Martin Miggs and the School of Wizardry

In the Ministry of Magic

Martin Miggs was, for the most part, and ordinary Englishman. He was married, had a daughter, and a job that paid enough to care for the family. He taught mathematics at a state school just a few minute's walk from his flat, and he enjoyed his work about as much as anyone else in his situation did. He also enjoyed a night or two every week at the pub for a pint or two and a few games of darts. He disliked Yanks in general, but liked the ones he knew (such as his cousin's husband).

This is not to say that nothing unusual ever happened to him, because the students in his classes took every opportunity to make something unusual happen. He was one of the more popular teachers, or one of the less unpopular ones, depending on what sort of student held the opinion; he had learned that while children are not as smart as they think they are, they are smarter than most adults take them to be. But by and large his life was fairly unremarkable.

Then one day Martin Miggs lost his family and seven years of his life.

The day had begun ordinarily enough. He got up, showered, dressed, ate the toast and drank the juice that Claire put out for him, gave Elizabeth a kiss as she slept, gave Claire a kiss at the door, and left for work.

Then, quite without warning, he was dizzy.

He staggered, but putting a hand to the wall stopped him from falling. When he was able to collect his wits, he noticed that he was no longer in the corridor that led past his flat, but in what looked like the corridor of an office building, and that a few strangely-dressed people had suddenly appeared around him. In addition, his breath was now coming in great ragged gasps, and his heart pounded as if he had just been running for his life. There was adrenaline in his veins. He leaned against the wall of the corridor, staring blankly at the people around him, until he caught some of his breath. "What has happened?" he asked.

"What do you remember?" asked one of them. This person held a small rod, which appeared to be wooden.

"I was just leaving my flat for work."

"Well, that puts him back a ways," one of them, an old man, said. "Arthur, we can handle him now. You go down and get that shoulder looked at."

A red-haired man who was holding his shoulder gingerly nodded faintly and turned away, going up the corridor.

Martin, still very wary, but beginning to calm down, noticed that everyone was carrying a small rod similar to the one he had first seen. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Please come with me, and I will explain everything," the old man said. He took Martin gently by the arm and guided him the other way along the corridor. Martin went along, and was soon steered into an office along the way; the door, which his guide closed behind them, read Office for Muggle Victim Relief. "Have a seat, if you like," the man said.

Martin said in a chair next to the first desk in the office, and the old man seated himself behind the desk, which among its clutter had a nameplate reading PHOEBUS PENROSE. "Would you like some tea, Mr. Miggs?"

"Yes, thank you."

"'Fraid all I have is the bagged stuff," he said. He turned to the teapot that sat on his desk and gave it a tap with his rod, which looked to be made of mahogany. Immediately the kettle began singing.

"How did you do that?"

"I beg your pardon--oh, that. It's part of the reason you're here." He got a pair of cups and saucers, tapped one of each with the rod again, and set them on the edge of the desk nearest Martin. He then dropped a tea bag into the cup and added the steaming water. He did he same to the other tea cup, and then sat down. "Do you believe in magic?"

"What?"

"Do you believe in magic?" the man repeated, with complete placidity.

"What are you about?" Martin asked. The question seemed completely unrelated to his sudden presence here.

"I want to know how well you understand your present situation. Do you believe in magic?"

Martin, who was not in the mood for this sort of foolishness, gave an exasperated sigh. "No, of course not," he replied.

"It is by magic that I just brought the tea water to boil."

"Nonsense. That could be a hotplate there."

"Quite true." Penrose thought for a moment. "What would it take to convince you that your belief is incorrect?"

Martin found the question annoying. "Oh, I don't know," he said sarcastically. He looked around, and pointed. "Turn that chair into a dog."

"Well, I'm not very good at Transfiguration, but I'll give it a try." He got up, rod in hand, and went over to the chair that Martin had picked. He waved the rod, said "Caniverto," and in the space of two heartbeats the chair grew long black and white hair, the back of the chair reshaped itself into a dog's head with floppy ears, and the legs and seat formed into a dog's legs and torso. The dog--a Border Collie--turned around, bemused, and wagged its tail.

"Great Caesar's ghost," Martin whispered, then, in a normal tone, "how did you do that?"

"A simple wave of my wand here, an incantation, and concentration on a specific result," Penrose replied. "It's the way most magic is done."

Martin gave his head a quick shake, but the dog remained.

"Are you convinced?"

Martin shrugged. "For the moment." He looked at Penrose. "Why haven't I heard about this before?"

"Those of us who are able to perform magic have decided to keep our existence a secret from non-magical people. We are a small minority among people at large, only about one out of every thousand, so if our existence became known we would have a great deal of difficulty controlling the situation. Consequently, one of the primary missions here at the Ministry of Magic is to ensure that wizarding society remains unknown to non-magical people such as yourself."

"Where can I learn how to do magic?"

"The basic ability to do magic is inborn; we are not quite certain if it is inherited or due to some other factor. If you're not born with it, you'll never be able to perform magic."

At this point a paper airplane came through the open transom and gently drifted over to one of the other desks. The dog gave a short bark and followed it, then sat bemused when the paper reached its apparent destination, where it fell to the desktop and remained still. Penrose raised his wand again, said "Finite," and then the dog turned back into a chair.

Martin closed his eyes and opened them again. The chair was still a chair. "Why was I brought here?"

"You weren't brought here, Mr. Miggs. You broke in."

Martin shook his head. "I don't remember breaking in here."

"What is the last thing you remember?"

"The last thing I remember, I was leaving my flat for work. Then, suddenly, I was out in the corridor."

"And you remember nothing of the time from when you left your flat to just now when you came to your senses out there?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Nothing at all."

"Tell me, what day is it?"

"October the sixteenth. I think." He paused. "Yes, definitely."

"And the year?"

"Nineteen eighty-four."

Penrose said nothing to this, but merely looked at the wall to Martin's left. Martin looked also. The calendar on the wall read September 1991 at the top. He stared at the date for five eternal seconds before he could speak. "Seven years? I've lost seven years?" he stammered.

Penrose nodded wordlessly.

Martin shot to his feet. "Claire? Elizabeth? What's happened to them?"

"You should sit down for this, Mr. Miggs."

With the hollow feeling in his stomach that foreboded the worst, Martin sat.

"I cannot think of a kind way to put this, so please forgive me. Your family is the reason you have been trying to break into the ministry. Shortly after the last day you remember, your wife and daughter were murdered by one of our kind."

--

It took a trip to Martin's flat, another visit to the council building to examine death certificates, and a final visit to the cemetery before Martin was fully persuaded. At first he was nurturing the suspicion that it was all a complicated prank being played on him, but these suspicions were dashed by the dates on the papers and magazines at the newsstand that they passed on the corner. The flat was empty, and as he walked through, looking for Claire and Elizabeth, he noticed that the clothing lying around was all his, and not theirs, and the flat itself was in a state that Claire would never have tolerated.

At the council offices, after an hour's wait, Martin read for himself the death certificates. Claire and Elizabeth had been strangled some seven years before.

"You said they were killed magically," he stammered when they were walking away from the council offices.

Penrose looked at Martin with an expression of frank pity. "The murderers used magic to accomplish it. The details would be too traumatic for you at this point."

While certificates made the deaths official, the plain granite grave markers, very lightly weathered, made them real. Their lifespans ended two weeks after the last day he remembered. For seven years, his wife and daughter had been waiting for him, six feet under the grass on which he stood.

"Couldn't you do anything?" he asked.

Penrose shook his head. "No spell can bring back the dead," he replied. "Some of our kind are buried here."

Martin held back the tears; he didn't want to cry in front of Penrose, who was still a relative stranger. "So now what happens?"

"The last three times you came to our attention, we made you forget whatever you'd learned about us, and left you to rebuild your life on your own."

Martin was quiet for several moments digesting this. It was true that remembering their deaths would be a bad memory, but it was not the whole truth. It was not the real reason he had been made to forget. These magical people had tampered with his memory for their convenience, and how it all affected him was decidedly secondary. "You bastards."

Penrose looked briefly uncomfortable. "That is not an unfair charge. I am not in favor of that policy, and this time I am going to see if I can arrange another solution. You see, most of the Muggles--your kind, you know--need just one memory treatment, and then they resume their lives, without ever disrupting our affairs again. But somehow that's not working for you. This is the third time you've broken into the Ministry, looking for the people who murdered your family. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Muggles have gotten into the Ministry without magical assistance of some sort, and you are the only one to do it more than once." He gave a glance towards the grave stones. "Are you ready to go?"

Martin nodded dumbly, and they set off. Martin dreaded the arrival, because that was when he would have to wrestle with the feat of living without Claire and Elizabeth, but the walk was shorter and quicker than he wished.

"I presume you will want to be alone for a while," Penrose said, as they arrived Martin's flat. He looked uncomfortable as he said this.

Martin nodded dumbly. He got out the key to his flat and went in. "Won't you come in?" he asked.

"It would be better if I returned to the Ministry. I'm going to make a few contacts, and see if I can work out a better solution for you this time. I will call on you in the next day or so." He gave a nod of farewell and turned to leave.

"Just one moment," Martin said. He was beginning to tremble. "Did you catch the bastards?"

Penrose gave a very dejected shake of the head. "We know only that at least one of our kind did it. We haven't given up on finding them." He gave another nod, and this time Martin did not stop him from going.

Martin closed the door, and now, with nobody around him, he gave way to the misery that had been building up in him. For the rest of that day, and on through most of the night, he alternated between sobbing, raging, and numbness, and didn't get to sleep until the early hours of the morning.

The doorbell woke him up at nine o'clock. He rolled off of the couch--on which he had spent the night--staggered towards the door, and looking outside, saw his sister Dierdre.

"Good morning, Martin," she said as he let her in.

"Not good for me," Martin replied. He gave the door a push so that it closed. "Pardon the mess."

"Oh, I've gotten used to your housekeeping," she said.

"So what brings you here?"

"Phoebus Penrose told me I should pay you a visit."

"You know him?"

"I only met him yesterday," she said, taking a seat in the armchair, "but I've met some other people from the Ministry of Magic."

"You know about the Ministry? Penrose told me yesterday that they try to keep themselves a secret."

"Usually, they do. But that rule doesn't apply to everybody."

"Let me see if I can brew up something drinkable," he said, and stepped into the kitchen. "So what's the exception?"

"Sometimes, one of their kind is born into a family of our kind."

"Is that so?" He took a teapot to the sink.

"Yes," she said, sounding nearer. Martin looked and saw that she was now standing in the doorway. "It turns out that Raymond is one."

Martin put the kettle on the stove and turned around to face her.

"It explained a lot," she continued. "He'd done a few things by accident over the years. But in August we got a visit from the school that they have to learn all that stuff. Raymond's there now."

Martin started. "Speaking of which, shouldn't I be at work right now?"

"Where?"

"State school up the road here."

She shook her head. "You haven't worked in half a year."

"Sacked?"

She nodded her head. "After you lost Claire and Lizzie, you started having episodes of erratic behavior. I thought before that you were simply losing your grip on things. But last year you missed a lot of work and so they let you go."

"I suppose my finances are a shambles."

"Not yet, but they're getting there. Luckily for you, it takes an act of God to turn out a tenant nowadays. Anyway, Penrose paid me a visit yesterday, and after talking with him I finally know what you've been up to." She shook her head. "He told me that you're going through the loss again, fresh."

Martin swallowed the lump in his throat, but said nothing.

"This is the fourth time they've had to make you forget things."

"And I hate it."

The tea was ready, and for a while they sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea but saying nothing, until there was another knock at the door. Martin answered it, and seeing Phoebus Penrose outside of his door, admitted him and led him to the kitchen.

Penrose brightened when he saw Dierdre sitting at the table. "You'll be interested in hearing this," he said to her, and turned to Martin. "Mr. Miggs, by good chance I believe that I have found a situation that will assist you in your current circumstances. Would you be interested in a teaching position?"