Chapter One: The Murders of Margaret and Marcus Penn

The first thing Harry noticed was the blood on the walls. Most of it had dried a rusty, corroded brown by now (the crime scene was nearly a day old), but some still looked tacky and sticky, shiny like wet paint. Only wet paint smelled of chemicals, of dyes and liquids, not a rotten, coppery scent that was all-too familiar to him. The floor was dark wood, the walls a neutral beige. A little chandelier hung from the ceiling, four bright lights that lit up the room and left nothing hidden in shadow. Every horrible detail was revealed, like bleached bones after all the tissue, muscle, and skin had been stripped away.

Harry moved gingerly through the room, stepping over blood to prevent contamination (of both the crime scene and of his shoes; he really didn't want to buy another pair so soon after last time). As he approached, he examined the bodies near the center of the room with a critical eye. A woman, it looked like, and a man, though the blood made it difficult to tell. Both had dark hair, with the woman's darker than the man's.

"So, who are they?" he asked the woman crouched beside them. He'd just been called in (it was supposed to be his day off, but his boss had said they'd needed him. He could understand that Dark wizards didn't really care about whether he should've been working or not), and had been informed that Jones would brief him. She had curly black hair that was pulled up in a professional bun, though a few strands had escaped its tight hold. They waved in the air like tentacles. In her hand was a state-of-the-art wizarding camera, and it gleamed proudly, showing off its shine; Harry remembered watching the woman polish it. Currently, she was using it to document the scene.

"Margaret and Marcus Penn, an older sister and a younger brother. The muggles in the neighborhood didn't know them very well, said they'd just moved in around a month ago and rarely left the house. Their fireplace was connected to the floo, though, so who knows how often they actually left?" Jones hovered over the woman's dead face and wide eyes, snapping a few close-ups.

"Hmm. Any witnesses?" Harry crouched down next to her. He looked closer at the bodies. The dead woman's neck was ripped open, and he didn't know anything sans magic that could create such a vicious wound. She had other lacerations on her wrists, legs, and torso. The man was much the same, except he had no slash across his throat; instead, there was a deep hole in his chest.

The corpses were dressed in typical wizard fashion: somewhat muggle-ish, old-style clothing underneath long, flowing robes. The man had been wearing gray slacks, dress shoes, and a white button-up under charcoal-gray robes when he'd died. It was a smart casual look. Had they been planning on going out? The dead woman was donned in a long, purple dress with embroidery up the bodice and hem. Overtop were black robes accented in gold and violet. Going out was a good possibility; who wore that type of clothes in the evening unless there were plans?

"A few muggles heard screaming, saw some flashing lights about ten o'clock last night. That's when they called 999. Nothing concrete, but they were obliviated anyway. Can't be too careful." Jones moved to the man's body, having captured every inch of the woman's.

Harry nodded, standing back up. "Time of death?"

"Yesterday, around eleven P.M."

"But if the muggles called around ten, then why didn't the muggle police arrive sooner?" Harry questioned.

"They did. Got to the house about ten-fifteen. Except, they couldn't get in. They tried to bust down the door, break the windows. Couldn't even see what was happening, really. Just lights and shouting. It sounded like a standard ward, or maybe an over powered, long-lasting shield charm. Even the aurors couldn't get in until about two in the morning." She stood up, took a couple more pictures, and turned to face him.

"Yes, except how was the ward set up so quickly or over such a wide expanse? The killer must be pretty powerful," Harry pointed out.

"Or he got here early, set it up somehow without the victims noticing. They could've been asleep," the woman speculated. Harry grunted. He straightened and took out his wand to cast a precise magical detection spell.

His wand burned a dark, violent blue color and vibrated angrily in his hand. No list of spells appeared before him, nothing to indicate exactly what had occurred. What was going on?

He furrowed his brow. The woman looked up at him.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Has anyone attempted to determine what spells were cast during the murder?" He re-cast the spell, but the results were the same as before. He cast a magical signature spell. The strongest magical signature, of course, came from the wizard themselves, but for a short time (a few hours or up to a week, depending) after they cast spells, a wizard's magic hung in the air, clinging to the area around where the magic had been cast. Traces of magic even lingered after death, though most dissipated immediately after the wizard died.

There were four magical signatures in the vicinity. He discounted one immediately, for it was a mint green color that emanated directly from the woman at his side. Two others painted the dead bodies in front of him: a deep indigo-blue for the man, and a dark purple for the woman. The colors hinted at the siblings use of Dark magic. But what really disturbed him was the one that covered the walls, layered over the blood, and clung to the corpses in front of him like a sickly disease. It was black, a darkness that sucked the light out of everything, sucked the life out of it. "What the hell?" he muttered quietly under his breath.

"I don't think so, no. It's sort of a specialized spell; we were waiting for an expert." She looked at him, not having heard, and tilted her head to one side, clearly waiting for an explanation. Apparently, he was the expert she'd been waiting for.

"It's odd. It indicates that no known spells were cast, but great quantities of magic were used. Did the murderer just use only wandless, non-verbal magic? And the magical signature isn't like anything I've ever seen before. Do you know the basic premise of magical signatures?"

"The color indicates power—red being the least powerful, violet being the most—and the shade indicates the darkness of the magic—the darker the color, the darker the magic," the woman affirmed.

"The person that did this… Their magical signature is black. It's impossible! No one could have used that much dark magic—to erase the color entirely… They must've done something to scramble it so we couldn't use it to help us track them down," Harry hypothesized. There was no way their magical signature was black. That meant whoever had done this was smart—very smart, and very talented.

Most dark wizards that committed a crime as heinous as this were either too crazy or too arrogant to cover their tracks like this. Or both; the evil magicks they dabbled in often had side effects. You couldn't go around making sacrifices and using dark artifacts without damaging yourself—it corrupted your magic, somehow, and then corrupted your mind, soul, and body. Harry had wished he'd paid more attention to magical theory, now that he was applying it more in real life, but, well, he didn't think Hogwarts had even covered the effects of dark magic.

It was the beginners you had to watch out for. Or ones that had somehow managed to stay sane—or at least smart—through all that they had put themselves through. Since Harry didn't think he'd ever come across any murders quite like this, he was willing to bet on the former.

"Has the rest of the house been cleared?" Harry asked, looking back at the door he'd come through. It led to the living room. They were in the dining room now, which connected to the kitchen. The only clue that it was a dining room, however, was the small, round table tucked into the corner. It appeared that a vase of flowers had once rested there; but the flowers had been torn to pieces, and the remains of the ceramic vase were scattered under the table like hundreds of fallen soldiers.

"Auror Weasley went upstairs to look around. He said that something was wrong with the basement entrance, said to wait for you." Harry began to move back toward the door.

"Good work, Jones. Go have someone come to help you take the bodies back to the Department. If you find something, I want to be the first to know."

"Yessir, Auror Potter." She gave a sort of grin and half-salute, putting her camera away in her side satchel. "Good luck finding the bastard that did this."

"I'll do my best." Harry stepped out of the room and began to walk up the stairs, wand in front (never could be too careful). "Ron?" he called.

"In here, Harry!" He finished climbing the stairs and found himself in a hallway with doors lining both sides. There was a plush carpet on the hardwood floor, and a few nice paintings hung on the stretches of wall in between the doors. Surprisingly, they didn't move. What were a witch and wizard doing with muggle paintings?

Harry walked into the last door on the right. Ron was inside, waving his wand about to detect general magic (not the specific spell-detection technique Harry had used downstairs) and looking around for anything out of place.

"It's looking pretty clean," he commented to Harry. The red-head turned to face him. "Pretty gruesome downstairs, though."

"Jones said you needed me for the basement?" Harry asked.

"Yeah. The door's loaded with runes, and I didn't want to risk it."

"Let's get it over with, then. We have plenty of work to do after this." Harry began to trot back into the hall and down the stairs. The entrance to the basement was located in the kitchen, and they passed quickly through the dining room.

The basement door emitted a chill, like invisible, icy fingers were grasping outward to choke anyone close enough to catch. It looked simple enough: plain white wood, a brass doorknob, a few scratches. On the frame around it, however, were runes carved into the wood. Harry wasn't the best at runes—things like this had always been Hermione's area. He knew the basics, however, and knew enough to be wary.

Leaning close, but not touching, he examined them carefully. He wished that someone who better knew runes was on hand, but he was the one they had. They couldn't afford to contact someone and waste time trying to coerce them onto the crime scene. Most people didn't like to have anything to do with dark wizards, and this trail couldn't go cold. Someone like this, who had killed those siblings like that, who had known enough to scramble their signature, or, worse, who had a signature that dark… Someone like this wouldn't rest, would strike again.

Having peered at the runes for a few minutes, Harry felt he understood enough to proceed.

"Those mean that, to pass through the door unharmed, it requires known blood to enter," Harry said, pointing at a rune shaped like a spiraling, upside down triangle, "and that one indicates that… something… will happen if the one who enters is not known or doesn't give blood. This is pretty heavy-duty. Whoever these Penn siblings were, they knew some magic."

Ron nodded, also looking at the runes closely (not that he could read them). "Can we get through, mate?"

"Yeah. Give me a moment." He thought about it. If he poured enough magic into them, the runes would short-out, overloaded with magic. However, there were so many that he didn't think that would work. He could maybe trick them somehow into thinking his blood was someone else's. Or…

"Hey, Ron, how much trouble would it be to get a blood sample from one of the corpses?" The red-head shrugged, scratching at his nose.

Harry walked back into the hallway, past the hideous dining room, and through the living room to the outside of the house. Officials were milling around, chatting about what was happening, examining the house and grounds. The two bodies had already been levitated out of the house, and it looked as if Jones and a couple of others were securing them to be port-keyed elsewhere.

To transport any sort of evidence, a portkey was used instead of apparition; apparition was too unpredictable and had left many a splinched corpse behind because of the wizard's squeamishness. A portkey, fortunately, was easier, though it was also easier to tamper with (as Harry knew well). That was why the portkeys were examined thoroughly before being used to transport evidence.

"Jones!" Harry called, walking quickly toward her and her group. "I need a blood sample."

"A blood sample? Who from?" She asked, pausing in what she was doing to raise her eyebrow at him. "And why?"

"One of the bodies. The door to the basement needs known blood for us to get through. I don't want to mess with it and damage possible evidence. Who knows what the Penns were doing down there that required such precautions?"

"Well, I suppose you'll know soon. Give me a moment to collect the blood."

She went to kneel beside a bag and removed a vial from it. With a wave of her wand, she spelled the vial to fill with blood. She handed it to Harry without fuss.

"Thanks," he said, and Jones nodded, going back to help with the bodies.

He walked back into the house and to the basement, holding up the vial for Ron to see. The red-head grinned.

"So, do we just put some onto the frame?" he asked.

"I think so." Harry uncorked the vial carefully (though, thankfully, Jones had enough sense to only fill it up half-way). He tipped the glass until a trickle of blood dripped out onto his finger. He rubbed it carefully onto one of the runes.

The door glowed briefly before the light faded.

"Think that means we can go in?" Ron asked. He held his wand at the ready.

"Let's hope so," Harry replied, and they began down to the basement. The wooden stairs groaned angrily with their every step, furious with the pressure put on them, no matter how gentle they tried to be.

Even though they had flicked the lights on, it was still dim, and the smell of mold and dust wormed into their noses like pollen on a spring day. Ron sneezed. The soft peach paint on the walls was peeling up, exposing the gray, concrete flesh beneath. They turned on the landing to head down the last ten steps or so.

"This is creepy as hell, mate," Ron muttered.

"Yeah. Makes me wonder what the Penns were up to down here," Harry agreed. At last they reached the bottom, and Ron gasped.

Huge floor to ceiling bookcases lined the walls, and books of all shapes and sizes rested there. Harry could make out a few of the titles: The Art of Torture: Psychological and Physical; How to Brew Poison; Ancient Curses: All you Need to Know; and Obscure Spells Guaranteed to Defeat any Opponent. In the center of the room was a long table, stacked high with herbs, beakers, tools, vials, and cauldrons. The herbs looked dangerous; they were deep, violent colors like purple, red, and blue, with sharp thorns and shriveled petals. Some of the beakers preserved body parts or animals. A hand (probably human) floated in one, and reptilian eyes swirled in another (they almost seemed to watch them).

"Well," Harry said, "with all of this, we may have some idea of motive, now." An aspiring Dark Lord taking out competition? Or a rival Dark inventor, wanting to stop the Penns' experiments? It wasn't unheard of; in fact, it was one of the main reasons Dark wizards killed one another. If they wouldn't become followers, they became enemies and were killed.

"No kidding." Ron walked closer to the table and shuddered. "We'll need to get Jones to come in and photograph everything."

"And get everyone to take these back to the Department to be examined. Knowing exactly what they were doing may give us a clue as to whom their killer might be." And if someone could take down two pretty powerful Dark wizards, Dark wizards smart enough to hide their (what looked to be) highly illegal activities from the wizarding world for who knew how long…

Harry sighed as they trudged back up the stairs.

It was going to be a long night.

AN: Jones is not a major character in this; I just needed an OC. You might see a few more, but, again, none of them will play major roles, although you'll probably see Jones again in later chapters. Also, I'm probably going to mess around with magical spells and stuff, so sorry if that's boring to anyone. This story will not really be focused on pairings, and I'm really not sure who's gonna be with whom yet if I do include any. If you notice any mistakes, blame my sister who edited this.

I'm new to this site, so if there are any formatting errors that I overlooked, please notify me so I can fix them immediately. Reviews are welcome. Thanks for reading!