Aunt Marge—truly the stuff of Harry's childhood nightmares.
"How could you treat me like this?"
A loud shout from the next table snapped Harry out of his grim reverie. He turned his head and saw a young couple in the midst of a heated argument. After catching a few words, he was met with a fierce glare, so he quickly averted his gaze.
Turning back, he found Hodge Blackthorn propped up on one hand, his chin resting on it, watching the quarreling couple with keen interest.
"Hmph!"
One of the pair leapt to their feet and stormed off without looking back, while the other scrambled after, offering a string of apologies. Crack! A fissure appeared in the coffee cups on Harry and Hodge's table. Harry's eyes widened in shock.
"H-Hodge—" Harry stammered, unsure of what to say. After a moment, he managed to whisper, "Was that… one of those Gifted? A superhuman?"
Hodge had already seized the opportunity to finish his coffee.
"Probably," he said, eyeing the neighboring table where two porcelain cups now lay shattered in halves.
"Should we follow them?" Harry asked.
Hodge shook his head.
Follow them for what? To apprehend them? To ask how they got their powers? Or perhaps to pose as another Gifted and offer some guidance? If Voldemort's looming threat weren't hanging over them, Hodge might have been curious enough to investigate, maybe even start a side gig as a "superhuman detective" in the Muggle world—much like Nicolas Flamel's alchemist persona, which was quite renowned among Muggles.
Harry calmed down as well. Even if they chased after the couple, he could only observe from a distance. The Statute of Secrecy meant he couldn't reveal his wizarding identity.
His recent habit of listening to the news had made it clear: these people weren't exactly in a great spot.
Meanwhile, the Muggle Prime Minister sat alone in his office, irritably flipping through a lengthy report, occasionally glancing at a grimy little oil painting in the corner of the room.
He was waiting to meet with the other Prime Minister, who called himself the "Minister for Magic."
God help him, he was starting to wonder if the stress of his job had driven him to a mental breakdown. But the man had stepped out of the fireplace flames right in front of him and turned a teacup into a gerbil. Truth be told, this wasn't his first brush with "weird and wacky" events. It had started on his first day as Prime Minister, fresh off his election victory, basking in the glow of newspaper praise. Then, out of nowhere, the painting in the corner spoke, reminding him of a meeting.
The Prime Minister had agreed on instinct.
What followed was bizarre: a man emerged from the fireplace, prattling on about "magic," "Dark Lords," and "the abandoned boy"—a jumble of nonsensical terms—before declaring victory in some war and assuring him that Muggles like himself had nothing to worry about. Then he vanished back into the flames.
The Prime Minister hadn't told a soul. For years, he convinced himself it was a dream, a brief nap after the exhausting election campaign. That is, until two years ago, when a portly man appeared from the flames and informed him of a large-scale magical disturbance in the city center. The Ministry of Magic would handle it, he was told, no need to worry.
Utter nonsense. Every time the Prime Minister recalled that moment, his blood boiled.
Since then, society had been plagued by the emergence of superhumans—people who set fires, shot electricity, froze others solid, or moved at impossible speeds. A whole gaggle of freaks had popped up out of nowhere, and to the Prime Minister, they clearly fell under that other Prime Minister's jurisdiction. But the angry voters didn't see it that way, and his political rivals were gleefully rubbing their hands together. What could he do? Even religious groups were coming after him.
So, the last time the other Prime Minister appeared, he'd finally had enough. He grabbed the man by the collar and demanded he take responsibility. The response was chilling: those people weren't his to manage. Wizards—ugh, the word alone made the Prime Minister queasy—aside from a few pure-blood families who clung to inbreeding, freely intermingled with Muggles. It wasn't a modern policy; it had been happening naturally since wizards first existed. So, in theory, his jurisdiction was crawling with people who carried wizarding blood but hadn't awakened magical abilities.
Thankfully, the other Prime Minister had agreed to help capture, interrogate, and take in some of the troublemakers who abused their newfound powers—provided the right laws were put in place. Laws… blasted bureaucracy. The Prime Minister had never despised how similar their systems were until then. Out of a politician's instinct, he'd probed into the structure of the magical government and learned they, too, had a revered but largely hands-off figure who focused on education, public works, and international affairs. Except theirs was a man.
Inevitably, after much diplomatic artistry and compromise, the Prime Minister had no choice but to enter a secret partnership with his magical counterpart. A handful more government officials were let in on the existence of magic, and he had to pretend he'd known about it all along, as if a secret department had been handling such matters since the dawn of the British government.
As dusk settled and the office grew quiet, the Prime Minister heard a soft cough.
"To the Muggle Prime Minister. Requesting a meeting. Please respond immediately. Faithfully, Fudge." The small, frog-like man in the painting, sporting a long silver wig, looked at him expectantly.
"Let him come," the Prime Minister said. The man in the painting vanished instantly. Though it wasn't his first time witnessing this, the Prime Minister still found it uncanny. When the man reappeared, he couldn't resist asking, "How many portraits of you are there?"
"Only two, Prime Minister," the figure in the painting replied.
"So when you leave, the other portrait has two of you?" the Prime Minister asked, curiosity piqued. At that moment, bright green flames erupted in the empty grate of the marble fireplace. The Prime Minister sat up straight, and seconds later, a man in a thin emerald-green robe stepped out, brushing ash from his clothes as he crossed the grate.
"Prime Minister," Cornelius Fudge said, his face haggard. "Good to see you again."
The Prime Minister had no desire to return the pleasantry. He fixed Fudge with a stern look. "Rough week?" His eyes flicked to Fudge's noticeably slimmer waistline. "And, er… Volde—"
"Don't say his name," Fudge barked.
"Fine," the Prime Minister said, pausing. "The Dark Lord, then. How's that going? I recall you said you were sending people to track down his, uh, soul."
"It's bad," Fudge said, slumping into the chair across from the Prime Minister and removing his hat to reveal a bald head. "I'm afraid he's truly back."
"What—why?"
"Azkaban has been breached."
Azka-what? The Prime Minister froze, then remembered—Fudge had mentioned it before. It was the wizard prison. Good heavens, this was… He gave Fudge a sympathetic look.
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