Unexpected
WHEN: August 20, 2010 – 6:50 PM
WHERE: Ministry of Magic, Auror Office, Harry Potter's office
"ALL AURORS MEET IMMEDIATELY AT BRIEFING ROOM", the robotic voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt sounded through a speaker in Harry's office.
"Screw that, always before shift end!", Harry exclaimed and got up. Just one week in full service after that assassination attempt and this was the third time something happened right before the shift end.
The last two times it only were drunk kids copying the once-popular joke of hexing public toilets while under the Trace (which made the arrests a pretty short-forward process), but the problem was that each of these cases had left one hour of memory modifying and two hours of pointless paperwork. Even famous Harry Potter, vice-lead of Auror Squad, was not immune to red tape.
As he entered the briefing room, it was already filled up. His old buddy Ron was the last to appear (as usual), and Kingsley immediately began to speak.
"This" – he pointed towards an animation of a burning building that appeared with a flick of his wand – "happened like ten minutes ago. We have absolutely no information who it was, a scan done two minutes after the explosion showed up no witnesses in five kilometers around the location. The whole area is deserted since around 2008."
Ron asked: "Any Death Eater traces? Magical remains? How do we know this was not a Muggle with some weapon to test or Muggle terrorists planning their next attack?"
"We got magical echo there. The whole warehouse has been subjected to energies so intense that they, even minutes after the accidents, left more than visible traces. John" – he pointed to John Redstone, his successor as Auror leader after Kingsley had become Minister – "has tried to find out if the signature of the magic has showed up already in earlier crimes. The point is: there is no evidence that it was any British wizard. I've owled the German, Russian and French authorities, maybe it was an escapee."
"What about Muggles near the scene? Did they already begin investigating?" Harry asked.
"Yes, they launched a whole terrorist squad there and arrived moments after John left. They won't find anything other than stone, though. Thank god they have no idea about magic… but it might be an idea to tell the Prime Minister what's going on."
"So, what are we going to do?", Harry asked.
"We wait until tomorrow and let the Muggles finish their job. No need to make them suspicious, the total lack of evidence is enough for them without seeing a large number of people strolling around in a deserted area. John has already magically sealed the whole site – no wizard except an Auror and no magical creature is able to go nearer than 1km around the warehouse remains.", Kingsley answered.
Two minutes later, Harry and Ron exited the briefing room. "Jesus, I thought it was another oh-so-urgent toilet once again. What do you think: what was this?", Harry asked his partner.
"Not the faintest idea, man. But I hope we can nail the one behind this down. And quickly. In terms of destruction this seems like someone tries to copy Death Eaters… but who? All the old folks got locked away for long times, and the young ones… I don't believe anyone of them was it. We, after all, have got their magic signatures, and this one doesn't match any other we know."