A Hogwarts Murder Mystery

Prologue - Tea with the Professors

It was the 31^st of August 2013, it was a glorious summer day, and Harry and Ginny Potter had been called to Hogwarts to discuss a murder.

Well, technically, they had been invited by their old friend Hermione Granger, the school Transfiguration Mistress, to have afternoon tea with her and the Headmistress, but both Harry and Ginny knew Hermione well enough to know that she did not have 'afternoon tea' unless something serious was going on. A visitor could work out just how big the problem was based on the amount of chocolate in the cake. And Ginny read the newspapers.

"You've read the newspapers, I take it?" said Professor McGonagall sternly.

"Should I have done?" asked Harry worriedly.

Ginny tried to kick him under the table, and hit the table leg instead, jerking a cup of tea onto the floor.

"How did that happen?" asked Professor McGonagall confusedly.

"I don't know," said Ginny in embarrassment. "Maybe it's wobbly."

McGonagall gave her a Look. "And it chose that moment to wobble, all by itself?"

Ginny said nothing. Professor McGonagall glared a moment longer, and then gave it up as a bad job. "Professor Granger, ask a house-elf to come up, will you?"

Hermione stood up and pulled a silver chain, which emitted a low note, and then a high chime. "Leandra," Hermione spoke clearly to a point about halfway up the wall, "will you send up a house-elf to clean up a cup of tea, please?"

"A cup of tea?" asked the wall in tones of disbelief. "Send a house-elf just to clean a cup of tea?"

"Leandra, just send an elf," said McGonagall. "Send Winky if no-one else is available."

"Very well, professor," said the wall dutifully, before it emitted a chime and a low note. Hermione sat down again, looking disapproving, as she did every time house-elves were mentioned (which was why Professor McGonagall took such great pleasure in mentioning them). Harry, who hadn't the faintest idea of what had just happened, looked over at Ginny, saw that she appeared completely unfazed by the incident, and gave it up as a bad job.

"Okay then, so why should we have read the papers?" he asked.

Hermione made a 'tchah!' noise; Ginny looked faintly embarrassed, and Professor McGonagall looked at him curiously. "Do you read the papers at all, Harry?"

Harry squirmed. "Not since the prophet mocked up those photos of me with Cho Chang and Oliver Wood." Whilst he had secretly found the photos of himself with Cho strangely interesting - in, he kept hurriedly reminding himself, a strictly 'Oh, so that's what it would have been like if we'd got together, not that we ever will, don't worry, Ginny dear' way - the general 'exposé' had been so bizarre, disturbing, and generally offensive to himself, Cho and Oliver (the headline, Charming Cho Seeks Wood and Potter's Snitches, had made him choke so vigorously on his breakfast that Ginny had been forced to levicorpus him in order to help him cough it up), that they had all successfully sued the Prophet and publicly vowed to never read it again. Even so, Wood refused to be alone in a room with him these days, and Harry's own team captain, Ban Benwick, had ever since eyed Harry with a rather disconcerting leer.

"Okay," said Ginny hurriedly, "We're not discussing this. I read the papers - I get The Watmanch* - and I know what you're talking about. It's about that house-elf, isn't it?"

[* The Watmanch : originally The Hogsmeade Watchman, this paper famously never spelled words right, or indeed put them in the right place - famously, it advised in 1916 that the Lake District was in the midst of a full muggle conflict, and should be avoided at all costs, but that the Somme Valley would be a nice peaceful place for a holiday. Despite this minor faux pas (resulting in a wizarding death toll of 200, and an economic slump for the Lake District), The Watchman was Wizarding Britain's favourite broadsheet. Its name was changed by opinion poll in 1968 to The Watmanch, its most typical rendering of the title, although after the change it generally spelled itself Wanmatch.]

"Yes," answered McGonagall wearily, in tones suggestive of 'Finally the correct answer, My God, why did I ever become a teacher.' "Lurkey's death. Suicide. Or - as it may well be - murder."

"Excuse me?" said Harry. "I still don't know what you're talking about. What's happened to the house-elf?"

"I just told you," said Professor McGonagall. "He died. It may be suicide. It may be murder. We really don't know."

Eyeing Harry's near terminal confusion, Hermione took pity upon him. "Okay then. About a year ago, the NUEEP sent us a new elf, whose previous employment had been terminated. The NUEEP assured us that he had not been fired because of any wrongdoing, and that he wanted to work at the school because he had always dreamed of it. Lurgey was hired almost immediately, but soon after that hiring little things started to go wrong. Trinkets would go missing. Food would arrive at the table too salty, or too peppery. Books would disappear. Apparatus would be damaged. Students stopped complaining about Peeves, which was a big hint that something was wrong, I assure you - a lot of last year he was so depressed that he spent January to April haunting Hagrid's house, because it was the only place nothing was going wrong - and that, we all eventually realised, had something to do with the fact that Hagrid doesn't let elves into his house - not since that time he stood on Lobelia and she claimed it as sexual harassment, I mean honestly -"

"How do you know it wasn't Hagrid's children causing the problems?" asked Ginny, desperate to stop Hermione before she launched into her full diatribe against 'compensation culture', whatever that was: Ginny had a vague idea that it had something to do with muggle schools.

Hermione snorted. "Oh, they're no real harm, as long as you keep them away from the kitchens and warn the animals about them - I mean, ever since that business with Danaius and the manticore, it's just been a matter of shouting, 'Danaius, come back!' and all dangerous beasts within hearing range are scuttling for their dens - but they don't deliberately set out to cause trouble. Whereas, when the NEWT papers were sabotaged so that they were impossible to answer - Professor Vector spent days in the hospital wing when she found that all the arithmantical equations had been jumbled up so that they were impossible - and the exams officer reported seeing a house-elf matching Lurgey's description -"

"Hang on, Lurgey?" asked Ginny. "I thought his name was Lurkey?"

Hermione shot a nasty look at the Headmistress, who had the grace to look embarrassed. "Lurgey was his real name," Hermione answered. "But some people," and here she gave Professor McGonagall a look capable of melting stone, "insisted on calling him by a cruel and unnecessary nickname, which as a result made him feel ill-used and mistreated."

"Well, I'm sorry, Hermione," said Professor McGonagall indignantly. "But everyone called him Lurkey, even he called himself Lurkey, and you have to admit it's hard to swim against the current."

"You are the Headmistress," said Hermione, in a voice dripping acid. "It is your job to set an example to those around you, not do as they do. It was distinctly unfair of you to use that awful nickname."

"Lurkey was entirely appropriate as a name for him," came a voice from behind Harry and Ginny. Turning, they saw a haggard woman of their age in an apron, clutching a mop and bucket. "The house-elves are all on their lunch-breaks, and Winky's dead drunk again, headmistress," she said, bustling over with the mop, "which means that, according to ministry rules," she added in disgust, "I have to deal with it."

"Yes, thank you, Leandra," answered Professor McGonagall.

Whilst the woman clattered over to the remains of the teacup and swept it up, Hermione attempted to continue. "But surely you can see that if everyone was insisting that he would come to a bad end, and calling him untrustworthy, then he would inevitably act upon those instincts."

"Professor Granger," said Leandra witheringly. "I may not be as intelligent, or as well qualified as you. I am sure that you, the youngest witch to ever achieve a mastership, even if it was by strictly unethical methods -" (Hermione flushed at this) "would know more than I, a poor widow forced into a job I was not born to in order to make ends equal. But believe me when I say that I spend more hours in the kitchens than I'd care to mention, and I saw that dratted elf every day, and all that I saw proved in the strongest possible terms that he was a bad lot, who got caught out, killed himself out of shame, and good riddance to him! nosy little bludger that he was, sneaking around and sticking his nose where it wasn't wanted." Her beady stare at the four of them made it quite clear that Lurgey/Lurkey was not the only creature guilty of such crimes in the school.

"Thank you, Leandra," said Professor McGonagall firmly. "I'm sure you have plenty to be getting on with."

Leandra curtsied with exaggerated civility. "Of course, Professor. I believe I have some paperwork" (and this was said in tones one would expect sewage to be described in) "to be getting on with." She swept out of the room, clanking the bucket behind her; Harry distinctly heard her mutter, "uppity woman, thank you very much House-Elf Liberation," as she left.

Hermione bit viciously into a piece of cake, muttering about self-fulfilling prophecies and the conceits of the silent majority. Professor McGonagall absent-mindedly reparoed the cup, and, seeing a tea-stain, used her wand to clean it. Ginny looked at her curiously. Why did she call for that woman, then?

Professor McGonagall, seeing Ginny's expression, smiled ruefully and said, "That was Leandra Burke. Widow of Prasutagus Burke - the man who killed himself last year after that scandal over the hexed muggle electronics, you remember, or would if you read the rags. He left what money he had left to the ministry - they say in exchange for them burning any records of his involvement and giving him a clean record in history books, though if so then the Ministry isn't holding up its end of the deal - and his family had barely enough to keep themselves, thanks to your burning their shop down, Harry, and so they refused to take in Leandra or her two little girls. And she had no money to speak of - the Yaxleys were bankrupted years ago - and so even though she'd been brought up to live a fairly genteel life she had to take the first job she could get - which was the house-elf coordinator position."

"And she has made it perfectly clear ever since that she finds it demeaning," added Hermione in disgust.

"Nonetheless," said Professor McGonagall, "she did give the basic gist of what happened. Jocasta, the exams officer, gave a very accurate description of Lurk - all right, Lurgey! We - that is, myself, Professor Flitwick and Madam Burke - confronted him, asked him to tell us what had happened, and he confessed not only to exam sabotage but also to all of the other petty crimes. I dismissed him at once, and ordered him to pack his bags and leave the next day."

Professor McGonagall shifted in her seat, appearing slightly embarrassed. "He never left. We found him hanged from the rafters in the Bell-Tower that evening when another house-elf went in to ring the dinner bell. It was...distressing, but obviously suicide, something to put aside. We all believed we could move on."

"That happened two months ago, at the end of June. And for a month, there was nothing. But then, on the 31^st of July-"

"My Transfigurations Laboratory was wrecked," said Hermione harshly. "Some vandal had smashed the animal cages, destroyed the textbooks, shredded the diagrams, and ground the Transfigurative Restoration Work to dust. It was very thoroughly done. Whoever it was used cleaning charms to wipe away footprints and fingerprints. There was no way an outsider could have got in. Which meant that it had to be -"

"A traitor to the school," finished Professor McGonagall. "A teacher, or staff member, that had deliberately destroyed school property. And that was when we considered: was Lurkey's death really suicide? Or had he been ordered to carry out that vandalism? Had he known something, someone who meant the school harm, and was he killed because of it?"

"What did you do?" asked Harry.

"The minister," said McGonagall angrily, her nostrils flared, "wrote it off as petty vandalism and refused to 'waste' ministry resources on vague suspicions. And Nymphadora Lupin wasn't able to do much without ministry backing, except conclude that there were no obvious suspects - no one had conveniently arrived in the school the day before the vandalism, and there was nothing but vague suspicion, about which too many people were subject to offer a lead. We hoped that nothing else would happen. And nothing like that has happened. But there have been a number of anonymous letters - penned using the cypherus charm, of course - I got one this morning." She pulled it from a desk drawer, and handed it to Harry and Ginny. Looking at it, they read:

Cats only have nine lives. And they don't always fall on their feet. I'll get you next staff meeting. I'll have your job yet - there's only the half-breed in my way.

"I believe it is supposed to read as though it comes from Professor Sprout," said the Headmistress calmly. "It's quite interesting. The first two sentences seem like generalised threats - the writer knows about my animagical form, but then so does anyone that's ever paid any attention to me in Third Year Transfiguration, and there's nothing concrete, like 'I'll throttle you with the curtain cord in the library'. And the fourth sentence is just obfuscation to make me suspect Pomona. It's the third sentence that intrigues me most: is it the carelessness of a teacher? An ancillary member of staff trying to throw me off the scent? Or a double-bluff: an attempt by a staff member to convince me that they are really another staff member pretending to be a teacher?"

Ginny had, by this time, had enough. "I'm sorry Professor - but why are you showing us this, and telling us all of this? What, exactly, is it that you want us to do?"

"Oh didn't I say?" asked Professor McGonagall lightly. "I really should have. What I want is for you and Harry to spend a few days here."

There was a silence. Harry and Ginny stared at Professor McGonagall, who was pleasantly smiling, and Hermione, who was beaming. Finally, Ginny spoke. "You what?"

"I want you and your husband to spend a few days here. You see, Cardelia - that's Madam Hooch to you - came down with doxy virus last May - before any of this started, you understand, so she's in the clear - and since then she's been recovering at her home in the Malverns. And I had been planning to hire Catriona McCormack to teach flying whilst poor Cardelia was ill, only then the Weird Sisters got into that trouble in Colombia and she had to fly over there and she says it take ages for the Colombian mediwizards to sort out that hexed cocaine they took... and then I talked to Hermione, and she suggested that, given your previous experience in solving these little mysteries, you would be the best person for the job: especially since Chudley's not going to be playing another game until November, and it should be sorted out by then..."

She smiled winningly. Harry groaned. "You've got this all worked out, haven't you?"

McGonagall looked surprised. "Naturally. You, Harry, will be the big bluff Quidditch hero who is obviously interested in whatever is going on here, and will draw all the attention of the...perpetrator; you, Ginny, will be the Victoria Wood-style* Quidditch wife, who will be ignored by the perpetrator, allowing you to make more careful enquiries. And between you and whoever you manage to clear from suspicion, you can flush out the trai...misguided soul."

[Note for those who are not familiar with the world of Quidditch: Victoria Wood is the wife of Oliver Wood, the Puddlemere United Goalkeeper, not the famous muggle comedian. The only thing amusing about the Quidditch Victoria Wood is that she is nothing like the muggle Victoria Wood. 'Victoria Wood' is used in the magical world to denote dim and fluffy stupidity.]

Harry looked at Ginny. What have we got to lose? he thought. It'll be good to catch up with Hermione properly. And to see the old teachers. And it might show me an option for when I retire.

Ginny looked at Harry. Damn blast it! she thought. She's hooked him! Doesn't he realise I don't want to come traipsing back here again like some magical Chalet School Girl? I wanted to book a holiday! And I'm not leaving the kids with Mum and Dad again, not whilst Dad's still obsessed with dynamite.

"We'll talk about it," said Ginny firmly, not quite loud enough to drown Harry's enthusiastic "Of course! We'd love to help."

"Excellent," said McGonagall, who was either selectively deaf, or running the school according to Machiavelli. "Hermione will give you all the information you need to know. And you'll be told everything - within reason - in a full faculty meeting tomorrow, just in case Hermione's deliberately mislead you."

Hermione paled. Ginny, whose initial reaction of swelling up like a bullfrog had now been replaced by a perverse fascination - was she that awful when we were here, or was it just a case of absolute power corrupting absolutely? - quickly hurried the other two out of the door. "I look forward to seeing you and young Sirius tomorrow!" called the Headmistress after them.

~*~

"Shall we go and visit Ron now?" asked Harry as soon as they had exited the office staircase and the gargoyle (which had a neat metal sign labelled Professor M G McGonagall, Headmistress, Please Form an Orderly Queue gripped in its claws).

"Only if he has a bathful of acid that I can dispose of your mangled corpse in once I have killed you!" shrieked Ginny. "What were you playing at, getting us involved in this mess?"

"I thought it would be fun," explained Harry.

"Fun? FUN?! How will tracking down a house-elf murdering, lab obliterating, poison-pen using maniac be fun? You're not a child rushing around searching for the Philosopher's Stone any more, Harry!"

Slightly hurt, Harry pointed out, "You were upset about having to send Sirius here tomorrow. Now you get the chance to see him a bit longer."

"And won't he be embarrassed when his father makes a complete clabbert out of himself!"

Ignoring this (largely because he suspected that Sirius would be rather embarrassed by the sort of behaviour McGonagall seemed to expect), Harry changed tactics. "Professor McGonagall needs us. She said so."

"Did she Harry? Did she actually, at any point, say that she needed us? She wanted us, so we could orchestrate this silly farce involving you behaving like some ridiculous Quidditch stud, and me like one of their interchangeable bimbos!"

"Hermione needs us!"

Hermione voiced, rather quietly, her opinion that she would actually prefer a ventilated cranium. But that seeing two of her best friends make complete fools out of themselves was something she had really been longing to see.

"Oh right!" shrieked Ginny, who always preferred to argue with someone who didn't have the power to leave her in bed alone that night. "Now you think we're making complete fools out of ourselves! I didn't hear you voicing that opinion in Madam-the-Headmistress's office!"

"Handy tip Ginny, just in case you ever decide to work for a living instead of supporting yourself on your husband's money: arguing with your employer does not generally push you up the career ladder."

"Enough!" yelled Harry, his voice echoing in the stone corridor. Lowering his voice he added, "If you really want me to, I'll go back in there and tell McGonagall that we can't do it. Or, we can think this over, and try it, and if it all goes wrong we can leave, and maybe, just maybe, we'll actually be able to sort this problem out and make the school safe for Sirius."

Ginny sighed. "Okay. You win. Friends, Hermione?" She shook Hermione's hand. "But if you dare try to imitate that idiot Dash Fwistle and his stupid "I'll have pulled by the time you finish your first glass" line, I'll demonstrate just how seriously we take the line "Behind every strong man is a stronger woman." To the entire school. And that'll be bound to smoke out the traitor. As well, of course, any budding Skeeters."

"I do love you, Ginny-Pinny," said Harry in sarcastically nauseating tones.

"I love you too, Harry-Carry," Ginny replied, and they both rubbed noses, smirking. Beside them, they heard Hermione make fake gagging sounds; and then, laughing slightly, she burst out with "Hello Vincent!"

Harry and Ginny sprang apart, to see Vincent Crabbe staring at them in fascination. He waved and said, "'Lo."

"Er, what-" said Harry.

"Vincent here is the apprentice Caretaker," said Hermione brightly. "Professor McGonagall gave him the job after he repented, once his father and Lucius Malfoy died."

"Right." Ginny, Harry was relieved to see, appeared as surprised as he was. He'd been starting to wonder what he was missing in The Prophet.

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence, and then: "Well, bye," said Crabbe, before shuffling off.

"Talkative, isn't he?" commented Ginny sarcastically. "Almost couldn't get him to shut up there, could we?"

"Oh, be quiet!" said Hermione. "He's not that bad, now that little creep Malfoy doesn't order him around. Nor is Goyle for that matter - he's the apprentice Groundskeeper," she added, seeing Harry and Ginny's incomprehension.

"And you wonder who the traitor is?" asked Harry incredulously.

"Oh, shut up," said Hermione. "Come on, Olympe and the children want to see you before they go to France."

Talking happily, they went down the staircase.

~*~

From the listening post beside the office door, Minerva Garnet McGonagall heard every word said by the men and women outside her office door. She smiled to hear Harry and Ginny agree to her proposal. She listened to them traipse down the staircase, off to visit Hagrid. Then she straightened up, walked carefully to the chair behind the desk, and sagged gratefully into it. She buried her face in her hands. "How am I going to keep this façade up?" she muttered out loud. "If I can barely do it for an afternoon, how will I do it until this is all over?"

She looked up, and stared around the office. It had changed greatly since she had inherited it. Gone were the whirling silver gadgets that she could not use and did not want to use, banished to Professor Flitwick's office. Gone were Fawkes and his accoutrements, his fire burned out and his effects given away. The Penseive confiscated by the Ministry, the sword of Gryffindor turned to a sad puddle by Voldemort in the Battle of Battles. Even the furniture had been replaced, the bulky desk sent to Aberforth Dumbledore, the ancient carpet and chairs which had been installed by Phineas Nigellus Black upon his promotion to Headmaster so many years ago now consigned to the junk rooms. All that remained was the Sorting Hat, in a Jinx-Proof case where no future Tom Marvolo Riddle could suborn it to his own ends, and the portraits of the departed Headmasters and Headmistresses, which sixteen years before had been increased by one, and now there was but one space left upon the wall...

"Albus," she said. The sleeping form of Albus Dumbledore upon the wall awoke, and he gazed down solemnly upon her from the wall. She cleared her throat. "I am afraid. Of what I have done, and of what will be done. I have lied and I have behaved badly. I am horribly afraid that I have betrayed this school beyond any point of forgiveness."

"My dear Minerva," said Dumbledore. "You have been given my advice time and time again. One must strive to gain the greatest good for the greatest number."

"But that got you killed, didn't it?" said Minerva.

Dumbledore bowed his head. "True. Do, then, what you think you must."

Minerva laughed, slightly hysterically. "That is excellent advice. Except, is it that I must do what the school wants; or I must do what I want? And what if what I want is what the school does not want..."

Author Notes:

The Chalet School Stories are a set of books by EM Brent-Dyer, concerning a boarding school for girls. Ginny would probably find the stories insipid, and hence find the idea of acting like characters in them repellent (she was probably given some of the books by Arthur, to help her blend in with muggle culture). Hermione, on the other hand, probably read and enjoyed them.

But one space left upon the wall: According to legend, when in 1792 Francis of Habsburg became Holy Roman Emperor, there was only one space left in the Hall of Portraits (either before or after his own picture was hung). In this case, the implication is that Minerva McGonagall has had an attack of superstition, and is assuming that either she or her successor will be the last Head of Hogwarts. Logically, the next portraits could simply be hung below the portraits already hung; but Minerva is not thinking entirely logically at this point...

Any readers of DL Sayers' Gaudy Night will of course recognise the similarities. It is, of course, intended as tribute to that excellent woman's fiction. That said, this will not be a bland copy of that book.

Next chapter: the Potters head for Hogwarts: Sirius Potter has his obligatory-meeting-with-canon-characters'-children; and Harry and Ginny discover how bundimun slime can be used by criminals...