Hello ! This story is a translation of one of my fics ; English is not my first language so there might be mistakes.
It is a mix between Harry Potter and a crime drama, Tunnel. So it's a murder investigation but with a dash of Magic.
The stroy starts in 1985 but everything that happened in the Harry Potter canon is the same, just twenty years earlier.
Don't be shy, tell me what you think !
(Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the work of JK Rowling and does not belong to me, I'm just borrowing the universe and the characters. Tunnel is property of OCN.)
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November 1985
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Night was already beginning to fall, precipitated by the gloomy weather visible through the windows of their workspace. The few Aurors still lingering hurried to pick up their files, sealing them in their desk drawers before getting ready to go out, wishing good night to their on-call colleagues that evening.
Harry turned off the small lamp on his desk before putting on his cloak and joined Ron who was waiting for him at the big front door of the Department. After Voldemort's defeat and the end of the Second Dark War in 1978, the two young men immediately began their Auror training, graduating from the Academy two years later. With five years of experience, they were now no longer rookies and were working as partners in the Violent Crimes Division of the Auror Department.
Their team consisted of six men and women. The youngest member was still in training, his name was Jack Sloper. He was nineteen years old and Harry had taken him under his wing and was trying to teach him everything he knew. The young trainee had been assigned to them a few weeks earlier, introducing himself shyly to them, with short black hair with a brush haircut and his jacket three times too large making him look even younger than he was. He had quickly become part of the team and was extremely committed to his work; Harry liked him very much.
Their other teammates, two women and two men, were all competent, older and more experienced wizards, usually taking on the most difficult cases, sometimes to the dismay of the two young men, who often found themselves investigating less interesting crimes. They had just concluded their last case, the days were quite peaceful, and they could afford to leave the office at a relatively correct time.
Harry and Ron walked through the almost deserted hallways of the Ministry to reach the elevators while discussing their plans for the weekend.
"Ginny insists that we go and see some houses on Saturday",Harry began, stepping into the cabin. "We haven't yet found one we both like."
"Have you tried the Devon side?" his friend asked him.
"I know we said we wanted to escape from the city, but I admit I don't want to go and bury myself deep in the country either. I would rather find a place close to the coast."
The elevator doors opened and they stepped into the atrium.
"You could always try to find one close to us. Imagine that; we could create a whole village of Weasleys, with Fred and Angelina who don't live very far, Percy who plans to get closer and my parents a few kilometers away!"
"It's tempting, but I'll pass," Harry replied, laughing.
They separated in front of the large chimneys, wishing each other good evening, each one returning to his respective residence. Harry and Ginny had been living for several years in a small old house in a residential area of London. They had settled there temporarily at first, but because of their time-consuming professions, he as an Auror and she as a professional Quidditch player, they had not had time to find anything else. Until now at least, because for the past few weeks they had been scouring the magical real-estate agencies in search of the perfect property, the place where they could finally settle permanently and consider starting their family.
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When he came out of the fireplace and into the dimly lit living room, a burning smell assailed Harry's senses. He put down his bag and removed his cloak, leaving it on the couch as he walked past to the kitchen, where his companion seemed to be struggling with the evening meal. Dark smoke billowed from the oven and the dish she was holding in her hands. She placed it on the open window sill and tried to push the smoke away with hand gestures and the cloth she was waving in vain. He smiled at the sight for a moment, then took his wand out of his pocket and, with a spell, made all traces of the disaster disappear.
Ginny turned around sharply, an air of surprise painted on her face, and her messy red hair twirled with his sudden movement.
"Harry! Are you here already? I wanted to surprise you by preparing dinner, but I think I failed it a bit."
He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. He could smell the smell of burning impregnated in her red hair.
"The element of surprise is there for sure! You look like you just had a fight with a troll. What was it?" he asked, looking at the blackened contents of the dish on the window sill.
"Lasagna, I tried to follow Mom's recipe. For once I wanted to cook!"
"That's okay, it's the intention that counts," he reassured her when he saw her look of displeasure. "Would you like to go to a restaurant?"
She answered him with a smile, her eyes filled with affection. When she looked at him like that, Harry always felt like the luckiest man on earth, and even after all those years together, he fell even more in love with Ginny every day, if that was possible. Nothing could ever match the feeling of happiness, security and warmth he felt when he was by her side.
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A few days later, on a cold November morning, Harry thought back to that moment, thinking that he would have preferred to be warm in their little house with Ginny rather than running along the muddy path on the banks of the Thames. He was in pursuit of a man suspected of poisoning his neighbor with an adulterated potion in revenge for a story of a stolen Mooncalf a decade earlier. The Auror did not yet have all the details of the case.
"Stop! In the name of the Ministry, stop!"
The man turned around, cast a spell on Harry and shouted "would you stop in this situation?"
"Son of a-" Harry didn't finish his sentence, and instead cast a spell of restraint on his suspect, narrowly missing him and scratching his sky-blue anorak instead.
The man turned suddenly and disappeared into the tall grass of the fallow riverbank.
"Hey! Come back here! Scum!"
Harry was running out of breath ; they had been running for a while now and his body was making him feel his lack of training. He could hear the other two Aurors on his team running behind him, Jack's voice coming to him between breathless laments.
"Kiddo! Try to intercept him by aparating in front of him!" Harry told him.
The characteristic pop ! of his disappearance echoed across the field. The man in front of him accelerated, shouting, "don't come near me! Ah! Stay away from me!"
"For Merlin's sake, stop!"
Harry tried to cast another spell, but pointing his wand while running made him miss his target by at least a good two meters. He let out a cry of frustration and started running again.
"Leave me alone! Aaah!"
The man in the blue coat had turned his head to estimate the distance to Harry and had gotten stuck in a hole in his path. His body laid all the way down in a muddy puddle, and he tried to turn around before Harry could catch him.
As the Auror approached to handcuff him, the suspect began to struggle, moving his legs and pointing straight in front of him with a scream of fear.
"What are you doing? Tsk. Your act won't work, you're coming with me!"
"There! There!"
Harry raised his eyes and looked at what the man was pointing at.
In the middle of the tall, yellowed grass was the lifeless body of a woman, her bluish skin covered with dark marks, and her hands were tied up like her ankles. Her shoes and her bag and its contents were scattered around her, but her clothes, a white skirt and coat, were still on. Her face was juvenile, half masked by the strands of dark hair escaping from her undone braid.
Entirely focused on the body, the young man did not hear his colleagues arrive and jumped when a hand was placed on his shoulder.
"Boss?"
Harry turned to young Jack, who looked at the scene with wide-set eyes, his pale complexion almost as white as the milky sky above their heads; it was probably the first time he had ever seen a dead body. The Auror, himself upset by what he saw, took pity on him and sent him to escort the man he had just apprehended back to the Ministry.
Once the boy left, he turned his attention back to the young woman, his colleague at his side.
"We need to contact the Muggles, that's more their jurisdiction, isn't it?" he suggested.
Harry approached the body and slowly walked around it to inspect it, when he saw something slightly hidden under the victim's small leather bag. He bent down and picked it up.
"Contact the office, I think this case is for us."
Between his fingers, he turned the light-colored wooden wand that seemed to belong to the young woman.
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Mindy Pinfield was twenty-one years old, from Bristol and had disappeared four days earlier, having last been seen leaving her best friend's home in London. She was indeed a citizen of the Wizarding World, a former student at Hogwarts, perhaps Harry had even met her in a corridor during their studies.
In the naked, impersonal autopsy room of the Magical Forensic Wing of St Mungo, the forensic pathologist, a small, dark-skinned man in his forties, had concluded that the victim had been murdered in a muggle-like manner.
"She was strangled with a nylon stocking that was still around her neck when the body was found."
He pointed to various places on the body, continuing his report to the Aurors present. "Traces of blows were found, here, there and there. She probably struggled with her attacker, but I did not find any other abuse."
The information was a slight relief to Harry, who would not have been surprised to learn otherwise.
"I also found no fingerprints on the body, nor any individual magical signature," the coroner continued.
"So is it a case for the Muggle police, in the end?" Ron asked.
Ron had been assigned to the investigation with Harry, Jack and a fourth Auror, Lance Williamson, the oldest and most experienced in the division.
"Not exactly. Here, help me turn her." The mediwizard beckoned to his young assistant to help him, and once the victim's back was visible, he pointed to a darker spot shaped like a multi-pointed star. "This is a spell impact, more precisely a paralysis spell."
He released the body and continued his explanations. "Usually, spell impacts disappear in a few minutes, a few hours at the most. However, with death and the cessation of all blood circulation, the healing process does not take place and the mark persists."
"So the killer is indeed a wizard. But why kill her this way? Why not use an unforgivable or another spell?" Harry asked.
"Maybe to cover their tracks, to make us believe it was a Muggle crime and hope that their authorities will take care of it," Jack tried.
The way it was done was unusual, the Aurors had to admit. Still, Harry felt a certain excitement about finally investigating a case that seemed more complex than the ones he was used to solving, and he could see that his teammates shared his feelings. What satisfaction they would feel when they'll arrest the criminal!
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Two weeks later, however, his mood had changed dramatically. The investigation was at a standstill, the aurors had no clues that could have moved the case forward. The observation of the crime scene had not brought them anything new; the culprit had apparently mastered the art of erasing his tracks, and the interrogations of the victim's relatives and acquaintances had proved to be totally useless. As a rule, however, such a violent act was most often perpetrated by someone who knew the person killed, at least that is what the Aurors were taught at the Academy.
"It's so frustrating!" Harry sank into his chair and raised his arms to the sky before letting his hands fall back on his face. In front of him, Ron's posture, slumped on his desk, echoed the same emotion.
"Not to mention the Daily Prophet, which has just published an article with a photo of the crime scene. I don't even know how they got it," continued the brown haired Auror.
"What a bunch of vultures. The investigation is still ongoing, they're really not helping by publishing such things."
"They have no regard for Miss Penfield's family. For Merlin's sake, imagine if it was your own daughter, or your sister."
"Have you told Ginny about this?" Ron asked after a moment of silence, rolling his pen on his desk with his fingertips.
"About the case? Yes, vaguely. I never give her many details when I tell her about ongoing investigations, though."
"Hermione often asks me a lot of questions, it's pretty hard to stay vague."
"It's because she works next door, she's a bit of a colleague. It affects her more than Gin."
"I can't wait for us to find something, anyway, and quickly. Anything, as long as it makes things move forward."
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"Anything" wouldn't have been the words Harry would have chosen, especially when a second body was found by an early morning passer-by a few weeks later on a lonely path under a bridge. Like the first victim, it was a young witch in her twenties, Emily Browning, who was obviously killed in the same way. The first thing the young Auror saw when he arrived on the scene was her half-long, shiny red hair surrounding her head like a crown of fire. He had to force his gaze away from the body after a few minutes before joining his senior. All around the security cordon installed by the Aurors, a crowd of onlookers and journalists were trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.
While the officers and the forensic team tried to find clues at the crime scene, picking up each object carefully, Harry and Williamson observed them.
"It's only been four weeks since the last incident," said the youngest, tightening his cloak around his shoulders after a particularly icy gust of wind.
Williamson ran his hand through his graying hair with a weary gesture. "I know. Robards will be on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
"What kind of criminal acts like this? We've already investigated all the Department's known offenders."
"Well, we're going to have to do it again."
They were interrupted by Jack, who slowly approached them, with a slightly greenish complexion. Harry had asked him to interview the witnesses.
"So what did they say?"
The trainee put one hand on his chest before taking in a deep breath and answering him.
"She wasn't there last evening."
"It happened in the night then," Williamson said, deep in thought.
"Do you think it could be the same criminal?" Harry asked.
"Don't talk nonsense. Let's go back to the office. We have work to do."
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Cuddled up in their big bed with unraveled sheets wrapped around their legs, Harry and Ginny were finally going to be able to spend their first night in their new home. Despite the closed windows, the sounds of the nearby sea could be heard in the silent room.
It was the house they had always dreamed of, although it was far from the city, but it didn't matter as long as they could move around by apparating or with the floo network. There was a small wizarding village nearby, and the couple knew it was the ideal place to raise their future children.
Harry thoughtfully ran his hand through Ginny's long red hair, her head resting on his chest, her face serene and her eyes closed. She seemed about to fall asleep when the young man whispered.
"Gin."
"Mh."
"You promise to be careful when you go to London alone, right?"
The young woman opened her eyes, turning her head slightly towards the ceiling. "Why are you asking me this all of a sudden?"
"It's just- With the recent murders, and the fact that the suspect, or suspects, are still at large, I can't stop worrying about you."
Ginny changed her position to face him. "Of course I'm careful, and besides I'm not helpless, I know how to fight," she added with a smile.
"I know." He kissed her before holding her close to him, the image of the body he'd found the day before still vivid in his mind. "I know," he repeated in a low voice.
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For several days, they spent hours interviewing dozens of men in the office, ranging from the victims' families to acquaintances, without any conclusive results. The days seemed interminable, and their work did not progress, making them moody and irritable.
On the fifth day, a witch burst into the office in panic, calling out to every Auror she passed on her way.
"Please! Please! Please help me! We have to find her!"
Williamson was the first to react, rising abruptly from his chair. "Mrs. Culbert? What's going on?"
The woman rushed towards him, clearly agitated and anxious. Harry recognized the owner of the little teahouse on the corner of the street facing Madam Malkin's store on Diagon Alley.
"It's my daughter, Lena. She didn't come home last night ! Please, we must find her!"
The four Aurors looked at each other. Williamson guided the woman to a desk a little further away and his teammates joined him. Harry conjured a glass of water and handed it to her. She must have been in her forties, her clothes seemed to have been put on in a hurry and her blond hair gathered in a vague bun escaped from it and fell back onto her shoulders.
"How old is your daughter again?" asked the eldest Auror.
"Twenty-two years old. She lives with me at the moment. She works in the teahouse and in the evenings she helps me deliver the dishes to my customers."
"Is it unusual that she doesn't come home? Maybe she's out with friends," Jack says.
"She would have told me." The witch's trembling hands tightened around the glass she was holding. "She's always very punctual, always back by nine o'clock sharp. With the incidents that the Daily Prophet talks about... I'm so worried! Please, you must find her!"
"Don't worry, we'll see what we can do," Ron tried to reassure her.
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Lena Culbert's body was the third to be discovered early the next morning in a field on the outskirts of town. Her mother's tears filled the Auror Department as they broke the news, turning Harry's heart inside out. The feeling of helplessness he felt only grew stronger every day, making him angry at the criminal and at himself and his incompetence.
"How could you let this happen to her?! Why did she have to die?! Why did she die? Lena!"
The questions that the young woman's mother cried out while shaking Williamson echoed those that young Auror was asking himself. Why couldn't they find the suspects? How was it possible that several people could commit acts of such violence so close in time? Such actions were usually motivated by deep feelings of hatred or resentment towards the victims, often perpetrated by people close to them. Why then were the Aurors unable to identify a suspect?
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"We find the same mechanism as for the two previous victims, strangled with a nylon stocking, feet and hands tied." The mediwizard and his assistant were working around the body in the cold room, while sharing their observations with the Aurors.
"So could it be the same murderer in all three cases?" asked Harry.
"That's absurd, you can't base your theories solely on the method used to kill," Williamson replied gruffly.
"Usually, you solve cases by investigating the surroundings, by finding clues and evidence, or by interviewing relatives. But if you take the Browning and Pinfield cases, we didn't find anything at all, and it's not for lack of looking," the young Auror said, before looking back at the woman's body. "It is the same for her. Maybe we've been wrong since the beginning."
"Enough of this. You're talking nonsense. We're already having enough trouble without imagining absurd scenarios. Why don't you go get the list of the clients she delivered the day she disappeared instead." His senior's dry tone was irrevocable and Harry refrained from making any further remarks, even though he didn't think any less so.
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Interrogations in the Auror Department continued and the investigation was still stalled. The investigators had a brief moment of hope that they had found a solid lead thanks to Miss Culbert's client list before finding themselves in a dead end. Harry's entire team had now been assigned to the case, in order to speed up the investigation.
After a grueling day interviewing the last clients on the list, Harry went to the scene of the latest crime, accompanied by Jack. Night had already fallen and the moon was weakly shining in the January sky, the cold air turning their every breath into small clouds of condensation. They crouched side by side and silently observed the surroundings, the only source of light coming from their wands. Harry glanced down at his watch.
"Nine o'clock. It's about the estimated time of the murders." He looked up to the sky and then let his gaze wander over the landscape. "It's a very dark place for someone who doesn't know the place to venture into by chance. That several people would choose to kill someone there... It doesn't make sense."
"Do you think it's someone from around here, then?" Jack intervened, blowing into his hands before rubbing them to warm them.
"Someone who knows this place anyway, yes."
"So one and the same suspect for all three murders?"
"I don't think we can ignore this theory, even if it's the first time I've seen this type of crime." Harry nodded.
Sure, there had been a series of murders during the War against Voldemort, but all of them were committed against a certain type of population, by different wizards and witches although they adhered to the same values; these were hate crimes and could not be compared to the current situation.
"Do you think there will be others? Murders, I mean," the trainee asked shyly, his worried look probing Harry's serious expression.
"I hope not, but my instincts tell me it's a possibility."
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A few weeks later, as he was about to leave the office, Harry was called late to join his team in a wizard suburb of the capital. It was away from a residential area, on the edge of a railroad track, that Elizabeth Bickford's body was found shortly after ten o'clock.
When Harry apparated to the scene, the place was in full swing, illuminated by the Aurors' wands collecting as many clues as they could under the night mist, trying to reconstruct the course of events with the help of an Appare Vestigium. The phantasmagorical golden silhouettes revealed by the enchantment seemed to vanish almost as soon as they appeared, making it impossible to analyze the crime. He easily found Ron, who was supervising the operations, with a grave face.
"Was she identified?"
"Yes, Elizabeth Bickford, twenty-five years old, she lives here, in one of these houses," replied the red-haired Auror, pointing vaguely towards the buildings in the distance.
"Has anyone notified her family?"
"We tried to contact them through the floo network, but there was no response," Jack informed him, just joining them.
"She has been killed, and you want to tell them that by firecall? What's wrong with you, kiddo?"
After checking the young woman's address, Harry headed for the residential area. He walked for about ten minutes before he saw a strange silhouette standing out in the light of a street lamp, obviously waiting for something. As he approached, the Auror realized it was a man holding a toddler in his arms. The child suddenly began to cry and Harry stopped, praying, begging whoever would hear him — Merlin, Morgana or someone else — that it would not be the victim's family.
"Excuse me!" the man called out, walking towards him. "You wouldn't have passed a young woman on your way here, would you?"
Up close, the features of his face, dimly illuminated by the street lamp, seemed familiar to Harry. Corner. It was his name. Michael Corner, a student at Hogwarts in the same year as him at Hogwarts. The young father's eyes widened as he recognized the man in front of him.
"Potter? Is that you? What are you doing here?"
"Michael? Do you- Do you know Elizabeth Bickford?"
"She's my wife. Why? Have you seen her? She's incredibly late. I was worried. I went out to wait for her."
"Michael, I'm so sorry."
Announcing the death of a loved one to a family had always been what Harry hated most about his job. On that day, he learned that it was even more difficult when you knew the family.
Michael's scream as he rushed to the lifeless body of his wife tore up the silent night, and Harry tightened his arms around the toddler he had grabbed from the young father's arms when he arrived at the scene. He tried to soothe the child's tears by skipping gently and whispering reassuring words to him, while Michael dropped to his knees near the young woman's body.
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Harry stared blankly at the wall of the small, cold room, an air of déjà vu that he would have gladly done without in front of the scene before him. Elizabeth Bickford's body laid there under a thin white sheet after being inspected from every angle.
"As you can guess, the cause of death is similar to the previous victims. Strangled with…"
"... A nylon stocking," Harry ended in a dull voice.
At his side, Williamson let out a long sigh, his eyes fixed towards the ceiling. "Is it really the same person's doing ?" he asked.
"I told you something was wrong."
"But it doesn't make sense! Why kill women like that for no reason? I don't believe it."
"How can you still say that after all this ?" Harry got angry.
"Hey, watch your tone, brat!" reprimanded the senior, pretending to raise his arm to hit him.
"Say, instead of fighting, look at her wrists," the coroner said. "She struggled so hard, hurting herself to the point of drawing blood to survive. One person was so persistent to kill, the other to live." He passed a tired hand over his face before speaking again, his gaze directed straight at the Aurors. "I've seen my fair share of bodies, but one person can't do this to another. Please make sure you catch him as quickly as possible this time."