Flick.

Flick.

Flicker of celluloid.

Image after image, the same cut and mangled corpse in each closer or further away. Blood or covered, none of it mattered.

"Why couldn't they use a time-turner?"

Click.

The light faded from the wall in the blink of an eye like magic. X almost hugged the warm machine as he shut it down and then dragged the large device over to a paper burdened corner of the room.

"Brilliant deduction, Harry, except not everyone has Wall Street money to obtain them." He turned to look at Harry's smiled wiped clean off his face. "Least of all a thirteen year old child attending school."

Hermoine did.

"What about her ghost?"

"Ghost? What do you mean?"

"There's ghosts all over Hogwarts."

"To create a ghost is as difficult as a dinosaur is to fossilize. Do you know how many dinosaurs this world will never know about because they simply didn't die in the right conditions to turn to calcify?"

X pocketed his hands and leaned against the stacks of folders behind him to stare into Harry's eyes like Lupin once did when he was about to scold him.

"Tell me, Harry, before I share the report with you, and solely based on the images alone, what do think happened?"

"A student was murdered."

"Simple deduction, sure, but by what means? You're an Auror, you've dealt with dark wizards before."

"Sectumsempra?"

"Sectumsempra?"

"It's a spell to cut your opponent."

X pressed his lips together and peeled from the stacks to meet Harry at his desk. On it, atop the small pile of papers and a damp coffee stain that pooled beneath his mug, X pulled out a manilla folder and pressed it to Harry's chest.

"I'm no wizard, Harry." X relinquished the folder once Harry took hold of it. "I think the word some in the ministry like to use is Squib."

"The student?"

"No, the student in this file is very much a witch, but she wasn't killed with a spell. This is a human death, but human means."

"What's the difference?"

"Means there's another student willing to kill someone with their bare hands." He added, "wands are elegant, Harry, and very impersonal. Anyone can cast the killing curse, but not everyone can hold a knife to someone's throat and do it themselves."

Harry froze. He hadn't really thought of something like that. Sure, Voldemort would be more than willing, and probably even Bellatrix LeStrange, but even still, up to this point all of the violence he'd encounter in the Wizarding world had all been produced at the end of a wand. He had almost forgotten the feeling of another person capable of inflicting pain personally on another, he should have, given his years under the staircase.

"How do we solve this?" Harry was ready to move forward.

"Ever been to Wales, Harry?" He stopped him to add, "the place, not the animal."

"I figured. Yes."

"Good, then that's where we'll start."

X checked his watch and grabbed the mug of coffee in haste, the stains left behind being his only trace the room had been occupied that day. He moved for the door to Harry's confusion. He expected to use a spell and they'd be off, so when he voiced up, X opened the door for him and smiled.

"Meet me at the train station, bright an early tomorrow. Six sharp."

"We're taking a train?"

"How do you expect me to get there? You're a wizard, Harry, I'm not. That, and I like the ride."

X waited for his new partner to exit. Once out into the unkept hallway, the door was locked with a key behind them.

No spell.

No need.