A/N

I own nothing and also sorry for the sporadic posting.

Chapter 4

Harry

Harry stared at himself in the mirror, feeling slightly ridiculous. In a white shirt, black suit, and black tie he looked a little like Vernon Dursley on his way to work. Harry had never owned a muggle suit, and after joining the magical world, he never thought he would need one. The suit left in his room by Eras fit him perfectly, but Harry was just not sure he liked it.

A moment later, Harry heard a knock on his door and Hermione walked in.

Beautiful, was his first thought, unprompted. In the years after Hogwarts, Harry found himself thinking of Hermione as beautiful with increasing frequency. Her curls were as frizzy as ever, but age had suited her well. She had grown into her slender frame and when her face was out of a book, he liked looking into her eyes. Today, the suit material of her gray dress skimmed her narrow waist and accentuated all the right places.

"I look like my mom," she uttered, smoothing her dress down. For some reason, she was blushing slightly.

"You pull it off well," Harry grinned, noticing her blush deepen.

Before he could wonder why that turned his insides, Ron walked in behind Hermione. "Muggles have the weirdest styles. Shall we?"

The three of them headed outside the building and saw Sean waiting with a dark car.

"We'll have to drive up to not draw too much attention. Maria DeLuca's bar is called the Wild Pony so I thought we'd start with a trap near there."

He couldn't quite put his finger on why, but Harry's gut told him not to trust Sean. He told himself it was not only because he had seen Sean's eyes trail down Hermione's body in the dress before landing back on her eyes, but deep down he knew that was definitely part of it. The four of them got into the black Subaru Outback and drove to the parking lot of a dilapidated building with a brown horse sign that read "The Wild Pony".

"How should we approach this?" Ron asked.

"We put a doorway right outside the bar and then we wait for her to walk through it," Sean replied.

"And what do we do when she walks through the door?" Harry wondered aloud.

"Question her, obviously," Sean declared.

"Yes, but not around people," Hermione added. She looked thoughtful. "Maybe we can start by saying we're the FBI to clear anyone else in the street at the time."

"We don't all need to wait for her," Sean announced. Harry knew what Sean was about to say before he spoke. "Maybe Hermione and I can wait here while Harry and Ron can review the file I got from the sheriff's office. You can even go talk to the sheriff."

Harry and Ron gave each other a knowing look, but could not think of any reason to disagree with the plan. Harry reluctantly accepted the proffered folder.

"He's a prat," Ron hissed when they'd left. "Ugh, that's sick."

Harry had just opened the folder and inside they saw six pictures of dismembered bodies. The police report described the crime scenes in excruciating detail. For nearly a quarter of an hour, they read through all of the material given to them.

"I guess we should go to the Sheriff?" Ron asked.

"Sheriff's department," Harry enunciated, holding the keys the way Sean had shown them. The car sprang to life and began driving to the police station. The building was small and on the inside, they found an empty room with two desks and a jail cell big enough to hold one person.

"Through there?" Harry pointed to a door labeled "Sheriff."

The room had one large desk and behind it sat a thin man with coffee-colored skin and jet black hair pushed back typing on a computer.

The sheriff looked up when he noticed the two men in the doorway. "How may I help you?" he asked.

"I'm, er, Harry Potter and this is my colleague, Ronald Weasley," Harry said. "We're here from the FBI."

"You're here about?" He eyed them suspiciously.

"Murders," Harry handed over the pictures from the file.

"Ah these," the man said, looking through the photos. "Happened before my time. I only took over a couple months ago."

"Could you get a hold of your predecessor?" Harry asked, surprised that the man knew so little.

"I have no idea what happened to him," the man said. "He told me that I was in charge and left. You could always reach out to his fiance"

He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down a name and an address on it. "His name was Maxwell Evans."

"He's in the file as a person of interest," Harry said. "Any chance he's on the run?"

"Like I said, no idea," the man said coolly. He rummaged through a set of files and opened one. Although, here, Max's predecessor marked the cases closed. She didn't list a culprit, though, so don't really know what happened there."

"Could we have that?" The man handed over the file.

Harry and Ron stood up. "We'll be in touch."

Hermione

Standing outside the Wild Pony, Hermione tried to imagine finding out she was a witch as an adult. She felt a lot of sympathy for Maria DeLuca and the paradigm shift she was about to experience, if indeed she was a witch. The back door of the Wild Pony opened, a pretty girl with dark skin and black hair tied into a high ponytail came out. She was holding two large black bags filled with trash. Hermione noticed she was solely focused on the task at hand and was about to whisper to Sean that they may need a new plan, when Maria looked up and saw the doorway. For a few moments she seemed mesmerized. Sean had magicked up an ornate red door in a gold frame. Hermione knew Maria was a witch simply because she could see the door but she and Sean waited for Maria to start walking towards the door before approaching her.

"Sean Foster, FBI. We're here to talk to you. Can we talk somewhere private?"

"Fine." Maria finally turned her gaze from the door and led them back to the bar into a storage room. Although she doubted the bar would be busy in the middle of a weekday, Hermione mouthed Silencio while holding her wand to make sure they were not disturbed.

"What's this about?" Maria asked warily. Hermione and Sean hesitated a moment, then Hermione started speaking.

"Have you ever done things without meaning to? Things you couldn't explain?"

Maria stared at her, then slowly shook her head yes.

"Have you ever gotten out of trouble without knowing why or how it happened?"

"Who are you people?" Maria began backing away.

Smiling, Hermione said "We're not really from the FBI. Sean's a wizard and I'm a witch and we're from the Ministry of Magic. We're here to tell you that you're a witch too."

"I'm a what?!" Maria exclaimed as the lights in the storage room flickered.

"When you experience strong emotions, you can do magic," Hermione comforted her. "But we can help you learn how to use your powers and teach you to control them."

Hermione was not actually sure if there was a protocol in place to instruct adult witches and wizards, but decided at that moment, she would teach Maria herself if she had to.

"You're crazy!" Maria shouted.

"We're not and we can prove it," Sean pulled out his wand, making Maria flinch. He waved it once and the objects in the room began to float around them.

"A witch," she wondered aloud, shaking her head. "A witch and a…"

"A what?" asked Hermione, now curious.

"Nothing", Maria blurted.

Sean eyed her suspiciously for a moment before saying, "We have some questions. About Roswell. And we have some rules in the magic community about allowing nomags-they're nonmagic people- to learn about us. In addition to telling you about magic, we're also here to make sure you don't break the rules."

"What questions?"

"There's been many… strange incidents reported here since 1947. Often, nomags would attribute them to things like aliens. We were just hoping you could help us investigate these cases."

"Sure," Maria said. "I don't know much, but I'll try and help."

But Hermione did not miss Maria's flinch at the word aliens.

Maria

How much do they know, was Maria's first thought. Although wrapping her mind around the idea that she might actually have magical powers akin to those of Michael and the lot was unimaginable, Maria's primary concern was for the aliens. As far as she knew, aside from their cohort of friends, aliens were still an unknown. But if the magical community suspected or even knew something, maybe they could help. Even without an active threat, Maria knew the aliens would need help sooner or later.

"What do you want to know about?" Maria asked cautiously. Maybe she could get them to show their hand first.

"Was your family here in 1947?" Sean prompted. She thought of all she had learned about her family, the ones who had arrived in 1947.

"As far as I know. My mom died recently, so I can't really ask her" She wondered how much her mother had known-or guessed-about their magical talents.

"What about the murders a year ago?"

She told them all the publically available information about the murders. Nothing of Jones and the weapon, of course.

"Are there any others in the area?" Maria wondered. "Like us?"

"Yes, one other," Hermione said. "Listen, take today to process. I'll be back tomorrow to help you get a wand and to teach you some basic magic."

After they left, Maria paced in the storage room, trying to decide what to do. Who should she tell about her newfound powers? Who was this other person with powers in their town? It was times like this that Maria DeLuca wished she could talk to her mother. She thought longingly of the family she didn't have, then suddenly remembered the family she did.

Liz

When Elizabeth Ortecho heard a knock on the door, her first instinct was panic. Although all had really been fine in the last three months, Liz still found herself facing normal situations with anxiety. She opened the door to find two men dressed in suits looking at her. The taller of the two, with flaming red hair, spoke first.

"I'm Ronald Weasley and this is my colleague Harry Potter. We're here from the FBI," Ron said. "We're here to ask you some questions about your fiance, Maxwell Evans."Panic surged through Liz. She had no answers for the two men regarding the whereabouts of Max. How could she tell them anything when she knew nothing herself?

"Is he home?" Ron asked, looking around the room beyond her. She paused a long moment, trying to calm her mind and organize her thoughts. Maybe honesty was the best policy. Or at least some version of it.

"He's not here," she started. "I actually don't know where he is. I haven't seen him in three months."

The men stared at her suspiciously. "Have you reported him missing?" the black-haired one asked her. She shook her head. "Why not?"

"He's done this before," she said, wishing she knew how to cry on command. "Years ago. I'm sorry. I wish I could be of more help. Why were you looking for him anyway?"

"He's a person of interest in an investigation," Ron said. "Thanks anyways."

As they left, Liz's mind began racing again. They weren't the FBI, she thought to herself. She found herself worrying about who they were and what secrets they might expose. It was time to call Jenna Cameron.