The Provisional Laws of Acquired Behavior or Learning

Authors Note: WARNING: Gore, Blood, and Corpses ahead. Viewer Discretion is advised from start to finish on this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't at this time own any published work of Sega or JK Rowling, if I did I'd gut the current Sonic fandom and only allow literate people to contribute cutting the fandom back by 90% and improving the quality by the same percentage.

December 26th, 1991
05:00 Earth, Unknown Location
The dark cellar Maurice had landed in was dank with mildew and poorly lit, smashed wine bottles on the ground made crackling sounds and dust swirled as a low hanging dirty mist as Maurice walked onwards, now very grateful for his newly magically reinforced shoes.
Light when visible shone from murky torches full of enchanted silver fire and other sources of light such as holes in the ceiling creating light rays in the dust had Maurice squinting in confusion. Wary of the ragged and likely unstable holes of which origins Maurice could not even guess at he continued to quietly walk.
The cellar corridor was large but luckily not as mazelike as he had feared, approaching the first change in architecture, a side alcove revealed a door of bars and on closer examination, bringing a Lumos to bear, the sight within caused Maurice to recoil with a full body shudder of shock and disgust.
Stacked from floor to ceiling, corpses. Decaying human corpses piled high from floor to ceiling in the cell horizontally stacked and pressed together like so many sardines in a small can, oozing rot and unidentified suspicious black fluid. Yet for all the scenes vileness no smell permeated to the corridor as explained away by the runes engraved on the bars giving off a dim glow, likely a barrier of some sort.
Maurice had nothing to throw up from earlier but still he wretched bile leaving a foul taste in his mouth, his frame shuddering in primal horror and revulsion backpedaling uneasily from the cell in a crunch of glass.
After a minute straight of heaving and keeping his eyes closed he began to force himself to calm down. Once calm Maurice made his way to the wall shakily pulling a torch of silver fire down from the wall sconce idly thinking that if he accidentally opened a secret passageway he might scream at the day he'd had, Next Solstice Maurice vowed he was just going to sleep right on through it.
Careful of touching anything that shouldn't be there and emotionally drained Maurice forced himself to keep moving forward along the corridor this time his wand arm raised defensively and now moving as quietly as possible. There were more such cells the deeper he went, forcing him to occasionally stop and calm himself down or quickly walk past them. Each cell was in similar states to the first and to make matters worse the creepy corridor got warmer the further he went looking for an exit, adding to the creepy atmosphere.
Reaching what looked like guard quarters in an old dungeon but with no corpse in sight Maurice took the time to rest examining the room closely, on the wall there was a dirty looking coat of arms torn in two and barely visible for the grime. Hoping for some answers Maurice aimed at the crest and quietly and carefully incanted a spell "Reparo" the crest knitted itself back together but although he cast it numerous times, no matter what happened the crest would not become clean.
Frustrated Maurice focused on the Latin motto at the base of the crest managing to read the inscription after some effort though his pidgin skill at latin was insufficient in understanding what the crest meant "Sanctimonia Vincet Semper?" Maurice sounded it out wracking his brains for the translation and origin before giving up in defeat, stowing the phrase for later. Looking around at the empty room Maurice sighed before resignedly moving onwards opening the other door inched open with nary a squeak.
Closing the door behind him silently Maurice did not see the stirrings of one of the tapestries behind him as it rustled in the windless darkness and began to move.

Meanwhile in a Secret Underground Research Laboratory in England
The Head Unspeakable breathed out an unsteady breath carefully maneuvering himself clear of the rubble and glass and shakily getting to his feet "Rank and status, Sound off!"
"Ow, Bear, Ow"
"Donkey, bruised"
"Mole, Watch for falling glass in The Prophecy Room"
"Chameleon"
"This is Wombat in the planetarium, Saturn is off its axis and has crashed into Jupiter, Mercury crashed into the sun, melted and has now been replaced by Neptune, Pluto and all the planets moons have joined Earth's moon in a stable Earth orbit and apparently Mars, Uranus and Venus have gone rogue"
"Beaver, the brains have also gone missing"
"Bulldog reporting, despite the damage there are no casualties though plenty of wounded"
The one identified as Chameleon spoke "Bad news sir, the departments Ethereal Wards are down"
The Head Unspeakable jumped "WHAT!? That hasn't happened since 1752 and the goblins created that moonlight powered ward crasher and blew themselves up!"
"Sir this incident carries the same signature as The Wish-Magic Incident" Charmeleon reported after scanning the area.
The Head Unspeakable gave a groan audible even under the standard unspeakable concealment charms.
"Sir?"
"The changes have accelerated rapidly, I had hoped that they would be finished by now, but something must have jumpstarted it" pausing for a minute the Head Unspeakable rubbed his face through the charm to ease the throbbing migraine and spoke aloud questioningly without much hope in his voice "Can we get those wards back up?"
"Negative sir" spoke Donkey
"That means we won't be able to notice let alone track the changes anymore, we're going to be subject to them now, just like everyone else" the Head Unspeakable slumped in place with a sigh.
"Does that mean we can go home then?" Spoke Bear carefully extracting and vanishing what looked like glass shards from his face beneath the glamour and seamlessly healing the wounds with a wand flick.
The head unspeakable sighed "There's no point staying, apart from regular work of course, besides we sent Owl out to test the effects of the wave and nothing harmful happened to him"
"Seemed like he got a bit smarter actually sir. He reassigned himself to the mundane Anglo-American branch and started to make some waves in their intelligence divisions" Chameleon noted dryly.
"No big loss there I suppose, it's better than fiddling around with pseudo-magitek the rookie barely understands" spoke Mole having returned from The Prophecy Room and shaking the glass out of his the folds of his robes.

December 26th, 1991
06:00 Earth, Unknown Location
Walking further along the corridor Maurice could see that there were only two cells left on either side of an ascending staircase, he paused and steeled himself moving closer hoping somewhat hopelessly of finding a single live person to tell him what was going on.
In the leftmost cell one a single man lay in the corner of the cell dead from what looked like starvation, Maurice grimaced at the claw marks around the door signifying that the man had tried very hard to get out, a very bad way to die. Maurice shook his head and not expecting to find much he moved to examine the other cell before the exit in which he made a surprising discovery, actual movement!
"Hello? Is anyone alive in there?" he called out quietly wary of potential inferius, not an unfounded paranoia given prior experience, the dark bundle shifted and Maurice drew a sharp breath in shock. A small child who looked to be about eight years old peeked at him with dewey blue eyes and dirty long hair opening his mouth in silent question. Maurice looked at the bars again a theory building "Hang on a minute I think there's a silencing rune up" Maurice dug around in his pocket for the small folding whittling blade he kept for sharpening his writing quills and carefully began to chip away around the runes for silence. Examining his work after a minute he turned to the child in the cell "Can you say something so I know I got the right rune?"
"Um hello?" spoke the child unsurely and roughly Maurice smiled reassuringly "I heard you that time, Give me a minute and I'll have this wide door open, My name's Maurice Bluewind and I'm eleven years old, what's your name?"
The child spoke timidly "I don't have a name anymore and I'm seven I think? Probably?"
Maurice squinted both at the rune cluster he was steadily unraveling and the odd questioning end statement "Well that's not right everyone should have a name, how about I give you one?"
"You'd do that for me?" wide blue eyes full of awe only a young child could have.
"Sure would, just give me a while to come up with a good one once we're out of here" Because Maurice didn't want to be thinking of names when all the thoughts running through his head were about creepy corpse-strewn basements "Speaking of, I don't suppose you know where we are, do you?"
Dewey blue eyes crossed in though followed by an adorably cute thinking pose ensuing "Um, I think we're in a place called Wiltshire, that's what I heard the woman say"
"Woman?"
"She's gone now, she left one day and didn't come back" Maurice was at the wrong angle to make out but the boy sounded a bit upset.
A beat of silence as Maurice took a calming breath drawing out his next question "Soooo what is this place?"
"It's a place where bad boys go" the boy whispered as if sharing something secret.
Maurice forced his tone to be even and hid his fury deep "And what's so bad that you're here?"
"I was naughty I can't make things fly or make the stick spark anymore so I was locked in here because I'm bad."
Maurice stopped chipping away at the runes for a second wary of accidentally charging them with his own now furiously sparking magic Maurice kept his tone even, even though he wanted to yell "I don't think you're bad"
'The people who locked you up though…'
On that thought though "Kid did you have any visitors? Did anyone pass your cell?" The cell was nearest the exit, those dead people had to have passed the boy on the way in somehow at the very least.
The kid nodded so hard his head looked like it would pop off with the effort "The man walked down that way a few times carrying biiiig boxes every day, then one day he left and didn't come back, He kept saying that he'd fix me, but I'm not broken though...?" Dewey blues eyes scrunched in confusion. Maurice look back down the corridor he'd come then to the cell next to the one he was working on and the emaciated corpse within the food summoning charm rune having failed on that cell at some point. Suddenly Maurice was unspeakably grateful that the monster who had stacked the wine cellar with bodies instead of something sensible like actual alcohol, hadn't let the child see that monstrosity down the corridor "Right that tears it, We're getting you out of here now, stand to the side kid I'm going to kick this door in" the boy rushed to the side of the cell and yelped as Maurice revved and with a flying bunny kicked the door, now with key locking runes scratched out, with a crash.
Green eyes met blue and a hand was extended with a smile "Come on kid lets get out of this place"

Manor Ruins, Wiltshire, England 06:30, December 26th, 1991
White peacocks awoke and scattered in a mad panic when in the ruins of the manor which had long stood silent gave a resounding creak then a great thudding crash the sound of a heavy cellar door with rusted hinges being forced wide open in slightly hysterical haste with a echoing slam.
"Wow look at that moon!" a young child exclaimed in wonder from Maurice's side Maurice just scowled feeling his stomach rumble "I'm so hungry my stomach's starting to digest itself, lets go get something to eat" Preferably miles away from here, speaking of "How do you like the name Miles?" the fresh air and limitless sky serving as a balm to his soul to as opposed to his earlier tightly leashed terror in the stale dank underground.
The child rolled the proposed name around in his mouth before nodding in agreement. Maurice nodded to himself and announced "Miles Bluewind it is"
The newly named Miles blue eyes were wide in shock "You're giving me one of your names?" Maurice smiled ruffling Miles dirty blond yellow hair "I always wanted a little brother" Miles gave a choked half sob before hugging Maurice and breaking down in tears.
It's to be noted that Maurice had grown up with very Victorian era-esque tales of the British orphanage system and of how grateful he should be that he had the Dursley's as guardians, it was those same outdated tales led Maurice, eleven year old supersonic boy wizard to adopt a seven year old child as his brother and somehow succeed.
Miles yelped as Maurice picked him up in a princess carry "Come on, we should get out of here, besides I want to introduce you to my friends" both boys seemed to flicker in place before vanishing from view like mist a boom sounding in the distance with the sound of childish laughter lost in the wind.
Mere inches away from where the boys once stood the suspicious drapery gave a shudder and robbed of its potential meal, headed towards the lights of the nearby town.