The Halfling Archive was an embarrassment to the government of Great England and Northern Ireland. Or at least, many were of the opinion that it should have been. It was one of those things that if you were born with two human or two hobbit parents, you didn't really think about. Not only because you didn't have to, but to many people the idea that such a thing, such an unfair thing could have ever existed was too uncomfortable a subject even just to thank about.

And if you were like Mike or his sisters, and only one of your parents was a hobbit or a human - the idea that you could ever not think about it was … well, it was something they didn't like to think about. That building cast a shadow that stretched across the entirety of Mike Cooper's life. Really he thought with the same stubbornness of long left behind childhood, it shouldn't have. It was just a building, just a cold white building. And yet it did.

It started at the beginning of the 20th century, some said it was even Queen Victoria that had set it up, but that could just be a myth. After all the actual earliest mentions of the place had come in 'The Halfling Regulation Act' - which while mainly about the things hobbits and those born of hobbits or sired by a hobbit could not be allowed to do in a 'civilised society', also took a sizeable portion of itself, to lay out that from here in all those born of 'Halfling' status were to register their movements with the proper authorities. Otherwise they would be thrown immediately in jail, regardless of pass criminal record, and in many cases the age of the perpetrator.

It was generally believed that the original authors of the act had meant to use the word "Halfbreed" but had made a mistake somewhere and instead of admitting it, had just doubled down on the spelling. And thus the word Halfling was born. This was generally thought to be true as such a word cannot be found in earlier documentation. Or at least, no human documentation. Hobbit languages, at least the ones they used to write in, were often so twisted and bizarre who really knew what they were saying. For all anyone knew they had been calling people Halflings for thousands of years and no one had bothered to ask them. Although they certainly got offended enough when you called them that, so maybe, who knew.

It wasn't really relevant to the topic anyway. What Hobbit Societies thought or didn't think hadn't been relevant to the little boy who at five years old had been forced to go and register his blood type in that building. Hadn't been relevant to the teenager who had to put his failing SATs scores on files there; and had certainly not been relevant to the nineteen year old who had had to sit in an uncomfortable medical examine room as he finally officially registered his first time. It had been an embarrassing experience for all involved.

He couldn't believe that some Halflings actually wanted to work in this crime against good nature, and fairness. Couldn't really believe it had been Leila, his out spoken, political activist sister who had been the one to do so. I mean it would have been ridiculous for either of his sisters to have agreed to step foot in a place like this, unless they absolutely had to - which thanks to the repealment of the Halfling Regulation act in 2018, they no longer did - but the fact that it was Leila made it almost a joke. A complete, fucking, joke.

Still, she was here, she worked here, that was just a fact of life and for once … for once he didn't even regret it. After all, if you were going to find the name of a Halfling - As Alison had always said the Captain was - lost to history, there was really no other place to go. And better it was the family that owed him a favour that worked in this horror show, than one he actually liked, right?

Leila had never been his favourite sister even before the incident at a Christmas. But then he supposed they were both at fault for that, both his sisters that is. They'd both needled and teased, and nudged him into having that breakdown. Insulting him, saying that he hadn't cooked any of the meal that he hosted. And then what had happened, he'd snapped, had a tantrum when they forced him to wear the footy pyjamas they'd bought him at Christmas. And then they had filmed it. Put it up on YouTube, oh what a laugh. Stupid Mike, and his stupid strop, the epic sulk rises again. Suddenly it was just like when they were kids and nothing Mike did was ever good enough.

Of course they hadn't been laughing quite so hard when Mum had discovered the video on line. She'd flipped, he'd heard it from Dad later that he'd never seen her look as angry as she did when she saw it. Apparently she had screamed at the girls and they had actually cried, he wished he could have seen it himself, but even just hearing it second hand was pretty awesome. It had almost made the crap they had all put him through at Christmas worth it, almost.

Yeah, Christmas had sucked but it certainly hadn't been the beginning of his rocky relationship with Leila. Really it had always been kind of strained. On her end because she had always thought that Mike was Mum's favourite and so she had resented the heck out of him And at his end he was fucking terrified of her, mainly because she became a little crazy when she was involved in a project.

He didn't quite know how he felt about setting her off on one himself, but he was resolved on this, he took the picture, he drove all the way here, he couldn't exactly turn back now.

Not now he was through the door anyway.

Hallway, upon hallway, upon other hallway. This wasn't the part of the building he remembered, nothing sterile or white about these walls. They were grey, just like the carpets and the pictures, and the plants. Everything was grey here in the part of the building the public wasn't supposed to see. He wasn't even sure how he had gotten in, there was a security guard up front but he just walked by him and the guy hadn't even looked up from his newspaper. Weird, he hadn't even known people still read newspapers like that.

And then suddenly the grey of the hallways was behind him, and his world was assaulted by the mess and the clutter that was his sister's office. That was all it was clutter and mess, and something that looked vaguely like it might once have been the remains of her lunch. You know, a fortnight ago. Ugh, her room had been the same way when they were kids.

Really it was best not to look too closely at anything in here. It wasn't the reason he was here anyway, no, that sat in the midst of all the mess, and papers and books of old hobbit lore. His sister, Leila with her nose stuck in one of her old books. Although he couldn't understand why. Don't get him wrong, he understood why she went nuts for books, and even why she might want bury herself in them especially when they concerned a project. He wasn't actually an idiot despite what his family might say about him. It was just why the Mordor was she reading 'that' book? She wrote it!

The Human Hobbit: The Remarkable Case of Agustín Rojas, Tallest Hobbit in History

Bad name, for an okay book. It had been her college dissertation really but honestly she probably would have written it anyway, that was how obsessed she'd become with Agustín Rojas during a family holiday in Columbia the summer before she even started college. He was some hobbit who lived sometime at the turn of the century, who apparently had grown as large as a man. A tall man too, at least six feet by the time the pictures stopped appearing. Seriously he had passed for a man. Apparently when he'd gotten sick of being hired out to freak shows, he'd run off to marry a human woman somewhere in the mountains of Columbia. A lot of later scholars dismissed the case, saying that obviously Agustín was just a human that had been adopted into a family of hobbits. And that was the accepted view until Leila had published her collage dissertation and presented the idea that no, really he was a giant hobbit and in fact hobbits and humans were probably a lot more closely related than people generally thought. Hence why it was so easy for them to procreate with humans and produce offspring that weren't infertile.

She managed to get it published but thanks to that, had been laughed out of every teaching or research project she'd applied for afterwards. And then some smart ass down at the British National Museum had done a DNA test on Agustín's skull - it was just less depressing not to ask how they had acquired that - and low and behold, full hobbit not a strand of human DNA in there. Suddenly his sister wasn't a joke and the job offers came flowing in. Making it even weirder that she had chosen to work … here.

No, he shouldn't get into that, shut up Mike … just get in there and ask your damn question.

She wasn't terribly impressed with his proposal. Mainly it seemed because finding someone, anyone, with no name - and therefore no birthdate - in the Halfling Archive was the kind of task that sent even the best crazy, remarkably quickly, apparently. So she almost said no, even when Mike brought up the incident at Christmas and the promise Mum had wrung out of the sisters to make it up to Mike somehow.

"Look," said Mike. "I just really wanted to find that name, as a present for Alison. He died at Button House, and she's really into finding the history of the house right now."

And then he took out the photo, that old black and white photograph of the Captain with the rest of his battalion and showed it to her, pointing out the Captain as he did so.

"We've just been calling him the Captain."

She took the picture and stared at it, it was strange she almost seemed captivated by the sight of the thing. Mike couldn't explain why, it was just an old photo of some soldiers, but then he never really could understand any of Leila's obsessions. It was one of the many reasons they had never really gotten on.

"Fine," she said at last. Wrenching her eyes away from the photo to look back up at him again.

"I guess I can take a look, but this makes up for everything alright." Mike thanked her profusely, and even said that not only did it make up for Christmas, but for any future crap she pulled on him too.

He stopped then, thinking he'd gone too far, but she just smirked and rolled her eyes.

"Come on, I've got to run it past my team first."

Mike followed her down into the bowels of the Archive Offices hesitantly, because from what he'd heard his sister was the sane one in this office. And then he thought of Alison, and steeled himself for any madness he was about to see.

This was Leila's team. It should be relevant to note now that they were all crazy.

First there was Cordelia "Quasimodo" Granger - a young (only 21) human woman of colour, with large round glasses that made her eyes look twice the size they naturally were. She was a professional Archivist. She was the best of the best when it came to combing through data many others would find unbelievably boring. No one was entirely sure how she got the nickname, as she only had a slight slouch to her shoulders and no visible hunch.

Mike privately suspected it might have something to do with how easily she made people jump when she appeared from the shadow - mean nicknames come easily when you're scared out of your skin.

Then there was Hestia "History" Bonnet - a thirty-year-oldAmerican woman of Māori descent, with bizarrely wild frizzy blond hair all about her face. The team historian, well professionally anyway - her years worth of research and study into the historical relations between hobbits and humans had proven invaluable to her team in the past. Interesting personal fact, Hestia was actually a direct descendant of Stede Bonnet, The Gentlemen Pirate. Don't worry she would let you know this if you spent even a small amount of time alone in a room with her, no matter how much you would wish she'd stop.

Stuart 'Stu' Craven - a young (specific age unknown) man originally from New Zealand. He was the resident Alchemist of their floor. Which meant he actually served several different teams in the Archive, but Leila's team was one of his favourites. No one outside of the Archive was exactly sure why they needed an Alchemist working there at all.

I mean if you needed to study magic why not just hire a Magician, there were a lot of them popping up recently. Or if it was a science thing, why not just hire a scientist - this amalgamation of the two just seemed cheap. Whatever the case, Stu was a very good at his job and his purpose whatever it was. He might also be a werewolf, or at least that was what the rumours said anyway. No one really wanted to ask if it was true.

Sure people could accept magic as a fact of life, but something about werewolves being real sent shivers up even the bravest spine. It had also been discovered much to History's joy that Stu was actually a descendent of Leslie ' Laszlo' Cravensworth, one of the fathers of the "modern" Alchemist movement. If you can really call something modern if it began in the 1700s.

According to family legend the Cravens of New Zealand were descended from Cravensworth and his favourite mistress, Helena Smith, who was sent over seas to New Zealand to keep her and the child she carried safe when Cravensworth was diagnosed with leprosy.

Next was Elijah 'Lijh' or 'Shakes' Baley, the only hobbit on the team. He was some kind of government agent sent over from the entirely hobbit country of Pictland.

By rights he should have been working somewhere higher up in the government, but his extreme case of Agoraphobia - to the point that he was even nervous around windows hidden behind a curtain - meant that he was only really capable of working in the Archive and still be somewhat functional. Because most of the Archive, the real Archive, those files that contained all the information on the Halflings of England and Northern Ireland born between 1900 and 2018, was placed underground where no natural light could ever reach.

He was a bit of a joke to most of the people working in the Archive, but Leila recognised his keen eye for human and hobbit behaviour so liked having him on her team.

Lola Powel was a young, blond woman from Kent - or at least that was what her driving licence said anyway - with a head full of air. She barely got anything right, and it was best not to leave her alone with any electrical device more complicated than a coffee pot as she might just explode it.

But she made the best God Damn Coffee in the building so Leila considered her one of her most invaluable team members.

Leila introduced each of them to her brother, and presented the challenge of the Captain's name to them, as if she expected them to be excited with the prospect which even to Mike came off as a little odd.

The team were less than enthusiastic.

A huge argument erupted between the usually quiet, congenial team then. Every member of the team had something to say, every member no, Lola stayed focused on changing the filter of the coffee maker. So focused in fact that it soon became obvious to Mike that the reason she was taking so long in what should have been a routine task - especially for someone who was apparently such an expert coffee maker - was that she was desperately trying not to be involved in the fight at all.

Cordelia believed that they just didn't have the time needed for locating a man with no name, and no form of identification save for one ancient, blurry black and white photograph.

She proceeded to grab said photo from Leila's hand and squinted in an exaggerated fashion as if to prove her point.

"You can barely even make out the features anymore, if you ever could. How are we supposed to find anything from that?"

Hestia snatched the photo from Cordelia in such a harsh manner that Mike felt a sudden terror that they were going to tear the photo, maybe even rip it in half and then any hope of finding out who that man was would be gone. But it didn't happen, in fact Hestia held the photo with a delicate touch and a serenely smug look upon her pretty face as she looked down at it and said.

"Don't be silly, this shouldn't be too hard to unravel."

Behind her Cordelia scoffed. "… from nothing but a photo?"

"No," said Hestia. "With your precious documents. If we know where he served then we can find the documentation for it. There has to be a list somewhere of all the men that were stationed there."

"Not in our files," said Cordelia, a sour note in her voice.

"Yes," Hestia said petulantly, seemingly determined to prove her colleague wrong. "They must be, if he was a Halfling all his movements if they have documentation must be stored here. Why else would you have such regressive and uncomfortable policies if you weren't going to follow them? If we only knew the name it would be easier of course, but perhaps Button House would be mentioned somewhere else in all those documents of yours."

"Not in the name of the document," pointed out Cordelia.

"So look through the rest of it," moaned the historian.

"That will take years." Snapped the girl in the glasses.

"Well, get cracking Quasimodo, no time like the present." At the sound of the name, made in that mocking tone, Leila started to step in but Cordelia was more than ready to stick up for herself. Even with someone who was at least ten years her senior.

"We don't even know what they were doing there at Button House, if it was during the war it could have been anything! For all we know it could have been some top secret government experiment."

"So?" Said Leila and the historian simultaneously, both in confusion but only one in derision and to Mike's surprise it wasn't his sister.

"So," said the girl. "That would mean most of the stuff we would have on file would be heavily redacted. Probably to the point where it's not even useful in finding out where the House is let alone who served there."

Leila looked like she was about to say something sarcastic to that, probably involving Mike giving them directions in their GPS or something stupid like that. When she was interrupted by another voice.

"I can help with that," said the hobbit sitting with his feet up on a desk at the back.

"Have you suddenly become psychic now?" History asked.

"Dinna be a gype, History." Said the hobbit in the fedora and the long coat hanging on the back of his chair. He then turned to Cordelia and asked her if this was really during WWII? Both she and Mike said 'yes' simultaneously.

"Right," said the hobbit. "Then there shouldn't be a problem - that's long enough back that the freedom of information act you English Humans put up should be in effect. Technically, since having accurate files on the movement of all 'Halflings' born before 2018 is this place's purpose, you should be able to just request them. Updated, no redacted files. They got away with handing over edited or blanked files probably because the war was so recent. They can't use that same excuse now."

And then at the startled looks of his colleagues…

"But if you're worried about the time it will take, and they might delay if there's something … embarrassing in the Button House Files … I've got a few contacts in that part of your government. I can see if I can't hurry things up a bit."

Most of the team looked at the hobbit now like he had just grown another head. Mike was the only one actually capable of speech at that moment.

"Thanks mate," and the hobbit nodded and smirked as if he found the others silence actually kind of funny. Mike wanted to laugh himself, out of joy, because now … now things actually looked like they might be moving forward.

"Right yes, thank you Lije that would be very helpful," said his sister thought she still sounded stunned that the hobbit contributed anything helpful at all.

"Right," she said then, as she clapped her hands to call the room to attention. "I think that settles it … anyone else got a problem with going forward. Stu?"

Stu opened his mouth to say something, but he got immediately talked over by Cordelia.

"Of course he's going to say no, he just goes where ever the group does."

Stu opened his mouth to say something to that, but again was talked over, this time by History.

"Of course, he's going to go along with the group, he knows his place … unlike some people."

Stu looked a little annoyed at that but was unable to say anything because Cordelia was yelling right back at History, asking what she meant by that.

"I'm the historian," said History. "This is a piece of history - Stu knows my voice carries more weight in this department. If I say it can be done it can be done."

"But," said Cordelia before Stu could even think of butting in. "You're expecting me to do the lion's share of the work."

"Look," said History, smiling patronisingly . "If this were a modern problem, or a document storing issue I would bow to your expertise, but it's not, it's a historical problem. So why don't you just shut your trap, and do the work asked of you for once."

And with that she shoved the picture of the Captain and his men right into Cordelia's chest. Mike felt that same panic, the one that told him they were certainly going to rip the picture and that he had better step in before they did. He found his feet beginning moving even before his mind could catch up with what they were doing, because Cordelia looked angry enough to burn a whole Library down. One tiny picture wouldn't last a second in her clutches.

But Cordelia did not rip the picture, she stayed with it clutched to her chest, her glasses seemingly flogging up with her tears.

"But it's all on me, isn't it, this historical problem of yours. Let's face it, other than standing there and looking pompous you don't do much, do you Hestia?"

History's triumphant look fell from her face but she remained quiet as the other woman continued to talk.

"I scour the documents for what we need for hours, days, sometimes even months. Lije uses his contacts to smooth over the more delicate processes when we need help from outside the Archive, or he helps me with the deduction. Stu has his computers, when he's not waving his hands with his magic spells."

History laughed at that, as if the thought of Stu - quiet unassuming Stu, with his neat polo shorts, scratched all over face and soft New Zealand voice doing magic, real magic was a laugh.

"Alchemists don't do magic, Quasimodo, that's just naïve superstition." Said History as if this one misstep of Cordelia's proved that she been wrong about everything else as well. This seemed to anger Cordelia even more than anything else the smug historian had spouted this morning.

"Magic is real." She said, in a small, pained voice.

"Of course it is, but only when in the hands of Magicians. They do magic when they do anything at all, but Alchemists. Please. They're retarded scientists."

"You're a retarded scientist."

You would have thought that such a childish retort would have sealed a victory for the historian, but no it only seemed to enraged her.

She snatched the photo back. And made as if to actually tear it in half, both Leila and Mike moved then to attempt to save the photograph but once again it seemed like neither of them was needed there.

History and Cordelia, and even Elijah slouched on his desk seemed to have been frozen in place.

They might have been pulsating symbols on the wall, but it was very unclear to Mike through the fog of his own paralysis. And then Stu was there between the two women, plucking the photo safely out of History's grasp.

"Sorry, I need to see that for a moment." Said the quiet, barely audible voice of the Alchemist and then he walked away and suddenly everyone, even Mike slumped forward as if there had been an invisible string holding them up, and someone had suddenly cut it.

Stu went off to study it at his computer desk, and amongst the others gasps and pants Leila said to Mike.

"When do you need it done by?"

And Mike blinked, before he said.

"My anniversary."

Leila frowned at that and shook her head.

"We can try but it's a little soon, when all we've got is the picture and one army posting to go on. Not even a hard document, just your word that he was there at Button House during the war. It might have to be a birthday, or even a Christmas Present."

Mike shrugged, slightly disappointed but he got it, it was a hard thing he asked her to do. And really all he wanted was to get Alison a good gift for once, it didn't necessarily have to be a gift for their anniversary.

"Thanks for this, Leila. It means a lot." Leila shrugged turning away, trying to pretend she didn't care.

"Sure, it's whatever. Just stop whining about last Christmas and we'll be even."

Mike promised that it was forgotten and even Leila couldn't keep the small smile from her face at those words.