The knock at my door was more or less to be expected, given the nature of the rather uncomfortable phone call earlier that day. "Come in." I called to the distorted image coming through the glass panel with my name embossed on the front of it.

The image bent as the handle was turned and I received my first view of the dark haired 'wizard'. I have to say, he certainly looked like the deranged asylum inmate he swore he wasn't during our talk between the scruffy black hair and and heavy bags beneath each wild eye, and I silently fingered the loose silver band over one finger in case this came down to force.

"Harry Dresden?" He rasped somewhat painfully, taking in my appearance as I examined him in turn. I nodded once in response and he shuffled through the doorway, quietly shutting the door behind himself before approaching the lone chair I kept for visitors.

Something akin to desperation filled his motions, and that did very little to reassure me. "What can I do for you, Mr. Regulus?" I asked him in a steady tone of voice.

He warily picked up one of the brochures on my desk with a slight hint of disbelief apparent in his expression, and I caught a glimpse of something brown tucked beneath his ragged shirt. Blasting rod? I wondered silently.

He glanced up at me from the description of the seven laws. "Are you really a wizard?" He questioned doubtfully, dropping the pamphlet down where he had picked it up and staring into my eyes.

I stared back and waited. Either we'd-

A young man cloaked in cloths of brilliant red and gold walked alone among a hall of picture frames, each one fading from the image of various men and women to black cloaked figures as he passed them by.

At the end of the hall the largest picture, that of a young man with piercing green eyes and sprawled black hair, stared out forlornly as he too began to change with a rattling hiss.

The man reached up to touch the last frame while he still could before collapsing to his knees...

"What in Merlin's name are you?" He demanded, pushing away from the desk violently and digging into his shirt for the blasting rod concealed there. I blinked and leveled my hand at him, calling out "Forzare!" before he could finish drawing it in time.

The force spell knocked him out of the chair and up against my door with a heavy thud, and his head rocked back against it with enough force to send him into unconsciousness.

Carefully and mindful that this could be a trap, I stood up and collected his rather pitiful looking length of wood and tossed it over to my chair before checking his pulse to make sure I hadn't just killed him by mistake- risking another violation of the First Law was something I wanted to avoid given the recent crap with Morgan and the release from my Doom of Damocles.

Thankfully he was still breathing shallowly and his pulse checked out. "I don't know who you really are, but at least I can confirm you've got a talent for magic, Mr. Regulus." I told the older looking man and lugged him up into the chair again, then brought out a spare pair of Murphy's cuffs I had borrowed without asking and locked him to a foot of my table.

"There. Now to wait for you to wake up and answer some questions." I said and dropped his blasting rod into drawer on my desk, then sat down to wait for some actual business venture to crop up.


He awoke some time later, a good few hours past the initial point when I would open up in the late morning. Bleary eyes blinked around at his settings and he made to sit up, only to be drawn short by the cuff around his left wrist with a grunt of minor annoyance, rubbing his head sorely for a moment before reaching down to dig around beneath his shirt in search of the length of wood.

I couldn't help interjecting at that point, "Looking for something?" and then watching as his head snapped up with a winch to look at me. His eyes cleared up after a long moment and he grimaced heavily.

"Glad to see you're finally awake. I'd like to ask a few questions, mostly concerning who you actually are and why you sought me out." I told him calmly, leaning over the desk to look at him properly.

"I'd like to know a few more things about you myself" He shot back in something akin to a guttural growl, and I almost thought he was baring his teeth at me like a rabid dog would.

One more point for the insanity plea. I thought and shrugged uncomfortably, resigning the outcome of this meeting to a probable call to Edinburgh for a Warden. Mad wizards roaming around don't equal good business, if Victor Sells had been anything to go by.

"Firstly, where did you come from, given that I haven't been able to trace any recent escapes from an asylum in the next nearest few states around here?" I asked.

He tried to sit up straighter in the chair, ignoring the bite of the cold steel into his flesh, and said "I already told you I'm not an escaped lunatic! I don't know how the veil shunted me over here, and I haven't been able to Disapparate back!"

There's that mystery word again, but we're getting closer. I motioned for him to go on and then leaned down to dig around in my drawers for a pen and some paper; it might help to trace down his origins through each statement I could go over. A shuffling motion on the other side of the desk caught my eyes as his shadow flickered, and when I brought my hand up again to knock his lights out if needed I found myself on the receiving end of a large black dog.

"Wha- Forza-!" my shout-turned-spell was cut short as the dog crashed into my upper body and pressed me flat against the floor, knocking the air out of my lungs and nearly giving me the treatment I had given him earlier in the day. Stars danced in my blackening vision as the dog pressed both of my hands to the floor and sat down on my upper body heavily.

I coughed and in between one moment and the next the dog was replaced by the wizard, straddling my chest with his knees sunk into each palm and his hands pressed against my throat.

"Better. I know you yanks conduct business a little differently than we do, but this is a little too far; a name in the muggle phone book? Does the International Statute of Secrecy mean that little to you?" He demanded.

I grunted.


The original concept for Sirius Interruptions.