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DEAD BOY DETECTIVES / PROLOGUE
whimsywitchess

HUMANITY HAS YET TO MASTER acceptance.

  Why, to be human is to be cloaked in a constant state of denial! Take it from a ghost — the human mind will waste a lifetime dreading death, only to settle into the throes of the afterlife with an unfamiliar calm that most mortals still believe to be incomprehensible.

  In fact, fear becomes a dear friend by the time your burdens have lightened with the sweeping chill of death, leaving behind all those mortal anxieties in pursuit of paradise. . . or, something along those lines. Besides, when your worries over something as trivial as life threatening injuries begin to get the better of you, your final breaths have already succumbed to the glacial kiss of quietus and you're staring down the obsidian eyes of Death himself before you know it! ( In most cases, anyhow. . . )

Don't worry about that just yet. The point of all this rambling is, quite simply, that Harvey Hemlock fears himself to be a prime example of this theory that he's concocted.

In life he had been school boy afraid of his own shadow, hiding a record breaking number of phobias up his sleeve like fairly disappointing card tricks. He was a weak dormouse of a boy and death has yet to change that about him, though he has noticed how his fears seemed to shine through more clearly when he lacked all the, er, spectral qualities.

  The other boys in his year had teased him relentlessly for his fragility; he was tormented by the Ravenclaw boys in the supposed solace of the common room and dormitories, who in turn left it up to the Slytherins and Gryffindors to provoke him during class. On the other hand, the Hufflepuffs had the decency to prod at his weakness behind closed doors, which is arguably worse.

It's human nature to detest anything different, but Harvey never understood quite what he'd done to deserve all that torment. He remembers how every day was envenomed by diatribes across the breakfast table and unnecessary comments on his blood status, his cereal occasionally transfigured into something vile if they were feeling particularly mean that morning. The pestering was relentless — balled up parchment pelted against the back of his head, chewing gum tangled in his hair, cruel nicknames tossed here and there that he's not going to repeat for the sake of his own sanity. . .

  If it were still possible for him to be swayed by adrenaline or reflex actions, the sour memories of his school days would send shivers down his spine.

Now, Harvey doesn't exactly like to dwell on the. . . altercation that had a domino effect toward his demise, though he's more than happy to disclose that he was so relieved when it was over and done with. By now, every student at Hogwarts knows better than to pester him for an explanation — it's not like he can remember all that much of it, anyways! His head was hardly attached to his shoulders for the duration of his death, and that is a traumatising experience in of itself. School children can be so nosy, sometimes. . .

   He digresses. In the unsavoury final moments he had spent on the mortal plane, the metallic taste of his own blood washing through his mouth, he had thought two things and two things only.

  One: Ouch!

  Two: He was dying, and fast.

And, no, Harvey hadn't seen a fleeting photo reel of his dearest moments in life — he was only sixteen going on seventeen, what could he really have to marvel at in his final moments?

  Harvey simply breathed his final breaths, his limbs feeling suddenly lighter as his thoughts grew syrupy like molasses. The loamy ground beneath his untied laces grew faraway, the world sounding as if he were kilometres beneath the surface of the Black Lake, the nipping pain around his clavicles ebbing to a dull ache. He felt liberated from all his problems, all the bullies and nastiness; he felt true freedom at last.

   Not for very long, though. He woke up as if submerged in an ice bath, gasping for air as his tendons stiffened in the cold. His entire body felt as if it were ensnared with the numbness of pins and needles, his feet unable to touch the ground without sinking straight through.

   Harvey didn't understand why he came back as a ghost on day one, and he still doesn't understand hundreds of days after. It doesn't help that concrete answers or even simple explanations seem to be a thing of the past these days — contrary to popular belief, the afterlife is a massive plethora of unanswerable questions.

So, instead of searching for the meaning of life, he had busied himself by haunting the back of classrooms and floating around in the eaves of the library, answering questions where he couldn't contain himself and correcting homework over student's shoulders. ( It sure is lucky that the curriculum hasn't changed in over a century. ) More importantly, he warded off bullies and offered his condolences to the victims as well as he could. He is a schoolboy turned spectre, after all. He's been in their shoes before.

But in the year of 1976, with tragedies sparking in places high and low, Harvey decides that a change is in order. He's been happily haunting for a century too long and it's high time that he pursues the explanations that he deprived himself of as a fresh faced, fledgling ghost! He's ready to shed his fears and evolve from the chrysalis as a brand new phantom, ready to take on the world and whatever it may throw at him.

And it just so happens that the first step toward success is to solve the murder of a young ghost by the name of Jett Turner. Has he hit the jackpot, or what?

Now, he knows how ludicrous that may sound, but cut him some slack! Harvey doesn't know what his unfinished business is supposed to be since he didn't exactly have a whole lot going on when he was alive, so he's been grabbing at straws to come up with a solution for a few months now. With this promising murder case presented before him, Harvey has made it his goal to resolve this hiccup in his afterlife by Samhain Eve at the very latest. Don't put the chairs on the table and lock up the Doors of Death just yet, Thanatos, for Harvey Hemlock is well on his way!

   Merlin's beard, he needs to stop muddling the details. It's frightfully hard when you don't have a functioning brain. . . Where was he again? Ah, yes — in life, this Jett Turner was friends with a boisterous group of gentlemen that Harvey really didn't care for, strutting around the school like a peacock, playing tricks on people that Harvey found cruel and far too familiar. The boy was killed by a mystery misfit with his back turned and, still in the early phases of his afterlife, laments about the tragedy of it to anyone who'll extend an ear. ( He's in that phase of haunting. Fret not, soon comes that sweet acceptance! )

   Whilst Jett Turner feels like a prickly thorn in his translucent side, Harvey supposes that if he's to resolve his unfinished business and free himself to whatever lies beyond, he needs to try everything he can — even if it means playing Sherlock Holmes for a little while.

    Merlin, he really has to get new hobbies. Perhaps he should add that to the list. . .

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HARVEY HEMLOCK
— George Rexstrew —

( The Self-Proclaimed Expert )

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JETT TURNER
— Jayden Revri —

( The Newest Recruit )

ARWEN SONNET
— Kassius Nelson —

( Clairvoyant, Of Course ! )

MISORA NAKANO
— Yuyu Kitamura —

( The Token Mortal )

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JANUS RUSLAN
— Lukas Gage —

( Harvey's Least Favourite Animagus )

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LEONA MERCY
— Olivia Cooke —

( The Burned Witch )

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TORESTEIN VALDEMAR
— Calahan Skogman —

( The Valhallan Wannabe )

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ENOCH SAMSON & CASSIUS SPENCER
Rami Malek, Fionn Whitehead

( The Hogsmeade Heroes )

DORIAN AVERY
Tom Sturridge

( The Living Breathing Auror ! )

JASPER LIONHEART
Boyd Holbrook

( And His Colleague. . . )

JAMES POTTER . . . Reiky De Valk
SIRIUS BLACK . . . Luka Sabbat
REMUS LUPIN . . . Matt Hitt
PETER PETTIGREW . . . Cooper Hoffman
MARLENE MCKINNON . . . Sophie Thatcher
MARY MACDONALD . . . Yasmin Finney
REGULUS BLACK . . . Justice Smith
HELENA RAVENCLAW . . . Mariya Andreeva
THE BLOODY BARON . . . Matteo Martari
THE FAT FRIAR . . . Jim Howick
NEARLY HEADLESS NICK . . . As Described

NOTES

all rights are reserved to j.k rowling. I do not own the harry potter series or anything that she's written. I only own my original characters and plotlines.

I don't agree with the things that j.k rowling has said. This is a safe space and any hateful comments will be deleted

AUTHOR'S NOTE

me 🤝 writing supernatural ocs

i've been cooking this up since dead boy detectives came out and it's been rotting in my drafts since, but i've decided with mabon just past and spooky season on the rise, i needed to publish it ‼️‼️

this fic is 100% taking inspo from bbc ghosts, dead boy detectives and maybe even a weeny bit of the sandman because i love that show with all my heart

ANYWAY, happy early halloween ! ! ! we'll see how far this fic goes lmao

DEDICATIONS

this fic is dedicated to the lovely -HEARTS4LORELAI sectxmsemmpra superpink24 -gutspilled ColinRitman_ siIverveils BookObsessedMidnight greenharts cxinnamon-sundrop KleeAlise11 -lady5tardust XTaliaBX florenceplustm -coquettish
and anyone else that reads this!! i couldn't do this without you all tysm for being so supportive 🫶🏻