Twilight

Chapter Three: Questions.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game - Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
Wednesday, August 11, 2010. 6am

Alex’s internal clock automatically woke him at his usual time, just after six. He opened his eyes, only to shut them again with a quiet groan against the brightness of the warm morning sunlight that flooded the bedroom. He rested there silently for several minutes, as he let himself adjust to the new day. Bridge was snuggled up against him with her arm draped over his ribs, still deeply asleep.

He quietly eased himself out of their bed and pulled the covers back over her, then stood and watched as she frowned and mumbled something under her breath before rolling over. She didn’t have to be at her law office until nine, and Apparition made commuting a breeze, so she could sleep in until the kids woke in an hour or so. He watched her sleep for several heartbeats, and was reminded again of how he was one of the luckiest wizards alive.

Alex leaned down, tucked the covers a little closer around his wife and kissed her gently on the head. I love you. He straightened and went into their bathroom to change into his workout clothes. After checking on his sleeping children, he made his way softly down the stairs and into the kitchen to start the coffee so it would be ready when Bridge and Harry got up.

He walked into the kitchen and found Harry already up, sitting at the kitchen table and reading one of the morning newspapers, a fresh cup of coffee in one hand. Alex raised an eyebrow at his friend. “Morning, Harry. Since when have you been an early riser?”

Harry lifted his coffee cup in salute as he looked up from the paper. “Good morning. I must still be on London time; I woke about an hour ago. Until I realized where I was I thought I’d horribly overslept. I couldn’t go back to sleep and decided I may as well get up and start the day.”

Alex walked over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup, dumping in a liberal amount of cream and sugar. He turned back to Harry, stirring the contents of the cup with a spoon. “Since you’re here, want to join me in some exercise?”

Harry looked at him dubiously. “I know what sort of 'exercise' you practice, sadist. I have no desire to punish myself.”

Alex chuckled and sat down across from his friend, then sipped at his coffee. “You really ought to exercise more than you do, Harry, playing pick-up Quidditch with your buddies three times a week doesn’t exactly cut it.”

“I exercise more than that,” Harry told him, a little defensively. “I hit the gymnasium an hour before the game starts and exercise then. My idea of exercise doesn’t include calisthenics, sword practice, and a six-mile run, the last half of it uphill, singing "Blood On the Risers" on the final half-mile at double-time.” The last bit was said with a mixture of disgust and horror.

“Oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten about that,” Alex smiled evilly at his friend. “ ‘Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die’,” he quoted, and laughed at Harry’s expression.

Harry shivered. “Sometimes, my friend, I wonder why you ever left the military.”

Alex couldn’t stop grinning. “Come on, Harry! Do you really think that I do that all the time? I’d been out of the Army less than a month, proud to have been part of an elite unit, and you’d made that crack about wanting to see how a real soldier keeps in shape,” Alex put his coffee cup on the table and pointed a finger at Harry. “I decided then and there that I’d run you until you puked. I was impressed though, you did manage not to collapse and puke your guts out until we stopped.”

Harry’s jaw dropped and stayed that way for a few seconds before he shut his mouth and glared. “You did that just to get back at me for a joke? How do you exercise, then? No six mile runs?”

Alex shook his head. “I’m not in my twenties anymore, Harry, three miles is enough for these knees nowadays, but I refuse to finish any slower than nineteen minutes. The calisthenics are still there though, along with sword practice. It’s a question of strength and endurance training: a lot of wizards, including some Aurors, don’t think they need to stay in shape. They figure that magic will take care of anything that comes along, so it becomes their response to everything. If something were to happen non-magically, they couldn’t handle it.”

Harry leaned back in the chair, nodding thoughtfully. “I can see that. It’s the same way at home.”

“I’ll bet.” Alex finished his coffee and stood up. “If I want to be done with my workout before the kids are up, I’d better go now,” he told Harry. “You’re welcome to join me.”

Harry shook his head. “No, Hermione is supposed to arrive soon with Lizzie, I talked to her in the fire last night. I’ll stay here and read the papers until they do.”

Alex shrugged and headed for the door. “Suit yourself.”

***

An hour and a half later Alex finished his cool-down stretches in the garden and walked towards the house, enjoying the warm morning sun and the gentle breeze as he moved. The surroundings were normally pleasant enough to exercise outside most of the year, and the property was on the edge of town in a mostly rural area, with woods and farmland on all sides for several acres.

His morning exercise sessions were his private time to completely wake up and to organize his thoughts for the day. Most times, he’d think of his family or puzzle through a case that was being particularly difficult.

The past few days since Leo’s death he’d been working at shedding his grief and anger both towards Leo and the older agent’s attackers. Those feelings wouldn’t bring his mentor back and, if he let them distract him, could lead to him making mistakes.

Mistakes in his profession got people killed.

Today, the morning after the funeral, he felt almost normal again. He’d made his peace with Leo’s death and brought his feelings towards the event under control. All that remained was to find out just what was going on.

The signs pointed towards a new controlling entity among the practitioners of the dark arts. Only an organized group would be bold enough to hunt down an experienced Auror like a dog and corner him like they did. The problem was:

a) Figuring out who they were

b) How well they had penetrated the government (if they had)

c) Determining the resources and personnel available to him to accomplish a, b, and:

d) Destroying their operations so thoroughly that he’d send the scum straight to hell.

By the time Alex reached the back steps he’d put those thoughts away. It was time for family and friends, not work. Once breakfast was over and the kids safely at daycare, then he could find out just what was in that vault and hopefully have more intel on the threat than he had before.

He entered the house and was immediately assaulted by the smell of pancakes and bacon in the air, and pleasant sounds of conversation were coming from the kitchen.

“Daddy!” Katie ran into the mudroom from the kitchen and hugged her father, then looked up at him, positively squirming with excitement. “Guess who’s here, Daddy!”

Alex grinned at his daughter. “Hmmm…Martha Stewart?”

Katie giggled and put a hand over her mouth, as if trying to keep her secret from spilling out. “No! Try ‘gain Daddy!”

“No?” Alex let a puzzled expression appear on his face. “If it isn’t Martha Stewart, then it would have to be Tinkie,” he said, naming his in-laws’ house-elf cook.

“I heard that!” Professor Hermione Granger-Potter’s voice called out laughingly from the kitchen.

“Aunt ‘Mione!” Katie scolded, dragging a laughing Alex into the kitchen behind her. “You gave it away!”

“I’m sorry, dear.” Alex saw Hermione pretending to look ashamed. “I’ll do better next time.”

Alex let go of his daughter and went over to Hermione, who was the one cooking breakfast, and kissed her on the cheek. “Hermione, you’re looking more radiant every time I see you.”

The rising star of King’s Mage College, Oxford frowned at that statement. “Humph. Says you,” she groused, patting her swollen belly. “I look like an elephant.”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me,” Alex said solemnly, and then smiled affectionately at her. “Seriously, Hermione, you look good. The baby only makes you look more lovely.”

“If you keep flirting with my pregnant wife, Alex, I’m going to hex you,” Harry said dryly from the kitchen table. Alex turned to see him holding his three-year-old daughter Lizzie on his lap, who was busy gobbling up the plate of pancakes in front of her.

“And that will be the least of his worries.” Bridge entered the kitchen dressed for work with John in her arms, and put him in the highchair. She turned to Alex and playfully put the tip of her wand against his chest. “Behave yourself, soldier, you’re all mine and mine alone. I have to go into work early since I took yesterday off, and since I want some girl time with Hermione this afternoon. You need to drop the kids off at day care before you and Harry go off on your little adventure.”

“No problem, Bridge.” He batted the wand away and leaned in to kiss her, but she put a hand up to stop him.

“Alex, no!” she scolded, half laughing. “These are my good work robes and you’re all sweaty from your workout. Go take a shower and come back down to eat your breakfast. That’s an order.”

Alex gave her a jaunty salute and went upstairs to clean up. When he came down twenty minutes later, Harry was the one at the stove. Hermione was sitting uncomfortably at the table, watching the girls chatter happily with one another. John was watching them from his highchair and playing with the soggy remnants of a half-eaten pancake on his plate. His wife was nowhere to be seen and a quick mental scan found her in her office, gathering files to take to work.

He got a plate from Harry and sat down at the table.

“How are you holding up, Alex?” Hermione asked.

Alex grimaced as he began to cut into the pancakes and looked up at her. “I’ve been better, Hermione, but I’ll be okay soon. Really, I will,” he protested at her doubtful look.

“You and Leo were very close…”

“And I’ve had three days to get over the shock and make my peace with the idea,” Alex said firmly. “I’ve mourned him, and I’m sure that I’ll continue to miss him for a long time, but I don’t have the luxury of time to mope about and be depressed.” He looked over towards the two little girls, still oblivious to the adults’ conversation, and to his son, who was watching him as if he were the most interesting thing in the world. “I have other things to keep me busy.”

***

After breakfast had been cleaned up and the children dropped off at day care for a few hours, Alex, Harry, and Hermione Apparated to Tecumseh Boulevard, Washington D.C.’s equivalent of Diagon Alley. In the shadow of Capitol Hill, the street was probably one of the best-kept secrets and biggest tourist destinations in the wizarding world.

The street was full of shoppers bustling to and fro the many shops and restaurants nestled in the red brick buildings that appeared unchanged from the city’s founding days in the early 1800’s. It was still relatively early at midmorning, but it was shaping up to be a typical hot and humid scorcher of a day, and many of the shoppers and tourists looked to be trying to get things done before the hottest part of the day and retreat to more air conditioned locations.

“So you don’t have any idea what’s in the vault?” The trio walked up the steps to Gringotts main entrance, ignoring the whirring and clicking of tourist cameras snapping pictures of the building’s impressive white marble façade that, like most old banks, resembled a classical Greco-Roman temple.

Alex shook his head at Hermione’s question. “I didn’t even know about it until I got Leo’s note. I hardly even come here myself anymore since Gringotts embraced the computer age five years ago. I was spoiled in the Muggle world since direct deposit is a requirement in the military, and I never did like carrying around Galleons, Sickles and Knuts.”

They walked past the goblin security guards and through the doors into the building, and immediately felt the temperature drop significantly and become much less humid. “Thank God!” Hermione exclaimed in relief. “How did Bridge ever survive being pregnant twice in this horrid climate?”

“We’re natives, Hermione, so we’re used to it. Even so, she never left air conditioning if she could help it,” Alex replied sympathetically. “You could have stayed at the house.”

Hermione waved the last bit away. “Allow you two to go off on your own? I think not! You both have a tendency to keep too much to yourselves.”

Harry looked at his wife with concern. “Are you all right, love?”

She gave him an irritated look. “I’m seven months pregnant in a city where it routinely hits 35 degrees this time of year, I feel like a bloated elephant, and my feet hurt. Of course I’m not all right!”

Alex sped up his pace to one of the goblin tellers, the last thing he wanted to do is get in-between them if they really got into an argument, hexes could be used. There wasn’t much traffic in the building today, and it probably wouldn’t pick up until late in the afternoon when things started to cool and the tourists came out in force for the evening’s entertainment.

“I’d like to enter vault 5318-B, please,” Alex said, producing the key.

The goblin took the key and peered closely at it. Nodding in satisfaction that this was indeed the key to the vault, the goblin looked back up at him. “Name?” it asked brusquely.

“Alexander Mackenzie,” he said, handing the goblin his identification.

The goblin checked a book then returned its attention to Alex. “Your name is on the list,” it said, and rang a bell to summon an assistant.

“Gynt will take you down to the vault.”

The cart ride was uneventful, and soon the trio found themselves in front of the vault, far underneath the city.

“Well, here we go,” Alex said, taking the key and unlocking the vault.

There wasn’t much in the vault. An old, battered, cardboard box sat on a table at the center of the vault. The box held a few newspaper clippings, a recent issue of National Geographic, an amulet, and a well-worn hardcover notebook.

“Right then,” Hermione declared briskly. “I’ll take a look at the Geographic. Harry, you look at the articles, and Alex can look at the notebook.” She picked up the magazine with one hand and spread it on the table, and absently rubbed her back with the other hand.

“There’s no need to stand, Hermione,” Harry told her, and conjured three chairs.

Letting Harry tend to Hermione, Alex sat down and opened the notebook. The writing inside was in a language Alex couldn’t begin to identify. The strange marks on the page definitely weren’t related to any alphabet he’d ever seen, and as he stared at it he could have sworn that the words changed shape subtly. This is out of my league; best have the good Professor take a look.

“Hermione?” She was engrossed in the magazine and he had to repeat himself a bit louder to get her attention. He held up the book so that she could see the writing. “Any idea what this is?”

She dropped the magazine and tore the book out of his hands. Alex watched with a mixture of bemusement and concern as she rapidly flipped through the pages, her face firmly set in ‘professional’ mode.

“Fascinating,” he heard her whisper.

Alex watched them both as Harry looked up from the newspaper articles and stared at his wife. Harry stood and walked around the table to stand behind Hermione. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that before,” he said curiously.

“You wouldn’t have,” she murmured absently, she had stopped flipping through the book and was concentrating on a single page.

“Well? What is it?” Alex asked.

Hermione looked up at him. “Alex, this is High Atlantean! It hasn’t been a living language in over three thousand years! Not only is it High Atlantean, but it is also protected by an encryption spell.” She turned the book so he could see it and pointed at a random line of text. “See how the letters keep changing? I can tell its High Atlantean by the alphabet, but they continually cycle randomly, so there’s no way I can decipher it until the spell is broken somehow.”

Alex had never seen her so excited. “How would Leo know High Atlantean? He was an old-fashioned west Texan. I don’t think he spoke anything other than English and Spanish.”

Harry looked up from reading over his wife’s shoulder, his face serious. “Whatever Leo was, Alex, I’m beginning to highly doubt he was just a ‘old-fashioned west Texan’.”

Hermione nodded in agreement. “Until today, I only knew of four people who can at least read High Atlantean, much less write it with fluency. It is a difficult language to learn and very few texts remain from those days, Chinese is simple by comparison. I’ve been studying the language under the head of my College, Dean Branson, as part of a joint research project, and I barely understand it. Many of the nuances in the wording still escape me...”

She looked like she was going to continue like that for some time, so Alex put a hand up to stop her. “Thanks, Hermione. So whatever is in there has to be unencrypted and then translated?”

“Well, um, yes.”

Alex nodded slowly. “What was in the Geographic?”

Hermione perked up again. “Several things, but I believe the most relevant is an article on an Olmec royal tomb. It was apparently quite a find; the excavators believe that it is the tomb of Tezcatlipoca. He was worshipped as a god by most pre-Columbian civilizations up until the Spanish Conquest,” She put the book back on the table and picked up the magazine again and checked the features listed on the cover. “Once the encryption spell is broken I can check to see if the name is written down in the book. Other than that, there isn’t anything else in here that I can imagine would be remotely connected to dark wizards, unless they’re masquerading as bison in Montana.”

“I think we can rule that out, I haven’t heard of any bison Animagi outside of the Lakota Sioux,” Alex said dryly.

“The newspaper clippings aren’t much help either. They’re all about a candidate for your Secretary of Magic.” Harry held up one of the clippings and Alex could easily see the headline: Senator Kenyon declares candidacy for Secretary of Magic: Plans to run on ‘Reform’ platform.

Alex shrugged. “I’ve been following the campaigns, but not all that closely. It’s a long way until November elections yet.”

“I wonder what the connection is…” Hermione mused.

Harry shook his head. “I haven’t a clue, but there are fifteen separate clippings dating back a year and a half. There must be a connection between all this information, but there’s no reason to do it here when we can work on it in the comforts of Alex’s home.” The black-haired wizard glanced meaningfully at Hermione’s swollen stomach and Alex got the hint, even though he couldn’t see an obvious problem. He’d been just as overprotective when Bridge was pregnant.

“Right, we have what we came for,” Alex nodded. “We can continue this at my place.”

***

A few hours later Alex sighed and stood up from his chair in the family room. “I just don’t get the connection with what Leo gave us.” He stretched and looked at his watch; Bridge would be home soon and he needed to get the kids from day care.

He’d downloaded and printed off dozens of articles on Senator Kenyon dating from the start of his political career up to his campaign for Secretary of Magic. He and Harry had split the pile and started reading to see if something would come up. But the good Senator was squeaky-clean, nothing at all in his biography to suggest he had dark sympathies, just an average wizard politician of moderate republican leanings.

Hermione was sprawled on the couch, several books on pre-Columbian cultures spread about her. The trio had swung by the local library on their way home and checked them out so they could do some quick research. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a great deal of information on the Olmecs. Other than some impressive monuments and the recently discovered tomb, not much remained from that long dead culture.

“There just isn’t enough in these books, Alex. Information on Pre-Columbian magic isn’t as bad off as that on Atlantis, but it’s still quite scarce. I’ll have to make enquiries among my colleagues to find out more.”

Alex rubbed the back of his head in frustration. “Between that and getting the encryption spell broken it’ll be hard to keep this quiet, Hermione. Isn’t there any way you can do the research on your own?”

Harry spoke up from his position on the floor in front of the couch. “We know someone who has experience in curse-breaking, Alex. He should be able to break the encryption spell, and Dean Branson can help Hermione translate the writing. Neither would ever betray a confidence. Once we get the book translated we can decide whether to bring in outsiders for more information on this Tezcatlipoca character.”

“Right.” Alex thought he felt a headache coming on. “I’ll have to continue to look into the good Senator in the meantime then. There’s got to be a reason Leo included him in this information cache,” he sighed, sat back down and put his head in his hands a moment before he looked back. “Why did he have to dump all this in my lap? Why couldn’t the stubborn bastard just tell me what was going on and ask for help? Why all the cloak and dagger?” he demanded angrily.

It still hurt that Leo had gone off on his own without asking Alex to back him up. To Alex it was both a personal and professional blow that Leo waited until going off on a suicide mission to enlist his help. It made it hard to keep his grief locked away in its mental box

Harry and Hermione exchanged glances, and even through his shields he could feel the subtle undercurrent of their silent communication as they decided which of them would respond first. Neither of them were telepaths, but they’d been best friends since they were ten years old. They simply didn’t need words.

“From what you’ve told me, and from what I saw the few times I met the man, I’d say he thought he could handle it by himself right up until he died. But also there is something else in play here,” Harry said thoughtfully.

His wife nodded. “I agree. There is no way Leo should have known how to write High Atlantean, but we have to assume he had abilities not even you knew about, Alex.”

“Those abilities didn’t stop him from getting killed,” Alex responded bitterly. “Now I have to pick up where he left off without much information on what I’m facing.” He sighed and looked at his friends again. “I sometimes wish I’d never joined the Aurors.”

Harry looked at him in disbelief. “How can you say that? You weren’t so indecisive in Colombia.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t have a wife and family then,” he sighed again, and then held up his hands in surrender. “But you’re right, I can’t ignore it. If this has information on a new group of dark wizards operating on US soil then I have to follow up and do something about it,” He’d sworn solemn oaths when he entered West Point, and again when he joined the Bureau as an Auror: to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This mission had been dumped in his lap unexpected and unwanted, true, but he would not shirk it.

“You won’t have to do it alone, Alex,” Hermione told him, she’d taken Harry’s hand in her own and they both looked at him earnestly. “We’ll help, and we can bring in other members of the Order as well. We’ll all stop it together.”

***

Hernando entered the room after a covert glance its occupant. The man was seated at a desk with his back to the door, methodically reading the dossier prepared for him just a few hours earlier. It seemed safe to enter, but one never did know for sure.

Tezcatlipoca, self-proclaimed Lord of the Underworld, was a wizard with a mercurial temper.

Hernando had barely taken four steps into the room when the tall wizard spoke. “You have the information I requested?” His deep voice held a seemingly unconscious undercurrent of the power that Hernando knew the other wizard commanded. There was no doubt in his mind that this was the same creature his ancestors had worshipped as divine. He stopped in his tracks and bowed respectfully, even though he was not in his master’s line of sight. One can never be too careful around the jaguar god, he thought, and straightened before speaking.

“Yes Milord. We’ve just confirmed it. Shódas sent his owl to the residence of one of his Auror protégés, Alexander Mackenzie. We don’t know what message the owl carried; our sources in the Bureau knew nothing about it, but Mackenzie was seen entering Gringotts this morning with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger-Potter. All we know for certain is that the three of them entered a vault and left a short time later. Our agents have Mackenzie’s property under surveillance but were unable to approach closer due to some elaborate wards that have been cast on it. Entering the home covertly is impossible at this time.”

“What do you know of this Mackenzie? You have a dossier prepared?”

Hernando eased his rigid stance and breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Of course, milord. We knew you would want the information right away.” He approached the desk and placed the folders at his master's right hand.

“I will study them in detail later. The highlights?”

“Mackenzie is Muggle-born from a family with long ties of service in the American Army. He served in their Special Forces and spent nearly two years deployed in their anti-drug operations in Colombia. Shódas recruited him for the Aurors and was responsible for his training. He is married to a witch of the New York D’Chevalier family and has two children. His parents were murdered in the last war and he has no other close relatives.”

“Any reason why Shódas chose him, specifically?”

“None that we know of, milord. He’s a talented enough Auror, but we’ve found no reason why he was sought out.”

“I see,” Tezcatlipoca swiveled his chair around to look at his subordinate and Hernando suppressed a shiver as his master’s cold jade eyes seemed to peer directly into his soul.

“Tell Wadúna to investigate further. Shódas must intend his protégé to continue in his stead. I must know what information he has, and if he truly poses a threat.”

“But he’s Muggle-Born, how much of a threat could he be?” Hernando said, and instantly wished he’d thought before he spoke as his master stood up angrily.

“I will not tolerate sloppy thinking, Hernando! Such attitudes by the so-called Dark Lord Voldemort led to his destruction and I will not have them in my subordinates! I will accept anyone into my ranks who is useful and will swear fealty to me, regardless of bloodline or magical ability.” He stalked around his subordinate and into the outer office.

“I was imprisoned in that tomb for centuries, lost in a dreamless sleep, until the fools who thought themselves grave robbers opened my sarcophagus and gave me the life energy I needed to return. What did I find when I emerged into the light of day?” he asked rhetorically. “That my subjects had been enslaved by barbarians from across the sea and that those with magic had separated themselves from those with none.”

Hernando spoke cautiously. “They were afraid of the Muggles, milord. Afraid that the intolerance of magic would lead to their destruction.”

His master waved the comment away. “Fools,” he sneered. “If they continue thinking in this way they will cause their own demise by inbreeding. Muggle-borns should be encouraged and supported, instead of being spat on by reactionary fools as inferior; they inject fresh blood and new ideas into our ranks. It is the natural order of things for the strong to rule the weak. All magic-users, those with the blood or Muggle-born, are the strong and destined to be the ruling elite.” He turned and stared at his frightened subordinate.

“I will rebuild my empire greater than before and when I am finished this world will acknowledge me its sole master.” His jade colored eyes glowed and looked past the terrified man to the Aztec weaving on the opposite wall. The dagger pounded into the wall pierced the image of the feathered serpent the weaving depicted.

“My brother Quetzalcoatl is dead. This time the Atlantean scum will not stop me.”

***

“It’s after midnight, Senator, go home!” the cleaning witch scolded the tall man sitting behind an ornate wooden desk.

He nodded absently, still absorbed in the thick sheaf of parchments in his hands. “I need to finish this first, Rosemary, but I’ll go soon.” His staff had left hours ago after he’d insisted they take the night off; there wasn’t anything they could do until he’d finished reading anyway and he wanted them sharp in the morning.

The old witch snorted and gave him an affectionate pat on the arm before she moved on to the next office, twirling her wand and whistling merrily.

Senator Brian Kenyon put down the thick parchment document on his desk and took off his glasses. He leaned back in his high-backed office chair and pinched the bridge of his nose.

The reform bill was important. He’d staked his political future on taking a broom to the bloated and over regulatory Department of Magic; if the bill didn’t pass his chances of being elected to the Secretary of Magic position were nonexistent.

It would be a close fought thing, he knew. The committees of Magical Oversight in both the House and Senate were mostly made up of members who had been in Congress almost half a century, and were extremely resistant to change.

Kenyon was one of the leaders of the ‘new bunch’, a group of members elected to the House and Senate over the past decade and who were eligible to sit on the Magical Oversight committees. Their informal caucus was dedicated to overhauling the Department of Magic and the ways in which magic was regulated and controlled in the US. In their opinion the department as it existed currently was a relic, it hadn’t seen a complete top down review of its functions since the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Grindelwald.

But they faced a continual struggle just to make the most minor reductions in the Department’s power and bureaucracy. Most older committee members regarded the ideas of Kenyon and his colleagues as political suicide and refused to support them. To them, the Department was their political playground and it allowed them to reward supporters and punish political enemies. It was their own personal fiefdom that the rest of the government knew little about and, for the most part, cared even less.

“Hello, Senator.” Kenyon’s head whipped up and he looked towards the figure hidden in the shadows of his doorway. Rosemary had turned off the lights to his outer office on her way out and locked the door behind her. Surely he would have heard someone come in…

“How did you get in here?” Kenyon demanded, his hand dropping down to slowly open the hidden panel in his desk that held his wand. “These offices are warded against intruders.”

The intruder chuckled, a deep rumbling sound, “Even wards decrease in power after a certain period of time unless renewed, Senator, and from the state of the ones in this building, I doubt they’ve been checked in years.”

Kenyon felt his hand close around his wand and tried to project a calm expression. “What do you want?” he said evenly.

“Strange that you should mention that.” The tall figure stepped closer, but Kenyon couldn’t identify him, as his features were completely obscured by the cloak and robes he wore. “The reason I’ve been sent here, Senator, is to ask you precisely that.”

“I don’t understand.” Kenyon thought of trying to blast the stranger with a stupefy spell, but it had been so long since he’d practiced that sort of spell…

“Don’t bother with the wand you have hidden in your desk, Senator, I won’t harm you,” the stranger seemed amused. “I’m here to ask you a simple question: What do you want?”

“I want to be Secretary of Magic. I want to be the greatest of them all, a Wizard Lincoln or FDR. I want to change the Department and magic in this country so completely that they’ll divide history into the pre and post Kenyon eras.” He blinked and the stranger had vanished, making him wonder if he’d imagined the entire thing. Had he really said that aloud? He’d never shared that secret with anyone. Then he heard the stranger’s voice in his head.

“We’ll meet again, Senator,” it promised.

***

Alex yawned as he walked into the bedroom after convincing Katie to go to sleep. It had taken two glasses of water, three stories and a trip to the bathroom before she’d settled down and drifted off into slumber. It was a never-ending source of amazement to Alex that his mischievous imp of a daughter could look like an angel when she was asleep.

Harry and Hermione had declined their offer to stay at the house and had gone to a bed and breakfast in George’s Crossing shortly after dinner. They’d stayed there before, and the owner had never taken advantage of their patronage to advertise her establishment. They’d come back out after breakfast tomorrow morning.

“Is she finally out?” Bridge was sitting up in bed, casually reading Grisham’s latest legal thriller.

“I think so.” He hung up his bathrobe and slipped into bed next to her. “But I thought she was asleep the last time.”

Bridge smiled and looked up from her novel. “We’ll see. It’s almost pathetic how she has you completely wrapped around her little finger.” She marked her place in the book and put it on the nightstand, then turned out the light, leaving only the moonlight from the windows to dimly illuminate the bedroom.

“Guilty as charged,” Alex told her. “How’d work go today? I never had a chance to ask you earlier.”

His wife sighed and snuggled up against him. “I’ve had better days, we were in meetings with people from the Wizard Trade Organization most of the day. They’ve already approved the expansion of WWW into North America; all we were doing today was haggling over the details. Washington’s Ghost! I never realized how irritating European wizarding officials could be before today. It was all I could do not to hex one of them; they kept going into every little detail. It was like they didn’t trust Americans to write a proper incorporation charter.”

Alex chuckled. “I’ve dealt with them a few times on extradition cases, they are pretty full of themselves.”

Bridge yawned. “Well, we straightened them out all right,” she said sleepily.

“Good.” Alex kissed her goodnight and settled down to wait for sleep to claim him.

***

The sun was setting behind the bluff across the Hudson as Alex found himself walking the West Point grounds in his Auror robes. For some reason this didn’t strike him as odd, even though it had been an unwritten rule since the Academy’s founding that Wizard officials were supposed to wear Muggle clothing or the military uniform of the day in order to blend into the population. It didn’t seem to matter anyway, since the grounds appeared to be deserted when they should have been filled with people.

He spotted a cadet off in the distance, sitting on a bench overlooking the river. There still wasn’t anyone else in sight, and Alex decided that this had to be the weirdest dream outside of nightmares that he’d ever had.

Why not go with the flow? He asked himself wryly, shrugged his shoulders and walked over to the bench.

“This seat taken, cadet?” he asked in a polite, friendly tone, not looking at the cadet but gazing at the sunset across the river and bluff beyond.

“Not at all sir, go ahead,” the cadet replied, and Alex frowned. That voice sounded awfully familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. He sat down beside the youngster, frowning. He pushed it aside for a moment and simply stared out at the sunset, still trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle revealed in the vault that day.

“Something on your mind, Alex?” the cadet asked, and Alex turned to look at him in surprise. His surprise quickly turned to shock. He’d seen the face before, but never like this outside of photographs.

“Dad?!” the young man smiled and nodded. He looked no older than twenty, painfully young to Alex, who couldn’t remember ever seeing him so relaxed and carefree in life.

“Hello, son. Been a long time since I’ve been able to talk with you.” He looked over his son’s Auror uniform briefly. “Not quite the same as Army dress blues, but an honorable profession just the same. You’ve done good, boy, your mother and I are proud of you.”

“Is she here too?” Alex turned and looked about to see if he could spot her, but there was no one else on the grounds.

“I’m afraid not. This isn’t exactly a social visit, Alex,” Joe Mackenzie told his son.

Alex snorted, “I’ll say. The only time I see you in my dreams is when I get to watch you being tortured to death,” his tone was bitter and somewhat hurt.

“I’m sorry that you have those nightmares.” Alex noted that his father hadn’t tried to dissuade him from blaming himself for the deaths in that vision, and it was comforting in a perverse sort of way: Joe Mackenzie had been many things but a liar was not one of them.

“So are you really the ghost of my father or are you just part of my subconscious?”

“You’re the wizard, you tell me.”

“Right.” Alex resumed his observation of the sunset, now rapidly disappearing behind the bluff. After a few moments he sighed and asked resignedly, “OK I’ll bite, why are you here?”

“I’m here because this was the place I loved more than anywhere else. It’s funny how out of all the places I lived over the years, West Point always held a special place in my heart.”

“You’re being difficult. You know damn well what I meant.”

“I’m here because I’m supposed to deliver a message. Your instincts are right: There is a new dark lord, one that is smarter and better organized than Voldemort. It’ll be a nasty fight, Alex, and it’ll be even worse if he gets control here in the US.”

Alex sighed in frustration. “You haven’t told me much more than I already know. They had to be better organized and smarter than Voldemort, it isn’t that hard to figure out. I want to know who it is so I can stop the bastard before they start.”

It was starting to get dark now, and his father’s form seemed to begin to fade and become transparent. The phantom shook his head. “It’s too late for that, Alex. But I will tell you this: Talk to Harry’s godfather about our sword, and about the amulet. They could be key in the time ahead. Good luck son.”