The first tricks Mr. Evans taught him were card tricks. After handing him a deck he showed him how to make sure to always get the card you wanted to have or how to always find the card another had picked.

"Cards tricks really are the basics with sleights of hand. Also, it's damn useful during poker games."

Harry searched for the card the man had picked. Spotting the queen of spade, he presented the card to him. "Is this your card?"

"No."

Harry cursed under his breath.

"Still need to work on it, I'm afraid. Also, even if your trick fails you mustn't show it to your audience."

Harry mumbled and handed the deck to the man.

"Oh, you can keep it. I've got many others in a drawer. It's not like I cannot get a new one at the guild anyway."

Harry frowned. "The divination guild, you mean?"

He nodded. "Their decks are prettier so I always nick normal and tarot cards when I go to their underground poker tournament." Seeing Harry's befuddled face, he gave him a sly smile. "Do you really think certified seers are allowed to bet?"

Harry didn't have anything to say to that.

It was only when as they left the theatre and saw the inspector showing what looked like a drawing to a few people he asked, "Why do you think he's so obsessed with what happened?"

Mr. Evans shrugged. "He's just like that: he needs to know everything and tell everybody what he knows. Even easy card tricks like the ones I showed you, he needs to tell me how I do them. I suppose it's a quality in his line of work, but ours need us to keep our secrets secret."

Finally spotting them, the inspector walk in their direction to show them his poster.

"Does any of you recognize this person?"

Harry glanced at the drawing of a crooked-nosed man wearing a ruff. "No, I don't."

"Mr. Evans?"

Mr. Evans opened his mouth.

But the muggle didn't let him talk "Nevermind. Of course you don't." He sighed and rubbed his face, his buffy moustache twitching as he was scratching his nose. "I suppose I have no choice but to ask you to come to Scotland Yard then."

That had to be harassment by this point.

Mr. Evans must have been the same thing for he crossed his arms and asked in a low voice, "On what ground?"

The inspector paused as if trying to find a reason to give. "Your cousin told me last time the fire was nothing but a regrettable accident caused by a badly extinguished cigarette. Maybe this is true but considering how quickly the cabinet burnt, it raises the question on what was used on the cabinet that could make it burn faster than a matchstick. Whatever substance was used, it had to be highly restricted so I must ask you what it was and whether or not you acquired it legally."

He nodded to himself, clearly proud to have found something to get his way. Retrieving a tiny watch from his breast pocket, he looked at the time and stated. "The two of you will have to go to Scotland Yard tomorrow morning, I'm afraid."

"The boy works from seven to six."

After pocketing his watch, he retrieved a little notebook and a pen. "Where?"

Mr. Evans' eyebrow twitched. Once he gave an address, he sarcastically told the man, "Anything else you need to know, inspector? My taxable income perhaps?"

If the man noticed the sarcasm, he didn't show it. "I suppose he can come tomorrow evening then, but I want to see you tomorrow morning at seven sharp. And I want the two of you to give me real answers this time."

That being said, he closed his notebook and left.

"I'm really getting too old for that shit," the magician muttered.


This couldn't go on.

That was the thought Harry had when they came back to the Evans' apartment. Wizards coming and trying to show Mr. Evans' shows, the police going after them because of the mess others made… Something had to give and it looked like they'd be the losers at the end.

Harry knew Mr. Evans had said that they weren't supposed to do anything, that the muggle'd move on, eventually. Perhaps he was right and they were going to be alright but for how long would they be? And how long would it take before that inspector stopped putting his bushy moustache in their business?

He angrily ran a hand through his hair. It wasn't fair. Why was it always good people who got in trouble? Why did they always have to clean another's mess? It shouldn't be them who should be worrying and trying to protect the statute o secrecy, it was that man on the poster!

Harry tried to find a way out of this mess but he just couldn't. Erasing the man's memories? Casting some powerful confundus charm? Not only wasn't allowed to use magic, he had no guarantee this could actually work. If he were to use magic, the next owl he'd get would inform him he was expelled from Hogwarts. And if he was expelled, any chance he had of going back to the twentieth century would vanish.

And Harry hated himself for thinking this, but he couldn't do that. Even for the Evans, Harry couldn't give up this sliver of hope.

No matter what, Harry couldn't use his wand. And without his wand, Harry wasn't better than a muggle and he couldn't do a thing.

It was in foul mood that Harry fell on his bed of convenience.

There had to be something he could do, he brooded. Even if he couldn't use his wand, there had to be something he could do.

He stilled as he put his hands in his pockets. Slowly, he retrieved the deck he had forgotten he had put in his pockets.

Bringing the deck to eye-level, he suddenly had a crazy thought.

This was insane, he thought. This was pure madness, what he was thinking.

But hadn't Dumbledore told him a long time ago that the most brilliant plans always had a hint of madness?

He got up and went to the table where he posed the deck. After a moment of hesitation, he walked to a cabinet, opened a drawer and searched among the many decks in the drawer what he was looking for.

When he finally found a tarot deck, Harry went to his chair and shuffled the cards.

He might not be able to use his wand, maybe he couldn't afford to buy the ingredients needed for a befuddling solution, he doubted divination was concerned when it came to the trace.

The first card he revealed was the Devil. The second was the King of Sword and the third the Hermit. He then got the Tower and the Magician.

If Harry realistically knew the Devil and the Tower cards were not as ominous as what the picture drawn might imply, he couldn't stop a wince at their sight.

He was trying to figure the cards' meaning when he heard somebody knocking.

It was Mr. Evans. "May I come in?"

"Sure."

The man entered the room and closed the door. "It's about what we're going to tell the dear inspector tomorrow. I was thinking of- Are these tarot cards?" The man walked to the table and looked at the cards he had drawn. Spotting the magician card, the man chuckled and said, "That's me! Are you trying to see the future because of the inspector?"

Harry shrugged and looked at the cards. "If it works…" Seeing the man amusedly shaking his head he asked. "Don't you believe in divination?"

This man had been in Mesmer's divination party after all. He'd have thought he'd take this matter more seriously considering he knew seers.

He hummed. "My parents made me go see a seer when I was thirteen. They wanted him to tell me when I'd finally do magic, you see."

"And?"

"He told me I never would."

Harry stopped looking at the cards and stared at the man.

Mr. Evans turned his head and winked. "As you can see, that idiot was wrong. Are seers real? Yes, they are. Does that mean we should blindly trust their third eye or some cards now… That is a completely different problem. I know a thing or two but that's it. What was the question you asked the cards?"

Harry hadn't really had a question in mind. It was just that with everything going on he had no idea how they were supposed to take care of the situation with the inspector and had hoped that, by some miracle, a card would tell him what he was supposed to do.

When Harry said that much, Mr. Evans bit his cheek. "That's not good. That's not good at all."

Harry grimaced. "I know it's stupid to assume we'd get an answer but-"

"It's not that it's silly, it's that this sort of thinking can be very dangerous. What if the answer is one you do not like, what are you doing to do? Like… I know most seers tend to follow what their cards, some Higher Being, are telling them to do but that is not a good thing at all! You can use a deck if you think you need it to give you some hint but never, ever, let it rule your life!"

Harry flinched.

Taking the magician card between his long fingers, the man pensively looked at it. "I know it's tempting to rely on some wondrous artefact, and they can be a great help sometimes, but you should never make them your master."

Suddenly remembering Tom Riddle's diary, Harry winced.

Eyes still on the card, Mr. Evans absent-mindedly retrieved his fob watch with his free hand.

He stilled and looked at the objet in his hand, as if he hadn't noticed what he had been doing. Finally, he gave a self-depreciating chuckle and he put the artefact back to his pocket without looking at the dial.

"If we want to find the answer to our problem, I'm afraid we'll have to work for it. This is why we need to agree on what we're going to do tomorrow…"


The next day, Harry went to work without his wand.

The reason Mr. Evans had given him about not bringing it to Scotland Yard was that, while the chances were slim, it was possible that the sight of a wand could trigger his memories.

Seeing Harry hesitating he had sighed. "Remember what I said about not being the slave of some artefact? This is also true when it comes to wands, perhaps even more so. If you're worried about being unarmed or something like that, then bring a knife if it makes you feel safer but stop relying too much on something that, by your own admission, you are not allowed to use."
After much thinking, he had picked his pen knife and mentally recalled himself all he's learned from his fights with Aberforth every time he went to a narrow street.

When it was time to go to Scotland Yard, he hid the pen knife in a hidden pocket.

The constable who searched him didn't notice the weapon. "Who are you supposed to see again?" he asked.

Harry paused, realizing he had no idea what the noisy inspector's name was. "Well, he's got…" With his hand, he signed a gigantic moustache.

"Ah, him. Fifth floor, third door on your right."

After thanking the man, Harry took the stairs and reached the fifth floor. Once he found the aforementioned door, he knocked.

There was some noise on the other side. "Enter!"

When Harry opened the door, Harry saw the man closing a drawer. Putting a key in his breast pocket, he raised his head. "You were supposed to come at six."

Harry could already feel the headache coming. "I finish work at six, I come here at roughly six thirty by foot. I cannot apparate, you know?" Not yet anyway.

"A man should always be on time," he mumbled. "Oh well, next time you come to Scotland Yard, be on time." A pause. "Not that there should be a next time, of course. One should avoid to get in situations that could bring them here." Another pause. "Unless of course they're the victim and in which case, of course they should go to a police officer as soon as possible and ask for help, and-"

Harry sighed and tuned out as the man began explaining every possibility in which being slightly late could be forgivable and those where punctuality was a mandatory.

"… and of course if you happen to work for New Scotland Yard being at the right place and at the right moment is a must," he finished. "Not early, not late, just on time."

"We were supposed to be talking about the cabinet, weren't we?"

The man dazedly shook his head. "Yes, yes," he said as he took a fountain pen. "First thing first, which wood was the cabinet made of?"

The next fifteen minutes were spent answering the man questions, each one more precise and ridiculous than the previous one. And the more Harry had to answer, the more pissed he was.

The only silver lining in this mess was that the muggle was getting as annoyed as Harry. "You cannot honestly tell me this was a normal fire," he groaned. "Five minutes. It didn't even take five minutes! How is that even possible for a piece of furniture this size to be reduced to nothing but ashes in less than five minutes?"

Harry couldn't help but drawl, "Well, that's the thing about vanishing cabinets: they vanish."

The inspector stilled. For a few blessed seconds, he didn't say anything. Finally, he very carefully put down his pen.

His moustache was uncontrollably twitching when he said in a low voice, "You must think you're being very funny but I'm afraid to tell you this is no laughing matter. A man was spotted near the theatre-"

"A man with a ruff that could very well be a clown as far as we know."

"And a substance able to burn down a heave furniture like a cabinet in less than five minutes was used. Are you so blind you cannot see how dangerous such substance can be?"

"And how am I supposed to know what this mysterious substance is? Do you really think we'd purposefully put something that dangerous on something entirely made of wood?"

"No but you know somebody who did."

"We told you we do not recognize this man!"

"And we both know you're lying."

Harry groaned and angrily ran a hand through his hair. "You realize how ridiculous this is? Why are you so focused on how the cabinet couldn't have burned? It did! And why are you so sure it burnt down too quickly? Have you burnt down a cabinet like this one to see if that was the case?"

The man paused and looked away.

"You did?" he incredulously asked.

The inspector mumbled, "The scientific method is clear: if you have a theory, you must prove or disprove it."

Harry couldn't believe it. "How long did it take?" he asked out of morbid curiosity.

"Nineteen minutes and twenty four seconds. And that was the one with gasoline."

Harry had nothing to say to that.

"There are also more poofs I've gathered that indicate there is more to the case at hand-"

"The case?"

"So if you do not want to be involved in the case I'm building you should start talking. Right now."

The man hadn't finished his sentence that the door behind Harry opened.

"Not now."

But the man at the door ignored him. "The superintendent wants to see you. Right now."

The inspector froze. "The superintendent?" he dreadfully asked, his buffy moustache seemingly freezing in dread.

"Right now. And from what I've seen, you really shouldn't make him wait too long."

The inspector winced. "Would you please keep an eye on him while I go see the superintendent?"

He shrugged. "I'll let the door to my office open."

"Thank you." Turning to Harry, he declared, "This is not over."

Once the man left his office the policeman sighed. "Why are you here?" Once Harry told him he rolled his eyes. "Some really have too much time to waste here." Looking at something outside, he shrugged and left the room.

Now that Harry was alone, he let out a loud sigh.

There was no doubt now: the man was never going to give up. If they didn't do anything to make him stop, this hell was never going to end.

But what could they do? They couldn't use magic, how could they drive the man to stop looking?

Harry thought about it. After a moment, he got up from the chair he was sitting on and went behind the inspector's desk to search the papers on the table.

The problem, Harry decided, was that they did not know the man at all. Hell Harry didn't even know his name. The man could be Jack the Ripper himself and they wouldn't know any better. But if they knew him, if they had something on the man, perhaps they could find something to make him stop looking in their business.

The top drawer was locked but his enchanted pen knife quickly took care of the lock. Looking at the perfectly organized papers inside, Harry tried to find the 'case' the man had been building or something that could be useful.

Sadly, while the drawers did contain a few documents on several cases, none seemed to be about the vanishing cabinet. Giving up he began to look at the other things he could see.

Seeing a heavy envelope with no address, Harry took it and retrieved what was less a letter and more a roman written in the man's elegant handwriting.

Seeing the first two words, Harry's mind suddenly stopped.

Doctor Doyle,

In light of the lack of answer to the letters I sent you on the 6th of January, the 15th of March, and the 4th of July, I must once again take my pen and point out the few inaccuracies you've made on your stories, which can range from gross exaggerations to outright continuity errors regarding the events in your story and the dates they are supposedly taking places. Indeed, in A Study in Scarlet, you wrote that…

The twenty or so pages were filled with the man pointing out continuity errors after continuity errors and him pondering whether or not some deductions Sherlock Holmes made could reliably be called deductions and not only wild guesses.

Harry quickly felt very sorry for the author who was also being harassed by the man who by the end had begun a crusade on how Sherlock Holmes couldn't have just died in The Final Problem, and what a terrible literally choice killing such character was.

… I naturally understand that, as you are the author, the decision to discontinue the adventures of Sherlock Holmes is yours and yours alone. Nevertheless, I feel like it is my duty as an avid reader of yours to at minimum ask you to reconsider. You must have realized by now: Sherlock Holmes has become more than a character. He has become a symbol of logic, and a new era where science and pure logic have replaced ignorance and close-mindedness. I firmly believe that the story of Sherlock Holmes will drive many in the police force to outdo themselves and work for a fairer justice. This is why we need him to show us the path to take in this century that is about to begin.

Awaiting your reply,

Robert Granger.

Harry hadn't finished reading the letter that he heard a cough.

Inspector Granger crossed his arms. "Well, well, well. You sure have some explaining to do there."