Redo

Chapter 1

"It's upstairs to the right." Petunia said, her smile saying the same thing as Sue's mother's, so she just silently got up and left the table, not caring about the position or clattering of her cutlery.

When she got upstairs she got a little curious about what Harry could be doing holed up in his room for a whole week without emerging. He had always been interesting, not enough for her to stick out her neck for him, but enough for her to think about him every now and then. He was always so strange, like that time he climbed the school cafeteria, she still had no idea how he managed it without getting caught before he was up there.

As she got near his room though, she could hear what sounded like a bird's screech and the smell coming from the room was terrible, it was as if something like a rat had curled up and died. Harry was odd, but nobody could be that odd, right?

So Sue opened the door.

It was just a crack, but it was enough for the foul smell to spill out of the room, and her to see a human handing from a rope, she didn't look to see where the rope was attached to.

She fell to the ground screaming, running downstairs before waiting for a response and grabbing the phone, typing in 999 before anyone could stop her.

"Hello-" The operator said, Sue not letting them get another word out.

"There's a dead body in the house, 4 Privet Drive, Surrey." Sue managed to get out, her head spinning, she couldn't tell if the smell had stuck to her clothes or it had followed her down, because it was all she could smell, and the image of the body, though in silhouette was ingrained in her mind.

-----

It was still her first week on the job when she and others were sent to the scene of a death that had been called in by a young girl around the same age as the victim. The victim's name was Harry, Harry Potter, and he was being raised by his aunt and uncle after being orphaned as a young child. He attended a boarding school for troubled children.

That was all the information she was given before walking into the room where Harry's body was. It hadn't been enough for her to prepare herself for the scene before her eyes, though she wasn't sure if anything could have.

Harry's eyes weren't fully closed, as his body swung slightly, it seemed the momentum he had when he fell still moving the rope around his neck as he hung, his toes barely touching the floor, a stool on it's side behind him, in such a way it would be unlikely to fall. His neck was badly bruised, though not in the same place as the rope, rather the bruising looked more like hands.

Flies had already started flying around him, landing on his half open, glassy eyes, his ears, and even on his paled, chapped lips. His body and the room smelling like death, rather fittingly considering what it contained, it seemed like the body had been dead for a few days before the authorities had been called. Blood was on his hands , and in some parts of the carpet, but it wasn't easily visible to see where the blood had come from.

His owl was also still in her cage, the bottom filled with her filth and the bars covered with scratch marks from her talons and beak. Her white feathers had specs of red on them in some places where the feathers touched, her feathers looking extremely ruffled and most of them also looking damp. She was making a racket and there was no evidence of food inside the cage either, so it was unclear the last time she had been fed. Harry's window had been sealed shut, though the bars that were there before his second year were gone, but there was still no way for Hedwig to go out. She can't have hunted for herself.

The Dursleys spoke to her superiors alone before some other people who claimed to be from a higher department checking if the death actually fell under them showed up. She wasn't sure what it was they were doing though, because they didn't look closely at any of the evidence closely before leaving. She had no idea what the Dursleys had said, but her superiors had no interest in her concerns with the circumstances, telling them to just get the body out of the house as soon as possible. His death, though recorded, was pretty much immediately ruled as a suicide, in spite the bruising on him in places it would be impossible for him to reach, or the bruises of his neck being much too large for his own hands.