A Piece of Mind

Smiles and Lies

Heyyyyy, it's been a while! If you're still reading this, I applaud your patience: I could literally never haha.

(Also, I've decided to actually put names for the chapter titles, bc it's easier for me to remember what's what)

Enjoy!

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Oliver Jacobs looked out into the room of young faces as the sounds of dueling and the flash of bright spells filled the air. It brought to mind the warning the Minister gave him before coming here - to be wary of the skills Dumbledore and those loyal to him are teaching their students. To be careful not to give these kids the tools to overthrow the Ministry of Magic.

What an idiot.

Fudge might not choose to acknowledge it, but Dumbledore was strong enough to be his own army. The only reason he didn't have Fudge's job was because he couldn't be bothered with politics.

If Oliver gave the students restrictions, they would find a way to get around them, which he was sure was what happened with Umbridge. Teaching them advanced spells and curses would distract them from the fact that he wasn't really teaching them any defense. The average Ministry employee could handle them in this state, as long as they were not caught unaware.

He looked at the back corner as Draco Malfoy and Artemis Fowl threw spell after spell at each other, leaving no room for hesitation. Jacobs watched Artemis just nearly dodge a nasty knee-reversal hex and almost immediately cast a silencing charm back, to no avail.

These two might give the average wizard a rough go of it.

Oliver still can't believe he met the boy here, at one of the most well-known wizarding schools in Europe. The odds were one in a million.

The first time Oliver saw Artemis was on a busy street in downtown Barcelona, almost 4 years ago. He was with his mountain of a bodyguard, frozen in the middle of a road packed with people cursing at him in Spanish. Oliver had stopped walking, intrigued by the scene.

The boy was in an expensive suit, with styled black hair and eyes sharp enough to cut through steel. He exchanged some words with his bodyguard and stretched out his arms. He looked like a lunatic. Still, Oliver watched silently, taking a bite of the churro in his hand - he had just gotten off work from the Ministry and had felt he deserved a treat.

Suddenly, a small, ugly creature popped out of nowhere. It loosely resembled a troll that had been in a terrible fire, only smaller, scalier, and with big curling horns above its ears. It was a grey-green color, with golden eyes that narrowed into sharp lines as the thing looked around. It was about as tall as the boy in the suit, and humanoid - but there was no mistaking the creature for a human. Oliver could smell the stench of sulfur from twenty meters away. Everyone on the street froze, watching the creature in equal parts horror and disbelief.

Sniffing the air through slitted nostrils, it opened its snake-like mouth and spoke some nonsense words. "Felicitations to Lady Heatherington Smythe," it said in a voice akin to crushed glass on grating steel, with an unplaceable accent. English was not its first language.

The creature grabbed the boy's outstretched palm with its stubby four-fingered hand, but the boy did not look worried, nor did he try to pull away. His bodyguard tried to stop him, but it was already too late. As the teenager and the creature disappeared, all hell broke loose.

The air was thick with the sounds of shouting and screaming. Drivers abandoned their cars, or simply drove them into store windows to escape. A wave of humans withdrew from the point of materialization as though repelled by an invisible force. Not wanting to get hit by a panicking civilian, Oliver cast a quick yet strong Disillusionment Charm on himself and apparated to the nearest balcony to watch the chaos reign from his perch. This would be interesting.