Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's note:

Ok, I have made a few alterations; mainly to the time line amongst others; to this chapter and re posted it. I have also managed to correct the spelling of Lucius in the Prologue. Sorry about that, I blame my beta (ignoring the fact that I don't actually have one J ) Thanks once again to all the reviewers for these first two parts. 

Chapter One.

Eight years later….

Detective Inspector Harry James carefully lowered himself into his favourite chair with a groan and a soft sigh and picked up his glass of scotch from where he had temporarily set it on his coffee table before crossing the room to close his curtains against the orange glare from the streetlight outside the window. Kicking off his shoes he lifted his aching feet to set them on the table when he noticed the small red light on his answering machine blinking and reached out a hand to press the button; taking a sip of his drink while he waited for the mechanical and for some strange reason he had yet to work out, American accented, female voice to inform him that he had "One new message. Received today at twenty one oh four hundred hours."

There was a quiet beep and then Harry heard his girlfriend's angry voice fill the room. He cringed, suddenly remembering that he had promised to phone her.

"Harry? It's Elizabeth. Are you there?" There was a pause, followed by a sigh. "Fine. Ok, look, I didn't want to do this with a message but as you're no doubt still out working like some bloody obsessive……" Another sigh. "I'm sorry Harry but I don't think that this is working. I can't keep trying to compete with you're job and there's this guy at work, Mike….." She trailed off. "So, anyway. I'm sorry but it's…it's for the best. Just….take care of yourself. Ok?"

Another small beep then silence.

Harry sat staring absently at his answering machine and wondered if maybe he should be more bothered by this turn of events before quietly acknowledging that perhaps it wasn't wholly unexpected. He raised his glass to his lips and drained it in a gulp, gasping slightly as the burning liquid hit the back of his throat. Another one bites the dust he thought wryly to himself re-filling his glass from the bottle of Glenfiddich that he'd sat by the side of his chair so it would be near at hand. He lifted the glass in a silent salute before draining it again and glanced around his sparse sitting room. Elizabeth was the third in six months, which he thought, must be a record. At least she had left a message; as he picked up the bottle once more his now slightly fuzzy mind reminded him that Kate had sent a friend with a note.

As he ran Elizabeth's message over again in his head, had she ever mentioned a Mike before? Harry tried to remember why he'd decided that his attempts at relationships were worth the trouble, when they always seemed to fail so spectacularly. Maybe it was the fact that his small flat always seemed so much more cold and lonely when he was on his own; or maybe it was because a warm body pressed against his own during the long nights helped keep away the nightmares of flashing lights, loud bangs and terrified screams that he could never remember clearly when he woke sweating and shaking, but which still left him with feelings of terror and despair firmly lodged in the pit of his stomach. Maybe it was both. But he was on his own once again now and tonight all he had for company was the bottle of whisky, half a cold 'veggie supreme' pizza he'd had delivered from Dominoe's last night – when he'd forgotten to meet Elizabeth for dinner – and the television.

Running his hand through his short, dark hair, thereby making it stick up even worse than usual, he dished out the remote control from where it seemed to be perpetually lodged between the cushion and the side of the chair and switched on the TV. As he did so he pressed the once more re-filled glass to his forehead in a futile attempt to sooth the burning ache that never seemed to go away; which was always worse when he was tired and which seemed to emanate from the strange lightening bolt shaped scar.

Harry wasn't sure when or where he had got the scar but he had always assumed that it must have been in the accident where he had also lost his memory. When he had awoken scared and confused in Cambridge's Addenbrookes hospital the doctors had told him, according to the eye-witness reports, that he had simply stepped off the grass verge and straight into the path of a van. When the emergency services had reached him, he had had no form of identification or anything else on him apart from a broken stick clutched in his right hand and a torn piece of paper with Harry James written on it, which they'd taken to be his name, in his left. Despite hours of questioning and prodding however, Harry, had not been able to say why he had done such a thing or even what he might have been doing on the side of the road in the first place as could not remember anything from before he'd woken up in that hospital room eight years ago now, not his age, not if he had got any family or friends – he assumed not as no-one had ever come looking for him and the police had found no missing persons reports – nothing. After six months of trying everything they could think of, with no success the doctors had sent him away with the dubious reassurance that he could get his memories back any day and, as they had estimated that he was about seventeen years old, the prospectus of the local college and the address of a hostel.

Shortly afterwards, Harry had got a job in a local supermarket, put himself through night school and miraculously, university, before joining the police and moving to Oxford. Harry was naturally good at his job; so good in fact that he had just been promoted to DI after only four years, a remarkable achievement but he knew he had a tendency to get caught up in whichever case he was working on and his personal life suffered for it.

The theme music for the local news caught his attention and Harry tried to focus his gaze on the television where the news reader was talking, looking appropriately sombre.

"Tonight's main story. Early this morning a man's body was found just outside of the Forest Hill area in South Oxfordshire. The man, said to be in his early twenties was discovered on the side of the B4027 by a local resident out walking her dog. Police sources say that so far no identification of the body has been possible but that a murder investigation is currently underway and so far the police are denying that there is any connection to the three other murders of two men and one woman that have occurred in the area during the last two months. "

Harry groaned and switched the TV off again, he had spent all day working on the case in question, since he had received the phone call about the discovery at 6:15 that morning and they were still no closer to working out who the man was. They only thing they could be certain of was the fact that the four murders the news had mentioned were, indeed connected. All the bodies bore the same mark, gruesomely etched onto the chest. A skull, with what appeared to Harry to be a snake coming out of its mouth. Harry sighed suddenly exhausted and pinching the bridge of his nose closed his eyes. He only meant to rest a moment but when he opened his eyes again it was to find sunlight creeping into the room through the small gap in the closed curtains.

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Scowling fiercely Severus Snape shuffled through the numerous rolls of parchment that were currently littering his desk and tried to remember again why he had agreed to take the position of Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry in the first place. Grumbling silently to himself he lifted his wand to incinerate the latest letter from the Ministry of Magic asking his opinion on the idea of introducing speed limits for broomsticks – a preposterously stupid idea – but before he could even open his mouth to voice the necessary incantation a shimmering silver mist appeared in front of his desk, his own addition to the various charms in place in the immediate vicinity of the office, announcing the arrival of a visitor to his office.

Glancing up he could not prevent his scowl from deepening even further when the mist showed him the image of Sirius Black giving the current password – "Monkswood" – to the stone gargoyle which still guarded the staircase leading up to his office. Fixing his most threatening glare on the door he waited for the sharp knock, barking a curt "Come in Black!" when it sounded.

The door opened slowly to admit an extremely grim and agitated looking Sirius who crossed the room in three long strides and thrust his arm out brandishing copies of several newspapers towards Snape.

"Read the papers this morning?" he asked.

" No." Snape answered through gritted teeth, taking the proffered papers from Sirius who immediately threw himself, uninvited, into one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs facing Snape's desk. Ignoring both the other man and his own murderous impulses for the time being Snape turned his attention to the front page of the Daily Prophet and blanched slightly as his eyes settled on the glaring headline.

3 GO MISSING

Fears of Dark Activity.

Reporter: Mavis Phillips.

"Yesterday the Daily Prophet received reports that a further three wizards seemingly vanished into thina ir late Monday evening and haven't been heard from since. The three in question, who cannot be named have no obvious personal connections, only that they are all muggle-born wizards who studied at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizadry at the same time as the still missing and presumed dead Harry Potter….."

Snape glanced briefly up at Sirius but the other man's face was blank of all emotion, though his knuckles were white where his hands were gripping the arms of the chair. Snape turned back to the paper.

"…..These are the latest in an increasing series of mysterious disappearances of muggle-born witches and wizards the likes of which haven't been in since He-who-mustt-not-be-named was at the height of his powers over eight years ago.,,,"

Having read enough Snape threw the Prophet aside to see that the other papers Sirius had given him were all Muggle ones and that they all bore similar headlines. He glanced through them.

"MYSTERIOUS BODY FOUND IN WOODS"

"UNIDENTIFIED MAN DISCOVERED ON ROADSIDE"

"PUBLIC FEAR GROWS AS POLICE INVESTIGATE FOURTH MURDER IN TWO MONTHS"

Snape sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes slumping back in his chair. "Bugger."

"It's getting worse. The muggles are noticing." Sirius' voice was quiet.

"I know. I can read Black". Snape snapped, for once unfairly taking his increasing bad mood out on Sirius. He waited for a retort and was surprised when none was forthcoming. He sighed again. "I think they're supposed to though." He mused.

"What do you mean?" Snape shrugged.

"I'm not sure yet. Have you managed to find out anything useful?"

Sirius looked up. " Not much, no. I did manage to follow Crabbe to an abandoned building last night but he must have apparated or used a port key because when I finally managed to get inside there was no sign of anyone and no-one came back either. He wasn't the only one to go there though, I picked up five different scents."

Snape allowed his lip to curl up in distaste at the reminder of Sirius' animagus form, he had never been overly fond of dogs. The fact that this man could turn into one only managed to heighten his dislike even further.

"You should go back tonight. See if you can find out where they're going."

"I'd planned to."

 There was a moment of silence and then Sirius cleared his throat,

"Do you think…." He paused again and Snape could see he was trying to collect his thoughts. "Do you think there's anything in what the Prophet says? The connection to Harry I mean?"

 There was an uncomfortable pause. Through the long years of the war leading up to the final defeat of Voldemort and the imprisonment or death of many of the most prominent Death Eaters the two men had managed to develop a somewhat cordial working relationship. Despite this though neither of them had ever been able to completely let go of their mutual animosity forged over decades; their stilted conversations never usually made it past business and occasionally forced pleasantries and it made those odd occasions such as this one all that more difficult for Snape, not known as the most sympathetic of souls in normal circumstances, who now stared at Sirius thoughtfully for several moments whilst he tried to think of what he could possibly say that he, and others, had not already said to Sirius countless times since Harry Potter's simultaneous victory and consequent mysterious disappearance.

" I don't think so. Coincidence." Sirius grunted, his eyes not meeting Snape's.

"Look, Black. It's been eight years. We would have heard something….there would have been a sighting by now if…." He trailed off as Sirius quickly got to his feet, scraping his chair back noisily.

"I should go. I told Remus I'd drop in on him before I went out again. I'll bring you a report as soon as I know more." With that he turned on his heel and left the office. Snape watched him go without a word. He sighed. In the eight years since Potter's disappearance he had had to watch the man go from a loving, jovial personality into little more than a walking, talking, barely breathing shell and as much as he may still dislike the man he could not help but be bothered by it. If it was left up to him and him alone, he would take the animagus away from any kind of physical or surveillance work, but Sirius was adamant that he wanted to keep battling any remaining dark forces and Snape was sure that it was only the other man's conviction that Harry was being held somewhere and that one day he would find him that kept Sirius alive from one day to the next. As much as Snape may not like the man, even he could not bring himself to take that away.

He turned back to the papers on his desk. "Bloody Potter."

TO BE CONTINUED**********