Harry Potter - Hellion!

 

The group of Mages made it to four Privet Drive without much issue, being totally oblivious to the mounting storm. They walked through the police ribbons marking the property without even bothering to read what was written on it. For them, ‘POLICE’ repeated all over the length of said red tape had no meaning. The first thing Dumbledore noticed was that the wards were effectively down, and he rushed forward, literally breaking in the front door with a well-placed and definitely over-powered reducto curse that reduced the entrance hall to dust, thus not helping them in their own search for clues.

The teachers made their way inside behind him, all the while hearing several dozen loud pops announcing the arrival of the members of the Order of the Phoenix and a plethora of aurors from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLA). All ignored the numerous police cars and officers that had responded to a general call for intervention from Police Central. Several hundred officers were now around or in the immediate vicinity of the target. The constant appearance, out of nowhere, of strangely vested people drove glaring holes in the Wizardry Secrecy Act, as the police, citizens, and newspapers, including TV cameras, transmitted everything live!

The Minister for Magic, Millicent Bagnold, accompanied by his half-dozen personal guards, made an apparition on the site, along with the head of the DMLA, Bartemius ‘Barty’ Crouch Senior. The Minister and Crouch made their way quickly through the thong of witches and wizards, entering the house right behind the members of the Order of the Phoenix.

"Dumbledore!" yelled the Minister, red in the face, "What is the meaning of this? Just about every member of the auror office responded to your call! It is as if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back!"

"He might as well be, Minister. The wards protecting Harry Potter are down and we can not find a trace of him in here! It is as if he never lived here, and yet, I personally delivered him to these doorsteps late last night!"

"Harry Potter? The Harry Potter? The one we are currently celebrating the victory over the Dark Lord?"

"Yes, unless you know of another one that warrants my personal involvement in his protection, Minister."

"What are you doing to find him?"

"All we can. We just got here a few minutes ago. Alistor, what do you see?"

"A very small amount of magic, Albus. I can not ascertain if it is from Harry, as I have never met him personally before. There is a brownish patch on the wall that has traces of magic, and a higher concentration on the floor, within the covering muggles call wall-to-wall carpets. I wonder what they use them for, since these things can not fly. These traces are so weak I can not even verify if they are from a wizard, as a squib could make as much. Strangely, the highest concentration is in the fireplace, but it has been degraded by fire. And the fireplace is not linked to the floo network, has never been from what I can see."

"Was there a battle?"

"No, Albus. As I said, there is no significant magic around. The biggest signature is your own, and is linked to the trace of a ward, which concurs with your explanations as to where Mr. Potter was supposed to be safe. Evidently, Albus, he was not."

"There you have it, Minister, you know as much as I do."

"Let us retire to the Ministry to discuss what to do. Nothing seems to be gained from staying around," Crouch suggested. They moved out to the front lawn to find themselves faced with hundreds of muggles wearing similar dresses and long sticks.

"I thought muggles did not have wands?" Bagnold commented.

"This is the police! All of you are to lay down and not move or we will open fire. Any attempt at making a run for it will also produce the same result! Lay down, or else!"

"Fire? They have mastered fiend-fire?" said a shocked Minister. "All of them?"

"I do not know! I have not talked to muggles, ever. The only ones that know of them are the obliviators, and that is part of the Department of Mysteries. You know how secretive these fuckers are!"

"I said get down and I mean business! You have a second to hit the ground!"

"And what is the police?" asked the Minister, still ignoring the warning.

"The muggle aurors, I think."

"You think?"

"I am as clueless as you are. Do not forget I too am a pureblood. But they outnumber us one hundred to one. We might be able to use magic to escape but some of us, quite a few in fact, will not make it. We cannot apparate simultaneously, and the first to do so will trigger their response, Minister."

"What do we do?"

"We obey, you fool. You want us at the mercy of death-eaters because we have no more aurors?"

As the Minister pondered the question, a huge explosion was heard from the muggle side, and the magical users smelled something reminiscent of fiend-fire while seeing flashes of light that reminded them of the color associated with the spell for fiend-fire. They dropped to the ground, in shock.

"Crouch! They have better control over fiend-fire than we do! How come we never saw that coming? We can not do these short fiend-fire bursts. It takes all we have to maintain that shit under control and not burn us with the target! It smells like fiend-fire too! What have we gotten ourselves into?"

"A lot of trouble, it seems," replied Crouch.

Shortly, police officers made their way through the scared magical, putting in steel bracelets. The mages were too shocked to even try and resist, and were quickly brought to the crab basket, tied to the rail bar and carted away for interrogation at Scotland Yard.

---

Meanwhile, the shark made its way down the Whey. It was seen grabbing fish, and killing a huge sturgeon, then jump out of the water to catch a duck in mid-flight. Later on, it ate a labrador that had the misfortune of taking a swim nearby, much to the chagrin of its distraught owner. Stories spread about a huge predator that did not hesitate to hunt the shallows, taking in anything that ventured in the water. Beaches were closed, boats left alone, and people began reporting more sightings. A camera recorded the shark taking down a deer that had bent over to take a drink. That made the run of the televisual media the world over. A dinghy that had been blown into the river was savagely ripped to shreds in front of a crowd of campers.

As it made its way toward the Thames River, people got scared and began asking more and more questions. Some claimed the shark tried to take them off a walking bridge, forcing its closure. By the time it reached a narrow in the river, the panic was at its peak, and the Prime Minister had to call an emergency meeting of the Parliament, to try and defuse the explosive situation that threatened its existence. Margaret Thatcher stood in parliament to deliver a resounding rebuff to the accusations of the opposition that she had promoted research into recreating a monster.

"I can assure the leader of the Opposition that our government has not, in any way, been involved in creating a monstrous shark. There are no facilities of research of that type anywhere in the country, much less on a rather calm river such as the Whey, where the alleged shark was first spotted."

"Sure, tell us that after seeing Dolly the sheep on television, Honorable Prime Minister. Do you take us for a bunch of idiots?"

"There is a huge difference between injecting a collection of chromosomes in a nucleus empty of all genetic material and manipulating the genome of a shark to recreate an extinct species." And you are an idiot, whether I say it or not, she thought.

"But doing that kind of research costs billions. No one can do it on his own, without government subsidies!"

"Dolly was made by a private group of researchers subsidized by the sheep industry. Who says someone was not stupid enough to work on the project in his basement pool? After all, the government can not, and does not have the right, to search each and every house in the country in order to unearth unethical research. If such a person did it, he had the money not only to do the research, but to prevent us from finding out about it. Are you willing to institute a dictatorship to alleviate the peoples’ fear? Would you open your mansion for inspection, Mr. Leader of the Opposition? Your grounds? All your properties?"

The Opposition leader looked flustered. He decided to take a different tack.

"What about the arrests made in Surrey this morning? According to the reporters, it showed people appearing out of thin air! It got on the news a few minutes before this session was called up."

Thatcher began sweating profusely. What had these idiots done that brought their existence in the light, damn it! And what to say? She can not acknowledge magic in Parliament! Play ignorance of the events, she thought, and ask for an emergency meeting with the Queen. After all, it was her ancestor that signed that treaty and enacted the Wizardry Secrecy Act. Let her deal with it.

"I have not heard of this. Would the Honorable Leader of the Opposition allow me to investigate the validity of these claims? After all, someone managed to make the government believe we were invaded by extra-terrestrial life-forms some years back," she said, referring to the ridiculous reaction of the Opposition party, then in power, to a simple radio play! The barb did not go unnoticed by the Opposition leader.

"Just open the television in your office, Prime Minister. It is all over the place! If it were not that the public is taking it with a grain of salt, well, except for some eccentrics, you would have a major event on your hands, equivalent to the Norman Invasion!"

"Nonetheless, I still must investigate these so-called facts. We all know how easy it is to create illusions with modern technology. If I gather your point, we might as well expect a landing of the Psychlos, of L. Ron Hubbard fame!"

"It is more treacherous than that, Madam Prime Minister, and you know it. At least the Psychlos did not even look human, whereas those shown on television look perfectly normal... for the late fifteenth century that is!"

---

While the debate raged on in Parliament, and in view of the world, another debate was being held in the slammer between the Mages.

"Bagnold! We must escape and mount an offensive!" thundered a very enraged auror by the name of Rufus Scrimgeour.

"Escape? How? We no longer have our wands!"

"We can always apparate!"

"Sure! Try it with these steel bracelets tying you to the walls. We can not even rotate to create the vortex, you fool!"

"Can anyone use the Imperio without a wand in this crowd?"

The request by Amelia Bones was met with silence, as they looked at the Minister, Bagnold, and the Chief Warlock, Dumbledore, inquisitively.

"We can not use these curses without the assent of the Wizengamot!" thundered Dumbledore.

"And how do you plan to get that assent, you bumbling fool? We are stuck here! And I wonder what the muggles are waiting for? Historically, they interrogated us using rather unpleasant methods before converting us to living torches! There are what? One hundred and fifty of us in all held here? We must escape! By any means necessary! And the hell with the Ministry’s laws concerning the Unforgivables!"

Dumbledore and Bagnold exchanged glances and after a nod from the Minister, Dumbledore nodded to Crouch Senior. "We are allowed to use the Unforgivables against the muggles until this situation is resolved. Who has the most powerful Imperius?"

Silence met that question.

"Come on! We need an answer!"

"Given the history of the Ministry, which gives permission, only to later blame and imprison in Azkaban, your are unlikely to get an answer from anyone!" said Molly Weasley, from the far end of the jail tank. "Your words are as trustworthy as air! Who would admit practicing these curses and gaining their mastery to the point of being able to perform them without a wand and silently? That might as well brand them death-eaters with the dark mark on their forehead rather than on the inside of their left forearm!"

"Molly!"

"Oh, shut up, Shacklebolt! You know how true my words are. The Ministry has been double-faced in that war, and is probably infiltrated from the root to the top by death-eaters! You throw innocents and guilty in Azkaban without the benefit of a true trial, and you know it!"

"What would you do, you bitch?" thundered Crouch Senior, sweating like a pig on a roasting grill. "I have my own son in there!"

"We have veritaserum, and what do we do? It takes the permission of two-third of the Wizengamot to administer it for interrogation. Talk about doing things with both hands binded! And no one, not a single one, of the prosecutors asked the most fundamental question of all!"

"And what would be that question, Molly?" said Dumbledore.

"Were you forced to take the dark mark under the Imperius curse? Or, can the dark mark be imposed by force? And a subsidiary to that question is: What did you do to earn said mark?"

"Molly, that is a violation of an individual’s right to protect himself from self-incrimination!"

"To hell with rights given to criminals that torture children, Scrimgeour! The way things were going, Voldemort was winning! His thugs have decimated pureblood families left and right! And he may well have won, since the only mage with enough power to kill him has disappeared, probably dead, all this because you, Dumbledore, tried to ‘protect’ him within the muggles! Talk about ‘protection’! You sound like that organization that sells protection to store owners in the muggle world, what is the name?" she concluded, turning to Arthur.

"The Camorra, or more widely known, as the Mafia."

"So, you bunch of larvae, what do we do? Ronald needs to be changed and fed by now and I doubt Charley will think of it! He almost pukes every time I do it, and let us forget Bill: that bookworm would probably die of starvation if I did not shower him with water at meal time! I just hope Percy keeps an eye on the twins or the Burrow will really carry its name!"

Behind walls, very thick walls, a group of police officers monitored the exchange between the witches and wizards, recording everything on video tape.

"I wonder what these curses are and what they do," said one fresh recruit. "I am getting scared."

"Oh, do not be. Tied up the way they are, they will not be going anywhere."

"I was wondering why you insisted they be shackled that way, Captain."

"The way things are going, the Wizardry Secrecy Act is dead and buried, so might as well completely bring that world to light."

"What do you mean? I never heard of that Act."

"Even the Act itself is secret. Only the Prime Minister, the lords governing MI5 and MI6, and naturally the reigning Monarch, know about it."

"So how come you do? You are none of these."

"My family is magical, Sergeant. I was thrown out on the street at age eight because I am what is called a squib in that backward society. I was bound by that Act, until today. The wizards rocked and capsized their own boat, let them swim in shark-infested waters."

"A squib?"

"Someone that, albeit of magical origin, shows no sign of magic. I had no spontaneous magical accidents while I was within the family."

"They are disgusting! Throwing their kids out because they do not have something!"

"Oh, do not climb on your high horses, there. The reverse is also true: One girl my brother fancied was a magical child thrown out by her muggle family, who got scared because she could move things around without touching them. That is called levitation, by the way. I do not know what happened, as my parents were a bit fanatical with lineage, and my brother really liked that girl. For all I know, he married her but got disinherited for it."

"Stupid, backward society!"

"No more stupid or backward than yours, Sergeant. You have a girl, right? What would be your reaction if she came home one day with a black boyfriend, or, God forbid, a girlfriend? Or fancied a magical being and showed up with said being?"

"Why do I have the feeling that you are not telling me everything? The word ‘being’ sends shivers down my spine!"

"My brother went to their Magical school, and showed me a book of magical beings. Some are ugly as sin, but others... Elves, especially, fascinated me. There are Fairies, House Elves, and what not. Some are more humanoid than others. Our closest, but also rarest counterpart are Elves."

After watching the mages debate further as to what to do, the Captain made his decision.

"Thomas, Frank, Robert, and William, you four are to go to the tank and retrieve that old guy with that long beard. Shackle him tighter than a hog. The best way, I think, is to run a rod along his back, manacle him at both ends, and bring him to the interrogation room. That guy’s name rings a bell. My brother said something about a double-door, or Dumbledore, and given his ego, he should be easily manipulated by our interrogation team. The higher they climb, the harder they fall. We will monitor your behavior closely to spot any influence from a curse. By the way, ear muffs are mandatory. I know it is hot in there, but my brother said that they could control people by command. I figure if you can not hear them, they can not control you."

---

The Prime Minister left Parliament in a huff. She picked up Lord Chelsea, MI5, Lord Dunesworth, MI6, and Lord Strand, Scotland Yard, on her way out.

"So, report! I have a meeting with Her Majesty in fifteen minutes so be brief."

"We have one hundred and fifty in the tank. Interrogation is beginning," replied the High Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

"One of our guys came through: he said that this school picked up kids at eleven until they graduated at seventeen or eighteen, so we have a search being done through archives about kids suddenly vanishing at or near eleven years of age. So far, there are quite a few."

"Be more explicit!"

"Each year, about three hundred kids that age disappear to reappear later, totally inapt to function in our society, and they all seem to be suffering from amnesia. It is a costly endeavor to retrain them to function in our society."

"What kind of training do they get?"

"Military, espionage, the likes. They seem particularly good at the later."

"Why is that?"

"For some reason, they seem to be able to get in and out of tight spots without issue."

"Kind of the way the guys we captured got into a tight spot, appearing and disappearing out of thin air?"

"Yes, Lord Strand. Exactly like that."

"Luckily I decided to have all of them stripped on capture, then. It seems to have worked. On last report, they are all in the fish tank. Nude."

The limousine turned into the back alley leading to a side door to Buckingham Palace, the driver almost being blinded by the number of camera flashes.

"You come with me. I hope to keep this meeting short, and you are my best sources of information. While we wait on the Queen, refresh yourself on the Wizardry Secrecy Act. I may have questions later."

"My Saxon is a bit rusty."

"Refresh!" replied the Prime Minister.

"And you might consider refreshing your Gaelic rather than your Saxon, Lord Chelsea. That text was written in Old Gaelic, around 1000 AD, in the language of those with the power, the mages. The language of the Round Table, the language of King Arthur, the language of Camelot."

"How do you know, Dunesworth?"

"I have been interested, as a pastime, in the evolution of languages across the British Isles. At some time, Gaelic was the dominant language of Scotland, and that text was signed by every Scottish Monarch until Mary Stuart, who refused. The Mages backed out of their support for the Monarchy, leading to her fall in the hands of Elizabeth First, and to the witch-hunts that marred Elizabeth the First’s reign. The mages hid, and waited until she died to force the then reigning Monarch to sign the treaty, under pressure of bringing help to the Spaniards. Since then, all reigning monarchs sign it on their ascension to the throne."

"That is high treason!"

"Maybe, Chelsea, but from whom? Mary? Elizabeth? The mages? Or even King Arthur, that lost his kingdom to the mundanes for betraying his word to Merlin? The first signatory was King Arthur himself! And you can track the entire lineage of the Scottish throne through that treaty, until Mary Stuart. Then it skips her and Elisabeth First, and resumes with James IV of Scotland (the same as James First of England!), that united the Scottish and English crowns, thus bringing the treaty into the current line of British royals. They simply disengaged. Each time a crowned royal balked at honoring his own signature, he lost his crown. Ask yourself why."

"Are you telling me Elizabeth II, our current monarch, has signed that treaty?"

"Yes, the last signature is hers."

"Thank you for the refresher in history, Lord Dunesworth. At least, now I know the true importance of that bit of paper. What I wonder is why it is declared to have been signed only in 1603?"

"Would you feel bounded by an Act of a monarch not of your throne? Sixteen-O-three is the year King James sat on the English, creating Great Britain or the United Kingdom. That is why."

"Makes sense, Dunesworth, lots of sense. Well, we have arrived. Let us go meet her Majesty."