Author's Note: This is the first of a projected series of multi-chapter stories spanning several years and focusing on the first Voldemort war from an outside perspective. Original characters dominate, but canon characters will have important parts to play. Later installments will hint at Death Eater activities, Voldemort's quest for immortality and the origins of the Order of the Phoenix. There will be secret agents, intrigue, murders, and a little romance.

According to PS/SS, Voldemort had been a menace for eleven years before he fell on October 31, 1981. That would mean he started making himself known by 1970.

I would like to thank my amazing beta LuthAn for pointing out the cracks in the story so I could repair them.

The song is 'Way We Were' by Barbra Steisand.

The Magical War Detective I: The New Protector
Chapter One: Green is the Colour of Death

Part I

Wednesday, November 13, 1974
St. John, Jersey

The radio in the kitchen played on but the last listeners were beyond caring for the music. A freckle-faced woman, her arms still covered up to the elbows in soapsuds from a sink full of dishes lay across the linoleum floor. Her husband was slumped beside her, a damp dishtowel still held in one hand. The shattered remains of a glass littered the floor. Upstairs, a teenage boy lay dead in his bedroom.

Of the way we were.
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind

Morris Jakes, a local official with the Ministry of Magic, banished the Dark Mark floating above the Landry cottage.

Ten minutes earlier, his only Wizard neighbour, the elderly Mr. Bradley, had alerted him to the presence of the Dark Mark. Jakes had thrown on his dressing gown and hurried out the door and across the street to the cottage to dispel the hateful symbol before any Muggles saw it and asked inconvenient questions. He had then made a quick search of the house for survivors. As expected, there were none - even the family rabbit was dead.

As he stared at the rabbit, Jakes suddenly remembered the instructions the Ministry provided for those who stumbled onto such a scene: remove the Dark Mark, search for survivors from a distance with Detection Charms, then leave immediately and contact the Department for Magical Law Enforcement. He had completed the first two steps, but Jakes realized that he had yet to alert the Ministry or local officials.

Jakes had never trusted Floo powder, especially now with rumours of Death Eaters within the Floo Network. Owls would serve his needs. He dispatched two owls: his Brownie and a tawny bird borrowed from Mr. Bradley. One owl would fly to London and the other to the nearest Department of Magical Law Enforcement office in St Peter Port. All Jakes could do now was to wait until others came to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy.

Jakes ran a hand through his thinning hair; in his youth he had worked in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Once he had even hoped to be an Auror, but now, after having been sick over Colette Landry's roses, he thanked his lucky stars that fate had set him on a different path.

He stared at the empty patch of sky where the Dark Mark had been hoping help would arrive quickly. All around him Muggles slept on, unaware of the horror perpetuated in their midst.

Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Andrew Ketterly, Chief Protector for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Guernsey Office, knew something was wrong as soon as he heard the owl scratching on his window. He grabbed his wand from under his pillow and rolled over, glancing at the clock and frowning at the time. There was only one reason anyone would owl him at this early hour. And while he thought it extremely unfair that bad news required immediate notification while good news could be put off, Andrew knew his duty, and so turned toward the window.

He checked the owl for nasty surprises before opening the window. The bird hooted at him thrice before it perched on the headboard to wait for a reply - never a good sign.

He opened the letter. Until tonight, the only local casualties of the Death Eaters were a Ministry witch assassinated while holidaying on Alderney and a Sark wizard caught up in a rare daylight raid on Hogsmeade. Neither attack really hit home for him – one was a tourist and the other far away in Scotland. With a heavy heart Andrew knew the war once relegated to what islanders called 'the Continent' had at last reached 'the states'. As his eyes skimmed the letter, they found what he feared: The Dark Mark hovered above three Muggle corpses on Jersey.

Andrew dressed quickly and Apparated to the address scribbled as a hasty postscript, and with a soft pop arrived in front of a darkened cottage.

"Ketterly?" an older wizard in a blue dressing gown squinted at him. He had his wand out, but his hand shook. Andrew thought that if it came to a duel, it would be easy to disarm him. Not that he expected anything of the sort, of course, but one could never tell.

"Are you Jakes?"

"Yes," the wizard confirmed. He looked immensely relieved to see Andrew. "Your robes are on inside out."

Andrew sighed. Not exactly the impression he might have hoped for, but he had been in a hurry. "Is that the house?"

"Yes," Jakes said.

"Thank you for the owl." Andrew cast a simple Detection Charm on the cottage, but the outline of the building remained dark. Nothing lived in that house. "Did you notify London?"

"At the same time as I owled you. Aren't you going to go in?" Jakes asked, curious. Now that he was no longer on his own his courage grew.

Andrew indicated he would not be going in just yet. "Ministry procedure stipulates that we're not allowed to enter a Dark Arts crime scene alone. Sometimes dead bodies aren't the only things Dark wizards leave behind." It was best not to mention that sometimes even the corpses were dangerous. After surviving the war against Grindelwald, Andrew was not afraid of many things, but Inferi were definitely on that short list.

Jakes paled. Evidently, the possibility of a trap had not occurred to him. "But I..."

"Already went in yourself?" Andrew finished. Jakes nodded. "Now you know better," he said grimly as he checked him over and did not find any trace of curses. He had not really expected any. "But it's not a problem this time. You're clean."

"How long do you expect it will be before we hear from London?" Jakes asked.

"At least an hour," Andrew said as he wrapped his inside-out robes closer around his lean frame. It was freezing outside.

"Perhaps we could wait at my house," Jakes suggested. He had a need to feel useful. "We could have a cuppa."

"Which house is yours?"

Jakes indicated a house across the street from the Landry cottage.

"Good idea," Andrew said gruffly. He could correct his clothes inside, and could really do with the tea.

Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?

Being an Auror turned out not to be the glamorous occupation Frank Longbottom and his girlfriend Alice Henshawe had expected. If anything, Frank felt he was combating sleep deprivation more than Dark Wizards, and was failing miserably at the former.

It was Wednesday now, but so early in the morning that sensible people were still in their beds. Frank could barely remember when the last time he had seen his bed.

The words of the report he was studying were blurred beyond all recognition. He rubbed his eyes and the smears revolved back into something almost comprehensible. This was his third straight night on duty at Auror Headquarters.

He stiffened and reached for his wand at the sound of footsteps approaching from behind; he no longer felt secure even buried in the heart of the Ministry. Frank turned to find Weatherby, Mr. Crouch's secretary, coming towards him. He recognized the secretary's stiff stride; this would not be good news. But these days it never was.

"This arrived for an Auror." Weatherby slapped the letter down in front of Frank. Until now it had been a relatively quiet week, but the Death Eaters would often conduct a series of attacks and then fade away for weeks. Frank feared that another round of attacks was about to commence.

Frank slit the letter open with his wand and winced as he read the contents. Three more innocent people were now dead. He did not have to owl his superiors with news of this latest attack; he knew Moody and Crouch were still sequestered in Crouch's office discussing the need for more personnel to join the fight.

Frank got up to inform Crouch. He would send an owl to Dumbledore later. There was no need to employ the techniques designed for Order members to communicate securely, not that he felt capable of a Patronus at the moment. No, an owl would do. This was just a simple warning for the sake of an orphaned girl. No one deserved to learn such terrible news from a schoolmate or a newspaper.