This is the first of a series of vignettes about Louis. I have quite a bit to explore for him: his past as a hit wizard and him crossing paths with my other characters, his family's history, and so on. I’m still firming up some of the details and filling them in only along the way, so the vignettes might seem a bit raw and unpolished at times. Feedback is very welcome and appreciated, so please feel free to contact me on Discord :)
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The Harwich Incident
21st January, 2000
Owww…
The first thing Louis noticed was his throbbing headache. It felt like someone had hit his the back of his head really hard with a baseball bat or something. In fact, it hurt so bad that, for some time, it was the only thing he noticed.
And then the smell hit him. Musty, stale, forgotten by time. It wasn’t a foul or overpowering smell, but it wasn’t pleasant and just strong enough to announce its presence despite his headache and alert him to his surroundings.
He tried to reach out and soothe that painful spot when he realised that he couldn’t quite feel his arms. But his head was already leaning against something soft, so he turned slightly and pressed the aching bit onto whatever it was. And that was when he noticed the third thing: he wasn’t leaning against something. Rather, he was lying on his right side on a carpeted floor. In a really awkward position.
Which led to the fourth thing: his legs were bent, almost like he was sitting on a chair—
—and all of a sudden, Louis remembered where he was and what he was doing and why he had ended up here, wherever here was, firmly tied up to a chair and lying on a mercifully carpeted (but probably filthy) floor.
He was in Harwich. Or rather, they were in Harwich—him and the good old information broker Mal—to investigate a series of disappearances when they were ambushed. He hadn’t gotten a proper glimpse at their assailants, but he did dimly recall Mal shouting right before he blacked out. What happened to Mal after that, Louis did not know.
Time to take stock of the situation. In all certainty, they had been sniffing around at the right spot – why else would they be attacked? And he was probably in the baddies’ hideout – an old and abandoned house, judging from the outdated decor and the derelict state of the barren bedroom he was in – which said baddies had saved him the effort of locating. And the most important thing he had to do right now was to free himself.
Which was easier said than done without his wand. Fortunately, thanks to his dogwood wand’s stubborn refusal to perform nonverbal spells, he happened to be slightly better than the average wizard at wandless nonverbal spells. But then again, because of how tightly his arms had been bound to the back of the chair, plus the fact that he had been lying on one of them, both his arms were, as he discovered to his chagrin, completely numb.
Excellent.
The hit wizard wiggled a little, testing his bonds. His left leg was tied firmly to the chair leg, but there was a bit of give for the ropes around his right leg. Grunting, he squirmed harder, and lo and behold the chair leg gave way with a loud creak, and his right leg was free.
He froze, clamping his mouth shut even though he hadn’t said a word, and listened. Silence.
Emboldened by this turn of good fortune, he swung the chair around with all his might, rolling over so he was in an awkward kneeling position with the chair behind (or above?) him like a tortoise’s shell. The wooden backrest thwacked hard into his back, and he winced. Recklessly he decided to chance it: standing up as best as he could, he swiftly backpedaled and slammed the chair as hard as he could into the closest wall with a loud crash. Both he and the chair groaned from the impact, and neither were any worse for wear. Again! The chair creaked louder this time, and on the third try the wood finally gave way and he fell awkwardly amongst the splintered pieces.
Without the backrest to hold them taut, the ropes around his arms loosened, and he shrugged them off, then shrugged a bit more to try to get some circulation into his still-numb arms. For a moment, nothing. Then all of a sudden, the stinging sensation of pins-and-needles took hold and spread down his arms to his hands and fingers, unpleasant yet welcome.
He quickly limbered up, stretching his sore limbs, and reached for his wand. It wasn’t there, of course. Shaking his head at this minor inconvenience, he approached the door of his ‘cell’. The lock seemed busted, so he gave the door a firm tug. It rattled but didn’t yield.
“Alohomora,” he intoned, pressing his palm against the door just above the lock. Immediately he heard the squeak of metal rubbing against metal as what sounded like a rusted door bolt slid open, and the door swung free.
Cautiously, he poked his head out, but there was no one in sight. His room was at the end of a corridor, saving him the effort of figuring out which way to go. As stealthily as his boots and the floorboards underfoot allowed, he tiptoed his way to—
“Hey!”
A shout from somewhere further down the corridor, and then the unmistakable ruckus of a full-blown brawl. Mal, he thought, as he sprinted towards the source of the noise. He rounded a corner just in time to see the information broker smashing the remnants of a chair into another man’s face, knocking the latter out instantly. A second man was already sprawled on the ground in a heap, face down and with one arm bent unnaturally over his back. A third man closed in from behind, but Mal whirled around and grabbed his arm. A startled yelp escaped the assailant’s lips as he was flung bodily over Mal’s shoulder and slammed hard into the ground. He cried out in shock and agony, before he was silenced by three vicious punches to the face.
Louis cringed. “Ow.”
Having dispatched his attackers, Mal looked up, concerned. “Louis! You hurt?”
“Just secondhand pain.”
Mal smirked. “Glad you’re fine. They didn’t rough you up too badly?”
“I might have a concussion,” Louis admitted. “I don’t know.”
“Might explain this,” Mal replied, tossing over a wooden baseball bat he picked up from the ground with a dark red splotch. Louis flubbed the catch and fumbled a little before finally getting a grip on the bat. “Yea, probably explains my splitting headache,” he replied, before gingerly touching the sore spot on his head. The hair there was a bit damp, and when he checked his fingers he saw that they were stained red.
“Fuck.”
“Behind you!”
Mal’s warning came barely in time for Louis to turn around and raise the bat defensively. Something collided solidly into it. Two more rough-looking men had charged into the room, wielding makeshift melee weapons of their own. Said object that Louis’ hasty parry had blocked turned out to be a wooden stick with nails sticking menacingly out of it, which its wielder swung again in an exaggerated overhead smash. The telegraphed attack was slow enough for the hit wizard to deflect, and he seized the opportunity to swiftly land a textbook riposte. Mr Stick-With-Nails howled more in anger than in pain and came at him again.
Meanwhile, Mal had already wrestled the other man to the ground, disarming his opponent with an armlock that elicited a pained squeal. They rolled on the ground, and for a moment Louis was tempted to butt in and sneak in an attack but held back because it was hard to hit the right person when both of them were tumbling around. Besides, he had his own problems to deal with: said problem was now swiftly closing in, wooden stick raised and ready to smash Louis’ head in. The hit wizard repeated his trick and parried the same way again, but his blood-slick hand slipped and they both watched as his bat went clattering across the floor. His gaze went back to his opponent, who was now grinning menacingly back at him, no doubt thinking about the myriad awful things he was going to do to Louis.
“Expelliarmus!” Louis shouted out of the blue, thrusting one hand forwards as though it were a wand. His opponent raised his arms defensively and reeled back… but nothing happened. Confused, he blinked—
—and let out a high-pitched croak as Louis delivered a kick to where the sun didn’t shine. The burly man grasped his family jewels as he sank to the ground in slow motion, his head now at the perfect height to be kicked. And so Louis did. Mr Not-So-Tough-And-Manly-Now toppled over instantly.
In the meantime, Mal was holding his own opponent in a triangle choke. The poor man gasped and flailed helplessly for a couple of seconds before going limp, and Mal dumped the unconscious man unceremoniously onto the ground.
“You good?” Mal asked, dusting himself off as he stood up.
“Yea,” Louis nodded, hunkering down as he searched the fallen men’s pockets for any clues. Nothing. No sign of any wands either.
From the corner of his eye, Louis spied something moving, and he looked up just in time to see – between Mal’s legs – three more figures at the end of the corridor. His gut twisted, and instinctively he threw out his hands just as gunshots rang out, the echoey corridors amplifying the tremendous booming that shook Louis to his core.
And then… nothing.
Was he dead? Gingerly he pried open one eye (he didn’t even realise he had closed them). The figures were still there, but his view was blurry and distorted, as though he was looking through frosted glass, or…
A magical shield!
Somehow he had conjured a barrier large enough to protect both Mal and himself. All ten eyes stared incredulously at the shimmering shield and the flattened bullets stuck to it. But he was in a really awkward position: half-squatting in a wide stance with both his outstretched arms on either side of Mal. He looked up and Mal, who already seemed to have a plan in mind, and he had an inkling what it was.
“On three,” Mal said.
“On three,” Louis agreed.
“THREE!”
With a battle cry both man surged forwards as one like some awkward centaur with haemorrhoids – Mal sprinting with all his might and Louis scrambling and somehow keeping up right behind, legs still stuck in a wide stance to avoid tripping over Mal’s feet, and his arms still encircling Mal to sustain the shield. The gunmen screamed, panically discharging their firearms at the rapidly approaching bulletproof monstrosity that was barrelling straight towards them. The impact of each bullet sent a shockwave to Louis’s increasingly sore and quivering arms, and the shield flickered but stubbornly held. All five voices became louder – two with growing determination, three becoming higher with rising terror – until the guns clicked empty and the inevitable happened.
Like a wrecking ball, Mal and Louis plowed into the three gunmen, and all five of them crashed into a heap of tangled limbs. The magical shield finally shattered from the impact, and Louis rolled away with a groan. Someone else stirred, and immediately Mal was on him, fists landing like hammers until the gunman was out cold.
And at long last, silence fell over the dilapidated house.
Picking themselves up, the two wizards took stock of their surroundings. “That seems to be the last of the reinforcements,” Louis noted as he eyed the seven unconscious assailants. But something was bugging him: these men – presumably the ones responsible for the disappearances – weren’t wizards. Why would Muggles abduct wizards? Unless…
“I think they’re Squibs, Mal.”
“Squibs?” Mal’s eyes darkened as he considered the possibility. It seemed plausible, and it could potentially explain something he had found out the week earlier. But it was too early to draw any conclusions. “Could be. But if that’s the case, we may have a bigger problem on our hands.”
“Then we’ll just have to get to the bottom of it,” Louis replied with a grin. “Just like we always do.”
Failing Upwards
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Louis Harrigan
- Auror
- Player: Jae
Failing Upwards
the worst mistake is the one you don’t dare to make
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Louis Harrigan
- Auror
- Player: Jae
The Jaywick Incident
10:13am
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
This is how it went down in Jaywick.
The beachfront houses were quiet and peaceful.
Seagulls circled lazily in the clear blue sky, their calls accompanied by the gentle lapping of waves against the shore. But the scene was far from idyllic – the houses were decrepit, the beach was covered with trash, the seagulls mean and thieving, and ‘quiet and peaceful’ was just a rose-tinted synonym for ‘deserted and unwanted’.
It was built as a holiday resort for working-class Londoners, but now it was the last resort of a desperate and frankly not very capable but somewhat rather lucky fugitive whom Louis had been tracking down over the past week. Just a simple thief who had broken into a magical supplies shop in Diagon Alley and made off with a whole crate of bundimun secretion worth quite a tidy sum. The acidic ooze was commonly used to manufacture magical household cleaners, but it was caustic enough to be flagged as a hazardous substance with strict regulations and its thief marked as a dangerous individual to be apprehended with force if necessary.
Louis remained crouched behind an unruly bush, eyes peering through the foliage and fixed on the blue house diagonally across the street. About twenty yards away, Verity – a Hit Witch and his partner for this assignment – peeked out from behind a rotting wooden fence. The intelligence was sound: the target had been spotted entering the house more than two hours ago and was still there, a faint silhouette visible through the dusty window panes.
Verity raised her hand in preparation to give the signal, because the Ministry trusted her more than Louis to lead the operation. Louis indicated his readiness with a hand signal.
On Verity’s count, Louis sprang to his feet and charged into the house, wand raised and ready. Meanwhile, the Hit Witch circled to the back of the house, cutting off the escape route. At the sight of Louis, the fugitive gave a started yelp and threw up both hands, trembling in abject terror and generally overreacting. He looked terrible and pathetic, as though he hadn’t had a wink of sleep in the past week and barely ate. Which was true on both counts, because Louis had blundered dangerously close on so many occasions without noticing the fugitive that the poor man was utterly convinced that Louis was some sadistic tormentor toying with him, lurking in the shadows and ready to pounce on him the moment he let his guard down to eat or drink or take a piss, only to depart just as suddenly to prolong the mental torture.
There was no fight. Whatever fight the fugitive might have once had had been completely and utterly drained away over the past few days. He collapsed onto his knees in a nervous wreck, bawling and pleading piteously, and was apprehended with absolutely no fuss at all by a somewhat confused Louis and a very unimpressed and disappointed Verity (who had hoped to encounter enough resistance to make this assignment look good on her annual performance review, but also not too much so she could actually accomplish the mission in spite of Louis). The crate of bundimun secretion was subsequently recovered from the kitchen.
All in all, a successful and uneventful mission, Verity’s snide comments throughout the week notwithstanding, which was excellent in Louis’s books and worth raising a pint to.
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10:30am
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
This is how it really went down in Jaywick.
Louis is irrelevant. Verity is irrelevant. The fugitive has a cameo. And Nigel will have a massive headache – both literally and metaphorically.
Ten thirty Monday morning, and this part of Jaywick was deserted. One of the worst parts of one of the worst settlements in the UK. There was no reason to be here, unless one needed a place free from prying eyes.
Nigel pretended to consult his map as he walked along the road. He didn’t need to – both the consulting and pretending. His destination was the only intact house in this district that hadn’t been completely gutted by a fire that happened at some point in the past, and he had already caught sight of it from a distance. With literally nobody in his immediate vicinity, there was no need to put up an act.
So he dropped all pretence and jogged towards the house.
He arrived slightly after the appointed time. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar, and the hinges squealed as he pushed the door open. The interior of the house was brightly lit by sunlight from the gaping hole in the roof. Nigel noted dryly that there was more hole than roof.
Someone stepped out from behind a corner. By now Nigel was getting quite sick of seeing that face, even though it was his. Or rather, identical to his – this was his mirror clone, the darker reflection that had stepped out of the magical mirror all those years ago. Morgan had contained their reflection. Nigel’s had gotten away.
“I was wondering if you’d show up,” his clone began, a casual, easy smile hovering over his lips.
“I was wondering when you’d stop playing games,” he snapped.
“My, my, so hostile.” The clone’s smile never faded. “We literally just chatted a while ago.”
That made no sense. “We did not.”
The clone pretended to consider the statement. “Clarification: I spoke with you. You haven’t had that conversation with me yet.”
“You’re from the future then,” Nigel concluded. It was the only logical answer.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, the clone withdrew a small vial and a notebook. The vial seemed ordinary enough, and there were some flecks of blood on the notebook’s front cover. “There’s a blue house down by the beach. I want you to travel back in time and hide these inside the house. Securely.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You will. Because you already did so in the morning, so that I can pick them up later this afternoon.”
A bootstrap paradox. An endless loop in the flow of time, like an eddy in a river, forever swirling and going nowhere.
“Be a good boy and close the loop,” the clone said, his tone firmer than before.
“How do I know if you’re telling the truth?”
“That’s the neat part: you don’t. You’re free to walk away. But before that: would you be at least interested to find out what these things are?”
The smirk on the clone’s face told Nigel he’d regret it if he didn’t hear his clone out. “Shoot.”
“Acromantula venom, and instructions for brewing a volatile poison with a colourless and odourless vapour when mixed with certain ingredients including bundimun secretion.”
“Oddly specific,” Nigel said. “How is that going to convince me to cooperate?”
“About fifteen to twenty minutes ago, two Hit Wizards apprehended a fugitive sheltering in the blue house, after receiving a tipoff from a Ministry of Magic staff called Lydell Byrd. The fugitive had in his possession a crate of bundimun secretion that he stole from a shop in Diagon Alley. He’s disenfranchised and angry, and desperate enough to do anything. You can close the time loop to ensure the vial and notebook never leaves the unending cycle, or you could chance it and see where they end up.”
A time loop was a chain of cause-and-effect that looped back onto itself. To break the loop would introduce a new cause and a new effect, and another cause behind the new cause and another effect for the new effect, ad infinitum as the chain formed new links to extrapolate itself into both the past and future. And like all the other fundamental building blocks of reality, Time, when disturbed, had a tendency to latch on to the nearest thing in an attempt to resolve to the lowest energy state.
“What about Lydell Byrd?”
“You know who Lydell Byrd is.”
They both did. Lydell Byrd was a false name used by Ministry of Magic staff who came across vital information but could not reveal their identities due to operational or information security concerns. As an added layer of security, all messages from Lydell Byrd had to come from within the Ministry’s headquarters, thereby preventing its misuse by non-Ministry staff.
Nigel thought for a few moments. “I’ll do it.”
The clone’s grin widened and he handed over the vial and notebook. “That’s a good boy. The fugitive entered the house at around eight. The Hit Wizards are still searching the house. You might want to find a nice secure spot to hide those two things so the fugitive and Hit Wizards can’t find them.”
“And where would that be? How would you know where I hid them?”
“Oh, I’ll know. After all, great minds think alike.” The clone pretended to check his watch. “Looks like I’ve got to go. You best run along too; if I recall, you haven’t got much time.”
Before Nigel could protest, the clone vanished into thin air, leaving him alone in the house with the vial and notebook in his hand.
* * *
6:34am
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
Four turns of the time turner later, Nigel found himself in the same house at sunrise. Behind him, the door was shut. He opened it, and the hinges squealed.
Instinctively he left the door slightly ajar, in the exact state he had found it when he had first arrived. He didn’t know where the blue house was, so he started towards the beach, guided by the light from the rising sun. The scent of salt pricked his nose in a way that wasn’t unpleasant.
The clone’s parting words rang in his head. “If I recall, you haven’t got much time.”
Most people who used a time turner were only aware of the five-hour limit: one could only travel up to five hours into the past and stay there until they arrived back at the time when they had used the time turner. Few ever encountered the other limit: there was only so much time travelling one could do before other ill effects started to manifest, independent of how far back in time one travelled. As an Unspeakable who worked in the Time Room, he was quite often dangerously close to that limit. He had, according to his estimates, just shy of an hour left.
He checked his watch. Fifty minutes and three seconds. Less than he had remembered.
He ran until he arrived at the beachfront. A row of houses looked out to the sea, their dusty window panes a brilliant shade of gold in the morning light. Somewhere in the middle was a blue house, and he hastened his pace.
The interior was surprisingly cluttered, with old furniture that was falling apart. He gave each room a quick glance, looking for a good spot to hide the vial and notebook. Meanwhile, time was ticking away.
Approximately nine minutes later, the deed was done. He had stuffed the items inside the disintegrating foam of the sofa.
* * *
6:55am
10th April, 2000
London
Soundlessly, Nigel materialised in a discreet corner of Craig's Court, just off Whitehall.
Within minutes he was inside the Ministry of Magic, walking at a brisk pace through the largely empty atrium, a small mercy he was thankful for. Most of the staff weren’t due to start work yet, and Nigel wasn’t supposed to be here at this hour. Keeping his head down and his eyes on the floor, he ducked into a lift.
After what felt like an eternity, he arrived at the ninth floor – a windowless, black-tiled passage lit solely by pale torchlight. The dial of his watch turned amber. 29 mins left.
Opening the forbidding black door, he stepped into a round chamber with twelve handleless doors, where he chose one instinctively and pushed past it. The Time Room lay beyond the door, a long rectangular room almost completely covered in all manner of clocks, their synchronised ticking mirroring his pounding heart.
A fellow Unspeakable was already hard at work: Pravin Thilagan, a young lad who had recently joined and immediately had all the most time-consuming and tedious and boring tasks foisted upon him.
“Hi, I’m Lydell Byrd,” Nigel said.
“Don’t mess with me, man,” Pravin began. “Look, I'm bad with names, and I'm sorry I keep forgetting yours. I remember it now, Graeme Nigel something—“ Abruptly he stopped as it dawned upon him what was going on. “Oh, Lydell Byrd. The Lydell Byrd,” he repeated reverently. Just two months into his job, and already he had the honour of being involved in something so secretive. His face lit up as he momentarily envisioned himself as a super spy (or at the very least, a super important ally of the super spy), and he quickly composed himself. “Mr Lydell Byrd, I am Pravin Thilagan from the Department of Mysteries. How may I help you?” he asked, still beaming about the mental image and the very welcome distraction from his monotonous drudgery.
* * *
7:18am
10th April, 2000
London
“Bish bash bosh!” Pravin declared.
It was nowhere as fast as the term suggested. By the time Pravin had sent the ‘anonymous’ tip to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and filed the relevant paperwork for the Time Room’s internal records, the dial of Nigel’s watch had turned an alarming red. Pravin’s earlier enthusiasm was swiftly melting away as he reverted to his earlier state of mild existential dread, now that there was nothing standing between him and his work.
“Does this happen often?” Pravin asked, looking at the watch with his brow furrowed in concern.
“Sometimes. Why?”
“What happens if you cross the limit? Will you die?” Pravin’s already large eyes widened further. “Will I be as overworked as you? Will I cross the limit one day? I’m still young, I don’t want to die.”
“You’ll be fine,” Nigel said as reassuringly as he could as his watch’s dial began to flash. “I need to go, I’ll see you soon. Take care.”
He left before Pravin could stop him. Six minutes. He could still make it back to Craig’s Court and flip the time turner before the spell weaved into his watch forcefully yanked him back to his original time. It was a failsafe designed to keep Unspeakables in the Time Room safe, with absolutely no regard whatsoever for user comfort, because ‘injured was better than dead’, according to the Department of Mysteries's staff handbook.
He could make it.
With two minutes left, he was back on the surface. dashing across the road with a burst of speed and sparing himself the ignoble fate of getting flattened by an oncoming Ford Transit. He slipped into Craig’s Court and rounded the corner—
Something crashed hard into him, sending him tumbling arse-over-tit into a wall. He sat up and found a man with a gaunt face and a haunted expression rubbing his sore shoulder. A fallen crate lay a short distance away.
Their eyes met.
The man panicked and jumped to his feet, scooping up the crate and fleeing before Nigel could say a word. But something at the edge of his vision caught his eye. The Unspeakable turned to look.
Lying on the ground was a small pouch with a broken strap. The contents had spilled out: a vial and a notebook. The very same that his reflection had given him, sans the flecks of blood on the notebook.
His watch beeped and initiated the final countdown. Five seconds.
Dammit.
Four. Three.
Without thinking, he grabbed both items. He couldn’t leave them there, where they could be picked up by someone else.
Two. One.
* * *
10:34am
10th April, 2000
London
The world flipped, spun, inverted, everted, then vomited him out onto the very spot he had been standing. Gravity flung him sideways into a metal fence, and then physics properly resolved and he fell flat on his back, the wind knocked completely out of his lungs.
For a few seconds, he lay motionless, until he finally mustered enough strength to pick himself up, along with the fallen vial and notebook.
“Don’t move.”
Something pointy pressed into the side of his neck – a wand. The voice sounded the same as his.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Nigel demanded.
His clone said nothing. The wand retracted, and then pain blossomed from the side of his head as his clone unleashed a magical blast. The force threw him onto the ground for the third time in a few minutes. He tasted blood and coughed. A few droplets splattered onto the notebook lying a few inches beside him.
“I’ll hold on to these for now,” his clone smirked as he picked up the vial and notebook, all the while keeping his wand pointed at Nigel. “I’m supposed to meet someone in Jaywick at ten thirty and I’m running late despite going back 4 hours in time.”
“Scum,” Nigel spat. “You lied.”
“Technically I did not, because I haven’t said the lie yet.” His clone hunkered down and poked Nigel’s cheek tauntingly with the wand. “Such a good, obedient boy. You must be tired. Sleep now. You’ve earned yourself a good rest.”
The tip of the clone’s wand flared, and the world went dark.
* * *
3:28pm
10th April, 2000
London
He awoke, cold and drenched, to a cloudy sky and falling raindrops.
He tried to sit up, but was foiled by a wave of nausea and a terrible throbbing in his head, and only managed to roll onto his side. He couldn’t see his hands or his arms or any part of his body. Some kind of invisibility spell, perhaps. How long had he been out cold? His clone must have cast the spell after knocking him out, else someone would have already found him by now.
With his arms, he pushed himself up and leaned heavily against the metal fence behind him. Fuck. He had been played like an utter and complete fool. Duped into believing that he had to sustain a bootstrap paradox.
The rain continued to fall, steady and uncaring. Along the main road, people walked past Craig’s Court without seeing him.
* * *
4:04pm
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
By the time Nigel recovered sufficiently to Apparate to Jaywick, the vial and notebook were gone from the blue house. In their place was a note, written in his handwriting but not by his hand.
First and foremost, thank you. I needed the vial and the notebook, and you have dutifully delivered both items to me.
Likely your head is still throbbing, so I’ll spare you the effort of thinking. The items were beyond my reach even with a time turner, so I had to enlist your help to go one step further.
You have played your part to just shy of perfection. I would have liked the notebook to not bear those bloodstains, but it’s no big deal. Good work. May our next collaboration be as smooth and successful.
10:13am
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
This is how it went down in Jaywick.
The beachfront houses were quiet and peaceful.
Seagulls circled lazily in the clear blue sky, their calls accompanied by the gentle lapping of waves against the shore. But the scene was far from idyllic – the houses were decrepit, the beach was covered with trash, the seagulls mean and thieving, and ‘quiet and peaceful’ was just a rose-tinted synonym for ‘deserted and unwanted’.
It was built as a holiday resort for working-class Londoners, but now it was the last resort of a desperate and frankly not very capable but somewhat rather lucky fugitive whom Louis had been tracking down over the past week. Just a simple thief who had broken into a magical supplies shop in Diagon Alley and made off with a whole crate of bundimun secretion worth quite a tidy sum. The acidic ooze was commonly used to manufacture magical household cleaners, but it was caustic enough to be flagged as a hazardous substance with strict regulations and its thief marked as a dangerous individual to be apprehended with force if necessary.
Louis remained crouched behind an unruly bush, eyes peering through the foliage and fixed on the blue house diagonally across the street. About twenty yards away, Verity – a Hit Witch and his partner for this assignment – peeked out from behind a rotting wooden fence. The intelligence was sound: the target had been spotted entering the house more than two hours ago and was still there, a faint silhouette visible through the dusty window panes.
Verity raised her hand in preparation to give the signal, because the Ministry trusted her more than Louis to lead the operation. Louis indicated his readiness with a hand signal.
On Verity’s count, Louis sprang to his feet and charged into the house, wand raised and ready. Meanwhile, the Hit Witch circled to the back of the house, cutting off the escape route. At the sight of Louis, the fugitive gave a started yelp and threw up both hands, trembling in abject terror and generally overreacting. He looked terrible and pathetic, as though he hadn’t had a wink of sleep in the past week and barely ate. Which was true on both counts, because Louis had blundered dangerously close on so many occasions without noticing the fugitive that the poor man was utterly convinced that Louis was some sadistic tormentor toying with him, lurking in the shadows and ready to pounce on him the moment he let his guard down to eat or drink or take a piss, only to depart just as suddenly to prolong the mental torture.
There was no fight. Whatever fight the fugitive might have once had had been completely and utterly drained away over the past few days. He collapsed onto his knees in a nervous wreck, bawling and pleading piteously, and was apprehended with absolutely no fuss at all by a somewhat confused Louis and a very unimpressed and disappointed Verity (who had hoped to encounter enough resistance to make this assignment look good on her annual performance review, but also not too much so she could actually accomplish the mission in spite of Louis). The crate of bundimun secretion was subsequently recovered from the kitchen.
All in all, a successful and uneventful mission, Verity’s snide comments throughout the week notwithstanding, which was excellent in Louis’s books and worth raising a pint to.
━━━━━━༻❖༺━━━━━━
10:30am
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
This is how it really went down in Jaywick.
Louis is irrelevant. Verity is irrelevant. The fugitive has a cameo. And Nigel will have a massive headache – both literally and metaphorically.
Ten thirty Monday morning, and this part of Jaywick was deserted. One of the worst parts of one of the worst settlements in the UK. There was no reason to be here, unless one needed a place free from prying eyes.
Nigel pretended to consult his map as he walked along the road. He didn’t need to – both the consulting and pretending. His destination was the only intact house in this district that hadn’t been completely gutted by a fire that happened at some point in the past, and he had already caught sight of it from a distance. With literally nobody in his immediate vicinity, there was no need to put up an act.
So he dropped all pretence and jogged towards the house.
He arrived slightly after the appointed time. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar, and the hinges squealed as he pushed the door open. The interior of the house was brightly lit by sunlight from the gaping hole in the roof. Nigel noted dryly that there was more hole than roof.
Someone stepped out from behind a corner. By now Nigel was getting quite sick of seeing that face, even though it was his. Or rather, identical to his – this was his mirror clone, the darker reflection that had stepped out of the magical mirror all those years ago. Morgan had contained their reflection. Nigel’s had gotten away.
“I was wondering if you’d show up,” his clone began, a casual, easy smile hovering over his lips.
“I was wondering when you’d stop playing games,” he snapped.
“My, my, so hostile.” The clone’s smile never faded. “We literally just chatted a while ago.”
That made no sense. “We did not.”
The clone pretended to consider the statement. “Clarification: I spoke with you. You haven’t had that conversation with me yet.”
“You’re from the future then,” Nigel concluded. It was the only logical answer.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, the clone withdrew a small vial and a notebook. The vial seemed ordinary enough, and there were some flecks of blood on the notebook’s front cover. “There’s a blue house down by the beach. I want you to travel back in time and hide these inside the house. Securely.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You will. Because you already did so in the morning, so that I can pick them up later this afternoon.”
A bootstrap paradox. An endless loop in the flow of time, like an eddy in a river, forever swirling and going nowhere.
“Be a good boy and close the loop,” the clone said, his tone firmer than before.
“How do I know if you’re telling the truth?”
“That’s the neat part: you don’t. You’re free to walk away. But before that: would you be at least interested to find out what these things are?”
The smirk on the clone’s face told Nigel he’d regret it if he didn’t hear his clone out. “Shoot.”
“Acromantula venom, and instructions for brewing a volatile poison with a colourless and odourless vapour when mixed with certain ingredients including bundimun secretion.”
“Oddly specific,” Nigel said. “How is that going to convince me to cooperate?”
“About fifteen to twenty minutes ago, two Hit Wizards apprehended a fugitive sheltering in the blue house, after receiving a tipoff from a Ministry of Magic staff called Lydell Byrd. The fugitive had in his possession a crate of bundimun secretion that he stole from a shop in Diagon Alley. He’s disenfranchised and angry, and desperate enough to do anything. You can close the time loop to ensure the vial and notebook never leaves the unending cycle, or you could chance it and see where they end up.”
A time loop was a chain of cause-and-effect that looped back onto itself. To break the loop would introduce a new cause and a new effect, and another cause behind the new cause and another effect for the new effect, ad infinitum as the chain formed new links to extrapolate itself into both the past and future. And like all the other fundamental building blocks of reality, Time, when disturbed, had a tendency to latch on to the nearest thing in an attempt to resolve to the lowest energy state.
“What about Lydell Byrd?”
“You know who Lydell Byrd is.”
They both did. Lydell Byrd was a false name used by Ministry of Magic staff who came across vital information but could not reveal their identities due to operational or information security concerns. As an added layer of security, all messages from Lydell Byrd had to come from within the Ministry’s headquarters, thereby preventing its misuse by non-Ministry staff.
Nigel thought for a few moments. “I’ll do it.”
The clone’s grin widened and he handed over the vial and notebook. “That’s a good boy. The fugitive entered the house at around eight. The Hit Wizards are still searching the house. You might want to find a nice secure spot to hide those two things so the fugitive and Hit Wizards can’t find them.”
“And where would that be? How would you know where I hid them?”
“Oh, I’ll know. After all, great minds think alike.” The clone pretended to check his watch. “Looks like I’ve got to go. You best run along too; if I recall, you haven’t got much time.”
Before Nigel could protest, the clone vanished into thin air, leaving him alone in the house with the vial and notebook in his hand.
* * *
6:34am
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
Four turns of the time turner later, Nigel found himself in the same house at sunrise. Behind him, the door was shut. He opened it, and the hinges squealed.
Instinctively he left the door slightly ajar, in the exact state he had found it when he had first arrived. He didn’t know where the blue house was, so he started towards the beach, guided by the light from the rising sun. The scent of salt pricked his nose in a way that wasn’t unpleasant.
The clone’s parting words rang in his head. “If I recall, you haven’t got much time.”
Most people who used a time turner were only aware of the five-hour limit: one could only travel up to five hours into the past and stay there until they arrived back at the time when they had used the time turner. Few ever encountered the other limit: there was only so much time travelling one could do before other ill effects started to manifest, independent of how far back in time one travelled. As an Unspeakable who worked in the Time Room, he was quite often dangerously close to that limit. He had, according to his estimates, just shy of an hour left.
He checked his watch. Fifty minutes and three seconds. Less than he had remembered.
He ran until he arrived at the beachfront. A row of houses looked out to the sea, their dusty window panes a brilliant shade of gold in the morning light. Somewhere in the middle was a blue house, and he hastened his pace.
The interior was surprisingly cluttered, with old furniture that was falling apart. He gave each room a quick glance, looking for a good spot to hide the vial and notebook. Meanwhile, time was ticking away.
Approximately nine minutes later, the deed was done. He had stuffed the items inside the disintegrating foam of the sofa.
* * *
6:55am
10th April, 2000
London
Soundlessly, Nigel materialised in a discreet corner of Craig's Court, just off Whitehall.
Within minutes he was inside the Ministry of Magic, walking at a brisk pace through the largely empty atrium, a small mercy he was thankful for. Most of the staff weren’t due to start work yet, and Nigel wasn’t supposed to be here at this hour. Keeping his head down and his eyes on the floor, he ducked into a lift.
After what felt like an eternity, he arrived at the ninth floor – a windowless, black-tiled passage lit solely by pale torchlight. The dial of his watch turned amber. 29 mins left.
Opening the forbidding black door, he stepped into a round chamber with twelve handleless doors, where he chose one instinctively and pushed past it. The Time Room lay beyond the door, a long rectangular room almost completely covered in all manner of clocks, their synchronised ticking mirroring his pounding heart.
A fellow Unspeakable was already hard at work: Pravin Thilagan, a young lad who had recently joined and immediately had all the most time-consuming and tedious and boring tasks foisted upon him.
“Hi, I’m Lydell Byrd,” Nigel said.
“Don’t mess with me, man,” Pravin began. “Look, I'm bad with names, and I'm sorry I keep forgetting yours. I remember it now, Graeme Nigel something—“ Abruptly he stopped as it dawned upon him what was going on. “Oh, Lydell Byrd. The Lydell Byrd,” he repeated reverently. Just two months into his job, and already he had the honour of being involved in something so secretive. His face lit up as he momentarily envisioned himself as a super spy (or at the very least, a super important ally of the super spy), and he quickly composed himself. “Mr Lydell Byrd, I am Pravin Thilagan from the Department of Mysteries. How may I help you?” he asked, still beaming about the mental image and the very welcome distraction from his monotonous drudgery.
* * *
7:18am
10th April, 2000
London
“Bish bash bosh!” Pravin declared.
It was nowhere as fast as the term suggested. By the time Pravin had sent the ‘anonymous’ tip to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and filed the relevant paperwork for the Time Room’s internal records, the dial of Nigel’s watch had turned an alarming red. Pravin’s earlier enthusiasm was swiftly melting away as he reverted to his earlier state of mild existential dread, now that there was nothing standing between him and his work.
“Does this happen often?” Pravin asked, looking at the watch with his brow furrowed in concern.
“Sometimes. Why?”
“What happens if you cross the limit? Will you die?” Pravin’s already large eyes widened further. “Will I be as overworked as you? Will I cross the limit one day? I’m still young, I don’t want to die.”
“You’ll be fine,” Nigel said as reassuringly as he could as his watch’s dial began to flash. “I need to go, I’ll see you soon. Take care.”
He left before Pravin could stop him. Six minutes. He could still make it back to Craig’s Court and flip the time turner before the spell weaved into his watch forcefully yanked him back to his original time. It was a failsafe designed to keep Unspeakables in the Time Room safe, with absolutely no regard whatsoever for user comfort, because ‘injured was better than dead’, according to the Department of Mysteries's staff handbook.
He could make it.
With two minutes left, he was back on the surface. dashing across the road with a burst of speed and sparing himself the ignoble fate of getting flattened by an oncoming Ford Transit. He slipped into Craig’s Court and rounded the corner—
Something crashed hard into him, sending him tumbling arse-over-tit into a wall. He sat up and found a man with a gaunt face and a haunted expression rubbing his sore shoulder. A fallen crate lay a short distance away.
Their eyes met.
The man panicked and jumped to his feet, scooping up the crate and fleeing before Nigel could say a word. But something at the edge of his vision caught his eye. The Unspeakable turned to look.
Lying on the ground was a small pouch with a broken strap. The contents had spilled out: a vial and a notebook. The very same that his reflection had given him, sans the flecks of blood on the notebook.
His watch beeped and initiated the final countdown. Five seconds.
Dammit.
Four. Three.
Without thinking, he grabbed both items. He couldn’t leave them there, where they could be picked up by someone else.
Two. One.
* * *
10:34am
10th April, 2000
London
The world flipped, spun, inverted, everted, then vomited him out onto the very spot he had been standing. Gravity flung him sideways into a metal fence, and then physics properly resolved and he fell flat on his back, the wind knocked completely out of his lungs.
For a few seconds, he lay motionless, until he finally mustered enough strength to pick himself up, along with the fallen vial and notebook.
“Don’t move.”
Something pointy pressed into the side of his neck – a wand. The voice sounded the same as his.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Nigel demanded.
His clone said nothing. The wand retracted, and then pain blossomed from the side of his head as his clone unleashed a magical blast. The force threw him onto the ground for the third time in a few minutes. He tasted blood and coughed. A few droplets splattered onto the notebook lying a few inches beside him.
“I’ll hold on to these for now,” his clone smirked as he picked up the vial and notebook, all the while keeping his wand pointed at Nigel. “I’m supposed to meet someone in Jaywick at ten thirty and I’m running late despite going back 4 hours in time.”
“Scum,” Nigel spat. “You lied.”
“Technically I did not, because I haven’t said the lie yet.” His clone hunkered down and poked Nigel’s cheek tauntingly with the wand. “Such a good, obedient boy. You must be tired. Sleep now. You’ve earned yourself a good rest.”
The tip of the clone’s wand flared, and the world went dark.
* * *
3:28pm
10th April, 2000
London
He awoke, cold and drenched, to a cloudy sky and falling raindrops.
He tried to sit up, but was foiled by a wave of nausea and a terrible throbbing in his head, and only managed to roll onto his side. He couldn’t see his hands or his arms or any part of his body. Some kind of invisibility spell, perhaps. How long had he been out cold? His clone must have cast the spell after knocking him out, else someone would have already found him by now.
With his arms, he pushed himself up and leaned heavily against the metal fence behind him. Fuck. He had been played like an utter and complete fool. Duped into believing that he had to sustain a bootstrap paradox.
The rain continued to fall, steady and uncaring. Along the main road, people walked past Craig’s Court without seeing him.
* * *
4:04pm
10th April, 2000
Jaywick
By the time Nigel recovered sufficiently to Apparate to Jaywick, the vial and notebook were gone from the blue house. In their place was a note, written in his handwriting but not by his hand.
First and foremost, thank you. I needed the vial and the notebook, and you have dutifully delivered both items to me.
Likely your head is still throbbing, so I’ll spare you the effort of thinking. The items were beyond my reach even with a time turner, so I had to enlist your help to go one step further.
You have played your part to just shy of perfection. I would have liked the notebook to not bear those bloodstains, but it’s no big deal. Good work. May our next collaboration be as smooth and successful.
the worst mistake is the one you don’t dare to make
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