Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Harry Potter or BBC's Sherlock!

Warnings: Dark!Harry, Eccentric!Tom, OOC-ness, Yaoi, Light Side!Bashing, Slash, M/M, might add warnings later on.

Chapter 1

A Study In Avada Kedavra

Diagon Alley, unlike the rest of London, was mostly an area of peace and calm. Unless you came there the week before start of Hogwarts term, of course, because by then parents and their children thronged in masses like animals to buy what was required for the upcoming school year. But aside from that, Diagon Alley was pretty safe. The traffic and hideous brainless muggles in London weren't heard of on the magical shopping street, nor was it common with murder or shootings. Mainly because wizards didn't carry guns, but that's beside the point.

Though, that didn't mean crimes were non-existent. Besides, Diagon Alley wasn't the only magical place in Britain. Wizards and witches were murdered here and there all over the country, and since the Aurors from the Ministry were pretty incompetent, it was a good thing Tom Riddle decided to take the situation into his own elegant hands.

His choice of profession had been a way to mock Dumbledore in the beginning. Just to show that old coot that he could make it on his own without the employment he'd been denied as teacher at Hogwarts. Sure, Tom had… other occupations that showed he was independent and powerful, but he couldn't very well go and shout that little detail in Dumbledore's face. It'd be bad for his reputations. Both of them.

However, detective business had soon turned out to be rather tedious. The problem wasn't that he often had to travel far outside of Diagon Alley, or that too few mysteries occurred that were brought to him. No, that wasn't a problem at all. People adored him and gladly went to him instead of the imperious Ministry.

But Salazar, wizarding murderers had no imagination! And his clients! He'd never met so many uninteresting, awkward, plain dumb people in his whole lifetime before he started his new career. How hard was it to think for oneself once in a while? Just because their husband was lying unconscious on the ground didn't mean he'd been hit with an Avada Kedavra. The curse may not leave any sign on the body, but checking for a pulse before running off to the closest private detective shouldn't have been too much to ask for.

And that spell was another reason for his boredom. Everybody used the Killing Curse. Had they no minds to think of more creative ways? Tom could name a hundred ways of murdering a person out of the top of his mind in only five minutes, so why should it be so hard for the rest of his common criminals?

Well, common and common. Not when he had this job, no, but it wasn't his only one. Oh no, Tom wouldn't do with just that. He enjoyed both occupations, and he needed them equally. Like drugs, but more healthy. Maybe not, though, on second thought. He might have to do a research about it…

"…le? Mr Riddle? Have you fallen asleep?"

Tom started slightly in his brown leather armchair, though he wouldn't admit to it if asked later. Dark Lo… no,consulting detectives were never startled.

He sent the plump little lady in the armchair across from him a dazzling smile that would make any woman low on sugar faint.

"Of course not. I was merely in deep thought, as I hope you understand. A lot of cases are brought to me concerning Death Eater raids as of lately, and there's much on my mind." An incline of his head showed his respect, though false, towards the woman. "Please accept my apology."

She blushed brightly, rather like red balloon in a child's hands, and gave a nervous huff. Tom was sure she would've giggled if she wasn't so strict.

"There's no need, I assure you. I understand perfectly well how much pressure must've been put on your shoulders", she said, a sympathetic look on her face that darkened as she continued. "It's all the bloody Ministry's fault. They don't do a thing to stop it, I say. Just sitting there on their arses in that big fancy building of theirs and keep making excuses about how they don't have the resources to fight You-Know-Who. Honestly! If this goes on much longer, we won't have a mermaid's chance in the desert against the Dark side. Bloody ridiculous!"

She was rather flustered by the end of her passionate speech; cheeks even more flushed and eyes shining with anger and fists clenched on the armrests, with her gaze fixed on something far away in a spot right over Tom's shoulder. Her breathing came out short and harsh and spittle that had flown out of her mouth shone like little pearls now on her neat black skirt.

"Really?" drawled Tom, sounding mildly interested. "I guess it is 'bloody ridiculous'."

The woman gasped, surprised, and snapped her eyes back to the famous private detective. Her mouth fell open as she realized she'd lost her composure in front of the man, and her cheeks flushed, if possible, even redder.

"I- I'm so-" she stuttered.

Tom offered a comforting smile. "Don't worry about it. Everybody deserves to speak their thoughts once in a while, no less such a charming woman as yourself."

Taking deep breaths, and nodding at his words, she calmed down rather quickly and sat straight once more. When she met Tom's gaze, though, she still blushed a little.

"Thank you, Mr Riddle."

"Let's not dwell on it, shall we," he suggested while crossing one leg over the other, placing one elbow on his knee and resting his chin upon his hand. "Now, tell me about your case, Miss…?"

She smiled at him, relieved, and said, "It's Arabella Figg, but you may call me Bella."

A smile tugged at the corners of Tom's mouth. He knew someone else who preferred being called Bella, but that was the only similarity. The Bella he knew wouldn't appreciate being compared to a commoner like Arabella Figg.

"I'd be delighted, Bella. So what's brought you here to ask for my assistance?"

Arabella appeared a bit put out when he didn't offer her to use his first name, but shook her head slightly and dove into her story. Tom, awaiting yet another tale about hexed tea pots or suspected dragons in gardens, was not expecting the words that came from the elderly woman's lips.

"There's been a series of mysterious murders in Muggle London. Terrible, it is, but as the muggle police - they're a bit like Aurors - has yet to-"

Tom had to interrupt her here. "Excuse me, madame?" he asked, almost incredulous.

Arabella nodded eagerly, scooting out on the edge of the chair in excitement. "Oh yes. Five dead bodies, they said on the news this morning, and all in the same area. Apparently one of them was an infamous drug dealer the police had been after for ages. That simply can't be a coincidence! The rest of them were all drunken homeless men, except this one-"

"Miss Figg, please!" exclaimed the handsome man, making her jump in her chair.

"What is the matter, Mr Riddle?" she asked, bewildered. She looked hurt from his raised voice, but obviously tried not to show it.

Tom sighed and rubbed his forehead. Another one! Well, what had he expected?

"I don't do muggle cases, Miss. I only take interest in magical crimes", he explained patiently, as if talking to a child.

Figg nodded, her distress gone. "But that's just it", she told him. "They're not muggle."

Stilling completely, the detective narrowed his eyes at the old woman sitting in his assistant's armchair, dressed in a short brown coat covered in cat fur. "You said they occurred in Muggle London. And as far as I know, only muggle drug dealers trade in Muggle London, not illegal potions dealers."

"Oh, well, you're right, of course. It all seems rather muggle", agreed Figg happily, like a school girl about to tell her friends the gossip of the year. She held up her wrinkled hand and held up one finger. "One was a muggle drug dealer." Three other fingers joined the first. "Three were homeless muggles, two with criminal records." The thumb represented the fifth victim. "And the last one was just this early morning. A finely dressed man identified as one Rufus Scrimgeour."

Tom did not gasp softly and his eyes did not widen. "And the method of murder?" he breathed, barely able to sit still after hearing the, apparently, dead Auror's name. He could barely believe his ears.

Arabella Figg grinned, showing off yellowed teeth in the most unattractive way, but the dark haired man simply couldn't bring himself to care anymore.

"The cops have no idea", said Arabella smugly. "There were no signs of how they died."

~/-\\~

Twelve hours earlier, Muggle London.

The alleyway lay dark and quiet when Auror Rufus Scrimgeour stumbled into its shadows. No, not Auror, he corrected himself. Head of Auror Office, that's what he was. And a great one, too. The best one in the latest four hundred years or so, at least. No one killed off disgusting Death Eaters like him. Not Shacklebolt or Moody or any of those other little buggers that tried to steal his place.

"No!" he growled to himself forcefully, and almost stumbled over an empty cardboard box. He glared at it, vision a little blurry thanks to the Firewhisky, and kicked it as hard as he could, promptly falling on his arse in the process.

Rufus groaned as the world spun and rested the back of his head against the cold hard ground. Shouldn't move too quickly. Bad idea, he noted to himself and struggled to sit up. The contents of his stomach rose happily in his throat at the opportunity of getting out, but Rufus swallowed stubbornly and squeezed his eyes shut.

It'd been a long night - far too long - and he was tired. Actually, on second thought, the pavement under him wasn't really that uncomfortable. Maybe he could take just one small nap...

Just as he was about to do that, his ears picked up on a sound in the dark; something akin to a snicker. Eyes snapping open, he peered into the alleyway, only to grumble frustratedly seconds later. Everything he saw was bloody swirls of black and darkness. The light from the street behind him didn't reach this far.

"Useless muggle lamps", he muttered and gave up on trying to see what had made the sound. It was probably just a muggle lying there, just as drunk as Rufus himself. Or it was nothing. Yeah, it was probably nothing...

Rufus didn't like muggles. Neither was he a racist, but non-magical people to him were like very big rocks. They didn't fulfil any use and were just plainly in the way, taking up more space than they were worth. Actually, muggles were worse than big rocks, because you could build houses with rocks. He imagined it'd be difficult to build anything with muggle bodies.

But just like big rocks, he didn't actually care about the muggles. Not like You-Known-Who did. That's why the dark wizard wanted to kill all of them; because he hated them. Rufus just very much disliked them.

Still, Rufus wasn't allowed to express his... mild disgust. Not out loud. If he did, he'd be sacked and his reputation would be ruined. And again, it was the muggles' fault, he reasoned. For if there hadn't been any muggles, he couldn't dislike them, now could he? There'd be no muggles to dislike! Hm, maybe the Dark Lord had a tiny point, after all...

It took a long while for the Head Auror to pull himself out of his drunken thoughts. Once he did, he had no idea of how long he'd been sitting there in the alley, just staring into the dark. Rufus frowned. He really must be extremely drunk. How had he even gotten himself into Muggle London in the first place? It had to be one of his colleagues' fault. They were always trying to get him fired.

Grumbling incoherent words about untrustworthy imbeciles and traitors that let him get too drunk, Rufus Scrimgeour struggled to his feet. When his knees felt too much like jelly, he leaned against a nearby container. He'd never been so thankful for something that contained garbage ever before.

Getting a brilliant idea, Rufus leaned over and pressed his heated forehead against the wonderfully cool lid of the container. He groaned loudly, but wrinkled his nose when he smelt his own breath against the plastic surface. Ugh.

He pulled out his wand, which had won many bloody and honourable battles, to clean his mouth of the vulgar stench of alcohol. He had just cast the spell, which possessed a soft baby blue light, when a gasp came from the shadows.

Rufus spun around, almost tripping over his own feet, with a sneer or his face. There were no doubts this time. He was sure he'd heard someone! However, the damn darkness revealed nothing, and the Auror growled as he pointed his wand at where he thought the sound had come from. If someone asked later, he'd deny that his hand was shaking. At the moment, he blamed the Firewhisky.

"Show yourself, muggle!" he demanded loudly. His voice was followed by a chilling silence echoed by the traffic of London at night. A weak wind passed through the narrow alley, rustling some plastic bags on its way and causing a shiver to run down the drunk wizard's spine. He squinted into the shadows. If he strained his ears, he could almost imagine he heard someone breathing. Yes, there was definitely a person over there.

Rufus growled - a low rumbling from deep within his chest - and took a threatening step towards the bastard.

"I said, SHOW YOURSELF!" he roared and slashed his wand through the air. The movement was immediately followed by an almost soundless moan and a thump as a body fell back against a wall. Rufus smirked darkly. Even under the influence of alcohol, he delivered the best non-verbal cutting curses. That'd put the muggle scum in place.

Breathing could be heard now. They sounded strained, like the person was in a lot of pain. Well, of course they were. They'd just been sliced open by a drunk Auror!

But said Auror started to feel troubled when he thought over his actions. Although he didn't exactly regret it, maybe cursing a muggle wasn't the best thing to do if you were a man with a reputation to uphold. And having the blood of a possibly innocent person on his hands didn't sound all that good either. From the sound of it, his victim wouldn't hold up much longer if he didn't do something soon.

Raking through his mind on knowledge about healing spells, he remembered a few that he'd learned during his Auror training. He was unsure, though, if they'd work on the gash he'd meant to create, since the spells were only supposed to work on shallow cuts and minor injuries.

Better than nothing, he muttered mentally as he made up his mind to give it a try. It's the damn muggle's fault anyway. Shouldn't sneak up on me like some creep. Don't they know who I am?

Rufus shook his head as if to clear it and held up his wand in front of him, crouching in front of the person.

"Lumos", he murmured at the same time as he scolded himself for not thinking about doing this earlier. He had to verbally utter the spell, since the cutting curse was only one of few he could cast silently. Oh well, he'd just have to Obliviate the muggle later so they wouldn't remember him using magic.

The darkness cleared to give way to the light erupting from the tip of his wand. Rufus looked down to see the frozen form of a boy sitting curled up against the wall with his legs drawn close to their body and arms wrapped around himself, all while blood oozed from a deep gash on his upper arm and shoulder. Rufus winced a slightly when he noticed how close to the heart he'd cut. That must've hurt.

"Hey", he called to get the other's attention. The boy had his head bowed so Rufus couldn't see his face. This frustrated him and he repeated himself with a louder voice. "Hey! Oh, for Merlin's sake... Don't tell me you're dead already."

The Auror knew that the boy was still alive, of course, because he was visibly breathing and trembling ever so slightly. That led to the man getting angry and he scowled deeply. Such disrespect! Here he was, trying to help, and the brat wouldn't even look at him.

"That's it, muggle. If you don't face me this second, I'm going to have to take to violence and it won't be pretty."

To other ears, his threat may have seemed strange since what he wanted was to heal the boy, not hurt him more. But that logic didn't strike Rufus as reasonable at that moment. He was sure there was some magical law stating that yes, Aurors were allowed to use violence if muggles didn't do as they were ordered to.

The boy, whom he guessed was a young teenager, didn't move one inch aside from taking deep breaths. Rufus' lips thinned in rage and he reached over with his wand-free hand and grabbed ebony black curls in a vicious grip. He pulled, hard, so that the head was forced up.

"Look here", he spat in his furious drunken state. "You do as I-"

He stopped then, for he couldn't continue. The words he was about to say got stuck in his throat and he felt his mouth go dry. Rufus' eyes went wide with horror as he looked into those of the boy beneath him. No, not a boy. Something else. Something awful. Something that wasn't human.

"What the-?"

Releasing the hair as if he'd been burned, the Auror scrambled away from the thing; so quickly he lost his balance and fell on his behind once again. But this time he barely noticed. All he saw was that.

In the dimming light of his Lumos, blood red eyes appeared to shine. Rufus couldn't look away. It was like it had nothing else on its face, because all he could look at was those eyes.

...Eyes that he'd only ever seen before on one particular Dark Lord.

The boy-like thing didn't say anything. It just looked at him. If there was emotion in the gaze or not, Rufus could not tell. To put it bluntly, he didn't care. All he cared about was getting away from it.

"What the fuck!?" he yelled, scrambling further away and trying to hold his wand steadily aimed at the same time.

Tilting his head to the side, the thing eyed him almost curiously. Rufus felt his breath catch in his throat and his heart beat like he had a heart attack. Curiosity was never a good thing when it came to dark things. Never.

From the now nearly extinguished light from his wand, the Auror watched the red-eyed creature slowly unfold its arms and starting to rise from its sitting position. Every movement seemed painful and took forever, but Rufus found he couldn't come up with a single curse to cast even as his panic grew.

Just when he thought it couldn't get worse, his back hit the opposite wall of the alley and he froze. Maybe it was the fear; maybe it was the alcohol slowing down his senses. It didn't matter what the reason was. Rufus was paralysed, rooted to the spot.

At this point, the thing was standing and leaning against its own wall, breathing nearly as heavily as the drunk man. A large dark stain was spreading alarmingly quickly over the fabric of his left shoulder. All Rufus could hope for was that the creature would pass out from the blood loss before it could do anything to him.

It was then that the Lumos finally went out completely and he was left staring blindly into the darkness, no longer able to see the thing. Of course, this did nothing to soothe his nerves. He gripped his wand tighter, knuckles whitening, and gasped for breath. He was panicking. He couldn't remember ever feeling so scared before in his entire life. If only he hadn't drunk so much tonight...

A rustle of clothes came from the shadows. Rufus' soles scraped against the pavement as he desperately tried to get further away. It never occurred to him that he could get up and run. All he could process was the creature he feared and the fact that he was close to pissing himself.

Another rustle, like fabric against fabric when someone walked. The Auror called out with a trembling voice, "D-don't come any closer! I'm warning you! Stay away you- you- freak!"

He was met by silence. Complete, utter, deafening, silence. He couldn't even make out breathing anymore, aside for his own. Not a single sound penetrated it. The cars in the distance seemed like nothing. In the end, there was only the sound of Rufus' racing heart.

And then he was seeing the creature again, accompanied by the crackling sound of a fire. But there was no fire, and that face didn't look exactly the same. The ghostly pale skin had a green shine to it, and the sick colour reflected in its red eyes. Those eyes that had been emotionless, but that now gleamed rage. A slender hand was raised in front of its chest, and between the delicate fingers danced a flickering green light that illuminated the almost handsome face.

If Rufus' eyes could've gone wider, they would've when he saw that image. No... it wasn't possible. Not wandlessly, non-verbally. It couldn't be...

He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw the creature's lips move and heard a voice saying softly,

"I'm not a freak."

And then there was nothing at all.

No one ever saw the flash of green light exploding from one of many dark alleys in London. The next morning, a man was found pressed up against the wall with a look of horror on his face and a tight grip on a strange stick. Alarming amounts of blood were also discovered, but there were no wounds on the body and no match was found when the blood was tested.

There was only the dead body of Rufus Scrimgeour, Head of the Auror Department. Hours later, there was also the very curious wizard detective known as Tom Riddle, lurking around in the shadows of the crime scene.

Hm.

Very curious, indeed.