Chapter Text
10:26pm.
The all too familiar clock hanging precariously on the brick wall swirled and wobbled in her hazy vision. It eventually stilled long enough for her to read the time through its cracked face, confirming that it had already been seven hours since her early dismissal for abuse of power. Again.
Whiskey slipped down her oesophagus like liquid flames, coaxing her to choke on its brash fumes. Too many nights had been spent this way, drinking away her torment until she could slip into the bliss of incapacity once more.
Becoming an auror wasn’t on her list of desires after graduation—neither was her taste for scorching spirits. But here she was, slumped over a sticky bar from her perch on a raggedy old stool in what was possibly London’s grimiest pub, still donning her work attire.
If she had a shred of self respect left to spare, she’d be bitterly disappointed in the poor excuse of a witch she had become. Her possibilities could have been endless upon her departure from Hogwarts had she not allowed herself to be coerced into a life she did not wish to live.
Raymond Harper—the Ministry’s most celebrated auror and a branded hero—had made a personal visit to meet her towards the end of her final year at Hogwarts. It was the cover of every paper, the gossip on every pair of lips for miles and nothing but a bloody hindrance to MC. The attention had only just begun to shift from her, and she was happy about it until he came along. People who she couldn’t name if there was a knife held to her throat were hanging off of her every limb, wanting to be close to the girl who caught Raymond’s attention.
His praises of her ability to take down the notorious Ranrok had only been met with shrugs and boredom. By the seventh year, she wanted no part in any conversation regarding her fifth year, but she bit her tongue and allowed the beloved man to fawn over her determination, courage and strength.
If only he knew how it haunted her.
The first offer of a place on his team within the Auror Programme was immediately turned down. She wasn’t interested in partaking, and was convinced that she couldn’t be swayed.
That being said, Harper was known to all for being a particularly persuasive individual, a skill that likely earned him his fame. The more he offered her, the harder the position became to refuse. The fully paid and furnished house in London was the deciding factor, and that very promise of a home to call her own had earned him his prized apprentice.
Which, for lack of a better term, seems to have bitten him on the ass.
MC flew through the programme, graduating to an actual Officer in an impressive amount of time. She wasn’t happy, but she was comfortable. A partner who didn’t seem like a complete ass, a home she could do as she pleased within, and a job that paid her well.
A bliss that lasted merely a week.
Ricky Donovan was a sleaze who would do anything to one up her—and get into her bed. The town house was so big and empty that she could practically hear the dust settling onto its chosen surface. The money was more or less keeping this hole of a pub in business.
She was definitely no longer comfortable, and was nothing more than a shell of her former self. Everyone who had ever mattered to her either stopped bothering or fell off the face of the earth, and by Merlin was the loneliness as prominent as a sharp blade to the chest.
In terms of being an auror, she was a fucking beast. In terms of being human, she was a shot of whiskey away from liver failure and dark thought away from a mental breakdown.
The burn of a stiff drink always masked the stab of solitude and was the only other thing she could significantly feel. It helped her remember the things that were once so irrevocably important to her.
Good grades. Starting a family one day. Trying to be the kind of witch that Eleazar Fig would be proud of.
And who could forget those fucking freckles in the warm light of the undercroft.
She only allowed herself to think about Sebastian Sallow when she was drowning in self pity, which was almost every night. In amongst her impressive arsenal of solved cases and captured criminals, he was the one mystery she just couldn’t solve.
After practically begging Ominis not to turn him in after what happened in the Catacombs and losing the little friendship that she and the blind boy had built together, Sebastian went off the radar that very summer, never to be heard from by her again. Sometimes—when her mind was in a particularly dark place—all she could manage to picture when trying and failing to figure out his whereabouts was the skeletal remains of a teenage boy laying somewhere in the dirt.
He was determined to a fault, willing to lay his life out on the line for something he really wanted. It was a terrifying thought, and she wasn’t sure how much more of it she could take. It made her suffocate with grief until she was choking on sobs so violent she could practically feel her heart trying to come out of her throat. There was no easing one of these episodes, not a single thought that could calm her down. She would eventually lose consciousness and wake up with a lovely reminder of her trauma throbbing behind her eyes for days on end.
Eight years was a long time to be missing, and no matter how optimistic she tried to be, the dread always came back to find her.
“Think you better head home, chick. You’re at your limit.” Alex tossed a dirty rag over his shoulder before swiping the empty glass from her, an ever present frown on his unapproachable face. “You know the rules. Five drinks maximum. You’re lucky I still let you drink here.”
He was right, not that she’d admit it out loud. Making a fool out of herself came pretty naturally these days, which was the exact reason that Raymond had dismissed her so early into the workday. One aspect of being an auror that she just could not get a hold on was not letting herself become emotionally invested in a case.
By lunchtime, she had beaten a coward half to death with her own fists for the unspeakable murder he had committed. His wife had been unrecognisable upon their discovery of her remains, and it took everything in MC not to spiral into thoughts of her missing friend.
Every single body found was a fresh reminder that the fifteen year old boy she would have done anything for all those years ago could be nothing more than discarded remains. The very thought made her feel sick, the fiery whiskey searing the lining of her stomach as it churned.
“You’re lucky I haven’t ratted you out to the Ministry,” she mumbled pathetically, sliding off of the bar stool at a ridiculously slow pace. Gringotts coins of varying sizes and worth clanged and rolled along the wooden bar surface, a few taking a nosedive over the edge. “Keep the change.”
The burly barman grunted, his jaw tight as he kept his tongue where it belonged. Alex Paver was a very large, very no nonsense type of man—one who wouldn’t dare cross her. He had a business to uphold, one that didn’t only require serving a borderline alcoholic auror dangerous amounts of firewhiskey.
MC had found out about his less than legal bounty hunting side hustle the very first time she stepped foot in his shabby pub and accidentally stumbled into his office instead of the bathroom. She’d had an inkling that something was going on behind the scenes as he’d spent the night shifting his gaze to an expectant pair of eyes watching him intently from behind her perch at the bar. Her first thought was that he was in trouble—which was why she had snuck behind the bar and barged into his office when he disappeared in there with the man—but she soon came to realise that the unfriendly wizard hanging around the pub without a drink in sight was awaiting a service.
MC threatened to drop an anonymous tip into the auror office if Alex didn’t indulge her in the details of the peculiar exchange immediately. Alex had tried to throw her out of the pub, but once he’d dragged her back out into the small hallway that led back to the bar, she watched a hooded wizard drag a whimpering man through the back entrance. Soon after, she was sworn to secrecy in exchange for a permanent seat at his bar. She had tried to waver his drink limit rule a few times, but he would never budge. He said it was to save his own ass should she drink herself to death, but the slight glint of concern in his steel eyes told her otherwise.
There were bounty hunters all over London led by him, snatching those who have done wrong by the wrong witch or wizard or who are hiding from whomever seeks them—usually for reasons that are rather unsavoury.
Alex receives a monetary reward from whichever dodgy client requires his services as soon as the unfortunate soul is handed over, and the cash is split with whichever hunter got their catch. By all means a profitable trade, but in no way was it something an auror should let slide if given knowledge about. Truth be told though, MC couldn’t give less of a flaming shit if she so desperately tried. She was a good auror in body, but not in mind. She could take down the best of the best in the world of criminals and feel absolutely nothing while doing so.
On a few occasions, she had thought about binning her job and joining Alex’s team of hunters to escape the chokehold that the ministry seemed to have on her. That was if he’d even have her of course, he had seen her in some terrible states on a number of occasions. Never had she acted on the thoughts, and like clockwork every morning she was half dead with a hangover at 6am trying not to throw up at the sight of her partner.
Her only benefit from Alex’s business was her raggedy stool that was definitely no longer in its prime. Maybe not the fairest deal in the world, but it added just the smallest bit of something to her life. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she supposed that she considered Alex a little more than just the grumpy barkeep who lectures her about her alcohol consumption and grunts in response to anything she says.
Not so much a friend as he was a forced acquaintance.
Since the first one she saw that day in the back, MC had caught glimpses of these bounty hunters only a few times. A quick flash of one slipping through the back of the pub, a little peak of one leaning over the bannister of the restricted staircase that leads up to their den as they inform Alex of any issues. She was yet to see a face, all of them covered with black masks over their mouths and noses, only leaving space to see their eyes if you were close enough. From afar, the spacious hoods attached to their black robes cast a deep shadow over the slither of their face that isn’t covered, concealing their identities.
She'd be lying if she said she wasn’t a little curious about who these people were, but she wouldn’t allow herself to become any more involved than she already was. Just her knowledge of the organisation alone was enough to have her slung from the Ministry. As much as she hated her job, it was the reason she had a home.
And a home was more than she could ask for after losing everyone she loved.
With an accidental thud, the splintery wooden door slung open and ricocheted against the brick wall before she stumbled down the lone step to the pavement. It was a bitter January night, and her work robes did little to shield her from the frosty gush of wind knocking her balance.
There was no reason that she couldn’t just apparate back to her house, saving herself from the chill that would rest deep in her bones for the remainder of the night. But she wanted to feel it. The burn of her thirty minute long trek home would mask the burn of spirits sloshing around in her otherwise empty stomach.
With a heaving breath of air she pulled herself together, wrapped her robes a little tighter around her torso and turned to start heading down the dimly lit street;
Only to stop dead in her tracks.
One skill she could thank her auror training for was her ability to feel a pair of eyes on her at any moment, sober or not. It was like a small shock at the base of her skull, warning her of possible danger. Her head whipped around in an instant, hazy vision shifting from swaying lampposts to wiggling dustbins and every window of every moving building until they landed on one.
Taking a step back to get a better look, she glimpsed a hooded figure in the upstairs window of the pub. She couldn’t be sure that the person was looking at her given their hidden face, but the way every fibre of hair upon her person raised almost as quickly as the goosebumps across her skin practically confirmed her suspicions.
Before she could even take her next breath, the figure was gone, leaving only a swaying net curtain in their wake. She didn’t know what to make of the lingering unease, an unsettling ball of dread growing in the pit of her stomach for reasons she could not explain.
Her gut was screaming at her to remain vigilant on her commute home, despite her intoxication. The mystery figure was easily recognised to be a bounty hunter, but she hadn’t the foggiest idea who any of them really were. For all she knew, they were a group of wanted criminals and murderers Alex had taken in like a litter of stray kittens.
And if that was in fact the case, chances were that she knew every single one of them. Every face of every wanted poster was stored in her rolodex of a brain, only vacating once she or Ricky had detained the bastards.
As she hurried her steps down the muted street, she felt that burn against the back of her skull once more. To draw a little less attention to herself, she dug through her pockets and produced a small mirror, whipping out her terrible acting skills to check her non-existent lipstick in the reflection.
And as expected, she saw the very same sight over her shoulder in a different window. The only window facing her.
Someone was watching her.