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“The footage you’re about to see is disturbing,” began Tom Riddle, stern and serious. “Some of my colleagues argue that it’s too dark to be shown to you all during your first few weeks here, before you’ve been desensitized to the violence integral to our work at the FBI.”
He paced in front of the many rows of students in his classroom — FBI trainees, incredibly rough around the edges, scared shitless already by their strict, unforgiving Professor Riddle. He anticipated that perhaps a quarter of the adults in front of him wouldn’t make the cut, just from a glance around the room — some looked far too nervous already, others too eager, and the intensity of the training in store for them would weed out those undeserving of the honor.
Still, despite the high hurdles the FBI trainees would eventually learn to overcome, Tom held out little hope that any of them would be bright enough to solve the case, the one that Albus Dumbledore, Head of the FBI, had been agonizing over for the past few years. Dumbledore had pulled Tom aside before the semester started, and with an uncommonly straightforward honesty, pleaded with Tom to search carefully among the students in his classes for any rare gems. None of the agents officially on the case had been able to make any real dent in finding the elusive serial killer that haunted Dumbledore so mercilessly, and though it would land him in immense trouble if the higher-ups found out that Dumbledore was recruiting from trainees, the poor man had truly gotten desperate.
As promised, Tom was doing his part, watching carefully for any signs of uncommon intelligence or unique perception among his charges. He was invested in knowing the next generation of the FBI for his own purposes, anyway, even without Dumbledore’s request.
But as his eyes scanned over the students in front of him, some of whom didn’t even have their notebooks out, he remained pessimistic.
“However,” continued Tom, the click of his loafers on the lecture hall’s floors the only accompaniment to his quiet voice. “I believe that these people have far too little faith in you. Those amongst you who have what it takes to become real FBI agents will not be scared off by what I put in front of you, while those who balk at this first real challenge are simply not fit for this program.”
A man in the front row gulped audibly. How embarrassing.
“The video I’m about to show you is evidence in an active case,” said Tom, stopping at his lectern to prepare the footage. He squinted at the screen in front of him, pausing for a few long moments; he’d been lecturing for a great many years now, and each year, it seemed that there were new cords to be plugged into new ports in new computers. He fixed his audience with a solemn stare as he hooked up a cord he hoped was the correct one; if it wasn’t, the longer wait would simply add to his gravitas. Hopefully. “This footage has been rescued from a dropped video camera found near the site of an abduction. Your homework for tomorrow will be to tell me everything you learn from this recording. Don’t leave out a single detail. And try your hardest, please. Perhaps your insights will be valuable to the brave agents currently working on the case — who knows? Any questions?”
The room remained silent. Tom shot a wry glance over the crowd. “I warn you – you’ll only be shown this footage once. For those of you who don’t have notebooks out, now would be the time to take notes. Unless you think you can remember everything about this from memory?”
He stifled the urge to roll his eyes over the sound of paper rustling and crinkling.
“This,” said Tom, raising his voice slightly. “Is the last discovered footage on Harry Potter’s camera before he vanished.”
***
“Hey Potheads, and welcome back to Harry’s Hunting!” said Harry Potter, the familiar sight of his desk and messy corkboard filling the background of his video. “Before we begin, I just want to thank you all for helping me reach 900 thousand subscribers. We’re getting so close to that YouTube Gold Play Button, and it wouldn’t be possible without all of your support!”
With his cheery voice and messy hair, it was easy to see how Harry Potter had gained subscribers on his true crime YouTube channel so quickly. He spoke to the camera as if it were a friend, with all the ease and comfort of the boy-next-door in his teasing and enthusiasm. Perhaps he wasn’t quite a heartthrob, with his dorky, thick glasses and his crooked smile, but he was magnetic to watch nonetheless.
“As you guys know, we’re currently investigating the strange deaths of Myrtle Warren, Alastor Moody, and Severus Snape,” said Harry, his demeanor switching from playful to somber in an instant. “I’m not a part of law enforcement, but I am a concerned citizen, and I think it’s on all of us to do whatever’s in our power to help bring justice to these victims. I know the authorities still say these deaths aren’t linked, so please don’t spam my comments on this — you can check out my last video for what ties all these murders together.”
At that, Harry frowned, running his hands through his hair. “Not quite right,” he muttered to himself, reaching towards the camera and adjusting a few settings. His face came in and out of focus, his expression far less friendlier when he knew the moment wouldn’t make it into the final cut of his video. His videos were always full of his chatter, with sound effects and backing music to match each moment; seeing him so silent was strange, the eerie incongruity of seeing the man behind the curtain.
After the camera was adjusted to his satisfaction, Harry repeated the same lines a few times, trying to get his inflections just right. Much of the rest of his filming went similarly; the casual, conversational vibe of his videos was a performance rather than anything natural and innate, though Harry had clearly mastered his act.
“Today, I’m going to go to the location that connects all of these people together,” said Harry for the fifth time, eyes bright and mischievous, as if letting the viewer in on a secret. The effect wasn’t quite as impactful once seen with his four previous takes, each with the same sparkling sincerity, but Harry continued on fearlessly. “We’ll be scoping out the abandoned Hogwarts Academy to get an idea of where these victims may have met each other…or their killer. I’ll see you there!”
Harry’s hand covered up the lens – a set up for a transition shot, something to make life a little bit easier for his editors.
When his hand came back off the lens, his expression was grim.
“This better fucking work,” muttered Harry to himself.
In one smooth, casual movement, he shut off his camera.
***
“Here we are at the Hogwarts Academy!” whispered Harry to the camera from inside a run-down, abandoned classroom. The footage had become a bit shakier, his handheld vlogging not nearly as steady as his office’s set-up with its tripods and ringlights. “From my research, Alastor Moody and Severus Snape both held brief, one-year stints as teachers here, while Myrtle Warren was a student for all five years of secondary school. Very little else connects the three of them together, besides the strange circumstances of their deaths. They might have all met their killer in these very halls.”
Harry continued to chatter over his footage, seemingly less concerned with getting multiple takes of any particular moment. Perhaps his words in his home set had been scripted, but here, Harry’s enthusiasm seemed genuine — the camera switched from showing the school to Harry’s earnest dialogue, with each nook and cranny of Hogwarts Academy described in detail by Harry, oftentimes supported by research he’d conducted before his filming journey.
“Finally, we’re about to head out to the grounds,” said Harry, holding his camera a bit too close to his face. “According to one of my interviews with a past student, the forest behind the school was super off-limits. There were rumors that a massive snake lived in those woods, just waiting to prey on unsuspecting schoolchildren. Loads of teenagers still went into the forest for a smoke or just to skive off, but they’d get in huge trouble if they were caught. Like, expulsion-worthy trouble.”
He switched the camera to film the hallway in front of him, the front doors of the entrance ahead of him. “Check it out! They’ve got these little trophy cases lining the entryway. Isn’t that cute?”
The camera zoomed in on a few of the trophies. Special Award for Valedictorian. Special Award for Philanthropic Leadership. Special Award for Services to the School.
But Harry seemed to lose interest in those quickly, camera snapping back to the front doors. “Did you guys hear that? What the fuck was that sound?”
For the next few minutes, Harry simply filmed the front entrance of the school, his shaky footage capturing nothing but the thick, wooden doors in front of him and his unsteady breathing.
The microphone hadn’t picked up whatever noise Harry had heard. The viewers wouldn’t know if it was real or imagined.
Without warning, the footage of the hallway switched off.
***
The next clip began.
Harry held the video camera at an awkward level; rather than the elevated angle he’d been using before, he now held his camera just in front of his chest, capturing an unflattering view of the bottom of his chin. Sweat dripped down his neck, and his microphone picked up his shaky, rapid breathing. From above him, swooping trees covered the sky, hiding Harry in a sea of green and brown
“There’s a concrete shed behind the school,” whispered Harry into the camera, speaking torturously slowly. “I think it’s the old caretaker’s shack, but it’s not on any of the blueprints. I looked in through the windows. I think something’s very wrong in there.”
The camera angle flipped again, nauseating in the roughness of its transition, to capture an unassuming, grey hut, nearly hidden behind the towering trees of the Forbidden Forest. Harry, for once, did not fill his walk back to the shack with any unnecessary chatter; his footsteps were silent, careful to avoid twigs or the crunchiest of leaves as he stepped closer and closer to the hut in the woods.
As Harry reached the side of the shack, with its single, tempting window, the camera stopped for a moment; not a pause in the recording, but a pause in Harry’s movements, as if he was reconsidering his actions. After a minute of nothing but the side of the concrete walls, in a single, swift movement, Harry lifted the camera towards the window, capturing the awful contents inside.
Though the glass on the window was smudged, the shock of red behind it was so vivid that no amount of dirtiness could have concealed it. Bloodstains littered every surface, a mix of old, dulled brown coating the walls and fresher, bright red splashes splattered across the floor. Various weapons hung from a pegboard on the opposite wall, from saws to hammers to knives, some of which had their own bloodstains immortalized on their rusted metal. Coils of rope lined the floor, carelessly twining between the strange buckets lining the wall of the hut before finally resting on a tattered mattress sat in the middle of the little room.
Harry’s camera panned over all of it carefully, capturing every detail.
Once again, the footage cut off abruptly.
***
When Harry’s voice came again, low and frantic, the camera was pointing straight towards the ground, nearly resting on a pile of dirt.
“He’s here,” whispered Harry, voice so hushed it came out more like a hiss than anything else. “He saw me by the fucking hut. He’s trying to kill me.”
Harry went silent again, with only the rustling of the branches and a view of some particularly malformed tree bark filling the screen. Somewhere, a songbird let out a mournful warble, as grating as an alarm in the quiet of the forest.
“Fuck it,” growled Harry eventually. “I’m wasting my time here. He knows these woods like the back of his fucking hand. Might as well get something out of it.”
With careful hands, Harry set down the camera, tucking it just out of sight behind a bush. The leaves covered most of the lens, but the right side Harry’s form could just be seen poking out from the sides as he stood to his feet, dusting the dirt off of his jeans.
“Voldemort, you stupid motherfucker!” Harry shouted, defiant to the end. “I found you! You’re fucked! If I can track you down on no fucking budget, the cops are going to have you in jail before you know it!”
The wind whistled through the leaves, the sound of the branches scraping by the microphone drowning out the next words Harry spoke.
“—do it?” Harry was yelling, his voice rising in pitch. “What did poor Myrtle Warren ever do to you, huh? She was just a teenager, did you know that? You killed her days before her twentieth birthday, you fucking psychopath.”
A pause, while Harry gasped for breath.
“Are you hiding from me?” cried out Harry, somehow possessing the audacity to mock the man hunting him through the woods. “You’re actually such a pussy! Is this why you’re killing these people? Taking out all your insecurity over your limp-dicked, impotent cowardice on these innocents?”
More heavy, labored breathing. More footsteps.
A cry.
The side of Harry’s head flew into frame as a single gloved hand snapped his face against a tree, banging the man’s forehead on the tough bark before Harry had the chance to turn around and fight.
Harry’s form quickly fell out of view, dropping like a stone onto the forest floor.
Slowly, the sounds of the forest that had gone silent during Harry’s ranting began to return. Birds sang in the trees, chirping and cawing to each other. A squirrel ran by the camera, darting quickly through the undergrowth, there and gone in a flash. The wind continued to stir the foliage around the camera’s microphone, the soft swishing of leaves a constant in the remaining minutes of the recording.
Along with the distant sound of something heavy being dragged through the dirt, just out of sight of the lens.
***
Tom paused the recording. There was little else to see; the rest of the footage simply captured the peace and tranquility of the forest until the camera had finally run out of battery.
“This footage was discovered six months ago, a full month after Harry Potter’s disappearance,” said Tom, watching his audience carefully. They had handled the footage better than Tom had expected, but many of their expressions were still horrified, distraught at the footage of what the FBI believed were likely Harry Potter’s final moments. “The FBI made the connection to Hogwarts Academy weeks after Potter. Our agents searched the entire property. By the time they arrived, the serial killer Voldemort had already cleared out the hut you see in the video, but Potter was cleverer than the killer had realized; he’d left the camera behind to try and give us any info on Voldemort at all.”
The class looked appropriately touched by his sacrifice. As they should; it took a man of real character to willingly walk to his death, facing certain doom by himself in the woods, all in the vague, undefined hope of helping those after him.
“Potter had tried to bait Voldemort into speaking, unsuccessfully,” continued Tom. “But this footage—that brief flash of Voldemort’s hand, even with the glove—provided us with some of the best evidence we’ve got. From there, we can extrapolate height. We can trace where his gloves may have been purchased. We can get a general idea of his build. And that’s not even taking account the profile insights we gained from the inside of his shack.”
A student in the front raised her hand cautiously.
Finally, a trainee with initiative. “Ms. Granger.”
“I’ve done my own research into the Voldemort case, sir,” said Granger, her tone brisk and matter-of-fact. “After Potter’s disappearance, Voldemort’s been connected to the deaths of Bertha Jorkins, Charity Burbage, Frank Bryce, and Cedric Diggory. All the bodies of Voldemort’s victims are found in public places, violently ripped apart to delay the process of identification, but with more than enough biological material to tie each body to its victim. But as far as I know, Potter’s body was never found, right?”
“Excellent, Ms. Granger,” responded Tom, real fervor entering his voice. “Something is different about Potter to Voldemort. What does that tell us about Voldemort? And how can that help us catch him?”
Before Granger could open her mouth to answer, the bell rang, signalling the end of class. The trainees packed up their bags, relieved to leave the room; they’d probably get to take a nonsense class on disguises or legal restrictions next, something that would let them bury their heads in the sand a bit longer, ignoring the reality of the work they’d need to do.
But it didn't matter to Tom.
Tom had something waiting at home for him that was far more interesting than any of the shit he had to put up with during his teaching post at the FBI. A man in his basement, one with thick spectacles and a crooked smile, one with bravery and integrity, one who Tom couldn’t help becoming obsessed with.
Tom was no fool; after all, he’d gotten away with killing as Voldemort for years now. He knew that Harry was plotting something, whether a grand escape or some way of signaling to the outside world just who Voldemort really was. A spark had entered his eyes as of late, a bit more of his old bite coming back into their conversations, a sure sign that Harry had found a reason to be hopeful. But Tom had found ways to counter his plans before, never hesitating to respond with the full extent of his cruelty, perfectly pleased to play Harry’s little games.
The most sensible thing to do would be to kill him, of course, but Tom had long since left the realm of what was sensible when it came to Harry Potter.
He packed up his belongings, humming quietly to himself, ever-eager to see what his beloved had in store for him today.