Two for One

Chapter 26: Names

Harry waits in the open front door, arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face. "What was that?"

"Honey, I'm home?" the Unspeakable tries.

Harry stares.

"Oh," the Unspeakable muses. "Did I not tell you about the muggles? Because I've been keeping an eye on them ever since they first passed your wards."

Harry looks over his shoulder at the boys. "The Unspeakable is a bad example. Don't be like them."

The boys have stars in their eyes after seeing such a vast array of powerhouse spells used with such brutal efficiency. The muggles couldn't hope to fight back even with all their firepower. The whole street was wiped clean.

=====================

The next day sees Harry in a ministry interrogation room, providing a witness statement.

"I'm an inspector for an international network of Hit-wizards and -witches," the inspector says. She looks down at the public file the Unspeakable made and sees that Harry lives in a muggle neighbourhood. "A magical Interpol, if that makes more sense. I take part in special operations."

"Nice to meet you," Harry says. "I have no idea who they were, or why they targeted me."

"It's because you're magical," the inspector says, leaning forward. "I understand it might be difficult but can you think of anything they might have seen you do that would have tipped them off?"

Harry pauses. "I have strong wards around my house, and I don't cast magic outside in muggle neighbourhoods. They've visited the house but nothing happened that I'm aware of."

"Have your children maybe performed accidental magic outside?"

"Nothing they do is accidental," Harry admits. "But no, nothing outside that they've told me of."

The floating quill writes this all down, along with the backup recording device set on the table.

"And your children," the inspector begins slowly. "Gellert Grindelwald is in the system as a missing persons. Or at least he was until a year ago, when he became your ward and the file was redacted. I had to go through a lot of trouble to find it."

"Oh?" Harry says, trying not to overact the confusion. "I mean, Gellert did find me himself, but he said he had no family left. The same with Tom, though at least he told me what orphanage he came from."

The inspector watches him for a moment. "Fine. Perhaps I'm wrong. And Tom Riddle-"

The door is flung open and the Unspeakable storms in. "I was to sit in on this witness statement as Harry is my responsibility."

"Are you playing games again, Unspeakable?" the inspector snaps, getting to her feet.

"Would you like to play with us?"

She scowl. "Watch yourself. My team handles any threat to the magical community, don't push it or I'll be seeing you sooner than either of us would like." She gestures sharply and the recording equipment vanishes. "Take him, I'm done here."

=====================

Gellert and Tom know much more than Harry, having emptied out the muggle woman's head when she was 'lost' upstairs.

They tell Harry that the muggles are a special taskforce of the British government.

The concept of this task force started in Germany, catching magical and doing human testing in order to mimic the magic they've seen in muggles.

But the information spread thanks to the spies during the build-up of this world war, and now all the major powers are aware that there are strange people among them – though many are only aware of rumours.

"This never happened in my world," Harry admits.

Harry would have known – Hermione would have told him. She went through a whole thing during fourth year about finding case where muggles really saw magic and responded aggressively – to win an argument about muggles being horribly dangerous as a species, and all that propaganda.

Then again if it started in Germany, this special force, then Gellert would have headed the squadron, right? But would the Dark Lord have allowed muggles to know that much about magic?

Gellert worked with Hitler but how closely, how honestly? Was Hitler guided, or puppeted, or just slyly encouraged by a perfectly muggle advisor?

Harry looks down at Gellert and the blond boy peers back up at him with big blue eyes.

Did Gellert stop information on the magical world from reaching the muggles? Was he the reason Harry's world didn't have these special forces?

Or perhaps, because this is a parallel world, it simply happens regardless of whether this particular Gellert is younger or much older.

"Don't read people's minds without consent," Harry throws out there, just because he thinks he should.

"I got consent," Tom protests.

"You also need consent for the imperio. Actually just don't control people."

"Harry, they knew us," Gellert adds on, completely ignoring the imperio comment. "By name. They didn't know much but their information decoded from intercepted messages had our names – mine and Tom's."

Harry's eyebrows draw together. "Why?"

"The woman didn't even know," Gellert sighs. "She vaguely remembered it, she wasn't high-up enough to know that kind of thing. Only because she was reporting on us and her handler looked shocked did she even hear this much."

"I've asked your Unspeakable," Tom says. "He's gathering further information but it'll take a while with the Hit-wizards making a fuss."

Harry looks between them, worried. "And only the Unspeakable will be gathering this information."

"For now," Tom reassures. "And we'll tell you if we need to take extra measures ourselves."

Harry is still wary. "Okay, until then you stay together at all times – and I know, muggles are weak, whatever you want boys, but I don't think you can dodge a semi-automatic right now so just be cautious."

"What's a semi-automatic?"

"Rapid fire avada kedavras, so let's not tempt fate, okay?"