - not going in the right direction.  If the blood before had told them anything, it wasn’t that the perpetrator was staying very long.  The body had been dragged in the opposite direction.  These were fleeing prints. 

Crouching down on the balls of his feet, Archer wished that he had the camera they usually had for investigations with him.  He’d have to record this in a pensieve later, convenient for when other evidence could not be attained, but after getting a good look, the Auror stood up and took a step back, he did not want to accidentally interfere. 

Instead, he kept his eye on the prints, watching them as he continued to walk - and then stopped.  He frowned.  The prints stopped.  They stopped dead in their tracks.  They apparated.  That meant they still had the skill, at least, to do that - at least 17, and probably came into the forest the same way.  Most likely not students.  He looked at the snow around the prints - slightly less deep than the others, there had been a sudden rush - a kind of blow-out pattern caused by a gust of air, by apparating. 

At least they knew that much, and hearing Trevelyan’s voice, Archer shot up immediately, catching the tail end - wand, Arch.”  He didn’t hesitate, instead, he moved forward, hoping that Trevelyan still had his investigative wits about him and didn’t actually touch the far more hard evidence that they were acquiring. 

He was happily greeted by the sight of a woolong, ripped and gingerly holding the broken wand that had clearly been previously in the snow.  “Found some footprints,” Archer informed him, “led out and signs of apparating.  Not sure how much else there is here,” he looked around, then looked at the wand.  “We should get that in.” 

Archer also looked at the destroyed woolong.  “Too bad you had to destroy some quality currency for that.” 

Jonas let out a laugh in spite of himself, flashing the other man a quick smile.  "Reckon their value might be dropping now that we're out of the hospital," he replied, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of the clearing.  "I can tell Tam to add the charge on to me consulting fee."

There was very likely more that they might be able to find here.  But this wasn't a Muggle-run investigation like he might watch on one of his crime dramas.  Magic made things much simpler; collect the evidence, in and out, and without nearly the burden of proof that a Muggle court might require. 

At least it was clear that something more complicated had happened here.  Signs of apparition, the angle that the spell appeared to have been fired at - judging by the amount of blood, Jonas had a hard time believing that a normal fifteen-year-old student could be capable of magic like that anyhow.  That, though, would be something for Radley and Raynor to determine once they moved past the initial stage of the investigation.  For now, they'd found what they'd come for.

Jonas gave Archer a nod, pulling his hand inside the sleeve of his coat to give him a better surface to carry the broken wand.

"Right behind you, mate," he agreed, and they turned to follow the path that they had already traced through the woods once.