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Chapter 13: Interlude - Fyreside Stories 4

Chapter Text

"Contact was made, sir."

"With the anomaly?"

"Yes. Completely accidentally, as it happens."

The man behind the desk, who had been in that position longer than he cared to think because few others who were capable of the job wanted the job, motioned to a pair of chairs. Both the men who'd entered after a brief knock sat and arranged themselves. "Continue," he invited.

"I was in Diagon Alley, meeting a contact," one of his visitors said, scratching under his ponytail. "Dreadful man, but he's a useful source of information. Often without realizing what he's passed on. In any case, I'd finished my business and was heading to the public floo point at the far end of the alley when I saw her. She was walking with a group of teenagers and two adults. I got a couple of photos, then rapidly exfiltrated the area to minimize the risk of adverse consequences."

The man gave him a narrow look. "You mean you ran away," he translated, while the other visitor stifled a small chuckle.

"Like a little girl," the first one replied without a hint of embarrassment. "Partly to bolster my cover, and partly because I vividly recall last night and had no wish to remain in the vicinity. And I judged it important to get the information to you as soon as possible." Putting the briefcase he'd placed beside his chair on his lap, he opened it and removed a couple of eight by ten glossy color photos, which he leaned forward and put on the desk. Reaching for them, his superior studied them carefully under his lamp.

"I recognize this boy," he stated. Both the others nodded.

"Harry James Potter, sole surviving member of the Potter family, son of James Henry Potter, deceased, and Lily Jasmine Potter, also deceased. And the subject of more stories, tall tales, rumors, and bizarre occurrences than seems even vaguely plausible outside a novel. He was present at the Ministry of Magic last night, and my information is that it was his presence that was most likely the trigger for the event. We're not sure how yet, although Bones is pulling out all the stops attempting to work that out. She's been causing a lot of trouble in the Department of Mysteries, who were somewhat unwilling to drop everything and look into whatever it was that happened." He smiled a little grimly. "She persuaded them otherwise. Rather sharply. I suspect they're now torn on who is more dangerous, her or that last demon. They're certainly responding with gratifying alacrity now, although regrettable lack of success so far."

The man behind the desk nodded his understanding. "The two girls?"

"The brunette is Hermione Jean Granger, daughter of Richard John Granger and Jennifer Kirsten Granger, undoubtedly a genuine genius-level student, with a very solid bent towards research, leavened with a loyalty to her friends and an impressive level of complete ruthlessness that would make her a prime candidate in a few years. The blonde is Luna Selene Lovegood, daughter of Pandora Circe Lovegood, deceased, and Xenophilius Laertes Lovegood, also exceptionally intelligent and studious although considered somewhat odd by many of her peers due to an unusual outlook on life, quite likely combined with a lively sense of humor. Ostracized at school by many of the students until she befriended Potter and Granger, then she became very close quite rapidly."

"Judging by their appearance the two adults are the Granger parents?" he asked, receiving a nod from both visitors.

"Yes," the first man replied this time, opening a folder he'd been carrying and looking through it. "Both dentists, Richard Granger with a specialty in dental surgery, Jennifer Granger handling dental reconstruction and aftercare. Run a successful practice in Guildford, where they've resided for twenty two years and four months. Neither showed any magical aptitude, nor did any ancestor on either side going back at least four generations. Hermione Granger is a definite first generation magical. Harry Potter's father was obviously the descendant of multiple generations of magicals, while his mother was also a first gen. Luna Lovegood's ancestry is… complex. There are oddities we're still researching if you go back a few generations." He handed over some papers from the folder, the man at the desk reading them carefully.

"I see. Interesting. A linkage to the Deep, possibly?"

"It's not impossible. Records are fragmentary after the last major incursion, before the old ways were properly sealed again. We're looking into it but it may not even be relevant."

"Still, in this game a coincidence is always somewhat suspicious."

"I can't deny that, unfortunately."

All three of them exchanged looks for a moment, then he turned back to the photos. Tapping the remaining figure, he stared at them. "And the anomaly?"

"Our information is that she referred to herself as a… Parahuman… and claims to be from another version of Earth. Not only that, but from some fifteen years in the future."

The voice was flat. He sat back and considered the information, looking from one man to another. "Is that even possible?"

"Time travel is certainly possible as we well know. Hideously dangerous if carried out wrongly, and highly discouraged, but it exists beyond doubt. We even have inklings of a technological method to achieve it, beyond the three known magical ones. And we also have more than ample proof of life beyond the confines of our own reality. We suspect the Deep is one such proof, although it's not something that's amenable to verification. We've also had visitors from other worlds a few times. The magicals tend to refer to them as demons and try to pretend they don't exist, but…" His subordinate shrugged a little. "They're not always successful in that. Luckily it's rare that someone unwise manages to breach the walls between our reality and whatever else is out there. It's usually an ill-thought-out experiment, or a complete accident."

"So combining the two is at least plausible even if we've never seen it before," the pony-tailed man added. "Whether in this case it's true we simply don't know yet."

"And the…" Thinking for a moment, he carried on, "Parahuman aspect? Do we know what that means?"

"According to our visitor, who calls herself Skitter, it refers to empowered individuals in her home reality. Not magicals, though. She was apparently somewhat bemused to discover magic existed. What the source of the abilities is remains unknown, apparently even to her people. But the end result appears to be some rather terrifyingly potent powers which, while magic can approximate many of the essential results, from her conversation with Bones and the others, are significantly more extreme in their effect. Magic would appear to be more generally versatile but it certainly cannot replicate anything even close to what was demonstrated in the Ministry atrium last night."

"I see. And these abilities are linked to, or the cause of, the activity in the Deep at the same time?" He mulled that over, slowly tapping his finger on the image of his current biggest problem. "How, I wonder?"

"Skitter would appear to have the ability to control, or link to, or something of that nature, many lower forms of life. Insects from what our initial data showed, but it seems that it extends to far more than that. Many, if not most, magical life forms appear peculiarly susceptible to whatever it is she can do. The research department is suggesting that she either directly communicated with some of the deep dwellers, or influenced them in some other manner. The sensor data is consistent with a mass migration from far down to the currently occupied levels of the Ministry, likely through the various ventilation and access ducts throughout the building. Unfortunately those almost certainly extend far past the sealed off section, and it's been proposed that some of these minor passages may have either been missed during the original attempts to contain the problem, or had their seals fail over the centuries for one reason or another. No one is entirely sure."

"However," the first man replied, taking back the narrative, "if this is true, it would go some way to explaining something we've long wondered about, where a continuous supply of certain… annoyances… has been coming from. It's possible that a minor leak in the containment, which wasn't located during the work to instrument all the access methods, could have allowed sufficiently small or stealthy creatures to escape now and then. We do know the Ministry is absolutely infested in the lower levels, although we have the great good fortune that most of the inhabitants down there appear content to remain down there. But… Occasionally we've had trouble in adjacent tunnels and other underground spaces we believed were not connected to the Deep. It's been a problem for several hundred years, and flares up now and then, then subsides again, for no obvious reason anyone can discern. The Underground has seen more than a few such incursions with some fairly awkward results."

"The original Earl's Court station in 1871, for example," his colleague put in. "The fire damage from the efforts to close the breach was so severe it was moved, although the public was never told the real source of the fire, of course."

"And King William Street was forced to close only ten years after it opened, due to an incursion that couldn't be dealt with at the time. It was sealed off for nearly forty years until the war. Luckily when the War Department decided to convert it into an air raid shelter, the denizens had left, or the results could have been quite unpleasant." The first man shook his head. "And of course Brunel nearly drowned due to not heeding the warnings during that unpleasantness while constructing the Thames Tunnel. One would have thought he'd have learned after the previous problems, considering how his first attempt had to be sealed and buried so thoroughly that even now it's still unknown to most, but the man was rather strong-willed and prone to ignoring advice he didn't want to hear."

He shrugged again. "People have wondered for a very long time how some of these events came about. A number were obvious, someone delved too deep, but others were and still are a mystery. We may have found a possible explanation."

"And if it's been going on for long enough it could even be the original source of many of the more problematic creatures the magical side is prone to," his superior commented with a frown, receiving a pair of nods. "I see. Interesting. See that it's investigated."

"Yes, sir."

"The question then becomes, if Skitter attracted, or called, or summoned, something or things from far below, why did they then go back when she left the Ministry?"

"That part we're unsure of. We simply don't know enough about her abilities. She could conceivably have an influence sufficiently strong to have allowed her to not only entice certain forms of life towards her, but to persuade them to return. We do know she was apparently controlling a substantial number of known, and more worryingly, entirely unknown, creatures during her somewhat dramatic removal of Riddle and his accomplices. How far that control extends, both in physical range and overall completeness, is not something we're sure of. Several hundred yards for the first at an absolute minimum seems plausible. The second? We just don't know. Not enough data."

"While the control over both non magical and magical pests is strange and concerning," his colleague put in after they'd thought about the issue for a moment or two, "the much more concerning, not to say frightening, aspect of her abilities remains her apparent control over Fiend Fyre. That part is giving everyone the heebie jeebies to put it mildly. It's totally, utterly unprecedented, and indeed wasn't thought to even be possible. Fiend Fyre is a law unto itself and is widely known to be the next best thing to completely uncontrollable. At best you can influence it to burn in roughly the direction you want, and if you're exceptionally skilled and lucky, to then go back to wherever it is it truly comes from. Calling it up is usually the preserve of the terminally stupid or the supremely overconfident. And more often than not results in the death of not only those foolish enough to try but anyone unlucky enough to be nearby." He shivered a little as the other two looked thoughtful and worried. "Pompeii. Santorini. Krakatoa. Tunguska. Names that are associated with events that resonate throughout history, and each of them the result of someone who considered themselves far more powerful than they turned out to be."

Looking at each of the others in turn, he added rather nervously, "Fiend Fyre is never trivial, and in extreme cases erases entire countries. Skitter was wearing it as a coat last night. I can't begin to explain how wrong that is. It's akin to someone juggling critical masses of plutonium that are already glowing blue and somehow not killing everyone within fifty miles. It's flatly impossible according to everything known to magic. Yet I saw it. Half the Ministry saw it. And now whatever she really is is wandering around Diagon Alley with three teenagers and a couple of dentists…" He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead, then put it away. "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm wondering what we can do about something like that."

"Ask it very politely not to wipe us out and offer to try to help it get home, I suspect," the first man said quietly. "I'm not sure leaving that to the Ministry and the Chief Warlock is necessarily the best plan."

"No. Neither am I, to be honest," the man at the desk said, examining the photos again, dwelling for a moment on the sharply focused image of a quite disturbingly insectile mask over something that looked human but quite likely wasn't even remotely that. Eventually he tapped the paperwork and the photos together and handed them back, watching as his subordinate put them back into the folder. "Have the research department investigate everything known about travel to other worlds, or from other worlds. Full authorization to open the sealed archives. Keep monitoring the Deep situation, but if it's stable for now, put the majority of our resources on keeping anyone from provoking Skitter in any way. That includes threatening her apparent new friends. I have no wish to find out how she might retaliate if some fool decides to cause trouble."

He looked at the pony-tailed man. "Williamson, do what you can to help Bones without breaking cover. If absolutely necessary we will, but I'd prefer not to as the long term ramifications could be even worse than that."

He pointed at the folder.

"I'd honestly be surprised if that was true," Williamson said gloomily.

"You may be right, but even so, discretion is key. As you know. Find out everything you can about the Lovegood situation as well. We'll work our end at the same time, and see what turns up." He folded his hands on the desk as the other two nodded. "Hopefully we can keep this from becoming another 1755 scenario. Or worse." He shook his head ruefully. "Breaching the Deep would be bad enough. Adding whatever she is to that would be far worse, I fear."

"Agreed," the first man said, rubbing thumb and forefinger together on the folder in his hand. "I would much prefer to avoid anything like that."

"As would I," added Williamson. He sighed heavily. "Once more unto the breech, then. Dealing with idiots and trying to forestall the end of the world for another day."

"That is what we all signed up for," his superior chuckled. "So far we've succeeded. Let's see if we can keep doing so."

"At least if we fail we probably will never know," Williamson replied with black humor, smirked at the pair of glares he got, then stood up. "I'll report back as soon as I learn more."

"Good work, both of you."

"Thank you, sir," said the first man, also standing.

"Incidentally, do we know why Skitter was in Diagon Alley?" he asked as the other pair turned to leave. "Sightseeing, or something more specific?"

"I have no idea, she was heading in the general direction of Gringotts the last time I saw… her… oh hell." Williamson turned an appalled expression on the others, who'd paled.

"Ah. This might be… a touch tricky," the man behind the desk finally sighed, rubbing his temples. He could almost feel the incoming chaos without needing magic...