Author's note:
Hi y'all (I should probably not say that because it sound ridiculous on me) how's your new school term going? Mine starts tomorrow! Exam year... eek... nope I'm not looking forward to that!
Anyway, enjoy!
Chapter 22: Sparks
For a second he was muddled 'what the…' but then his vision cleared and he laughed "Hello Luna!"
"Harry what are you doing here?" The woman smiled.
"We came to talk to the minister about… erm… something, what are you doing here?"
"The same, but they chucked me in here almost the second I started speaking."
Harry noticed Ron jostling the door (their wands had been taken away earlier) and moved to join him.
"There's no point." Luna interjected "There are guards outside and you won't get through anyway, that door's a meter thick."
"Merlin can't you…" Harry began, but as he saw the expression on Merlin's face he stopped. The man was standing next to Mordred and the two looked completely lost.
"Our magic won't work in here" Mordred groaned and Merlin nodded.
"It's like there's some ancient enchantment that's blocking it, we're powerless." He agreed.
Ron slid to the floor "Powerless and trapped yet again," he grumbled.
Had it been thirty minutes or three hours? Arthur had no clue. Time seemed irrelevant here, with no windows and no contact to the outside world; he was beginning to rethink his views on witchcraft again. Maybe his father was right after all, maybe magic was bad. What had they done that was so against these people's views? Asked to be heard? They had barely been allowed to even open their mouths before they were locked in here. Something Arthur doubted even Uther would have done.
He had been pacing, but now he stopped, his legs suddenly tiered, and bent to sit down, but as he did so something small but solid slid out of his pocket; it clattered onto the floor where it settled, its upper-side glimmering.
"Arthur, what is that?" Merlin sounded almost hopeful as he said it. Arthur wondered what that little shiny thing could do to make him so.
Arthur frowned "It's the thing Hugo was trying to teach me how to use." What had the boy called it… a phone?
Merlin appeared next to him, he was smiling with the right side of his mouth, a sort of sly smile that told Arthur he had a plan. Merlin reached down, and picking up the peculiar cuboid, he tapped its shiny surface.
Suddenly the screen lit up making Merlin's smile grow wider. "It seems the ministry's isolation from muggle society has got the better of them!" He announced "They've built this room so that wizards can't get out." At that he pointed at the phone, grinning "Not muggles!"
The Ministry was in uproar. Seven wizards had managed to escape from their most secure cell on the entire planet using a muggle crow bar nonetheless! The Ministry had thought the tool inferior, but it had managed to wrench a thick metal door open from the outside without raising any of the alarms.
And how had they known where to look in the first place? The people that had used the escape tools - whoever they were - should have had no idea about the cell, it was a guarded secret that only a few of the Ministry's most trusted got to know of.
The Minister, for his part, was furious. This was embarrassment!
Reporters crowed him as he stormed down the corridor; asking irritating questions and getting in his way. One placed himself right in the Minister's path and the Minister, full of fury, slammed a hand into the man's abdominal, sending him stumbling to the side.
How could this have happened? It was near enough impossible! But no matter how much he tried to deny it, it had happened and now everyone knew. Everyone knew of the secret prison below the Ministry's walls and now they wanted to know who had been trapped there and if they were dangerous. He couldn't let the world know that their hero – Harry Potter – had been placed in imprisonment just because he had a theory… no, that would look too suspicious; people would come way too close to the truth. He had to find another way.
In that second a thought struck the Minister and a smile slithered between his lips. He slowed his pace, walking a few more steps before he turned on his right heel – greeting the cameras and the journalists – and began his speech.
A poster caught in the breeze, its picture rippling like the surface of a choppy ocean. A passer-by glanced at it, but looked away after reading 'UNDISIRABLE No1 – Harry Potter', the words of the Minister of Magic probably still ringing in his head:
"Your hero has failed you. It seems that after a disturbed childhood, Harry Potter – the boy who lived – has become… unstable.
Please, if you see Mr Potter or any of the people he is associated with, we would ask you to keep your distance and to contact the Ministry immediately. The suspects are armed and dangerous and Potter has warned that given the chance he will make the muggles aware that we exist as soon as he is allowed that freedom. It is of the upmost importance that we find him and anyone involved."
The news had at first roused chaos within the wizarding community, but soon they came to understanding that Harry Potter needed to be found. He could not be left to reveal their secret to the muggles. It would be suicide.
Yet still it had been a week before the news had started to enter the papers, and neither Potter, nor any of his friends had been seen since.
"What do we do?" Hermione asked.
The group sat in a circle, silence hovering over them and it stayed that way for almost fifteen minutes before Arthur coughed, announcing his presence to the group and stood.
"Well seen as none of you are volunteering to take the lead I guess I'll have to." He paced for a few seconds before coming to a stop just beside Merlin. "What is our goal in this?"
"To reunite everyone for the same cause so that we can stop the world from destroying itself!" Merlin huffed "But we've fallen at the first hurdle!"
"Maybe," Arthur nodded. "But in order to reunite everyone, we need to make the muggles aware that you exist right? So how about we start with that?"
"That would be good if we didn't have the whole wizarding community against us." Ron muttered, but Merlin nodded slightly at Arthur's proposal.
"I think Arthur's right, the last time you had the odds against you, you were just kids… and YOU won, what's stopping you from doing the same again?"
There was a hush for a minute; everyone thinking about this new idea that had been roused.
"So… How are we supposed to do this… how do we get the muggles to believe this? They'll just pass it off as computer graphics or whatever they use these days." Harry queried.
Merlin noticed that he only looked at Arthur, that even though Arthur had barely spent a week in the modern world he had already taken charge and the group's previous leader had recognised that.
At that realisation, a strange sense of ease crept over Merlin. He felt safe with Arthur's lead, or at least as safe as he could be. He remembered feeling this a long, long time ago, back when Arthur had been king and the most noble of them, at that. Of course there had been moments when Arthur hadn't listened to Merlin and everything had collapsed around their feet… but when his friend had listened, or hadn't needed to, Merlin had known that all would be okay.
Arthur nodded, showing Harry he understood his question. "We need to do something big, something in front of everybody, in a place where there is enough people that nearly everybody in the country and others across the world can't deny…. I'm going to leave the magic to you though, for obvious reasons." he sat down, surveying the group's faces and slowly a small smile tiptoed onto them. They had a plan, and it was going to be spectacular!
- Saturday, the 16th of November 2019
The streets were dotted with people, each barely a meter away from the other, walking, running, cycling, driving. Turning in and out of shops, on their way to work, heading back home; or meandering with cameras, taking snapshots of interesting sites:
London on a weekend, and a bank holiday at that! It seemed that everyone, all at once had decided to go outside, onto the stone-paved pathways and where now trying to make their way amongst the a thousand strong crowd striving to do exactly the same thing.
Trafalgar square in particular was abnormally busy, maybe it was the lions, sitting, proud on their perches; maybe it was the national gallery, that crowned the place in all its splendour; or maybe it was the magic in the air that day that made sure no one could miss being there in just that moment.
Well, whatever it was, the group of nine strong, Lunar, Ginny and Neville – the latter two having broken the others out of the ministry – included, where sure not to miss it.
They, stopped, just below the North-facing lion; its black eyes staring forward, straight above them as they checked their watches; nodded to one another, and diverged. Merlin, Arthur and Mordred stayed put, watching the time: five minutes to midnight, two minutes; one.
The explosion came from the houses of parliament, flames licked its walls and the people's screams rang out, panic consuming them. What was happening? Was it a terrorist attack? Their hand's shaking; they hugged their children, trying to carry them as far away from the blaze as possible.
Not two minutes later, people where seen running and screaming from another site – Chinatown – its lanterns rustling as a great wind swept through the street, and as people turned to see what was happening their mouth's dropped, eye's widening as a ginormous dragon, made entirely of fire, stretched its wings and flew up into the sky, covering hundreds of meters in a second.
Merlin knew the time had come, he and Mordred placed palm on palm and chanted, eyes closed. Suddenly the land grew dark; for minutes, a stillness hung over London, the only movement was that of the dragon's beating wings and the licking of flames on the Houses of Parliament.
The strange thing was though, that the darkness did not stretch across England, not like night would have done. It contained itself, like a wall had been built around the outskirts of the city - a wall of darkness.
This stillness stretched out for what felt to the people like hours, but in reality only lasted for a mere few minutes.
Merlin studied his watch carefully, waiting, before he turned to Mordred again, locking palms, drawing from the other man's power and soon a large ball of fire shot into the sky and hung just above Nelson's Column like the first decoration of Christmas; and on the contrary its job was to lead the way, just as a star had lead the way for the wise men in those old bible stories.
Merlin, Arthur and Mordred, walked forward, trotting up the steps of Nelson's Column to stand in a small triangle – Arthur the uppermost point, Merlin and Mordred forming the lower two - placed either side of their leader like body guards.
The time was five past twelve. It had taken only five minutes but now, the whole of England, maybe even the whole of the world was listening, and pleased with their work, the allies let the spells drop, the daylight returned; the ball of fire grew smaller until it wasted into nothing; the dragon dispersed into embers which were scattered in the wind and the flames that had consumed the Houses of Parliament disappeared, leaving not even a scorch on the building's surface.
All was left as if the events that had just occurred had been but a fleeting dream.