Pubs felt different at eleven in the morning. The morning light laid bare all the secrets that the nighttime hid, and the dive bar Eric had managed to land himself in had plenty that should be covered up. The seats all slightly discolored from years of spilled drinks and cleaning chemicals. The floorboards were all warped, likely a burst water line that the owner had never bothered to finish repairing from. The ceiling tiles were stained from years of smoke and the whole room reeked of smoke even if the sign out front loudly proclaimed, 'No Smoking Indoors'.

This was no high-end establishment to hang about with friends, this was one of those dingy pubs that was frequented by only the most solitary and lowly, drowning their thoughts in pints of cheap stout and whiskey as like to come out of a jug as a bottle. Two teenagers sat by the television, watching a recap of the last nights football match, why they weren't in classes on a Thursday morning he couldn't begin to guess. The only other people were two geysers sitting by themselves at the bar and nursing a pint.

Then there was him. Half an hour before noon and he already had five empty pints in front of him. The only person working was a woman probably in her thirties, tattoos littering her arms and a sheared short hairstyle that even a model couldn't make attractive. She sat behind the bar reading a magazine and leaving every few minutes for a smoke break. She hadn't made any effort to grab the empty glasses on his table so for now they just continued to build up.

There were certainly better things he could be doing with his time, almost anything was more productive than day drinking alone, but right now Eric just didn't care. He had already put in his work for the morning, and it had gotten him nowhere so what did any of it matter. Just a few hours earlier he had been optimistic, starting his day with an excitement he hadn't felt since his Hogwarts days. He went to a job interview trying to get a research assistant position at a project delving into alternative ward breaking techniques.

With his resume it should have been his job, it was supposed to have been his job. If anything, he was taking a step down. Near perfect scores on his NEWTS in charms, arithmancy, and runes was already good, but in addition he already had four years of experience on cutting edge spell research. He had been hired straight out of Hogwarts as an intern on a small project by a somewhat eccentric master. Unfortunately, the project's only funding had been the man's personal inheritance which due to the man's inability to stay focused on any one topic, he quickly burned through, doing a lot of good research, but creating nothing of use.

He had arrived to interview for the position, all misplaced optimism and youthful joy, only to be told that the job was already filled. Two months now. Two months he had been searching for a new job and two months of constant rejection. Every position had already been filled; every project appreciated his application but had decided to move in a different direction.

As he stared into the swirling dark depths of his pint it was hard to find a reason to keep trying. It wasn't really the rejection that had him so down though, it was who he was being rejected for. He knew for a fact that on the island of Britain, there were only two people in his year that were better than him for these jobs. Jacob Leifer went straight from London Institute of Magic to work for the Aurors designing whatever it was they needed, and Cynthia Bagshot from Glasgow Witches Academy was working on space expansion.

He pulled himself back mentally from that tangent. What mattered was that he was best option of his age and who did they pass him up for: Harald Harbaugh. He fucking hated that guy; they had been the same year at Hogwarts, and he was one of the most conceited men he'd ever met. Eric had better NEWT scores, his work experience was more impressive, and he was more likable, although that one was just his opinion.

He downed the remaining dregs of his pint and arranged it with the other empties, forming pyramid on the table out of the glasses. Well, Harald did have one thing on him. A father who worked in compliance at the ministry. After his first few rejections Eric had blamed it all on his muggleborn status. Clearly, he was being discriminated against. But the longer he thought about it, the more he realized how wrong he was. It wasn't discrimination, it was just gold old-fashioned nepotism. The wizarding world just wasn't that big, why hire a muggleborn like him when you could build relations with a possible supplier or business contact by hiring their kid or cousin.

Maybe it was time to let his inner Ravenclaw die and find some mundane job to pay the bills. With the tri-wizard tournament and the quidditch world cup on the horizon he would certainly be able to catch a job on the wave of tourism money. Or maybe he should just finally grow some balls and sign up as a curse breaker. Bill Weasley had been a couple years above him at Hogwarts and he still had all of his fingers, at least Eric was pretty sure he did.

Well, anything was better than moping around hoping for something to show up. He was going to head home, sober up, and then start looking for whatever he could find. He slid his wand out of his sleeve, a quick confundus and this bartender would forget he had never paid for his pints. It wasn't very nice or glamourous but there was only one way to easily survive without a job in the wizarding world and zero qualifications in the muggle one. The secret ingredient of constant magic assisted petty theft.

Before he could even send the charm winging off, a man suddenly slid into the seat on the other side of his booth.

"Mind if I sit here?"

Eric took another quick glance around the bar to make sure it hadn't magically filled up when he hadn't been paying attention. Still just as empty as it was before. The man took advantage of his moment of surprise and slid another pint across the table towards him, "I got you one as well mate".

Eric stared at the new pint for a second then back up at the man. The newcomer's neatly tailored suit and his general appearance made him look like right now he should be trading stocks rather than sitting in this dingy hole in the wall. He glanced back down at his pint, was this man trying to drug him or something? The man across from him was leaned back sipping on his pint like he didn't have a care in the world, blond hair neatly combed to look like it was barely combed. This was just a bit too weird for him. Eric pushed the pint back across the table. "Thanks for the offer but I was just about to leave."

"I guess something good about wizards is that you all are very careful with what you drink."

Nothing sobered you up like thinking that you might have broken the statue of secrecy. Eric sat right back down, the wand still in his hand now trained on the other man from underneath the table. Obliviating wasn't his strong suit, and he definitely shouldn't be doing something that required precision while intoxicated, but he wasn't going to be the reason wizarding society was exposed.

"Wizards? I don't know what you mean."

The man chuckled slightly and sipped his pint before grimacing at the cheap beer. "Yeah, you do." He stared at Eric for a second more before making a swatting gesture with his hand. "Put your wand down, I have no desire to be lobotomized today."

The man's mention of obliviation meant that it hadn't been him that gave it away, maybe the man was a wizard himself although Eric seriously doubted it. It just didn't fit with the man's demeanor. Regardless of the man's status, talking out loud about the wizarding world in this backwater muggle pub was a surefire way to clue more people in, so with a twist of his wrist Eric cast a light privacy spell. He relaxed slightly and under the table directed his wand away from the man, but he wasn't going to completely let down his guard. Wand still firmly in hand, just in case.

"Truly it's a wonder that more people don't know. I mean every year a hundred or so eleven-year-olds drop out to go to a variety of schools that the British government has never heard of and has no record of." The man let out another chuckle. "How the Ministry thinks that wouldn't raise any red flags I have no idea." He sat there in silence for a second taking another sip of his pint. Eric had no idea what to say, where was the man going with this?

"Oh! This is a funny one. Florian Fortescue, you know him? Well, he's muggleborn. Every year he sends his sister a lot of money, she's a single mother he's just trying to support her, I know very sweet. Well, revenue and customs gets her taxes and thinks she's up to something because how else would a single mother working as a secretary have so much unexplainable income." The man burst out laughing like he had just told the funniest joke ever told.

"Well, I'm getting off the point. We just had a position open up and thought that you would be perfect." He pulled out a business card and slid it across the table. He stood up leaving his mostly full pint and Eric opened his mouth, trying to get a question out before the man waltzed off as quickly as he had come in. The man was not going to let him get away with that, cutting him off before he could get anything out.

"Personally, I would strongly recommend it. Been working here about three years now, great pay, generous benefits, and altogether lot of good people." He took a step away from the table. "So just swing by sometime tomorrow morning if you're interested." He turned and made a b-line for the door.

"What is it you do?"

His called-out question was summarily ignored by the retreating man and the heavy door closed loudly behind him. The other patrons gave him some annoyed glances for his disturbing their peace, then went back to their own drinks. Eric flipped over the business card. Stiff white paper with simple black embossing, no company and no number, just the name Grant Fisher and an address.

Well, he had been planning to leave before that whole situation and he should stick with that plan before he wound up wasting the entire day here. He moved over to the bar, shooting charms across a pub was incredibly not subtle.

"Just closing out." Before he could even confound the woman, he was waved away. "Man before covered for you." Well, saved him the trouble he guessed.

While he had been inside, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. More wind then actual rain but the brutal February air whipping through the London streets drove the sparse droplets of water and cold air into in. He flipped up the collar of his jacket, the thick wool and the built-in warming charm working overtime to keep him comfortable.

No number of warming charms in a jacket could protect him from his own cold thoughts. Who was that man? If what he said was true what did that mean? Eric had always assumed that the government on the muggle side had at least some number of people in it that knew of magic's existence and were actively covering it up. Was that not the case? He wasn't sure how he hadn't realized it earlier, but covering up people practically dropping out of existence had to take far more effort than he had thought. As annoyed as he was with the wizarding world currently, he knew that nothing good would ever come of secrecy dropping. He turned down a narrow alleyway and stepped into the shadows, sending around a quick glance to make sure he was alone before apparating away.

He reappeared atop a windswept hilltop, a sheer cliff in front of him dropping sharply to a narrow rocky beach, the North Sea crashing on the rocks below. Up here in Scotland the weather was even worse, the rain coming down thick and fast and Eric ran to the small hut perched on the precipice. He darted inside slamming the door behind him and let out a sigh of relief and shelled off his jacket, enjoying being back inside.

What from outside looked like an old grain shed was expanded on the inside. A table to the right held a potions burner that worked as his stovetop for cooking and the wall beyond it was taken up by a large section of cabinets, holding all his belongings along with the cabinets that he had enchanted to use as a freezer and a refrigerator. On the left was his workstation, stacks of books holding a myriad of bookmarks and dozens of rolls of parchment meticulously organized, a sharp contrast with the back of the room where discarded clothes littered the floor around a queen bed.

That bed was looking quite nice, a bit of a beer nap was sounding exactly like what he needed to settle his thoughts. He collapsed on the bed, staring out at the ocean. He had enchanted the wall facing the sea to be fully transparent, so it looked like the rain and raging waves could break in at any moment. He liked living here, it was too bad he was using an illegal space extension and was probably violating a million other laws. The ministry would have his hide if it got called in, luckily no one was interested in him enough to report him or even know.

The address from the card led him to an office building in downtown London that looked just the same as any other. Judging by the man from the bar's appearance, this was not a business casual kind of organization, so Eric had put on his one and only suit. If he wound up getting this job he would probably have to get more, if he ever found out what this job was. He had decided that there was no downside in just checking what they did here, even if their recruiting techniques were incredibly creepy. He needed to move on and do something and maybe this would be good for him.

Eric pushed through the revolving door into the quiet entrance area. A young woman sat behind a broad reception desk in front of a bank of elevators.

Eric put the card on the desk in front of the woman. "Hi, I'm Eric Crowl I was told to stop by here sometime today."

"Crowl, yes, I was told to give you…" The woman leafed through the stack of papers beside her for a second before pulling out a packet of papers. "This!" She passed it and a pen over the desk. She gestured to the chairs off to the side of the room, "Just read through this and once you've signed it, I can call up for you."

It was easy to tell at a glance what the packet of pages was. The whole document followed the very standard formula of a binding non-disclosure agreement. It would make him feel pain if he began revealing anything he shouldn't, the pain would keep growing until he either passed out or died if he kept trying to give away secrets. All in all, it was a run of the mill NDA, he had signed one almost identical at the last project he worked at, everyone wanted to protect their intellectual property. A once over to make sure there wasn't anything hidden within and Eric signed it, handing it back to the woman.

As he sat waiting, the atrium silent around him, he felt his nerves starting to creep up. Yes, this was just a job interview, he had done over a dozen in the last couple of months. This one was different though. He was putting himself out into the unknown, taking a chance on an unnerving recruitment.

Only a few moments later the elevator dinged, announcing its arrival and out stepped the same man from the pub. Grant if his card was to be believed.

"Happy you could make it." He had a firm handshake and when not cast in shadow by the poor lighting of a bar a bright smile. "I was hoping you'd come by." Grant clapped him on the back, "Let's take the stairs and I can give you the full tour." He led Eric to a slightly out of the way door and pushed it in, revealing an ugly concrete stairway.

"Now that I've shown up and signed everything can I finally learn what this is?"

"Ah, of course. Sorry about all of the secrecy but we really can't have people learning about this place." They reached the first landing and Grant pushed open the door exiting the stairwell.

"The ministry does the bare minimum to keep secrecy, they obliviate when they can and that's about it." The floor that they exited onto looked like a standard office hallway, glass fronted offices lining each side. "We as an organization do three key things, the first is that we keep secrecy in the ways that the ministry doesn't know to." He gestured around the office.

"This floor here does all of the work to convince the government that the wizarding academies are real elite private schools." He walked along the hallway. "Some paperwork and a compulsion here and there and we save a lot of muggleborns a lot of trouble."

"Are they all wizards? How do you manage to hire this many people without being noticed."

"Not wizards, actually we hire mostly muggles, the vast majority of the work that has to be done is governmental things where magic does not help. For every compulsion or obliviation we need there is 200 forms to fill out. They are all under very strict secrecy contracts."

They made it to the end of the short hallway and the area opened up into a larger room filled with cubicles. "This is where we protect people trying to move money between the magical and muggle world." He gestured around grandiosely. "And also stop Lucius Malfoy and his lackeys from committing financial crimes."

Grant strode through the cubicles. "We have an enchanted system to steal all muggleborn's and their relative's employment and income forms before they reach the government. Then, these brave accountants make any inexplicable income or expenses due to a series of fake companies they've created over the years. Add in a weak compulsion on them to not look too closely and it's all good."

"They also have the second purpose of looking out for any cases of wizards trying to manipulate the system. It was all the rage a few years ago for wizards to try to insider trade using legitimacy and fake identities. Anonymous tips to SEC to seize their assets sorted that out."

They were through the den of accountants by then, moving quickly through the next rooms, fulfilling purposes and covering issues that Eric had never even thought about until then. They completed their circle of the floor and Grant pressed the up button on the elevator. It honestly felt so outlandish that the whole situation didn't even seem real. An organization of mainly muggle paper-pushers keeping the existence of wizard kind a secret. It also made him curious about why he was even there.

"I'm sorry but what is it that you need me for? I mean it seems like you have things pretty well figured out here. Also is the only use you have for wizards compulsions and bureaucracy because I'm not particularly good at either of those?"

Grant had a little chuckle as he stepped into the elevator. "No, of course not, I'm not much one for that either. Remember I said we do three things? That was all of our keeping secrecy efforts. The second thing is that wizards for all of their skill have limited population so the production of raw, non-magical materials, like metals or ceramics is expensive due to labor. We channel muggle made resources into the wizarding world at a slight markup to fund this place and keep prices on the magical side down. That's all boring though. The last thing we do is we make the world a better place."

The elevator opened allowing them to step out onto the new floor. "One wizard can do so much to help the muggle world, breaking up organized crime, ritual blessings of farmland, an unbreakable charm here and there. The list goes on and on." This floor was completely different to the floors below. Instead of a mass of desks and people working away at papers there were far fewer offices. Eric saw a gym off to one of the sides and what looked like a dueling platform down a hallway. "Now, I am going to hand you off for the last bit of explanation"

Grant knocked on a door and was greeted with a gruff shout. "Well go on in. He's ready for you." Eric pushed the door open and walked into the office. Unlike the modern downstairs floors, this office was much darker, wood paneled walls and a dark bookshelf. Behind the desk was a man, probably around sixty-five if he was a muggle, but with the stiffly erect posture and build of a younger man. The man gestured at the chair across from his desk. "Have a seat."

The chair was wide armed and uncomfortable. "Now son, I trust Grant showed you around well." A nod was all the man needed to continue. "My name is Charles Rook, but you can refer to me as Captain or Captain Rook." A past military association would make sense for the way he held himself as if constantly at attention. Was it muggle military or the aurors was the real question.

"Now you've probably been wondering why we would be interested in you. What we need is an academic type like you." He stood up and came around to Eric's side of the desk, standing over him. "The most powerful magics in this country are all held and researched secretly by the unspeakables at the Ministry. All the things that have the largest potential to help people or that we should be preparing for are locked up in that secret basement."

Eric suddenly realized that he hadn't asked Grant almost any questions and many jumped to the front of his mind, but he was very certain that Captain Rook would not take kindly to being interrupted. "Now, the only time the unspeakables interact with the rest of the ministry is when it comes to hiring. They send a list of possible candidates to personnel to make sure none of them are terrorists or the like. The list is very confidential and is disposed of after the checks are done. But this time I managed to get a hold of it."

The captain placed a single sheet of paper in front of Eric, and he could feel his heart jump as he saw his name. Being an unspeakable was the best possible place to be as a researcher, practically unlimited freedom and if the rumors were true, some laws just did not apply to them. "Now if you look at the others you will see you are not getting this job. Plenty of much more experienced and better people on it." That brought him right back to earth. And he was right, while the list was all relatively young people, he was still on the less experienced end.

"However, I used to be an auror, and I still have a few friends in the department that occasionally do me a favor or two. A few of the better candidates can fail background checks and some of them will have anonymous tips called in about them. They won't turn up anything, but it would be enough to get them pushed back in the hiring cycle."

He walked back to his chair, sitting down and leaning forward towards Eric. "I can get you this job. All I would need is you to pass on information about anything that we could use to help or that we should be worried about." He leaned back after that. "Any questions?"

All the questions he had stacked up in his head before seemed to have deserted him in that moment. "So, all I would be doing is working as an unspeakable and just passing on information?"

"Of course."

"What would I get for this?"

"A job as an unspeakable to start. We would also give you an apartment in London and 100,000 pounds as a thank you."

Eric asked a few more questions but he had honestly already decided when he heard the 100,000. They were getting him his dream job and paying him more, just for passing on some information to help everyone. There wasn't a world in which it seemed like a bad deal.

Thirty minutes later, Grant patted him on the shoulder as the ink dried on the contract laying out their agreement. "Welcome to being a spy."