The Last Drop |Tom Riddle|

Chapter Six: A Good Christmas

In a hidden corner of the Auror Department where not many would go, there was two large doors that led to a massive private working area filled with boards and desks to serve the purpose of completing large scale investigations.

Standing in front of two large boards hung to the wall, Eleanor and Colin presented the files of the several string of murders occurring more frequent in the past six months.

The room was bright and bordered by black columns with golden spirals to keep the room protected with a spell and the meeting table itself was marble that seemed to reflect the moon. In this table sat Minister Tuft, John, Julius, Anna and three other Aurors who were her closest aids and according to Colin, all of these people provided the most to the department.

They were given the official green light to make this into a larger scaled investigation with Eleanor taking point and this was the first large scale meeting being held on the investigation.

When she was dragged into this very room for safety all those years ago when Grindelwald assassinated the Minister before her father, she never thought she'd be leading an investigation in it.

"I believe I have narrowed it down to these four cases here." Eleanor said, pointing at the four case files spread out and pinned across the span of two boards. "Hepzibah Smith was an accident by an Elf, the man at Borgin and Burkes neglected a sign that indicated a cursed item, and the man in Birmingham was detected by Muggle respondents to have caused the fire in his home while under the influence of alcohol and never putting out his cigarette before passing out. Therefore, I've ruled them out as natural occurrences from just plain human error."

"Which leaves us with these four." Colin lead.

The two of them took turns explaining the overview of each of them. It was Eleanor's turn to explain Steve's murder.

"I believe this is not one man, but a group. A small group or at least a large organization sending out small numbers to conduct these attacks. I made copies for each of you to look at and I've assigned a number of you to each file. " Eleanor concluded.

"I know you have all glanced over these only for the parts you were responsible for, but this has become too much of a concern to the people we represent. The Daily Prophet has been making strong allegations that there is more fear in our people coming from the wizarding world than the Muggle world now days." Colin added. "People will not trust their Aurors if we cannot provide the real answers."

She had to admit; she hated that Colin worked with the Prophet.

There must have been some money to it because it was too suspicious for someone like him in a position to be on good terms with the one of few news sources for wizards. Most people from the Ministry utilized the Prophet for bad reasons.

For the next couple of hours, Eleanor and Colin listened to what their peers could gather and they both drew on the board in a red marker, making notes and connections over the files and pieces of evidence they could fine according to whatever they said. It's been a while since she had a full on meeting over this.

Even the Wilhelmina offered a few points almost as the outsider opinion. It was also reassuring to have someone there to encourage Eleanor along the way as well.

"What about him?" Julius pointed out. "The guy from the Wand Permit department? Uh, Maxwell Fordham. I remember he was under fire for trying to slow the process for Mudbloods to receiving their permits around the time I started and recently just took money from one of the pureblood campaigns up in Ireland."

"The Irish are having their own problems, those animals." another Auror scoffed. "There's been some lingering drama from that conflict in Ireland though. It wouldn't be a horrible idea to look at that."