Search:

SIYE Time:2:08 on 29th March 2024
SIYE Login: no


Seeing Double
By DragonHeartstring

- Text Size +

Category: Alternate Universe
Characters:Draco Malfoy, Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Other, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley
Genres: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Drama, General, Humor, Romance
Warnings: Death
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 136
Summary: Ginny Weasley became an Auror after a traumatic death made her determined to see no killer stay free. Harry Potter saved the wizarding world, and is now enjoying his life as Witch Weekly's Number One Bachelor, no longer worrying about Death Eaters and killers. But when a man who looks just like the 'Chosen One' himself is found murdered, the two must work together to find the killer before it is too late.
Hitcount: Story Total: 60150; Chapter Total: 7225
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
I should probably have already mentioned that this story does alternate perspectives (Ginny, Harry, Seamus, Hermione...) while maintaining 3rd person POV, but the majority of the story is told over Ginny's shoulder.




ChapterPrinter
StoryPrinter


“It’s a real tragedy, isn’t it?” Kenneth Larkin, the personnel manager at the Diagon Alley branch of the Post Office shook his head sadly. “He was a good lad. I read all about the murder in the Prophet, but there were no details.” Larkin turned and looked at Harry, his eyes doing the familiar flick up to his forehead.

When Ginny and Harry had entered the Post Office that morning, everyone had frozen in place. Ginny knew that it had less to do with that morning’s reports on the murder and her Auror robes than the man at her side. Harry Potter was the most famous man in the entire Wizarding World and he had the ability to turn everyone’s heads. It amazed Ginny that any of these people were even able to function with the amount of staring that they were doing.

Kenneth Larkin had greeted them at the front desk and brought them into the back, probably in an attempt to increase productivity in his office. His thinning blond hair was combed carefully over his forehead in a vain attempt to hide his bald spots, but the only thing the hairdo achieved was making him appear ten years older than he really was.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Larkin asked.

Harry went to answer, but Ginny stomped quickly on his foot to silence him. “Well, Mr. Larkin, he was definitely killed, but we couldn’t find any problem in his personal life that would result in murder. Do you know if he was having any problems here at work?”

Larkin chucked lightly. “Unless one of the owls pecked him to death, I don’t think I have the answer for you.” Ginny raised one eyebrow and Larkin stopped laughing. “Just a joke. But no, Duncan really did not work with many of the other people here, mostly just with the owls. He was the best trainer that we have seen here in a very long time. You know, just last month, one of his trainees was able to hit over one hundred kilometers in just under th —”

“I would love to hear about it, really, but we do have a killer to catch,” Ginny cut him off before he could continue talking about owl flight speeds. Larkin looked disappointed, but managed to pull himself together.

“Of course, Auror Weasley, Mr. Potter. What can I do to help?”

“Did Duncan leave any of his belongings here?” Harry jumped in before Ginny had a chance to speak.

“Yes, he had a locker, let’s see,” Larking flipped through a pile of parchment until he found the correct sheet. “Number 436 was his.”

“Thank you very much Mr. Larkin. I’ll let you know if I need anything else. And please get in touch with the Auror Office if you remember anything important about Duncan that could help us figure out what happened.” Ginny shook Kenneth Larkin’s hand and walked around him to the row of lockers. Harry followed closely behind her. As they approached locker number 436, Ginny took out her wand and performed a basic detection spell to see if there was any dark magic in the area. Detecting nothing, she murmured “Alohomora,” at Clarke’s locker. The lock clicked and the door sprang open.

The contents of the locker seemed mundane — a winter cloak, a couple of packages of Droobles Best Blowing Gum, some spare Chocolate Frog trading cards. A small stack of parchment littered the floor of the locker. Ginny lifted the pile out and threw it down on a nearby bench. She sifted through old yellowing copies of the Daily Prophet, notes made by Clarke, and pages of a monthly calendar with dates circled and memos crossed out. Harry reached across her and lifted what appeared to be a collection of letters.

“Subscription renewal for Quidditch Quarterly, letter from his sister, an old summons for an unauthorized portkey,” Harry flipped quickly through the pile, identifying each one. He stopped and stared down at one of the letters. “Hey, this is addressed to me!”

Ginny jumped quickly and snatched the letter out of Harry’s hand before he could open it. She could see Kenneth Larkin watching from behind them, and did not want any crucial information to get out before the Auror Office was ready to release it.

“We can take this back to the Ministry, Potter.” She pocketed the letter addressed to Harry as well as the rest of the letters he had been looking through. Ginny turned to address Larkin. “Once again, thank you for all of your help, Mr. Larkin. We will contact you if we need anything else.” With that, she strode quickly past the man and to the exit of the Post Office; not even bothering to make sure Harry was following her.

~~~

Seamus jumped up from his seat as soon as he saw Ginny coming through the door to the office. “Weasley, do you have any updates?” He knew immediately who the man behind her was but he did not know what he was doing there. The last time he had seen Ginny was the day before, when Robards had called her into his office. She had left in a huff immediately afterwards, and Robards would not say what their conversation was about. When Hermione had spoken to him about the glamour charms, she mentioned Ginny visiting her along with someone else, but would not say who, instead she just kept smiling and laughing in a very un-Hermione like way.

“Yes, I do. Will you fetch Mathews and come to the meeting room immediately.” Ginny sounded frustrated, and stormed over to the meeting rooms, Harry Potter in tow.

Seamus walked quickly over to the break room and found Aaron pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Oi, Mathews, Weasley is back. Looks like we are getting some answers.” The two of them quickly went to the meeting room, opening the door to find Ginny putting a pile of parchment on the table.

“Good, you two are here.” She turned and looked at them and then sighed. “I might as well get the introductions out of the way. Potter, these are my teammates, Seamus Finnigan and Aaron Mathews. Lads, this is Harry Potter. He has requested that he be allowed access to the case, and, seeing his relationship to the circumstances, the Minister has approved it. He will be working with us until we catch the killer.”

Seamus reached forward to shake Harry’s hand. “Nice to meet you, mate,” he said.

“Likewise,” Harry said, doing the same with Aaron. “Ginny says you went to school together?” he asked.

“Oh yes, we did. I’ve got loads of stories about her. Did she tell you about the poster-?”

“No time to socialize, we have a killer to find,” Ginny cut him off, looking like she could kill him. “I suppose you heard about the glamour charms?”

“Yes, Hermione told us last night,” Aaron supplied, taking a seat at the table. “Does this mean that he had no connection to the killer at all and it was just random?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but then we found this at his work this morning,” Ginny lifted one of the letters off the table and read from the front. “It is addressed to Mr. Potter here, and it was among Clarke’s possessions in his locker. Granted, it isn’t the most secure location, so it could have been planted there.”

“What does it say?” Seamus asked.

“Let’s find out, shall we,” Ginny responded as she slit the envelope open. Before she could pull the parchment out, she was interrupted.

“Seeing as it is my mail, don’t you think I should open it?” Harry asked with a smug grin. He seemed to sense Ginny’s response before it came, because he followed up with, “We already know there is no dark magic, so a civilian like me would not be harmed by opening it, would I?”

Ginny could find no way out of it, so she handed the letter over to Harry. Seamus and Aaron exchanged amused glances at the look of exasperation on Ginny’s face. Harry withdrew the letter and started reading it, his eyes growing wider as he neared the bottom of the parchment. Ginny was losing her patience.

“Are you going to tell us what the bloody letter says?” she burst out, tapping her fingers against the table. Harry handed the letter over wordlessly, the mischievous grin gone. Ginny’s face became serious as well, and she turned the letter so all three Aurors could read it.

The letter was short and to the point:

Harry Potter,

The Wizarding World may see you as a hero, but I do not. You may think you killed for good, but there is no good in what you have done. What you have taken from me — namely my security — is worse than any crime you believe the Dark Lord commit in his time.

Not everyone loves you Harry Potter, and there are many like me who want to see you dead. I will see to it that you are paid back for the pain that you have caused my companions and me, and I will not be stopped by any witch or wizard that attempts to come in my way.


There was no signature.

The three looked at each other and then turned to Harry. He cleared his throat. “I guess we have something to go on now.”

Ginny sighed, rubbing her temples. This case was much more complicated than your average murder. “Mathews, will you run this letter down to Diggory, have him see if he can find anything on this letter that will show us who wrote it.”

“Oh, but he will be so disappointed that you aren’t bringing it, Weasley,” Aaron began to tease her, but stopped at the look on her face. “I’ll let you know if he finds anything,” he said as he left.

“So you don’t think that Clarke wrote this letter,” Harry asked. “It was in his locker.”

“No, definitely not. Clarke did not kill himself, and he did not change his appearance to look like yours. The glamour charms were set deliberately as a message to us, and to you. You need to watch out Potter, someone out there wants you dead,” Ginny responded.

“It isn’t the first time.”

“That isn’t funny,” Ginny sighed. She leaned back in her chair and turned to look at Harry. “Can you think of anyone specific that would want to kill you?”

“No,” Harry responded quickly, and then began speaking at the look on Ginny’s face. “I mean, sure, there were a lot of Death Eaters left over at the end of the war that wanted me dead, but didn’t the Auror Office find them all?”

“We found all known Death Eaters," Ginny started, exasperated, "but there still could be those whose identities were unknown to us, or who remained in the shadows during the fighting and the aftermath and that way evaded detection. It certainly sounds like and angry Death Eater.”

“If that is the case, then how did it end up in Clarke’s locker?” Harry asked.

“It could have been planted there after the fact,” Seamus began. “After Clarke was killed, the murderer could have gone back to the Post Office and put the letter there, knowing that we would eventually find it that way. Or, somehow, Clarke found it when it was at the Post Office before it reached you, and that is when he put it in his locker.”

“It really could be either one, but if Clarke found the letter, why wouldn’t he hand it over immediately?” Ginny speculated out loud. “Also, it was sealed, Clarke would have opened it if he knew what was written inside.”

“It isn’t exactly hard to re-seal something with magic,” Harry pointed out. “Anyone could have done that, it didn’t have a wax seal.”

“Yes, but if Clarke was just going to leave it in his locker, why would he re-seal the envelope after reading the letter?” Ginny shook her head. “We aren’t going to get anywhere speculating, we need something concrete.”

The three of them sat in silence for a moment, thinking, until Harry brought up a completely different topic.

“So, who is Diggory?” Harry asked, “And what is he going to find?”

Seamus laughed. “Cedric Diggory is an artifact analyst. He usually works with old items, finding mind-numbingly boring information about ancient runes or some other rubbish. But sometimes, he actually turns up with something important about a piece of evidence that we have.”

“A wonderful biography, really, Finnigan,” Ginny said, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, and I forgot, most importantly: he is in love with Weasley.” Seamus grinned, and Harry turned to look at Ginny with a look of shock.

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he declared.

“First of all, he isn’t my boyfriend. Second, he is not in love with me.” At that, Seamus scoffed and started laughing. Ginny ignored him. “And third, how would you know anything about my personal life, Potter, it’s not like we are friends.”

“You wound me, Ginny Weasley.” Harry smiled at her. “But tell me, if Diggory isn’t your boyfriend, then who is?”

“Weasley doesn’t have a boyfriend.” Seamus cut in between his laughter. “Although she does have a queue of admirers. Would you like an application?”

“Wonderful,” Ginny said before Harry could speak. “Now I have to work with three idiots instead of two. How about we focus on the serious situation at hand and the threat against your life, Potter, instead of my private life.”

“That doesn’t sound nearly as interesting, but I suppose we could try that.” Harry winked at her. “So what do you think this Diggory bloke is going to find?”

“I don’t even know if there is something to find. The handwriting is a dead end, it was made with a Dictation Quill, and thousands of people own those. The most that a diagnostic spell can tell us about that is if the voice that dictated the message was a man’s or a woman’s. But Diggory knows other spells that I don’t, so maybe he will be able to find something that will point us in the right direction.”

A ding rang out from Seamus’s communication mirror. He answered, and Aaron’s face appeared on the screen. “Why don’t you all come on down to see us. It looks like Diggory has found something.”

~~~

Har ry did not like Cedric Diggory’s face, or the way that he kept smiling. Diggory had smiled at everyone: Seamus, himself, and especially Ginny as they entered his office within the Improper Use of Magic Offices.

Harry stood with the three Aurors around an examination table on which lay the threatening letter. Unlike everyone else Harry had met in the past two days, Diggory did not seem particularly excited to be meeting ‘The Chosen One,’ rather he was more interested in greeting Ginny. Seamus had looked at Harry as if to say, ‘I told you so,’ and Harry could see exactly why someone would think Diggory was in love with Ginny.

“So what have you got for us, Cedric?” Ginny asked.

“I think what he has for us is different than what he has for her, no?” Seamus leaded over and whispered in Harry’s ear. Harry snorted in response, and Ginny glared at both of them. Aaron just shook his head with a slight smile. And Diggory just kept grinning. He waved his wand and the letter and envelope levitated in front of them, spinning slowly as he began to speak.

“I can tell you one thing: this letter has not been in many hands. There are no claw indentations, so it was never attached to an owl. Because there were no processing or diagnostics spells cast on the envelope, this letter never passed through the system at the Post Office.”

“So there goes theory two,” Seamus noted, referencing his previous hypothesis. Diggory kept speaking.

“As you probably deduced already, Ginny, the note was written with a Dictation Quill, and I can tell you that it was a man that dictated the note. Other than that, there is nothing about the parchment or the handwriting that is of note, or that can give you any clue as to the identity of the author.” Diggory directed his entire speech to Ginny, ignoring the fact that there were three other people in the room.

“So did you find anything that can help us identify the author?” Harry asked. Diggory must have missed the sarcasm in his voice, because he continued to smile while giving his answer.

“Actually, yes. I was able to trace a slight magical signature that was present around the parchment. It seems that someone thought it was more pertinent to use magic to handle the parchment than to physically do so. Unfortunately for them, they don’t know that I can trace that. I identified the magical signature and compared it to those in the archives. It belongs to one Hugh Runcorn.”

“Runcorn? Related to Albert Runcorn?” Ginny asked, surprised.

“His son,” Aaron confirmed.

“Runcorn? Should I know that name?” Harry asked.

“Probably. Albert Runcorn was a big player here during the war. According to my father, he wasn’t exactly a Death Eater, but he was a sympathizer; he played a large part in finding muggle-borns and helping the administration strip them of their magic,” Ginny answered. “What do we know about Hugh?”

Aaron held up a file and read from the inside. “He has no priors, probably because he is only nineteen. One year out of Hogwarts, he works for the Office of Magical Transportation — Broom Regulatory Control.”

“Let’s go talk to him,” Ginny said.

“We can’t. He didn’t come into work today, and without notice. We don’t know where he is.”
Reviews 136
ChapterPrinter
StoryPrinter




../back
‘! Go To Top ‘!

Sink Into Your Eyes is hosted by Grey Media Internet Services. HARRY POTTER, characters, names and related characters are trademarks of Warner Bros. TM & © 2001-2006. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions on this site are those made by the owners. All stories(fanfiction) are owned by the author and are subject to copyright law under transformative use. Authors on this site take no compensation for their works. This site © 2003-2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Special thanks to: Aredhel, Kaz, Michelle, and Jeco for all the hard work on SIYE 1.0 and to Marta for the wonderful artwork.
Featured Artwork © 2003-2006 by Yethro.
Design and code © 2006 by SteveD3(AdminQ)
Additional coding © 2008 by melkior and Bear