Harry was halfway through a lukewarm cup of tea when the floo in his office flared green and spat out a voice before the caller's head even fully formed.
"Head Auror Potter," said Dawlish from the other end, sounding like he'd swallowed a nail, "we've got one you'll want."
Harry set his cup down carefully.
"Where?"
"Knockturn side street. Muggle frontage. Third floor. Door was sealed from the inside. Wards are intact. Victim's… dead. No sign of entry."
A locked room. In London. In the wizarding world, where locks were mostly for decoration.
What the hell?
Harry rose, tugged his robes straight, and reached for the thin notebook he kept in his top drawer—it had a plain black cover and it was uncharmed.
He shoved it into his pocket and stepped into the floo.
---
The building was a narrow, soot-stained townhouse leaning into its neighbours.
Two uniformed Aurors stood outside, trying to look bored but Harry could easily see that they were forcing themselves not to look scared.
A young witch in a plain cloak waited at the bottom of the narrow stairwell, clipboard hugged to her chest like a shield. She looked up as Harry entered, eyes quick and assessing.
"Potter," she said. Not a greeting—an acknowledgement.
"Asha Khan," Harry replied, because he'd read her file and because she'd earned the courtesy of being recognised. "You're on scene lead?"
"Procedure lead," she corrected immediately. "You're Head Auror, so you'll be lead-lead, but I'm going to keep the chain clean."
Harry found that he quite liked her, but he couldn't show it now, could he?
"Show me," he said.
They climbed.
The stairwell smelled of damp wool and old cabbage… Halfway up, the air changed.
This feels wrong.
On the third-floor landing, a single door faced them. Dark wood. Brass knob. Nothing remarkable.
"How long?" Harry asked.
"Neighbour reported a thump," Asha said, ticking a box without looking down. "He says it was at twenty past nine. Came up to complain. Door wouldn't answer. No voices. He went back down. Came up again at ten. Same. He finally called Magical Law at half ten."
"And first Auror?"
"Eleven-oh-three. Door wouldn't open. Wards didn't register a breach. We held and called you."
Harry stared at the door. It stared back, smug in its simplicity.
"Who lives here?"
"Tobias Flint," Asha said. "Ministry-employed. Evidence and Records liaison assigned to Auror Office. Thirty-seven. No known enemies. No family on file. No wards registered beyond standard."
Harry's jaw tightened. Evidence and Records. That was close to the spine of the Ministry—close enough to matter.
"Any sign of spell discharge?"
"None detected on the landing," Asha said. "Inside is unknown."
Harry nodded and stepped forward. He didn't touch the knob.
He pulled out his wand.
"Finite," he said, and felt the spell slide over the ward-layers. The wards remained, patient and intact.
"Alright," Harry murmured. "Go on."
Asha made a small motion with her hand. Two Aurors behind her raised their wands in unison, and a third—an older wizard with a healer's bag slung over his shoulder—lifted a tiny silver lens and peered through it, lips pursed.
"Ward integrity?" Harry asked him.
"Unbroken," the man said. "Sealing charm is… self-contained. It's not tied to the doorframe. It's tied to the room."
Harry's stomach sank, just a little.
"That's clever," Asha said softly. "And annoying."
Harry tried to keep his voice flat. "On three."
They hit it with a coordinated burst.
The air went tight.
Then the ward-shimmer snapped—not like glass shattering, but like a rope giving way. The pressure in the landing eased. The door swung inward with the easy compliance of something that had never been locked at all.
If the owner of the wards was alive, they wouldn't have fallen by that.
Harry didn't move for half a beat, letting his instincts listen. No ambush spells. No lurking curses. Just… stillness.
And a smell.
Ozone, faint and metallic, like after a lightning strike.
And something else: cheap ink, the kind you bought in bulk for Ministry forms.
Asha wrinkled her nose. "You smell that?"
Harry didn't look at her. "Yes."
They entered.
The flat was tidy in the way of a person who didn't want anything in their home that couldn't be accounted for.
Sitting room straight ahead, narrow kitchen to the left, bedroom door closed on the right. A single lamp burned on the far table, its light steady, no flicker.
Tobias Flint sat in an armchair facing the fireplace, as if he'd been reading and drifted off. His head lolled slightly to the side. His hands rested on his thighs, palms down. There was no blood. No obvious wound. No overturned furniture, no broken glass, no signs of a fight.
Only the wrongness of how utterly composed death looked on him.
Harry's eyes went to the wand lying on the carpet near the victim's right shoe.
It looked… grey.
Not colour, exactly. More like the wood had forgotten how to be wood.
Asha's quill scratched. "Time of death estimate?" she asked the healer-wizard.
The man knelt carefully, sleeves rolled. He didn't touch Flint at first; he waved his lens, watching for residue. Finally he placed two fingers on the victim's throat.
"Cold," he said. "Not hours-old cold. Placed in the cold cold. And…" He paused, leaning toward Flint's face. "He's been gone for a while."
"The wand's weird," Harry said, confused.
The healer glanced at it, then looked up sharply. "Don't touch it bare."
Harry had already been moving. He halted, and Asha tossed him a pair of thin dragonhide gloves without being asked, like she'd been waiting for him to be reckless.
Do I really have that reputation?
Harry pulled them on and crouched. Up close, he could see it: the wand's surface had micro-cracks like dried riverbeds. The core wasn't visible—cores never were—but something about the wand screamed of emptiness.
He lifted it with two fingers.
"Core burnout," the healer said, voice low now. "I've seen it twice. Both accidents. Both catastrophic. You don't do that by waving it too hard."
"Someone killed him," Harry said simply.
Asha's quill paused. "That's generally what dead means."
Harry shot her a look. Her mouth twitched once, then settled.
Good.
"No," Harry said, focusing. "Someone killed him and closed the room behind them."
Asha nodded once, serious again. "It's peculiar."
Harry let his gaze sweep the room. There were two cups on the table. One empty. One half-full, tea darkened at the edges. A stack of parchment sat neatly beside an inkwell—cheap ink, black as tar.
On the mantelpiece, a small glass vial stood upright, stoppered.
Memory vials were common enough now—too common, some would say. People bottled their wedding days, their children's first brooms, their grief. After the war, everyone wanted a way to keep what mattered safe.
It wasn't empty.
---
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