It's a Mystery, Granger

Chapter 11

Draco was having a wonderful time. The case involving his vault hadn't been closed yet and Theo had ganged up with Blaise to bully him about Granger, but Draco couldn't be bothered at the moment. After all, no one had stolen anything from his vault (it was really just an inconvenience that someone had broken his wards and the Gringotts security system) and Granger was a downright joy these days, so he wasn't about to let Blaise ruin his day when he walked with a grim expression.

"What is that you're wearing? A sense of cheer?" Blaise asked, stopping a couple meters from Draco's desk and eyeing him suspiciously. "You look like a right nightmare."

"I think I look rather dashing," Draco said, glancing down at his dress robes. "You look like you've been better, though."

"Har har," Blaise deadpanned. He walked up to Draco's desk and dropped that morning's copy of the Daily Prophet. "We've got a bit of a mess."

Eyeing Blaise, Draco took the paper and glanced at it, stopping immediately when he read that morning's headline: Weasley Breaks Into Malfoy Vault! Best Friends and Fellow Aurors Granger and Potter to Arrest Him.

Oh. Yes, they did indeed have a mess. A much larger mess than Draco had anticipated when he'd first asked for an investigation and one he wasn't sure he wanted to follow anymore. Surely it wasn't worth what was about to be so much more trouble, was it?

"Fuck," he mumbled, letting the paper fall back onto his desk. "I knew—I fucking knew something was upsetting her last night, but I didn't know it was this."

"Upsetting—Hold on," Blaise demanded, leveling a glare at Draco. "Last night? What are you on about?"

"Granger," Draco told him. Blaise rolled his eyes and Draco scowled. "I told you I was taking her out to dinner. That was last night, you wanker."

"You took her out the night she arrested her best friend?" Blaise accused. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at Draco. "You thought that was a good idea?"

In hindsight, no, Draco did not think it was a good idea, but he hadn't known what had happened when he sent his not-so-official owl and showed up at her house. If she had told him, he would have cancelled immediately if only to give her a little time to process. Instead, however, he'd taken her up to that fantastic muggle restaurant and invited himself over like everything was dandy. What a rotten bit of luck he had.

"Well we made the plan beforehand," Draco grumbled, glaring at the paper instead of looking at Blaise. "Merlin's eternal balls."

Draco groaned and leaned back in his chair, running a hand down his face as he looked up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and held back another groan.

"You have to drop the case."

"I know!" Draco snapped, sitting upright and glaring at Blaise in one move. "I know, okay? That was never the point of the investigation."

It was supposed to be easier than that, though Draco imagined he should have predicted a more complicated case the second someone managed to get past all of Gringotts' security and his vault wards.

"I told you this would backfire," Blaise muttered, dropping into the chair across from him. Draco bit back another retort. "You couldn't have just let it go?"

"Whoever broke in would have seen Crabbe's body," Draco reminded him sharply. He couldn't afford for word to get out as there would be questions. Questions that he wasn't quite sure he could answer even a year later. "We can't drop charges without talking to Weasel first."

"What? Privately?" Blaise scoffed. Draco looked at him. "You can't be serious, Draco."

"Never been more," Draco mumbled to himself, glancing back down at the paper.

"No way will the Ministry allow you in to speak privately with a suspect."

In theory, Draco knew that, yes. He knew Kingsley—however much he preached about encouraging more mixing between purebloods and others—would keep an eye on any Malfoy that stepped through those doors. Even if his father hadn't been sent to Azkaban and his mother pledged to support the War survivors. The Malfoy name came with certain expectations so no, Draco could not just waltz into the Ministry and ask to speak privately with Weasel.

Zabini, on the other hand, was an entirely neutral name that came with benefits from both sides.

"Blaise," Draco mused, looking at him curiously. "You could go."

"Granger would recognise me in a flash," he shot down. Draco rolled his eyes. "I'd step through the Ministry doors—" He pointed to the near ceiling height doors behind him, leaning forward as he told Draco, "—and some special Slytherin ward would alert her before I could take a second step."

"Oh come on, she'd let you through," Draco said. Even he didn't really believe his own words, yet he still took offence at Blaise's scoff.

"We're not getting to Weasley, Draco," Blaise said finally, crossing his arms over his chest. "It's either you drop the charges here and now, or Granger gets the truth and she turns us in."

"Weasel wouldn't know," Draco said, waving his hand. "Takes brains to put that shit together."

"Does it?" Blaise asked. He looked at Draco solemnly. "That vault holds everything the Syndicate is and was. Any longer than five minutes and he would have figured it out even if he wasn't the primary auror on most of our cases."

Draco frowned and looked back down at Weasel's arrest photo. The git had been an idiot in Hogwarts, but he was one of the Ministry's top aurors so clearly he had to be good at something. It was unlikely he'd merely poked his head in the vault as well. If Weasel had gone to all that trouble to get past Gringotts' security system, then he had to have spent time in the vault looking for something. Something he'd known about before ever entering the vault.

"He knew about Crabbe before he even went to Gringotts," Draco said suddenly, looking up at Blaise. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk, saying, "There's no way Weasel would have thought to enter the vault without reason. He knew something that could only be confirmed if he went to see for himself."

"I suppose," Blaise said, allowing Draco's musings to steer the conversation. "But how did he find out? Say he did know Crabbe was there, how did he find out?"

Draco lifted a hand uselessly. He didn't know. Yet. He didn't know yet, but there were many ways to find out when running what was considered by the Ministry to be an international crime ring.

"Send for Daph, would you?" he said in reply. He stood up, rolling back his sleeves and reaching for his wand. "I need to make a quick Gringotts visit."

Blaise didn't even question him, standing up as well and heading to the door. He paused just before leaving, though, and glanced back at Draco.

"Just because I don't want to deal with two messes," he said, eyeing Draco warily. "What exactly are you planning to do at Gringotts?"

"The vault hasn't been touched since Weasel was in it last," Draco reminded him. The goblins certainly hadn't and aside from Granger mentioning that they had taken Theo's family ring, he doubted they'd moved anything else. "If I can get down, I can see what Weasel was looking for."

"And Granger?" Blaise probed, raising an eyebrow.

Draco's lips twitched into a smirk. "I have to send her my regards if I'm in the area, don't I?"

Blaise gave him a disapproving look.

"If you make a scene or turn this into a bigger mess, Syndicate won't have a member from the Malfoy family anymore, got it?" he threatened.

With a flourish and a mock bow, Draco sent him one last smirk before apparating directly out in front of Gringotts. It was high time to get some answers himself. And perhaps a coffee.