CHAPTER 2: THE ADVOCOSFAIRA
Location: Wizarding community of Haypippil Square, Washington, D.C., USA.
Time Frame: Late December during "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." (Six months after the events in my fanfic "Dark Horizon")
Jimmy O'Bannon sprang to his feet after completing his morning routine of a hundred crunches and a hundred push-ups. He immediately followed that with his other morning routine, staring at a framed moving photo hanging on the wall of his small apartment. A sigh slowly escaped his lips as he studied the smiling quartet with their arms wrapped around one another. They all wore robes and pointy hats, blue for the three boys and silver for the one lone girl.
Has it really been six months?
Sometimes that day, graduation day, still seemed unreal to him. He'd spent seven years at the Salem Witches Institute – six, really, considering he studied abroad for one year at Hogwarts in Britain. But a huge chunk of his life had been spent at that school, with Jared Diaz, Rosa Infante and Artimus Rand his constant companions.
Now they were all on their own.
He chewed on the inside of his cheek. His desires pulled him in two different directions. On the one hand, he did like being on his own. He didn't have to deal with classes, homework and detentions any more, and he could come and go as he pleased. On the other hand, he missed the camaraderie of his fellow students, pulling pranks, and just hanging with Jared, Rosa and Artimus. They still remained close. Nothing would ever change that, not after everything they'd been through. But getting all four of them together in one place these days proved difficult. Auror training took up much of Rosa's time. Jared had been in Mexico the last two months combing through Mayan ruins with an expedition from the Magical Museum of North America. Even Artimus' job with the Department of Magic's Office of Wizarding-Muggle Relations kept him extremely busy, especially given the current climate in the Wizarding World.
O'Bannon frowned. Either here in Haypippil Square or back at Salem, one constant would be with him and everyone else in the Wizarding World.
The threat of Lord Voldemort.
With that in mind, he strode toward a plain, worn wooden desk stationed near the window. He glanced at the old-style wooden buildings across the street as he sat down. Pulling out his wand, he waved it back and forth in front of his computer three times.
"Muggletus Fabrica Operor!" O'Bannon circled his wand once and tapped the computer. Within moments it hummed to life.
He sat back and smiled, thinking back to Dean Thomas and all his experiments trying to get Muggle devices like CDs and DVDs to work inside Hogwarts. He had succeeded, to a degree. One of his experiments caused the Warner siblings from the cartoon Animaniacs to escape into the real world and run amuck through Hogwarts. O'Bannon frowned, remembering how Wacko had eaten his autographed photo of Boston Bruins great Ray Bourque. He'd never forgive Dean for that. Thankfully, Hermione Granger helped to perfect the spell, as one would expect from "the brightest witch of her age." Now O'Bannon could use his computer, stereo and TV in the Wizarding World. Because of that, the Guild of the Light decided he was the perfect choice for a "very important" task.
Monitoring Muggle news sources for any "suspicious" deaths or accidents. Suspicious meaning Death Eaters might be the cause.
O'Bannon grunted. At times he couldn't figure out how causing apartment fires and bridge collapses aided Voldemort's efforts to conquer the Wizarding World. As Jared's mother, Auror Liana Diaz, told him, spreading fear was a vital strategy for the dark forces. It helped keep "the good guys" off-balance. In addition, causing so much death and destruction with impunity made witches and wizards think twice about opposing Voldemort and his thugs. On a baser level, as Mrs. Diaz put it, "These monsters just enjoy killing people."
O'Bannon's gaze shifted to the large snow globe on his desk while he waited for the computer to warm up. He watched the snow fall on a miniature version of the wizarding town of Ovenderburg, complete with working street lamps and moving figurines of wizards and witches, some conversing, others walking into shops. He sighed at the scene. It looked so peaceful. For a second he envied the little figurines who went about their business without a care in the world.
Or maybe those figurines did worry about the outside world, considering the true nature of this snow globe.
Several little icons popped up on the computer screen, causing O'Bannon to end his musings.
Time to make my "contribution" to the war effort. It pissed him off to no end that six months after joining the Guild they still had him doing this crap detail. Dammit, he'd joined them to fight Death Eaters, not plink away at a computer. He and his friends had already proven they could handle Death Eaters, even experienced aurors. But did that matter to the higher-ups in the Guild of the Light? Hell no. They seemed content to let the Muggle-born sit at his "comp-tooter" and watch the friggin' news.
O'Bannon logged on to the internet and typed his usual key words into the search engine. ACCIDENT. DISASTER. FIRE. DEATHS. UNEXPLAINED. UNKNOWN CAUSE.
One hit led him to a news story out of Rochester, New York. There had been a huge pile-up last night on the New York State Thruway resulting in six deaths, four of them in a mini-van that had burst into flames. Twelve others had also been injured. When O'Bannon saw the accident occurred during a snowstorm, he doubted Death Eaters had anything to do with it.
The next hit made him raise an eyebrow. Yesterday afternoon in Utah a twin-prop commuter plane collided with a small private plane over the Provo Municipal Airport, killing twenty-three people. Investigators appeared puzzled by the nature of the crash, as the weather was clear and the control tower reported normal communications with both planes right up till the time of the collision.
This definitely looked like something he should bring to the Guild's attention. He moved the cursor to the print icon at the top of the screen and raised his finger to click the mouse.
The floor behind him creaked.
O'Bannon's eyes widened. He heard another footstep behind him. Another. He quickly moved the cursor to the home icon and clicked, hoping he got rid of the mid-air collision story in time.
"Good morning," said a soft voice. A pair of hands grasped his shoulders and began massaging them.
O'Bannon turned in his seat. A trim young woman with mocha skin and short dark hair stood behind him. She only wore a black t-shirt, one of his, which read, "Football Was Invented For Wimps Who Can't Cut It In Hockey."
"Hey, babe," he smiled at his girlfriend, Talia Laribee.
She bent down and kissed him full on the lips. "How long have you been up?"
"I don't know. Fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe. You looked zonked out and I didn't want to wake you."
"I wouldn't have minded if you did." Talia waggled her thin eyebrows at him.
Electric jolts went through O'Bannon as Talia slid her arms around his neck and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Gotta play with your doohickey, huh?" she said.
O'Bannon sighed in mock frustration. "We've been together for nearly five months now. You think you could call it by its proper name. Computer."
"Mm, I like doohickey better."
He shook his head. "It's a good thing you're sexy, otherwise I wouldn't put up with this." He tacked on a smile at the end.
"Jimmy." Had Talia's skin been a lighter color, she'd surely be blushing. That had been one thing he never understood about her in all the time they'd been dating. Talia always seemed to doubt or underestimate her own beauty. But her looks had been the main reason he'd gone over to the table the Young Wizards and Witches Athletics and Activities Association had set up at the Salem job fair a couple days before graduation. He found Talia to not only be gorgeous, but very nice with an energetic personality. Shortly after he began working with her at the YWWAAA, he asked her out. O'Bannon recalled their third date, when she hesitantly admitted she'd been surprised at his interest in her, since, "You just strike me as the kind of guy who'd be dating mind-blowingly beautiful women."
"I am dating a mind-blowingly beautiful woman," he had replied. "One who happens to be a great person to boot."
Talia had smiled shyly at that. If anything her comment surprised him. With his lean 5'10 frame, his round face and conservatively combed brown hair, O'Bannon wouldn't dream of putting himself in the same class as whichever Muggle movie star girls currently went insane over. He thought he'd lucked out big-time going out with someone as hot as Talia Laribee. The same had been true during his brief relationships with the Seeker for his dorm's Quidditch team, Rana Rollingsworth, and the British auror Nymphadora Tonks. He could also throw Mireet Miradeaux in there. True they never got romantically involved while at Hogwarts, but he had taken her to the Yule Ball. That had to count for something.
A kiss on the cheek by Talia pulled him back to the present. "So how much longer are you going to spend on your doohickey?"
"Just a few minutes. I wanna check the Bruins score from last night."
"Okay." Talia patted him on the shoulder. "I'll leave you to it."
She backed away from him. O'Bannon went to his favorites icon and clicked on . He sat back and waited for the site to come up.
Something fell over his head. He tensed as the world around him went black. O'Bannon grasped a handful of cloth in his right hand and yanked. The computer, the snow globe, the desk and the window all reappeared before him. He glanced down at the bundle of cloth he clutched and unfolded it. It turned out to be a t-shirt. The same t-shirt Talia had been wearing.
He spun around, his heart speeding up. But Talia was nowhere in sight.
"I'll be in the shower if you want me," her voice carried from the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom. Seconds later he heard a steady stream of water.
O'Bannon turned back to the web site. He bit down on his lip, trying to decide. Final score of last night's Bruins game, or gorgeous, naked, wet girlfriend.
I love my Bruins. But . . .
He shoved his chair away and jumped to his feet. "Coming, sweetheart."
O'Bannon stripped off his t-shirt and started toward the bathroom.
A rush of wind from the snow globe caught his attention.
His body stiffened. Slowly, O'Bannon turned. The light snow that had been falling on the model of Ovenderburg morphed into a full-scale blizzard, blotting out the town. His chest seized. He couldn't blink as he stared intently at the snow globe. Or rather, what looked like a snow globe. The decoration was merely a disguise for an advocosfaira, a magical message sphere. The only messages it delivered came from one source. The Guild of the Light.
The blizzard formed ethereal white words. COME TONIGHT AT 6 FOR DINNER.
O'Bannon gazed at the last two words. He knew the Guild wasn't really inviting him to dinner. That was just the code word telling him the place for the meeting, a place he knew very well.
Nervousness churned within him. His next scheduled meeting with the Guild wasn't for two days. What could be so important they needed to see him tonight?
A spark of excitement sliced through his nervousness. Maybe the Guild wanted to give him a real assignment. Something that didn't involve sitting at a damn computer. That had to be it. He'd paid his dues for six months. He'd discovered several "accidents" in the Muggle World the Guild later determined had been caused by Death Eaters. And he'd been doing very well in his advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts training.
Maybe now the Guild of the Light would finally let him do what he had wanted to do from the first day he joined them.
Fight.
NEXT: REUNITED
AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Advocosfaira" is a combination of the Latin "advoco," meaning to summon, and the Greek "sfaira," meaning sphere. I couldn't find any translation in Latin for "sphere" or "orb" or "globe," so I figured Greek was the next best thing.