Prologue
A man walked. 11 inches. Holly. Phoenix feather.
Rain, and with it an oppressive chill, dominated the scene, pattering lightly on awnings of dingy motels. Alleyways reached out with shadowy arms to invite the dismal and lonely. Thunder threatened but did not give way to lightning. Cab horns rhythmically blared as if on timers.
And onward he walked.
His blank face betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Stomach purposely empty. Palm wrapped around his pocketed wand.
The letter was expected. He recalled its patient hovering outside the office door. He had opened it after finishing the first coffee of the week, black save for a solitary scoop of sugar. Its contents, disturbing though they were, were also not wholly unexpected. A team was already assigned to this case; it was not unreasonable to expect a case report. What was unexpected was the following patronus requesting his personal attention to the matter.
He walked until he reached a seedy corner store, which he paused at, as if pausing a walk would somehow enable his memory to produce directions. It did, after a moment. He banked a right down a sidestreet. Industrial feel.
20 meters down and the fog revealed, to his eyes, the haze of a concealment charm. The building on his left rose five stories, windows boarded, glass broken, or wrapped-anything besides intact. The loading dock entrance was already opened to him. No flashing of badges necessary for the head of the department. Boot met him as he climbed the ramp. 12 and ¼ inches. Willow. Unicorn hair.
"This one's weird."
Despite his status as a former Ravenclaw, he had an unfortunate tendency to state the obvious.
"What's wrong?"
Boot's head jerked to gesture behind him. They walked further into the decrepit factory, around towering crates and boxes, pulleys and levers, ladders and forklifts, until they reached the room the team had set up with their photographs and numbered cones across the cracked concrete floor.
Brocklehurst leaned over the table, one hand pressed firmly into the hard plastic, fingers splayed, the other flicking a notepad held by its corner. 10 and ½ inches. Alder. Phoenix feather. She puffed her dark bangs away from her face. In her excessively quick speech, she began:
"Sorry you had to come down here, but I just found something absolutely ungodly and I really think you'll want to take this case on yourself."
"I didn't know it was that unusual."
Brocklehurst puffed again, possibly wishing she were puffing something other than air. "Hence the patronus. The letter was premature. But look at this bull." She tucked her camera, dangling around her lean neck, across her shoulder to hang at her back and brusquely handed over a photograph. "Just took that. Don't smudge it. Already sent the damn thing off with Fredricks."
Harry glanced down his nose. It was a close up of a man's arm, or the remains of one anyway. The whole corpse had been brutalized, barbed wire slashes cut through pale skin. While gruesome, it was not entirely unexpected. They knew this killer was bloody. The disturbing part? A dark mark had been carved out of the flesh of the arm. Filling its place, like a surgically implanted puzzle piece, nestled a piece of wood.
"Is that?"
"We think so."
"The rest of it?"
Grim silence. One beat, two, five, twelve.
"Send a letter to Ollivander immediately."