"Do you know why you're here?" a hooded figure said to the person strapped to the table.
"No, No…" the governors flunky stammered.
"The governor has assured us that he had no knowledge that the two magi were even there, let alone wanted to talk to him. Do you understand what that means?"
"B… But they were just women."
"They were Magi, according to our histories, either of them had the power to wipe Istanbul off the map. Did you not wonder why the gracious Emperor deigned to speak with them?"
"N…No"
"You are going to allow us to ascertain the truth of the Governors words. If they are true, he will merely be assigned to the dung mills."
"I'll talk, I'll talk, give me veritaserum I'll tell you everything." He starts to scream as a trolley loaded with different potions is brought out.
"Oh you'll talk, and the veritaserum will come later when you're really willing to tell me everything I want to know. You see, unlike the muggles, for us torture is a very reliable and therapeutic method of getting information from people. Once you're willing to tell me anything just to get the pain to stop, that's when the veritaserum comes in. That way we know that everything you're telling us is true.
"Now where shall we start, bone breaker, bowel expelling, amputation, I know nail growth. Oh, while I remember, make it good as you have an audience."
The figure picks up two leather mittens that look like they'd take the a fist rather than a flat hand. The flunky looks over into the direction indicated and sees the Governor strapped to a similar table that's tilted so that he's standing up.
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Amelia looked around the room at the handful of Aurors that she absolutely trusted to be there for the right reasons and not likely to let the power they wield go to their heads.
"You are all here because I trust you to do your jobs and do them well. Even if it goes against what I want you to do. You all have a strong sense of right and wrong and have chosen this job as a calling rather than a career. That includes you Moody, even though you're retiring next year.
"You are now going to be what the muggles call a special operations squad. You already know your basic occlumency as part of the job. You will be going back to basics until you can visualise your own magic. I know, it's nothing ground-breaking parents have been doing this for their children for centuries. But once you can visualise it, you are all going to start sewing like this. Every. Single. One. Of. You. If I come into the office and you're not sewing you'll be running laps with me behind you throwing stinging hexes at your arse while you're sewing. Do you understand me?"
"Yes Ma'am." They chorused.
"I'm interested to see where you're going with this lass." Moody added.
"Oh don't worry, once you can sew a straight line I'm confiscating your wands and giving you blanks."
There were various gasps of dismay and denial. Moody just looked at her speculatively. She drew her sword and stabbed it point down into the desk.
"How do you think I learnt to use this instead of a wand?"
"I'll whip 'em into shape Bones, have no fear."
"Thank you, Moody."
"Once you're good enough for Moody, three of you will be on sentry duty at all times at the wand check booths. While it's not a secret, I don't want you talking about how you developed your wandless abilities. Your unit number is MSO1 if anyone asks."
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"Hey Dad, who's Sirius Black?" Ron asks around his sandwich.
"Why do you want to know?" Arthur responds.
"Oh, he's on the front page of the Prophet, apparently he's escaped from prison and should be considered dangerous. He was widely regarded as the biggest traitor of the war, as everybody knew he was the secret keeper for the Potters."
"Thanks Dad".
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Harry grumpily walks downstairs to breakfast, it's the first day of her period and her chest is sore to boot. Lily appears at the bottom of the stairs and looks at her critically.
"You, young lady, need a bra."
"But Mum." She whines.
"No but Mum, you've got to that age where your body's changing and it's unseemly for a young girl to have her nipples poking through her blouses."
"But none of the other girls at school wear bras."
"Most of the other girls only live in the Magical world. You my girl live in both the Magical and Muggle worlds."
"But what about when I shift forms."
"Are you or are you not a witch?"
"I'm not a witch, I'm a Magi."
Lily just looks at her.
"Yes Mum."
"Now what's really going on, as it's not like you to argue about something like that."
"It's the first day of my period and I'm stuck like this for the next week."
"Come, sit down with me."
They both sit down on the sofa.
"Now is the problem that you can't transform, or that you're worried that at some point you'll want to transform?"
"Erm, I guess the latter."
"So, when you're a boy, what is it that matters?"
"I don't know, the whole thing."
"As you're a metamorph, do you think changing your features and leaving your uterus would help with your feelings?"
"I. Don't know Mum. Maybe."
"One of the nurses that's looking after Sirius asked me if you were transgender the other week while you were out. I had to tell her that I had no idea what that is.
"I then got a mini lecture, it appears that some people are born with the brain of one sex compared and the body of another. Some of those people are somewhere between the two. For those people it can be very upsetting when their bodies don't match their minds. This isn't something you normally need to worry about, but it is something you might want to think about and see if you can get some books for. As they might have some coping mechanisms that you can use. Especially now that your bodies are starting to diverge.
"What I want is for you to feel comfortable in whatever body you're in, so if you're a boy at the moment we can skip your bra shopping until you're a girl again. But you will still need one. Just don't forget that you have more options than most people do for making your body conform to your mind."
"Thank you Mum, I miss my other Mum's."
"I miss Tuney too."
The front door slams open and an irate Hermione walks in.
"Are you OK Hermione?"
"No I'm not OK!" she snaps.
She brings herself under control with great effort.
"Sorry, I was just discussing my electives with my parents. They suggested that I should take muggle biology and math so that I can go to university to become a dentist and join their practice. AAARRGGHHH! Why can't they just support my decisions? I pushed ahead to be almost ready to do my GCSE's by the time I got my letter to please them. I've pushed myself to be the best, to understand and be someone they can be proud of. But as soon as I'm trying to do something I want to do it's, 'Oh, why don't you take Biology and Math, I'm sure that Karen would understand, then you can go to medical school and become a dentist'."
"Hermione!"
Harry's voice snaps her out of her tirade.
"Come and join us on the couch and we can all bitch about how unfair life is together. My Mum want's me to go bra shopping."
Immediately distracted, Hermione takes a seat between Harry and Lily and looks at Harry critically.
"She's right, you're starting to bud. You should get a training bra before it becomes absolutely necessary to wear one. That way you get used to it before taking it off becomes problematic."
"How are you getting on with the mind healer?" Lily asks.
"Oh, he's fantastic. He just get's me and it's so easy to just talk things through. Did you know that mind-healers can actually repair the damage that neglect and abuse causes in our brains? I know a few child psychologists that would kill for that ability."
Harry nudges her in the ribs, "You just casually happen to know some child psychologists, huh."
"It's not like that, they move in the same social circles as my parents, so I've met them at the odd party or two." Hermione responds indignantly.
"Uh huh, and how many of their recommended books did you read between meetings?"
"Maybe one or two? Ok all of them." She amends seeing Harry's look.
"Were any of those about transgender people?"
"Oh yes, one or two, it's fascinating."
"Do you think I could borrow them?"
"Why would you… Oh, right. Sure I'll grab them from my bookshelf later."
Now sure that her earlier irritation has been completely derailed Harry ventures, "So what was going on with your parents?"
"I know it's only been a couple of weeks, but talking with Dave has helped me put some of the stuff I've read into the context of my own life. You have to understand, my parents have always been driven people, you have to be to become a dental surgeon with a royal appointment. But because of that they've always been distant to me, my life growing up was an endless parade of babysitters and Nannies. They provided everything that I needed for a healthy development except themselves. I learnt early on that one way to get their attention was to excel at something, and so I did."
She leaned into Harry as she hugged her as she continued, "Soon I was out-performing other children my age because if I didn't keep improving, they stopped paying attention. I was eight when my accidental magic stopped being so accidental, as I found that it gained my parents attention. Finally, I had a combination of things that gave me the emotional attention I needed, and it was all good. God it sounds so clinical when I say it."
Hermione dashes some tears from her eyes, "When we met you in Diagon Alley, I also met my first and best friend. Here was a boy who would put up with my prattling on about things I knew and humoured me too. He also knew things about magic I'd never even read. That would probably have been the end of it, but then he woke me up the first morning at school. He had changed into a girl just to continue doing the exercises we'd been doing before school started. If you hadn't done that, I think I would have just shrunk back into that girl from primary school that needed to succeed in order to achieve validation from my parents."
She kissed Harry on the cheek, "You then took away my books and forced me to learn from other people rather than trying to be ahead all the time. Dave thinks that did more for my emotional health and development than anything else I'd done or learnt.
"Which comes to what happened today, we were talking about electives as normal, and Mum says, 'Why don't you take Biology and Math, I'm sure that Karen wouldn't mind. Then you can become a dentist just like us.' She said it in that way she used to suggest that I look at this thing or that thing when I was younger, and I could feel myself slipping back to my old mindset, where I needed to excel at the things they were interested in to gain their approval.
"I think I shouted at her something like 'What about what I want to do with my life, what if I don't want to be a dentist. I'm going to Harry's' and then came here. For crying out loud, I'm nearly 13 you'd think they'd credit me with having some idea of what I want to do in the future."
With that pause in the conversation, Lily says, "I think that you're developing into a very strong and independent young woman, and that's exactly what you need to be. You've started to see some of the things that you could be and do. You're a magus and from what I've seen you're becoming a very well-rounded person. I've seen you working on your creativity when you think no-one's watching. I think that your parents just haven't seen you growing up. To them you're still the bullied 8-year-old girl that needed direction in her life. I was a couple of years older than you when I started to rebel, and I think that most other girls are too. But we all have different lives, and yours has shaped you and pushed you to mature much faster than other girls your age. I've seen it in Harry here too, and even Daphne to some extent. You're all older than your years would suggest, and it's because different things in your life have pushed you to grow up fast. For Daphne it's been dealing with the aftermath of her Occlumency. For Harry it was not just the abuse she suffered, but also finding out that my sister had been doing her best to protect her, then add the Magi stuff and her kidnapping. You have just told us your reasons for growing up fast.
"I'm seeing the same thing in Ginny, Dudley and Luna, but in different ways. They're still children where you are now young adults, but they're looking at the world with more open eyes than most their age do. I think that where you three have needed to grow up fast in order to deal with the world as you've found it, they've been shown the same world, but have been shown that they're being equipped to deal with it. That is really the difference between a child and an adult, responsibility.
"Anyway, you both need breakfast, so why don't you both make something together. Don't bother cooking for the others, they've already gone to the Rookery so that Xeno can show Dudley and Ginny a dirigible plum, and a few of the other exotic plants they have there."
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"How's the shortlist for the new magical ambassador coming along Peters?"
Peters looks up from his work, "We have managed to put together a promising list of recent graduates with between one and two years of experience Sir Connolly. We normally wouldn't be considering such young candidates, but they are going to have a massive culture shock and be expected to learn magic as well."
"Very well, have them all packed up and housed on privet drive. Anyone that panics in the first week needs to be extracted and cleanly obliviated. Once they're settled, we'll let Karen know and she can take them to Hogwarts for their interviews."
"Very good Sir."