Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A Thousand Natural Shocks

A Harry Potter/Criminal Minds (US TV) Crossover

By Sif Shadowheart

Author’s Note: Notably, things will go rather A/U for both HP and CM to make this work.  I’ll try to give you a head’s up when we get there.

That said, we’re going with being 100% canon for first, second, and third years of Harry Potter and afterward we begin diverging and going a bit more A/U in the details.

For CM, we’re inserting between the season premiere of season seven and the second episode, making this the first “real” episode with the team back together and Prentiss alive and out of hiding.

Disclaimer:  Harry Potter and Criminal Minds (US TV) are both the properties of their various owners.  This is only fanfiction for the purpose of entertainment without monetary gain.

My child arrived just the other day/He came to the world in the usual way. But there were planes to catch and bills to pay/He learned to walk while I was away – Harry Chapin, Cat’s in the Cradle

One: The Black Hart

September 28, 2011, BAU Roundtable Room, Quantico, Virginia

“What do you have for us Garcia?”  Supervisory Special Agent and Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner asked the team’s technical analyst-slash-communications/media agent as everyone gathered in the roundtable room after welcoming Prentiss back officially.  Though everyone was ecstatic to have her home and moreover alive, there was a distinct chill between their polymath and genius Dr. Spencer Reid and several of the others, most notably JJ, who he seemed to blame even more than Hotch despite it having ultimately been the SSA’s call to put Agent Emily Prentiss in hiding to protect her from her now-deceased attacker terrorist Ian Doyle.

The bubbly blonde analyst popped up from her seat between her best friend and chocolate god of love Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan and the new “rookie” profiler on the team Special Agent Jennifer “JJ” Jareau who was their former communications agent and media liaison before her promotion to profiler and special agent to give the rundown on the current case that had been flagged for the BAU team.

Clicking on the television monitor they used most often for briefings at the rear of the room Penelope began as the agents including the newly “undead” Special Agent Emily Prentiss and SSA Dave Rossi to round out the full team.

“Loraine Howard, 33, professor of English.”  Garcia rattled off, clicking madly to bring up more and more pictures.  “Murdered a week ago at approximately four a.m. on the 21^st, her body was found in a dumpster in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.”

“The ante- and post-mortem stab wounds are excessive.”  Spencer noted with a frown as he studied the autopsy report.  “Seventy-seven altogether clustered over the upper torso and genitalia.”

“That’s a lot of rage.”  Prentiss said, half to herself and half to the team.  “That’s not just excessive it’s massive overkill.”

“The coroner reported that she was dead within the first five or six blows but can’t pinpoint it any further than that.”  Garcia told them.  “That’s not the bad part.”

The team continued to flip through the files, quickly understanding what she meant.

They weren’t so thick because of an orgy of evidence.

They were thick because they encompassed over a dozen confirmed and/or possible victims that partially matched the same modus operandi as whoever killed Loraine Howard.

Rossi did a quick count.

“Four definite and multiple possibles.”  His tone was incredulous.  “How did no one notice this earlier and call us in?”

“That’s the bad part.”  Garcia hit another button and had another twenty pictures flying onto the screen surrounding a map with pinpoints for each one.  “None of them occurred in the same city within less than three months until Loraine.  June 24^th Theresa Sokolovsky, 26, was raped and murdered with multiple stab wounds including the same clusters and overkill present in Loraine’s murder, again in the Seattle area, this time her body was found in the nearby city of Kent.”

“If it wasn’t for the distinctive clusters, no one would have noticed or connected the two with the different police forces involved.”  Morgan said, eyes dark as he saw autopsy picture after autopsy picture of women who somewhat matched.  “What were the search markers Seattle PD used to put this together?”

“They stuck with the West Coast: female, stabbed and raped or with similar mutilation, mid-twenties to early thirties.  That gave us,” Garcia highlighted the corresponding pictures.  “Jessica Santos, 24, of Los Angeles, raped and stabbed October 22, 2010, body dumped in an upper middle-class neighborhood of LA.”  She reported, shoulders slumping a bit.  “I expanded the net and found some others: all female, all in the right age group with similar wound clusters, then excluding the sex gave me the three males, one of which was a domestic abuse gone off the rails and the other two showing significantly escalated mutilation from what was found on the females.  But right age and similar wounds.”

“It’s more than that.”  Hotch frowned, flipping between many of the pictures.  “If some of these are excluded by evidence similar to the one male, then there’s a dozen young professionals of similar age.”

“All very attractive, more so than the norm even in a place like Los Angeles.”  Spencer mused, cocking his head a bit.  “And physically fit.  None would be easy to attack.”

“It’s more than that.”  Rossi cursed in Italian.  “The crimes span the country but long hair, similar age, successful.”

“No kids.”  Prentiss added.

“And in committed relationships according to the police notes.”  JJ sighed, eyes sad.  “I can’t believe this has been going on more than a year and we’re just now catching it with such similar victimology.”

“It’s not unusual.”  Hotch told them – well, more reminded them.  “Preliminary overview shows that these crimes were spread out not just in vicinity but also time until recently.  If he hadn’t returned so soon to Seattle it could’ve gone on indefinitely until the connection was made.”  He scowled.  “He’s escalating.”  Climbing to his feet, he gathered up his files.  “Wheels up at 0800.  Let’s make sure he doesn’t get to add another picture to that map.”

…

Hotch walked through the front-door of his quiet home in a simple middle-class neighborhood, already braced for the rocketing form of his soon-to-be six-year-old son Jack to slam into his legs as was their routine.

Just that quickly, as he stepped over the threshold of the three-bedroom home, Hotch turned off and Aaron who was a single-father trying to raise his son in the wake of his ex-wife’s murder flipped on, Aaron setting aside his briefcase and hefting Jack up onto his hip.

“Daddy!”  Jack cheered, ecstatic as always to see his father come home before he went to bed.

“Hey buddy.”  Aaron gave his son a smacking kiss on the cheek before setting him back down and grabbing his case – with the contents, locked or not, it was going straight into his home office – held out his hand for Jack to walk with him back towards the den that Derek had helped him convert when he decided to move out of the tiny apartment he’d moved into following the divorce and hire live-in help rather than have Jack shuffled between Aaron and his aunt Jessica – his ex-wife Haley’s sister – who had offered to take over his care.  “What did you do today?”

As Jack burbled along like spring water over rocks, Aaron nodded at the motherly older woman who hadn’t been frightened of the circumstances that provoked her hire – namely the murder of his ex-wife by a serial killer Aaron had been hunting – and had also passed Aaron’s rigorous background investigation.

Sally Mayfield was in her mid-sixties, grey-haired, and as no-nonsense as Virginia bedrock and just as reliable.

A widow with no children, all Sally required as an “extra” for the sometimes round-the-clock care she provided Aaron’s son was two-weeks off in December and April to visit family, a request Aaron was more than happy to oblige considering that she took total care of the house and was Jack’s main caregiver at times due to Aaron’s high-stress and high-demand vocation.

Sally gave a small smile and nod back to her visibly-tired employer who had the grim-but-hidden-from-his-son lines bracketing his mouth that spoke of a bad case.

Not that any case Mr. Hotchner worked was good by any means.

But over the time Sally had worked for and with the pair of Hotchners, she’d come to recognize the signs of a case that would have him disappearing sometimes for a week or more and returning with bruises under his eyes, hollow-cheeked, and world-weary.

“I’ll put dinner on, Mr. Hotchner.”  Sally told him.  “Mac-and-cheese.”

“Mac-and-cheese!”  Jack broke off his recitation of his spelling words they’d worked on at school to cheer over the treat, one of his favorites.

“Thank you, Sally.”  Aaron told her with a quiet sigh of gratitude as Jack towed him towards his office to set aside his case and then to his bedroom to change, Jack going a mile a minute the entire time.

…

Seattle, Washington, The Next Day

“Have any further connections between the two local victims been found?”  Morgan asked after the round of cursory introductions had been performed between the team – all save Garcia who was back home in her office at Quantico – and the local police.

“Nothing.”  The lead detective, one Jason Thorston told them, arms crossed over his chest as he glared at the board with the current known information pinned up on each woman.  “Theresa was late twenties, Loraine early thirties.  Both professionals: a management analyst and a professor.  Theresa was married, Loraine engaged.  Blonde hair just passed her shoulders, dark brown to mid-back.”  He flicked a finger at one of the pictures.  “Honestly, if it wasn’t for the wound patterns, there’s no way we would’ve considered them connected especially with Theresa’s rape.”

“That’s not surprising.”  Reid told them in his calm, meticulous manner.  “Mrs. Sokolovsky was the last victim we’ve identified to have been raped out of all the potential victims of this unsub from across the country.  It’s possible that his failure to perform with the more recent victims is one of the triggers behind his escalating brutality.”

“What about places they visited, local coffee shops, hair dressers, anything?”  Prentiss prompted as the team looked through the police notes that hadn’t been digitized or forwarded to Quantico as well as the physical evidence such as Theresa’s journal.

“Coffee shops would be a dead-end.”  The lead from the Kent police snorted with a roll of expressive brown eyes.  “This is the home of Starbucks.  There’s a shop or café on every block.  Aside from that no, nothing that stands out.  Seattle’s a major city for all that it’s not as large as LA or New York.  When you add in the rest of the metroplex?  Bellevue, Kent, Renton, the islands?  Theresa and Loraine could’ve both lived here all their lives and never crossed paths once.”

“We know this unsub is traveling.”  Hotch reasoned.  “That shows intelligence.  He stayed undetected this long by spacing his kills by both distance and time.  Morgan,” Hotch’s deep brown eyes flicked over to Garcia’s best friend.  “Call Garcia.  See if she can pick up any further patterns from the kills.”  He scowled down at the smiling picture of Mrs. Sokolovsky.  “Then take Reid and interview the significant others.  See if there’s anything they forgot to mention or didn’t think applicable.  JJ, Rossi, the dump sites.  Prentiss and I will continue combing through the physical evidence to see if anything stands out.  We know his type but we don’t know how or why he’s choosing them, figuring that out is going to be key to finding this unsub.”

“We’re not even one hundred percent on his type yet.”  JJ murmured to Rossi as they broke up for their assignments.  “We still don’t know if the male victims are his or if the stab wounds are a coincidence.”

“What do your instincts tell you?”  Rossi arched a dark brow at the young profiler, who sighed as she climbed into the passenger seat of their SUV to battle Seattle’s traffic to get to Queen Anne, the closer of the two dump sites.

JJ nodded her head to the side.

“That he’s not going to stop.”  She said.  “And that at least some of those potentials Garcia flagged are going to be added to this one’s tally before we’re done.”

…

Howard Condo, Queen Anne, Seattle

“Mr. Johnson, I know this is difficult.”  Reid began coaching the grieving fiancé of Loraine Howard, one Derek Johnson, high school counselor at a Christian private school, age thirty-four, through the days leading up to his fiancé’s attack and murder.  “Going through all of this again, but anything you can tell us about the day-of and the days leading up to Ms. Howard’s death can help.”

“Even the smallest things,” Morgan added, his voice not as naturally soothing as Spencer’s but his face and eyes softer.  “Can lead to an arrest.”

As the red-eyed man picked his way through his last day with his fiancé with all the delicate precision of a bomb-tech navigating a mine field, Reid split his attention between the facial expressions, body language, and vocal inflections of the man, ruling him out easily within moments of being guilty of Loraine’s murder, whilst also cataloguing everything he could see of the open-plan condo from the magnificent view of the Space Needle from the picture window beside the balcony’s French doors to the requisite “couple’s” photo on the fireplace mantle.  Everything screamed happy, successful, upwardly-mobile couple.  No pets, no kids, nothing to distract them from their career ambitions and each other.

“We woke up at the normal time.”  Johnson got out in fits and starts, visibly gathering himself as he continued.  “Loraine didn’t have class but she likes…liked,” he caught himself with a hiccupping breath on the tense.  “Waking up with me anyway on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It gave her time to get in a jog or a yoga routine and breakfast before heading to campus.  Had coffee, talked about our plans for the weekend: we were going to go to the ‘hawks game.”  Johnson buried his head in his hands to hide his sobs from the empathetic audience.  “Went to work.  Everything was normal.”

Until it wasn’t.

“What time would Ms. Howard have normally arrived home from campus?”  Reid asked by rote.

“Six-thirty.”  Johnson told him, scrubbing away his newest round of tears with the heel of his palms.  “Maybe seven at the latest if traffic was worse than normal or one of her students wanted a last-minute meeting.”

“When did you realize something was wrong?”  Morgan took over, Reid already aware that there were no out-of-the-norm traffic issues on the 27^th, just the regular Seattle gridlock.

“Uh, about eight.”  Johnson told them after a long moment.  “She wasn’t picking up her cell – both our cars have hands-free units.  It just wasn’t like her to be that late and not have called.  Seattle,” his breath caught again but he continued on.  “Seattle isn’t as crime-heavy as LA or New York but it isn’t Utopia either.  Neither of us would worry the other like that.”

“And that’s when you called the college and found out she never arrived for her late-morning class.”  Reid led him a bit, Johnson nodding along.

“Classes run until almost ten at night.”  Johnson shrugged.  “I knew I could get someone at the security office to check on her.  But she wasn’t there.”

Morgan and Reid exchanged a look.

That meant Loraine was taken anytime between Johnson leaving for work at six – according to the police report Reid had memorized with his eidetic memory – and missing her first class at eleven.  A five-hour window to take her, giving the unsub anywhere from seven to fourteen hours before anyone was even aware she was gone, and her body wasn’t found until the next day.  It took less than twenty-four hours for the unsub to kidnap, mutilate, kill, and dump Loraine Howard.  Given the time of death, but the time anyone knew she was missing…she was already dead.

Derek gave an internal grimace.

Heaven save him from intelligent unsubs.

“What about the days leading up to that Thursday?”  Reid asked.  “Did Loraine take a new class at the gym, see a new stylist at the salon, go out with friends, anything?”

Johnson shifted and the two agents perked up, nearly coming up on point.

“There was, well.”  Johnson grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck.  “There was one thing.  I didn’t want to mention it before.  These things have a way of getting out and I didn’t want anyone talking about Loraine like that.  Let alone what it could do to my career if people make certain assumptions.”

“What, what happened?”  Reid urged, neurons firing as Derek got that intensely intent look that said he knew whatever was coming next was big.

“There’s this club.”  Johnson heaved a hapless breath.  “We’re not members or anything but Loraine’s sister and her husband are and they got us a guest pass as an engagement present.”

“What kind of club?”  Morgan prompted when Johnson faltered.

“The kind you don’t talk about in polite company.”  Johnson said with no little amount of exasperated bravado.  “That kind.”

“Sex, BDSM, what?”  Morgan continued, not letting this go.  He knew this was something that could’ve helped the SPD a week ago if Johnson had just said something and damned his reputation.

Unfortunately, as Derek and Spencer both knew all too well, a person’s reputation often became something most friends and family members were near-rabid about protecting in the wake of a tragedy like a murder.

“All of that and more.”  Johnson grimaced, clearly still uncomfortable with it even more than a week later.  “It’s called The Black Hart.  Members and guests only, extremely exclusive.  The sort of place where anything goes.  It was too much for us, even with the excellent food and drinks, the great dance floor, the rest of it was way too edgy, even with the discretion and non-disclosure agreements you have to sign to get inside.”

“Sounds like they take their customers’ privacy seriously.”  Reid noted, something about the name niggling at him but the connection wasn’t quite there yet.

“I wouldn’t know.”  Johnson shrugged, even as his grief crashed back down and bowed his shoulders.  “Like I said: too much for us.  We stayed all of an hour before taking off with no intention of applying for membership or ever going back.  Now I wish we never went in the first place, Susan’s upset feelings be damned.”

…

Seattle Police Department Headquarters, That Night

“What have we got?”  Hotch asked after a long day of interviews, site inspections, and trolling through the physical evidence of two vicious murders.

“Ms. Howard’s fiancé mentioned going to a new club eight days before she went missing.”  Reid began.  “Morgan asked Garcia to look into any club activity in the victims’ finances.”

“And hit paydirt.”  Garcia piped up from where she was on-cam via laptop.  “Of our possible victims thirteen including Howard, Sokolovsky, and Santos visited nightclubs within a week to ten days before their deaths or had recurring membership fees being paid out to one or more.”

“Good.”  Hotch nodded, thinking furiously as he paced.  “But don’t exclude the others yet.  Have the detectives in the various cities check with the victims’ family and friends.  See if any of them went to nightclubs regularly or in the weeks immediately prior to their deaths.”

“There’s more.”  Morgan leaned forward, hands clasped before him.  “We checked with Theresa’s husband during the interview.  They were members at Black Temptations, a sister-club to The Black Hart where Loraine and her fiancé visited with a guest pass.”

“The Black Heart?”  JJ arched an unimpressed brow.  “That’s a little morbid isn’t it?”

“Hart as in a male deer, specifically a red deer stag over five years old.”  Reid corrected.  “From the Old English Heorot.  In literature a hart is usually a symbol of a quest.  In England during the middle ages and feudal period the hart was a "beast of venery" representing the most prestigious form of hunting, as distinct from lesser "beasts of the chase", and "beasts of warren", the last of which were regarded virtually as vermin.”

“Right.”  Garcia blinked then continued on.  “However, JJ was spot-on.  The same company that owns both The Black Hart and Black Temptations owns dozens of clubs all over the world.  All exclusive members-only places all owned by Potter-Black Consolidated headquartered in London.  The club Jessica Santos was a member of is called, surprise surprise, The Black Doe, one of four Potter-Black clubs of that name.”

“The unsub could be an employee or management.”  Prentiss nodded thoughtfully.  “A traveling dj or entertainer under contract, anything.”

“It’s the first solid connection between these crimes outside of the victims.”  Rossi noted.  “Garcia, did any of the identified victims visit or have memberships to the same club?”

“No.”  Garcia answered after a flurry of keys, shaking her head.  “Several were members or visited clubs of the same name but in different cities such as Josephine Boer of Chicago’s visit to that city’s version of the Black Hart, after which her body was found by a homeless man in an alley nine days later she’d been missing ten hours officially.”

“So this unsub sees his targets in the club.”  Rossi rattled off, talking it through.  “Or coming or going from it, picks them, and then learns their routines before snatching them when they’re alone with enough time to commit the crime and then dump the body before a real search has been started or the police have been alerted.”

“Garcia, did all of the victims have significant others that visited the clubs with them?”  Hotch asked on a hunch after reviewing the physical evidence from SPD.

“That would be a yes.”  Came the answer through the screen after more flurries of typing.  “Six husbands or domestic partners, three fiancés, and five boyfriends, all solid relationships from the reports the s.o.’s were eliminated from the suspect pool almost immediately, all wrecked with the victims’ deaths.”

“This is an enraged unsub, who covets what he doesn’t have.”  Hotch began, getting a clearer look at who they’re after with the peak into the victims’ lives provided by the evidence.  “Solid relationships between desirable, professional, successful people.”

“He’ll be in this same age group.”  Reid spoke up.  “He probably just disappears into the background, overlooked by the targets of his desires.”

“As his violence progressed the rapes weren’t enough anymore.”  Rossi said, shaking his head.  “It’s control and envy, he’s in crisis and it’s only going to get worse.”

Morgan stood and pointed to the timeline, circling something thanks to the information Garcia had sorted through.

“Here.”  He pointed to the picture of Ms. Boer as something clicked.  “Theresa was the last victim raped and if we exclude the victims who don’t have the nightclub connection, then it was a steady timeline.”

“Seven weeks between victims and no repeats on the cities.”  Reid saw it at once, eyes flicking over the pictures as his brain sped through information, processing it even faster than Garcia’s computer could manage.  “Something happened between Ms. Sokolovsky in Seattle and Ms. Boer in Chicago that sent him spiraling, a second trigger event.”

Nods abounded all around, JJ adding: “the rapes stop and the violence escalates.  It’s not enough anymore.”

“There’s thirty-seven days between those two murders.”  Reid did the math at the speed of light.  “Then twenty-one between Mrs. Boer in Chicago and Ms. Evanson in DC, nineteen between Ms. Evanson and Ms. Colbert in Baltimore, and twelve between Ms. Colbert and Loraine Howard.  If this pattern continues…”

“He could devolve into grabs every week or less.”  Morgan sighed rubbing his face.  “Which means we might have a new vic anytime.”

“And with no way to determine where.”  Rossi scowled.

“Actually.”  Reid frowned and cocked his head.  “If this is an unsub that pattern and order are important too which his original timeline suggests, then the next victim will be from the middle of the country, such as Ms. Bret from Detriot following Ms. Santos in LA and Mrs. Boer from Chicago following Ms. Sokolovsky.”

“Garcia, how many clubs does Potter-Black Consolidated own in the middle of the states?”  Hotch asked.

“Focus on what are normally considered the fly-over states, major cities from the Rocky Mountains to Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, and Alabama in the east.”  Reid added.

“Ok darlings that gives us,” Garcia tsked, shaking her head.  “Le Coeur Noir and Leather and Lace in New Orleans, The White Lily in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Chicago, and Black Sins in Baton Rouge.”

“There’s no way to pin-point which club is next on the unsub’s list.”  Morgan said, groaning a bit in frustration.  “That’s seven clubs.”

“Then we need to warn them all.”  Hotch decided.  “And get the surveillance footage from the clubs that have already been identified.  Our unsub might be on those tapes.”

“Ah, that’s not going to be easy, bossman.”  Garcia hated to burst her bubble with what her research had discovered about Potter-Black Consolidated and their clubs.  “These clubs are extremely exclusive with their membership and take discretion and their member privacy very seriously.  From what I’ve found online there’s not even a peep floating around about what goes on in the clubs.”

“Mr. Johnson did say that The Black Hart had a reputation for discretion and that they had to sign non-disclosure agreements just as guests, let alone members.”  Reid pointed out.

“And he implied a whole lot more about what goes on in there.”  Morgan cocked a brow.  “They’re not going to want to give up those tapes.”

“We’ll still ask.”  Hotch ordered, raising his brows.  “Then when we’ll get a warrant.  I want those tapes before another woman is brutalized.  We’ll fly back to Quantico tonight.”

“Hotch-man?”  Morgan frowned.  They’d only been there a day.

“He’s done with Seattle for now.”  Hotch told them.  “We need to focus on getting that information from the nightclubs and interviewing the families.  We can do that better from Quantico than we can from here.  Don’t worry.”  His humor was nothing less than dark.  “If we don’t stop him,  we’ll be back here in a matter of weeks.”

Chapter Text

A Thousand Natural Shocks

Author’s Note: Remember, we’re A/U for Harry Potter and will be going off-script for Criminal Minds after Episode 1 of Season 7.

Two: Black Temptations

FBI Headquarters, Quantico, Virginia; 0800 30 September 2011

The BAU team reconvened around their own conference table at headquarters after a scant amount of sleep and for Hotch a frustrating night of trying to reason with the manager from the DC nightclub Black Sins, a frustration he saw on the rest of his team’s faces, Garcia summing it up.

“Well, looks like the rest of you had just as cheery conversations with the clubs as I did.”  She noted as they all dug into the donuts and muffins she’d brought in, knowing they’d need the pick-me-up after her own running-in-circles she’d done trying to hack the clubs when they did nothing but waste her time with refusals, though at least all of them – all thirty-three of them in the States – had been willing to forward the warning and preliminary profile to their members as a precaution.

“You’d think they’d want to protect their members and help us.”  Morgan scoffed, scowling down into his coffee.  “Not keep us from doing our jobs.”

“They think they are protecting their members.”  Rossi told him with a weary sigh.  “I know these types of people.  The last thing many of them can afford is for their membership or just a visit to one of these clubs to become public, let alone whatever they might participate in there.”

“Your tone makes you think you know something about that.”  Derek smirked at the older profiler.  “Something you want to share with the group.”

“I recognized one of the club names on the list Garcia gave us.”  Rossi admitted, not having anything to hide.  “Canis Major in Rome.  A former flame of mine was a member, but I only went once with her.  Too much that I would have had to turn a blind-eye to as former law enforcement, including members of the La Polizia Roma indulging their vices.  The club as I remember is was surprisingly egalitarian, fees based on a sliding scale.”

“How was membership determined then?”  Reid asked, cocking his head to the side.  Most exclusive clubs he’d heard of had an income requirement of some kind.

“I can answer that.”  Garcia interjected.  “I got nowhere with the clubs, stonewalled at every turn, I couldn’t even tip-toe through their system since the only thing connected to the wider web in each location is a single point-of-sale for running credit cards and invoices, that’s it.”

“I didn’t hear that.”  Hotch said idly.  “Continue.”

“That’s the thing, they don’t keep any records or anything that could be hacked.”  Garcia told them a bit excitedly.  “Everything has to be old-school: hard copies or a singular system on a closed-loop that can’t be remotely accessed.  But, the point-of-sale was enough for me to make a rough outline of the type of membership we’re looking at.”  She flicked the screen on and loaded some pictures.  “These are people with something to lose or something to gain from membership with the club.  They’re intelligent, at least moderately attractive, and range from valets to professors to police and law enforcement, politicians, diplomats, even petty criminals.  A little spelunking in the dark web found only a couple of references to the clubs.  From what I can tell they’re like a matchmaker: if you have a desire you can sate it at one of the Potter-Black clubs.”

“Bringing the beautiful and the rich together with dealers, criminals, and whatever else.”  Prentiss scoffed.  “Great.  No wonder they won’t play ball.”

“Let’s get those subpoenas issued for their records.”  Hotch ordered, brows pinched.  “If they won’t help us willingly they’ll help us or risk being shut down.”

“Already on it,” Garcia told him then nibbled her lip and said: “Even that might not matter, boss.”

“What, why?”  JJ asked, rearing back a little.  “No matter the clientele, if they’re shut down the cash stops, that has to matter, right?”

Garcia flicked another button, bringing up a trio of pictures.  “Maybe not to the owner.  I did digging into the ownership of Potter-Black Consolidated thinking that maybe the boss could rattle his managers into coughing up the goods but…”

“Isn’t that Sirius Black the mass-murderer?”  Reid asked incredulously, staring at the middle picture.

“That would be the problem.”  Garcia sighed.  “The files from London are seriously redacted, like redacted to the point of if I tried to hack them I’d be arrested and one my way to an MI-6 black site five minutes later, redacted.  But.”  She stressed.  “What wasn’t redacted doesn’t paint a picture of someone who has any love or trust for either the government or law enforcement, the opposite actually.”

“Who’s the owner?”  Rossi tilted his head, trying to figure out why the third picture was of a pre-teen boy.

Garcia highlighted the picture of the young boy.

“Harry James Potter-Black, currently age thirty-one but this was the most recent photo I could find of him anywhere.”  She said with utter exasperation.  “He inherited Potter Pharmaceuticals from his late father at fifteen months old and then merged it with Toujours Pur Incorporated when he inherited that from his godfather, one Sirius Black two months before his eighteenth birthday in 1998.”  She rattled off.  “Naming the resulting conglomerate Potter-Black Consolidated after his own double-barreled last name.  But,” she said with no-little triumph over finding out the next bit.  “Even more digging found an adoption record from July of 1981 where one Sirius Orion Black the Third officially adopted his godson one Harry James Potter three months prior to the murder of his parents.”

“They knew they were going to die.”  JJ said gravely.  “But why would they choose Black to be their son’s guardian?”

“That’s where it gets weird.”  Garcia told them, though there was plenty about the situation that was hinky.  “I’ve found only bare-bones documentation about these people.  Birth and death certificates, marriages and adoptions, some work and education files, that’s it, even their financials are off the grid until Potter-Black took over the companies and merged them in ’98.  From what I was able to figure out, one Alphard Black,” she lit up the first picture, one of an aristocratic man done up in a fine suit straight out of the fifties with tied-back long hair.  “Left his company to his great-nephew Sirius on his death in the early seventies.  At that time it consisted of a handful of clubs in the UK and Western Europe.  That’s not the weird part.  Then straight out of school, Sirius Black and his cousin one James Potter, his godson’s father, along with James’s then-fiancé Lily Evans all join the UK counterterrorism agency MI-7 which was formed in response to the ongoing and increasing instances of terrorism in the UK.”

“How did Sirius Black go from counterterrorism agent to mass murderer?”  Rossi asked.  “Did he flip?”

“Way worse than that.”  Garcia sighed.  “He was one of their best agents, his file – as redacted as it was – lists commendation after commendation for bravery and various operations against the Death Eaters, a so-called neo-Nazi supremacist group that operated in the UK and parts of Western Europe from the early sixties all the way until 1998.  For some reason Potter and his wife were active agents until winter of 1980 and then disappeared until their deaths on October of ’81 when their safehouse was attacked.  Harry survived, everyone else died including the terrorist who attacked them which for the next ten years was assumed to be the leader due to the lack of activity during that time.  Sirius Black was blamed for the attack since he knew the location of the safehouse and was supposedly tracked down by a friend of both Black and Potter then Black killed the friend, one Peter Pettigrew and set off an explosion that killed a dozen bystanders.”

“That’s a whole lot more than nothing, baby girl.”  Morgan told her bemused as she waved him off.

“Not that much actually.”  Garcia told them.  “I only found the story after some serious digging – no pun intended – in a newspaper article from the small village the safe house was located in and another from the London Times on the explosion.  Someone spent some major time hushing up the story.  Black gets tossed in some MI-7 black site for thirteen years and the kid gets shuffled off to his maternal aunt’s house where more than one accusation of abuse was leveled at the Dursleys – the aunt and her husband plus their son – but all of them were hushed up just as quickly as the story with only minor notes remaining in the social services database.”

“This guy’s been let down time and time again.”  Morgan sighed, rubbing one hand over his head.  “MI-7 didn’t protect his family, abuse was ignored.  It’s no wonder he won’t want to help us.”

“It gets worse than that.”  Garcia frowned, a sad look in her eyes as she stared at the picture of ten-year-old Harry Potter-Black.  “At eleven he went off to the same prestigious private school in Scotland that both his parents attended as well as both Black and Pettigrew.  His standardized tests all showed an extremely intelligent boy who consistently underperformed in classes.”

Reid found the said-education reports from Potter-Black’s primary school.

“He didn’t just underperform.”  He said a moment later.  “All the work on these tests are right, only the answers are wrong.  He intentionally hid his intelligence in the face of a hostile home, what did the cousin’s grade look like?”

“Barely enough to pass in a lot of cases.”  Garcia told him after hacking back into the school records.  “He attended summer school all through primary and the school recommended either being moved into special ed or being held back but the guardians wouldn’t go for it.”

“I bet Harry wasn’t allowed to do better than his cousin.”  Prentiss guessed, disgust for the system that failed the boy Potter-Black used to be ripe in her voice.

“That’s a good bet considering one of the accusations regarding abuse came right after the first term grades were posted.”  Reid said, voice absent as it got when he was more focused internally than the external situation.  “It was the only time prior to attending his private school that Harry ever made top marks in his classes.”

“So,” Garcia brought them back on-track.  “He goes off to private school, one Morgana Magnus in Castleview, Scotland.  Makes good marks his first year and is in the top five his second.  Then in ’93…”

“Sirius Black escapes.”  Rossi supplied, familiar with the story even though the States at that time didn’t have a BOLO out on Black.  “And remains at-large until his death five years later when he leaves his fortune and holdings to his adopted son.”

“Exactamundo.”  Garcia smiled at the oldest agent on the team.  “But there’s more to it than that.  In ’98 when Black died, it was during a counterterrorism operation that got a lot of press in the dark web section of the UK.  Mainstream media ignored it but there were tons of disappearances and “disasters” between June of ’95 and May of ’98 that were played off a bit too cavalierly for some people to believe.  Then, lo and behold, Sirius Black is posthumously exonerated by the Queen herself and awarded a multitude of medals, as is his son who survived to take up the reins of the two companies and attend college not to mention…”  She trilled.  “Joining MI-7 just like his parents before him.  Officially he wasn’t a fully-fledged agent until ’03 but unofficially his name shows up in redacted files regarding operations as far back as 1995 until he resigned from the agency in ’08 with a stack of commendations to match all three of his parents and a massive chip on his shoulder regarding the equally-massive amount of reprimands for insubordination.  This is a former government agent who has zero reason to like either law enforcement or government agents and every reason to block us as much as possible.”

“That may be true.”  Hotch allowed a moment later.  “But see if you can work up anything like a list of known associates.  He might not talk to us.  Maybe he’ll talk to one of them.”

…

Penthouse/Owner’s Suite, Black Temptations, Florence, Italy

“Harry.”

Harry Potter-Black turned to the two-way mirror that sat propped up on his desk facing him, a tool and duplicate of the one Siri had given him years before, that allowed him to be connected to his company’s main offices in London – and thereby his personal assistant, his old Hogwarts school-mate Tracey Davis of Slytherin – no matter which of his clubs he chose to reside in on that given day.

It wasn’t the most stable of lifestyles, he’d have to admit, but given that it was only him despite numerous attempts from friends and family to get him to marry and settle down, it suited him.

He could be in Havana one night and Antwerp the next thanks to portkeys and international Floo travel.

And no one could ever again dictate where he lived or what he did.

No, it wasn’t stable.

But it was what he needed and had needed for so long that he hadn’t even realized it until he’d started opening new clubs and globe-hopping to take a more active role in overseeing them when he left the Aurors.

“Yes, Davis?”

“I’ve heard from our clubs in the states.”  She rushed to tell him, more than a bit frantic.  “A dozen of them have had police and FBI insisting on seeing security footage and membership lists because of some crime.  I’ve alerted the American lawyers and so far they’ve blocked the LEOs from getting access to the clubs but if this goes on…”

“We’ll close the clubs before we give them so much as a napkin, Davis.”  Harry told her arching a knowing brow.  “That’s the protocol.”

“The clubs in the States are some of our most profitable.”

“Then we’ll give it a year and come back.”  He shrugged.  “It’s not like I can’t afford it.  Better take the hit from that than our guests start to think that we can’t uphold the code of privacy and discretion we offer.”

“Yes sir.”

“And Davis?”  Harry frowned, something niggling at him.  “Tell Savage in DC that I’m coming stateside.  I want to know firsthand what’s going on that has LEOs so interested in our clubs.”

“I’ll inform the Black Temptations DC house elves to ready your suite, Mr. Potter-Black.”

“Thank you, Davis.  That’ll be all.”

…

BAU Headquarters, That Night

Hotch lifted his head as Garcia knocked on his door, his mood plummeting in a heartbeat at the serious look on the normally-perky blonde’s face.

“The team’s already waiting to leave, sir.”  Garcia told him all sad eyes and soft voice.  “And I ordered the jet to prepare.”

“Where?”  He asked, already leaning over to grab his go-bag, having barely been home to swap it out the previous night.

Sometimes he really hated being right.

“Houston.”  Garcia handed him a file, the last she’d put together when the murder had popped up in the County Sheriff’s database.  “They already know you’re coming.”

…

The BAU team jet, 2200, 30 September 2011

“The clock is already ticking before the next victim.”  Hotch reminded the team.  “This took nine days between Loraine Howard in Seattle and the newest victim in Houston.  What do we know about her?”

“Gabrielle “Gabi” Ormond.”  Reid rattled off, already nose-deep in the slim file with the preliminary information the sheriff had forwarded and Garcia had dug into to flesh out.  “Thirty, owns a boutique in Houston proper, lives with her boyfriend of three years: a golf-pro named Douglas Templeton, thirty-three.”

“Same m.o. as the previous crimes.”  Prenitss said.  “Boyfriend expected her home in the early evening, started to worry and tried to call her cell but nothing.  He hadn’t even started calling around to friends or the police by the time his girlfriend was found dead and a deputy was knocking on his door.”

“Nine days is cutting it close for our unsub.”  Morgan noted.  “That’s within the time period that we’d seen earlier between the club visits and the abductions and murders.  He’s moving quickly from one city to the next, picking a target, and moving on them.  He’d already selected Gabi before we even knew there was a serial killer targeting the clubs.”

…

The next day was comprised of the same routine from Seattle, none of it telling them anything they didn’t already know, including that the wounds showed increased escalation.

As predicted, the unsub was continuing to get worse but hadn’t yet made a mistake beyond hitting the same city too close together.

“Obviously he knows what cities Potter-Black Consolidated has clubs in.”  Morgan pointed out when they were loaded back onto the jet heading back to DC two days after leaving for Houston.  “How?  Even Garcia had to dive into their tax filings to figure that out.”

“Maybe he knew someone who used to work for the company or used to work there himself.”  Prentiss suggested.

“Or members know which cities they can visit and still go to a sister-club during business trips or vacations.”  Rossi added.  “Did any of the members admit to anything like that?”

“No,” Reid supplied then continued.  “Which considering the level of privacy they insist on – even to the level of hindering the investigation by not coming forward with the club visit or membership immediately – isn’t a surprise.”

Silence fell at that as the team focused back at the root: Harry Potter-Black and his list of associates.

“I tell you one thing.”  Morgan mused.  “If I was the club managers, I wouldn’t want to stick around when the big boss finds out that this was a murder investigation and they blocked us.  Privacy is important to his business, but I have a hard time believing that a guy who fought as hard as this,” he held up the file on Potter-Black.  “For his country would be okay with hindering the apprehension of a serial killer.”

No matter how bitter he was over his own dealings with law enforcement.

“Those lawyers are vicious.”  Rossi huffed a laugh.  “Worse than any of my ex-wives’ divorce attorneys.  They had an injunction so fast my head spun.”

“That’s not easy to do either.”  Hotch admitted, knowing a thing or two about the subject as a former prosecuting attorney.  “And if they managed it as reported by the field offices in the other cities with victims then they knew we were coming.  We have to operate as if the company, even Potter-Black, knows what’s going on and are protecting the unsub for an unknown reason.”

“Could it be Potter-Black?”  JJ asked.  “The secondary trigger point, Mrs. Boer, was murdered on his birthday.”

“It’s possible.”  Hotch told her voice quiet.

“Not so much, bossman.”  Garcia told them, the laptop lighting up with her picture from her computer cave at Quantico.  “At least three of these murders took place during charity events where Potter-Black was spotted according to the gossip rags.”

“Expanded your web diving on him?”  Derek asked with a dark chuckle.

“Indeed my luscious chocolate god.”  Penelope shot back.  “Potter-Black supports a dozen different charities, all to do with children and at-risk youth, including attending fund-raisers and giving away truly obscene amounts of money to them, three of which overlap with the estimated times of death for three of the thirteen, well, now fourteen victims.  If Harry Potter-Black is the unsub he’s mastered being in two places at once.”

“Well, there goes the easy mark.”  Rossi shook his head.  “How goes the court battle?  The injunctions still standing?”

“Considering the law firms he employs.”  Hotch said, not waiting for Garcia to update them.  “We could all be dead of old age before that’s resolved.  Our best shot is getting to Potter-Black and having him call off the lawyers unleashed by his employees.”

“I think I might be able to help with that.”  Derek frowned, sitting up as he stared at a name on the list of classmates from Morgana Magnus.  The files were organized in order of newest – and therefore most likely to still be in contact – associates to oldest, and the name was the very last on the classmates from Scotland before diving into his primary school years.  “Baby girl, can you get me a date of birth and next of kin on one Blaise Demencio Zabini?”

“I’ll try but it’ll need my full-attention darling man.”  Garcia answered already typing at the speed of thought.  “Back in a flash.”

“The name ring a bell?”  Rossi asked, intrigued by the look on his face.

“Yeah,” Derek gave an incredulous little laugh.  “I can’t believe it until Garcia confirms.  But Blaise Zabini is the name of one of my distant cousins, second or third or something.”

“Second cousin twice removed my delicious chocolate muffin.”  Garcia popped back on the screen to report.  “Son of Serephine Zabini neé Bellemy and Demencio Zabini, half-French half-Italian with, woah.”

“What’s woah?”  Prentiss asked.

“Fifteen step-fathers.”

The team shared shocked and disbelieving looks at that, which turned to consternation at the next bit.

“All of which predeceased the former Ms. Bellemy before her own death two years ago from unknown causes.”

“My aunt was a Black Widow?”  Derek asked, shocked to his bones.  “No wonder Blaise liked the couple times he got to come and visit before my dad passed.  If I was him I wouldn’t want to leave either.”

“Second cousin once removed.”  Reid corrected.  “Your most recent common ancestor would have been your great-grandparents, but in essence yes, that’s the inference that could be made.”

“Jesus, things you wish you didn’t know.”  Derek scrubbed at his eyes even as he dug for his phone.  “Let’s see if my mom has contact information for cousin Blaise, since I doubt any of us are going to find a better connection than an old classmate to a guy as good at isolating himself as Potter-Black.”

The list complied had been long but outside of his employees very shallow except for a friend of his parents named Remus Lupin, a widower with a teenaged son who Garcia couldn’t find any contact information on.

Distant acquaintances and the remnants of classmates, many of whom had died during the terrorist attacks in the late ‘90’s or like his former friends in the years since grown estranged.

Even a distant connection a dozen or more years old was better than the goose-egg they had at the moment.

Twenty minutes later had Derek dialing an international number, praying that Blaise would pick up despite the odd area code.

“Hello?”  Came a sleepy voice along the line, a rich, lush hint of both France and Italy making for an accent that Garcia a bit flustered as she listened in via the speaker phone.

“Is this Blaise?”  Derek asked, the other voice snapping awake and sharpening in an instant at his American tones despite the calm and easy manner behind them.

“Depends on who’s asking.”

“This is Derek, Derek Morgan?  I’m your cousin from Chicago, you used to visit us every now and again in the summers until my dad died?”

“Mum’s Cousin Hank’s son?”

“That’s the one.”  Derek gave a hidden relieved breath that didn’t shake his voice or give itself away at all.  “I’m with the FBI now and I need your help with something.”

“Taking after your Dad, huh?”  Blaise gave a weary sigh.  “What in the world could an English researcher,” Unspeakable.  “Do for an American federal agent?”  And a muggle one at that.

“We’ve hit a bit of a brick wall in an investigation and your name popped up on a list of known associates.  Does the name Harry Potter-Black mean anything to you?”

Dead silence.

“Is he under investigation?”  Blaise’s tone turned ice-cold, the team trading looks at the switch from sleepy to warm to ice within moments.

“Not at this time.”  Derek said carefully.  “There’s a killer targeting people visiting his clubs in the US and his managers have stonewalled us and called out the lawyers.  Is there any chance you can get me or someone on my team a meeting with him?”

Blaise blew out a heavy breath, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“How many dead?”

“Fourteen so far.”  Derek told him.  “We have a week maybe less before the next body hits the ground and the only link between them beyond surface similarities is the clubs.  We really need to talk to Harry Potter-Black.”

“We’re not exactly friends.”  Blaise admitted.  “But I know his PA…and I’m a member of one of the London clubs.  I’ll see if I can get my hands on some guest passes to wherever he’s at right now.  Word has it that Potter tends to bounce between clubs doing spot-checks and keeping his managers and employees half-terrified and in-line.”  He flicked a look at the clock.  “But Tracey won’t be in at the office for a couple more hours, it’s early here.  Call me back around ten a.m. my time and I’ll have an answer for you.”

“Thank you.”  Derek blew out a heavy breath and closed his eyes in relief.  “You don’t even know how much we needed this break.”

“You know you’re not going to get in without a member, right?”  Blaise checked.  “And what type of clubs Potter runs?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah.”  Derek told him.  “But why do I need a member?”

“Someone has to vouch for you.”  Blaise grimaced, wishing that he’d learned to care a little less in the aftermath of the Voldemort Wars.  “Guess I’m the unlucky bastard that Potter’s going to tear a strip off for taking cops into his club…if I can sweet-talk Tracey and if he’s visiting one of the US clubs.”

“I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.”  Derek said, raising his brows.  “Given the circumstances.”

“Whatever, I’ve never understood him.”  Blaise snorted.  “Ten A.M. London time.  You’ll have your answer about getting into the club or not then.”

Click.  Blaise hung up, already dreading the tongue-lashing Tracey was going to give him – let alone Potter – when his using his connections to help cops get into Potter’s clubs is known.

Meanwhile back on the jet, the team was already planning for success.

“We’re going to need to be ready to make it to the club ASAP if Blaise comes through with the passes.”  Hotch noted.  “How long does it take to fly from London to the States?”

“Seven hours and fifty-five minutes baring issues.”  Reid rattled off.  “Meaning if Blaise gets the passes and comes himself to help us we can get in to the club tomorrow night.”

“We can’t look like LEOs or they’ll make us before we even get through the door and kiss our meeting Potter-Black goodbye.”  Prentiss warned.  “So undercover.”

“And we’ll take the whole team except for Garcia.”

“Hey!”

“Since you’ll be monitoring the pin-cameras we’ll be wearing.”  Hotch continued, ignoring her protest.  “Just a group of friends out for a night with Derek’s cousin visiting from London.  Nothing to spook the unsub if he’s there or Potter-Black either way.  He’s counterterrorism so he’s the one we have to worry about if he’s upset at our presence.  Garcia, what’s the next club that’s most likely to be targeted given the established pattern?”

“Black Temptations DC.”  She reported.  “In every instance of a West Coast victim the unsub hits one of the clubs in the middle of the country and then DC and that’s the only one of the three clubs that hasn’t had a victim yet.”

“He’s running out of random targets.”  Rossi noted.  “He’s going to have to repeat himself soon which could force him into escalating even more considering how long he’s gone undetected and the lack of a nationwide alert.”

“That’s the last thing we want to do.”  Hotch grimaced.  “It could force him to start grabbing truly at random to protect himself and sate his urges.  It’s a hard choice but I’d rather we get Potter-Black to play ball with us than risk shoving this unsub even farther over the edge.”

…

At two a.m. while the rest of the team was sleeping except Hotch, Derek made the call to London.

“He’s aware of the situation at least in part, which means it’s your lucky day.”  Blaise reported.  “Tracey told me that he changed his plans to pop-in on his Rome club to go to the U.S. and get a bead on the situation, the severity of which none of the upper echelons of the company are aware of from what I got out of Tracey.  I’ll be there this afternoon your time and we can hit the club tonight.”

“Which club?”

“Black Temptations in Washington D.C.”

Chapter Text

A Thousand Natural Shocks

“Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? 
Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.” 

― Emery Allen

Three: Leather and Lace

“He’s coming to the club that’s next on the list?”  Rossi arched a brow once they’d reconvened again for the third time in four days in the roundtable room at the BAU offices.  “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

“From what Blaise said, Potter-Black doesn’t know about the murders or how serious the crimes are.”  Derek reported from where he stood leaning against the table.  With the confirmation that they were going to the club that night, Hotch had called a late start that day in the afternoon while they waited for Blaise to arrive, his pick-up arranged for a rookie FBI agent at the airport to bring him to Quantico.  “But felt the situation needed his attention with so many of his clubs all being hit with subpoenas and warrants all at once.  The lawyers are still tying things up, but that’s the sort of thing that would prickle my neck and I’m not even counterterrorism.”

“Potter’s always been a paranoid bastard.”  A lush voice spoke from the doorway, Hotch waving off the rookie who’d escorted its owner to the BAU bullpen as the team turned as one to look him over.

And there was a lot to look and – and appreciate – if the looks on JJ, Prentiss, and Garcia’s faces were any sign.

Though Reid wasn’t nearly as covert about doing likewise as he thought, but after working with Hotch and the others for so long they all knew he was more about people and less on packaging or arbitrary labeling regarding gender and sexuality.

“But it kept him and a lot of us alive back when England went all to shit so who’m I to complain, yeah?”  Blaise offered, setting down his bag into the door to the roundtable room.  “Blaise Zabini, late of London.”  He introduced himself, nodding as the others did the same, face staying that bland-but-charming look, except for cracking a smile at bubbly Garcia who gushed – just a bit – over him.

Not that Reid could blame her, Blaise Zabini was a smoother, lither, accented version of Derek but with indigo eyes instead of Derek’s dark brown.

There was a lot to gush over and appreciate from an aesthetic standpoint.

“Hey, thanks for doing this man.”  Derek stood and shook hands with his cousin, the two clapping each other on the back after a quick – as Garcia would call it – “man hug.”  “I know it can’t be easy using your friend like that but we really need an in.”

“Not a problem.”  Blaise shrugged, eyes dancing over the pictures pinned up of the victims, both living and autopsy headshots, frowning a bit.  “Tracey was a Slytherin same as I.  She knows the score but that doesn’t mean she won’t make me pay for it once Potter rakes her over the coals.”

“It won’t cost your friend her job will it?”  Garcia frowned herself, pouting a bit at the thought in compassion.

“Nah, Potter’s a hardcase but he’s got a soft heart under all that hair, always has.”  Blaise waved that off as Reid jumped on the next tangent.

“Slytherin?”

“School houses.”  Blaise shrugged, going with it even as the others rolled their eyes a bit at Reid’s lily-pad-jumping way of tracking a conversation.  “Every incoming class was quartered based on a personality test to help build friendships or alliances between the students since most of us came from all over the UK though a lot of the legacy students tended to know each other before we got to the school.”

“How well do you know Potter-Black?”  Hotch asked, getting down to business as Derek pulled out a chair for their guest.

“Well as any who went to school with him, not as well as some.”  Blaise shrugged.  “He was always the sort to have a close group of friends.  He’d be friendly to anyone who crossed his path, wasn’t a hothead like his best mate, didn’t go looking for trouble, but it usually found him anyway for one reason or another.”

“How do you mean?”  Derek prompted.

“How much do you know about Harry Potter?”  Blaise asked in return then listened to the rundown via Reid that was a parroting of Garcia’s early research plus a bit that had been added since:

“…then he went on to get dual degrees in business and psychology before leaving MI-7 to manage his businesses full-time.”  Spencer wound down, having noted the subject areas on the degree certificates Garcia had located in Cambridge’s database earlier.

“Right, well.”  Blaise blinked a little taken aback by the sudden outpouring of information.  “That’s a whole lot of absolute shite for knowing anything about Potter.  Here’s something that’ll help you more than all of that with trying to get him onside: Potter has a code.  It might not make sense to you lot, you didn’t live through what any of us over there during the Death Eater days did.  But he has one.  Trouble comes looking for him, not the other way round, but when it does he puts it down.  There were days at school that I thought the only things keeping him going were pure nerve and contrariness.”

“How do you mean?”  Prentiss asked.

“Wasn’t supposed to survive the attack on his parents, was he?”  Blaise smirked, indigo eyes playful but knowing.  “Wasn’t supposed to have a brain in his head or a backbone after his loving relatives got done with him – not that anyone knew about that until after May of ’98 but there were plenty of signs before.  Wasn’t supposed to care about anything but following in his father’s footsteps, become the head of the MI-7.  Wasn’t supposed to want anything other than the life that had been planned out for him since he was a baby.  And what does he do?”  Blaise chuckled.  “He survived, he thrived – scrawny as all hell and a bit twitchy at times but still – he pursued his own interests, said no to the wife already picked out for him and turned down the cushy desk job they wanted to force on him.  He’s as footloose and fancy-free as anyone who lived through everything he did probably could be and now some fucker wants to make his clubs a hunting ground?”  Blaise’s grin had too many teeth to be a smile.  “You lot better hope you find this arsehole before Potter does if you want anything left over to be found, that is if you’re still determined to beard the dragon in its den?”

The team traded looks, Blaise’s information more than a little concerning when combined with the information Garcia had dug up, while Dave latched onto what Zabini had started to tell them before getting side-tracked by Emily’s question.

“What did you mean about his code?”

“Oh, he’s a right-honorable git most of the time, soon as he hears about what’s been going on you’ll have no better ally.  It’s getting him to listen is the problem.”  Blaise rolled his eyes with a huff.  “I overheard him onetime talking to a common acquaintance of ours when Potter was shagging him blind.  Malfoy was a prat and more to him, even tried to kill him once from the way the story goes, but Potter still forgave him for it, knew that back then everyone was just trying to stay alive and Malfoy was smack in the middle of it with the Great Twat Riddle living in his home thanks to his insanely fanatical father.  Said that he’d gotten a fair few pieces of advice over the years but only a couple ever stuck with him.  First, that we’ve all got light and dark inside us and what mattered was what we choose to act on.  Second, that there are times in our lives where we have to choose between doing what is right and what is easy.  And last, what is life without a little risk?”

Blaise stopped talking and let them process that, after all, they had hours yet until they needed to head for the club and anything at all he could give them about Potter would hopefully help them convince him to call off his lawyers or whatever it was exactly they needed from him.

More, since Blaise was sure to get bounced as soon as the team was made as law enforcement, he likely wouldn’t be there to help them navigate the dangerous waters that were Harry James Potter-Black’s mercurial moods.

“Then how do we get him to listen?”  Reid asked the obvious question.  “Since legal action hasn’t helped.”

Blaise snorted shaking his head.

“It wouldn’t.”  He told them, rolling his eyes.  “If anything it will make him more likely to go after this creep himself.  But if you can get his attention, know how to bait him, he’ll come around.  He’ll have to, his code won’t allow for anything less, but he’ll also insist on being right there in the thick of it with you.”

“A loose cannon is a risk we can’t afford in an investigation.”  Hotch pointed out as much to himself as to the rest of his team.

“Hotch-man.”  Derek told him, brows raised.  “He’s MI-7.  Loose cannon is obvious, but he has to have skills we can use in addition to the information we need.  It’s a risk we’re going to have to take if we want to stop this unsub.”

A silence lingered over the room, the rest of the team shifting as Blaise looked on, everyone agreeing with both men’s points but seeming to lean towards Morgan.

“Then it goes back to Reid’s question.”  Prentiss blinked a bit.  “How do we get him to listen?”

“With the right bait.”  Blaise smirked, eyes dragging with appreciation over both Hotchner and Reid, quirking a brow at his cousin.  “Thankfully you have three prime specimens of his preferred vice right here in this room.”

Most would assume Blaise was talking about the rather attractive trio of ladies, but they weren’t profilers for nothing and the look Blaise had shot the three younger male profilers was nothing short of blatant.

“He’s gay.”  JJ stated blandly.  “And a player?”

“Not as such.”  Blaise shrugged.  “He’s not indiscriminate if that’s your meaning but he likes his men a certain type: tall, strong, smart.”  He rattled off.  “If Malfoy wasn’t such a stuck-up prick the two of them probably would’ve been settled down with a tribe of ickle Potter-Malfoys years ago.  Add in that cute rambling thing that Dr. Reid seems to do and he’ll let you talk long enough for the situation to become clear to him but all the same…I should probably only take our three “bait” agents with me, so it looks less like a team of law enforcement and more like a group of mates out.”

“How will we get his attention then?”  Derek asked.  “Just look pretty and hope for the best?”  He scoffed.

“Not at all.”  Blaise shook his head.  “Like I said, Potter’s a bit of a paranoid bastard.  He knows everyone who steps foot into a club he’s in at any given time.  If naught else, he’ll come ‘round to find out what I’m doing with a trio of fine blokes in DC instead of back home in London with my lovely wife.”

Hotch nodded, though with palpable reluctance.

“The three of us will meet you at your hotel, and we’ll take an unmarked car from there.”  He ordered.  “The rest of the team will stay back here and monitor things from a distance just in case our unsub moves faster than expected.  You know this man the best, Mr. Zabini, how should we dress to grab his attention?”

“Leather and silk if you have it.”  Blaise told them.  “Well-fitting but doesn’t have to be bespoke.  Potter’s not up-himself like that.  If you don’t then dark, fitting denims in a low-rise with the nicest shirt you have: button-down not a sweater or a t-shirt.  Though,” he cocked his head and grinned at Dr. Reid.  “If you wanted to keep the waistcoat and ditch the shirt and tie, Dr. Reid, I might have to fend the lads and ladies off with a stick before he has a chance to spy you.”

The trio nodded, even as Spencer blushed bright cherry red at the compliment buried in the leer.

“Thank you for this, Mr. Zabini.”  Hotch told Morgan’s cousin.  “We’ll meet at your hotel at 2200.”

…

“I don’t know how I feel about this.”  Spencer told Derek, his best-friend, as they walked a pace behind the lean forms of their boss and Derek’s cousin.

Hotch had just come back from months overseas in Pakistan, and his lean form showed it, especially in the skin-tight brown leather motorcycle pants he’d been poured into with a royal blue silk button down that wasn’t as fitted as it used to be.  Reid’s brain helpfully supplied that based on the wear patterns and an almost unnoticeable crease, the pants at least were probably several years old, likely from a time before Aaron’s son had been born when he was a younger man.  That they also highlighted just how toned Aaron had gotten while in the desert wasn’t helpful for Spencer’s peace of mind in the least.

It wasn’t like he never noticed how attractive some of his co-workers were in their different ways.

He was a healthy man about to turn thirty next month, that he toted around a brain that never shut up didn’t change that.

He particularly enjoyed Derek from an aesthetic perspective much like Agent Seaver but would never do anything more than look with as many statistics he knew regarding workplace relationships that ended badly.

Spencer valued his friendship with Derek – the first of its kind he ever had – far too much to ruin it.

Still, he could appreciate him from a distance, much like the way he appreciated Hotch’s ass in those pants especially with his boss walking in front of him and not likely to pick up on said appreciation.

“Playing honeypot?”  Derek flashed a grin as he looked over at Pretty Boy.  “Considering how many times you’ve been snatched or ended up in danger accidentally on cases I’d think it would be refreshing to know you’re bait for once.”

“Ha ha.”  Spencer glared a split-second at the other man, eyes flickering over the – again, painted-on – clothes Derek had worn: low-rise black jeans with a plastered-to-every-muscle purple silk shirt and black boots with a bit of a heel that put Derek, usually an inch shorter than Spencer, eye-to-eye with him.  “You’re not funny.”

“No, but of the three of us you have been snapped up more often Pretty Boy.”  Derek pointed out, grin firmly in place as they came up to the walk for the club.

There were no masses of cars or throbbing bass that could be heard on the street, the exterior the same as everything else they’d heard about the clubs owned by their current target: dark and discrete.

“And lookin’ like that,” Derek arched a brow at the tight, tailored jeans and button down, jeans dark blue and shirt a warm crimson that brought color to Spencer’s ivory complexion.  “You really are lookin’ for trouble.”  He frowned playfully, slipping a bit into a cover for the benefit of the bouncer who Blaise was holding out his wristband for confirmation as well as the guest pass for the three agents.  “Why don’t you ever dress up like that when you go out with me and the girls, huh?”

“Because we never go to places like this.”  Spencer told him patiently, the duh implied, much to the amusement of their two companions and the bouncer who’d been listening to the by-play.

“The hostess will take care of the confidentiality contracts for the night, gentlemen.”  The bouncer told them once it seemed Derek and Spencer had cut out the by-play.  “Otherwise, welcome to Black Temptations.”

…

Derek rubbed at his hand, soothing skin that felt prickled somehow by the weird fountain pen the hostess had given them to sign the contracts with.

And what contracts.

He’d seen the surprised and impressed arch of Hotch’s brows as the lawyer – Hotch always certain to keep up his credentials despite not actively practicing law – reviewed it before giving them the go-ahead to sign.  There was a lot of legalese that even with Derek’s background in law enforcement was hard to swim through.  But what it came down to was, no matter what they saw, short of actual murder, rape, or kidnapping, they couldn’t do shit about it without having a lawsuit come down on them like the wrath of god – or Strauss.

Those were the only exceptions in the wording from what Hotch had found: murder, rape, and kidnapping.

Given what Blaise had told them about the club and Garcia’s research, it made sense.

A place that hinged on anything goes…but required consent, it was strange, yes, but gave Derek hope that this wasn’t just a fool’s errand and another dead end, despite the club being a vice cop’s field day from just what looked like high-class escorts or maybe “sugar-babies” snuggling up to older, wealthy appearing men and women on the level the hostess escorted them to, complete with a private booth and a couple of chilled bottles “courtesy of Lord Potter-Black” after an order had obviously come through her ear piece as the three agents were signing their contracts for the night.

There was one thing he saw – besides the drugs he was certain he saw trading hands in more than one booth or table on all three levels of the club – that bothered him.

Leave it to Pretty Boy to ask, whether it was appropriate or not.

“What’s with the masks?”  Spencer frowned, genuinely confused.  “If those contracts are as binding as they appeared, what does it matter if your identity is known?”

The genius was speaking of the same thing all three of the agents had tagged within seconds of being on the uppermost level of the club, what appeared to be a quieter “gentleman’s club” area with smoky music playing in the background and buffered from the noise on the other two levels by soundproofing and a clear pane of plexiglass that let them see the whole of the club – both the area one level down that was more of the BDSM-type setting that they’d expected, and the bottom floor that took up the entire level with a massive dancefloor, a stage, and a long bar along one side.  The top two floors were more balconies overlooking the bottom level, with a cat-walk outside private booths at the top and a bit more space than that for “scenes” on the next level down.  But nothing compared to the massive bottom-level with performers – male and female – dancing on platforms and what looked like doors and alcoves leading to private areas ringing the two walls without either stage or bar.

And about a quarter of the patrons, probably about a hundred people total, wore at least half-masks covering their eyes and upper cheeks to protect their identities even with the protection of the contract in place.

“Not being able to say or do anything about what you see here doesn’t mean it can’t color your behavior in other ways.”  Blaise told them nonchalantly.  “The ones with masks are either fulfilling a kink or can’t afford to even be seen in a place like this.”

“But with the membership angle and having to vouch for guests.”  Hotch noted as his dark brown eyes flicked over the patrons.  “There’s no danger of having an unstable person in the club with no accountability.”

“Exactly.”  Blaise nodded.  “Might have been different in the original clubs owned by the Blacks but once Potter took over he made damn sure that if there were going to be clubs like these around that they were going to play by his rules.”

“Consent.”  Reid nodded, his brain clicking along.  “He can keep the worst elements out, keep things like human trafficking or abductions from occurring by having stringent membership requirements.”

“And if anyone breaks my rules.”  A voice as lush and smoky as the music came from behind Derek, which gave him a damn good view of Pretty Boy’s stunned reaction to the man and his cousin’s grimace, Hotch as ever not giving a damn thing away.  “I know exactly who to take apart.”  The man sauntered around Derek then leaned down to bracket his cousin with long arms encased in what even in the low light of the club Morgan could tell was a bespoke silk shirt with silver or platinum cufflinks flashing diamonds at the wrists.  “Give me one good reason, Zabini.”  The man, who could only be Harry Potter-Black despite looking almost nothing like the bespectacled little kid in the picture Garcia had found except for flashing emerald eyes, purred into Blaise’s ear.  “To not hand you your fucking arse for daring to bring law enforcement into my club.”

“People are being murdered.”  Reid blurted out before anyone could take a breath, those bright green eyes latching onto him without their owner moving an inch.  “And we think they’re using your clubs as a hunting ground.”

“Well.”  The man shoved away from the booth, arching a brow at the far-too-pale face of Zabini.  “that is a good reason.  Fuck off Zabini, before my good nature wears out and I blacklist you.  Dr. Reid and his comrades have a thing or two to discuss with me.”  He jerked his head towards the exit, Blaise taking off like a shot, then motioned for the three agents to follow him with a tip of his head and a wave of his hand.  “After me, gentlemen.  Something tells me this isn’t a conversation for the floor.”

…

The profilers followed after the club owner, each mentally ticking off boxes or filing away information as they were prone to do even without knowing it.  One of the rules of the time was to not actively profile each other.  Actively being the operative word as they couldn’t help but do it unconsciously even to each other. 

A team like theirs, well, secrets were almost impossible to keep and privacy? 

Forget it.

Aaron could almost hear Reid’s mind clicking away at that speed of light or the snap-quick associations that were piling up for Morgan without the other man even being necessarily aware of it until it came time to talk them out.

He was doing the same after all, even if his eyes couldn’t help but stray every now and again as the man, who could only be Potter-Black, led them through the club, his gaze landing here on a couple in latex engaging in pet play, then there on the drug deal between a syndicate criminal and some starlet, but always, always being drawn back to Potter-Black like magnets to a lodestone.

And he wasn’t the only one.

Eyes followed him from the moment he’d stepped up to their table – Aaron would estimate since the moment he stepped onto the floor – flicking from Potter-Black to the men trailing behind him and back, the club members and guests doing some profiling of their own the way everyone does in a social setting, let alone one with as high-stakes and high-tension as the inside of Black Temptations.

Harry Potter-Black wasn’t as tall as any of them had expected after listening to Blaise talk about him, only about five-nine, not much more than average for an American male but a bit taller than average for someone with his mixed heritage.

That was another thing.

The school picture Garcia had pulled had clearly shown a young boy with pale-tanned skin, only a livid red scar on his forehead to make him stand out from dozens of other young English children in the Fall.

Harry Potter-Black was clearly not English – or not just English.

How much mixed race he was – Indian subcontinent was Reid’s guess based on the skin tone what tended more towards the bronze of the Middle East rather than the mocha and ebony tones of Africa or the coppers of Native Americans and the heavy immigration from India to the UK in the last fifty years – was hard to say but he wasn’t white-bread Anglo-Saxon either unlike the picture of his “family” the Dursleys who nearly dripped WASP from every pore.

Five-nine, probably between one-fifty and one-eighty, light bronze skin with thick black hair that poured in waves and curls down his back from where it was pulled into a tail at the crown of his head, with emerald green eyes, Harry Potter-Black was a striking man and he moved and dressed like he knew it.

Not vain to the point of narcissism, nothing about their preliminary profile on him even hinted at the latter, but his green silk shirt was a perfect match for his eyes and his leather pants were so well tailored Morgan would bet he could bounce a quarter off of Potter-Black’s ass.  Moreover, his boots were flat-soled.  Not even a bit of a heel the way both Hotch and Morgan’s boots did, meaning he was comfortable with his height or didn’t feel the need to add to it at least or compensate for it.

His training was clear in his movement and constant scanning of the club, his head turning only slight fractions to use reflective surfaces, but never appearing to look away from his target as he moved towards one of the discrete “staff only” doors set against one wall.  Every step was precise, unhurried.  If Spencer were going to describe it to his mother, he’d say that he walked like he not only knew every inch of the world around him but that he knew it belonged to him for the asking, the sort of poetic prose that Diana would appreciate.  In his report, if it was necessary, he’d call it an assured economy of movement like a trained operative such as a SEAL.

One thing all three of them were certain of before the door less than a hundred yards away from their table closed behind them, revealing a hidden staff-access stairwell and hallway, Harry Potter-Black was as dangerous as his background and Blaise’s information suggested.

That didn’t put them off.

All of them were dangerous in their own ways.

What they needed to know – and fast – was whether he was the sort of dangerous that could help them or that would hinder them.

And to find that…they had to follow the spider into his web and hope that they weren’t this evening’s flies.

Chapter Text

A Thousand Natural Shocks

Four: The White Lily

Harry wished, faintly, that he’d never gotten up that morning let alone given the order to have his penthouse readied at Black Temptations DC, before banishing the thought.

It had nothing to do with the mess that his club managers had made of a simple request from the police and dragging in the briefcase brigade to hold subpoenas and warrants at bay and everything to do with it all at once.

He knew the score, understood it better than anyone else involved most likely since he knew both viewpoints.

On one hand he had the privacy and discretion offered to their members.

On the other the search for justice for victims and the need to bring down a killer before the body count rises any higher.

And there he was, his duty to his patrons running headlong into his own code that had him leaning one way over the other, a lean that even he wouldn’t have been able to predict before one Dr. Spencer Reid opened his pretty mouth and said those fateful words, words that had been his weakness since he’d been little more than a kid with a “saving people thing.”

People are being murdered, the genius had blurted out.  And your clubs are the hunting ground.

Now that, that was a way to get his attention, riling up both sides of him at the same time.  It’d be impressive if it was calculated, instead of an instinctual plea leveraged from what was likely as thorough a study of Harry as the profiler could make with the scant information available through research and whatever Blaise had given them.  At least he didn’t sense any suspicion coming from the agents, that had been leveled at him enough that he could almost taste it in the air, just a lot of frustration.

Honestly, he thought.  If they’d wanted to stay under his radar for longer than a handful of minutes, they should have left the genius – the published, respected in law enforcement genius – back at the office to come talk to a former law enforcement operative.

Though he did appreciate the effort they’d put in to catching his attention, Blaise’s influence he should think.  Letting his eyes trail over the trio’s reflections in the two-way mirror that made up any door or window in Black Temptations between the public and staff areas – in this case the one that led to his office – eyes lingering on windswept curls and doe eyes here, tight leather there, and mocha skin on the last…at least if Blaise was going to bring in LEOs to his club, they were eye-candy.  And the leather was a nice touch.

Draco must’ve complained or gossiped more to his old school-friend during their brief fling than he’d thought given that nothing ever ended up in the papers, or he’d just been making an assumption given the dress-code of most of the clubs.

Either way, all three of them were definitely something to look at, a feeling he could easily see that they reciprocated even as they profiled every move he made.

Not that he could blame them.

He was doing the exact same thing after all, just through a lens of club owner and former law enforcement instead of behavioral analysis.

“You know.”  He told them as he led them into his sterile office.  “You could have just asked for a meeting through my PA.  With everything going on with my clubs I would’ve taken it.”

“Perhaps.”  Aaron acknowledged as his ever-moving gaze flicked around the stark impersonal space.  All black and white: walls, desk, lamp, etc. with grey slate tile.  There wasn’t even a single piece of artwork or plaque on the wall to relieve the monochrome palate.

It gave nothing away beyond the truth that they already knew: this wasn’t his main office and Potter-Black wasn’t going to be easy to profile, but if he agreed to help them that was all that mattered in the end other than catching the unsub.

“However, our only experience with your organization thus far Mr. Potter-Black would suggest otherwise.”  Aaron finished his thought as the object of interest in the room, indeed the sole purpose and focus of it leaned back against the front of his desk instead of sitting behind it, arms crossed over his chest as he studied each of them in turn without offering them a seat at any of the open four stiff-backed hardwood chairs that were lacquered black to match the desk and were arranged before it.

“Fair enough.”  Harry decided after a long moment of watching the profilers watch him and vice-versa, the young Dr. Reid in particular having a hard time meeting his gaze as his own doe-eyed honey gaze flittered from Harry to the clean desk to the single thing out of place in all the monochrome – other than Harry and the profilers – the ornate silver-backed mirror that he used to communicate with his headquarters in London.  “You seem to like the look of my tablet case, Dr. Reid.”

Yes, Harry called him on it.

They came to him after all, stepped into his territory with at least partial knowledge of what they were getting themselves into.

He understood why.

Understood better than most people who’d only ever met him after he’d left the Aurors would ever think.

That drive to catch a killer, it was one of the most potent highs for men like them, like he used to be, the chase and capture, or in some cases the kill, but he didn’t really see that in any of them.

They weren’t as far gone as he’d gotten before he stepped away.

Before he became the thing he’d always sworn never to be.

Before he became what he hunted.

He’d heard often enough since taking on his business full-time, especially overseeing the clubs, that a lot of people believed the only difference between a cop and a criminal was a badge.

He’d seen enough during his time in the Aurors to know how that belief had come about.

Still, he wouldn’t let himself slip down that well-worn slope like so many LEOs before him.

He didn’t dare.

Harry knew that if he did, he’d become something he’d fought since he was eleven years old.

Tom.

Or maybe something even worse, with the name, money, and power he could bring to bear.

“It’s very ornate.”  Reid said in reply, a bit of an interested furrow to his brows.  “Fifteenth century, most likely a mirror case from the early Venetian artisans who created many of the first mercury-tin amalgam treated pieces of glass that created a perfectly reflective surface, the precursor to the modern silver-coated mirror backs that arose in 1835.”  Reid blinked, snapping out of his ramble with a tap of Morgan’s hand against his arm.  “I’ve never seen anything like it in person before.”

A ghost of a smile kissed Harry’s lips against his will.

Now that was cute.

“My godfather had a taste for the ornate and absurd.”  Harry told him honestly.  Siri was the biggest proponent of spending obscene amounts of money on the most ridiculous things imaginable, especially if it was muggle and guaranteed to have his unlamented family who’d left him the Black fortune rolling in their graves.  “It was originally a gift for Yule when I was fifteen.”

A Yule gift that saved him from a very nasty trap in fact, though that wasn’t a story that mattered at the moment.

The profilers blinked at the usage of Yule rather than Christmas but Hotch as ever could be counted upon to bring the conversation back around to the point of their invasion of their mark’s club.

Which was good as Morgan wasn’t certain he liked the interest on Potter-Black’s face focused so intently on Pretty Boy.

“We can’t prove definitively that our fourteen victims were all members or guests of members of your clubs, Mr. Potter-Black.”  Hotch led with what he knew had caught Potter-Black’s attention – more than Spencer anyway.  “However, credit card receipts do put them as having visited one of your establishments within a week of their murders.  Race, religion, hair color, skin color, background are all different, even gender with two males being included.  What we do know about our victims is what we told your managers to warn your patrons about: young professionals in their 20s-30s; long hair; above average objective attractiveness; and in committed relationships from areas all over the country who were in one of your clubs not long before being killed.”

Harry thoughts that over for a long moment as the profilers watched him – for all the good it did them.

Spencer wasn’t surprised that as a former counterterrorism operative, Potter-Black had excellent control of his facial expressions.

“I notice you didn’t mention eye color.”  Harry pointed out.  “A rather telling exclusion considering the laundry list of things that don’t connect your victims.”

The profilers shared an uncomfortable glance.

Especially since now they’d gotten a look at Potter-Black, they were drawing a conclusion about why their UnSub had picked their two male victims, adding a whole new dynamic to their profile.

“Hazel or green eyes.”  Reid offered finally.  “The two males in particular had a combination of green eyes and dark hair though one was Caucasian and quite pale while the other was Hispanic.”

“Not desi.”  Harry quirked a brow.  “Guess your boy isn’t completely fixated then or his victim pool would be quite a bit narrower.”

“That’s a little premature, don’t you think?”  Derek jumped on that statement with a quickness.  “There are literally thousands of people in the States that fit the victim profile based on the capacity of this one club alone.”

“Perhaps.”  Harry nodded easily enough.  “My ego’s not so fragile that I’ll be disappointed if I’m wrong.  Still.  Other than the committed relationship segment, I rather hit all the right notes and I’m assuming there’s something you want from me more than a peek at my membership list – which you’re not getting short of an actual act of the gods.”

Hotch shared a glance with his teammates then gave Reid a nod.

“We’ve discovered patterns seem to be important to this UnSub, likely a way to gain and maintain control.  One of those patterns leads me to believe that he’ll be selecting his next victim from DC, this club, actually to be specific, if he hasn’t already.”

“Well now.”  Harry pursed his lips, thinking quickly.  “That won’t do at all.  What sort of timeframe?”

“He needs at least a few days to stalk his victims and learn their routines.  With the latest murder taking place in Houston the day before yesterday, he’ll be looking for a new victim most likely tonight or tomorrow with his accelerated timeline if he hasn’t selected one already.”

Harry nodded, then rounded his desk, tapping his two-way mirror and pretending to make a call to Tracey who would be able to magically sort the membership records for what he needed to know.

Call it a hunch.

“Tracey, it’s Harry.”  He greeted as soon as she picked up.  “I’m here with three of the gentlemen from the American FBI.  I need all the information we have on the following people…”  He arched a brow and waited, Reid rattling off the names of the confirmed victims.  “Send everything we have to my secured account.”

Which in this case was a two-way zip pocket in his Ferragamo black and red leather briefcase with enchantments procured from Gringotts linked to either Harry’s account manager at the bank and a secured drawer in Tracey’s depending on which location he selected by pressing a gemstone on the zipper and not a computer email but what the muggles didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anything.

That same briefcase also had a locked section – by both magical signature and a combination wheel –  that could connect straight to Kingsley Shacklebolt at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement which Harry hasn’t used since he retired from the Hit Wizard branch of the Auror office…a precaution Kings had insisted on that might be handy given the current situation.

Most people looked at the expensive black leather body and the bright red handles of the case and dismissed him as just another toff with more money than sense, all unknowing that everyday he carried around the ability to directly contact one of the most powerful LEOs in the world.

Really, it was the little things like that that made the money worth the hassle of managing Potter-Black Consolidated.

“That’ll take a bit.”  Harry told them, scrutinizing them for a long moment then made a suggestion that he half didn’t expect them to take.  “In any case, how would you feel about attempting to…redirect your UnSub onto a new target if he hasn’t found one yet?”

“What do you mean?”  Hotch asked though he had a damn good idea.

“You don’t think it’s a member or else you’d be asking a lot more firmly for my rolls.  You’re thinking…”  He sorted it out.  “Someone rejected.  Grasping desperately for what they can’t have.”  And definitely a muggle or no-maj as there was no way any wizard worth their wand would be so sloppy.  Even Tom’s boys cleaned up better after themselves unless intentionally inspiring terror than this violent wanker.  “That suggests that they know where my clubs are but can’t get access to them themselves, likely watching the entrance and exit to select their victims.  And no offense, but you wouldn’t have been so surprised out on the floor by what I looked like if I was an easily recognizable figure.  Dark hair, handsome, with green eyes isn’t exactly the same as knowing me on sight.”

“You want to set yourself up as bait.”  Derek sighed.  It was ballsy and the exact sort of thing an MI-7 agent would want to do.  Considering the body count on this bad boy Derek couldn’t really blame him.  “Which means you need someone to play your committed significant other.”

“If my instincts are right, not only my committed s.o., but a loving sub.”  Harry told them point-blank.  “I recognized one of the names on your list.  They were a Domme who gave performances and demonstrations with their sub at Black Sins.  Quite instructive actually.”

“That’s why you want to see the membership information.”  Reid realized.  “To confirm through the club what we didn’t see – necessarily – through their lifestyles and family information.”

“A lot of people become shockingly circumspect when it comes to protecting the reputation of the deceased.”  Harry knew that better than anyone considering what a pillock his dad had been before his seventh year of Hogwarts.  “Even to the point of madness.  Someone with an ego problem like your boy seems to have would likely love a relationship with a loving sub.”

“It would feed into the ego, considering the inherent power dynamics of Dom/sub interactions.”  Reid mused.  “Then…”

“He’s not killing who he wants.”  Hotch noted grimly.  “He’s killing who he wants to be.”

…

Reaching into a desk drawer, Harry pulled out one of the phones that Potter-Black Consolidated’s tech branch, Black Integrated Technologies, manufactured (and with help from Remus had been magic-hardened for use in both wizarding and mundane worlds) known rather ironically as the Black Tech “Excalibur” with the OS dubbed “Merlin” because as Mssr. Moony liked to say why not?

The day his remaining dogfather suggests naming a phone model “Magic Wand” Harry was checking him into St. Mungo’s psych ward.

Pulling up a number from his massive directory, Harry made a call while the three profilers started tossing ideas back and forth and the pros-and-cons of letting Harry play bait.

As if it was ever a question of letting when it was his own damn idea.

Though just as importantly, who was going to play Harry’s committed s.o. and loving submissive since that was the key piece missing from Harry being a perfect ringer for the motherfucker using his clubs as a hunting ground.

Harry might consider most of his members worthy of everything from amused tolerance to glacial disdain but they were his nonetheless.

He wouldn’t sit back idle while this bastard hunted in his territory.

It was just as simple – and complex – as that.

The profilers broke off their conversation when Harry spoke, blinking as if waking up from a daze as their furor – and inability to contact their team on the outside which must have the others panicking – shattered at the quiet confirmation of Harry continuing to go his own way and make arrangements around them and without knowing their own preferences and wishes.

More than one scowl was shot his way but that was fine.

Harry knew he was a high-handed bastard at the best of times.

Set a problem like the current situation in front of him and he gets so much worse as his former colleagues in the Hit Wizards knew better than anyone.

“Martina, darling.  Harry Potter-Black,” he stood hip-shot and leaning against the side of his desk in his elegant and modern office that was utterly devoid of personality, more entertained than was becoming given the givens at flustering a trio of trained profilers and agents from the FBI.  “Fabulous, dove, fabulous.  I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a bind.”  He lowered his voice as if confiding in the other party.  “You see, I traveled on a whim to surprise my darling fiancé and I’m afraid he’s quite tied up with work at the moment and would hate to be too much of a distraction.  You wouldn’t happen to have my usual suite available, would you?”

Hotch, Morgan, and Reid all traded exasperated glances at the “darling fiancé” as they were still trying to sort that part out, especially with Morgan not wanting Potter anywhere near their investigation now that they’ve actually met him and the odds of him going rogue shot up off the charts.

“Wonder which one of us is going to be his darling?”  Morgan asked in a whisper designed to carry.  “I don’t know if I can realistically carry off playing a submissive.”

Spencer scoffed, rolling his eyes.

Derek was so not submissive material in any area of his life.  He wasn’t necessarily overly controlling or domineering, but he wasn’t the sort of person to be easy with another making decisions and taking charge.  A trait that used to have him butting heads with Hotch rather consistently until they figured out a balance that worked for them on the job.

Hotch…maybe could carry it off but it wouldn’t be very natural and might come off a bit awkward.

No, Spencer knew as soon as Potter made the jump from s.o. to sub who the likely one to play fiancé was going to be.

Though at least with as extremely attractive as Potter was it wouldn’t be a hardship.

Showing desire for him at least wouldn’t be an act though he’d have to be careful to keep a leash on it and remember that it was a performance for an UnSub not an actual scene or relationship.

“Thank you, dove, I’ll be by later tonight to check in.”  Harry laughed lightly.  “If he can get away I’m sure he’ll want to take advantage of the steam shower in the suite, I’ll introduce you if and when he comes by.  Ta, Martina.”

Harry clicked the cell off before pocketing it.

“Well.”  He smiled, expression more than a little wicked.  “One of the biggest gossips on either side of the pond now knows that Lord Potter-Black has a fiancé and came to town to surprise him.  Who wants to spend a couple days being pampered by an obscenely wealthy man for the tabloids while we bait a psycho?”

“If a D/s dynamic is part of the victimology than I would suggest myself.”  Spencer spoke up after a hard swallow at having those startling – especially against the bronze skin of their owner – emerald green eyes locked on him.  Fuck.  Potter was a Dom all right and an intense one if how he looked at and watched others was any sign.  “Agent Morgan couldn’t reliably portray the role correctly and Agent Hotchner isn’t in the correct headspace for an undercover position at the moment.”

“And you feel you could reliably portray a submissive correctly, Dr. Reid?”  Harry asked, voice just as much purring silk as ever, even when pissed off it just got softer if taking on a hardened edge all the more startling for it.  “It’s more than collars, kneeling, and following orders darling.”  He moved around the edge of the desk, knowing it was coming off as a prowl or a cat-like stalk to the trained observers watching his every move and facial expression, cataloging his every word and flick of his eyes.

Slowly as he came close to the lanky-but-lovely form of the BAU profiler, he reached up clearly telegraphing his intent, and ran the fingers of his left hand through the doctor’s curls.  He mourned a split-second that Dr. Reid’s hair wasn’t longer all around or so short-cropped on the back and sides but shook it off.  He was lovely either way and playing his Dom certainly wouldn’t be a hardship.

Though he had a feeling that if it were for more than a role sweet Spencer would have an edge of challenge to him that could be quite enticing for a Dom like Harry when he chose to play.

Seriously, if it weren’t for the LEO part of the equation, Harry would be giving Blaise a present for bringing three beautiful men into Harry’s orbit instead of having to act completely pissed off with the Slytherin for the next few months until the whole situation eventually blew over.

He ran his hand down the back of sweet Spencer’s neck, grasp gradually firming as he kept his eyes locked on the soft honey gaze of the profiler, noting absently when his hold hit a certain level of control that those pink petal lips parted on a soundless gasp and his pupils dilated at the sensation.  Bringing his palm around to the side of a long elegant neck that would look gorgeous in a collar, the pad of his thumb coming up to rest just under the point of Spencer’s chin on the underside of his jaw.  Without a flicker of warning, Harry tightened his grip and tilted his hand still in place around Spencer’s neck, thumb and fingers so strong that they kept his head in position even as the strength exerted from Harry’s arm in wordless command had Spencer sinking onto his knees all without a word exchanged between them.

The others started, a word of protest easily coming to Morgan as they watched the exchange that was a borderline battle of wills and a test all in one.

Neither honey brown doe eyes or fierce emerald green orbs flickered for so much as a second or turned towards their audience as the smaller man – in height if not anything else – put the larger on his knees.

Spencer found the position easily coming back to him even years later for all that it had been a brief – very brief – dip into the culture of BDSM he’d experienced before with a partner.

His legs spread and knees bent, spine and head straight as his ass hovered just a touch above his heels, hands coming automatically to his back and crossing at the wrist.

Harry arched a brow, impressed at the obvious either research or familiarity that went into the pose.

“Hmm.”  He hummed, pleased, then released his hold on the pretty profiler and stepped back in a release from position as wordless as putting the sub into it had been.

Which was bad on both their parts as it hadn’t been agreed to or negotiated beforehand for all that Harry’d needed to know if Dr. Reid could manage what being a sub for someone as high profile in the scene as Harry was implied.

Putting him into position would be the least of it if the masquerade drew on very long as they worked to tempt the murderer into going after Harry.

“Maybe you do know what you’re in for at that, pet.”

A light blush dusted Spencer’s cheekbones as he ducked the incredulous – Derek – and thoughtful – Hotch – gazes of his teammates and friends.

“A bit of experience but it didn’t suit the dynamic I had with my former partner and a lot of research at the time, Sir.”

“That’s good.”  Harry nodded, still with a considering look in his eyes as he scrutinized Spencer.  “It will definitely make things easier to sell to our all-too-human monster if you know the basic etiquette that’ll be expected.”  His tone turned brisk.  “Normally I’m not interested in D/s outside of play but if it is a factor of the victimology then pretending to live the lifestyle outside of your work will make us a richer and more rewarding target for your UnSub.”

“You’re not serious, are you?”  Derek asked, still clearly thrown off his game by the mini-scene between Reid and Potter…and that Hotch had just watched instead of intervening.  It was Reid.  Pretty Boy.  Just letting someone put hands on him rubbed all of Derek’s instincts wrong and raw.  “You can’t just slap a collar around Reid’s neck, call him your fiancé, and expect the UnSub to just go with it out of the blue.”

“No, of course not.”  Harry agreed easily.  “Not normally.  But I’m not normal, even I know that.  I live a life of extreme privacy that drives the paparazzi in England right up the wall.  It would be completely in character for me to carry out a relationship away from the public eye.  If anything being vocal about coming to the States to visit my fiancé would be the hard to believe part, not that the fiancé existed without others knowing about him.”

Striding quickly back over towards his desk, he pulled out a standard play contract that he stocked in all of his offices – just in case – for if he found a playmate while undergoing a spot-check.

Normally those playmates were for a night or two, a long weekend at most, but since he had a few hard limits himself that would easily be tripped during even routine play he didn’t take the matter of understanding soft and hard limits on his partners – even for one night – for granted.

“Well, Agent Hotchner?”  Harry asked as he located a pen, focusing on the man he’d pegged as the leader of the group.  “Are you willing to use me as bait in exchange for my knowledge of the victim pool and possible access to a list of rejected membership applications from the six months prior to the fist murder?”

“Make it a year.”  Aaron narrowed his eyes on Potter then exchanged a questioning glance with Spencer who gave him one short nod in answer.

Since really it’d be Spencer mostly dealing with the consequences from taking Potter’s help in the end it was up to him.

“Done.”  Harry agreed, having already figured that would be the case.  “I have to go retrieve a few things from my temporary quarters here, including my travel bag.  Spencer,” his voice softened again as he addressed his new – temporary, for-show – submissive.  “I like to be prepared.  This,” he tapped the neatly paperclipped pages now resting on the desk with a pen beside them.  “Is a list of my limits and a standard checklist I use with my play partners.  I would like you to review them both and answer what you can on the checklist.  If there is anything you have questions regarding, we can discuss it after we remove to The Mayflower.”  He arched a knowing brow at the agents.  “Spencer will need to leave with me, I’m assuming that the rest of your team will be able to discreetly make their way to the hotel for an update and briefing.”

Hotch nodded, shortly.  “We’ll need time to arrange it, tomorrow morning might be best.  Spencer, are you comfortable with staying with Potter for the night?”

“Hotch…”  Derek started to protest only to be spoken-over by Spencer.

“Considering that he booked probably the nicest suite in the city, I’m sure there’ll be an empty bed for me.”  Spencer noted drily, giving Derek a quick roll of his eyes and a nose-wrinkle for his protectiveness.  “We’ll manage until everyone can make it there in the morning.”

“Bright and early, before 0800 if at all possible.”  Harry suggested/ordered.  “We need to create a routine that doesn’t deviate too much of a busy businessman and his fiancé taking a bit of time to spend with him.  Dr. Reid isn’t well known outside of law enforcement circles, so…”  He pursed his lips in thought.  “Professor?”

“I guest-lecture at several universities.”  Spencer admitted, nodding.  It was a good cover and fit right in with the image that their UnSub seemed to be drawn towards.  “Garcia can easily make a false cover for me that’s easy to find with a bit of internet searching and bury my real identity for a while.”

“Sounds like a plan.”  Hotch agreed, motioning Derek out of the room with a jerk of his head, turning to go as well.  “Let go celebrate our friend’s engagement on the way to a taxi, Morgan.”

“Yeah Hotch.”  Derek sighed.  He wasn’t happy about leaving Pretty Boy with a random – and dangerous, really fucking dangerous – former agent and confirmed bad-boy but given the situation he knew Reid would kick up one hell of a fuss if he tried to protest again after Spencer made his own opinion more than clear.  “Baby Girl will have you on comms and your phone, Pretty Boy.”  He reminded him – needlessly but it made him feel better at least.  “We’ll keep an eye on you remotely through the night in case our guy goes from crisis to complete spiral and tries something.”

“Thanks, Derek.”  Spencer smiled and nodded to his teammates.  He recognized that they were worried.

He simply didn’t worry for himself in this situation.

It was in that exquisitely controlled, well, control that Potter had used to put him on his knees.

The look in his eyes while he did it.

Spencer wasn’t dismissing everything they’d learned about the man and his reputation, not in the least.

Nonetheless, his instincts were nearly shouting that he was safe with this man – at least as long as he was his sub for however little amount of time that lasted.

Chapter Text

A Thousand Natural Shocks

Chapter Five: Black Sins

“Oh thank the computer gods, my Chocolate Delight.”

Neither Aaron nor Derek were surprised to have a desperate Garcia’s voice ringing in their ears as soon as they left the building and texted her on their suddenly-working-again phones.

They’d waited until they were clear of the building, acting reserved-but-excited for “their friend Spence whose Dom proposed” before texting a quick warning of what Garcia would hopefully be picking up again from their earwigs and mics.

Aaron didn’t know how Potter-Black ran tech in his clubs that shut down electronics other than his own, but he had a feeling more than the FBI would be willing to do terrible things to get their hands on it.

“I lost you all after you went through the doorway and couldn’t pick up anything, even that the units existed on my systems until you came back out.  That club is a total tech black hole.”  Her voice rushed, panicked and hyper over their earwigs.  “Whatever system Potter-Black has in place, it completely shuts everything down.  There wasn’t even a microsecond of coverage from your mics, earpieces, or phones that I could use to locate you let alone use for anything else.  Black Tech is rumored to be the leaders in black-ops hardware and software for MI-6 and MI-7 and after tonight I definitely believe it but I’m still not picking up our Boy Wonder so thinking we’re missing something that happened while you were inside Bossman.”

Aaron shot a team-wide text using his FBI issued encrypted cell updating them as the taxi pulled up that Spencer would be spending the night undercover.  The message should be protected in case the UnSub had a way to divert or pick up communications sent in the areas around the clubs, answering Garcia’s question that wasn’t actually a question.

“And we trust Potter-Black with Spencer overnight?”  Dave spoke up from where he was with the rest of the team at the roundtable room with Garcia monitoring them from her tech cave…or trying to anyway.  

Which became monitoring the activity surrounding the club Aaron supposed since there wouldn’t have been anything off of them to monitor with the blackout electronic conditions inside the club.

“Spence was just as surprised as we were that Blaise helped Harry set this up for them.”  Derek stayed in character even as their taxi pulled away from the curb outside the club.  “Funny how things work with my cousin being old friends with Spence’s fiancé.”

And that was enough for silence to carry over on the other side of the comms, the rest of the team quickly putting the pieces together.

“Aww.”  Garcia felt for Boy Wonder.  “Why is it always Spencer who ends up playing bait?”

“Well, he’s just so pretty.”  Derek snarked, still not happy with the situation.  “Though Potter-Black isn’t anything to sneer at either.  Their engagement photos are going to be striking.”

Needless to say, none of them wanted Spencer’s stint undercover to go that far because if it did it meant that they’d failed to catch their UnSub for longer than any of them wanted to contemplate.

“Get some sleep.”  Hotch told Derek and therefore the rest of the team as the taxi pulled up to the parking garage that they’d left their vehicles before arriving at the club together.  “We have an early breakfast with the happy couple at 0600 to get everyone on the same page with the investigation and utilizing Potter-Black’s resources and information.”

…

There was a tense, nearly expectant silence that fell between Harry and his guest – and temporary sub for all intents and purposes – as the older agents strode out of the office and back into the club-proper with a guide in the form of one of the lovely servers that staffed Black Temptations DC.

“Your UnSub from what little I’ve found out about this situation moves fast so we shouldn’t have to keep up the charade for too long.  But,” Harry tapped the limits lists again.  “Just in case I’m afraid I must insist, especially as a few of my triggers are particularly infamous among my workers and regular guests.  While you take care of this, Dr. Reid, I’ll collect a few things we’ll need for veracity from my rooms as well as my travel bag.”  He arched a teasing brow.  “I trust I can trust you not to go looking around the private areas of the club you can access from my office and to stay here?”

To most it might seem a needless question given the mini-scene they’d just played out but that Potter-Black asked anyway said to Spencer – along with the reversion to formality – that the former operative wasn’t the sort to take things for granted, much like his small test of Spencer’s ability to submit earlier.

“No, I mean,” Spencer babbled a bit over his words as he often did when his brain was outpacing his motor control.  “Yes.”  He took a breath as green eyes switched from caution to amusement in a split second.  “Yes, I’ll stay here and won’t snoop.”

And despite all temptation to do just that, Spencer kept his word, eyes flicking rapidly over the truncated list of acts both sexual and not that were if not common at least not overly obscure in the BDSM community with the corresponding five-point checklist that ranged from “Very Interested/Enthusiastic to Hard Limit – No.”

Which was a bit more comprehensive for responses than other simple templates of its kind Spencer had seen before both personally and while undergoing research in both sexual and non-sexual BDSM dynamics when his short-lived partner had initially sparked his interest in the lifestyle.  Unfortunately, just not to the extent that Ethan would’ve wished for in a submissive.  Spencer, while enjoying play and even could see himself living as someone’s submissive full-time, could never be a pet 24/7 who lived for nothing more than their Master or Dominant.

He’d go gibbering crazy from lack of mental stimulation in less than a week with that sort of arrangement though he could also see where the lack of stress and decisions and pressures that came with living as a pet fully trusting in a dominant could be appealing.

As their explorations in BDSM had grown along with their relationship, he eventually saw when Ethan’s desire for total control of Spencer began.  But, thankfully, they’d both recognized that neither of them were what the other needed and/or wanted and salvaged a friendship from what could’ve been a disastrous breakup.  Not long after which found Ethan being mentored by an older Domme from their club and Spencer going off to the FBI Academy.

Potter-Black didn’t strike Spencer as a full-time full-control dominant like Ethan matured into being once his former lover had grown comfortable with himself and his desires, but he could easily see Potter-Black as the sort of quietly assured and confident Dom that walked into a scene room or club and had the subs on point and watchful from his presence alone.

Some dominants Spencer had observed were loud and brash and beat their chests a bit or got aggressive with each other.

That sort of theatrics Spencer rather thought Potter-Black would see as uncouth and callow.

He didn’t have to preen or strut or posture for power.

Harry Potter-Black was power…and it was one of the sexiest things Spencer had ever seen or experienced in his life having those eyes locked on him and his hand both unbreakably firm and unspeakably gentle all at once around Spencer’s neck.

He also, Spencer was quick to note, had a handful of hard-limits that weren’t entirely unexpected from a former agent and a couple that were – and made Spencer completely understand why the former operative had felt the need to acquaint Spencer with them before showing him off even if briefly as his fiancé and sub.

Given that “Master” was one of the more prevalent ways for a submissive to address a Dominant, Spencer wouldn’t be surprised if it being an immediate halt and scene-breaker for Potter-Black was a commonly known trigger around those who knew Potter-Black even if as only a Dom and not the infamous owner of Potter-Black Consolidated.

He also had hard-limits of being addressed as Lord or My Lord or Milord and any and all variations thereof – interesting – receiving pain-play, any and all watersports and things to do with emesis and excrement, all knife-play, and total sensory deprivation.

It read like a checklist of hard-limits - in Spencer’s educated opinion - that married up almost exactly to some of the things they’d been able to profile about Potter-Black from the scant information Garcia had dug up or Mister Zabini had supplied.

The only limit on the list that was a bit odd for the man they’d profiled was his having Hard Limits on both Voyeurism and Exhibitionism.  Though given how seriously Potter-Black took the privacy of his club members, maybe not such a surprise after all.  The policy was in place prior to Potter-Black taking over the clubs from the Black family as part of his inheritance, but from everything Garcia said or Zabini implied he took it to an extreme that was impressive even for the type of establishments he ran.

Given that there were no instances of invasion of privacy that Garcia was able to find, little to no press coverage despite him being both wealthy and nobility, it didn’t quite add up.

Unless, as was often the case, there was something about Potter-Black’s history that they hadn’t seen yet.

People being desirous of privacy wasn’t odd in and of itself, but for it to be such a severe issue that it made a hard limit in basically every facet of Potter-Black’s life, Spencer couldn’t help but think that there was an underlying issue, a piece of the puzzle that he and his team weren’t seeing.

Though given the scant information they’d managed to gather surrounding Potter-Black in the first place, that there was a missing piece - or likely more than one - to their profile of him wasn’t a surprise.

Potter-Black was only out of the room for a matter of minutes, returning with a trio of jewelry boxes in his left hand and a small suitcase in his right.

The man gave him an approving look when he found Spencer had kept to his word and stayed in place - likely monitoring him through the club’s security system - setting down his suitcase next to the impersonal desk and the jewelry boxes on the desk.

“Your fashion statement is actually a bit of a boon.”  Harry commented as he flipped open the largest of the three boxes then turned it to face Reid who came to stand next to him at a look.  Inside wasn’t just a collar - as would be expected from a monogamous D/s pair who were at the point of being engaged - it was a statement. Made of diamonds, the collar was set in what Spencer would be willing to wager quite a bit was platinum.  Honestly, if it weren’t for the padlock closure - likely also made of platinum and connecting the two ends - Spencer would’ve taken it for an expensive necklace that would be perfectly in place at any high society event.  A double-row of one carat diamonds made up the bulk of the collar with the pure white-silver shine of the metal hidden except in the rear padlock.  “Since it would’ve hidden this.”

Spencer found himself speechless, especially since while Potter-Black having a collar of that kind of value and specificity on hand also didn’t quite match the profile of a lone-wolf player that Zabini had sketched out for them.

If anything it was directly contrary to it, leading Spencer to believe that the more they’ll learn about Potter-Black the less they’ll actually know about him.

Having that sort of collar on hand - even for someone as wealthy as Potter-Black - meant that he either had once had a submissive he was considering collaring or that he wanted one and was considering settling down.

Spencer didn’t say a word, knowing better than to try and argue with someone like Potter-Black over that sort of thing - though he would have if this was actually his Dom and not just someone he was going to play out a deception with for the sake of an Unsub - merely loosening his scarf and undoing the top buttons on his shirt.  Potter-Black handed over the collar, as taking the step of collaring him himself would’ve implied things about their relationship that weren’t factual.  A step that neither of them were prepared to take in private when their roles were only for the benefit of the public.

It felt hollow, putting a collar around his neck for part of an undercover operation, but it was necessary, as was sliding the ring taken from one of the other boxes onto the fourth finger of his left hand.

The ring was old gold, softened from age and wear, with styling and workmanship that spoke to it being a genuine antique.  Rather than being set with a faceted gemstone - a trend that didn’t start until the fifteenth century - a dime-sized cabochon garnet was on the face of the ring, while the left and right flanks had images that had been almost worn away from wear.  On the left was a triangle inset with a circle and a bisecting line, on the right a tree - an oak if he had to guess based on common English iconography - growing from a pot.

“The Potter family ring.”  Harry explained to his new - if fabricated and temporary - fiance, then showed him the one in his hand as he slid it into place.  “The Blacks are the older family so it’s expected that when I wear only one of the rings that it’s theirs.”

His new fiance’s ring of choice was silver - being far too old at a glance for it to be worked out of anything else - with an ornate “B” on the face and matched hounds on the right and left of the ring’s sides.

“And you just happened to have these lying around?”  Spencer couldn’t help but ask as the dichotomy was stark against the profile the BAU had put together on Potter-Black.

For his part, Harry just gave a quirk of his mouth that was too dark to be anything like a smile, then settled the long platinum chain with a small key set with tiny sparkling diamonds that matched Spencer’s - temporary, temporary - collar’s lock around his own neck.

It was and wasn’t an answer all at the same time.

“Normally I would stay in my suite here at the club,” Harry carried on moving towards their joint objective.  “But such would rather defeat the purpose.  Fortunately,” this time, he actually smiled as he picked up the papers still sitting on the desk and tucked them away into his suitcase.  “I keep a car ready for when I’m in town, saving us the awkward scene of waiting on a cab.”

Especially as doing so would be distinctly out of character in ways that even a hidden fiance couldn’t match.

He spread out his free arm, leaving it up to Spencer just how close he was willing to get in the role of Harry’s sub - at least for the moment - as he tilted his head towards the door.

“Shall we, darling?”

Feeling the mindset of the role settle around his shoulders like a jacket that fit a bit too well for his peace of mind, Spencer stepped into Potter-Black’s space, tucking himself into the smaller (at least in height) man’s side.

Wrapping his own arm behind the strong back of the former agent, Spencer blinked as he silently cataloged the hidden strength concealed by what had to be an excellent tailor as Harry coiled his free arm around Spencer’s trim waist.

Nothing short of tailoring magic could hide the thick muscling of Potter-Black’s back he felt move under his arm, or the steel-cable strength of that arm.

A strength that Spencer had already felt in another way, when the other man, ah, tested Spencer’s suitability to play his submissive.

“We shall.”  Spencer quirked a smile of his own, and then Potter-Black led the way out of his private domain and into the public areas of the club.

…

It was the shock of the year: none other than the Harry Potter-Black leaving one of his infamous clubs with a submissive on his arm wearing both a collar and an engagement ring.

The wandering bachelor and notorious recluse (outside of his clubs anyway) but one of the most sought-after men on two continents had decided to settle down.

Even if not one of the witnesses to the juiciest piece of gossip to hit Black Temptations: Washington DC could say a fucking word about it outside of the club walls.

More than one gossip-monger and/or socialite stewed in stifled frustration.

For one particular witness to the scene of Dr. Spencer Reid and Lord Harry Potter-Black leaving the latter’s club, the emotions roused were far closer to enraged envy than any sort of shock or well-wishing.

Which, little did they know, was precisely the point.

…