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Fay understood it didn't really make sense to be afraid of blood, but she was all the same. Listening to her parents discuss their patients (leaving out names or other identifying traits, of course) over dinner always made her stomach churn. Her brother hung on every word, dropping peas or carrots into his lap when he missed his mouth, but Fay pushed at the table to excuse herself early.
The Defense class with Lupin as professor ended before she had to discover her boggart was a vampire, specifically a vampire draining her little brother of each drop of blood within him. Dark creatures stalked her dreams, always with sticky, red muzzles or mouths. Each time she swung a Beater's bat during practices she imagined the Bludger was the head of the vampire that broke into her house the year before Jordan would have started Hogwarts.
There was a certain irony in the uniform she'd worn since she was eleven. Gryffindor red, and now the bright crimson of Auror robes. She hung them behind her whenever she sat at her desk so she wouldn't have to look at them. Hunting down dark wizards and creatures was worth the weekly nightmares with Jordan as the main character.
You'd be proud of Hector a letter from her mother read, pinched between her fingers on her left hand while a slice of toast rested forgotten in her right. He said he's caught another, over in America. And he mentioned he'd love to see you when he comes home for Christmas. Perhaps a game of Gobstones as a family, for old time's sake?
Fay crumpled the note, but reflexes made both of her fists clench. Wearing more of her breakfast than she'd consumed, Fay stood quickly, mumbling to Harry that she was going to the training room if he needed her. Green eyes glanced up at her over circle wire rims but he made no move to stop her from tearing out of their shared space.
Blow after blow landed on the punching bag in a far corner of the Auror's gym. A few others were lifting weights or going through some sort of physical therapy for wounds from raids, the bright green of Healer robes nauseating Fay. There seemed there was no where she could go to escape her parents, or their insistence that she stop dwelling so much on the death of her brother. She loved her cousin Hector, because he was one of the few that understood the meaninglessness of telling someone to get over it.
Oh, how she wished her mother would stop pretending she knew what was best for her.
Her shirt clung to her, a dark line forming wherever the worst of the sweat beaded. With her eyes watching her feet in front of her, it was a near miss to running into a man walking along the same corridor.
"Excuse me," he said, slipping his hands back into the folds of his robes. Fay caught the smell and sight of black leather gloves when he'd raised his hands to halt her march. "My apologies."
Looking up, she knew him in an instant. Even a Gryffindor pureblood knew the names and faces of each pureblood in England, and her off-the-books work with him the last several months made her familiar with the rest of him. "Good day, Mr. Malfoy. I should be apologizing to you. I'll watch my step in the future."
"You may have been watching your step too closely, Ms. Dunbar," he replied, tilting his head a bit to accentuate the way he lifted his eyebrow.
"As you say." She couldn't help the smallest smirk from lining her face. The way her lip curled reminded her she was drenched in sweat, the droplets running down her face as she spoke.
"I do say. Are you available this afternoon to review the case in more detail?"
"My afternoon is free until tea time, Mr. Malfoy, but I was going to spend it in the Ministry Archives looking through legislation. I'll need more references for the kind of evaluation you're demanding."
"Are you suggesting I couldn't ask more of you, Ms. Dunbar?"
Her heart flipped a bit but she shot it with an arrow before it could color her face. "I've said no such thing. So, if you'd like to join me in the Archives I will be there in thirty minutes. Or," and here she forced herself not to lick her lips, "we could meet after my shift and continue this discussion elsewhere?"
Lucius Malfoy's face pinched a little around his eyes, and Fay watched him squeeze his hand over the cane she knew held his wand, a reflex if ever she saw one. He tilted his head in one of the smoothest nods she'd ever witnessed outside of a stage production in the Muggle world, before he took her hand, sweaty knuckle wrappings and all. Folding both of his over it, he said, "I'd be delighted if you could view the vampire charts I've constructed in my study. Narcissa has planned for several other colleagues, and I'm sure the table can be set for one more."
"I accept," she managed to say, glad her brief lessons with a governess weren't so far in her past that she knew that wizard custom asked her to also nod, then place her free hand over his in a brief clasp. The smile she added wasn't part of her training; it was solely for Lucius's benefit, and it repeated its place on her face throughout the rest of the day and the evening as she anticipated what was in store for her at Malfoy Manor.
She would find Jordan's killer and stop her nightmares once and for all.