Ominous

By Angelfirenze

Disclaimer: Dick Wolf and J.K. Rowling own damned near everything and everyone. It is pointless to attempt to sue me. You will get nothing, as I am merely a LO:CI and HP loving college student. Anyone you don't recognize belongs to me. There are always lyrics somewhere in all of my stories. They probably will come from Incubus, Radiohead, Straylight Run, Thursday, and My Chemical Romance, just to name a few. Also, I should say that bcavis's fic, 'The Art of Being a Kept Woman,' inspired the title. It's my most favorite of hers. ::bright grin::

Summary: "Uh, no. I-I went to bed in my boxer shorts...I woke up in the...the hotel across the street. I-I need some clothes. I'm a police detective and I live in New York. In Brooklyn. I need to get back there so I can go to work."

Pairings: Bobby/Alex, as it's only the summertime and no students are there. O.W.L results haven't even gone out yet!

Timeline: Post-'Collective' since that's the last one we've seen...damned NBC...pouts I know 'Collective' probably takes place during a winter month, but let's pretend it didn't, okay?

A/N: I know the movies are better considered entities to themselves, but I do love the uniforms. So let's pretend Bobby's robes came with other stuff.

Part I: Post-Mortem, Pre-Waking

Well I'm a total wreck and almost every day.
Like the firing squad or the mess you made.
Well don't I look pretty walking down the street.
In the best damn dress I own?
Bobby Goren went to bed Thursday evening thinking this was the first time he'd been tired enough to sleep this early in forever. It had been an...interesting case he and Alex had been working. People so obsessed over the universe captured in a book that their entire lives revolved around it. He rolled over onto his side, stealing one last glance at his alarm clock before sleep mercifully took him. 11:27...

It was the earliest he'd been to bed in years.

9:02 am
Hogsmeade, Scotland
Around the back of the Hog's Head Pub

Aberforth Dumbledore carried a stack of butterbeer crates out of the back of his pub, intending to stack them against the wall in his back alley. It was a bright and sunny day, but he hadn't been able to tell from inside the Hog's Head, grimy as the windows were with dirt. So when he went outside, he was so busy shielding his eyes against the offending sunlight that he didn't immediately see the body of a young witch lying in the dying grass. Once he'd deposited the crates on the ground, he turned around was met with the sight of her body. Her eyes were frozen wide in terror, as though she'd had the Killing Curse performed on her. At first, Aberforth thought that was what happened. That was before he noticed her throat was cut. Turning to run inside, Aberforth sent an owl up to his brother at Hogwarts, telling him what had happened.

8:30 am
Hogmeade, Scotland
Three Broomsticks Pub

Bobby Goren's eyes snapped open, as they usually did, and he was dismayed to find sunlight shining down on his face. He usually awoke too early for this to be a problem—wait, what time was it? Why didn't his alarm go off? Then he remembered he'd forgotten to set it, he was so tired. Captain Deakins was going to have his head. He sat up and looked around his bedroom. Except that it wasn't his bedroom. He didn't know where he was at all. He was still exhausted. He looked at his watch, still on his wrist after he'd left it on before collapsing into bed the night before.

11:34 pm? But that means I've only been asleep for seven minutes!

Bobby sighed. Well, whatever it means, obviously I'm not tired anymore... Slowly he extracted himself from what he noted to be a full-size feather bed and walked downstairs. His back was a little sore. He felt as though he'd hit the ground or something. There was no one in the main room, so he went outside to attempt to get his bearings. He thought about calling Alex, but decided against it, thinking that if he couldn't figure this out on his own he'd ask her help. In the meantime, he'd look around what he determined must be a neighborhood of some kind. However, after a few seconds it was obvious he wasn't in Brooklyn anymore. For one thing, the complete absence of car exhaust in the air—or cars in general—threw him off a bit. So he wasn't even in New York City.

Great.

He saw a store a few feet away called Madame Malkins' Robes for All-Occasions. Seeing as he was almost completely naked, he was bound to offend someone eventually. Sighing again, he crossed over and entered the shop, finding this morning to be an experience a little like the video for 'There, There' by Radiohead, where Thom Yorke went peeking all around a forest to find animals engaged in rather human situations and—concentrate, you moron! He chastised himself, forcing his eyes to focus on the shop. A little bell had tinkered somewhere inside and a middle-aged woman in a dress of a velour-like fabric came bustling out of the back of the shop carrying an armload of boxes. Bobby's first inclination was to offer to help her, but then he remembered he was dressed only in dark blue boxer shorts. Blushing deeply, he attempted to make his six foot, four inch frame smaller so as not to attract her attention.

"Merlin's beard," the woman breathed, setting down the boxes and turning back around to see him. "Where on earth did you come from dressed in nothing but your underpants?"

So he was in Scotland. Great.

"Uh, um—I woke up and—"

"An American, eh? What? Did one of your neighbors play a trick on you, then? Stole your clothes?"

"Uh, no. I-I went to bed in my boxer shorts...I woke up in the...the hotel across the street. I-I need some clothes. I'm a police detective and I live in New York. In Brooklyn. I need to get back there so I can go to work."

"So you went to bed in America and woke up in The Three Broomsticks, eh? Have you ever Apparated before?"

"Uh, no...e-excuse me, what?" Bobby felt his face crinkle in confusion.

Then the woman really examined him. "You really don't know what you're doing here, do you?"

"No, I need some clothes. I'd pay you, but I think my wallet is in my apartment and—"

But the woman turned away from him and started going through boxes on the shelves. "Don't you worry about that. You can pay me later. You need to see Professor Dumbledore first."

And the woman came over with a long dark blue robe and a stool. She told Bobby to stand on the stool and had him put the robe on before starting to pin it to the right length. "To match your boxer shorts," She grinned and Bobby blushed again.

When she was finished a moment later, she handed him a crisp white shirt, a pair of dark blue pants, and a dark blue necktie.

"Here are some trousers and a shirt and necktie for you to put on in the backroom there. You'd do well to get some socks and shoes, as well."

"T-thank you, Madam Malkins," Bobby mumbled, doing as she asked and going to get dressed in the back. When he returned, Madam Malkins was gone from her shop. Remembering how she'd said he could pay her later, Bobby walked out of the shop and immediately noticed a commotion coming from a pub down the road with a sign hanging above it that had a hog's head dripping blood onto a plate and checked tablecloth. The sign was really moving as though...it was alive. Bobby pulled his attention back to the crowd gathered around the doorway where an old man with an apron, presumably the barkeep, was telling men in matching black cloaks with a golden 'M' embroidered on their front right breast pockets that he'd found the girl while putting butterbeer crates out in the back.

Bobby's eyes closed for a brief moment before he walked up to the man talking. His long grey beard had tiny wood chips in it, which Bobby knew would be from the crates he'd been carrying. He wanted to go see the body, but he knew that would be inappropriate.

"She's just a young one...only been out of Hogwarts a year." The old man was very saddened. "But it wasn't the Killing Curse. Her throat was cut open."

The two wizards in the uniform cloaks both looked confused.

"Her throat was slit?" One of them asked in a thick Scottish accent. "It wasn't done with magic?"

"No, no. You-Know-Who wasn't the one that did it. And not the Death Eaters. They'd've tortured her first. We would've all heard her screaming."

You-Know-Who? Death Eaters? Bobby filed all this information away in his head and walked up to the police officer-like men and asked, "Uh, excuse me. I'm sorry to interrupt. I-I know this is a murder investigation, but I was wondering where exactly this Hogwarts that the victim graduated from is?"

Both the men in uniforms gave Bobby funny looks. "Just up the road, there, sir. Everyone knows that and you should, too. Now if you'd kindly leave..."

"Right, right. Sorry," Bobby apologized again before turning around and walking quickly in the direction the wizard pointed. He'd been walking for about ten minutes before he turned a corner and came across an enormous castle, with wrought-iron gates bearing winged boars at their top ends. The gates were open, as though beckoning him forward. Slowly, he walked up to the front door and knocked.

He received no answer. Sighing again, Bobby turned around and started walking back up the drive when he heard the doors of the castle swing open.

"Who're you?" A harsh voice asked and Bobby turned back around to see a rather repulsive man with staring, accusatory eyes glaring at him. At the man's feet stood a cat whose coat immediately brought to Bobby's mind the dust bunnies under one of his foster mothers' sofas. The man was brandishing a broomstick at him as though he were a stray dog.

"U-uh, my name is Detective Robert Goren from the New York City Police Department in the Major Case Squad and a woman in the village, Madam Malkins, recommended that I see a Professor Dumbledore. I-I went to sleep last night and woke up here and I—"

"Come on, then," the man growled, grabbing his arm and yanking him into the enormous Entrance Hall. "Madam Malkins recommended you, eh?"

"Y-yes, er...you know, there's a dead body down in the village and—"

"It's no concern of yours," the man snarled, turning quickly to glare. "Your only concern is gettin' back wherever you came from."

Bobby quickly discovered he really didn't like this guy, whoever the hell he was.

"Um, what's your name?"

The man glared at him again. "Argus Filch, not that it's any of your business."

Filch stayed quiet until he'd pulled Bobby up what he counted as five flights of stairs, past hundreds upon hundreds of paintings, all of which were moving the same way the sign in the village had. All the paintings were watching very closely, moving through each other's frames to follow his progress to wherever this disagreeable Filch man was taking him. They apparently found Bobby even more fascinating than he found them.

Suddenly, he was brought to a halt as Filch stopped in front of what appeared to be an office door. Bobby, of course, was bigger than he was so he was nearly knocked to the ground.

"Geroff, geroff!" Filch complained, shoving Bobby backward. "Aye, it's times like this I wish I could just curse people left and right!"

Standing straight again, Filch threw Bobby one more glare for good measure and knocked on the door before them.

"Yes?" an older woman's voice called from within.

"It's Filch, Professor McGonagall. I've got a stranger out here sayin' that Madam Malkins told him to come see Professor Dumbledore."

There was silence for a few seconds before a severe looking woman with brown hair and green eyes behind wire-framed spectacles came out into the hallway.

"Found him at the front entrance, Professor," Filch was saying. "He just knocked. Said he's from New York—"

"Mr. Filch, I would think you knew better than to simply let strangers, tourists into the castle?" She peered down her glasses at him and Bobby felt a tiny pang of amusement.

"Um, Professor," he said, glancing down at her. "Uh, my name is Detective Robert Goren. Bobby. I-I met Madam Malkins down in the village and she said I should come here. I-I only just went to bed in Brooklyn, New York and then woke up seven minutes later in what she said was The Three Broomsticks in my boxer shorts. She asked me had I ever Apparated before, but I have no idea what that means. She said I could pay her back for these robes eventually, but to come see Professor Dumbledore first. And I was going to ask her where it was, but she was gone when I came back from getting dressed. I-I went outside and walked over to what I later learned was The Hog's Head. Apparently, the proprietor found a dead girl with a slit throat behind his pub. I wanted to go see the body, because that's what I do in New York. I solve murder cases like that one, but I don't have jurisdiction here. I'm an American police detective who woke up halfway around the world. I didn't even know where I was until Madam Malkins told me—"

That was when Professor McGonagall put a hand up to stop him talking. "Breathe, Detective Goren."

"Bobby," he said, smiling slightly and she frowned a little.

"Detective Goren, let me see if I have this correctly. You went to bed mere minutes ago in New York in the United States and woke up in the Three Broomsticks in your boxer shorts. You don't know what Apparition is and there is a dead girl's body down in the village of Hogsmeade that the proprietor found while you were changing into robes that Madam Malkins gave you because you weren't properly dressed."

"Yes, Professor."

"And she told you to come see Professor Dumbledore?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever been to a wizarding school, Detective Goren?"

"I didn't know there were schools for wizarding...ah, magic. I didn't know there were schools for magic."

Professor McGonagall frowned and turned, beginning to walk. "Come with me, if you please, Detective."

Bobby sighed and began walking.

Well I hope I'm not mistaken by the news I heard from waking
and it's hard to say I'm shaken, by the choices that I make
and well I find it hard to stay, with the words you say
Oh baby let me in
Well I'll choose this life I've taken, never mind the friends I'm making
And I get a little shaken, because I live my life like this
And well I find it hard to stay, with the words you say
Oh baby let me in
And you can cry all you want to, I don't care how much...