Chapter 5

August rolled by. Robards continuously plagued me for new information on the Malfoy case, but there simply was nothing to go on. The opinion that it had been a magical assassination was just that – an opinion – and aside from the sheer lack of evidence pointing to a Muggle bomb, there was nothing to use to determine who could have done it. Unlike Teddy's situation, there were too many people who might be happy to see the Malfoys dead just for being Malfoys and plenty of people who could tangentially profit from their deaths, so motives abounded. But without the physical evidence to trace magical signatures, it was all but impossible to determine what kind of spell was used to blow up the car. The only odd thing about the entire situation was the fact that they were in a car to begin with.

I tapped the tip of my wand against my teeth. If there wasn't enough car left to examine, maybe it was high time that I started working things from the other end, so to speak. Maybe it was high time I began acquainting myself with Draco Malfoy.

I spent the next week gathering every single shred of information I could find on the post-war Malfoy family. It wasn't much; they had mostly kept to themselves once the trials were over, but anything I could use to construct a character profile would help. What I found surprised me, but then again, I suppose never having known him well, anything would have surprised me.

It seemed as though Draco had married Asteria Greengrass the year after she graduated from Hogwarts, and in 2006, she had given birth to their son. That much was easily obtained from newspapers. Asteria apparently had been something of a housewife; at least, I had never found anything to suggest that she had held a job outside of the home. But Draco, interestingly, had gone into potions work. I remembered quite well that he had always succeeded in Potions class, but I always remembered it as him having curried favor with Snape, not that he had been particularly apt at the subject. I suppose I had been wrong. But rather than teach at Hogwarts – and it appeared he had actually been offered the position once by Professor McGonagall before her death – he opted to go into research, expanding the laboratory at Malfoy Manor and working from home. His developments had been implemented both at St. Mungo's and in the greater medical field. Perhaps Asteria had been his assistant, or maybe partner, I thought to myself.

He was fairly respected in the field and made a decent living, but it was nothing compared to the wealth that the Malfoys had flaunted prior to the war. They had barely been able to hang onto the Manor after the trials left Lucius and Narcissa practically impoverished, so it was a bit of a surprise to learn that Draco had saved enough to buy back the family estate in southern France only last year. For all I knew, it may have been the first time Draco had ever been able to take his family there to visit.

Lucius and Narcissa had retired to the Manor after the war, rarely being seen in public. They barely socialized, not deigning to make social connections outside of their former circles, yet unwilling to keep associations with those who had received the more public punishments during the trials. Since the accident, only Lucius had been seen, and even then it was only the occasional excursion to Diagon Alley. Narcissa, it seemed, was devastated by the loss and had completely cloistered herself at the Manor.

But as interesting as the lives and times of the Malfoy family were turning out to be, they simply did not explain why anyone would target Draco, or rather, give any leads as to who might have killed him and his family. He didn't have the Malfoy wealth, his son and heir was killed with him, and his career wasn't a threat to anyone. The potions work he had been doing was largely theoretical, and those who made use of his findings were doing so in the hopes of developing experimental cures for diseases and disorders, not for developing poisons or weapons.

I reported all of this to Robards, of course, and while he was also interested at first, even he had to admit after a few weeks had passed that none of it was the grand clue we had all hoped for. And more frustratingly, there was absolutely no change in Teddy's condition. Tonks had long since returned to work, trying to distract herself from the lack of new information, but I knew her too well to believe for a second that it was working.

So, it was a bit of a shock to me one morning in late September, almost two months after Teddy's poisoning, when Tonks stormed into my office and slammed something down in front of me on my desk.

"There! There!" she fumed, pointing to the paper. Grabbing my lit cig out of my hand, she puffed furiously on it, stopping only long enough to let out a giant hacking cough. Her hair was a vibrant, furious red.

"Sit down, Tonks, before you hurt yourself," I said, snatching the paper off of my desk and scanning it. My eyes widened.

"Tonks, where did you get this? And why on earth are you giving it to me?" I exclaimed, cursing silently under my breath and dropping the paper to my desk. Shite. Shite. Shite.

"It was slipped under my door this morning. Harry, I have wards. I have wards that only recognize a handful of people. Someone was there ... someone knows how to get to me," she said, her words falling over each other in their effort to get out.

The paper clearly said, "I know where to find you. One day all you have will be mine."

"I always figured someone had hurt Teddy to get to me, but now ... now it's real, Harry. Someone's after me and I don't know why," she said, her voice escalating until she was practically screaming.

"Tonks, who else knows about this letter?" I asked firmly, sliding the paper carefully into an empty folder with the tip of my quill.

"No one. I came straight here. Apparated here immediately," she responded.

"Good," I exhaled. "The first thing we do is show it to Robards. He needs to know that you're being threatened. We'll get some Aurors to guard you at all times. And for now, at least, you'll need to go on leave. It's not safe for you to be out in the field," I stated.

"I ... I don't want to go back there," she muttered. "I can't."

"Then you're coming home with me," I said. "No ifs, ands, or buts about it."

We briefed Robards, who agreed that she shouldn't work until whoever was threatening her was caught. He assigned Ron and another Auror named White to be her own personal guards and sent the letter off for testing. But as soon as we were done talking with him, I took her arm. "Come on, let's go back to your place."

"Harry, I told you, I don't want to go back there," Tonks stated flatly.

"I know that, but we need to get your things. I'll be right there with you. And besides, we need to make sure that we double-check the premises, see if anything else was left there, and change your wards, alright?" I reassured her.

"Yeah, I suppose so," she nodded and sighed. "Now or never, eh, Harry?" A split second later we were standing in her kitchen.

I quickly glanced around her house. "Anything look out of place?"

"No, everything seems just as I left it. Sorry for the mess, though. Haven't had much energy to ... do things lately," she said, hurriedly sweeping a pile of dirty dishes into the sink.

"Alright. I'm going to reset your wards, and then I think you should go pack up whatever you think you might need for a week or two. I'll be right down here waiting for you," I said.

"Thanks, Harry." She walked past me to head upstairs, stopping to press a kiss to my cheek.

Muttering a few diagnostic spells, I saw that her wards had in fact been breached, but why no alarms had gone off was a mystery to me. Quickly I changed her wards to a variant of my own, setting them to allow only Teddy, Tonks, myself, Ron, and Auror White. If she decided she was more comfortable staying here, then only those who were supposed to protect her could come in. Anyone else would set off an alarm that would wake the dead. I smiled grimly.

"Ready, Harry," Tonks said, holding a small trunk.

"Okay, then. Hold on tight," I said. Grabbing her arm, I Apparated her home with me.