Prolouge
The office was silent, save for the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the far wall. It was a soft sound, measured, almost indifferent to the weight of the bodies stacked in its wake. Papers rustled faintly as Harry Potter shifted in his chair, one hand gripping the chipped ceramic rim of his coffee cup, the other absently tracing a path across the sea of reports and photographs scattered before him.
The murder board loomed in front of him, a grotesque mosaic of suffering. Strings of red thread stretched from name to name, crisscrossing between bloodstained photographs, coroner’s reports, and crime scene diagrams. It was a web woven from death, and at its center sat the name that had plagued Harry’s thoughts for weeks.
Voldemort
A ghost. A myth. A nightmare dressed in flesh.
Harry exhaled slowly, his breath shallow and controlled. His exhaustion clung to him like a second skin, but he refused to succumb to it. He had spent too many nights like this, hunched over his desk, pouring over reports that led to nothing, retracing the same steps through blood-soaked alleyways and dimly lit morgues.
And yet, despite the long hours, despite the sleepless nights, Voldemort remained elusive.
No witnesses. No mistakes.
Just bodies.
Harry let his gaze drift over the photographs once more, his sharp green eyes absorbing the details with the practiced ease of a man who had spent years staring into the abyss of human cruelty. The victims varied in age, status, and background. A politician, a journalist, a police informant, an Auror. On the surface, there was no connection, no unifying thread.
But Harry knew better.
Voldemort did not kill without purpose. He was not some reckless butcher, not a man driven by impulse or rage. His murders were surgical, calculated with a precision that made Harry’s stomach twist in something uncomfortably close to admiration.
Marlene McKinnon.
Harry’s grip tightened on his coffee cup.
She had been found three nights ago, her body carefully arranged beneath the cold fluorescent glow of an abandoned warehouse. The scene had been eerily pristine—no evidence of a struggle, no sign of hesitation in the kill. And carved into her forearm, in deep, clean strokes—
Oblivion.
The word haunted him. It was the first time Voldemort had left a message behind. He had never taunted before, never acknowledged the hunt. Until now.
Harry leaned forward, fingers pressing into the grain of his desk as he studied the word again, scrawled in his own handwriting on the board. Oblivion. It was deliberate. A warning? A challenge? Or something else entirely?
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, the rough scrape of stubble grounding him in the moment. His mind was running too fast, spiraling through possibilities, dissecting the details over and over again. But there was something missing.
A connection he hadn’t yet seen.
His gaze dropped to the lower half of the board, to the tangle of reports stamped with the Department of Law Enforcement’s official seal. He had read them all a hundred times over, and yet his eyes caught on something small, almost insignificant.
A name.
Not Voldemort’s.
But written in deep, ink-black letters at the bottom of an old witness report.
Harry frowned.
He had seen that handwriting before.
His fingers hovered over the page, tracing the careful, elegant script. It stood out, didn’t it? The way the ink had dried just slightly darker than the others, the way the letters looped and curled with meticulous precision. It wasn’t like the rushed, impersonal scrawls of most Ministry officials.
No.
This had been deliberate.
A chill settled over Harry’s skin, though he wasn’t sure why. He flipped through more files, scanning for the signature again, searching for something to ground the unease twisting in his gut.
There.
Another report. Different case, same careful handwriting.
And again.
And again.
The realization hit him like a slow-moving avalanche.
It meant something.
But what?
He exhaled sharply, pressing his fingertips against his temples. The pieces were there, scattered before him like a puzzle with no edges, no clear boundaries. And yet, Voldemort’s presence threaded through them all, unseen but undeniable.
A specter in the dark.
A name without a face.
He was close.
Harry could feel it, like the weight of a phantom’s breath on the back of his neck. The presence of something just out of reach, watching, waiting.
But no ghost could haunt forever.
And Harry Potter was not a man who let monsters run free.
London was a city of filth.
It festered beneath the golden glow of street lamps, its gutters filled with the ghosts of those too weak to survive the game. It was a city of power and vice, of men who thought themselves kings and men who were kings, though no one dared to name them as such.
Tom Riddle watched it all from the height of his empire, the balcony of a penthouse that overlooked the Auror Headquarters like a deity gazing down upon the mortals that scurried below. A glass of deep, almost-black wine rested between his fingers, idly twirled as his sharp eyes traced the movements of one particular figure.
Harry Potter.
The detective stood in his dimly lit office, framed perfectly through the wide windows. A singular, lonely man bathed in the warm glow of his desk lamp, surrounded by the chaos of his own making.
Tom smirked, lips curling around the rim of his glass as he observed. How dedicated he was. How fascinating.
Harry had been hunting him for weeks. Chasing a ghost. Grasping at nothing but echoes of violence left behind like a carefully composed sonata. And yet, he remained relentless, unwavering, pouring over crime scene photographs and ink-stained reports as though he could force them to speak the truth.
Tom admired that about him.
His tenacity.
His obsession.
His complete and utter blindness.
The poor detective hadn’t even come close to understanding. He had not yet peeled back the last, most exquisite layer of the puzzle. He did not yet know that the shadow he chased had a face. A name. A voice that could whisper in his ear and lace around his throat like a noose.
Tom took a slow sip of his wine, letting the bitterness settle on his tongue.
Tonight, Harry looked tired.
His fingers raked through his already-untidy hair, his broad shoulders tense beneath the cheap fabric of his Auror’s uniform. His lips were parted, shaped into a thoughtful frown as his gaze lingered on something out of Tom’s view.
Was it the message? The word carved into the McKinnon girl’s arm? Oblivion.
Tom had chosen it carefully. He wondered if Harry had figured out what it meant yet.
No.
Not yet.
But soon.
Soon, Harry would understand.
The detective leaned over his desk, and Tom found himself studying the movement. The way the lines of his body flexed beneath the dim light, the tightness in his jaw, the furrow in his brow.
He was beautiful, wasn’t he?
Not in the way most men were. There was nothing polished or practiced about him. His beauty was raw, carved from hardship and fire, etched into the sharp angles of his face and the determined set of his mouth.
Tom had seen many men over the years. Had used them, discarded them, broken them, and forgotten them. But Harry Potter—
Oh, Harry Potter intrigued him.
His fingers tapped idly against the glass railing as he considered his next move.
McKinnon had been a test. A gift, carefully wrapped in suffering and left at Harry’s feet. And oh, how he had reacted. How he had hovered over the crime scene, drinking in the details, tracing the letters on her skin with his gloved fingers as though memorizing the shape of them.
Yes, Harry understood. Perhaps not consciously. Perhaps not yet.
But on some deep, instinctual level, he understood what Tom was doing.
And he was fascinated.
Tom exhaled a slow breath, setting his wine glass down with a soft clink. His mind whirred, sifting through the endless possibilities of his next piece, the next tableau he would set before his favorite detective.
Who should it be?
It had to be perfect. Something that would send Harry spiraling deeper, keep him tangled in the web that Tom wove so delicately around him.
A child? No. Too crude. Too obvious. Harry despised cruelty against the weak. It would not entice him—it would only enrage him, and Tom was not interested in blind, useless fury.
A Ministry official? No, too political. It would send the higher-ups scrambling, and Tom did not care for interference.
He needed someone close. Someone significant. Someone who would make Harry feel the loss in his bones but also need to understand why.
Tom let his eyes drift over the skyline, considering.
Perhaps—an old friend.
Someone Harry trusted. Someone whose death would not simply hurt, but leave a question, an itch.
A mystery Harry would have to solve.
Tom’s lips curled into something wicked as he reached for his wine once more.
Yes.
That would do nicely.
His gaze flickered back to the man in the office below, his little detective who stood in the dim glow of his desk lamp, so deeply, unknowingly entangled in the game Tom had set before him.
He was going to ruin Harry Potter.
And Harry was going to love every second of it.