The Halloween Case

By all available evidence, Frank Doubleday's last weeks on earth were hellish ones.

Two months previously, he was loitering on Platform 9 3/4s while the students were packing onto the train merrily, anticipating their new school year. As the train began to gather steam to chug off to Hogwarts, Doubleday seemed to leap onto the tracks in front of it. Quick reflexes from the crowd of parents saved him, their magic plucking him from the air and bouncing him back to safety. Shaken and sweating, he babbled something about slipping and thanked them all before running off.

Neville and Hannah Longbottom reported that since then, Doubleday had run up a considerable tab at the Leaky Cauldron. Hannah was quick to point out, however, that while Frank was a quiet, mournful kind of fellow, he always paid up within the week and never caused any ruckus. He just drank, steadily and quietly, as though he had been waiting all day for relief and was determined to have it now. As the weeks past, he started showing up earlier and earlier in the day.

On October 3rd, St. Mungo's records showed him as being treated him for an overdose of the Draught of the Living Death. The Healers had noted that if they'd been a half-hour slower with administering the Wiggenweld potion, or if Doubleday's dosage had been a quarter ounce more, he would never have awakened. Doubleday had claimed it was a potion brewing accident.

On October 31st, the day where the dead are said to walk among the living, Frank Doubleday wandered from the various parties being thrown at Knockturn and Diagon, hardly talking to anyone. The next morning his landlord, smelling something nauseous from within Doubleday's flat, let himself in and discovered the body.

Poison. Judging by the fumes, he had taken Etruscan Mercyweed. It was neither tasteless nor odorless and it took up to ten minutes for the effects to set in, so Mercyweed was not widely used in assassination. It was barely regulated since it was a necessary component in several household potions.

"What are we thinking?" asked Harry Potter. The Auror team was in the depths of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, where the bodies were interned before being released to their loved ones. Harry was filling out the paperwork on the death, because he had lost the coin toss against Ron and neither trusted the two rookies to fill out the forms without making small errors that would keep them there longer. Harry scribbled his quill across the parchment quickly and efficiently, with better penmanship than he'd shown in school.

The victim was short and stout, but didn't cross the line to actually being fat. His haircut was conservative- a respectable low fade on the sides and long and wavy on top. It would pass without comment among muggles or wizards. He was still in his blue striped pajamas as he lay still on the smooth stone slab.

"Suicide," said Harry Devereaux.

"I'm going to go with suicide," said Samantha Brand.

Ron Weasley shook his head. "Murder."

Three people looked at him cross-eyed. The fourth, the man on the slab, did not.

"How do you figure, mate?" asked Harry.

"Suicidal guy, right? History of self-destructive acts. Depression, alcoholism. Chooses to off himself on Halloween. So he drinks poison and waits for the end, alone in his room, alone in the world. Right?" Ron said.

"Err..." said Devereaux.

"So where's the bottle?" Ron asked. "We searched his flat up and down, like we always do. Where's the bottle the Mercyweed came in, huh?"

The other three Aurors stared. Devereaux swore softly.

Sam said, "He could have Vanished it after drinking."

"We checked his wand," Harry said. "The last spell he cast was Lumos. No Vanishings in the 48 hours before his death."

Ron quirked a small smile. This job wasn't nearly as much fun as he'd thought it would be, but there was still some joy to be had in spotting something everyone else missed.

Harry muttered something to himself before slapping the parchment on the desk and standing up. Ron knew he'd had a night out planned with Ginny. It looked like it was going to be postponed. Again.

"Alright, this case just got bumped from depressing to suspicious," Harry said. Ron's smile widened. He always liked watching Harry puff up into his leader stance. "Sam. Start on his backtrail again. Find and interview everyone who Doubleday talked to since he fell in front of the Hogwarts Express. Friends, coworkers, family. You understood?"

Sam nodded and Disapparated with a small pop.

"Devereaux, go back to his flat. Scour that building from basement to chimney. Find that bottle. Failing that, find anything that looks out of place. Something missing that ought to be there, something present that shouldn't. Particularly something that indicates someone else was there when he died. Once you're done there, hit up every potion vendor in the country. Find out who sold him the Mercyweed."

Devereaux nodded and Disapparated.

"What about us?" asked Ron.

Harry shrugged. "Paperwork, mate. Possible murder takes up more parchment than a sure suicide."

"Oh. I should have kept my bloody mouth shut."

Facts came trickling in, like they usually did in these situations.

First and worst, Devereaux confirmed the absence of any bottle in or near Doubleday's flat. This meant they'd probably have to come in on their weekends to solve the case. Devereaux also found that no licensed potion seller remembered selling Mercyweed to Doubleday, even after being given a picture of the deceased to examine and a time frame to focus on.

That was a warning bell. Harry's face got grimmer as Devereaux gave his report. The possibility of murder had come close to slipping past him.

No one at the Goblin Affairs desk where Doubleday worked had noticed any significant changes in him. No one saw any signs of sadness of depression. His supervisor had been shocked when Sam informed him of Doubleday's drinking. He was just one of those guys who inhabited the background of any scene you put him in- no close friends or lovers. He stopped short of being antisocial by being vaguely friendly in all his interactions, but things never developed past that.

His mother had died while he was still in Hogwarts, his father was a Muggle who lived away from the magical world. Doubleday used his holidays to visit him four times a year.

In contrast to Harry's increased suspicions, Ron was less and less sure that it was murder. By all signs, Doubleday was a midlife crisis waiting to happen. Maybe Doubleday had bought the bottle of Mercyweed ten years ago and put it in a cupboard and forgot all about it, then found it again that Halloween night. There might be some totally innocuous reason why the bottle was missing. Weirder things had happened.

The week passed slowly, grindingly, with no progress in any direction. Pressure came from the higher ups to stop wasting time on an obvious suicide and close the case. The week after that Harry closed it, ruling suicide. He didn't like it, but he did it. There were other fires to put out- Romanian smuggling rings, muggle baiting in Devonshire, Dark Mark graffiti in Knockturn Alley. He couldn't justify pursuing a stillborn case when manpower was needed elsewhere.

But Ron couldn't forget so easy. Something about the case stuck with him even as he directed his attention elsewhere. Perhaps it was the victim, who seemed to have lived such an unhappy life. Frank Doubleday had survived two wizarding wars and had landed in an insignificant job at a sideshow department. No friends and no close family. Ron had needed to earn his happy ending, and it hurt a little to imagine beating Voldemort and going home alone to live without Hermione and Harry and Ginny and his Mum and Dad...

Doubleday deserved justice. Assuming he had been murdered. Which he probably hadn't been.

But the case stuck with him.

It was a chance comment on Christmas Eve that did it.

He and Hermione were getting ready for a ball, a charity fundraiser she had organized in support of house elf liberation. She was stunning, as always. He was slightly unkempt, as always, and she was doing minor fix ups on him before setting out. Years of near poverty had left him without the proper instincts for proper dressing, at least by ballroom standards. Hermione seemed to have a knack for it.

She said, "Your Trimming spell is off, Ron, turn around and I'll get it."

"Hmm?" he grunted.

"The back of your hair," she said, halfway to exasperation. "The lines are crooked. I said you should have gone to see a professional hair stylist. I know you couldn't care less, and honestly, I couldn't care less either, but there's going to be a lot of important potential donors who probably do." She fixed it waved a twitch of her wand.

Ron froze. He spun on a heel and strode to the nearest mirror near the front door and stared at his reflection.

"Ron?"

He imagined himself with a low fade on the sides and long, wavy hair up top. He imagined needing to maintain that hair to blend in with muggles and wizards alike for when his holidays got closer.

"Ron? What's wrong?"

"The lines were crooked," he said. He could barely hear himself, like in a dream. "I couldn't see the back of my head to get the spell right."

"I took care of it already, Ron."

"Professional hair stylist," he said. "No one realized he was a depressed drunk because- oh, you sneaky son of a-" Ron realized Hermione was staring at him and stopped. He smiled bashfully, his cheeks blazing bright red.

Hermione cocked an eyebrow. "Are you alright?"

"Yes." It could wait till tomorrow. It wasn't Hogwarts anymore, where they felt the need to hare off the second they found a vital clue to a mystery. This ball could finance the end of the worst sentient rights violation in the world today, as Hermione had reminded him so often. Hermione would forgive him if he left now, but he had learned that one of the tricks to good marriages is to not intentionally do things that require forgiveness. "Yes. I just realized something, that's all. Work related. Come on, love, we'll be running late soon."

During the party Ron smiled when prompted and shook hands when prompted and made charming small talk when prompted. But underneath it all he was, like a general mapping out an invasion, planning how best to find the murderer. For her part, Hermione raised enough money that night to give every house elf in Magical Britain a golden wardrobe.

It was a lovely evening, over all.

It didn't take long. It rarely did, once you knew what you're looking for.

A simple trip to the records room allowed Ron to cross reference every licensed hair stylist with every known or suspected Dark wizard. That led to one Wallace McFormic, who, after the second war with Voldemort, had been convicted of selling information about Muggleborn refugees to Snatchers. An anonymous tip off had led to his arrest. He had been released from prison a year earlier and resumed his trade as a hairdresser in the more fashionable sections of Diagon Alley.

Once you had a name to work with you could find out almost everything. Like how Wallace McFormic had graduated with Frank Doubleday back in 1975. How none of his coworkers knew what he had been up to in the two month span between September and Halloween, when he had ceased almost all social contact with them. How he had no alibi for Halloween night. How he'd scored Outstanding on his potions exam at Hogwarts.

"We should have seen it sooner," Ron said. "Of all people, we had the least excuse." Harry and he were watching the records of McFormic's interrogation in the Pensieve. They were almost at the part where McFormic broke down in tears and confessed everything.

"He ruined me!" cried McFormic. "He ruined my life! And he thought I didn't know. He thought he had covered his tracks so well. He was the only one who would have finked on me. And then he had the gall to patronize me for haircuts! So he could visit his filthy Muggle father! He thought he was being so generous. 'Giving me a helping hand,' he called it, since I had just gotten out of prison. Like I needed his bloody charity. The filthy Mudblood should have killed himself, would have killed himself if he had the least bit of self-respect." McFormic started sobbing. He knew where he heading next, because he had done it before.

Harry Potter nodded, his face cold and stony. Ron knew he was blaming himself bitterly for almost letting McFormic escape. Ron decided then and there to tell Ginny about the Halloween case, so she could smack Harry upside the head with common sense in next day or two. Otherwise his black mood might last for months.

"Polyjuice potion," Harry said. "Bloody genius."

"You save up a man's cut hair," Ron said, staring at the memory of the murderer. "You brew it up and go out in his skin. You start creating a story weeks in advance."

"You charm yourself safe and fake a suicide attempt at King's Crossing."

"You run up a tab in his name to make him look like a drunken sot."

"You measure how much Draught of the Living Death it would take to scare the Healers but still leave you alive."

"And then, on Halloween night, you feed the victim Mercyweed at wand point."

Harry shook his head. "And he would have gotten away with it, except he slipped the bottle into his pocket afterwards."

"Force of habit, I guess." Ron shrugged. "Cleaning up after yourself after you commit a crime. Taking away anything that you brought with you. I dunno. Wish Doubleday would have put his name on the report that sunk McFormic the first time around. Might have sped up the process a bit."

"You remember back then. No one was sure at first that Voldemort wasn't coming back for thirds. I guess he didn't want a paper trail catching up to him later."

"Well, I'm not blaming him."

Grey-blurred Aurors took Wallace McFormic away from the interrogation room, animated metal twisting around his wrists. They could still hear the echoes of McFormic's screams and curses as they exited the Pensieve.

"It's kind of appropriate, though," Harry mused. "A false-faced murderer on Halloween. You have to wonder if he planned it that way."

"The only thing I wonder is when that war will come to an end," Ron said.