Subject:

Calen Challenges #1


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Challenge #1 :

Summary: Auror or Serial Killer

I've been watching this Tv Show Dexter recently. If you haven't
heard of it, here's a summary:

The series follows Dexter Morgan, an incredibly likeable forensics expert for the Miami Metro Police Department, who moonlights as a serial killer with a penchant for inflicting his own unusual brand of justice – he kills people who truly deserve it.


On to the challenge,

Rules:
* Post Final Battle.
* Harry works in the MLE, auror or hitwizard, magical forensics(?) etc.
* In the muggle or wizarding world, or both you choose.
* Harry doesn't feel much emotion anymore, but does get a rush out of
neatly cutting, taking samples, killing and dumping deserving recipients.
* Harry loves blood, the sight, smell, pattern it sprays when leaking from
someone, anyone. He see's it alot in his work at the MLE.
* Harry is not normal and knows it. But he pretends he's normal and fools
pretty much everyone. He's liked by all.
* At least one person in the MLE who doesn't like him at all. Someone who
thinks he's a shifty s.o.b. but still trusts him to do his job.
* No superHarry, should be about his smarts, staying ahead of everyone else.


That's pretty much it, anything else is up to you.

 

Sounds...interesting, but not overly so. It would take work to make this a good fic.

 

It'd also take a good amount of knowledge about forensics...and who's to say that Wizards don't have a charm to tell if it was a suicide or not? :/

I like the idea, though, Harry's personality sounds interesting.

 

From the sounds of this it would either be a really cool story with a crazy Harry, or is would blow up in your face from just lack of knowledge and proper character development. There would be many opportunities to mess up Harry's crazy thoughts and his decent into madness.

 

I'm taking a course in Forensics right now, and the idea seems pretty interesting.

It would probably replace the simple HP world with a darker, more cuthroat Victorian Age society, with Harry being called in for his 'expertise'. The atmosphere and enviroment would have to be similar to that Harry/Narcissa fic where Harry is an Auror investigating her Dark Arts stores. (Anyone have a link for that one?)

It would also require Harry's BWL status to be heavily downplayed. It definitely has potential if done right.

Though I suppose it could be done with a more Hannibal Lecter-ish Harry as well.

 

This sounds a lot like the earlier chapters of Vash's Lust of a Dark Soul, back when he didn't have the dark lordy Harry going on, and he was just your average psycopathic killer.

Ergo, nice idea.

And, as Mordecai mentioned in his post, you've got to do something about his BWL status. In the good post-Hogwarts fics that I've read (the ones that are continuations of canon), if Harry is an Auror, he's typically just your normal law enforcement member, even though he's practically the current icon of the Light, we don't see it. That's one problem/thing to mention if someone takes this up.

How would magical forensics work? Would they utilise spells to find evidence and identify any perpetrators, and if so, how? A simple summoning spell or an advanced selective vanishing spell could take care of any evidence one could leave behind, so there has to be another way to take evidence. Another form of evidence entirely, even. Maybe magical residue? I don't know.

well, tata.

 

That's taking the easy way out, as an author. You could get around the BWL-fame problem by making it AU - brother of BWL, but that's kind of cliche by now.

 

Heh.


:::

2011 A.D.

Harry Potter's cell is well beyond the others, facing only a bleak wall across the corridor, and it is unique in many ways. The front is a wall of bars, but within the bars, at a distance greater than the human reach, is a second barrier, a visible magical supression field. Beyond the slightly shimmering shield, Jane Cardinal could see a table bolted to the floor and piled high with softcover books and papers, and a straight chair, also fastened down.

Harry Potter himself reclined on his bunk, perusing the Italian edition of Vogue. He stroked his chin thoughtfully with his right hand and put the pages beside each other one by one with his left. The magazine was floating in front of his face.

Cardinal stopped a little distance from the bars, about the length of a small foyer.

"Dr. Potter." Her voice sounded suprisngly confident.

He looked up from his reading.

For a split second she thought his gaze hummed, but it was only her blood she heard.

"My name is Jane Cardinal. May I talk with you?"

Courtesy was implicit in her distance and her tone.

Dr. Potter, his finger pressed against his pursed lips. Then he rose in his own time and came forward smoothly in his cage, stopping short of the obviously draining field without looking at it, as though he chose the distance.

She could see that he was tall, sleek; in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own.

"Good morning," he said, as though he had answered the door. His cultured voice had a slight metallic rasp beneath it, possibly from disuse.

Harry Potter's eyes are emerald and they reflect the light in pinpoints of green. Sometimes the points of light seem to fly like sparks to his center. His eyes held Cardinal whole.

She came a measured distance closer to the bars. The hair on her forearms rose and pressed against her sleeves. It seemed impossible Harry Potter would ever be convict. A convict who was a criminal psychologist at that.

"Doctor, we have a hard problem in psychological profiling. I want to ask you for your help."

"'We' being Behavioral Science at the Hit-Wizard Core. The brutish Aurors would never bother to seek insight into the mind of a Dark Wizard. You're one of Neville Longbottom's, I expect."

"I am, yes." Despite the field, Cardinal put up her meager Occulumency shields. She knew he was powerful enough to do wandless magic regardless.

"May I see your credentials?"

She hadn't expected this. "I showed them at the... office."

"You mean you showed them to administrator Hermione Granger, my...benefactor?"

"Yes." She wondered why he found the idea amusing.

"Did you see her credentials?"

"No."

"The academic ones don't make much for interest, I can tell you. Did you meet Draco Malfoy on your way here? Isn't he charming? I did quite the job with him, I must say. Which of them had you rather talk with?"

"On the whole, I'd say Malfoy."

"You could be a reporter Granger let in for money. This institution is going broke. I think I'm entitled to see your credentials."

"All right." She held up her ID card, her moving photo becoming warped under the influence of the field.

"I can't read it at this distance, send it through, please."

"I can't."

"Because it's magical."

"Yes."

"Ask Barney."

The large orderly came and considered. "Dr. Potter, I'll let this come through. But if you don't return it when I ask you to--- if we have to bother everybody and secure you to get it--- then I'll be upset. If you upset me, you'll have to stay bundled up until I feel better toward you. Meals through the charm, no bed--- ­the works. And I'll hold your owl for a week. Got it?"

"Certainly, Barney."

The card rolled through on the tray and Dr. Potter held it to the light.

"A trainee? It says 'trainee.' Neville Longbottom sent a trainee to interview me?" He tapped the card against his small white teeth and breathed in its smell.

"Dr. Potter," Barney said.

"Of course." He put the card back in the tray carrier and Barney pulled it to the outside.

"I'm still in training at the Academy, yes," Cardinal said, "but we're not discussing the Hit-Wizard core --- we're talking psychology. Can you decide for yourself if I'm qualified in what we talk about?"

"Ummmm," Dr. Potter said. "Actually... that's rather slippery of you. Barney, do you think Trainee Cardinal might have a chair?"

It was a subtle insult at best, a psychological reminder at her status at worst. Harry Potter was more than just a powerful dark wizard.

"Dr. Granger didn't tell me anything about a chair."

"What do your manners tell you, Barney?"

"Would you like a chair?" Barney asked her. "We could have had one, but he never--- well, usually no­body needs to stay that long." Cardinal involuntarily shivered. She knew Potter saw it.

"Yes, thank you," Cardinal said.

Barney brought a folding chair from the locked closet across the hall, set it up, and left them.

"Now," Potter said, sitting sideways at his table to face her, "what did Zabini say to you?"

"Who?"

"Blaise Zabini, in the cell down there. He hissed at you on your way here. What did he say?"

"He said, 'I can smell death."'

"I see. He is correct. You reek of it. How do you feel about your first kill?" Cardinal froze. She was still having nightmares from that. Potter's eyes seemed to come alive, his nose breathing in some imaginary scent.

"Avada Kedavra. I'm dissapointed, you know. So uncreative. Bad form too." He looked at her, deep into her eyes. "It's such a waste of potential. I'd have used Turgis Remorialis. Are you familiar with it?"

Cardinal swallowed. "No."

Potter's lips curled into a sadistic smile. "It makes for wonderful entertainment, let me assure you. The skin is flayed first, the bones twisted ever so slowly. And then..." he paused for a moment, apparently reliving some memory. "...the bleeding starts. It pools."

Everyone knew Harry Potter's story. He had joined the Hit-Wizard crowd straight out of Hogwarts. Best in his class. Dumbledore's death had motivated him beyond what any thought possible. But he had changed.

"The muscles start to peel slowly off the bone, leaving it pure white against the crimson sheen of the blood..."

To everyone's suprise, he proved most adept at magical and physiological analysis of Dark Wizards. How they changed mentally, physically, emotionally. His skills helped the Core track down countless Death Eaters. He was never, as many expected, on the front lines taking them down.

"And then, the pain starts. The victims seem to go almost numb in the beginning, denying it. It's a wonderful process, seeing the truth sink in...and their blood leak out..."

But some of the Death Eaters seemed untouchable. Cardinal's own grandfather was killed by Samuel Parkinson. His money bought his freedom and took him off the Ministry's sights. But not Potter's.

"They almost always give this delightful scream. Of course, some of the braver, or more stupid don't at first. But they all do in the end..."

Parkinson was found murdered at the front of his estate. She supposed he owed Potter for that. It was a clean kill, of course. A simple cutting curse to the jugular. Bloody.

"They get this wonderful resignation. But the pain is too great. It breaks their thoughts. Their very struggling increases their loss of blood. The slow shattering of the bones helps too..."

And one by one, Death Eaters who walked free started to fall. At first, the Hit-Wizard Core was delighted at this occurance - it proved them right. But then murderers were killed. Rapists. Corrupt officals. Common theives. Muggles. Normal citizens.

"Death comes slowly, the curse assures that. It's intoxicating seeing them contemplate the horrors of their existence. Much better than the simple flash."

It wasn't who was killed that made him a priority. It was the manner of the kill. Clean kills slowly turned to messy crime scenes. Messy crime scenes turned into absolute bloodbaths. Of course, no one suspected Harry Potter. He was the one giving the description of the killer after all.

"Death must be made a ceremony. An occasion. A fatal green light is downright rude, don't you agree?"

Cardinal was brought back to the reality by the piercing eyes of Harry Potter. She hadn't noticed him get up from hs chair and move to the barrier. He was grinning lecherously.

"I'm afraid I don't, Dr. Potter," she managed with a small twinge of courage. She knew she was safe out here. But it didn't help to know what Potter was capable of. And it wasn't his magical abilities either.

Potter seemed to grin wider, his hand tracing the humming field. "Don't fret about Jane," he said in his quiet, cultured voice again. All traces of the bloodthirsty killer was gone. "I can help you there."

Straightening slightly, he stepped back once more, eyes glinting with dangerous curiousity. "Now, what kind of trouble is our friend Harmond Aldenton up to?"

Cardinal froze once more. She hadn't said a name.

Dr. Potter retreated to his bed, waiting.












:::

Yes, Dexter!Lecter!Harry would work splendidly.

 

I like this Harry's calculating personage. They know he's dangerous and unpredictable (serial killer might mean, he'd be very predictable). But it seems his coruscating mind might set him apart. I got that feeling that he's one step ahead or portrays the image that he is. Or maybe I'm just looking too deeply.

All in all, I like.

 

Good challenge. And I have to say, awesome preview, Amerision.

 

Amerision, please, you must continue it...Please, Im begging you.

 

Spectacular Amerison. Spectacular.

 

I'm necroing this because it was fucking epic. I want moar!

Also, fixes in red. "..." indicates blocks of text cut, because I didn't see errors...(Doesn't mean there aren't any there...I just didn't see them.)

I can't see him saying "Ummm." Maybe "Hmmm." instead.

(quotes were nested wrong...>.>)

lol, flashback to PS...>.>

 

Amerision: Ah, brings back great memories of "Silence of the Lambs"... I beg of you to continue your Lector!Harry. The way Harry talked about death was creepy and perverse, but that's what made it so great. I love the idea of Harry starting out hunting down Death Eaters and murderers, but then eventually progressing to the point he's killing random citizens. This is one of the most original ideas I've seen yet - certainly one of the most interesting. I'm excited to see where you go with this (should you go anywhere). Excellent job. A million stars.