Chapter 4

The atmosphere in the meeting room was tense. There was just no other word for it. Harry Pearce was fully aware that most members of his team were either in some kind of shock or wholly convinced that he had lost his wits and should benefit enormously from a visit to the shrinks. He could hardly blame them for such a reaction. His own response to hearing that there actually was such a thing as magic had not been better.

The silence was starting to get uncomfortable after a minute or so and Harry actually had to work hard to remain as composed as he had been before, keeping up the image of the decisive leader of this team, who knew exactly what he was doing, even if the members of said team obviously seemed to doubt that.

The reactions were rather mixed. Adam was composed, but then, he had already known what was going on. Harry had not expected any differently. It didn't mean that his Section Chief suddenly liked the development. He was on edge and uncomfortable, although he did do a good job of hiding it. He had been protesting the deal that had been made for the duration of the drive back to Thames House, but he would back Harry up in this meeting, of that he was sure. After all, it wasn't like they had a whole lot of other options.

Malcolm was surprised, but not at the mention of wizards, Harry wagered. The elderly technician had been there during the last war those wizards had fought and back in the day all of the team had known. No, his surprise would be the result of them asking for MI-5's help again when they had not been known to be too overly anxious about doing so before.

The others were mostly giving him incredulous looks, although Ros accompanied hers with an angry stare that would have sent less brave men running for the hills without a second thought. She was still mad at him for not being able to reduce her father's prison sentence and if he understood her at all, it would take quite some time for that anger to wear off. But she was a good officer, very good at her job, and that was what she was here for.

'What do they want this time?' Malcolm inquired politely, slightly puzzled.

That got him Ros's attention. 'You bloody well knew about this?' she snapped.

The technician nodded. 'During the war they fought in the nineties, we would sometimes be asked to assist with certain matters. We all knew back then.' There was an underlying tone of sadness, because only Harry and Malcolm were left of the team that had been aware of the wizards' existence. It was one of the downsides of this job. Not only were you in the line of fire yourself, your colleagues were as well and there were always casualties, one way or the other.

Ros did not appear very pleased with the answer at all, but she settled for a nod. 'So, what do they want?' The question was directed at Harry. 'Can't they just wave their magic sticks around and solve their sodding mess themselves?'

Harry wished he could answer to that with a yes, but unfortunately things were never that simple. A lifetime in the Service had taught him that some things just never were and when one dealt with the magical community of Britain, simplicity simply did not come into it.

He was beaten to it by Ruth. 'I think this might be about the Manchester debacle,' she said, giving her boss an inquisitive glance.

Harry's head swivelled in her direction. There weren't many occasions when the head of Section D found himself lost for words, but this was one such moment. He did not suffer from amnesia and last he checked only Adam and Harry himself had been aware that there even was a Manchester debacle. He weighed the chances of Ruth snatching the file off his desk while he wasn't watching, but dismissed the notion almost right away. The intelligence analyst was not the type for such behaviour.

'Enlighten me please, Ruth,' he said in as pleasant a voice as he could manage. The Home Secretary could have told her that this tone was never followed by something good. 'How is it possible that you are aware of the Manchester debacle?' Several of his officers were clearly on the verge of asking what the Manchester debacle even was, but they kept their silence for now and Harry was grateful for it.

Ruth blushed a little. 'Even wizards use the phone, or even the mail, every now and then,' she pointed out. 'There was an old contact of mine at GCHQ who knows some of their people and I just sent in a request for information when I first learned of it.' The analyst's cheeks were bright crimson and her eyes were fixed on the sheaf of papers in front of her, but she sounded a bit pleased with herself all the same.

And Harry could not really fault her for that. It was an impressive feat. Not many people could have pulled it off. At the same time it was a bit frightening how easily they could get access to sensitive information from the secret magical community. Did wizards have no common sense at all? Were they not aware how easy it was for Muggles – a word that the head of Section D was not particularly fond of since it always conjured up the image of a stupid incapable people, no doubt what some wizards thought about the non-magical community – to hack into mail and phone records? He should bring it to Kingsley's attention the next time they met, or they could kiss their precious Statute of Secrecy goodbye, thanks to their own carelessness.

Nevertheless, Ruth had done something impressive. He sighed in exasperation. 'Ruth, is there any institution in this country that's safe from you?'

This earned him a smug smile, even if the owner of said smile was blushing still. 'I'd like to think not.'

Well, it would certainly appear that nothing was safe from her, not even the biggest secret in the country. He might as well accept that and save himself the trouble of trying to forbid her to find out more. The more information they could get before his floor would be invaded by a bunch of wannabe Aurors, the better it was. Kingsley was a decent kind of man, but Harry did not believe for one second that he had given them all the intelligence they had on the case. They hadn't waited four weeks to inform them for no reason. Had the issue with the problematic recruits not come up, Harry doubted they'd have heard at all. He supposed he should be grateful. As it was, he was mostly annoyed.

'Then maybe you can tell us all that you've learned so far?' he invited her. Ruth was good at these briefings. She was thorough, well-prepared and enthusiastic. And Harry would like to hear what exactly she had learned.

That took her by surprise and she seemed to have trouble forming a coherent sentence for a while, but then she got up and got started. 'Well, the Manchester debacle refers to a botched-up operation of the wizarding equivalent of MI-5,' she said. 'They were chasing an unnamed group of terrorists and dark wizards that had been responsible for blowing up streets in York, Liverpool, Bath and Oxford.'

Zaf looked a bit puzzled. 'Wouldn't we have heard about it then?'

Ruth shot him an apologetic smile. 'The Ministry of Magic wiped the memories of the witnesses and put out word that it was the result of gas explosions.' He started to wonder how she had learned all this and he made a mental note to ask as soon as he had the chance. He had not even known that, so how could Ruth have found out?

Most people around this table were none too pleased with hearing that and Harry understood. He had not exactly been doing a happy dance around the room either when he had first heard that wizards could meddle with people's memories.

'Charming,' Ros commented under her breath.

Ruth pretended she had not heard that. 'The wizards eventually tracked them to Manchester four weeks ago,' she continued. 'It came to a fight and eventually the dark wizards and terrorists were captured, but there were some buildings damaged and a lot of people had seen it. The wizards had quite a lot of trouble covering it all up.'

Well, at least they had done a good job of that, because MI-5 had never as much as heard of anything gone belly-up. True, Harry had heard that some things had not gone "quiet according to plan, so there will have to be some memories that need modifying," which was the polite way of saying that some people's memories needed to be erased. The word debacle had been used for a reason.

Harry took over at this point. 'It would seem however that the wizards have missed out on some of their renegade suspects, including a few of our own. True to expectations, we had not been informed of this minor hiccup until this morning. And, as it would seem, they are quite incapable of locating and capturing their suspects themselves. And that's where we come in.' Unfortunately. Kingsley's proposal of a joined operation sounded innocent enough, but the trouble with wizards was that they always wanted to run the show, thinking that they somehow knew better how things were to be done, even when it was painfully obvious that they did not have a clue as to what they were doing.

Jo shook her head in confusion. 'What is it they want us to do then?'

Harry took a deep breath. He may not like this turn of events, but he would have to deal with them all the same. 'This is going to be a joined operation,' he announced. That was a novelty, even to him. Even during the war they had worked separately most of the time. Sharing information was as far as the cooperation went. 'And to that end we will be joined by three of their aspiring Aurors. I am being informed that they will be functioning as liaison officers, passing information between our two respective departments. While they are here, they are under our responsibility and I would ask you to treat them as team members.' Lest we bring some sodding wizard's wrath down on us.

The scowl on Ros's face seemed to have taken up permanent residence there. 'Why aspiring Aurors?' she demanded. 'And what the bloody hell are Aurors anyway?'

'Dark wizard catchers,' Ruth provided absent-mindedly, bent over some of her papers.

Harry should not have been surprised that she knew this, he told himself, yet he was. How had she figured all this out on her own?

'Then why are they not sending fully trained ones?' Zaf too clearly did not get it yet.

So far the team had not been really protesting and the head of the section suspected they were still not quite used to the idea, a little in shock even. Well, it would doubtlessly wear off soon enough. Now that was something he did not find himself looking forward to.

'Officially?' Harry asked wearily. 'Because they can't spare any of their other people, because they're too busy trying to catch as many of their own suspects without our help and they don't think that's necessary anyway when their only job is to pass on information.' If only that was the reason they were getting magical company, he thought wistfully.

'And unofficially?' Malcolm probed.

'The three we're getting are so hopeless at any normal spying that their boss thinks they would benefit from the experience they might get here,' he replied. 'We have been asked to see to it that they do learn some useful skills while they are staying here, if, of course, we can spare the time for it.' They would probably have to make the time for it, no matter how much he disliked the notion.

The silence in the meeting room was one of the loudest Harry had heard in his entire life, and that was saying something. The team seemed temporarily shocked into silence at this very unusual request. Section D was clearly torn between wanting to laugh in his face at the absurdity of it and wanting to slap it for agreeing to something so bizarre. He could not even blame them for it. He too thought it beyond ridiculous, but he had not exactly had a choice in the matter.

Of course it was Ros who broke the silence first, a look on her face that could have turned milk sour in a matter of seconds. 'So, let me get this straight: we're supposed to show some wand-waving weirdoes how to do our job?' While spoken with her usual lack of tact, this was the essence of the entire plan, as much as Harry hated the notion. He had a section to run and could do without the whole business of bringing wizards in, and pretty hopeless ones at that.

Adam sent his colleague a warning glance. 'Ros…'

But Harry shook his head. 'Yes, that is about the size of it,' he said. He may not like Ros's manners, but he appreciated her sometimes brutal honesty, to get straight to the point without beating around the bush for hours.

His answer however did nothing to pacify her. 'Well, then you have just lost your bloody mind.' The Senior Case Officer was bristling with rage.

The newest addition to the team had no reservations when it came to voicing her opinions. Harry knew most of the team wasn't incredibly fond of Ros Myers – she was a difficult woman to like after all – and that razor-sharp tongue of hers. He had overheard her saying to Jo not that long ago that "if I'd wanted a job where everybody loved me, I'd have become a vet." And true to her word she wasn't trying very hard to be liked. Sometimes Harry would almost be tempted into believing that she did whatever she could to make her colleagues' lives as difficult as she possibly could, especially since she had learned that Harry had not been able to reduce her father's sentence, another thing that didn't exactly warm the team to the idea of having Miss Myers around.

Yet for all her anger and resentment she was the best officer he had on the Grid since Tom Quinn. Adam was very good at his job as well, but at the moment he was still too affected by his wife's death to function as he had before that tragedy had happened. Truly, Harry did not doubt that it would be this Ice Queen who would end up tutoring the magical additions to Section D, or the wand-waving weirdoes, as she had so eloquently called them.

'This is non-negotiable,' he told her. 'Believe me, I'm not doing a happy dance around the room for this myself.'

Zaf cracked a smile. 'I'm sure we would all like to see that happening, Harry.'

The tension lifted somewhat as the others started to chuckle. And maybe that was what they all needed here before things had the chance to become depressing or uncomfortable any further. If he could he would have told Kingsley to stick this suggestion where the sun didn't shine, but he couldn't. He owed the man a favour and the issue of the terrorists and Death Eaters still on the loose was a far more pressing matter than a few Auror recruits with discipline issues.

He sent the officer a wry look. 'While these aspiring Aurors are here, they are not allowed to use any magic,' he went on as if his announcement had never been interrupted in the first place.

'Why not?' Jo asked. 'Surely it would…'

'The use of magic upsets the electricity,' Ruth explained before the junior officer had been able to finish her question. 'Our computers would stop working if magic was performed next to them.' She caught a few incredulous glances and shrugged. 'There was an email intercepted not long ago from some Magical Law Enforcement man to some kind of Muggle Relations Helpdesk, complaining that his Muggle television stopped working after he had performed some charm on it.' The way she said it she made it sound like it had been no trouble at all finding that out. Come to think of it, maybe it wasn't. What did surprise him was that wizards were apparently – and finally – adapting to the modern age. And about time too. Maybe he should tell Kingsley to get a computer and stop sending notes appearing out of nowhere on his desk.

'Thank you, Ruth,' he said, the smallest hint of sarcasm in his voice. 'Our new recruits will join us as of tomorrow morning. In the meantime I'd like you all to get fully up to speed on the Manchester debacle. Any useful insights, square them with Adam.'

The meeting room started emptying out. Harry himself felt like he was in need of a good whisky to take the rough edges off today, but he needed to stay sharp for a little longer. There were some important phone calls he still needed to make and he would need a clear head for that.

Ruth was still in the room as well, collecting all the files and papers that had been lying before her. Wherever the intelligence analyst went, paperwork followed in her wake. Her desk was neat and clean, but inevitably there were all kinds of papers and books to be found.

Well, he did have her on her own now, he might as well ask what he had wanted to ask since she first blurted out that explanation of hers. 'Ruth, as a matter of interest, how did you learn about the Manchester debacle, or wizards for that matter?'

The smug smile was firmly back in place now. 'Well, wizards do use the phone and mail occasionally,' she reminded him.

'I was becoming aware of the fact,' Harry shot back rather wryly.

'Well, one of the Aurors, someone called Ronald Weasley, is learning how to use a computer and to that end he is making most of his reports by mail these days.' The analyst shrugged again. 'I took an interest.' Suddenly she appeared nervous. 'I should have reported it, I know, but I thought…'

'You thought I might think you insane,' Harry finished smoothly. It was rather understandable, so he would not hold it against her. 'I would have done the same. No need to worry, Ruth.'

She flashed him a quick smile, but she was still not entirely reassured. 'Still, it was unauthorised…'

'Keep doing it,' Harry ordered. 'I'm sure they're not telling us everything they know. Keep digging.'

She nodded, the nerves gone now, back in her element. 'Any disturbing things I find?'

'Report to me.' Adam had enough on his plate as it was. And Harry was more suited to deal with any wizarding messes than the Section Chief, having dealt with the sorry lot for years. And for once it would be nice to have some advantage over his magical allies. Heaven knew they had little enough as it was already.


Next time: wizards arriving at Thames House. I hope you liked this chapter. Please review? It would mean a lot.