Disclaimer: Anything you recognize – be it character, location, idea or line – belongs to others; I may be playing with them but I make no profit from this.
Last time on Let the Games Begin
On the whole it looked extremely efficient, extremely modern and most of all, extremely out of place in the frame of huge granite architecture; though perhaps not as much as the man sitting behind it, expertly typing on the keyboard…
The incongruous apparition was a handsome man with an air of arrogance about him. He had brown smooth hair that fell over his forehead and eyes, obscuring his expression.
He was impeccably dressed in what Terry could have bet were designer clothes; his perfectly tailored slacks and silk shirt could have looked like an ordinary, though expensive, business suit if it wasn't for the unusual length of the white jacket. Clearly he was a man who set himself apart from the masses without bothering to become unconventional.
He looked fully absorbed in his work and didn't deign them of a glance; they remained awkwardly standing in front of his desk, fidgeting but silent. Something told them this was a man used to be feared and respected.
Finally the stranger raised his face, pinning them with two icy sapphire eyes: the expression in them was so deep and inscrutable, so cold and cutting, that Terry shivered, his mind filling with images of ice pinnacles and cutting winds.
He scrutinized them intensely from top to bottom, giving Terry the upsetting feeling that he was dissecting them with his gaze and carefully evaluating every piece for functionality.
Somehow, he had the horrible sensation that they were coming up short.
The man's sneer became more and more pronounced as the piercing blue eyes infallibly spotted and lingered on their dishevelled hair, torn clothes, the spots of mud streaking their outfits and their general sweaty and unkempt appearance.
Terry fought the heat he could feel growing in his cheeks and lowered his head, mortified by the judging sneer of the stranger. He felt Potter fidget uncomfortably at his side and caught him nervously trying to flatten his unmanageable hair.
"You're late," snapped suddenly the man, every syllable dropping with exacting precision. It made unpunctuality seem like a terrible crime. Terry gulped.
Unlike him, both Potter and Malfoy reacted with mulish scowls, their being intimidated vanishing in front of the contemptuous attitude faster than snow in the midday sun.
The Gryffindor spat, irritated: "Late for what, pray tell? I wasn't aware we were on a tight schedule!"
Malfoy's grumbled comment was a lot more insulting and made Terry discreetly roll his eyes at hearing the man declared 'a disgrace to the name of wizard'.
The man's attention snapped to the blond and the Slytherin stilled and paled when he met the livid gaze holding him under scrutiny.
"I beg your pardon?" asked the man dangerously.
Malfoy gulped, but then straightened defiantly and recklessly shrugged, openly throwing his own contempt right back at the man: "I said you're a disgrace to wizardkind! It's obvious you lack proper pride... dressing like that" he gestured with his own sneer, "and working like an uncouth plebeian. No true wizard would lower themselves to use such ridiculous things as these Muggle combutens!" he sniffed disdainfully.
The four of them sighed or grumbled in exasperation at the blond's all too familiar attitude.
The man however simply pinned him with a freezing stare: "What, pray tell, do you mean by 'wizard'?" he asked acidly.
Terry's eyebrows rose in shock and he shared disbelieving glances with Potter and Neville.
Malfoy stared at the man as if he'd come from Mars on a fluorescent pink broomstick which occasionally brayed and said very slowly, as if he was talking to someone retarded: "A magic user."
The other returned his attention to his laptop with a scoff, utterly dismissing them with a curt: "Magic doesn't exist."
They all stared at him.
He went on working on something or other, fingers flying over the keyboard, producing a pleasant ticking sound, or scrolling the screen and scanning it unbelievably fast.
They stared some more.
He ignored them.
Eventually Potter found some words: "Right. Right. No such thing as magic. Ok." He ignored his companions' choked incredulity and took a deep breath. "So all this…?" he asked leadingly.
The man raised his eyes from the screen long enough to bestow an infuriatingly condescending look upon him. "I realize that any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic, to the uninformed mind," he said patronizingly, "but I really expected more from potential successors. Surely you do not need to resort to pointless superstition to justify to yourself the as-yet-unknowns the world presents you with?"
There were varied reactions to this little speech – Hermione bristled openly at being declared uninformed and superstitious, Malfoy raged at magic being considered pointless, Terry gaped – but as usual it was Potter who cut through the insults slash meaningless minutiae to get straight to the heart of the problem.
"Potential successors? What the hell are you talking about?"
Terry blinked, then winced. Good point – he should have grasped that tiny detail himself!
Unfortunately, the man ignored the green-eyed boy masterfully and went on to say: "As a matter of fact, this illusion is the result of a complex and innovative application of the scientific principle at the base of my company's prize product."
"Your company?" blurted out Hermione.
Unhindered, the man continued in precise, clipped tones: "In short, during a filming of the Templo de Diablos in Spain, the light scattered from the stone architectures was recorded and now it is being reconstructed in a holographic interface so that an eye or camera placed in the area where the reconstructed beams cross and blend will see an image of the object even though the object is no longer present, appearing three-dimensional and, to a superficial glance, real, thanks to the almost-constant changes to the position and orientation of the viewing system."
"Huh?" was Potter's and Neville's brilliant contribution.
Terry worked through the explanation while trying to stop gaping. "How… how are you reproducing it? Holograms are practically sci-fi…"
"My company specializes precisely in the production of holographic interfaces," sneered the man. "There are hologram generators all around us displaying what you see. Perfectly rational explanation – the system is patented if you must know. No hocus-pocus nonsense!" He shot them a smug look.
"Your company?" asked Hermione again, rather faintly. She looked like she expected the answer but wouldn't believe it until she heard it.
"KaibaCorp," the man said shortly, his attention already back to the laptop he was working on.
Terry's mouth fell in shock as Hermione's breath rushed out in a squeak: "No way!"