True psionics do not exist in Harry Potter's universe. Everybody knows this as a fact. Or do they..?
oooooo
"Of all people! A breech of the statute of secrecy by an Auror?!"
Neville winced at the biting tone of the aged and let the old leather boot he clutched in his hands drop. The dull thump echoed within the chamber as he glanced upwards.
Many displeased looking wizards and witches dressed in ornate gray robes glared down from the balcony above, and he knew he'd be lucky to avoid serving time in Azkaban, much less keep his new job. If anyone bothered to ask him before portkeying him into the Ministry's lower chambers, he would've happily said he thought everything was going rather well. It was only his very first day serving the wizarding community, after all.
"That's not at all what happened, sir." Neville said softly in a firm voice, idly twiddling his thumbs as he studied the wandering cracks in the round chamber's floor. After a few breaths he dared to dart his eyes upwards.
The Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, sat regally in the front row of the balcony, and a single brow rose on his otherwise expressionless face.
"Then by all means explain yourself, Mr... " Minister Shacklebolt looked down a moment, as if consulting a note in his hand. "Ah yes. Mr. Longbottom."
Neville took a deep breath, and began.
He knew it the moment he reached into his volumous pocket for his wand: Trevor the toad escaped. Again.
Neville frowned.
He was here with several dark detectors stuffed into said pocket, all of which, thus far failed to go off, but Neville was reasonably certain the rotting skeleton of a fellow, currently lounging in the armchair by the door, was the dark wizard the Ministry was seeking. Dust choked spider webs draped over the remains, and he narrowed his eyes as he swept them over the small room.
Trevor was a clever one, constantly slipping past his owner's clutches. Only now, instead of hopping off to Merlin knows where within Hogwarts, he did it here in this supposed dark wizard's old house.
The heat of embarrassment soon vanished as Neville rushed about, eyes sweeping the decaying floor for any splatter of toady dampness.
"Trevor!" He called in a low hush of a whisper, which never seemed to work very well while in school. He always hoped the toad would deem to answer to his given name, at least once in a while.
"Trevor! Come here boy..!"
The house cloaked itself in somber silence as he searched for his beloved familiar with creaking footsteps, and although he had to bat a few doxies back into a neglected closet, no toad revealed itself. He did find a few broken windows on his search, sharp jagged thankfully bloodless, and the back door past the kitchen had a rather neat foot shaped hole in its lower half.
Neville smiled. The hole was definitely large enough for a squat toad to slip through. He recalled the summoning charm, and judged it wouldn't hurt his precious beast at all if performed outdoors: there certainly would be less things to bang into out there.
He took in a breath, opened the door and was about to raise his wand, when he sa w him.
"So of course he puts his wand away." Neville heard someone mutter in the balcony above him.
"No, I never really had it out at all." Neville replied, and demonstrated the awkward cupping hold he had used to hide the slender bit of wood from view. He was rewarded with many heated whispers that the Minister somehow silenced with a glance.
"Go on." The Minister intoned.
Laying the ground, beneath a hulking chunk of metal, was a large bald man. He was dressed in a tough sort of trousers that were horribly stained, but once might've been blue, and had on white sort of half robe with short sleeves -- much like the muggle garments his half-blooded friend..
"Objection! He's attempting to sway the judgment of the court by naming his well know acquaintances!"
"Sustained. Find another way to phrase it, if you please, Mr. Longbottom."
Nelville understood them as muggle clothes. The dripping black stuff from the maching looked disturbingly like blood, actually. This working on a car, as the muggle called it, he never saw it before. He wasn't fascinated exactly. He just couldn't look away.
As he watched, the muggle squirmed his way around and, without looking, groped with his arm for something around the wheel. He thought it's likely a small silver cylinder that was laid out with others of its like on the ground. The hand swiped once. The forefinger twitched as Neville heard the man wheeze and grumble, but the cylinder was just out of the man's reach no matter how much he stretched.
Neville widened his eyes.
He saw the cylinder roll, moving on its own into the apparent muggle's hand.
"He's a wizard!" Neville thought in wonder. Perhaps a half-blood.
"Only a half-blood would wear such dreadful garments." Neville heard someone whisper above him, a comment that gave rise quite a few snickers.
However grisly he looked, Neville decided to approach the fellow beneath the maching. He worked out where his head was easily enough and squatted a few feet away as he loudly cleared his throat. The man looked up at him with raised non-existant brows, and a big grin spread slowly upon his lined face.
"Help you?"
"You wouldn't have, by any chance, seen a toad hopping by here, have you?" Neville asked hopefully.
"Toad? Uh. No I haven't." The man had an American accent. Neville supposed the man was either visiting family, or perhaps on holiday. "Been futzing with this heap. So where's the ren faire?"
"Renfair?"
The man eyes drifted back to the maching, hands doing whatever this "futzing" was.
"Yeee-ah. I didn't realize England had them too. I could use some fun, that is after I stop all the leaks in this thing. You English make great cars, but they leak oil like you wouldn't believe."
Neville raised his brows. Maybe Wizarding schools in the Americas weren't that good. He could think of several ways to magically repair things. He had plenty of practice repairing his own blunders.
"Would you show me where it is?" The man said, interrupting his thoughts.
"Where what is?"
"The ren faire? Awesome costume dude!"
"These are my normal clothes! Don't American wizards wear robes?"
"Huh? Wizards?"
"You mean you're not..? Aren't you a..."
The blank look the man directed his way said it all. A breath later, the man shrugged and muttered something about mad dogs and Englishmen.
Neville sighed and took out his wand, ready to adjust the man's memory as the Statue required. He only hesitated on account of another tool scooting its way into the reaching man's grasp. Neville's brows lowered as he let out a breath.
"How did you do that?" Neville pointed.
"Do what?" The man replied without looking his way. The man reached over to the tool pile, and another slipped into his grasp..
"That."
The man's eyes widened at his hand and he jerked up so quick that he banged his head. In moments, he scrambled out from beneath the car. Neville watched as he eyed the tool on the ground, then examined his muck covered hand. After he blinked a few times, the man again reached out.
The same tool quivered, just a bit. The man lurched to his feet and began to pace, shooting glares with every turn at the pile of tools as though they had somehow betrayed him.
Neville patted the air.
"It's ok.. It's alright..calm down. It's only spontaneous magic."
"What?!? No. No. That's not remotely.. What..?" The man turned his owlish gaze towards him.
"Spontaneous magic. It means you're a wizard. Like me. Watch." Neville pointed his wand upwards, as he had no idea where the toad had gone off to. "Accio Trevor."
As if a toad could fly, the bloated body shot eagerly around the corner of the dank alley down the way in response to the charm. Just before he could become a spattered mess in Neville's free outstretched hand, Trevor stopped all movement and hovered in midair. For several heartbeats, the toad had a nearly bored expression as he floated gently down into Neville's hand.
He then made a decidedly froggy croak.
The man shook his head in disbelief, and rubbed the heel of his hand at his forehead. Unfortunately, the movement dirtied up the man's face with the dark colored goop.
Neville mentally cursed the apparent oversight the North American Wizarding Council had with the poor man, and decided then to escort fellow to the Leaky Cauldron. He meant be kind and at least give the man a chance to wash up there before showing him the wonders of his neglected birthright in Diagon Alley.
He was surprised that the man couldn't see the Leaky Cauldron's sign, and had a light guiding hold of the man's arm when the shrill muggle alarms, left over from much darker times, went off.
He was bent in two with both hands holding his ears as he thought, What is he, muggle or wizard?
Neville froze as he heard the crack of apparition fill the air. With a glance, he saw his superior standing by his elbow. He turned his gaze down the deserted street and watched as a pair of wizards dully obliviated the hapless bald man.
Guess he's a muggle?
"And that's what happened." Neville finished. He gazed at the unreadable, ancient faces, one by one, and swallowed.
"Mr. Longbottom," Began his superior. "Didn't you think to check and see if another wizard was around jinxing the muggle?"
"Well. Um. No."
"Brillant. There you are. You are .."
"Hold on hold it. You were there too, Can you say if there was? Was there a jinx cast?"
His superior's face contorted and managed a remarkable impression of a fish. It then skewed upwards into a scowl, before finally settling into a disgruntled sort of unreadable stone.
The many aged eyes silently shifted away and drifted towards the dark skinned Minister, all watching in hushed expectation.
Shaklebolt Kingsley gave the slightest of nods, and Nelville only just had the time to squeeze his eyes shut before the oblivator's wordless charm struck.
Neville closed the heavy door to his office, and blinked owlishly about in the dim room. He looked down at the scroll in his hand, and unfurled it. After a quick read, Neville sighed and set it upon his desk amongst a growing pile of awaiting paperwork.
His Auror probationary period was extended to a year by Minister Shaklebolt, for additional training in security protocols. He was too beat by his tiring first day as an Auror to even bother with remembering why.
Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....
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