CSI: Hogsmeade Episode 1: But what's in the Back Room?
Author: Lovely Rita Girl
Summary: The first installment of this Harry Potter/CSI crossover fic, in which there is trouble at Dervish and Banges in Hogsmeade, as Dervish has been rudely murdered over a mysterious and vicious creature that had been hidden in the back room and stolen away in the night.
Legality: I do not own anything Harry Potter or CSI related. I am simply borrowing the universes to tell a story.
Author's Notes: This has been quite the interesting creative experiment, and here you have my crossover of Harry Potter and CSI (the original Las Vegas cast). I have tried to keep everything as cannon as I could, considering that it is a combination of two different universes. I hope you enjoy!
Prologue
Richard Dervish II of the Dervish and Banges Shop was in the process of locking up the store. The money had been moved to the safe, the window dancers had been charmed to stillness, the floor swept, and the wall beside the book case closed. All of these actions were very familiar to Richard, as he did them every night. Every other night, he would charm the feather duster into dancing across the frames of the enlarged photographs of intricate mechanical innards that hung high on the blue grey walls of the main room, but tonight was not that night. Everything was asleep and tidy, and so, Richard Dervish was prepared to gather his coats and head for the glass door that looked out onto High Street.
There was a rattle from behind the back wall. Everything had been so quiet that Richard questioned whether it had been his imagination playing a game with him or not.
There was a crash from behind the back wall. Richard Dervish II of Dervish and Banges then knew something was amiss and set down his coats, flicked out his wand, and pulled the red book entitled Mysterious Passageways and How to Repair and Reoperate them back from the bookshelf to open the wall and expose the hidden dark hallway.
"Hello?" Richard called apprehensively into the black. He tried to keep his tone curt, in order to show that he most definitely meant business, but the lump of fear in his throat prevented him from doing so properly.
His question was responded by nothingness at first, and then hands slapping his face, pushing him down, and dragging him to the center of the floor. The arms and bodies those hands belonged to took Richard's wand from him before he had a chance to use it, and fluttered about the room knocking over and throwing anything and everything they could find to move. They gathered together and pulled Richard up by the lapels of his suit. Up, up they pulled him and hung him to sway on the chandelier above the cashier counter, dangling only by poor Richard's starched suit collar.
Richard tried calling to them and yelling at them to stop, but his pleas only seemed to make them more energetic, more destructive; and so they sang to themselves as they found index drawers to throw, pulling the cards out and reading them for only a second before allowing them to drop like unorganized feathers to the floor.
Then the hands rocked the chandelier, just to watch Richard squirm. They giggled with glee at his fear, as they ripped the framed pictures from the wall and threw various Sneakoscopes about the room, excited to see the colored smoke billow from the little glass balls upon eruption.
Richard could feel his collar ripping, but the hands kept tearing away at the shop, too distracted to hear him cry. The chandelier lurched as it began to rip from the ceiling. Richard dangled and rocked dangerously, causing the chandelier to jerk further from the ceiling and his collar to continue ripping, until the final thread snapped, and Richard rocked hard and was sent pummeling head-first into the glass display cabinet below, shattering the protective shell.
The hands and bodies and eyes saw what had been done and froze from their frenzy for just a moment before fleeing through the front door, leaving it open in their wake, and the shop to fill with the night's cold. Richard tried to call out to them for help, but a meager, soft "hey!" was all he could seem to whisper before everything went dark, blanketed by the warm blood trickling down Richard's face.
It wasn't long before Richard Dervish II expired in the shattered glass display cabinet of the Dervish and Banges Shop.
William Banges II of the Dervish and Banges Shop was walking briskly down High Street in the early hours of the morning before the sleepy town of Hogsmeade could awake so he may begin his opening rituals in the store that he and his close friend operated and ran together. Upon approaching the front door of the shop with his key in hand, he noted that the handle was not where it normally was. No, in fact, it was inside the shop with the door. This was odd, as Richard Dervish never left the shop door open, and William Banges could not recall leaving it unclosed either.
Nose pointed down at the floor in confusion, William pushed the door the rest of the way open and examined the hard wood floors. It appeared Richard had done a shoddy job sweeping the night before; a very shoddy job of it. William kept a close eye to his feet to ensure he did not trip and fall over any of the drawers, papers, broken glass, or strewn Sneakoscopes about, as he made his way to the cashier counter.
There was Richard. Asleep, perhaps, but too still for sleep, and lines of ruby blood down the side of his face, stemming from a large cut on his forehead with a large piece of glass still lodged in it. The blood did not appear to be flowing anymore.
William touched Richard's neck to find the life that may yet be beating there, but felt only cold instead. He shook Richard's shoulder, called to him, but the man seemed to be going stiff. Horrified, William tried to flee from the cadaver, but in his turn for the door, his very stubborn large toe caught the edge of one of the fallen index drawers and he toppled forward onto his hands and knees.
William tried to regain himself, but found he was continuously slipping on the strewn papers and broken glass he had watched so carefully on his way in. Frustrated, William began pushing the objects out of the way- clearing a path across the floor as he slipped and slid back out to the sidewalk of High Street and called for whoever could hear him to help, please help. A man has died, for Merlin's sake, and couldn't someone please floo the Ministry at once, as, if there ever was a need for emergency floo, this was it and thank you very much in advance.
Part One
Lieutenant Copper stood on the sidewalk with his wand neatly tucked into his breast pocket, his pocket-sized notebook with hovering Quick-Notes Quill still in hand, sipping at his tea and awaiting the CSI team in the warming morning air along High Street in Hogsmeade. His creased face frowned against the crisp breeze that floated through the air and pushed the glass door behind him into a gentle swing as three loud cracking sounds shook him for only a split second and three of the team's four appeared in front of him.
The blonde, brunette, and redhead looked blank as they surveyed the outside of Dervish and Banges, each mentally calculating what could be in the store.
"It's a real mess in there," started Copper. "The entire place looks completely trashed. Initially, we thought it was a robbery gone bad, but according to a Mr. William Banges over there-" (he pointed the tall-looking, gangly gentleman sitting on the sidewalk with his head between his knees) "-nothing seems to be missing. Of course, we could only get that much from him because the bloody fool refuses to go in with more than his head to look things over. Refuses to step foot in the shop again until, quote 'Richard's murder is avenged or at least politely resolved.' Hey, at least that'll keep him out of your hair.
"Now, Banges says he came to the shop today and found the door already unlocked and open (how many times have we heard that one). He says he found the place a mess, and Richard Dervish was dead in the display cabinet before he got there. Says he tried to flee in panic, but got all kinds of tripped up and fell over, and he's the one responsible for the path cleared through the debris on the floor. You guys are going to have great fun with this."
"Great fun," responded Draco Malfoy in his typical sarcastic tone. The boy had softened and quieted a great deal since the second wizard war, and had since grown his hair out a great deal to where he uncannily resembled his father. He couldn't seem to resist sarcasm still, as it did run in the blood, after all. "I'll see what I can get in crime scene photos to start," he finished almost sincerely.
Hermione and Ron Weasley made to follow their blonde coworker, but their movement was interrupted but another loud crack, and Harry Potter, the lead of the CSI team was there with them.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, "but I had to see a man about a Blast-Ended Skrewt."
"Charming" Hermione smirked back.
"No really. I was seeing their damage versus size ratios to follow up a hunch on that arson case from a few days ago."
The trio walked into the store and found themselves in a big pile of mess. While looking over the damage, Harry remarked its resemblance to the aftermath of a hurricane or tornado.
"Or one of your Blast-Ended Skrewts" Ron offered.
"Don't be silly, Ron. There's no evidence of fire or charring." Hermione retained her old ways of correcting the lad in her brilliantly brazen tone, but now it had grown into something endearing the two shared as part of a sort of routine; he used it with her when talking about Quidditch, and she used it with him when talking about anything else.
"You know," Ron said loudly, changing the subject, "I always thought this place was ridiculously over-priced."
"Yeah?" said Harry. He noted the dead man in the broken display case. "How much do you think they want for him?"
Neville Longbottom popped up from behind the deceased and with an innocent smile replied simply, "ah, probably an arm and a leg. That's just a bit off Coroner's humor there. Now who wants to help me get this guy to the good ol' Doc?"
Wordlessly, Malfoy stepped up and put his camera down on the back counter top to aid in lifting the man out of the case and on to the stretcher. The first attempt failed as, not only was the man in an awkward position, but he was a fair bit heavy set, and dead weight does often seem to be the heaviest of weights. On the second try, he joked, "Shouldn't Weasley be the one shop-lifting?"
"You only say that because I'm ginger." Ron called back, long-cense offended by Malfoy's jokes. The two had developed a platonic relationship around playful insults.
"Well," Malfoy kept the joke going, "that. And, poor."
Once the body had been cleared to the outside street and relocated to the Morgue (much to the wailing of Mr. William Banges), the team worked diligently to collect anything they could that seemed to be relevant. The primary problem was, nothing appeared to be especially related, and instead, all of it seemed to be one big chaotic blunder.
"You know," Hermione called out to no one in particular from behind a mess of some deconstructed machine that looked designed to turn wheels and hiss steam, "there are very few reasons a person would go through this much trouble to make this much mess. One, to make a statement, but really, what statement are you going to make to a quiet, balding man? Two-"
"To hide evidence?" Harry cut her off. "Too bad we're better than that."
"True. However, the third reason –Ron's favorite- is to act as a distraction from some bigger conspiracy. But, what would be so important in a Sneakoscope repair shop that it would need this much distraction and covering up?"
"I'm not sure," helped Ron, "maybe a super special Sneakoscope? Like, one that's all-knowing? And made of gold? And does tiny back flips when it's scoping? 'Cause if it's that, I want one."
The team fell silent in disbelief for a minute.
"Honey, maybe you should run a Spell Sweep of the room and see what was cast before Mr. Dervish died while the rest of us poke behind the counters." Hermione said as gently as she could to Ron, kissing his freckled nose.
Grudgingly, Ron began his task as Hermione, Harry, and Draco began searching the cabinets behind the displays. Harry stopped at a book shelf, and noting one red book, Mysterious Passageways and How to Repair and Reoperate them, Harry pulled the book and heard a swish to his right. Looking over, he stared down a dark hallway that was where the piece of wall had been. Hermione found herself at his side then, and the two drew their wands and whispered "Lumos", exposing the dark hall and staircase down into the unknown to the light of their wands.
Together they walked down the undecorated brick wall hallway to the rickety wooden half-staircase at the end, where an enchanted torch sensed their presence an illuminated the hidden storage room and all its shelves, exposing hundreds of tiny colored vials. A table stood in the center of the room, unscathed, and the order of potions on the shelves appeared to be undisrupted. A cage large enough to fit a small child lay dented on the floor next to the table, the hinged door lying open.
Reading the labels on the bottles, Harry hummed to himself, "Polyjuice Potion, Felix Felicis…Hermione, I think we may have found a motive."
Levitating the cage to leave it untouched, but bring it back to the lab, Hermione noted, "Or at least what it was caged in."
"So!" Ron's voice came from the top of the half stair. "My favorite theory was right. There was something of a big fancy something worth covering up with a huge mess in the front of the shop. Not a back-flipping Sneakoscope, but maybe a back-flipping something." He had a unique ability to gloat over his triumphs in a most child-like manner. No one was complaining.
Malfoy took over the cage levitation, seizing control of its route back to the lab for analysis. "We'll see if we can find anything of DNA on this to find what was inside," he confirmed. Hermione walked in Malfoy's wake to ensure the safety of her find, moving past Ron with an approving stroke of his cheek.
When Harry spoke again, it seemed to be to the empty room, though Ron was familiar with the Golden Boy's process and listened to add if he could.
"If Dervish and Banges are running some sort of black market back here, then why these potions?" Harry mused. "It's not as though they're illegal to sell, so why the big cover? What could have been so important in that cage to cause all this?"
"Maybe," Ron chimed, notifying Harry of his presence, "They wanted to over-charge on all this stuff. Think about it. They're not illegal, but they are bloody hard to find, which means that Dervish and Banges could overcharge as they see fit, you could make a fortune at that. Maybe they were overcharging for whatever was in the cage, and someone thought Dervish should be taught a lesson for it but it went too far."
"Yeah." Agreed Harry. "It always seems to go too far."
Author's Note: This is the first time I have written anything outside the realm of my University's assignments in several years. As such, any and all reviews would be greatly appreciated, especially those with constructive criticism. Thank you, I hope you enjoyed, and I hope to see you next chapter!