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London[1998]
–Damian Hawthorne–
He burped, patting his now full stomach, as he sat on a park bench, unable to support the weight of his own body because of how much food he'd eaten at this point. It was evening now, and he had been eating anything he could get his hands on, which meant any place that wouldn't ask too many questions, i.e, food carts and trucks, though trucks were not present anywhere in the city.
His accommodations, temporary as they were, were not far away from here, he could feel. He could feel his magic in them, and a general direction, as well as the path that he had memorised, but his body felt so heavy! He could barely muster up the will to move right now, which is why he plopped his heavy ass down on the nearest bench he could find.
His pockets were now empty of the substantial amount of money he'd stolen from that government official. In the middle of his heist, though, he realised that the man must not be a normal member of the government, because even if some of the higher ranking, but not the highest, would have enough money to buy a car like that, they simply wouldn't.
It wouldn't look good for the optics of the government, but that guy just waltzed in with that car, uncaring of any impact on public perception, which meant there was more that met the eye, in that case.
Magic?
Nah, he would have sensed something if that was the case. That was something else. So, it was socially and publicly acceptable for the man to arrive in that obscenely expensive vehicle, with a driver.
Did he meet the PM or something? No, the PM should have had more security than just a single person, as well as protections against magical infiltration, like the one he did earlier in the day, because heads of state must know about the magical world, right?
He has got to read some books about this world, man.
He sighed, and got up, albeit with some difficulty. His body, enhanced as it was, was having trouble removing that uncomfortable feeling of having stuffed himself to the gills. In his defense, he had been isolated, and had been eating just boiled stuff for over a year now, with only sweet being the only taste that he got from the Ancient One as a gift.
Those sour, spicy, and tangy sauces, especially with hot food–it was as if he was rediscovering his taste buds, and the best and worst part about it all was that this was just the beginning.
He could foresee many, many days wherein he stuffed himself into a food coma. It was good that he had a nice metabolism and plenty of stuff to do that would drain his body far more than any average person ever could.
Keeping that in mind, he began walking towards the bus that was approaching the nearby bus stop. Either the Train station or the city centre, whichever worked for that particular bus, was going to be his destination for the day.
Just locating the magical entrances should be enough for the day. As stuffed as he was, he did not have it in him to go around hunting for more money to exchange for Galleons in the magical world.
Actually, did they even take normal money? In fact, he had always thought the concept of currency itself to be largely irrelevant if one knew the particular brand of insane magic that was wand magic.
It was basically micro scale reality warping, available to thousands of people, and with the convenience of most of the heavy lifting being done by a stick, it was a miracle that large swathes of land around the planet had not been quarantined because reality itself glitched because of the wizards.
All questions to be answered later on, once he gets his hands on the magical world's equivalent of a library. Public libraries were rather common in this era in the normal world, but he had no idea about the magical one.
It was rather backwards when compared to the world that non magicals built for themselves, but he supposed that having magic from birth, and growing up surrounded by magic and people who thought magic to be a normal thing, would take most of the wonder out of it.
Only people who had never known magic in its form would appreciate it the most, knowing what sort of gift they were given. He supposed he could understand the overall lethargy and stagnation of wizards if all they had known their entire lives was this phenomenal force that bent the rules of physics for them.
Shaking his head, he got on the bus, drawing curious looks from some of the passengers but thankfully, no one actually approached him. The driver certainly didn't care, since he had the cash for it.
He just rode the bus to its last stop, which was a busy shopping street of some kind. It read Oxford Street. Huh, they couldn't name it anything original, could they?
Shaking his head, he began walking around the busy street, soaking in the sights, marvelling at the fact no one, not one single person, stopped to think about the lone child moving about very confidently, without being jostled by the people around him.
After about an hour or so, he realised that this was not going to get him any closer to the entrance to the magical world. This place had nothing of note, nothing magical that pinged off of his senses, so he began walking towards the next bus stop.
Quite a nifty way to get around the city, the bus. He hoped this world took public transportation seriously and did not build entire cities around highways, and prioritised one of the most inefficient and unsafe forms of transportation, ever.
Sure, cars were cool, really fun to drive, but only a small minority of people drove cars for fun, and even they would admit that the fun part of driving was sucked out of the experience when they had to drive, rather than want to drive.
He was walking towards the next bus stop, when he stopped mid way, as a particular smell of honey reached his nose. Mechanically, he turned to the side, only to see a building on the other side of the road, one that stuck out like a sore thumb, and yet, no one seemed to care about it.
It was not a store on a street that was entirely made up of shopping stores, with no single customer coming in and out of that place. The thing that stood out the most to him was the chimney at that place and the symbol etched in glass right next to it, shining with the sun overhead.
He sighed, as he began walking towards it. Knowing the Ancient One, it was probably one of her schemes but he was just looking for directions at this point. Once he was in, so to speak, with the magical world, he could handle it all on his own.
He just needed to know how to get in without triggering any alarms in the process.
___xx__
Hogwarts
–Albus Dumbledore–
"Your work on restructuring the Blood Wards was passable, but you failed to account for the energy signature unique to any Ancient Magic or magic based on those Ancient Principles."
Albus did not understand what was happening here. All the other times he had interacted with the Unspeakables, it was either something that ended in the other side repeating the same message.
Something along the lines of them not having enough clearance, him not having enough clearance, or just talk to their bosses, who were completely untraceable. So, he was certainly surprised, pleasantly so, when this group of Unspeakables were actually being quite helpful in terms of knowledge dissemination.
That did not reduce the alarming feelings he was having about the breadth of information that they seemed to have. He should have known that the Unspeakables would conduct research on the Blood Wards but he had never expected them to be so stealthy about it.
They completely disregarded all magical laws about it. He expected them to come to him, to get permission of some sort, but they just did their own research, without anyone being the wiser.
Now, the only question left was, why were they here? Why now? And what did they have to do with that surge in chaotic magic that fried his enchantments from inside?
"I assume you have rectified my mistake, then?" He asked, smiling, as despite his feelings on the matter of their trespassing and crossing boundaries, he did enjoy learning new things, and the reports placed on his desk were something he had never seen before.
He had a hunch that his days were going to get quite busy with research because of all the new avenues this single meeting opened up.
The Head Unspeakable nodded, "Yes, we did that almost a decade ago, right after you deigned to leave a crying infant out in the cold without a single heating spell on him, without informing his would be guardians."
While every single Unspeakable spoke in the same garbled voice, with a flat tone, he could still feel the judgment in that tone. Without showing what he was feeling on the inside, he replied, "I see. Thank you for that. In my defense, I expected the Dursleys to come out right away and I already had someone keeping watch on Young Harry. Now, can we move on to why you came here?"
"Certainly," The Head Unspeakable said before rolling up the reports, "We came here to speak to you of your push to reduce exploratory trips to the Magical Ruins."
He opened his mouth to defend his decision, something that was quite controversial in the magical research space across the world but the Unspeakable beat him to it, "I know quite well that you believe yourself to be right but things are about to change. A decade, two at most, the world will be unrecognisable from what it is today and for that, we need to be prepared, as much as someone can prepare for it."
Then, he tensed up, as his wand appeared in his hand instantly, leveled at the head of the Unspeakable in front of him, his entire countenance screaming combat despite none of the Unspeakables moving from their position, and then, just as it came, it left.
"What. Was. That?" He asked through clenched teeth, reluctantly lowering his wand, as the Unspeakable threw something at him.
The item slowed down immediately, floating towards him as he wandlessly summoned it, "A relic, retrieved from one of your private expeditions. Just a tiny bit of magic injected into that thing, and it bursts forth with a pressure on your soul, rendering most wizards useless, even with a wand."
"Why show me this? It just further proves my point of restricting the Ancient Ruins. I shudder to think what someone with nefarious intentions could achieve with–"
"I don't think I can explain it with words, but I can show you what we will be dealing with in the near future. Meet me in the lower levels of the Ministry of Magic tomorrow morning. You will understand why your fixation on keeping them closed would just doom us all."
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