Round 11 - I Open At The Close
Beater 2: Line of dialogue: "Are you sure they want to stay hidden?"
And that's not all: your story MUST also start and finish with the same word.
Optional Prompts: (quote) 'Dream a little harder' – Team Starkid, (word) coffee
Word count: 1011
Disclaimer: While I own the HP series I don't own the rights to it and I don't intend to make any profit from this, just have some fun and beat some bludgers.
The Hidden Players
"Are you sure they want to stay hidden?"
Sherman did not answer me. He just cocked his head to the side and stuck out his tongue. I scratched him behind his ears absentmindedly.
Laura, on the other hand, did. "Yes, they do."
"Idiots."
"They should call you Sherlock, not Mycroft."
"Tell that to my mother." It would certainly amuse her. She had accepted that most people readily believed my name was Mycroft Holmes and few ever called me Miles despite the fact that I have Miles Holmer written on my birth-certificate.
"Maybe, I will."
I shook my head, grinning. "I like Sherlock more anyway."
"Really? That is good to know. But, Myc, could you please explain how wanting to stay hidden makes them all idiots?"
"Well, they are terrible at it. So bad, that I really do wonder if they are even trying."
"It could be what the war was about, couldn't it?"
"It could."
We lapsed into silence. This was, frankly speaking, terrifying. It was one thing to refuse to believe there is no such thing as magic. I always was one to "dream a little harder" and only ever denied the existence of magic in order to not stand out. I might like Sherlock better, but there is a reason why they nicknamed me "Mycroft" long before I started to preside over intelligence agencies.
But it was very different matter, indeed, to have a hidden society of magic users that were by all accounts on the brim of a civil war. Especially, if one took the time to review the weird happenings in the 70s and discovered just how many people were likely lost to the last one.
"But even if it was, didn't the separatists win? How, then, do you explain the paper trails mysteriously ending at age eleven? The strangely dressed individuals? The moves from one place to another in a blink of an eye? Walking through the wall in such a public place like King's Cross? The casual disregard of security cameras?"
"So why didn't we know a thing about them until we started looking into the Sirius Black and Harry Potter matter?" asked Laura reasonably.
I took a sip of my coffee — the for once sweetened beverage helped me settle so my voice did not shake as I suggested, "Memory spells?"
Laura shook her head. So, she had arrived at the same conclusion, the one I hadn't dared to believe before.
"No, I think our willingness to question our sanity and equipment and the old 'where there isn't an accuser, there is no crime' was enough to hide them. Besides, they likely can get papers when there happen to be one."
"Probably. But I don't like this."
"Neither do I."
"So, we know their dangerous criminal escaped. They likely were at civil war in the late 70s. They start their education at eleven, can alter or wipe memories, and disappear in a blink of an eye. Their favourite excuse for the damage their conflicts cause is a gas explosion, even if there is no gas line anywhere in the vicinity of said explosion... Basically, we don't know what they can do, but they seem to have little knowledge about our world. They likely diverged from it during the witch hunts that came with reformation."
"Yeah, do you think they had something to do with that exotic lizard the Prime Minister's niece got from him? Ryan still swears up and down there was no way he could have bought it."
"Although it's troubling, it is entirely possible. I'm just glad that they aren't at war now."
Sherman strode towards Laura to demand more petting. "What are we going to do now?"
"We obviously aren't going to find anything else on Black and from what little we know, we don't want to draw more attention to our world — even less to ourselves."
"So what do we do?"
"We follow the leads we have. Anyone who disappeared at eleven years old and reappeared as an adult or who never existed, to begin with. We look at those close to them. We look for anyone willing to talk. And we look for the repeated widespread mentions of supernatural powers and make plans for countering them. We look more closely at all the cover-ups we discovered from the 70s. We do what we always do: we keep our eyes open, prepare for the worst and hope for the best."
"And about Black?"
"He hasn't harmed anyone since his escape, has he? We continue to look for him and if we do encounter him, we might as well attempt to make a deal."
~~oOoooOoooOo~~ Time Skip ~~oOoooOoooOo~~ 2 years later~~oOoooOoooOo~~
The wand rolled to the ground. The black wizard followed suit, dragged to the ground by the impact of Sherman's attack. Who would have thought that dogs would be this effective against wizards? I, of course, had hoped that they would be—had guessed they would be by their seeming dependence on wands—but, even so, I was glad Sherman took the man by surprise.
I strolled over to where Sherman was keeping watch over the 'treat' and carefully—I didn't want to break it, after all—stepped on the fallen wand. "Going by that reaction, you are stationed here as a protection detail. So how do you like our little drill so far?"
He glared at me. I glared right back. "If you wizards really wanted to stay hidden, you were doing an awful job of it, even before your civil unrest spilt over. We have two options now, Mr Shacklebolt: I can call back Sherman so we can discuss the security matters like the professionals we are... or we can do this the hard way."
"I am afraid that you have me at a bit of a disadvantage..."
"Holmes, Mr Shacklebolt," I said, signalling to Sherman, who, keeping his eyes on the wizard, backed to me and sat in front of the leg under which Kingsley's wand lay. I watched as the man stood up with deliberate slowness.
"We could start with what exactly our opponents' motives are?"