Chapter 2
Handler accepted a message from one of her decoders.
“Code cyan,” it started. Non-urgent request for more resources.
“I need reinforcements. I’ve uncovered a hidden organization too sprawling to investigate on my own in a sensible timeframe. This is far more vast than the truth serum you sent me to investigate. They have a presence all across Europe, including Westalis and Ostania. I need a small team to infiltrate their London base in two weeks time. Once we have found the location of their bases in Westalis and Ostania, this project will need all the espionage and infiltration specialists you can spare. Trust me, this will be worth the organization’s resources. I am not comfortable sharing details over radio as I am not sure how far their influence reaches. I will give a full report in person in three weeks. -Twilight”
Handler sighed. It was always Twilight, wasn’t it.
Since the peace accord WISE certainly had the manpower to spare, but this better not be like the time he rented out an entire castle…
—
Two weeks later, Anya and her family were on the bus to Trafalgar Square, where the “muggleborn orientation” would meet up. The bus was late – later than it was usually late, even. When it finally arrived, Anya shot out of her seat like a rocket. She rudely pushed through the crowded aisle to get off as soon as possible. Being stuck around people annoyed about the bus being late was so annoying! At Trafalgar Square there were still people tugging at her mind, but when they weren’t all focused on the same thing it was a lot easier not to get swept up.
Not being around annoyed people allowed Anya to focus on her excitement. She was going magic shopping! For magic school! She was a witch! Surrounded by annoyed people she’d almost forgotten that her life was super cool right now!
Anya bounced on her feet waiting for mama and papa to squeeze off the bus. They were so slow!
“Let’s go!” she said impatiently. She might have grabbed them and dragged them forward herself, if she was still a little kid, which she wasn’t.
It was not hard to find the muggleborn orientation. The super short teacher-guy that had come to clear things up after the teleportation incident was there, and the group of adults and kids all thinking about magic made it very obvious as well.
“Ah, if it isn’t the Forgers! Welcome, welcome. I do believe we’re all here now!” the short teacher proclaimed.
The rest of the group was less enthusiastic about their arrival. “Fucking finally”, “That felt wayyy longer than fifteen minutes”, “I wish I was in the other group.”
“Sorry we’re late!” papa said. “You know how the London buses can be…” He sounded human, but he was actually deep in mission mode. This was preliminary reconnaissance that he would build off of on a later, more thorough mission with other agents, after all. (Spies and magic? So cool!)
“We already did introductions, but let’s catch the Forgers up, shall we?” the short teacher said, gesturing to the man closest to him.
“We’re Dan and Emma Granger, and this is our daughter Hermione,” said the man.
Anya studied Hermione, her future classmate. Her hair was puffy, and her teeth were all beaver-like. She was annoyed about Anya being late like everyone else, but she was also excited about the orientation way more intensely than the others. She had a million questions to ask, and the orientation hadn’t even started yet!
The other people also introduced themselves. There was a girl without eyebrows called Sally-Anne, who was nervous about being around new people, and a big-nosed boy called Justin who was bored from all the waiting.
“Now, let’s make our way to Diagon, shall we?” the short teacher-guy said excitedly.
The group set off along Charing Cross Road, and it wasn’t long until they got to the Leaky Cauldron, which was apparently their destination even though it looked like a dinghy bar. The weird thing was that mama and papa couldn’t see it at all.
“You adults will need to hold your child’s hand to get through this leg of the journey; only mages can see the Leaky Cauldron!” the teacher-guy said.
Mama was curious and surprised when walking headfirst into a wall brought her into a bar instead, but papa’s mind started whirling real badly. He didn’t know how he would get his team in for recon if they couldn’t even see the door.
From Anya’s perspective, her first steps into the magical world were far more boring. There was just a normal door there, and she stepped through it. The bar on the other side wasn’t even interesting! Shouldn’t magic places be cool? She guessed the people were wearing interesting clothes, but Hogwarts was an awesome castle, so why wasn’t this a super mega shopping centre with upside-down gravity or something?
“How does that work?” Hermione asked, no longer able to contain herself. “Why can’t non-magical people see this place?”
“Why, I’m glad you asked Miss Granger!” the teacher-guy said. He sounded like he really meant it too, all bubbly and happy, though Anya couldn’t read his mind either, so she couldn’t say for sure. “The Leaky has a muggle diversion ward on it. That means there's an enchantment on the place that detects whether or not someone is magical, and only allows itself to be perceived by those who are. Muggles are subtly convinced that they have somewhere more important to be if they investigate. These enchantments are very common in the magical world, and are crucial to upholding secrecy.”
That explanation didn’t make papa feel better at all. Espionage-ing a society with such advanced methods of hiding things from him in particular was going to be a nightmare until he could get a wizard on his side.
“I can help you with your recon, papa,” Anya said straight into his brain, because that was a thing she could do now.
Papa was startled by the sudden intrusion into his thoughts, (he violently pushed down any creeped out feelings that he might have had).
“I don’t want to get you involved,” he thought, looking at Anya very seriously. She could see him think of all the ways she was untrained and vulnerable, and hear him list all the ways she could be injured or killed. “You should get to have a proper childhood.”
Anya rolled her eyes. As if she hadn’t been involved with his spy stuff already! What was Operation Strix without her?
“Fine, fine,” she thought to him. She could tell he wasn’t going to back down for now, but she had her ways…
The teacher walked the group to a small courtyard behind the bar, and tapped on some bricks on the wall.
“Now, I welcome you to Diagon Alley!” he announced.
The wall peeled itself open, and Anya was in awe. This was what a magical shopping district was supposed to look like! The buildings were all medieval and chaotically fighting for space with each other, and there were so many colors everywhere! People were floating their purchases with them, and the signs sparkled and changed and moved!
“Wow, it’s beautiful!” said mama, and even papa sacrificed a moment of memorization and strategization to agree.
“Our first destination is the bank Gringotts, where you can exchange currency!” the teacher announced.
The group set off down the street. The teacher said some other things to people who had questions (mostly Hermione), but Anya was having a hard time listening. It was partially because of all the noise, both physical and mental, from shoppers, but it was also because understanding English was harder when she couldn’t cheat and read meanings of words she couldn’t understand straight from the speaker’s mind. Why oh why did this short teacher have to have a mind-shield as well! Really, Anya didn’t mind that she couldn’t hear the explanations properly, though, because there was so so much to look at.
“Look! There’s brooms that fly!” she said excitedly to the kid with a big nose, Justin, who happened to be walking beside her.
“Of course there are,” he said, his tone and thoughts making it clear he thought he was better than her. He couldn’t stand people that made obvious observations about the world and considered it conversation. His mother said they were idiots. “It said there would be in the letter.”
Anya had just been trying to share in her excitement, but this kid didn’t deserve that anymore.
“Just making sure you noticed, in case you don’t know how to read,” she told him, drifting to the other side of the group before his indignation could form into words. It was so stupid that he was like that, since she could tell he was interested in the brooms as well.
That was when the group arrived at Gringotts, which was a really intimidating building. Anya thought goblins’ minds felt weird.
There was a whole boring waiting-in-line part during which the teacher explained the stupid way the money worked, but soon they had their galleons and they could finally do something interesting. Their first stop was the clothing store “Madame Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions”.
As it turns out, having clothes made for you in a magical store was pretty much the same as having them made for you normally, except the measuring tapes flitted around through the air. Also, the magic seamstresses could put enchantments into your clothes. Sadly, all the enchantments they were offering were kinda boring, like the clothes being waterproof or better at keeping you warm, or letting themselves out automatically.
Anya asked one of the seamstresses if she could add an enchantment that would make her invisible, or make her fly, or something cool, but the lady didn’t take her seriously at all. She tittered and thought that Anya was a “cute muggleborn ”.
After everyone was measured for their robes, the next stop was the trunk store, because apparently you were expected to bring your stuff to school in a trunk, even though it didn’t say so in the letter.
“This one’s huge!” Anya exclaimed, shoving her whole upper body into a magically expanded trunk. She waved her hands around inside it without touching anything. She couldn’t see where the space ended.
“That would be one of our portable workspace models,” the chest salesman said to papa. “Its air circulation and ventilation settings can be adjusted to best suit its use, and it comes with a bathroom pre-installed. Security measures are top-notch, of course.”
“Can I have it?” Anya asked papa, eyes wide.
Her excitement soured when she saw what the salesman was thinking, though. He was really sleazy about his eagerness to sell them the chest, which was way way more expensive than the models students usually bought. Also, he was planning on ripping them off.
“Never mind, I want that one,” Anya said, pointing at one of the models on the other side of the room. She pointed specifically at the one that the salesman thought students ought to buy if they knew anything about chests.
“Ah, what a wonderful choice,” he said. “It has three expanded compartments that you change between using a knob, fully incorporated shrinking and featherlight enchantments, as well as a simple lock that should keep your roommates out of your things.”
Anya, mama and papa thought that sounded like a pretty useful kind of chest.
“It costs 150 galleons,” the shopkeeper continued, completely full of crap.
“Excuse me?” Anya said, trying to sound grown up and credible, though it didn’t seem like the salesman was convinced. “There’s no way it’s that expensive. That’s a 20 galleon chest, if anything.”
Papa and mama looked at her quizzically.
“He’s super trying to rip us off,” Anya said to them telepathically. “Cause we’re clearly muggle and don’t know how the world works, and also the teacher guy is too busy answering Hermione’s questions to warn us.”
“Hmm, I think my daughter’s right,” papa said, taking the situation in stride. “In fact, I think it might be more of a 15 galleon chest, honestly…”
Oh boy was the salesman annoyed.
“For such a discerning customer, perhaps I could go down to 60…” the salesman tried.
“35 is a good price,” Anya told papa.
“No, I don’t think I want to spend any more than 25…” papa countered.
“I’d be losing money if I went any lower than 45…”
“30 galleons is the highest I’m willing to go.”
“35 galleons, final offer.”
“I’ll take it.”
Anya was feeling really smug about saving papa over a hundred galleons, whatever that was in real money.
When the teacher finally came over to look at what they were doing, he seemed relieved that they hadn’t been scammed.
“Mr. Chipmere here has always been a slippery one…” he said. He could have warned them!
As the group left, papa held Anya back from the rest of the group and quietly asked: “What specifically gave us away as non-magical? Was it our accent or clothes? Did he recognize professor Flitwick?”
“Um…” Anya said. She hadn’t particularly been paying attention to that. “I wasn’t paying attention. I might be too excited about normal things? I can pay attention from now on.”
Papa nodded. “Thank you, Anya,” he said.
Anya smiled back. She’d just gotten her foot in the door in terms of being useful to the mission. If she impressed him with this, he would definitely let her take on a bigger role!
The group’s next stop was the bookstore, which would have been an easy in-and-out, since there was a specific shelf conveniently dedicated to Hogwarts things, but everyone, especially papa and Hermione, wanted to look around a bit as well. The teacher, Flitwick, gave papa some recommendations on books about continental magical places, history, culture and stuff, which he was really thankful he could ask for without sounding suspicious.
Anya walked around aimlessly with mama, reading the names on the spines of books, most of which said nothing to her. “Old Futhark Runes in Modern Wardcraft” and “Navigating Psychometry in the Modern Age” might as well be gibberish. She pulled some of the books down to look at, but she mostly didn’t understand anything even when books were in English. There were books in French and Latin, and also a bunch of books in a language that she didn’t recognize, which was weird since Anya thought she’d learnt all the important languages in school.
Before papa and Hermione were done, she got bored and asked the shopkeeper if they had a comics section, paying specific attention to what gave her away as muggleborn. It seemed like it was her clothes and what she was asking after. Anya tried to press this hard into her memory so she could report properly to papa later.
This done, Anya pulled mama to the kids section, where the three (only three!) comic series in the store were shelved. Anya pulled the first volume of a comic called The Redcloak off the shelf, since it sounded the most interesting. Mama gasped in surprise, and Anya found out why when she turned the comic so she could see the cover. The picture on the cover was moving! Flipping through the pages, she saw that all the pictures inside were moving as well!
“How did they do that?” mama asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s so cool!” Anya said.
When papa was finally done finding a huge number of books for himself, Anya casually placed the comic on top of his pile.
“It’s a comic where the pictures move,” she said, and papa easily agreed to buy it. He was buying too many books for himself to refuse one tiny extra purchase.
Buying telescopes and potion supplies was a lot more straightforward, since everyone bought the basic Hogwarts set. Standing near the others in the muggleborn orientation while they were buying their things allowed Anya to take note of all the small mannerisms that the shopkeepers thought were muggle. She noticed that all the magical people thought they had a muggle accent, but that they didn’t place Anya’s or mama’s accents as muggle because they sounded Ostanian. Anya was sure that papa would be happy with that piece of information. He’d been talking with his perfect “RP” accent all day, when really he should’ve been sounding like he was foreign all along!
A couple people were also really rude about them being muggle, but mostly just on the inside of their heads. A customer at the astronomy store thought that Anya and the others were “worthless mudbloods waltzing into our world and stealing spots at Hogwarts like there aren’t a thousand kids more deserving,” which sounded really rude and kinda scary. He was really bitter that his own kid hadn’t been accepted. Anya gave that guy a wide berth.
Buying wands was a lot more complicated than buying potions ingredients, or even books. Anya hadn’t considered that wands might be super different from each other, or that finding the perfect wand would involve having your nostrils measured. She watched nervously as Hermione, the first in their group to be sacrificed to the mercies of Ollivander, was manhandled by his floating measuring tape.
While they were waiting for a wand to “choose her”, Anya turned her attention to the others in the group, or more specifically to the girl without eyebrows. She might have been called Sally or Perk or… something? Whatever her name was, she was thinking a lot about Anya, because she wanted to say hi, but she was too scared to. Anya found it annoying having that kind of attention on her, so she broke the ice.
“Why do you think the wands care about the size of your nostrils?” she asked, because that was on her mind.
Whats-her-face made an “eep!” kind of sound, surprised that Anya would want to talk to her.
“I, um… I, err, I’m not sure,” she said. She seemed like she wanted to disappear into a hole, even though she had wanted Anya to talk to her just moments ago? Anya was never really sure about how to deal with people like this.
“It would be weird if they wanted to make sure they’d be good for nose-picking or something,” Anya continued, trying to carry the conversation. “Or maybe it’s so that you can’t accidentally stick it up your nose.”
“Um… Yeah…” the other girl said, starting to get really worried that she didn’t have anything interesting to say.
There was an awkward pause.
Anya ultimately didn’t have to figure out how to make things less awkward, because there were suddenly sparkles in the air; Hermione had been chosen by a wand!
Anya stepped up to the counter next, by virtue of standing nearest to it. She braced herself for funny business from the measuring tape, but Ollivander didn’t set it on her at all. He already knew what wands she needed to try.
“Just one moment, miss,” he said, disappearing into the stacks of wands.
He quickly returned with five wand boxes.
“Natural legilimens such as yourself always seem to leave my store with silver limes,” he said.
He noticed she could read his mind! But he didn’t even have any mind shields! Anya had to be more on guard…
She glanced nervously at the others – they weren’t listening too closely, were they? Anya calmed down when a cursory glance of the others’ thoughts showed that they were listening to Hermione ask yet another question, and only mama and papa were paying attention.
“My apologies, I did not mean to reveal anything you wished hidden,” Ollivander apologized. “But be aware that it’s plain as day to anyone that can read auras, though we are rare…”
Anya considered that information. The teachers already knew because they had mind-shields, and apparently anyone that could read auras would also know… Her secret would not be very long-lived in the magical world, but she still felt the need to keep it a secret. There was no way the other kids would like having their minds read, magical world or no. Even mama and papa were still nervous about it, even though they loved her and were trying to used to it…
“Try this one,” Ollivander said, holding out a pale wand to her without any further ado.
Anya grabbed hold of it, and it made her hand feel unnaturally heavy. Before she could wave it, Ollivander snatched it out of her hand.
“How about this one,” he said, handing her another.
She barely even touched it before Ollivander pulled it away. It had felt like it would burn her, so she was thankful.
She knew that the third wand was the right one from the moment she touched it. It made her hand, arm and whole body feel warm, and bubbly. This was real magic. Holding the cream-colored wand in her hand, she truly felt like a witch.
When she waved the wand, bright green sparks came out, and she laughed in delight.
“Silver lime and phoenix feather, ten inches, swishy,” Ollivander said. “Well suited for transfiguration and non-verbal magics.”
Anya waved her wand around some more, making shapes, just to relish the feeling of magic coursing through her arm.
“I’m so happy for you, Anya!” mama said, delighted.
“That’s truly amazing,” papa said. His mind showed he was proud of her.
Anya smiled at them as wide as she ever had.
“Magic is so cool!” she said.
–
Anya pouted. Papa was practicing getting into the Leaky Cauldron by memorizing where the door handle was in relation to a nearby tree.
She had given such a good report on fitting into wizarding society! He had been truly thankful! He had considered how finding a mind-reader to work with could be good for WISE, but he never once considered her! He didn’t even consider her for opening this door on the mission!
Anya’s spirits were ever so slightly lifted by how silly it was to watch papa practice opening a door, even though she could tell from his mind that it was actually very hard to open a door you couldn’t see or feel.
Papa didn’t get to practice for long, though, because soon a tendril of magic concentrated out of thin air, and wrapped itself around his brain. Suddenly, it was very important for him to go home to read his books right away.
It was the anti-muggle ward!
Anya panicked.
“But papa!” she said out loud. “You need to be able to get your team in!” she continued mentally.
“No, no, it’s fine Anya,” he replied. “I can’t afford to waste time here. The more I can read before our scheduled meeting tomorrow, the more likely we are to succeed.”
Anya didn’t know what to do. She saw the tendril of magic around papa’s mind and it just screamed “wrong!” to her. She was scared to touch it, because what if it spread to her as well?
Then the same magic touched mama.
“We really should get going,” she said. “I’m starving!”
Anya lost all hope.
She could see the magic, but didn’t know how to counter it. She really wanted to learn. It creeped her out at a very fundamental level. And that Flitwick guy had said that this place had a subtle redirection! Anya shuddered to think of what a strong one would be like.
She hadn’t considered that there could be negative sides to magic like this…
They were half way home when the magic broke. The transition out was smooth, and mama and papa didn’t notice a thing.
As the tendril of magic left their minds, a tendril of fear wrapped itself around Anya’s mind. She really needed to learn how to counter this.