Far away in a pasture in Scotland, there lived a wolf and a shepherd. The wolf continually raided the shepherd's flock, as wolves often do, and the shepherd on occasion would shoot the wolf in some vital organ, causing it great injury, as is the wont of such folk. This uneasy give-and-take continued for some time.

But the shepherd grew tired of violence, and one day, as the wolf approached for his morning meal of a fat lamb, he approached the wolf. "You," he said, "are continually devouring my animals, and I am wounding you as much as I can. This cannot go on. I propose an agreement between us, so that I do not waste my lead and time and you do not waste your life. You guard my sheep, for the wages of one lamb a month, and I will not harm you in any way. That way, I can rest and you can eat. Is that fair?" The wolf assented, and the shepherd left his sheep for the pub in town.

The next day, the shepherd came to visit his flock, only to discover the wolf had made an end of every sheep. He was enraged. "Why did you go back on my agreement?" he screamed in frustration. "I thought we had a deal!"

The wolf looked at him, quizzically. Then he spoke. "I thought you knew what you were getting yourself into when you hired a wolf to tend your flock," he said, slowly. "You don't mean to tell me you expected me not to devour the whole lot of those animals? Be serious."

"I'll kill you!" the man screamed, and then the wolf up and made an end of him in disgust. And neither wolf nor sheep were heard of again in those parts.

What is the moral of this story? If you trust your enemy, he will up and eat your sheep. And then you will starve, and beg for beer from your townsfolk, because you have no livelihood. And you will have wool lying scattered around your house, with wolf spittle coating it. Verily, verily, that is the way of the world.

Evidently, Evans was in a melodramatic frame of mind at present. It must be forgiven. He had slept only five minutes that night, wide awake, poring over road maps to Nevada through the night, and working hard to forge his government security clearance. Sleep deprivation was not conducive to good judgment in a ten-year-old. Perhaps it had been a detriment to Evans to be told to act his age so many times in his youth, as certainly his body did if not his mind. Nothing had changed but his tolerance for caffeine, which he had stolen in the form of coffee from a brewery a block away in enough quantities to feed an army.

Hermione fared slightly better with the interruption of a normal sleep cycle, but she was as resilient as could be expected for a young researcher in an area of Texas known for its gang wars; that is to say, paranoid and ready to shoot her stolen gun at any provocation. More than seventy gang members had died while trying to enter the warehouse they were staying in. They must have been drawn by the computer monitors Evans was trying to cobble together out of washing machine parts. No matter. The plan would not be hurt if a few gang members were to mysteriously disappear; the gang wouldn't care, and the sheriff would only congratulate them for their aiming skills if he found out.

Nearly nothing could hurt the plan, now. In five days, they could end their flight from the law, and maybe – just maybe – they could get their lives back.

ooooo

September 14, 1989.

It is time I made a sense of this mess. I need to talk my history over with Hermione; there are too many loose ends I've found without even trying. The incident with the aircraft: what was that about? And why was…no, there's no time for that. I'll put down my history, and then, if I still don't understand I'll talk it over.

A Supremely and Starkly Concise History of H.J. Evans, nee Potter, he scribbled on the wall. Then he paused – looked it over – moved down a line.

Our story begins, as so many do, with a birth – mine. At the age of zero, I was born to one James Potter, evidently a secret agent for some secret British counterterrorism wing called Phoenix Division, or as it has been inexplicably been referred to in the several times it has been referenced, the Order of the Phoenix, and Lily Evans, whose name I have taken for the sake of my own dignity, a researcher on the Helix Generator who developed the rudiments of a functional electroatomic reaction before giving her work up to marry Mr. Potter and give birth to me. I will not call them my parents; parents care for their children, and they so evidently did n- that is irrelevant.

I was born in a secret camp hidden in the middle of London, codenamed St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, delivered using experimental methods that are inexplicably classified as Magic. Everything referred to in the first year of my life has been relentlessly and categorically classified by Phoenix Division, or else self-censored by Lily Evans, who took the trouble to record my first year of life. My first year was uneventful, and I did little besides breastfeed, sleep, and salivate that should be noted that I can readily understand. During that time, for reasons I will never understand I levitated objects with some fervor, turned the area around me to iron or marble (an admirable sense of fashion for one so young), which Lily referred to as Transfiguration, and succeeded in animating statues of knights and famous personages upon several occasions, setting them upon my guardians and family friends known by the auspicious title of Marauders. This was referred to as Magic, from which I conclude I was genetically modified to manifest these powers by my loving parents, if this is not a metaphor for some darker project (as is very probable.)

As the subject of my parents now manifests itself, I will indulge the reckless curiosity of myself and my other reader, one Hermione Granger, to be mentioned later, by a history of them. My male progenitor, James Potter, was the scion of a rich family so deeply mired in Codename Magic, as I will call the program in which I was born, that it was jokingly called an Ancient and Noble House by the members of the project. He was a troublemaker and pest to all humanity, slacking off the studies required in said division except for codenames Transfiguration and Quidditch, referred to in the most infuriating cipher known to man, which was an aerial sport in which pilots flew "brooms" (only God and the persons in said project know what kind of aircraft they are) and caught "Snitches" by means of some sort of grappling hook. But this veers off our subject. Suffice it to say, he caused female members of Codename Magic to lust after his body, and played pranks on some of the more serious element of CM in boot camp, one Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That is all.

The woman of whom I am directly descended was recruited from a civilian family at the age of eleven, and ever since devoted her life to greater knowledge of "Magic" until James turned his attention to her. She was a prodigy in all subjects in boot camp except "Quidditch", which she was woefully inadequate in, but chose to spend most of her time developing the Helix Generator, which channeled raw amounts of "Magic" which the members of Codename Magic spent their time manipulating with wooden devices known as wands. She originally meant it as a source of free electricity without radioactivity to the citizens of Britain, but electromagnetic pulses from said generator crippled her efforts. I refined it, and had reason on several occasions to curse her stupidity on the second lock, which- but I digress; that will be addressed later. She originally rightly reviled James, but in the end his good looks and overall 'bad boy' image won her hormones over; her mind followed suit, and she left off that project which has fundamentally changed the balance of power in the world for that idiot's abs and…

Suffice it to say that at age one and a half, a terrorist known as Voldemort, a former participant in CM and a talented fighter, entered my home and murdered my parents by voice-activated electromagnetic pulses from a wooden device called a "wand". He attempted to do the same to me, as any reasonable person would have done, but the pulse backfired and he quite nearly murdered himself. It was quite sufficient to knock his soul from his body, which promptly divided in two, one half entering me and another flying off into the distance. The leader of CM, one Albus Dumbledore, took me to the home of my former guardians, Vernon and Petunia Dursley. Here is where my story really begins, and here begins the plethora of plot holes.

These fine personages had the misfortune to discover me on their doorstep, the next morning.

Obviously, this was not taken well by either Vernon or Petunia, but they made the best of it by placing me in a cupboard under the stairs and having no contact with me for several years, sending food through a slit in the doorway. Thankfully, they had stored some of their surplus books there as well, which gave me something to do with my time. In a month, I was able to read, and in a course of another year I had…there is no time for boasting. The principal thing to note during my long imprisonment is that I had gained no sense of the idiocy those above me called Morality, and no sense of how human beings interacted with each other.

When I was let out, at age three, I did not speak, as I did not know how, nor did I understand spoken word, as I had memorized the patterns of words and letters rather than attempt to speak them, preferring to speak in Morse Code, in which I was very fluent. I also was unable to walk, as I had never done so before. Eating had previously consisted of elaborate rituals to apologize to the animals and plants I had eaten for their deaths and for my rampant consumption of living beings, and then a hearty crushing and kneading of the food with my fingers, which greatly confused the Dursleys when they saw my meals. I also had not taken a bath in years, and so was understandably covered in sores and dirt. Reeducation to human company took two years. This time, however, was not wasted.

I learned of drawing, and took considerable time to practice it, and animated television shows and manga, which I strove to emulate. I was unable to grasp any bearing of literary plot device or characterization, but I did gain a considerable knowledge of drawing, which I use to this day. Heavy machinery was…there is no need to recount my early history, and interests. Suffice it to say that I was extremely interested in machinery (as I still am) and Gothic architecture (which I continue to take pleasure in), and leave it at that. What I did, up to age four, was perfectly normal for a sociopathic, amoral child who grew up without the shackles of the Freudian model of child psychology. Let us speak no more of this topic. Matters of far greater import await us.

At age four, I happened upon a certain chest, which had belonged to my mother and had been left behind when the Potters visited my aunt and uncle's wedding, evidently. This chest contained a complete set of journals detailing my mother's life, mentioned above. I have already detailed the life history of both my progenitors, but these diaries mentioned far more than that, as they refer to secret disciplines not even the Pentagon has knowledge of. I will list them here:

Transfiguration: A science which apparently is able to change the structure of atoms in seconds, with the unfortunate limitation of not being able to produce rare earth metals. The methods of Transfiguration are unclear, and are referred to as wandwork, which is of course absurd. This points to the hypothesis that whatever is used to change said atoms is unethical, dangerous, or both. This has immense applications, as carbon fiber and other industrially useful materials can readily be produced from human waste and the vast quantity of garbage humans produce.

Potions: This is not a mechanical discipline but rather a division of chemistry under Phoenix Division. I am unable to understand any of what its applications are, as the effects of said discipline are absurd and so useful they seem blatant wish fulfillment. I would almost write off said discipline, save for the fact that all real technology contained in these journals is almost freakishly reliable and founded in sound science. Most chemical formulas are encoded, with ingredients being things like "eye of newt" and "dragon heartstring," and some of these chemicals' effects cause me to believe the substances covered in said discipline are reality-bending steroids that break all reality merely to benefit the user. This science appears to be the most secret of all, as evidenced by its handling in the journal.

Charms: Another branch of chemistry, which has a wide area effect of causing people to hallucinate. The hallucinations these substances create are very specific, ranging from believing an object is floating to believing an object has come alive. All formulas to these chemicals are omitted, not even encoded, and this is readily understandable, as some of the effects of said charms are extremely disorienting and useful on the battlefield.

History of Magic: This whole discipline is absolutely fantastic, and any indication of the true nature of History of Magic is maddeningly incomprehensible. It is said to be taught by a ghost, and focuses on goblin rebellions. It could be considered to be a study on military tactics, were it not for the fact that the course never had any focus on specific tactical maneuvers. This is worrisome, as whatever is transpiring in History of Magic is so secret it cannot even be alluded to.

All the rest of these disciplines are either mundane subjects (Astronomy, Herbology) with unique focuses, or absolute gibberish like Ancient Runes or Divination to any but participants in the project, as History of Magic was. Be it as it may, these journals contained the life story of my female progenitor, Lily Potter nee Evans, and this information. During the course of my reading, there was one person which confused me – Severus Snape, my mother's sometime friend and sometime enemy. He was singularly unpleasant, but for reasons unknown his insults were contained to the issue of parentage, and length of family participation in Codename Magic. This is absolutely absurd. What project would accept obstructionists such as him? What checks were there for him? And-

There came a knocking at the door of the warehouse, and Evans opened the door, cautiously, but with a stolen revolver in hand. Caution was a virtue, in a place like this. In front of him stood a police officer, holding a receipt from the American equivalent of Tesco on it.

"You are under arrest for blatant murder of blah blah blah crimes against humanity blah blah use of illegal weaponry, etc. ….violation of private property? Public indecency? Libel? Eating ice cream without a cone?" the officer muttered, then threw down the paper. "Do you have any idea how long it took for me to find you? I've searched all over this county looking for your hide! Do you not care that-"

There was no more to say. Evans fired, hitting the bobby straight in the chest, then shot his eyeball in case the man was tempted to escape. Then he took the man's pistol, looked around, then tossed away his revolver. He turned around.

"Hermione! That's the third one in a week! We have to leave the lab!" he shouted, indignantly.

"But-"

"But nothing! We can't do research if we're dead!"

There was an audible sigh from the back of the room. Then a cluster of bottles could be heard breaking on the floor.

Boise, Idaho. Population 125,738 souls, or at least those who bothered to report themselves.

The number, Evans thought, was far too low to mean anything but trouble. The surest sign of a secret air base was too many shops, and except for the university the town was a giant mall. The Department of Defense was not known for its farming, and pilots had to eat somewhere. No, he could write it off. The base wasn't on the list he was approved for, and there was no doubt he would be shot on sight even attempting to enter without clearance. If he could find it, which was a different matter entirely.

Around a base, most people without some legitimate reason for existing would be quietly killed in a "car accident" or some other convenient excuse. That had been the largest cause of death in the USSR for twenty-five consecutive years, he recalled. And the Russians didn't have half the resources America did. As he was already a fugitive, drowning or even discovery by the police was as convenient of a death as it could get. No, they'd have to go south. All the way to Las Vegas.

Well, there went any hope of reaching Mountain Home that winter. He'd have to forge a clearance, and that would take weeks. SAC had the best mainframe short of Absolut Nirgends' missile targeting system. He knew; Hermione had designed it. Under his orders, too! And she'd not even remembered to give herself a way to hack back in. Well, that's another month gone.

May 12, 1990.

A good many decades ago, Ernest Shackleton had launched a mission to Antarctica, hoping to reach the South Pole, and presumably use his achievement as a pick-up line in any bar he came across. However, the voyage had failed spectacularly when his boat was trapped in pack ice. By the end his men were reduced to eating seal backbone, marooned on a rocky island, where they hid under a lifeboat and presumably cried themselves to sleep while watching Days of Our Lives or whatever sailors did for entertainment back then.

Needless to say, his exploit was a failure, and back home the soldiers who survived trench warfare had by this time claimed the hearts of whatever women frequented English pubs. Now that he is dead, most people venerate him for getting himself trapped in the middle of nowhere, though they dress it up in words like "leadership" and "endurance" instead of telling the truth about his stupidity.

Today, Harry Evans was set to launch himself into a mission to Nevada, similarly remote though not nearly as cold, where he would use it as a pick-up line with the Department of Defense. There were no seals in that area of the world to eat, which troubled him somewhat, but Days of Our Lives was playing on more stations than the Antarctic. Not as many people would venerate him for endurance or leadership, probably because he would drive the whole way on a stolen motorbike instead of rowing a lifeboat, but that was, perhaps, for the best.

Comparisons to the voyage of the Titanic were unwelcome, but he'd gotten more of them than he necessarily wanted, mostly from his first mate, Hermione Granger. Unfortunately, her experiment on the Generator's potential as an invisibility device would have to be curtailed, and the machine Evans had spent seventeen weeks building would be destroyed along with it. It is quite natural that objections would be raised, but nevertheless they were irksome. That damn experiment never could be finished anyway. Stupid hazardous metal restrictions always got in the way.

"Evans! What are you doing? You look like you've spaced out!"

"I'm merely reflecting on the merits of making the invisibility generator invisible, instead of destroying it. On the one hand, we'll keep it safe, but then we'll never see it again. More's the pity; I did somewhat like it, though the humming noise it made was less than relaxing."

"I'm sorry, too." Hermione sighed. "Thirteen weeks of experimentation, all up in smoke because you wanted to go to Vegas. If you weren't so good at your poker face I'd have stayed behind."

"Shall we write an epitaph? This deserves a proper send-off."

"From all accounts, loss takes longer to set in when it comes quickly. Throw it in the river or something."

"If you say so." Evans took one last look at his…experiment, or at least the visible bits (two Frisbees held together with duct tape), then thrust it through the bars of the bridge and let it fall.

July 30, 1991.

"Mail for you, Evans! A letter from DeVry University - one from some charity about stiff upper lips or something – a pack of coupons from the grocery – oh! Here's one from Phoenix Division! You're in, too, I suppose. 'Ancient and Noble House' is right!"

"I'd like to remind you, Hermione, that I disowned my 'father' some time ago."

"True, but your genes say otherwise. Like to open it?"

"Sure, might as well."

It was a fine letter, for its kind; the sort some exclusive private school would send to a prospective student, elegantly decorated in green ink with wretched drawings of a phoenix and a dragon, with something about titillating a dragon in a dormitory in Latin. "Room 104, Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA" was written on it in spidery handwriting. But it seemed odd, because the same letter had come for Hermione, the day before her birthday. Some of the allure was missing, now that the second had arrived; it was like Jesus Christ descending down from Heaven with trumpets blaring at three in the morning to deliver the morning paper – very ornate, true, but becoming rather annoying rather quickly, and rather absurd. The whole thing was in code, anyway.

He opened it, and was not disappointed to find the same list that Hermione had received. "LetWork robes, cauldrons, et cetera. That's somewhat disappointing."

"It's a form letter," Hermione said thoughtfully. "It's a big division, so no personalization. Very odd. Still no explanation, or way to get said supplies. I wonder, perhaps they do take all this 'magic' rot seriously, and this is all gibberish that only people with this magic talent could understand?"

"No, you made a book explode you got bored with when you were three, remember? I forget what it was. War and Peace?"

"A dictionary, actually.