Chapter 1
In the morning, when the Auror's badge on the nightstand began to shake, Harry Potter was doing something that would only happen on the double bed in the main bedroom in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
'What—'
He sat up in bed from the red-haired woman lying beneath him, reaching out an arm to search on the nightstand. Harry Potter without a pair of glasses couldn't see anything further that one inch. He muttered. Ginny resignedly sighed, directly putting his badge and glasses into his hand.
He put on his glasses. A short line appeared on its surface.
CRITICAL SITUATION! COME IN 30 MINUTES.
'Fuck! Saturday! And I had applied for vacation!' he shouted to the badge.
It seemed to have listened his roar, the words on the badge suddenly changed:
POTTER MUST COME.
Harry threw the badge away, freely and rebelliously, Ginny could not help snorting with her laughter. Harry took off his glasses, lowering his head, kissing her crescent lips with hands stroking her waist again.
'Boohoo-— wow —wow-'
Harry looked up, fetching a dismayed deep sigh, then slowly sat up in an attitude of surrender, grabbing his glasses and putting on, looking around to find his clothes. On the other side of the bed, Ginny had put on her sleeping dress.
'I'm going to take a look at Albus.' she said, walking towards the door of their bedroom, picking up his Auror badge at the foot of the bed and throwing it to Harry. Harry caught it and pinned it up onto his robe which he had put up just now, then putting on his watch. The hour hand was just passing number '7'.
'Better to have something REALLY matters!' he muttered annoyedly.
As he walked down into the kitchen dressing neatly, Ginny was taking Albus in her arm, who was popping and craning his neck, and using her wand controlling the soap ladle stirring the oatmeal.
'Where's James?' Harry asked, helping her take out bowls and plates.
'Sleeping,' Ginny answered without turning her head around.
Looking at Ginny's back, a wave of guilty flooded over him. Unlike Ginny worked nine-to-five in the newspapers, his days off were very random, hardly exactly on weekends. This time happened to be on Saturday, he had planned to accompany with Ginny and his two sons, do more housework or anything.
'Sorry, Ginny...They know I'm on vacation today, they shouldn't call me to, but the badge said, "Potter must come"—' Harry began slowly and quietly.
'They know you are a pushover.' Ginny said emotionlessly, using her wand to control the ladle spooning out two bowls of oatmeal and giving them a wave, the bowls flew and smoothly arrived just in front of Harry. Then she went to add some water into the powdered milk.
Harry didn't try to refute. He walked close to Ginny, reaching out to take 10-month-old Albus from her arm and sitting down in front of the table. He used his right and to spoon the oatmeal up with his left hand wrapping around Albus's waist to let him stay on the thighs.
'They'd better really have something urgent, or I'll strike.' said Harry indignantly.
'So, what about the crime?' it seemed like she had accepted the truth unwillingly ultimately, Ginny put the feeder into Albus's hand and asked without any facial expressions, which meant she was truly unhappy or angry, then sitting down opposite him.
'Said to be a murder. Should go to the scene. They didn't offer any details.' said Harry.
'Do this kind of typical murder always directly be handed to Aurors?' asked Ginny, confused.
'Which means the crimes are related to the dark arts, for example, the victims are murdered by Killing Curse.' said Harry.
Ginny shrugged her shoulders. Harry put Albus onto the table, making sure he could sit stably and hold the feeder, then he finished his share of oatmeal, neat, quick and quiet. He stood on his feet, groping for his needs in his pockets to ensure that he had brought everything he required. He walked close to Ginny, lowered his head again and cupped her face in his hands, kissing her lips lightly. 'I'll let Robards give me some extra compensatory leaves.' said Harry with an apologetic smile.
Ginny shook her head and sighed, 'If they can't learn to respect the stuff's right of being far away from being excused, or it's equal to nothing no matter how many extra holidays they promise you.'
Harry acted on instructions, using a broken crock as a Portkey to travel to a churchyard in a village in the outer suburbs of Coventry. Around the corner it was a tent, which was obviously a temporary office of explorers on the scene.
A thin wizard with grey-brown hair ran towards him.
'Harry!" seeing Harry, Dennis Creevey shouted with his consistent admiration and excitement with surprise on his face. 'Fancy seeing you here! You're taking some days off I remember, aren't you?'
The twenty-three-year-old Dennis had become a seasoned formal Auror now. He would iron his robe everyday so that it was the trimmest in the office and pin the polished Auror badge to the breast of his robe. After Ron's resignation, it was he who worked together with him.
'Called to help there.' Said Harry unpleasantly. 'They said there has a murder. Do you know what happened?'
'Well...but you're on vacation anyway. Don't they get any other hands?'
'Go to ask the finance office. We could have enrolled more people if they could give us more money.' said Harry with a little bit impatience. 'What about the case itself, then?'
'The death is a twenty-four-year old witch, lost her life because being hit directly by a Killing Curse in her garden. The first finder is the host of her neighbor, seventy-five years old, also a witch — by the way, the ratio of wizards and Muggles in this village in two-to-three — according to her words, she invited her to have dinner in her home last night, the death left around nine o'clock. The neighbor discovered her corpse in the garden beside while she was watering her flowers in her own yard just past five a.m. this morning.' said Dennis.
Harry followed him to the crime scene, listening to his introduction on the way here. Raylwood was a village without anything special just like any other villages in Britain: scattering stone houses with inclined roofs, stretching and undulating gentle slopes, a sheet of pastureland and farms. How could anyone imagine that about forty percent of the villagers were wizards?
'This way, Harry. It was charmed the Anti-Muggle Charms here.' said Dennis, leading Harry strike over a fence that separated two households' farm. Behind the fence was a pebble trail one man wide. They walked alone the fences for hundreds of yards until the trail was stopped by a short wall. An old and shabby house lay at the back of the wall. It was definite that the owners' circumstances were so not good enough.
And it would be seen, that behind the old house, there were dozens of this kind of houses disorderly crowded together. It seemed that all the poor lived in this area. Dennis and Harry stroke over the short wall, along with a special feeling of going across a thin waterfall, the shabby houses vanished and dozens of houses that were in completely different styles than common houses — or another saying, 'anti-physics' — appeared in front of their eyes.
There were vine plants whose tentacles seemed to be going to throttle people who touched them growing freely in the doorway, wriggling on the walls. Some houses, like children's crooked work made of building blocks, stood steady with six or seven floors high however... This must be the wizards' ghetto in this village.
Harry knew that a modest house in red bricks with double floors was the scene without Dennis's leading. They furnished a red magical cordon around the house, which would throw anyone didn't related to the case away. Several Aurors wearing the same style of travelling robes with him were collecting evidence in the front yard. He followed Dennis, getting closer, seeing some other Aurors were searching inside the house, and a female Auror was comforting a couple of wizards who were in their middle ages paralyzing in the two-seater sofa in the porch. They seemed as though they would be fainted at any time.
'Look! There the corpse is.' Whispered Dennis, looking at the back garden. 'I haven't had time to take a look at it yet.'
Harry nodded, passing through the cordon, striding to the back garden. Some in the garden noticed that someone had come up, they looked up, giving him a scatter of 'Good morning'. Near the doorsteps of the back door, in the back garden, there were a few Aurors squatting around a corpse whose head towards the garden and feet towards the door. Her curly long black hair was unkempt, her body lay prone with her arms and legs splayed out. Floating in the middle air, some automatic notepads were writing in their different handwritings continuously.
'Paul, what's the death's status?'
'Romilda Vane, twenty-four years old. A hairdresser in a wizards' salon in this small town.' the Auror with golden hair called Paul answered.
'Ro...!' shouted Dennis, putting his hands over his mouth and looking at Harry.
Harry frowned, feeling in his breast pocket for gloves, pulling them on and using his hands to raise her head. In the thick and luxuriant hair, a face that had a beauty of wildness came into his view, coinciding with the annoying student in his faraway memory.
'It's her.'
'Ow...Merlin...' sighed Dennis in depression.
Romilda Vane, used to be a member of Harry's numerous seekers, a Gryffindor girl that was two years younger than Harry, a participant of the war in Hogwarts. Noisy, ungrateful, audacious, and acting badly in flying broomsticks. She once tried to poison Harry by chocolates with Amortentia inside, but Ron swallowed it by mistake. This indirectly caused Ron's seventeenth birthday disaster that he brushed with death. That were every thing Harry knew about her.
And she, like many people that Harry once knew but actually didn't familiar with, lay dead in front of his eyes, he, however, still remembered her bright black eyes clearly. The kind of dull pain spread over him from the scabbed scars somewhere in his heart — although he was totally clear that it was impossible to have a relationship with him. The habits were terrible.
'Forensic Expert White, the time of dying?' said Harry, moving his eyesight away from the corpse.
'Need to be carefully examined after transporting it to the Ministry, but we basically sure that it happened around two to three in this morning.' an elder Auror with gray hair answered.
Apart from a screwed-up parchment, there aren't any valuable evidence outside the house.' Paul took over the conversation, taking out a small transparent bag with a screwed-up parchment which seemed to have something written on it inside from the Exhibit Box. 'Don't know why she gripped a piece of parchment. Need to be studied then.'
Harry nodded. He raised his head and looked around. The Vanes were that kind of families that were really good at enjoying their life. The garden was filled by various kinds of magical trees, magical plants, as well as a Muggles' inflatable water pool, which had a sense of relaxation like going on a pleasant holiday — if the corpse could be ignored.
'Let's go inside.' said Harry.
Different from the ordered and beautiful garden, the living room was in a completely mess. Standing at the corner of the room, they saw that every drawer had been burrowed, the carpet had been ripped up, even the back of the picture frames had been taking apart. A dozen of Aurors were walking around and obtaining evidence busily.
'Emily, could you please tell me some details? Or information?'
'Ow! Harry! I'm sorry that I didn't notice you just now.' Emily got closer and said. 'AS you can see, the house is terribly messy... Regardless of whom the murder is, he must be inn a lack of money. All the cash and worthy jewellery have been wiped out.'
'A burglary and murder?'
'A tentative doubt, yes. But it's too early to make the final decision. I have to collect in the bathroom now, you could see around by yourselves.'
'Bathroom?'
'Yes! Even the bathroom cabinet had been rummaged!'
Emily walked away, Harry pushed his glasses, being lost in deep thought.
(To be continued)
