Sea Change

Sea Change

The national security people had told him Gordon Brown was quite stable, if a bit dull, so when after discussing Asian affairs, the European situation and the latest Middle Eastern meltdown, the British Prime Minister had asked whether the portrait had spoken to him yet, President Barack Obama was somewhat taken aback.

"Uh...no," he said.

"No emerald flames in the fireplace?" asked the Prime Minister.

"Uh..." Barack said again. The kids liked those crystals you threw into fires to give color to the flames, but he wasn't about to have that kind of cozy family gathering in the Oval Office. For one thing, the new puppy couldn't be trusted around good carpets. "Ah, we haven't had a fire yet."

"Oh, that's all right, you don't need a fire," the Prime Minister said kindly. He paused a moment, just as if he expected Barack to answer. "You're new yet; believe me, I remember how it was.... It'll all come clear in time, don't you worry. Good night, then."

"Good night." Barack hung up the phone, patted round his waistband for his Blackberry, then remembered for the tenth time that day that the Secret Service had taken it from him. No Blackberry, no laptop.... He pulled a paper memo toward him, picked a pen out of the stand, looked at it...how did you use these things again? Then green light shone upon his hand, a reflection of the green light dancing on the glass-topped desk, light which was itself a reflection....

Slowly Barack raised his eyes. Emerald flames in the fireplace? Check. But the Prime Minister hadn't said anything about a man stepping from the fire to the hearthrug, brushing ash from the sleeves of his burgundy robes.

Barack stood and looked up into his visitor's face. Dude had to top six feet--he'd make a good forward. Barack stifled his laugh just in time. Whatever the guy's game was, it couldn't be basketball. Still, he was impressive, with muscles under the flowing robes, skin darker than Barack's, a completely bald head and a golden earring in one ear.

Barack pulled open his desk drawer and reached inside.

"I wouldn't bother calling your Secret Service." The stranger spoke with a British accent. "In the first place, I won't harm you. Secondly, they won't hear. I've put Muggle-Repelling and Imperturbable Charms around the office."

"I'm not." Barack pulled a crumpled pack of Marlboros from the drawer. Yes, he'd quit smoking, but a man in purple robes stepping out of a green fire and talking about Muggle-Repelling and Imperturbable Charms? "I need a cigarette." Damn it, though, he didn't have any matches and he'd thrown out his lighter the last time he'd quit.

"Light?" said the stranger. Barack looked up. The man was holding something like an orchestra conductor's baton with a flame--yellow this time--flickering at the end. Cautiously Barack extended his cigarette. The other man touched it with the flame and the cigarette tip flared red.

Barack put the cigarette between his lips and inhaled deeply. They said nicotine sharpened your brain, whatever else it did to your body. He certainly hoped they were right.

"I take it you know nothing about me," said his visitor.

You can say that again. "Ah, no."

"Nothing to worry about, really." The man stuck out his hand. "I'm Kingsley Shacklebolt, UK Minister for Magic. Mr. Brown's wizarding counterpart."

"Magic...wizarding?" Barack took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared at it suspiciously. This was tobacco, right?

"You have heard of magic? Witches? Wizards?" said Shacklebolt.

"Uh, yes, I do read bedtime stories to my kids," said Barack. Or he had, a long time ago. He'd never thought he'd wish for it, but, oh, to have those days back again, to be nothing more than a state senator. How would Hillary or McCain have handled this?

"Oh, excellent! You do know, then! That makes it so much easier. You'd be surprised how many Americans, when I tell them I'm a wizard, think I play for one of your basketball teams."

"The Washington Wizards."

"Yes, that's the one. But no basketball for me, I'm afraid. I'm a Quidditch man myself. The fresh air, you know, soaring into the open sky on a Firebolt. Fastest broom ever made by the hand of wizard--"

Barack put up his hands. He'd take the latest bank failure over shooting the breeze about broom-flying with somebody who called himself a wizard. Any day of the week.

"Oh, sorry," said Shacklebolt. "Back to explaining myself. Or us. We're a parallel world, the wizarding world, of magical folk living pretty much invisibly alongside you Muggles, or non-magical people. You still remember us in your myths and legends because you used to live and work with us side-by-side. But then we began to have our differences--I won't go into the details just now--and we withdrew from your world, hiding ourselves magically from you. Usually it works out beautifully--we keep ourselves and our places and our magical creatures from you--"

"Magical creatures?"

"Dragons, werewolves, vampires, that sort of thing."

"Dragons, werewolves, vampires--exist?"

"Oh, yes. Just about anything you've read about in a fairy tale exists."

Though Barack crushed out his cigarette in the souvenir ashtray Michelle had let him keep on his desk, he somehow didn't think it was the smoking that made his breath come short.

"As I was saying," Shacklebolt went on, "we wizards try to stay out of sight. It's better, we've found, if we let you go on your merry and ignorant way. But we do have our conflicts, and our world can impinge on yours, sometimes fatally. Dark wizards, for instance, have a penchant for using magic to torture and kill, and they like to make sport of Muggles. Happily, we haven't had any serious trouble with Dark wizards in about ten years or so. But that's why we keep the lines of communication open with Muggle leaders, even while concealing ourselves from the rest of the Muggle populace. Magic's a dangerous thing, especially for those who haven't a defense against it."

Barack looked at him narrowly. "Now let me get this straight. There's a world of witches and wizards, hidden from the normal world--"

"The Muggle world," said Shacklebolt, looking offended. "We're every bit as normal as you are."

"All right, the Muggle world. And you're the wizarding world's Minister, its leader--"

"One of them."

"One of them. And you keep in touch with our world--the Muggle world--to warn us of dangers your magic might pose to us."

"And vice versa. Biological warfare, for instance, is a rather clever invention of yours," Shacklebolt said somewhat astringently.

"Fair enough. I take it, then, that I'm not the first American president your people have contacted?"

"No."

Barack continued to eye Shacklebolt. "I don't believe you. This is some kind of joke." Or worse. Where was his Secret Service detail? "If you're the UK Minister of Magic, leader of the wizards, who's kept up relations with the US government, why didn't President Bush ever tell me about you?"

"If President Bush had told you he'd seen and talked to a man who stepped out of green fires and called himself a wizard, what would you have thought?"

That the stress of the job was worse than anybody had told him it would be. "Oh," said Barack.

"Exactly," said Shacklebolt. "Which is why you won't tell anybody about us."

"Except for my wife," said Barack. "I'm sorry, but I don't keep any secrets from her."

Shacklebolt looked at him with an odd little smile and said nothing.

After a moment, Barack gestured toward the fireplace. "If there's nothing else," he said, then stopped. "No, wait. There is something else. You're the UK Minister of Magic. Aren't there any American witches and wizards? Haven't we our own wizarding government--?"

He was interrupted by a very familiar voice outside the door to the outer office. "I'm fairly certain he'll want to see me." The door opened and Michelle came in. She took in the scene with a glance and shut the door.

"Kingsley," said Michelle. "It's about time you showed up."

Barack's jaw dropped.

"Hello, Michelle," said Shacklebolt. He turned to Barack. "Mr. President, meet Madame President. Michelle Obama, the President of the Wizarding United States."

Barack could feel his jaw working. But for a few seconds, nothing came out of his mouth. "Michelle...you...you're a witch?" he finally stammered.

"Barack, I'm sorry...I just didn't know how...." Suddenly she wrinkled her nose. "Somebody has been smoking cigarettes in here."

Shacklebolt spread his hands in expressive denial. "If I did smoke, it would be a pipe."

Seemingly out of nowhere, a baton like Shacklebolt's appeared in Michelle's hand. No, Barack thought, stupefied. Not a baton, a wand, because she's a witch. She waved it, and the desk drawer where he kept his cigarettes popped open. Seeing the pack of Marlboros fly from the drawer into Michelle's hand knocked him out of his daze. "So that's where my matches went!"

"And if I knew where you kept the rest of your cigarettes--" She raised her wand again.

"Don't bother," said Barack. "That was my last pack. I'm really quitting this time." He looked from Shacklebolt to his wife. "If I can handle this, I can handle anything. With or without a smoke."

Michelle didn't look mollified. "I see I'm not the only one who hides things."

Now that was hardly fair. "I think there's a difference between my not telling you I've fallen off the wagon again and your not telling me through fourteen years of marriage that you're a witch!"

"He's right, Michelle," said Shacklebolt.

Michelle's face fell. "I'm really, really sorry. I just didn't know how, or when. I didn't think it was safe. Voldemort was so strong when we first married; he was even gathering followers in this country."

"Michelle. Voldemort's been gone for ten years," Shacklebolt said reprovingly.

"Who's Voldemort?" said Barack.

"I'll tell you later. I'll tell you everything later, when Kingsley leaves." Michelle threw Shacklebolt a withering glance, then looked back at Barack. "Over a glass of wine, when the kids are in bed. I was going to tell you soon, anyway, and that was how I'd planned to do it."

"You were?" said Barack. "Why now, after all this time?"

"Because she was elected Wizarding President!" Shacklebolt beamed. "I'm so proud of you, Michelle. We were all rooting for you across the pond."

"Well, that, yes." Michelle glanced at the door. "And Sasha."

Just then Barack and Michelle's younger daughter burst into the office, clutching the family's puppy to her chest. "Mom, Dad, look what I can do to Blackie's fur!" She knelt, released Blackie onto the rug and held her hand over him. The little Labradoodle's black fur slowly turned pink.

"I just found out," said Michelle. "Sasha's a witch too. Sasha, turn Blackie's fur back."

Barack felt as though every last bit of air had been pulled out of his chest. And no, he told himself. It wasn't the smoking.

"Well, I'll be running along, then," said Shacklebolt, still smiling, "to tell the Wizengamot that America's in good hands!" The emerald fire sprang up in the fireplace. Shacklebolt stepped into it and flames and wizard spun up the chimney and disappeared.

"At least I can get rid of that now," Michelle said. She was looking at the ridiculous portrait above the mantel, of a man in a powdered wig, with round red cheeks and a wart on the end of his nose. "George Washington belongs there, not you."

The portrait made a face. "Impertinent young woman!" it said to Barack's wife, as his daughter turned the puppy's fur from pink to black.

If change meant (as Barack had often thought) that your life was a hell of a lot different today than you'd ever dreamed it could be yesterday, then this was change, all right. Change Barack Obama had better learn to believe in.

6