Near the wall of the spacious main hall of the Anderson home, in the soft yellow light of the chandeliers, lay three unconscious wizards — bound, stripped of their wands, and relieved of anything that could be an enchanted object or carry even the faintest trace of magic. Their dark robes, similar in style, had taken some damage in the fight but remained intact.
Hermione and Daphne were occupied with the responsible business of magically repairing the hole that had been blasted through the wall. Successfully, it should be noted. Mr Anderson stood nearby with a rifle in his hands. Just in case. Our argument — mine and Mrs Anderson's — that if the wizards had wanted to, they could have done whatever they liked and there was nothing he could do to stop them, had made absolutely no impression on the man. His position was roughly: "And what, just throw my hands up and wait for whatever's coming?"
Mrs Anderson and I, meanwhile, were deliberating on what to do with our captured intruders. At the very least, we were in no hurry to bring any of them back to consciousness.
"Remarkable," Mrs Anderson was saying quietly, wand in hand and ready to apply magic to the unconscious trespassers at a moment's notice, though she was clearly a touch on the tipsy side. "You reacted to their arrival extraordinarily quickly."
"I have good sensitivity," I said, shrugging. I was standing beside her, wand in hand as well. "Felt something that shouldn't have been there, moved to engage immediately, won."
"It seems I've been operating under certain misconceptions regarding your capabilities," Mrs Anderson said with a measured nod. "Standing up to three adult wizards — and experienced ones at that…"
"Experienced?"
"I caught the end of your fight with that girl — without question, they're experienced. But where was I? Yes. It's a remarkable thing."
"Why did you have a lower opinion of me?"
"Your physique."
"My physique?" I was genuinely surprised by that.
"Yes. Usually, those who devote such meticulous attention to physical conditioning — particularly while still at school — well, statistically speaking, they tend not to amount to much as wizards. Even the diligent, hardworking, and genuinely talented find it extraordinarily difficult to reach the top across every discipline simultaneously."
"You consider my physical conditioning to be at the top?" I couldn't quite suppress a smirk.
"Well, you're obviously not some deranged bodybuilder," Mrs Anderson said with an approving nod. "The impression is rather different. More like a fighter, I'd say. Hmm — purely a fighter, even. Pure efficiency, no showmanship whatsoever. Though I'm no expert on the subject, so don't expect a professional assessment — I'm simply describing the impression."
"Are you certain," my father said, rubbing his temple thoughtfully, "that this is an appropriate topic of conversation given… all of this?"
He swept his gaze across the hall — the disorder now almost entirely resolved through the girls' efforts — and did not neglect to give the three bound, disarmed, and unconscious wizards their fair share of attention.
"They're not dangerous at the moment," Mrs Anderson said with a small shake of her head. "I've seen to that. The question is what we do next."
"Is there even any question?" Mr Anderson said, with a slight air of indignation. "We need to call the Aurors, or whatever your lot call them."
My father nodded in agreement, and the girls, having finished restoring the surroundings, nodded as well — Hermione certainly did.
"I don't trust them," I said, shaking my head.
"And why on earth not?" Mr Anderson asked, puzzled.
"How do you suppose these three got in?" I nodded towards the detainees and drew the beacon-marble from my pocket. "An Apparition beacon. Where exactly did it come from, given the visit we had not so long ago? Without this beacon, these wizards couldn't have Apparated directly into the house."
"I told my husband about that method of travel and its limitations. But your actual problem, Hector, isn't really that, is it?"
"You could say that. I know this particular witch rather well."
Daphne stepped over and spoke on my behalf:
"Ekaterina Romanova. Durmstrang graduate. During her time at the school, she was known as Durmstrang's finest duellist. She came to Hogwarts for the duration of the Triwizard Tournament. Hector was already stronger than her back then. And in the duelling club, he essentially only ever faced her."
"Yes, that's how it was," I confirmed, catching, from the corner of my eye, an elusive shadow of displeasure cross Daphne's face.
"The Duelling Club?" Mrs Anderson smiled. "Surely dear Flitwick hasn't given up on that idea yet?"
"Wizards are…" my father shook his head, "mad." Mr Anderson nodded in agreement, and even Mum, who had come over and was listening in, concurred with that particular conclusion. "Three armed intruders break into the house, a proper battle takes place, and they're standing here reminiscing and talking about school clubs."
"I'm used to it," said Mr Anderson — though he clearly agreed with the sentiment, he also seemed to understand something about it. "Wizards have different priorities when it comes to certain things. The overall picture does look rather jarring, I'll grant you, but not unbearably so."
"So, I'll ask again," Mrs Anderson looked at me without any further levity. "What do you propose we do?"
"Hmm… Conduct the interrogation ourselves. The thing is, during the fight with Romanova, I saw not the slightest flicker of recognition in her — and yet she couldn't have failed to recognise me. We spent nearly a year duelling each other constantly. Even if, in the year and a bit since, she'd somehow completely forgotten her sparring partner, there's an entire catalogue of distinctive details — in movement, in spellwork, in tactics, in habits — by which you can easily recognise an opponent. I, for my part, knew who she was before I even took off her mask."
"Call the police!" Mr Anderson and my father expressed more or less simultaneously.
"Oh, come now," Mrs Anderson said with a smile, dismissing this. "We're perfectly capable of punishing them ourselves in ways no police force has ever dreamt of. And it's not police, by the way — it's the Auror Office. When we're talking about an international organisation opposing the Dark."
"And what about the national one?" my father scratched his head again, holding his rifle muzzle-down in his other hand. Frankly, the whole situation was becoming rather absurd.
"Depends on the country. Back home they don't have a specific name — just MMP officers. In magical France, as in the ordinary one — gendarmes. Here in Italy, they keep it simple and call them the police. Although officially it's the 'Magical Police.' Some people have taken to squashing that into 'Maglitsia.'"
"That feels… wrong somehow," Daphne said, wrinkling her nose slightly.
"It is what it is," I shrugged, and crouched down in front of the unconscious, bound Romanova. "I sensed something off about her… Perhaps a diagnostic would be in order?"
"Your call, since you've started," Mrs Anderson said with a nod. "I'll ensure our guests remain in their current state of… non-standing."
"How can you all be so blasé about what's happened?" my father voiced his position once more. "And about these Aurors of yours?"
"Being blasé would be handing them over to the Aurors," I said, shaking my head. "What if they're all in collusion? We don't even know what their ultimate objective was."
"Precisely," my father said. "What if these wizards are Aurors themselves — all working together? Maybe they were simply doing their job."
"Doing it, yes, but not quite managing to finish it," Daphne said with a smile — a very sharp one, sharp enough to give most people in the room a distinct chill. "Hector could have killed them on the spot simply for unlawful entry. Or do you suppose Mr Weasley — you know, the father of all those Gryffindors — runs around between departments just for the fun of it? Collects paperwork? Forms groups? Marshals all that bureaucracy? Just to pop round to someone's house and check a couple of corners?"
"You're talking about terrible things," Hermione said, mildly horrified at the very idea of her brother killing anyone. "But what if they really are Aurors?"
"And?" Daphne took the argument head-on. "That means they can do whatever they like?"
"Enough," I cut off all further dispute. "There's no perfectly right answer here…"
I crouched over Romanova and began working through various diagnostic charms with my wand — both conventional and from the field of healing magic. The response from the spells, however, was peculiar, and I found I couldn't interpret it correctly. A lack of specific knowledge — I'd never encountered many of these particular nuances before. A couple of old injuries were no surprise, but that was all I could extract through magical diagnosis. Which was frustrating, because making sense of the situation using skills known to this world's tradition was beyond me, and as for my own — elven or otherwise — well, that was no smoother. Those methods presupposed magical manipulations far more precise than anything I'd encountered in this world, and yet I didn't actually know them. In short: as a diagnostician, I was useless here.
"Hmm…" I muttered, moving on to the next detainee. "Strange."
"Did you work something out?" Daphne asked, seeing that I hadn't yet begun my new round of diagnostics.
"That's just it — I didn't work anything out."
"Well, don't despair, young man," Mrs Anderson said, offering me an encouraging smile. "You have your whole life ahead of you."
"You can't know and be able to do everything," Hermione nodded. "Diagnostic charms and spells are far from simple."
From the corner of my eye, I caught something flash across Daphne's expression that was roughly equivalent to Enemy of the People Identified, directed at Hermione.
"Trust me, dear Hermione, your brother knows more than a sufficient number of spells."
"Well, it hardly shows…"
"You would need at least a passing familiarity with such a specialised subject before venturing an opinion on it."
The bickering, frankly, amused me. Yes — broadly speaking, almost all diagnostic charms and spells fall into a single category of magical manipulation regardless of their complexity or purpose. These spells are studied extremely rarely; two-hundred-year-old volumes on them sit in the library looking brand new, and even those who do study them rarely use them — all of which means that most people have no idea how they actually work.
If diagnostic magic delivered its results ready-made, many aspects of a wizard's life would be considerably simpler, and in healing magic, any fool could have reached the heights of the profession by muddling through a dozen spells and keeping a score of reference books to hand. But the reality is far more complicated. These spells, in the course of their operation, transmit to the caster's mind an assortment of images, sensations, and impressions, and that entire body of data must somehow be interpreted. It needs to find purchase in a foundation of knowledge and experience — only then does any result emerge.
And in the specific case of Romanova, I was utterly at a loss as to what the spells were telling me. Not entirely — but enough that it was like informing someone that stars are not points fixed on the dome of the sky. Knowing that much doesn't make anyone's life easier; it only multiplies the questions.
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