2002, Los Angeles (Harry knew the USA was big, but this was ridiculous)
Harry, along with Jesse, Demitris and Eleni, was assigned as a recon-stroke-capture team for a new sighting around the Los Angeles area. Chief Williams may have been annoyed at him for acting outside 'the chain of command' but it didn't, thankfully, stop him being used in the field. Although Harry knew his expenses budget would be getting a hefty reduction.
He was actually unsure why he was with the patrol team specifically along with Jesse, since he was an Auror, and didn't have a NEWT in Care of Magical Creatures. Jesse mentioned it was probably for the books, so that their consultants looked like they were getting something done. It helped that, thanks to Ron's own secondment to Athens a few months ago, the British Ministry was seen as more trustworthy than the notoriously isolationist American wizards to the Greeks in general.
"Well, now we sit and indulge in bougatsa and coffee until some creature finally emerges." Demetris was definitely looking smug, now in his element. It had taken an hour to find the most central point in L.A. and set up enough of their tracking instruments. Everyone except the creature handler was thoroughly tired and bored. The next half-hour passed staring alternately at a (muggle) map of LA, a (magical) map of the same city, and a copper teapot-shaped thing that emitted green-purple smoke at random intervals, and a bronze clock that didn't tick, and four burgundy pocketwatches with no hands.
"You aren't going to arrange any recon checks?" This was from Jesse, although he'd voiced exactly what Harry was thinking. Twenty minutes had gone by - both Aurors were definitely getting twitchy.
"My friend." This was said in the most patronising way that Harry could have guessed. "If this was a dark wizard, with intelligence and cunning, then yes, reconnaissance would be good. But, this is a creature, and if it smells wizards bumbling around, it may flee, and maybe destroy things as it tries to run."
"The damn hydra didn't look like fleeing to me!"
"Well that is all due to your own credit, you both must have looked fearsome ." The two aurors knew they were being insulted, but couldn't quite work out how, or if there was much point responding.
"Only the most dangerous and rare creatures can smell the differences between wizards and muggles." Eleni muttered, she, like Harry, seemed very annoyed that this was not a very active evening, but handling it with more grace. She was reading a dense book, it was all Greek to Harry, who didn't bother to disturb the witch.
"Aha, but that is why we are here, MACUSA do not know what they have, only that they are Greek and dangerous, and we don't know what they have, only that it is Greek and dangerous. So best treat it as dangerous, and possibly Greek."
And that was it for a few hours. Watching and waiting, checking the same maps and tracking devices, that Harry or Jesse had no idea how they worked, just that if red smoke turned up on one, there was a monster, and if the clock chimed, then there was maybe a heard.
Eventually Demitris took pity on both Aurors, and told them that most magical creatures couldn't sense muggles in the same way that they could sense magical beings, and that for all intents and purposes, a magical creature would see a muggle city in the same way they would see a forest. It was therefore, and the aurors couldn't follow the logic here, best if they treated the assignment as they would hunting in a forest, rather than an auror-stake out.
That worked for about four hours, but after getting nothing, Demitris conceded that perhaps a quick patrol with the green-purple smoke emitter would be useful.
Outside of a few strange yellow signals from a nightclub - "there are always bugs in the system, don't worry" - L.A. was, well, not peaceful, but it didn't look like there was any particularly high concentration of magic, or any magic at all really. The muggles were a different story, but they didn't concern the group.
Harry and Eleni were on their third circuit of L.A.'s major roads and it was getting to 1am. They returned and Harry gratefully sank into his chair, idly reaching for some snacks.
On his sixth bougatsa Harry began mentally cursing whatever intern that had obviously gotten spooked over nothing and sent them on a wild goose chase in L.A. he could be helping the demigods, or writing to Ginny, or something. Instead he was stuck staring at smoke and listening for a broken clock to chime.
A buzzing noise and a lot of red smoke later, Harry almost believed that something, somewhere had it out for him.
"Eleni, stay here, Aurors, follow me."
What happened next was perhaps the greatest blunder in MACUSA's history. Fifty obliviators, thirty healers, eight creature wranglers and an extra dozen Aurors needed to stay at the scene of The Event for twenty four hours to ensure everything was cleared up for the muggles.
It wasn't a basilisk, because no-one had died, despite staring it full in the face. The only deaths were when it actually ate the poor creature wrangler and auror that were too slow to apparate away.
A total of five witches and wizards had died, another twenty were badly injured. The worst hit were the muggles, around forty were seriously injured, over a dozen were killed, and three were only saved by quick intervention of magical healing.
Whatever the creature was, it was fast, very large, and used acid to attack its prey, alongside it's massive bulk and not-quite-petrifying stare. The only saving grace for Harry and his patrol was that the damage was caused by a completely separate Auror, apparating to avoid the massive not-basilisk, who caused a massive lorry to overturn. That, alongside the creature's massive bulk and penchant for ploughing through cars caused what Harry thought was the largest car-accident he'd ever probably see.
If it were just a large traffic 'accident' then the aurors would be able to right it within the hour, but the creature's acid attacks and massive bulk would eat through steel and concrete, causing massive explosions and large fires to break out in the half-destroyed buildings it left in its wake.
It was, eventually, killed, again vanishing into a strange dust-like ooze that soon disappeared as well, after a sustained mass of bombarda and fire curses, alongside numerous cutting curses and rubble being used to crush it. Hopefully the muggles would put it down to an oil-tanker crash that unfortunately, but entirely coincidentally also wrecked gas pipes and electrical wires that caused the massive explosion (there was no hiding that from the muggles, no matter how many obliviators were called in).
The good news was the creature was definitely dead, nothing in the world, except maybe a horcrux, could've survived the beating the Aurors just gave it, Harry thought.
The bad news, well, that didn't bear thinking about without either alcohol, or a lot of caffeine.
[a few days later, Intercontinental Hotel, Times Square, New York]
Harry had gotten his most recent daily update from Thalia yesterday evening - apparently the group were approaching somewhere named Centreville. They were going to use that to scout out Washington D. there were a lot more monster attacks as they approached the US capital, something that worried them, but kind of made sense. If the Greek gods, the nexus of ancient Greek mythology, were in D.C. then it would make sense that a lot of the monsters were as well, he guessed.
Harry still felt guilty about not apparating to them regularly, or helping them out more directly over their trek to D.C., but he, like the rest of MACUSA's Auror office, was completely swamped with cleaning up the L.A. fiasco. He was also trying to figure out a way to convince them to stay closer to more wizarding areas - even though they were not witches or wizards themselves, he knew that the wizarding world could help them out far far more than any muggle could. He didn't even entertain the thought of their 'parents' helping them out - Thalia and Luke's stories about them had definitely soured him on that front.
Harry again looked at the most recent letter from Ron and Hermione - unfortunately the cost and time delay in sending post meant that they were a good three days behind him, so the letters weren't regular by any means.
He'd written to them both to ask about the kids (he couldn't find a concise way of explaining about greek myths and demigods - they charged by weight, and Harry was convinced that American parchment had lead hidden in it somewhere. His letter just mentioned that the kids did not fall under MACUSA's definition of 'wizards' and they didn't have wands but could do a limited magic, and they called themselves 'demigods', and he wanted to find out how to help them.
Unusually the letter back was silent on any ideas. Ron put it bluntly (he and Hermione decided to save on costs and write a single long letter, each writing part of it, rather than sending 2 letters at a ridiculous expense).
Well Harry, we're adults now, you know. It was different when it was us against there was the beginning of a word, then a scribble, and another attempt, then another scribble over that one. Finally in Hermione's writing, there was Voldemort ! Ron's scrawl continued,
We have jobs, and are respectable witches and wizards
this was done in flourishing handwriting and all, the handwritten equivalent of an impersonation of Percy Weasley
and besides, they aren't witches or wizards, probably muggleborns that slipped through the cracks, they don't even have wands, so not much we could do anyway, even if they weren't American - MACUSA are proper arseholes about bureaucracy according to Dad and won't bother with anyone if they don't hold a wand - they make Umbridge's decrees look pleasant apparently
Even Hermione conceded that for all their honours and medals, they were still three British magicals without all that much international clout besides their collective fame (which was really Harry's fame, much to his annoyance). At most they could offer recommendations to some magical institutes, and smooth a few paths or offer introductions personally. But aside from that, well the demigods were definitely stuck. None of the three were happy about it, but they couldn't do anything, really.
They had, to Harry's great chagrin, realised that their fame and popularity didn't count for all that much on the international stage. They were still famous and sort of influential, but not influential enough to get foreign governments to change their ways.
If it hadn't been only five years since the Interregnum, then maybe Harry or even Hermione kicking up a fuss would have moved something in the Ministry bureaucratic machine, but the Ministry was simply under too much pressure to even think about using their limited clout on something as small as three not-quite-wizards all the way in America.
Or as Robbards put it to him when Harry tried to kick up a fuss in a separate letter, 'They're American citizens, don't have magic, and are quite possibly on the run from Muggle authorities, the ministry can't do anything for them, even if we wanted to.'
As was often the case since The Battle, Harry consoled himself with a few drinks. Nothing that would get in the way of professional duties, but just something to take the edge of his emotions. Make the day a touch more bearable.
It was in the bar that Jesse found him, not too far from his Intercontinental hotel, but far enough away that he couldn't blindly stumble back and forth between the hotel and bar.
After obligatory small talk, and more than a few drinks, both Aurors were feeling much better than they had earlier in the day. Both hadn't actually managed to talk to the other, they were, along with the Greek delegation, stuck filling in for the other aurors and admin workers whilst the fiasco was investigated by a separate team. Mostly it involved filing and completing paperwork that, even to Harry's untrained eye, looked suspiciously ad hoc.
Jesse confided in Harry that the scale of muggle America had resulted in dozens of muggleborns every year slipping through the cracks, and that trying to sort the shoddy paperwork was a common task usually assigned to a set of poor interns. Chief Williams was convinced that Harry and the Greek delegation had botched their task, and specifically requested them to fill in for the interns for that day. Harry had to admit, the man definitely could hold a grudge.
The American Auror also told Harry that the randomness of the attacks had actually put him at ease, if the creatures couldn't hunt or specifically detect wizards, then the odds of it being a dark wizard plot were very slim.
It could be an incredibly incompetent wizard, sure, or this could be a smokescreen for something bigger. But no one in MACUSA had found anything. Colonel Roberts was running her own team dedicated entirely to finding any hint of an attacker using the creatures as a smokescreen for attacks against MACUSA. But she had turned up nothing, at least nothing immediate, which was just the same really. After all, what use was a smokescreen if the planned attack wasn't immediate?
The creatures, as far as anyone could tell, were sprouting up, attacking completely random people or places, and then kindly buggering off. Except those that were 'caught' (a grand total of two, out of over twenty separate encounters), most creatures didn't stick around to be analysed. Apparently the hydra had just grown an uncomfortably large number of heads, and nearly killed Eleni and Captain Hogan when she asked to look at it - he'd obliged, but rather too quickly.
On a scale of 1 to 10 of how to impress a witch before a date, it was unanimously agreed by the Auror Office, that was definitely a 3. (Harry later found out that only one confirmed wizard had scored a 1, and they had landed their prospective date in Chicago's Magical Injuries Unit; 0 involved the sad demise of one party - every department always had one story about their own very unfortunate wizard doing just that - landing them in a hospital was either a 1 or 2 depending on how serious it was, and 10 was actually getting the witch to agree to another date)
The general consensus that the higher ups had briefed everybody on was that the creatures were randomly attacking with no thought or grand plan behind it, aside to sow general chaos.
Jesse was one of the few that was actually pleased about this; his family was unusual in that they lived in a predominantly muggle neighbourhood, and so were almost completely undefended if something that could seek out wizards actually found its way into Pennsylvania. But since the attacks were, at last, confirmed as random and having almost no detectable dark wizard presence, Jesse's family were safe. But since no dark wizard activity could be detected, it was not really under the purview of the Auror office any more.
"Jesse, I know that everyone thinks these creatures are just escaped breeding experiments gone wrong, no malicious intent behind them." Harry began, staring at the older auror over his tankard. "Well, the other day I bumped into a few kids that were actually fighting the creatures, and -"
"Ah, don't worry about that Harry, they're probably Native tribe kids from a reservation. Usually keep to themselves - they're a lot closer to the muggles than we are - but every few years a couple of tribe kids will go off on a 'Great Hunt' across the US."
Harry wasn't too sure how to broach the topic of gods or demigods, but the ready-made explanation of tribes was convenient. He made a mental note to check up on that. He'd been in America for over a month, and was only now finding out about a completely separate group of witches and wizards. He vaguely knew that muggle America had native americans that lived in their tribal area reservations, but he had no idea that any witches or wizards among them stayed there.
"Right, well by the sounds of it, they knew about the creatures before the Auror Office did, I was wondering if-"
"If our breeding experiment could be a Native thing, not just some random enthusiast?" Jesse worried at his lip, and his fingers began drumming the table. "Well, ok, this is not really a secret, but it's not really discussed either. So the Natives, they've got their own magic, use staves and rituals and other stuff. Not too sure how they get on without a wand, but they do. Thing is there was, well not a war, but a series of fights between the Natives and the witches and wizards that came with the muggles. I won't bore you with the history, but now there's an agreement, we stay out of their stuff, they stay out of ours. Mostly." Jesse tacked on at the end. Harry could already guess where this was going.
"But if MACUSA needs to check something with them, there's not much they can do to stop it?"
"Exactly. One thought from the higher ups is that the Natives used their own rituals to mess with some magical creatures and wanted to set them up for a big Great Hunt type of thing. Or this could be some petty protest that's gotten out of hand. Either way, it's no longer in the hands of our office." Jesse sat back and looked at Harry.
"A protest ? Isn't the massive damage a bit much for a protest?" Harry wasn't too sure if protest meant something different in American (he'd already found out that rubber didn't mean what he thought it meant after messing up a crossword puzzle).
"Well… the MACUSA-Native stuff is a lot messier, and has a lot more deaths than I really know about. But when I was an intern here years ago, I had to file some reports about MACUSA going into a reservation for something. A lot was wrecked there, and not a lot of goodwill was left over, so this could be a native tribe going for revenge."
"Erm. Are you sure?"
"Well I know that some natives refuse to let anyone from MACUSA onto their reservation. But this does seem like a lot for revenge. Honestly it's probably a tribe breeding something for one of their Great Hunt things that has gotten out of hand." Jesse looked at his beer, as if that would provide him with an answer.
"How does a Great Hunt work then?" Harry was curious, he'd never heard of anything like that before.
"Well, as far as I gather, some shaman is responsible for setting the creature up, breeding it or whatever, and it is let loose, and it's the job of some tribal fella to hunt the creature and return with it's remains. It's some trial of manhood. I much prefer ours."
"Exams?" Harry asked dryly.
"No! Getting so drunk you can't see a foot in front of you, then managing to make it home in one piece! That's the mark of a real man." Jesse laughed and took another gulp of his beer.
While Jesse was laughing, Harry realised the other thing the Auror had said. None of the scenarios the higher ups thought was causing this were linked to a dark wizard. So the 'case' was not really considered under the remit of the Auror office anymore. That probably meant he would be getting a call up from Chief Williams, or maybe even a memo from Robbards, that the consultancy was going to end at some point in the near future. He'd give it a week, based on the previous consultancy work the Ministry carried out abroad.
Harry decided to get in another round while he wondered how to make the most out of what was probably going to be his last week in the USA.