Harry Potter and the Elixir of Life
Hello there, this is the sequel to my first story, 'HP and the Heritage of the Snake'. You don't have to read that one to understand this one, but there may be spoilers waiting for you if you don't. You were warned... obviously I don't own Harry Potter or anything related to the books and films. Otherwise I'd be as rich as a Malfoy, which I'm not. What a pity. So...hope you enjoy this one. If you do, please a review. If you don't, tell me why ;)
A corpse for breakfast
Harry Potter was in a very bad mood when Savage finally brought him his coffee, and there were several reasons for this bad mood. First, the two weeks of vacation after the end of his schooling and the late get-up associated with it had been enough to make quite a morning muffle out of him. Second, he had to spend the night without Ginny, as Molly had recently made them both a huge scene because their daughter had spent so many nights at Grimmauld Place. And thirdly, Savage and he were the only two Aurors present in the office that Tuesday morning. Ron and Paula Zeas had been given a new case and were somewhere in Wiltshire to catch an illegal dueling club, and everyone else, including the other junior aurors (Neville, Susan and Ernie) were after a dementor attack in Edinburgh. Only Harry and his trainer and partner Savage had to stay here "if there is a second emergency" (Proudfoot's words) and had been busy working through a plethora of paperwork for two hours. Since it had been absolutely quiet in recent weeks, the probability of a second emergency was about as great as the championship of the Chudley Cannons in the British Quidditch League. Not that Harry wanted something bad to happen - but he had to get out of this office and get into the fresh air.
"Here, Potter," Savage said, handing him his coffee.
"Thank you," Harry muttered.
He had been quite relieved when Proudfoot assigned him to Savage because he had worked well with him last year and he got along very well with him. Savage also seemed content, although all the reporters were questioning him permanently to find out what it was like to work with the famous Harry Potter.
Savage pulled a file from the stack on his desk, took a quick glance, and then groaned in disgust.
'So honestly, what some people think-''
Harry should never know what exactly some people might think, because at that moment a bright red paper plane came into the office and clapped against Savage's forehead.
"Well," Savage growled, folding the memo apart. "Just when I'm about to suggest what breakfast to take..."
His eyes flew over the memo and he jumped up.
"Finally, the boredom's over, Potter. A dead man in a library in Devon."
"Homicide?", asked Harry as he hurriedly took his jacket and camera.
"Probably," Savage said, walking with long steps over to the elevator. 'The muggles say there's no evidence of murder, but the whole shop is ramshackle and witnesses have seen a flash of green light.'
Harry frowned. "How do we even know about it?"
-"We have people at the – what's it called - Pliece-"
-"Police," Harry hastily corrected.
"Yes exactly- a lot of squibs work there, and they let us know if something looks suspicious. You grew up with Muggles, didn't you?"
-"Hmm," Harry growled.
"Well, then you're not going to spill the beans. What is the standard procedure for such a situation?", added Savage in a schoolmasterly tone.
"Question the muggles, get rid of everyone at the crime scene, photograph everything, in case someone has seen something they shouldn't see change memories," he prayed down calmly, as Dawlish and the other instructors from the Auror Academy had told them last Wednesday.
"Right, Potter. The motto is: talk little, listen a lot."
They reached the atrium and walked over to the exits, immediately being attacked by a group of reporters. Harry had bought the Day Prophet and thus it kept quiet, but there were enough other newspapers that were very interested in his private life.
"Harry, is it true that you and Miss Weasley have separated?"
'Why aren't you in Edinburgh? Are you afraid of the dementors?"
"How do you like working with Potter, Auror Savage?"
Harry and Savage left the ministry without saying a word and arrived in Devon shorty afterwards.
The crime scene, a library, was located in a quiet corner of Devon, between houses and small shops. Butterby's Books stood in large, green letters above the entrance to the library, in front of which it was teeming with policemen and onlookers. Harry followed Savage to the door, in front of which stood an extremely corpulent, bald policeman who looked suspiciously at them.
"Savage and Potter, special unit," Savage said, holding out an empty business card to the policeman. The man's eyes briefly misted and then became clear again. "Who is in charge here?"
"Winchester, sir," the policeman said, waving them through.
In the library it smelled of books, blood and death. Harry bit his teeth and looked over to the pair of shoes looking out behind the counter. Two women were busy taking pictures while a stone-aged commissioner scoured the papers on the counter. When they came in, he turned around in confusion.
"Who are you?"
"Savage and Potter, Special Unit," Savage said, holding up his "ID card" again. "What do we have here?"
"Douglas Butterby, the owner," Winchester said grimly. "Dead, although we don't know why. Witnesses heard a gunshot and called us, but no one came out of here. Butterby also owns the apartment above the store, he took over the library from his mother years ago. Quiet man, has never made trouble. The cash register has not been touched, so it was not a robbery."
"We heard someone had seen green light," Savage said.
Winchester shrugged. "Red and green light, sir, no idea where that came from."
-"Have you found anything unusual?"
-"Yes," Winchester growled, pulling a plastic bag from the inside of his jacket. "This piece of wood here. No idea what this is supposed to be."
Savage nodded earnestly and swung his magic wand. "We are taking over the case, Mr Winchester. Your people can pack up and leave everything that has to do with the case here."
Winchester nodded as if it was perfectly normal for two members of some special unit unit to show up at his crime scene and take the case away from him. He and his two colleagues left everything standing and lying, including the two cameras, and went out.
"What do you think, Potter?" asked Savage, after everyone had left and he had muttered "Repello Muggletum."
"There was a fight here, that explains the red and green light," Harry said, as if shot from the gun, as he began photographing every corner of the room.
Savage deleted the images on the two cameras.
"And the shot that the witnesses heard?"
"Someone disapparated", Harry said with a frown. "The only question is whose wand this is." He nodded over to Butterby's feet. "His maybe?"
They walked around the counter to see the victim. Douglas Butterby was a middle-aged man with a lot of beard and little hair. His eyes were wide open.
Savage pointed his wand at him and spoke the usual diagnostic spells.
"The killing curse," he said succinctly. "Time of death an hour ago. What does this wand say?"
Harry took the wand out of the plastic bag and pointed his own at it.
"Prior Incantato."
The image of a boiling teapot appeared, then more household magic. Savage snorted.
"A heating spell. In any case, this is not the magic wand of the perpetrator."
-"So it's Butterby's?"
-"Maybe," Savage growled, looking around. "But for me, this looks like a normal muggle business. Let's check."
They walked through the door behind the counter leading into a small hallway. A staircase led up, another door led to a storage room where there were other books.
"All muggle literature," Harry confirmed after he opened some of the books.
Upstairs was Butterby's small apartment: kitchen, a small living room, bathroom and bedroom. Everything was quite tidy and normal.
"There's no sign that a wizard lived here," Savage said, looking at the pictures on the kitchen wall that didn't move. Most showed Butterby with an older woman who had probably been his mother.
"No pictures of the father," Harry remarked.
Savage nodded slowly. "Looks like it."
"Maybe the father is a wizard," Harry said slowly. "And he left..."
"Don't make hasty conclusions, Potter," Savage growled. "For now, all we know is that a Muggle bookseller was murdered by a wizard. What are our next steps?"
-"Change the memories of police men and witnesses."
-"I'll do that. And?"
Harry held up the wand they had found. "Finding out who owns this one in the ministry – it should be registered if it wasn't made illegally. If we can't get on with it, ask the wizarding families nearby if they know anything about Butterby, and check the missing persons reports if there was anyone else the perpetrator was looking for."
"Good," Savage said contentedly. "We have two options: either someone wanted to teach Butterby a lesson and decided to kill him after the shockers - or a second person was here who fought with the other. Then Butterby was perhaps only in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught in the crossfire. So then, Potter. Your first real case is directly a homicide. Let's see if we can solve it."
Back at the ministry, Savage drove straight up to the office to inform Proudfoot, while Harry walked over to the security wizard stationed in the atrium.
"Morning, Eric," he said, pulling the wand from the crime scene out of his pocket.
"Morning," the man muttered, without looking up from the morning edition of his Daily Prophet. "TORNADOS SIGN VIKTOR KRUM" was written big and wide on the front page – the dementor attack and this murder had only happened after the editorial deadline. Harry was pretty sure that the Krum transfer would have made the front page anyway and wondered with a smile if Ron had already heard about it. He put the wand on the counter, Eric took it and laid it on the scale in front of him, which spat out a piece of paper.
"Twelve and a half inches, elm and unicorn hair, is that cor-"
The security wizard broke off when he looked up briefly and noticed who he was talking to.
"Thank you, Eric," Harry said succinctly, taking the piece of paper off him and walking over to the elevators, untroubled by any reporters. Apparently, the news of the dementor attack had spread by now.
The Archives were located between the Auror Office and the Wizengamot Administration Service, Hermione's new workplace. There was nothing to see of Hermione, however, as Harry looked in as he walked by; Amanda Tudgeberry had probably barricaded herself with her in her office again. According to many colleagues (Ron), Hermione's devotion to Tudgeberry was frighteningly reminiscent of Percy and his relationship towards his first boss in the ministry, Mr. Crouch.
"Harry Potter," the archive witch, Doris Crockford, chatted enthusiastically as he came in. "A pleasure to see you come in, would you like a cup of tea? Coffee? With sugar, or-"
-"Thank you, Doris," Harry hastily interspersed, honestly trying to show a polite, collegial smile. It wasn't the first time he'd been here, and none of his previous three visits had lasted less than twenty minutes, which Savage knew. He quietly cursed his partner for sending him here.
"I just need to know who owns this wand. Urgently!", he added as Doris walked over to the cupboard where, as he knew, she kept her coffee.
"An important case?", Doris asked as she returned and extended her hand. "What is it all about? Death Eaters? A new Dark Lord?"
She definitely sounded too enthusiastic about both possibilities and made no attempt to check her files. Harry knew from his previous visits that this would continue forever if he did not resort to drastic measures.
"Doris," he said earnestly. "I need to know immediately who owns this wand, otherwise people will die. I. Must. Know. It."
Doris shrugged and rushed over to one of her huge shelves. Harry bit his teeth as he watched her search. Doris Crockford was the greatest gossip of the whole ministry, but as an archivist completely irreplaceable, which was not because she was particularly qualified – no, it was only completely impossible to find anything here without her help, because she filed things in a manner that, well, had nothing to do with order. Hermione had entered the archive once on her first day here and left a little later to complain to Tudgeberry about Doris, only to learn that nothing could be done: she was not the first to complain, but no one else could reign this chaos and no one else wanted to do this job. And so Doris Crockford was still here, drinking her coffee with way too much sugar and chatting as much as she wanted.
"This wand is not registered," Doris said as she returned with a ruffled forehead.
"Not registered?" asked Harry, stunned. "Are you sure?"
He immediately regretted the question.
"Of course," Doris grumbled insulted. "If something isn't in this archive, then it's illegal, Harry, you can be sure I've been here for twenty-two years and not even-"
-"Thank you, Doris," Harry choked her off and hurriedly left.
Back in the Auror Office, he went over to the kitchen and made a strong coffee – as black as possible – to recover from the conversation with Doris and think for a moment. All wands sold in the UK by wand makers (mostly Ollivander) were automatically registered, as were all wands of people arriving with an international portkey. If a wand was not registered, there were exactly three possibilities: someone had entered by other means without contacting the Department of International Magical Cooperation (meaning illegally), the wand was from an unregistered wand maker, or it had been sold without registering it. The latter happened from time to time: Ollivander had made several dozen wands during his captivity in Malfoy Manor, which were still in circulation. The old wand maker always claimed to be able to remember every single wand he had ever made, but no one had ever thought to ask him for a list of those he had developed for the Death Eaters at the time. So a visit to Ollivander would hopefully provide more clarity.
"Have you read it?"
Harry didn't have to turn around to notice that his best friend was in a really bad mood, and he didn't have to think too much to get to the bottom of it.
"Krum? Yes, it won't necessarily make the league more exciting."
The Tornados had won the championship three years in a row and if this team had a weakness, it was that their old Seeker had been a total failure.
"Forget about the league," Ron growled.
"Forget about the league?", asked Harry with mocked outrage. "So really, I know the future of the Cannons doesn't look rosy, but-"
"Gorgovich will get off to a good start this year," Ron growled. 'But you know it's not about that now. What does the bloke want here?"
Harry took a long sip of coffee. This conversation here slowly awakened his spirits. Ron had no reason to worry at all, he knew that, but Viktor Krum would never stop upsetting him. And after such a miserable morning as this one, a change like this one – Ron's unnecessary jealousy – was decidedly exhilarating.
"According to the article, he's looking for a new challenge," Harry said. "But we all know that it's all about the money - what do you guess, what will the Tornados be paying him?"
-"It's -" - Ron used a word for which Molly would force him to brush his teeth for an hour - "how much money he earns, you know that exactly - stop laughing now, this is serious!"
Harry grinned broadly. "Is it? What do you think will happen?"
Ron started making a coffee. "No idea."
-"Do you think Hermione will leave you and run off with him?"
Ron dropped his cup and cursed. "No!"
-"Then I don't know what you're upset about."
Ron repaired the cup with a wink of his wand and made a second attempt to make coffee. "He's her ex."
-"And you are her boyfriend. Or has that changed since our last conversation at breakfast?"
-"I don't like the fact that he's in the country."
Harry emptied his coffee. "As far as I know, Lavender is also in the country, and I don't see Hermine panicking."
Ron took a sip of coffee and cursed. "Too hot again! And that's something else!"
-"To what extent?"
-"I- you- what about Dean?"
Harry shrugged. "What about him? His business is going well, he's setting up Oliver and Katie's new apartment, Ginny met him in Diagon Alley last week."
-"Precisely!"
-"So?"
-"Are you not jealous?"
-"Why?"
Ron exhaled in frustration. "You're annoying!"
Harry laughed. "Ron. You've been together for over a year."
-"We are constantly arguing."
-"You have been arguing ever since you know each other. She's crazy about you, and you know that. Heaven knows why, though."
Ron turned bright red, took a new sip of coffee and burned his mouth again. 'He's an international Quidditch star. World Champion."
-"And you are her boyfriend, the guy who destroyed Slytherin's medallion and killed Fenrir Greyback. And you're in the chocolate frog cards! Stop telling yourself something."
-"I bet she will meet with him."
-"I bet she wants you to come along."
Ron cursed, this time not because of the coffee. "Definitely not!"
"Your decision," Harry said with a chuckle.
"Shut up, I know I have to come along," Ron growled. "What is it with that corpse in Devon? I saw Savage talk to Proudfoot."
"Murder," Harry said, now serious again. "Probably the victim was a muggle. We found a wand, but it's not registered."
-"Then ask Ollivander."
"I was about to do it," Harry said with a roll of his eyes. "But first I had to reassure my best friend, who is struggling with relationship problems that don't actually exist."
-"No idea what you're talking about."
-"What about this note because of the Dueling Club?"
"Nothing," Ron said, taking a careful sip of coffee. 'It was just two guys arguing about a girl. Both are at St. Mungo's."
"Regard this as a lesson," Harry said with a grin.
"Very funny. Hermione would kill us both before it happens."
-"Undoubtedly."
Ron emptied his coffee and took a pack of chocolate biscuits. "This conversation never took place, Harry," he said sternly, going back to Zeas as Harry headed to Ollivander, now in a far better mood.