A Land Without Magic
A "Once Upon A Time" / "Harry Potter"
Crossover Fanfiction
Disclaimer: "Once Upon A Time" is owned and created by the team of Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. "Harry Potter" is owned by J. K. Rowling. Extended references are made to characters from "Bewitched," "The Addams Family," "Johnny Quest," the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and others too numerous to list here. I do not own any of the characters depicted in this story. This Fan Fiction Crossover is the work of a hobbyist having fun with some of his favorite, fictional characters, and nothing more. I hope that this is a sufficient disclaimer.
Historian's Note: This story is set in October / November 1983. Storybrooke has just appeared in our world. It is roughly two years after the first defeat of Lord Voldemort.
Though I lived through 1983, I cannot make any absolute guarantees that the 1983 depicted in this story is historically accurate. Though I have researched this time period carefully for my story whenever I was in doubt, I take full responsibility for any anachronisms that I may have inadvertently allowed to slip in due to my imprecise memory of the period. As L. P. Hartley, CBE, so aptly put it, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
As an episode of "Once Upon A Time," the Title Card would depict a line of classic cars driving across the screen with Storybrooke in the background in the Blue Forest setting.
Chapter One: 10-22-1983
Special Agent Juliet Lockhart of the United States Federal Bureau of Sorcery sat at the kitchen table in a nondescript house that was located in an equally nondescript Boston suburb eating her dinner. At least, the house appeared to be nondescript to anyone on the outside, be they wizard or muggle. But on the inside, the small house was set up to serve as a Magical Anomaly Detection Station operated by the FBS. The house in Boston, along with hundreds of other similar stations scattered throughout the United States of America, was part of the MADS Network used by the FBS to monitor for magical incursions from the Enchanted Realms and assist in determining what (if any) threat they posed to the Wizarding World in general and the American Wizarding Community in particular.
As Agent Lockhart ate, the new trainee, Tabitha Stephens, monitored several wall-sized parchment maps of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. These maps had been enchanted to show the location and type of any magical anomaly that may require the attention of FBS Aurors. Then, when her break was over, Agent Lockhart would monitor the maps on her own while Trainee Stephens ate. Other than the two of them and the two agents assigned to the Day Shift who would come to relieve them early tomorrow morning, there was nobody else assigned to crew this station.
But this was not always the case. Only a few short years ago, there were anywhere from ten to twelve FBS Agents at this station at any given time.
Agent Lockhart reflected that back in the Day, the station had had three partially overlapping shifts, each consisting of three to four Agents or Aurors, with everyone living on-site throughout their assignment (Agent Lockhart had done two six-month station assignment in her time; one in 1973, and another in 1980.) The tight quarters were bad enough. But to make things even more difficult, only "passive" magic could be used at the station to avoid the possibility of revealing their location to any potential threat that popped-in from the Enchanted Realms.
Because of this, the kitchen and laundry area were in constant use. At least one person was always away on a supply run to the local stores, with several others performing various household tasks such as cleaning, vehicle maintenance and keeping the lawn cut and the driveway free of snow – all without using "active magic." And due to limited sleeping quarters, a "hot-bed" system was adopted to accommodate everyone on site.
All in all, the FBS MADS Network consumed vast amounts of galleons, dollars, and person-hours. But there was a very good reason at the time for doing this:
In the early 1970's, a Wizarding Civil War had broken out in the United Kingdom and Europe over the issue of "Blood Purity," and who should be allowed to receive formal magical training and be officially recognized as a "true" wizard or witch. The cause for much of this was a fanatical supremacist group calling itself the "Death Eaters," whose leader, the grandiosely self-proclaimed "Lord Voldemort" (but who was so feared by those he decided to target that he was normally referred to indirectly as "You-Know-Who,") was making life difficult for wizards and witches who could not "prove their magical lineage" to the supremacists' satisfaction.
Though the issue of Blood Purity had never been important to the American Wizarding Community, there was still a very palpable fear of what might happen if the fanatics in the UK and Europe triumphed. It was widely believed that these Death Eaters' next move in their zeal to "cleanse Wizardkind of mongrels" would be to attack the American Wizarding Community because it claimed a higher percentage of half-bloods and muggle-borns (as well as blended wizard/muggle families) than any other community in the Wizarding World.
Of course, not all American wizards and witches were worried, much less afraid. Agent Lockhart's trainee, Tabitha Stephens, though a half-blood herself, was from a very famous family of powerful and respected pure blooded wizards and witches. Mention "You-Know-Who" to Tabitha's formidable grandmother and she would show nothing but contempt for "Little Tommy Riddle" by loudly saying his supposedly tabooed name, daring the Dark Lord to accept her challenge.
Even the wizard currently holding the title of Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Stephen Strange (himself a muggle-born!) dismissed "Voldie" as a "two-bit thug," and a "punk" not worth his trouble. And given the beat-down Dr. Strange recently gave to the truly dangerous Baron Mordo, everyone (You-Know-Who included,) knew that this was no idle boast.
But Special Agent Lockhart was a half-blood witch who had as many muggle members of her immediate family as she had wizards and witches, and was not so complacent. Neither was Trainee Stephens, who (unlike her notorious grandmother,) worried about her muggle father and her muggle grandparents as well as her 13 year old brother, Adam. Even though Adam was a wizard, Tabitha had absolutely no illusions of how her kid brother would fare if he found himself alone, facing a gang of adult pure-blood fanatics, who wanted to "send a message" to those that they considered to be "Blood Traitors."
Fortunately for those who were concerned about the situation, the FBS had taken developments in the UK seriously, and expanded the mission of the MADS Network at the start of the Wizarding War in the 1970's to serve as a "Distant Early Warnings" Network against potential Death-Eater incursions, as well as sundry incursions from the Enchanted Realms.
Thanks to the influence of half-bloods and muggle-borns, the layout of the stations was based heavily on the Command Center of a muggle NORAD station, complete with large parchment wall maps of the stations' assigned monitoring area enchanted to passively receive and display "data" in the manner of a muggle radar scanner. And since "active magic" could not be used except in dire emergencies, an elaborate telephone and back-up, short-waive radio system was used to keep in contact with FBS Headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts, as well as with all other MADS Network stations. Even the network's secondary mission identifier, "Distant Early Warnings," was "borrowed" from muggle terminology.
In fact, muggle-derived terminology was used extensively to communicate between stations. This was partly because it just seemed "appropriate under the circumstances." But its use also had a practical aspect: The FBS believed that pureblood supremacists (who preferred to "party like it was 1499,") would be unlikely to monitor telephone and radio communications, much less manage to make any sense of the muggle jargon used even if they DID manage to overhear any FBS MADS Network communications . . . .
Special Agent Lockhart was roused from her ruminations when the intercom beeped at the kitchen table and Tabitha said, "Ma'am, sorry to interrupt your break, but we've got a contact in the vicinity of the Massachusetts / Maine border area. It seems to be a variant of vanishing cabinet lore . . . Ma'am, we just got a second contact; same location, but weaker than the first!"
Special Agent Lockhart said, "I'm on my way." She threw the remains of her meal in the waste basket, and headed straight for the map room.
