A/N: Although I'm more of an EWE person, this plot-bunny wouldn't leave me alone and so I'm taking the Next Gen out for a ride.

Disclaimer: I do not in any shape, form, or fashion own Harry Potter.

Prologue

In a room in a secret base known to very few, a tall man barked orders while he waited for his meeting to begin. He kept his demeanor stiff and straight as was befitting his station despite his weariness at what he was beginning to suspect was willful ignorance on the part of a subordinate that continued to question the future treatment of what this white coat clad subordinate called the 'prisoner'.

He called it 'creature'.

It might resemble them outwardly, but there was nothing human about the filthy thing huddled in the corner of the room on the opposite side of the one way mirror. Its outward shell didn't affect his judgment; neither did its youthful appearance. At one point he might have hesitated, but he knew what it was capable of now and would not fall for its deceitful ploys.

No. He would not be fooled by its false tears and cries of pain.

The door beeped, announcing the arrival of the men he'd been waiting for. He walked over to the console that showed them waiting for him to let him in from the last chamber. This compound had the highest security clearance in the country and all who wished to get into the observation room of one of the creatures housed here had to go through fifteen security checkpoints. And each checkpoint was specifically designed to ensure that no one could get in without it being well documented and to prevent a free creature from breaking in.

This was the second base; a creature had succeeded in getting into the first and they'd barely managed to subdue it, but they'd learned their lesson. They always learned from their mistakes and adapted and moved on. The creatures didn't.

He typed in the code that opened the heavy steel door and five men entered. They bypassed the white coats and stood at attention in the center of the room facing him. He walked towards them and they saluted him and said his name in unison.

"Gentlemen," he surveyed his latest potential recruits. As usual, these were the best of the best. Each man had been hand-selected and background checked even more thoroughly than national security agents. He knew that the man on the left was the fifth generation descendent of Russian immigrant Dmitri and Kyria Zhutinev from Moscow and that the redhead man next to him had a half sister and brother living in Glasglow from an affair his father had that the redhead was unaware of. He knew details about each man's life and background that most would consider invasive and overboard, but he and his branch considered necessary to make sure that they held no ties to the creatures.

He let the silence between them stretch out for ten minutes and was satisfied that none of them fidgeted or betrayed any emotion on their face. However, many had passed that trial; most of the men who'd passed through this room had done things for their country that could and would never be praised or lauded in the news. This mission was one of them.

"You all have been chosen because you are the best and my unit demands the best. If you can handle this, then you will join current operations. If not, you will be let go." He met each gaze, letting them decide what 'letting go' would ensue considering that now that they'd seen the base they would be liabilities if they weren't chosen. "Turn around gentlemen and face our world's biggest threat."

They about-faced and looked into the other room; he looked at them. He could tell the exact moment each of them recognized the youth of the creature, three of them flinched, a slight widening of the eye that he would have missed had he not been doing this for so long was all that betrayed the other two.

"Sir?" One of the flinchers questioned.

"Do not be fooled by this abomination's guise." He knew what their untrained eyes saw: a filthy little boy, emaciated so that all his bones were showing, with dark tangled hair and wide blue eyes bright with tears. "This thing is not like you or I, not human."

Three of them had children that were around the same age as the creature. The other two had siblings that age.

None of them gaped, they had too much training for that, but their stilted reactions showed him their disbelief.

"Not human sir?" The redhead asked after a few minutes of silence; he had a young daughter. "The child is not human?"

"Not human." He repeated.

This entire operation had taught him that no matter how highly trained and programmed the soldiers you brought in, men who would not question murder, fraud, or theft for their country, the moment you brought in the supernatural, some of that unrelenting loyalty was shaken.

"Dr. Loyan, start the demonstration." He motioned to his main headache and the white coated man keyed in the code. "Watch closely gentlemen. Officer McFersen, please approach the glass. Keep in mind that its one way."

"Sir?" Dr. Loyan asked. "The system is ready."

"Proceed."

"Proceeding." Dr. Loyan entered in the next part of the code.

The left side of the floor in the prison opened and a metallic box rose up. The creature scrambled to its feet and began screaming wordlessly. Its eyes locked on McFersen despite the fact that it shouldn't be able to see him and it launched itself at the spot he was standing, kicking and screaming at the reinforced glass.

McFersen's eyes widened again. "The glass is one way sir?"

"Yes."

The box stopped its ascension with a click and the creature went even madder; it's flailing against the glass increased, betraying strength that would have been impossible had it been human. Sparks shot off the creature and the box turned into a raging elephant.

All of the potential recruits cursed and McFersen jumped back. The elephant began throwing itself around the room even harder than the child.

"Relax, gentlemen. This cage is reinforced to the maximum. A tank at full speed couldn't get through it." This wasn't the first time a large animal had appeared in the cage with the thing.

Blood dripped down the glass moments later when the elephant's head gave way from the force of its charge. The animal fell and disappeared before it could crush the creature but the blood didn't. The creature stared at them, at McFersen with feral hatred and rage in its eyes. Some energy akin to lightening repeatedly arced from the creature then and hit the glass exactly in the position the redhead was standing. The blood on the window sizzled and burned and the energy kept coming. The creature fell to its knees, the energy still striking, it's mouth opened as it now screamed 'die' with each strike.

The glass began to crack. He didn't move back like them because he knew that there were two panes and that the one closest to them had a current of energy running through it that disabled the creatures' unnatural powers.

"My god." One of them whispered.

He waited until the cracks spread across the window, waited until he saw that each of them truly understood the horror of what they were seeing.

"Dr. Loyan, end demonstration."

"Ending demonstration." The doctor's hands were a blur and then electricity shot from the box and struck the creature in the back.

The force was so strong that small creature slammed into the glass again. They all heard the snapping of its left arm and saw it bend into an unnatural angle after the creature hit the floor. Then, most importantly, they all saw the arm crack back into the right position.

There was silence as the box descended back into the floor and the glass pane the creature had splintered slid out and was replaced by a new one.

"What… what is that?" McFersen gasped out.

"An abomination." He answered. "A creature that poses as human while preying on us."

All of them looked shaken and none of them contested his statement this time which gave him hope for their suitability.

"And this was simply one of the younger ones. The older ones are even more dangerous and wily." The larger creatures were held in more secure cages in other parts of the base; that had been another lesson learned the hard way, don't let them congregate or even look at the other.

They blanched, their faces mirroring his when he'd first learned of the creatures.

"But how, sir?" This question was from the Russian descendant, Officer Albright.

He walked over the wall, placed his hand on a scanner designed to look like a keypad, and part of the wall rose, showing another room.

"Follow me." This room was smaller than the last and held no view of the creature, but it did have wall sized screens on all walls including the one with the door and two rows of five seats each in the middle. He stood next to the first screen. "Take a seat gentleman and prepare yourself. This is a conspiracy that it took the UN five years to begin to understand."

He put his hand against another concealed fingerprint scanner and faced the similarly concealed retina scanner.

"ID confirmed." A female voice intoned from the speaker in the ceiling. "Welcome Commander. What sequence do you wish to show?"

"Discovery Alpha Complete."

"Understood. Showing Discovery Alpha Complete." The screens came to life, displaying a timeline with pictures denoting the videos that went with them.

The timeline started in the eighteenth century with an obscure often overlooked document that stated that the king acknowledged those other natured were allowed to govern themselves as long as it didn't interfere with normal British citizens. Most historians attributed this document to the king letting some ethnic group have religious freedom or autonomy within reason but it, like other mysterious pieces of history, had come to light with the truth.

"We first became aware of these creatures approximately two and a half years ago though, as you can see, they have been around us for centuries."

They nodded at that.

"They call themselves wizards and witches like the stories. They can channel an energy not found in humans that they call magic. They live longer than us and are harder to kill. And the majority of them view us the same way that we do apes. Any questions?"

McFersen's arm twitched.

"McFersen. Do you have something to say?" He asked.

"Yes, sir. Why now? If they've been around for as long as you say, why are we acting now?"

The current events screen was on the next wall, so all they could currently see was what his team had gleaned from history. What myths and things thought of as hoaxes at the time had turned out to be true, how their forefathers had been subtly manipulated.

So, it was going to be one of these groups. Some potential recruits waited until the end, not asking questions until they'd been presented with information and getting the reason for all of this afterwards. Others, the groups he preferred because on the whole those groups were more likely to have men join his cause, wanted to know the reason up front and filter information through that angle.

"You've all heard of the Brockdale bridge tragedy? Or the Lafayette incident? Or the Crawford nuclear meltdown?" Each of the events had been well publicized and talked about for months and was still considered some of the worst disasters in British history.

"Yes sir." They answered. Every British citizen had heard of them more than once.

The Brockdale bridge tragedy had happened 25 years ago and was just the most horrible happening in one of the most casualty filled years that England had ever witnessed. On a Friday afternoon during rush hour in the summer of 1996 in one of the most populated cities in England, a bridge collapsed. The death toll was in the thousands and they still didn't have an accurate count of everybody who'd died; bodies from that disaster still occasionally washed up on the shore. Engineers and bridge experts alike had been beyond perplexed at how a bridge that had shown no sign of the structural instability necessary to collapse so completely had done so. "Impossible" had been a word used to describe the occurrence as the bridge had collapsed far quicker than it should have and cars had inexplicably exploded in the air as they fell. Experts to this day couldn't explain it.

The Lafayette incident was even more perplexing though the death toll was only about a hundred. The Lafayette football stadium had exploded during a match ten years ago. That wasn't the strange part. The strange part was that almost everyone who'd been in the stadium as it had exploded had somehow appeared five miles to the east of the stadium with no clue of how they'd gotten there beyond some vague murmuring about buses that had never existed. Video of the game showed a blue light just before the explosion but that was the only hint. Even stranger was the fact that the police at the time accepted the bus suggestions as if it were true although it was physically impossible for thousands of people to have taken buses to a forest in a few seconds and no buses or records of the alleged buses had ever been found. But when anyone else looked over the case and tried to point this out, they suddenly agreed with the bus theory and left the case alone.

The Crawford nuclear meltdown was only three years old and confusing because of three important facts. One: Crawford had no nuclear plant. Two: there were no signs of radiation in the area. And three: despite this lack of nuclear plant or radiation, several hundred people were killed in an explosion there and someone had partitioned off the area so no one could go there anymore. More disturbing was the fact that anytime someone went to investigate, they left without entering the area and checked off that they did. Even his unit hadn't been able to breach the now abandoned town.

"Move to screen two." He told the computer. "And highlight the incidents I just named."

The seat section swiveled to face the second screen which had the title of each incident along with pictures, known facts, speculated facts, and problems.

The Brockdale bridge incident was first. The main picture was from a security camera which had caught odd specks of black, much larger than birds, flying away from the falling bridge and exploding cars.

"You all know this incident. You heard about on the news. Perhaps you or someone you know lost a mate or relative here." He paused to take in the reaction as they looked at what his unit had documented on it.

"This was the working of these… others?" A black haired man asked. This was Officer Rook; he'd lost his aunt and uncle in the tragedy.

"The creatures were having some sort of internal war and a few of them on one side, estimated between three and five, took the bridges down in an act of terror against the other side. Only humans were killed."

"Three to five?" Rook repeated in horror. "A bridge of that size?"

"Three to five." He confirmed. "And size doesn't matter to these creatures."

"Why destroy the bridges?" McFersen asked. "Why come after us?"

He kept his smile hidden. There was righteous anger in their eyes now. That was good. It would help them ignore the human looking shell of the creatures.

"Because they don't think like us and, as I've said, while they look like us, they do not consider themselves the same and think we're inferior." He took out a remote and enlarged a picture.

"What is that?" Albright leaned forward in horrified fascination.

"This was the leader of the creatures who destroyed the bridges." The nose-less, red-eyed snakelike abomination was how he imagined all the creatures looked once you made them give up their human disguise. "Voldemort. It resulted when a dignified man from an established family was coerced and raped by one of these creatures. Yes gentleman," he said in response to the disgusted looks. "They can steal our seed to create offspring."

He hit the remote again and an article on the mysterious death of the Riddles rose next to the pictures. "The result is a creature like them. This Voldemort, though raised in a perfectly normal orphanage, terrorized the children while he was there, killed his family when he got older and became the leader of the Death Eaters."

"Death Eaters? Do they actually…" Officer Kensington spoke for the first time.

"No. It's just a pretentious name. Although they cause plenty of death. Almost every strange incident that occurred during the time period of 1996 to 1998 is attributed to this group. The weather patterns and mysterious terrorists that no one could predict or understand then did not exist. They were just explanations for these creatures' actions."

"You said was. Is it dead now sir?" Rook asked.

"Yes. Another creature killed it." He clicked the remote and a picture of a green eyed man with spectacles appeared. "But before you get any false hope that some of the creatures have human qualities," another click of the remote and the green eyed man was unmistakable next to a man with a shock of hair redder than McFersen's and a woman with a mass of curly brown hair in the midst of a crowd watching a football game.

"This creature was involved in the Lafayette incident and believed to be responsible for the explosion. As well as the Crawford nuclear meltdown." He hit the button again and a shot of the green eyed man in black robes holding a stick against another robed man with a stick dominated the screen. They were on the sidewalk of a bustling street. "This picture was taken from a security camera across the street of the place where explosion originated, five minutes before it happened. There is no nuclear plant in Crawford, gentlemen. The creatures did it, once again showing no care for human life."

"How come no one has said anything before now?" Albright asked. "Shouldn't people be warned?"

He chuckled mirthlessly. "Listen. I told you. It took the United Nations five years to realize that something was wrong even though apparently our Prime minister has always known about them."

"The minister knows?" Rook crossed his arms. "Why is he only now doing anything about it?"

"The minister, like the other leaders of countries where they've revealed themselves to them, didn't fully believe it." He clicked the remote and a picture that had hung in the prime minister's office for decades was shown. "But then, if you have a highly stressful job and someone came out of your fireplace, introduced themselves as the minister of magic, and then left without leaving any evidence of their presence, you'd think you imagined it."

"Fireplace?" McFersen muttered.

He ignored it and changed the screen. "However, five years ago during an environmental summit, the UN tried to vote on approving places to develop for clean energy. One of these locations was a site in Scotland. Every time it was brought up to be voted on, they went to the next site without voting on it and ended the session without voting so it was not chosen. This might have gone unnoticed if all the delegates hadn't agreed on it beforehand and already promised a developer the rights to it."

He brought up a picture of one of their main benefactors: Bartholomew Umbridge. The small toad-like man had been generous in his donations to discover why he'd been cheated out of his promised contract. He'd also donated in more informative ways as well.

"They went over the minutes and discovered that five times they had brought up the location and five times they went from intending to vote, to going to the next the location, almost the exact conversation each time. If it had been a computer taking notes, it would have been dismissed, but a normally reliable secretary took notes that day and she copied each instance word for word." He clicked on the video of the incident.

It showed the delegates talking about a site off the coast of America and once they finished, there was static and they were talking about land in the Sahara and once they were finished, there was static and they were talking about Japan. The odd static happened three more times.

"According to the minutes, the site in Scotland was brought up each time the static happened. We believe that its one of their strongholds."

"But," another of the men, Officer Canton, shook his head in disbelief. "How can they make an entire room of people forget something like that? How did the secretary not realize it sooner?"

He put a grave expression on his face, allowing his feelings about the creatures and their situation to take precedence over his satisfaction that another group of cadets would be added to his ranks.

"They are able to meddle with our minds. They can read our thoughts, erase them, and control us. There are reports of creatures creating new identities for humans and making the human believe that they are that person."

Their faces reflected the horror that had settled in his chest when he'd first learned of these creatures and grown with each inhuman and unnatural thing he'd learned about them.

He decided to go for the killing blow. "And because of their lower birthrate they also mutate human children to be like them. Your child is normal until its eleventh birthday when they show up and take your son or daughter away for special training. This special training destroys what humanity is left in the child and makes it a creature like them with their same lack of values."

He brought up a picture they'd found of a young innocent looking Tom Riddle and one of the snakelike Voldemort as an illustration of before and after.

The fathers whitened and he knew they were imaging their children in the situation as he'd intended them to.

"Sir," Rook recovered first. "What you're telling us is that there is a humanoid species out there with superior durability, longer life, the ability to wield energy like a weapon and control our minds, and make our children like them?"

"That is correct."

"What advantages do we have over them?" Albright asked.

"The main advantages that we have over these creatures is our technology, their severe underestimation of it, our numbers, and that they don't know we know about them now." He smiled as he thought of the surprise of the creature each time they captured one. That arrogance that they were better than him was replaced by terror as he showed the creatures their rightful place in the world: under humans.

"These creatures are so filled with their self important superiority that they won't even know what's happening until we've struck and won."

A/N: Hope you're intrigued. Review please?