Edd Gibbon was thoroughly miserable. He really didn't know why the Dark Lord had sent him, Travers, and Dolohov to America. Surely they could just gather in more volunteers from the East, instead of coming all the way over here?
And why did he have to be one sent to the South? It felt like he was taking a bath whenever he stepped outside, and he could feel the suspicious eyes of the locals on him as he walked down the street.
But he was at his destination, and he winced slightly as he walked into the Magicshine Bar. He hated what the Americans called "country" music. But he would endure it. This was one of the main gathering places for wizards in this region, and the Death Eaters' main contact in the MACUSA had assured them that they would find plenty of volunteers for the cause here.
He looked around, concealing his disgust. It was all so...garish. He would never come to a place like this had he any choice in the matter. The beer would be cold, the music detestable, and the inhabitants uncouth.
No matter. He had a job to do, and so he suppressed his feelings and took a seat at the bar.
"What'll you have?" The barman asked. "I got Bud, Coors, and Miller in a can," Gibbon suppressed a shudder, "and you can see what's on tap. I got some foreign stuff if yer lookin' for a taste a' home."
His head snapped up and he looked at the grinning barman.
"How...?"
"Y'ain't from around here, that's plain as day," the barman said, and Gibbon looked around and silently cursed as he saw that nearly all the wizards here were dressed like the local muggles, albeit with a little more flair and fancier hats. His own garb stood out badly.
"An' I've been overseas. You look like a Brit. Am I right?"
"Yes." So much for being subtle. He'd never live this down.
"Now that gets me t' wondering," the man said absently, "'bout why a Brit would be coming in here. 'Specially in these times, with that Voldemort feller come back."
"Could I have that beer?" He asked. "It's a thirsty tale."
The barman grinned. "Have an Amstel," he said, bringing up a bottle. "And start talking."
He took a pull and nearly spat it out. What was this, horse urine? He swallowed, though, and started talking.
"Yeah, I'm here because of the Dark Lord," he started, not noticing the way the barman's eyes had gone flat when he gave him a title. "He makes things uncomfortable for his enemies. It's a bit unhealthy to be one of them."
"I can imagine so," the barman replied. "He's got quite a reputation over here."
Ah, so the Dark Lord's fame had spread. Excellent. He wouldn't have to go over all that then. He could go right to why he was here.
"So you know all about him, then?"
"Yeah," someone said from over by the music machine. "Wants to get rid of any wizards 'thout wizard parents, then take over the No-Majs."
Gibbon nodded enthusiastically. "That's exactly it." He smiled. "And I'm here to tell you that you can join, if you want."
"Join? Why?" Asked somebody else.
"Britain is only the beginning! Once we destroy the mudbloods in our country we'll be able to help you get rid of...yours..."
It was at that point that Gibbon realized that the temperature in the room had become wintry and absolutely silent, aside from the music, and his voice trailed off as he looked around the room.
The barman spoke, then, in a voice colder than the North Sea. "Y' seem t' be confused. Let me 'splain to you."
He pointed to four men sitting in a booth who bore a family resemblance to each other. "The Gist cousins, the male ones anyway. Half-bloods."
He pointed again, to a table where a man and woman were glaring at Gibbon. "Tucker and Sally Donnel. Tucker's a No-Maj, like Sally's parents."
He pointed to a woman sitting at the other end of the bar. "Over there, you have Caroline Wilson. Half-blood."
He grinned like a wolf. "As am I."
Gibbon felt his knees start to shake.
The barman gave him a look that mixed pity and utter contempt, heavy on the contempt. "No one cares about Rappaport's law except those Yankees up in New York and Boston. You thought that 'cause our No-Maj neighbors were stupid about race that we'd be like them, somehow?"
He snorted. "That, and once you get out of New England No-Majs tend to be a lot less weird about magic. Boys, get him out of here. Don't rough him up too bad."
As he went flying out the door ten seconds later, he found himself wondering if Dolohov or Travers were having better luck.
William Pilsudski grumbled a bit as he stumped through the halls of the MBI's headquarters in New York.
Working for the Magical Bureau of Investigation had its perks. Dealing with his superiors was not on the list, especially when it was Finley Norwalk IV.
Britain was finally officially acknowledging that Voldemort was back, something the MACUSA had known for months. Europe was divided on the issue, and the rest of the world didn't seem to care much at all.
Truth be told, he wouldn't care much either, were it not for two messages that had crossed his desk at the New Orleans field office. The first one had been official, a report from Alabama where a Death Eater had come asking for volunteers to help Voldemort take over Britain. The locals had given him short shrift, though there were some wand trash who might take him up on it. The second had come from a friend of his at the Boston office. Two men known to be Death Eaters had been seen going into and out of the houses of some of Boston's oldest families.
His friend wasn't sure what their reception had been like—the old families were not as forthright as his fellow backcountrymen—but the indications were that Voldemort and his lunatics were trying to recruit here, which would create a lot of trouble even if they weren't successful.
So what did Norwalk want him to do?
Norwalk wanted him to focus his efforts on the smuggling of illegal magic items. When he arrived at Norwalk's office, his assistant, a pretty witch named Belinda Tenson, gave him a sympathetic look as she buzzed the office.
"Yes?"
"Mr. Pilsudski is here to see you now."
"Send him in, send him in."
"Yes sir."
When William walked in, he was reminded of the other reasons he disliked Norwalk. The supercilious air, the nasal twang, and the lean face all produced a stereotypical Yankee patrician—the kind that had dominated the MACUSA since its beginning, and whose grip had only started to loosen in the past century.
"Mr. Pilsudski," the older wizard said. "Sit, please. We have much to talk about."
William looked at him skeptically. "I would like to know why you called me up from New Orleans."
The patrician coughed. "Yes. I was wondering if you had received any...odd messages lately."
Ah-ha. Norwalk wanted to know if someone was telling tales out of school, as Mad-eye had put it when they worked together on a creature-smuggling case that had been abruptly shuttered when it started implicating members of certain families.
Well, too bad.
"Can't say as I have, sir," he replied, deliberately thickening his Tennessee accent. The Pilsudskis had immigrated to MACUSA territory in 1971, and had assimilated with a vengeance. Outside of New England, what stigma remained to No-Maj-borns was held by the older generation.
Within New England...memories were long. Very long.
"Pity," Norwalk said. "But no matter. What of this incident in Alabama?"
"It's troubling. We already knew Voldemort was back, but he didn't try recruiting outside of Europe last time around, as best as I can tell."
"Do you think he'll find many willing to help him?" Norwalk asked. William resisted the urge to frown. The question was asked rather less anxiously than he would have, in Norwalk's position.
"A few. But not many."
Norwalk sighed. "A pity. Ah well. Have you gathered anything new about the smuggling?"
"Precious little. Ludo Bagman's disappearance threw most of the Transatlantic smuggling into limbo. They're still sorting out who owes what to who." He paused. "Any leads on where he went off to?"
Norwalk shook his head. "No. There's been reports of him everywhere of course. But the goblins are tenacious. I plan to let them find him."
William shrugged. He wasn't sure if that was the attitude the head of the MBI should take, but he had a hard time caring much about what happened to the man. "We did pick up some evidence pointing to Mundungus Fletcher."
"Really? Fascinating. See if you can pursue that angle." Norwalk smiled unpleasantly. "I would like to see him behind bars."
Which was why, if they did end up arresting Fletcher, Norwalk wouldn't know about it until he was in the Woolworth building. The last time William had gotten near Fletcher Norwalk had been the one behind shutting down the investigation. Now he wanted Fletcher arrested.
That was the sort of change in attitude that got him thinking about why it would occur. He didn't like any of the answers he was coming up with.
"Of course," he replied.
Norwalk beamed. "Excellent. Do you have any questions?"
Several, William thought, but I'm not willing to ask you right now, because doing so would reveal far too much.
"No sir," he said aloud, "none at all."
When he came through the door of the MBI office in New Orleans, he must have still been annoyed from his meeting with Norwalk, because Mandy Flamberge, who went by that because Salamandra was just annoying, gave him one of her patented glares. This one was the "don't go biting people's heads off because of something somebody else did" look.
"Norwalk was his usual self?"
"Yep," he replied. "Now he wants us to go after Mundungus Fletcher." He snorted. "Now that he's more dangerous to the old families than useful."
That brought nods from all the corners of the room. Benjamin Roth was especially disgusted. His family was technically one of the old families, as they'd been in New Orleans since before the Great Scouring, which had never reached the French holdings in America.
However, because of that, the wizarding community in New Orleans, and those areas influenced by it more than New York or Boston, had always been at loggerheads with their northeastern brethren on Rappaport's Law, and the Roths had been firmly against it from the beginning.
Which was why Ben was still a field agent instead of heading a field office, like he should be.
"Do you think Fletcher knows something?" He asked.
"Probably. Like how those known Death Eaters made it here to the States. The boundaries are supposed to trip whenever anyone who isn't allowed to come in crosses, and Death Eaters definitely aren't."
There were nods at that. The Northeasterners had obstructed every attempt to broach the topic until Voldemort's disappearance, but once it looked like they were losing they finally agreed to declare the Death Eaters a terrorist organization. By law, members of terrorist organizations were not permitted to enter the boundaries of the United States, and there were spells that activated the moment someone crossed the MACUSA's borders who wasn't allowed to. No alarms had gone off when those three crossed, which meant someone had smuggled them in, and Fletcher knew how to do that.
"So we are going to try and find him?"
"Or at least find his contacts. We know that at least one of the Death Eaters is down here. The question is whether he was planning on going out through New Orleans, or if he was going to go west to try and recruit there once he finished in the South?"
"Good luck with that," Mandy said with a grin, and the others laughed. The overlap between the magical and no-Maj worlds in the Southwest was a constant irritation to the old northeastern families—especially because, particularly in California, the families were just as old themselves.
They might find more receptive audiences in the Northwest, however. Seattle's initial wizarding community had been mostly northeasterners looking to carve out a place for themselves, unlike that of Chicago.
That, however, wasn't his concern.
"Chantry, I need you to check around. See if this Ed Gibbon's been talking to any of the usual suspects."
Andrew Chantry, who rarely spoke much, nodded. The Chantrys had more than their share of ne'er do wells and shady characters in their family, but Andrew wasn't one of them. Norwalk could cluck about it all he wanted. William was happy to have him.
He frowned then, as a stray thought struck him from thinking about the Southwest. "Do we know if any Death Eaters went down to South America?" He asked. The wizards who'd come to North America from the south had mostly been interested in running their own lives. The ones who'd stayed in the old Iberian empires had been meddling with the no-Majs down there for centuries. They might be more receptive to Voldemort's ideas.
"Not that anyone's mentioned," Mandy replied.
"Right. I'll talk to some people. We might want to find out where else he's sent people. If the Mandarins or the Brahmins get involved..."
Everyone winced. China and India were the most powerful of the wizarding countries. That was a bit of an adjustment for First-World No-Majs to make, but Ben had explained it that it was because the events that had driven the rise of the West and the decline of the East, like the Scientific Revolution and the Manchu invasion of China, had had no equivalent in the wizarding world. And magic was actually pretty evenly distributed among the world's population. Which meant that the two most insular and hidebound wizarding governments were the most powerful. Fortunately, the internal politics of both were messy enough that they couldn't be bothered to flex their muscles. Insularity was a good thing.
"Flamberge, start looking at potential candidates for surveillance." She nodded. The kind of people who usually got recruited into this kind of mess were in the MBI's files already, for various reasons. As for the odd ones out, they would almost certainly be seen in the company of the others. And who knew? They might turn up a connection or two to the old families.
"Roth, see if you can get in touch with some people. Find out what you can."
He wasn't going to say it out loud, but Ben knew what he meant. Find out what the old families were planning, or if they were planning anything at all.
"I'll call some of the other field offices. Let's go."
And so they did, and he went quickly to his office. He knew who he needed to call, and it would best not be over official channels.
Fortunately, all of the field offices had their plans for unobserved communications. He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Chicago office.
"Kessler here."
"It's Pilsudski. Usual spot for lunch? We should catch up about old friends."
"Yes. We should. See you there, save me a spot."
It wasn't surprising that he'd be late. Chicago was a busy place.
"Don't worry, see you there."
He hung up the phone and called the offices in Asheville and Reno. Roberts and Hinojosa were both available, and once he was done he turned to his correspondence box.
He fiddled with it a moment, then cracked it open. It was as he'd hoped-there was a letter in it from Mad-Eye.
He took his wand and tapped the seal, a special kind that, if touched by a wand it was not attuned to, would catch on fire and incinerate the message. Once it had finished unrolling, he read it carefully. Moody was definitely more paranoid than usual, and who could blame him? Being kidnapped, trapped in your own trunk, and impersonated by a Death Eater for nearly a year was unlikely to make you less so, after all.
Through all the roundabout comments, references to incidents that only they knew about, and two or three substitution ciphers, he found out several things. First, the Brits were utterly compromised. The only offices that weren't were the Aurors and those involved with Muggles.
Everywhere else had at least one Death Eater or sympathizer, perhaps more. He winced. He was fairly sure that he was in the same boat, except that even the MBI had been infiltrated.
Also, Voldemort was gathering allies from all over. Giants and werewolves, and volunteers from Durmstrang country. He grimaced.
The letter also mentioned that there were rumors that some of Voldemort's recruiters had gone further afield, and he sighed. He'd have to confirm that for Mad-eye, and he didn't want to give his friend even more bad news. Still, better to get bad news than be blindsided.
Also, it looked like Fletcher wasn't going to be crossing the pond anytime soon. Apparently Dumbledore had him doing something or other. Which was odd, because everyone knew that the man was not to be trusted.
He'd need to ask Mad-eye to talk to the man, then. So much to do.
The letter to Moody, though, could wait until he talked with the other MBI officers. He did some more paperwork, then went through his reports to see if a further pattern had developed. Apparently a fellow named Gibbon had been kicked out of a bar in Sweetwater when he tried to push for wizarding supremacy.
He looked at the man's description, then checked it against the incident in Alabama. One and the same.
So. He was probably going straight west, and the others probably were too. He was relieved to see that Sweetwater had been less than receptive—it was one of the bigger magical communities outside of the Northeast.
He looked at his clock. Almost noon. He set his door to "Out for lunch" then touched the one portkey his office permitted in or out.
Five seconds later, he was in a large bathroom in Denver. It was the sort of place a little weirdness didn't go much out of place. He quirked a smile. American wizards weren't nearly as flamboyant as Europeans, but there were always those little things that some just couldn't resist having.
He stepped out quickly. Pat's Diner was close by, but if he didn't claim a table soon there wouldn't be any left. It was also where the MBI heads who weren't sympathetic to the magical separatist or supremacist movements met to discuss their superiors and vent their displeasure with them. It was, after all, the purest coincidence that all of the MBI's directors had come from the New York and Boston field offices.
He secured a table for four and sat down just as Hinojosa came through the door, Kessler and Roberts not far behind him. The waitress took their orders and brought their drinks, and then they set to talking.
"Norwalk's acting squirrelly," Roberts said flatly. "Cagey, but erratic about it."
Kessler nodded. "We got a report from the Dakotas. There was a bar fight near the Black Hills. Guy who started it was from Eastern Europe, talking about wizarding supremacy."
William grinned. "I'll bet that went over well." There weren't a lot of witches and wizards in that area, just because there weren't a lot of people, but the ones that were there observed Rappaport's law even less than the Southerners did.
"Had the tar beaten out of him," Kessler replied casually. "Norwalk was on me to find who'd done it, so I sent Zizka. Who, of course, found that nobody there had any recollection of what happened."
They all grinned at that, and William talked about what had happened in Alabama and Texas.
Roberts frowned. "Why didn't I hear about something happening in my area? And Kessler, what about the eastern parts of your area?"
That was a fair question, and Kessler rubbed the back of his head. "He might have gotten lucky. I know the Purestrain over in West Virginia is the only place in the eastern part of the country where he could get a hearing outside of New England. Hinojosa?"
"There's one spot on the east side of Washington, near Spokane." He grimaced. "The Fourteen."
All of the men around the table grimaced as well. "You'd think they'd learn," William said with some disgust.
Hinojosa shrugged. "I'm just glad they're not all over California. I've had issues with anti-pureblood bigotry there, actually."
"Wait, what?" This was news to everyone at the table.
"Yes. Apparently purebloods are inherently inferior to half-bloods and No-Maj-borns because of inbreeding. In order to increase the genetic diversity of wizardkind, all marriage and childbearing by magical couples should be prohibited unless one is No-Maj-born."
William blinked. "What on God's green earth...?"
Hinojosa shrugged. "They're not wrong about the inbreeding. Look at Norwalk." Everyone snickered. "But Rappaport wasn't wrong about the dangers of getting too close to no-Majs."
That hit a bit close to home—but he had a point.
"Besides, replacing one form of idiocy with its mirror image isn't exactly a win. But, back to important things," Hinojosa continued. "We probably know where these gentlemen will be. They are members of a foreign terrorist organization, which means they are illegally present here." He smiled thinly. "What say we deport them?"
For the first time since he and the others had arrived in America, Gibbon and the others had an appreciative audience. It was, admittedly, not the sort of audience he would have normally wanted. Most of them had that down-and-out look common to those who weren't where they wanted to be in life, and none of them looked like they belonged anywhere better than this filthy establishment. Not his usual sort.
But they'd make good wand fodder.
"It's not time yet to take our rightful place," he continued, "to rule as we were born to. But soon, brothers and sisters, we will be able to complete—"
Every door and window in the place exploded inward. The fragments dropped to the floor almost immediately, and nearly a dozen men and women just...appeared in the room, wands out and ready.
Gibbon raised his hands slowly, as did Travers and Dolohov.
"What d'we have here?" A voice said in an accent very similar to the one the bartender at the magicshine had had, and he looked at a tow headed burly fellow striding through the front door next to a lean black man. "Three men who aren't supposed to be in the country. Whose arrival is recorded nowhere." He smiled unpleasantly. "Which means you are currently in violation of the law. And because none of you three are citizens of the United States, but are foreigners, we can simply boot you out of the country and have done. Or we can bring you to trial and have a lot of fuss about what y'all were doing here. Choose."
"We'll take the first one." Travers said almost before the American had finished talking.
"Your wands. Now." The American sounded disappointed, Gibbon thought as he slowly reached for his wand and took it out front-end first. The MBI was not known for being easy on potential threats. Or for laxness in enforcing its immigration and entry laws, likely because the laws themselves were so lax. All you had to do was just not be a serious criminal, deathly ill, or nutters.
As a result, no one had any sympathy for people who came in the wrong way. Gibbon was pretty sure that if he tried anything the man in front of him would kill him without hesitation and no one would care.
He handed over his wand very carefully.
So, he noted with some relief, did Travers and Dolohov. If one of them had decided to resist, he doubted that he would survive the resultant fight. And even if he did, he suspected the MBI would give him an actual jail sentence.
"Turn around," the man said, and once Gibbon had done so he continued with, "put your hands behind your back."
He did so, and as the shackles clicked into place he looked over at the other two, who were glaring balefully forward, an expression he permitted himself until the Americans turned them around and marched them out to the waiting prisoner transport carriage.
As they took off, he swore that there would be a reckoning for this, someday. When the Dark Lord had triumphed and cleansed Europe of all the mudbloods and blood traitors, America would be next. But for now, they would wait.
William's feelings were decidedly mixed as he sat down at his desk to write the apprehension report for the three Death Eaters. They had been able to catch them all, at least, and one of them had been fool enough to write down the itineraries for him and his fellows and leave it in a pocket. That would make figuring out where they'd received a warm reception easier—find places they'd been where there wasn't a report of a fight.
Of course, that didn't mean there hadn't been one, or that the Death Eaters might have noticed people becoming unfriendly before it came to brawling time, but it gave a good starting point.
On the other hand, the three terrorist recruiters had reached all the stops on their itineraries—presumably, anyway, since The Fourteen was the last place listed on all of them. That meant they'd been able to spread their message, and while there were few true believers in magical supremacy outside of New England, there was plenty of wand trash who would see the idea as a chance to get power.
Well, plenty might be pushing it, but since the entire population under the MACUSA's jurisdiction was around fifteen thousand people, any additions to the pro-Voldemort faction would be extremely bad.
Also, none of the three had spilled the beans about how they'd gotten into MACUSA territory. He suspected that if he'd and the others had had more time with them they might have gotten answers, but Norwalk had shown up within an hour of their arrival at the Woolworth building and taken charge, then quickly bundled the three off before the MBI had the chance to do more than search them and ask some quick questions.
Nothing suspicious there, no sir.
It was extremely frustrating.
There was a soft "ring-a-ling" sound, and he opened his correspondence box and smiled. They'd gotten the names of everyone who was at the Fourteen, and Kessler had put his best surveillance agent on Norwalk's tail. Unfortunately, Norwalk hadn't done anything incriminating, curse it. However, once he'd sent the three out through the Boston Port of Entry, he'd immediately gone to his family's house, and within the hour several persons who were connected to prominent magic supremacy sympathizers had arrived there and had a conference that had lasted until sunrise the next morning.
Hinojosa and Roberts were going to be extremely busy surveilling the Purestrain and the Fourteen, and Kessler and he were going to be busy covering for them. Because he knew what Norwalk was going to want them to focus on, and what he would want them to forget about.
And he and the others intended to do neither.
Of course, they'd have to be careful about it, but he didn't think that would be a problem. Norwalk would expect them to do as they were told, because that was what they had usually done.
Not this time. Not with the survival of one of the few magical powers that wasn't demented on the subject of No-Majs at stake. And if Britain should fall—it didn't take a genius to figure out that the Death Eaters and Durmstrangers would first bring down the Beauxbatons countries, then turn elsewhere.
America would eventually be on their target list. And if nothing else, should that day come, he wanted as few fifth columnists as possible in his country. Especially men like Finley Norwalk.
When he opened the box, he was somewhat surprised to find that there were actually two items in there. One was a letter from Moody. Apparently the trio had made it back to Britain, and not taken a detour down to South America.
He frowned for a moment, then made a note to send a letter to his Brazilian contacts. He'd worked with the Brazilian Conselho de Brujos a couple of times, and while they were disdainful of No-Majs, they also resented attempts to get them involved in anything outside of South America. They would not be pleased if Death Eaters were trying to drag them into a civil war.
And besides, it had been awhile since he wrote to Joao Figueroa.
The second item was what had caused him to smile, though. It was a complete dossier on Norwalk and his cronies, from the files the Roths kept. Ben had finally managed to talk his family into letting them out. This was going to make things…interesting.
A/N: Yes, I am aware that in the Fantastic Beasts films there are multiple magical law enforcement agencies in the MACUSA, and that none of them are called the Magical Bureau of Investigation. However, since Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set in the 1920s and the HP books are set in the 1990s, it is entirely plausible that some renaming occurred in the course of seven decades.