-Chapter One!-
Harry slouched out of the dingy tattoo parlour half pissed and half pissed-off. His Hungarian Horntail tattoo had just had its final touch-ups, and Harry later planned to enchant the inky behemoth to move and twist underneath his skin. He should be happy at its final completion, a task which had taken several months, but Harry James Potter was always pissed off. He ran a hand through his unkempt hair, then let it drop down, over his equally unkempt stubble. He didn't mind about his scruffy appearance, rather thinking that it added to his overall mystique and ironic taste.
He shuffled on further down the street, his inebriation just enough to take the edge off of his lightning-quick Seeker reflexes, but he still knew he was a deadly motherfucker if it needed to come to it. Which, it always did. Turning the corner of the dimly lit and rain-sodden street, he stepped over two bodies and coughed loudly into his balled hands. Pausing only to spit a long gob of reeking phlegm on the scarred visage of the first corpse, and ruing the day he ever entered that Egyptian tomb and contracted the wasting illness in his lungs, he continued on his not-so-merry way, fumbling in one pocket as he did so.
At last his questing fingers located what he so desperately needed. He gazed warily around at the poorly-lit stone frontages of Knockturn Alley and admired the gritty realism as he knocked one cigarette out of the crumpled packet. Harry lit it with a snap of his fingers and took a deep drag.
Before too many minutes had dared to pass for Harry Motherfucking Potter, he had finished his first cigarillo, eaten the butt, started on another, and found what he was looking for.
BA-CRASH!
The door to Borgin & Burkes flew open, and Mr Borgin found himself lifted by his lapels and slammed brutally against the concrete wall. "Where is he?" Potter roared in his face.
Borgin gave a little laugh: half nervous, half hysterical.
"Where? Is? He?"
Borgin squeaked and tried not to look at the 'specialist' bookshelf to his left which contained the hidden passageway. Harry wasn't fooled for a second and, bored with the reaction so far, used wandless magic (in which he was a grand master) to throw Borgin's body into the tall bookshelf with a cynical smirk. The wood was solid, but it gave away with a giant crack.
"That's what you get for 'Borgin' me" Harry added wittily.
Borgin had landed partway in the secret passageway, and did not rise. Harry had to step over yet another broken body that evening, and bared his teeth at the cheek of these bodies for getting in his way. As he crossed the threshold he felt the buzz of a strong ward die around his slim but muscular body. He had cast ward-cutting charms around his body earlier that evening foreseeing just such an event as this.
The tunnel was pitch black, so Harry conjured flames directly onto the palm of his hand, enjoying the scorching feeling of the fire as it licked at his flesh. Lumos was just too tame.
Deciding that he'd spent too much time dillydallying already, he began his descent into the bowels of the bookshop.
Do you have the power to R&R?