This is set in the same universe as HPMOR (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality) set just after the events of that fic, but its set in America and is not meant as a direct sequel. Any reference to Harry Potter cannon is owned by J.K. Rowling, HPMOR is owned by Eliezer Yudkowsky who has given permission for fan fictions, and any additional intellectual property in this work is owned by me; however, I give license for that part that is mine to be used in any additional fan fictions with the only stipulation being to not repost/rehost or publish this story without explicit permission.
Ok actual serious stuff now, I'm a very slow writer and while I like to think what I write is decent it tends to be structurally pretty poor. I've done a bit of editing to bring this to a serviceable state, but really I just want to get it out there so I apologize in advanced. Oh and question, who owns the image that seems to be used everywhere by HPMOR of snapping fingers? Does anyone have any other suggestions for a a cover image.
Knock, Knock. The door shook in its frame as some unknown personage made their presence known. Stephen looked up reluctantly from his paper. Only glancing briefly at his disheveled apartment. Newspaper clippings littered the floor, walls, and even in some instances were tapped, suspended to the ceiling. Interspersed throughout, in his own hand, were the same three words repeated over and over "magic is real". It had been a slow realization or fall into madness depending on how charitable he chose to be with himself on a given day. It had started only a few months ago in early July. He'd been in the final stages of his masters at MIT. Computer science was going to be big it seemed and Stephen was poised to be part of that.
Stephen didn't normally read the paper, but had been lying on a counter and he'd seen a headline: "Strange Lights Sighted Over the North Sea." That could have been the end of it, Stephen almost wished it had been the end of it, but he'd read the article. It was strange. Not incredibly strange: humanity was learning new things about the world every day not to mention hoaxes were perpetrated, but interestingly strange. He forgot about it. It was only shortly after that Kial, one of his Professors, mentioned Landsat. Satellite imaging released for free on the internet, a still rather vague term that Stephen only had access to through the university.
Stephen had been staring at various images on screen for what felt like hours, there were going to be words about his inappropriate use of university resources, when he remembered the story about strange lights. There hadn't been any accompanying images, but he was curious. He remembered vaguely where the article had claimed the lights had been sighted. There had even been a small drawing with lines for the various sightings converging on a central point slightly east of the Shetland Islands. In a few moments, Stephen had found the proper tile. It was grainy and of low quality, but still its contents were clear. A small speck of land near the middle of the image should have been the only notable feature. If the word had functioned as Stephen had supposed it did for his entire life, it would be the only sight. If the word had an ounce of common sense, it would be the only sight, but of course, it wasn't. Dominating the picture was a blinding white light. So bright that it had almost blown out every other feature of the image; however, the amazing power house that is the brain has been optimized aggressively for only a few tasks, but one of those, one of the most important, is pattern recognition. So it was that Stephen saw quite clearly a giant glowing human (he could never quite settle on a gender) standing clear as day against the black sea smack dab in the middle of the shot. It was amazing. It was incredible. Surely it wasn't a joke? Regardless of it's questionable nature, he printed it out so he could pass it around. Then he went back to looking at more mundane, though in some ways no less incredible, images or at least this is what he summarized had happened. Now he could only remember printing a picture. If asked he would have said it had just been pretty. It was only when he glanced up to where it hung above his bed that he remembered once again.
Knock, knock. Stephen had totally forgotten there was someone at the door. He was doing that a lot these day. Glancing over at another note, he remembered his theory. Whatever was messing with his memory was having lasting effects. It wasn't a comforting thought. Stephen reached for the door handle, but a second later it, along with the entire rest of the door, came hurtling out of the frame and into his room. Stephen's world went black.
Stephen woke. His head hurt. His face hurt. He couldn't really think of somewhere that didn't at least ache. He opened his eyes, but that didn't change much. It was dark: truly dark, not the dark of a night without city lights or even a closed up basement. All those places have some light. Some amount of photons are still able to reach the viewers eyes. This was the total absence of light. Groggily, he felt around himself. The floor was smooth and sloped gradually up on all sides of him, he found. A sphere or a bowl perhaps?
He was slowly beginning to work out the geometry of his cell when suddenly and without any fuss, it vanished. Light flooded in, and for several moments Stephen was completely blinded. His eyes slowly adjusted, and eventually the room swam into focus. He was lying on his side so it took a second for him to take in his surroundings. The primary feature of the room was a singular wooden desk stained to the point of near blackness, but as he scrambled up he noticed two things. First he seemed to still be in some kind of, now perfectly transparent, sphere, and second he wasn't the only one in the room.
Everything had happened so quickly. He'd been in his room-he couldn't remember quite what he'd been doing. Now, he couldn't even conceive of what was going on. The possibilities were running through his mind faster than light: maybe he'd been abducted by aliens? He'd always rejecting those stories out of hand, but this was feeling like pretty compelling evidence. That, of course, lead to his primary running theory: none of this was real. He rarely dreamed, and regardless he was thinking too clearly for that. If this wasn't real he was truly insane. It wasn't a comforting thought given the more Stephen thought about it, the more he was convinced that it was the only explanation that could possible fit all the evidence, especially after he saw what the one who was quite calmly sitting behind the desk was wearing. In real life people didn't wear robes. It just wasn't done and pointed hats?
"What to do with you?" the strangely dressed woman asked looking up from her desk and fixing a pair of piercing blue eyes on him. Somehow it appeared she had sensed him wake. Nothing about this situation felt good. Still he didn't really have any choice and regardless she continued before he had time to do anything, "Do you know you are the first muggle," she said the strange word with a practiced precise tone that told Stephen if it was made up it hadn't happened in the moment, "to work out even part of the truth in the last 20 years? In fact, you are the first I have had to deal with."
Stephen wanted to say something. He opened his mouth to speak, but realized that all that was coming out was a soft whimper. "Apologies," she continued, "you wouldn't even remember what you discovered."
Stephen was indeed racking his brain at this very moment for anything she might be referring to and coming up truly blank. Scarily, it seemed most of his last few months were blank. He remembered eating, sleeping, and going to the store, but the rest was totally blank, just a vague sense of researching something in his bedroom. "What do you want?" he managed to croak out at last. Though it was more of a whimper than the determined question he had meant to pose.
"We want your help," she told him frankly. "The world is in a dangerous time and it is my opinion that someone of your particular skill set may be useful to us."
"You need a programmer?" Stephen asked, feeling like he was on the edge of getting the giant joke behind it all.
She looked at him strangely and asked with a completely serious voice and expression, "What's a programmer?"
This was getting stranger and stranger. That statement basically ruled out the alien abduction idea, unless they only had a vague idea of English, but this woman seemed to speak perfect American English. "A programmer writes," he started to say and then realized that it would take far too long to explain to her what a programmer was if she truly didn't know. "Never mind, it doesn't matter," he finished awkwardly. There were more important questions. "What do you need me for then? Who are you? Where have you taken me? What's this," tapping the edge of his confinement which while it stopped his hand made no sound, "What the heck is going on here?"
"Magic," she said with a small smirk. So she wasn't going to tell him, he decided. Figured. He was already dismissing the theory he was insane. Whether he was sane or not, that way lay insanity. She seemed to sense his doubt. "but of course you do not believe me," she continued. "And if you did you would forget this conversation as soon as the words had so much as left my mouth. Follow me Stephen." He didn't have any choice, it turned out. Whatever made up the ridiculously clear globe, followed at a leisurely rate behind the strange woman, and Stephen was along for the ride.
Out the door, they walked into an ordinary enough, gray-carpeted hallway, but when he looked back, he couldn't find the door. They had only walked a little distance when the hallway ended on a balcony. The bubble that was his prison, bumped up against the edge beside his guide. "Don't worry," she told him with another small grin, "it's perfectly safe." And she jumped off the edge. In an instant, with a jerk, the bubble followed her over. Stephen expected free fall. He expected to be if not floating right off the 'ground', at least to feel light. He didn't. Instead they drifted down slowly as if through water. It was such a convincing illusion, that Stephen half expected to see bubbles floating up from the woman. After what seemed like an eternity of slow motion falling, passing row after row of balconies their course turned on a dime and headed for the far wall. Shockingly, Stephen didn't feel pushed down at any point during the turn. If not for the walls rushing by, he couldn't have said they were moving at all. They were very near the bottom of the shaft, Stephen noticed. There was also, it appeared, only perhaps another hundred feet of tunnel, before it bottomed out in a round bowl. Of more immediate concern, however, was the fast approaching, quite solid looking stone wall.
They paused, again at once and without any visible sign of g-force, directly in front of the featureless stone walls of the shaft. His guide/warden reached into her robes and produced a small wooden rod. It was unadorned, but made out of incredibly near golden, white wood which had been polished to a shine. She reached out and made a rather complicated circular gesture around herself and said a word Stephen couldn't quite hear. Seemingly in place of the circle she'd drawn, a black cylinder snapped into existence. A few moments later, the wall directly in front of them started to quiver as if a mirage and slowly in a door sized space a new scene appeared. At first it was gray and wavery, but slowly it grew into focus. The black screen around her disappeared, and with a movement much like walking she passed through the now clear archway. The bubble and Stephen followed a moment later. They found themselves in a circular room. Stephen wasn't even surprised at this point to notice that the doorway had deposited them in the middle of said circular room and then immediately disappeared. Why should it obey the laws of physics as he understood them, nothing else had. The room itself was large: at least a hundred feet across and about as high. It was almost entirely empty. The only sign of strangeness was the border of the room, which seemed to be made of glass beyond which was nothing, total blackness. Directly below his feet, Stephen noted, was something that reminded him of nothing more than some strange circuit board. Hundreds of feet of densely packed curls and symbols Stephen couldn't begin to guess at. As he watched, a bolt of something gold raced down one of the lines to end in a brief loud fizzle as it disappeared at the center of an elaborate rune.
"This way," she told him gesturing at a spot off to one side. In the same moment whatever manner of confinement had formed the sphere was gone and Stephen tumbled onto the ground.
"What do you want?" he begged again as he clambered to his feet on what appeared to be a glass floor just above the strange circuitry, but she didn't answer. As he walked slowly to the place she had indicating not knowing what else to do, he couldn't help but pessimistically suspect that if he wasn't insane he was nearing his end. His knees shook slightly as he stood in the place indicated. From another pocket in her robes the woman produced a small stone, which she placed at his feet.
"Stand still," she reprimanded him when he fidgeted too much. She looked around the room briefly, whether to check that they were alone or something else Stephen couldn't have said. Apparently satisfied on the condition of the room, she reached out with her wand and tapped lightly the top of the stone. Stephen almost jumped as under his feet the strange pattern jumped into feverish activity. Bolts of the same golden light he had seen earlier appeared and disappeared with a den of fizzles and cracks, but also scores of other colored lights flew across the floor. So many that it was hard for Stephen to keep track. Some of the lines even began to shift circling into new patterns before his eyes. It was an impressive display, but he had no way of knowing if these sorts of shifts were a regular occurrence or if something of significance had just happened. There was no way of knowing. After several moments where the two stood in awkward silence the floor began to quiet and eventually stop it's activity.
"Pick up the amulet," she instructed in a businesslike tone. Seeing no danger or even alternative, Stephen reached down. As his fingers brushed up against the surface of the stone it was as if his mind suddenly cleared. It was as if he'd been trying to remember something, and it had suddenly popped into his mind, but multiplied a thousand times. He hadn't just found the satellite image once. He'd run across it three times, it seemed, only printing it out on the third and final time. That had not even been the first erasure it seemed. Briefly an imagine of 10 or 12 robed and masked figures running through a supermarket holding rods that could only be called wands occasionally firing off bolts from their wands breaking jars and knocking down shelves maybe ten or twelve years ago. He had been with his mother. He could remember remembering it as a bunch of teenagers with baseball bats.
Shaking himself, he realized that he must have been gripping the stone for some time now. The-he now felt comfortable calling her a witch-was now standing in an entirely different position. He'd been so lost in rediscovering his memories he hadn't even realized time was passing. Now he stood again. Finally feeling like he was in a position to ask the right questions, but while it was reassuring to know he was probably not going mad, the new information didn't really solve much. It was clear that magic or sufficiently advanced technology was at work in the world, but beyond that, despite his fevered research, he hadn't been able to work out much: there was some population of magical users, they wanted to stay hidden, and they had some form of mind control that prevented him from holding onto memories of all this. It wasn't easy working out even those simple realities when the memories to support it could only be held in your mind for a few seconds at a time, but he still desperately wanted to know more.
She interrupted his thought process before he had formulated a proper question saying, "Now that you have the ability to actually remember let me explain your situation." She walked towards a new seemingly normal point and tapped her wand on the ground. The air shimmered and a doorway appeared leading to the office where he had first woken... "A new player has entered the rather littered stage in England," she continued as she gestured for him to follow and walked through the door.
Stephen glanced around once trying to create a complete mental map of the room and then reluctantly followed her. He couldn't resist looking behind the doorway at least once, however. As he suspected, the doorway was only visible from the front. He could see completely through it on the back. He decided not try sticking his hand through the back though. Getting it out might be a problem depending on how this thing worked. Satisfied he walked through and as expected found himself back in the office.
"At the same time the existing power structure has almost completely died off along with three of the most powerful wizards alive today: Dumbledore, Voldemort, and Flamel," she continued without pausing to give him time to think about the massive distance they had just crossed in an instant. "All seemingly without his actions; however, we have reason to believe he was directly involved in at least two of the deaths."
"I understand why this would worry you, but how do I come into this?" Stephen interrupted confused.
Ignoring the interruption she continued, "We believe that some of his success may stem from his rather... unusual upbringing and then there's this." She pulled a small gold ring off her finger and tapped it with her wand explaining, "This was taken from my memory"
A singsong voice spoke as if reciting a rhyme, "The devourer of stars, may conquer all, destroy the world, and never fall." It didn't seem like exactly a death certificate. All was spoken in terms of maybes and possibilities nothing was for sure and regardless despite everything else, Stephen would be truly shocked if prophecy was real. If nothing else, a totally deterministic universe was depressing.
Seemingly sensing his skepticism, she continued, "We are quite sure that the one referred to in the prophecy is one and the same as the one growing to power in England. I have only been witness to the one prophecy, but within the proper channels there is a buzz of speculation. It is said that more prophecies have not been revealed at once since the founding of Hogwart itself. Something big is coming."
"Still, this doesn't explain why you have decided to tell me all this. Surely you're worried I'll spill the beans," Stephen said, sensing as he said it that it might not have been his smartest move.
"Let me give some more context then," she answered. "His name is Harry Potter or as he often goes by HJPEV (Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres), he was raised by muggles, non-magicians, and we suspect some knowledge he gained through his muggle up bring may be the key to his success. We wish to attain that information and any other magics that may be of use. Do not worry you not be without help," she said matter of factly, "As to telling others. I doubt you would be capable of making it out of the school, and even if you could." She took out her wand and said a word and suddenly Stephen was standing trying to remember how he'd gotten there and what they'd been talking about. The last thing he could remember clearly was the door hitting his head.
She said another word and the memories poured back. She gave him a second to process the newly regained memories and then continued, "What has been given can also be taken away and regardless, you would never convince anyone of your wild claims, and as you yourself learned even if you did they would forget it. Let me be clear you are disposable. The would be no investigation in circles that would have any chance of success if you were to go missing."
Stephen didn't know what to say. It seemed he didn't have much choice in the matter and even if he did he wasn't sure he'd do anything differently. He managed a brief nod.
With a sigh she, Stephen realized he still didn't know her name, stood up and finished, "Let me show you to your room then, there is much to do.
This story is meant to cover ten chapters hopefully each of about the same length as the above. It took me long enough to write this, but I'm hoping ten will be manageable on my current schedule. I'm a full time student. Regardless, I'm certainly unable to commit to a release schedule. I will get each chapter out as it gets done. I'm on spring break so I can hopefully get a few done during that time.