The representative
As much as she was ashamed to admit it, the killing spree and the ministries reaction was about more than just public health and safety. And as much as it scared her, it was more than an optics issue either. The ministry had been devastated by the second war. Greyback had taken out almost the entirety of the practical side of the Magical Beasts department and a fair chunk of the legislative side as well. The remaining faculty had been further gutted by arrests and trials for collusion. And a fair handful had simply decided to take an early retirement. Hermione’s department, the smallest arm, which handled containment, control, and public safety had been hit the hardest with the ministry finding themselves relying on fresh graduates and geriatrics. Her staff on the ground had at most five years of field experience and at the least, six months. Wizarding society had little faith in the new government and even less faith in the vestiges of the old one.
So Hermione shook a stranger's hand on bloodied ground and held the doubt in her chest like a shield.
“Let us leave this place.” Armand spoke softly, his voice light and warm, “It must be cold for you, and everything we could find here has long been packed away.”
Pulling her hand away from his, her skin crawled. He smelled like cigarette smoke and jasmine.
“Not much open at this hour,” Hermione grimaced.
The boy shrugged and began walking.
–
“So, what exactly do you have to offer me? Because I’m not exactly interested in your corkboard and strings that you’ve collected without your mom finding out.” Hermione trailed behind him as they strolled towards downtown London. Despite his small stature Armands stride was quick and she found herself struggling to keep up without seeming obvious.
“Such impatience for such a lovely night. Besides, you don’t want to go home. Nothing for you there but yourself.”
The streetlights shuddered gold above them. As they moved deeper downtown, the hum of the city seemed to resume with the occasional chatter from pubs, nightshifters, and drunkards. Finally, Armand spun around to face her with a smile, he reached to the side and pulled open a coffee shop door, his eyes wide and unblinking. He gestured for her to enter like a mock-gentleman.
The cafe was warm, dressed in browns, reds, and oranges. Arabic music played softly in the background mixing with chatter and laughter from people at the tables. As Hermione entered, the air was awash with the smell of espresso, chai, and pastry. The cafe was larger than it appeared from the outside, with a split floor layout. While the counter and several long tables were on the ground floor, a flight of stairs below lay a mess of tables, couches, bookshelves, and dish recipes. Waitresses flitted between the two floors carrying trays of coffee pots, tea sets of cups, and various desserts.
“Normally this place only stays open late for the holy month but the owner decided to add midnight hours during uni exam periods as well. Now, they stay open until 2:30am three months out of the year.” Armand smiled, waving to the girl behind the counter motioning Hermione to come with him.
With a flash of a platinum credit card Armand had arranged for a pot of Turkish coffee, a dessert flight, and a savory array of bread and meat dishes to be delivered to a back table on the far side of the establishment. The more Hermione insisted on subtlety, the more food was ordered. While she had wanted a small inconspicuous table, the quantity of food they had ordered meant they had been relocated to a large circular table that rested between a set of the squishiest velvet green chairs she had ever sat in.
Doing her best to seem solemn while sinking into the cushions she examined the man before her. He perched cross legged. Her previous assessment of his age seemed correct but his eyes were wrong. A pale orange amber, wide and unblinking. As their food and drinks began to arrive he filled a small mug with coffee and took measured sips, rapt with interest at the choices Hermione made, nodding slightly as she filled her cup and plate.
“Enough.”
Armand cocked his chin.
“Who are you and why did you bring me here? What do you know?”
Delicately, Armand placed his mug back on the saucer. From the look of it he had barely drunken a thing,
“I represent an organization concerned with the containment and observation of the undead, the magical, and the unusual.”
“So you’re from a foreign ministry? Your accent is hard to place.”
“Not exactly,”
“What school did you go to? Beauxbaton? You have a bit of a french accent,”
Armand laughed, throwing his chin back, sinking himself deeper into his chair. Was he some kind of freelancer? A fair amount of pupils who graduated from auror training went into the private sector, hunting creatures for a bounty. While not technically illegal, the ministry frowned upon the practice. Things tended to go wrong and the unregulated nature of the career caused large risks to the statute of secrecy.
A waitress walked past, pausing to clear plates from her table. With a wave of his hand the woman’s gaze blurred, and she walked away without taking a thing.
“Oh no, nothing of that sort. No I was,” he paused, “privately educated. In Venice.”
Some homeschooler. Hermione sighed, as much as she hated to admit it, she’d been fooled. Months of no progress had left her grasping at straws and finding answers out of shadows on the walls.
“We’ve been watching you for sometime now,” he lifted his cup, stirring the drink slowly, “adrift with your nonsense politics, losing yourselves to your egos. There was not much sense in exposing ourselves to the mess but now-” he motioned to the air with his spoon, “your ministry is smaller, younger, and for the first time in eons, scared enough to listen. And you- you are desperate enough to come to us.”
His eyes. Those eyes. Cold burning orange. Wide and unblinking. Hermione tried to pull herself forward, her arms were so heavy, the chairs were so soft. Like sand slipping through an hourglass she found herself wound in his gaze, bound to her seat.
“Who are you,” she hissed, shaking the fog from her mind. With a twitch of her fingers her wand released from her sleeve, the wood reassuring in her palm.
“I represent an organization. An order really,” he looked to the side, Hermione’s limbs released, feeling returned to her fingertips, “we are The Talamasca.”
“The What?”
In the end, Hermione found herself grateful for the liters of caffeine. The two of them had found themselves talking until the cafe closed. The young man had been tight lipped, it was clear he had been given a list of things he was permitted to disclose and had no intention of saying anything else.
By the time she made it back home, the sky had changed from inky black to a soft golden violet. Pouring herself another mug of coffee, Hermione repacked her satchel for the day. Quietly she slipped back into the bedroom. Ron’s hair had tangled in the night, a fiery knot of red curls covered his face and pillow. This time of year he always procrastinated heading to the barbers, insisting that the extra hair kept his ears warm. Smiling to herself, she threw on a clean jumper, clean socks and washed her face. Hopefully she would appear to have slept the night before. Even so, she would not have been the only one of her colleagues to work through the night.
***
“We watch and We are always here”
The words inscribed on the business card in her pocket weighed heavy on Hermione’s mind. Armand had given her the card shortly before they parted ways. The words were written in neat gold serif font on plain white cardstock. However, the card itself seemed at least a few weeks old. The paper had begun to wear around the corners and bore a few rust colored splatters. On the back was a triangular symbol depicting what appeared to be an abstracted eye and a pointed falling tear. Beneath Armand had scribbled his phone number claiming that,
“It’s best not to add contact information until after we know our persons of interest are trustworthy.”
Armand had claimed to represent a 1,500 year-old organization that catalogs and tracks the supernatural. That they kept close watch on vampires, werewolves, what he referred to as “true witches”, and ghosts. That their purpose was not to hunt or kill but rather observe and conceal. That they considered themselves to be archives of the dead and undead, working to preserve history and knowledge. That they were run and organized by Muggles. Muggles who relied on computers, microfilm, and filing cabinets.
However, he seemed to care very little for the contradicting histories she had learned and studied,
“Your society has been so dedicated to insulating yourselves. It's no wonder you have no notion of the world outside your influence.”
Every contradiction she pointed out, every inconsistency with what she had been taught was simply waved aside. Her histories were dismissed as antiquated, biased, and most importantly censored. Yet he declined to provide any sort of verification. By the end of the conversation she had found herself wanting to hit him.
And his magic, that was the strangest part of all. He used no wand. No sigils. No runes. No pendants. Wandless magic had been banned in Europe for centuries and here he was moving things without even the twitch of his hand. Typically, a spell leaves a kind of residue on the air. The more powerful the wizard the longer it lingered. This echo allowed other witches and wizards to know when others were near. And yet… From Armand… Nothing.
“We Watch and We are always here” Hermione whispered to herself, wondering how true such a statement could really be.
***
The floor of the office was as usual, a mess. Owls cooing at the nests outside the windows, pining to come inside, the nights unanswered correspondence piled high on desks, stacks of books and manuscripts filling shelves upon the walls. The sun had begun to peak past the horizon, golden light shining through the windows and catching upon the antique stained glass. The chaos of the floor had always been comfortable for Hermione. There was always something to do, someone to speak to, and some new adventure to see.
As usual Hermione was the first operative on the floor. She glanced around the empty desks. While everyone felt comfortable judging her failures she had spent the whole night working and had still arrived before everyone else.
As she paused to open the blinds and let in the owls to collect mail, the door swung back open. Yawning and rubbing their eyes were Bilal and Leonara, wandering back from presumably a full night combing through files, volumes, and attempting to understand the strange catalog spells that had been placed by a secretary killed in the war. (It had been years and while everyone who worked with the secretary swore by her systems nobody had managed to decode how to work her spells. As such pulling documents had become a pain.) The two had yet to realize Hermione’s presence and dumped their bags onto Bilal's desk and fell into chairs. Bilal wrapped his head in his arms and draped himself onto his desk.
Wishing she had thought to bring coffees, Hermione walked over and tapped Bilal on the shoulder.
“Well?” she looked at the pair, “How did it go.”
Leonara slumped down in her chair, resting her chin in her palm, “Threads but no shirt.”
“What she means,” Bilal looked down glaring at his coworker, “Is that for such an impulsive species, they seem to have a remarkable knack for cleaning up after themselves.”
“All of the younger ones burn bright and fast leaving nothing behind but bodies. And all of the ones old enough to leave a record take considerable effort to leave nothing.”
“I suppose it makes sense,” Hermione sighed, “Once you have a century of killing under your belt…”
“Exactly.”
“So what now?” Leonara asked, “In my mind we ought to contact the French Ministry, see if they have anything recently. They’ve had a hell of a time combing through the catacombs lately, might have turned something up.”
Hermione paused, flipping the business card in her pocket between her fingers, feeling the paper moisten from the sweat on her palm. Researching by herself seemed to be the most logical option. If this was all some kind of distraction, it would be a help to have people unaffected. And she’d always prefer to hit the books by herself. On the other hand, if something went wrong no one would know what had happened. Any leads she found would die with her. The image of that poor woman, carved and left for the flies flashed through Hermione’s mind. Ron fast asleep, his red curls.
“I think I might have something,” she held out the card, “Let us go somewhere private.”
***
“You went by yourself, at night, with a stranger.” Bilal’s voice was cold
“I know it was reckless but-”
“You would kill me if I did something like that,” Leonara muttered
The Talamasca’s business card lay on the center of Hermione’s desk. Her office lay at the front of the floor. Most of the space was filled with her desk, three chairs, and bookshelves. Recently, the shelves had overflowed, leading to the little floorspace and windowsills to be taken over by more books and papers. And now, the biggest item in the room was a small rectangle paper the size of Hermione’s palm.
While she had explained the encounter the best she could, her justification was lacking and Hermione knew it. Why had she allowed herself to be led around town, guided by a stranger with no attempt to inform anyone… There was no explanation really. In part it was curiosity and shock at Armand’s gall but there was something else as well. Maybe desperation for some kind of answer?
“By yourself, with a vampire on the loose, no plan, no nothing!” Bilal stood up from her office chair, the way he lurched over her felt strange, like he was unsure of it as well, “What if something had gone wrong? What then? No one would have come for you, and we would be left to what? Fend for ourselves!”
Hermione rose from her chair, saying nothing. He was taller than her so to meet his eyes she would have to look up. Attempting not to remind Bilal of this fact she stared at her desk, as though he was not even worth regarding,
“You would yell at me? Scold me?” she took the business card back out of her pocket, “How about you help me?” Her voice softened, that small seed of doubt creeping back in, “None of us can do this by ourselves.”
Instantly, the air in the room softened.
“There is a murderer, walking free. Killing indiscriminately for months on end and we still don’t even know its name. This thing… Has managed to break into even our oldest homes. Blown straight past centuries old protective spells. I want to exhaust all avenues. All ends. And I don’t want to hear infighting. Especially from our brightest and strongest. ”
She paused looking at her colleagues.
“I’m sorry I went by myself. It was idiotic and I could have been hurt.”
Bilal sat down, “I would have done the same.”
“Am I the only one here with any sort of survival instinct?” Leonara snatched the card off the table to look at it closer, “Serif font. Nice.”
Neither Bilal or Leonara had ever heard of the Talamasca before and neither recognized the symbol. Hogwarts had been established in the ninth century and Armand claimed the Talamasca outdated it by about eight-hundred years. With Hogwarts came most of the English wizarding records so they would have a hard time finding information prior to that point. However, it seemed unlikely that an organization comprised of muggles and the occasional folk witch would be capable of remaining completely undetected for all of the years following.
Quickly, the three of them devised a set of rules. Firstly, as soon as Dean came in they would pull him into the loop. Three was a small crowd and four felt safer. Next, no one would attempt to contact or go anywhere with Armand without at least one other person present and one person informed on where they were going. Nothing the four of them turned up would be communicated with the ministry at large until they had conclusive proof. The risk of the ministry taking the simpler scorched Earth approach would do nothing to help catch the vampire and alienate potential allies. And they had been taking that approach more and more often lately. The biggest priority was to verify the existence of the Talamasca and whether or not this would aid them in their hunt. A large, centuries long collection on the undead would be instrumental in hunting older, more powerful vampires, and gaining access would take care.
“Wait,” said Hermione, snatching the card back and placing it on her desk. Pulling out her wand, she shouted,“Appare Vestigium!”
A simple tracking spell to reveal any magics placed on the card. As her wand sparked and the spell was cast, the little paper card began to glow. Bright orange and gold. Until, with a burst of smoke the little scrap of paper burst into flames. Shrieking Leonara smacked the table to put out the flames but it was too late. Half of the little card was burnt to cinders.
“We watch and W-” was all that was left.