Harry Potter The Meaning of Magic

[Estrecca]

This is a scene I've had hanging in my mind for a very long time. Hermione applies for a job as an Unspeakable and gets an interview that explores a number of things that canon mostly overlooked. Not sure if I'll continue this, considering that there are no plans for a broader narrative to expand this beyond the interview itself, but I didn't dislike what little I've written for this so far, so I thought that I'd just post it here.

THE MEANING OF MAGIC

The Department of Mysteries didn’t accept unauthorized visitors. It never had. It never would. The Unspeakables who worked within its walls were, to a fault, secretive and eerie. Hermione remembered it as a dark, forbidding place, full of deadly secrets and uncomfortable-looking furniture.

The downright cozy office she was in didn’t fit her mental image of the place. Not in the slightest.

Admittedly, her previous visit had involved a deadly battle against dark wizards, in which she had narrowly dodged death, and this time she was here for a job interview, so she was now in a better position to appreciate the less intimidating features of the Department.

Still, she really hadn’t expected her job application to be answered with an invitation to tea and scones in the office of Pandora Mulciber, Head Unspeakable, or for said almost centenarian public servant to be an avowed fan of the Holyhead Harpies, who seemed to be keen on talking on and on about the team’s new Chaser.

Well, if nothing else, Ginny would be thrilled to know that she already had fans.

“But that is quite enough of quidditch, I think,” said Miss Mulciber, twenty minutes into the conversation, while refilling the cups from a lovely silver teapot. “I am sure that you hear enough about sports at home and you muggleborns are rarely big fans. Would you like some milk with your tea this time, Miss Granger?”

“Just a little, please,” replied Hermione, while idly musing about what had just been said.

“Something in your mind?”

“Yes. Is blood status something I ought to worry about, if I start working here?”

The elderly witch took a sip from her own cup, before putting it down. She was frowning and visibly considering her reply. The ensuing silence lasted more than a few seconds.

“No and yes, but mostly no,” she replied at last. “I know that we have a reputation, because we mostly recruit people who happen to come from the old blood, but that is part tradition and part convenience. When we hire new Unspeakables, we look for certain qualities that, I am sorry to say, we find only rarely among the muggleborn.”

“And what qualities are those?” asked Hermione with a raised eyebrow.

“Resistance to external influence, for one. For centuries, we have mostly stayed out of the petty political games that the rest of the Ministry plays. We don’t want people who seek political power. We don’t want people whose loyalty might be bought by coin. And we really, really don’t want people likely to get caught up in the latest political inanity. As a result of this, I now manage a workforce of independently wealthy individuals, about half of whom would have had good odds of being voted into the Wizengamot at some point, if they had picked a different career path. And what was once tradition is now official Department policy.”

“Because of Rookwood?”

Pandora’s old face darkened the moment she heard the name, until her smile turned into a scowl that would have earned the approval of the late Professor Snape. “Yes, because of him,” the old woman said finally, voice full of utmost contempt.

“Have I struck a nerve?”

“Most definitely, but don’t worry. I was sure that this was going to come up during this conversation. It is just that some things are never particularly pleasant to talk about and, in this story, I was played for a fool.”

“You don’t have to...,” started Hermione, but the Head Unspeakable cut her off with an imperious wave of her hand.

“No, Miss Granger. I have to. Considering what my folly cost my family and this Department, some embarrasment is a very small price to pay. Very small, indeed.”

The old witch produced a small flask from a hidden pocket in her robes and poured some of its content into her half-empty cup. The pungent yet strangely pleasant smell of well aged firewhisky filled the room.

With a wry smile in her face, the old woman returned the flask to her pocket. “I should offer to share, I know, but I make a point of never sharing my Blishen with anyone, and this story flows better if I can feel a little burn in my veins.

“Now, as I was saying, I am the fool of this story. Augustus Rookwood started working here back in seventy-two or seventy-three. Very brilliant boy, very capable. Eager to learn, eager to please. If you can believe it, we used to joke that he seemed more Ravenclaw than Slytherin.

“I was not the head of the Department back then, of course, but I was a senior Unspeakable and in the shortlist to replace old Croaker. I had access to a lot of sensitive information... and Augustus was my protégé. There was some genuine potential in that boy that I wanted to nurture and he was a real charmer, too. I taught him things that he didn’t need to know, some of which he was simply not allowed to know at the time, and I’ve long wondered whether I might have helped his fall.

“I took him to some family meetings, you see. And, in case you haven’t wondered about my surname, I’ll tell you that two Death Eaters were from my family. My cousin Numa and his son. Whatever the reason for Augustus joining with You-Know-Who’s crowd, he used all those excellent qualities of his to supply the Death Eaters with information from inside the Ministry and far, far worse. He ruined the lifes of people, he tortured and killed innocent people, and betrayed my trust sharing with You-Know-Who some of the secrets we keep in this Department.

“None of the really sensitive stuff, thank goodness. Protégé or not, there was magic at work that didn’t let him reveal most of what he knew and I wasn’t so great a fool as to allow him anywhere near the big things, so when it turned out that You-Know-Who was back we had the opportunity to hide some... things in secure places. Worked like a charm. Even after they took over the Ministry and put most of us under the Imperius, it remained hidden, because Augustus thought that he knew everything worth knowing and they never even asked if we had hidden somehing.

“Good thing that they didn’t, too, or we probably would be dead or being good, little slaves for the Dark Lord still. I shudder to imagine what he might have done with some of the things we keep down here, considering what he managed to do with the scraps that Augustus was able to share with him. I am sure that you remember how he made his names Taboo? Well, he developed that by building upon one of the spells that we use here to make sure that our secrets remain secret.”

Hermione had listened in silence and when the other witch finished her tale, a shiver ran down her back. That final year against Voldemort had been... bad. The idea that it could have been even worse, if Riddle had just asked a question, chilled her to the core. She offered a shaky nod as her only reply to the story, but that seemed good enough for Pandora who resumed talking.

“As you can guess, the Department of Mysteries is taking operations security even more seriously nowadays. We know that you are capable of doing this job. You are a strong, competent and highly intelligent witch. If we had the slightest doubt about any of that, we would have simply sent you a deliberately curt refusal. But we don’t know if we can trust you and, for the Department, that is now the most critical thing. The single purpose of this interview is determining whether you are worthy of our trust.”

“I am not likely to join a group of dark wizards anytime soon, ma’am,” replied Hermione, with something like mirth in her voice.

“Indeed, but that is hardly the only way in which someone can compromise the secrecy of this organization. Let’s begin. Miss Granger, could you please tell me what magic means for you?”

 

[Mage Ronin]

I like it! More?

 

[Estrecca]

THE MEANING OF MAGIC (Part 2)

"What magic means?"

"Not quite, Miss Granger. I am asking what it means to you, specifically," said the Head Unspeakable.

There was a silence that felt uncomfortably long to Hermione, but she schooled her features into an expression of concentrated calmnes, clamped down on the impulse to blurt out the first thing that came to mind and thought about the question. Eventually, her thoughts settled on an answer. It wasn't a perfect one, but it felt... serviceable.

"Subjectively, it is something that is both part of me and larger than me, that changed the course of my life and gave me the opportunity to learn about the true nature of the world, but also made my life a lot more dangerous than it had to be and which has left me detached from my muggle relatives. Descriptively, it is the blanket term used to describe the abilities of certain beings and non-beings, as well as the assumed underlying force that makes all of those possible in the first place. Muggles would describe this force and the abilities it makes possible as supernatural, but seeing that they are undeniably part of nature that part of their definition is just a mistake born of ignorance."

Miss Mulciber laughed softly and when she talked her voice was animated and tinged with mirth. "Clever! Genuinely clever! That question is perhaps the most fundamental part of this interview and you just passed with flying colours."

"Really? That was it?"


"No, no, don't misunderstand. The interview is not over, but it would have been over if you had given me the wrong answer. And -believe me- there are many wrong answers to give when I ask the question."

"I see."

"If you really do, then you have better sight than some of our workers. I did not check the betting pool this morning, but yesterday at least half of them hoped that you would just quote some muggle dictionary definition."

"There is a betting pool about me?" asked Hermione, feeling somewhat intrigued, somewhat outraged and somewhat flabbergasted.

"Not about you specifically, but there is a betting pool whenever a prospective candidate is to be interviewed, yes. Work down here is... I'd say ninety nine parts mind numbing boredom and busywork, one part heart clenching excitement. That is not the kind of excitement most people enjoy, usually, so there is a betting pool. We also have a highly competitive chess championship every month, host awful poetry recitals every now and then and provide a wide array of periodicals, both muggle and wizarding, that Department staff can peruse at their convenience. I'd ask whether you are surprised to hear this, but I fear that your face says it loud enough."

"It doesn't fit what I imagined, no. Why...?"

"I am told that muggles call it personnel management. Ignotus Pilliwickle, who was the department head before Samuel Croaker, came up with the policy. He worked with some muggles during the second war in some kind of important project that involved a great deal of overtime and stress, you see, and learned some tricks that they used to unwind. There was some rumbling about doing things the muggle way at the beginning, but it seems to work well enough in keeping people more relaxed down here, which is always a concern for us."

"That actually makes a great deal of sense."

"Indeed. When one works with the forces we study down here, it pays to be careful. Because if you aren't, you end causing something like the Mintumble Affair. Or worse. I am unable to go into details, of course, but I can tell you that worse has actually happened. More than once. And I imagine that you remember just how bad the Mintumble Affair was, from the documentation we sent you when you were lent that Time-Turner."

Hermione shuddered. The Mintumble Affair, a time travel experiment gone wrong, had ended with the witch involved crumbling into dust and at least two dozen people removed from history as if they had never been born, as a consequence of their ancestors interacting with the time traveler in the distant past. Worse than that? She was glad not to know the details of something like that.

"Incidentally, that reminds me of something that I should have broached earlier. There are widespread misconceptions about our duties. Misconceptions that we encourage. The average wizard, in as much as he even knows that we exist, imagines that we dabble in things best left alone, things wizards are not meant to know. This is true to an extent. But only to an extent and, as a result, we sometimes get candidates of astounding intelligence who are eager to learn the things we know, merely for the sake of learning. Such candidates are invariably rejected."

"That doesn't strike me as a particularly wise policy," replied the younger witch, wondering what this meant for her own hopes.

"The Department of Mysteries and its counterparts around the world are not teaching institutions, Miss Granger. This is a vault to hide from the sun the things that are too dangerous to be known by the world at large. Secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken. The wish to learn the deepest secrets of magic is inherently antithetical to our purpose. And that's why there are exactly three Ravenclaws working down here currently, while over half of us once were Hufflepuffs"

"And who gets to decide?" said Hermione, unable to keep the words in her mind unvoiced.

"We do, for good and ill. We do. And that is why we prefer loyalty to genius. Everyone who is accepted is capable enough, but loyalty comes first and foremost. To become an Unspeakable, one must be willing to devote his life to the unpleasant, thankless cause of holding back the unexplored potential of magic and policing those willing to go further."

 

[grant]

Not sure where exactly you'll go with this, but it seems good enough. Have you put it on FF.net or one of the HP sites yet?

 

[Estrecca]

Not sure where exactly you'll go with this, but it seems good enough. Have you put it on FF.net or one of the HP sites yet?

Mostly, I just want to give closure to at least one of the many plot bunnies that are bugging me and since this thing I can wrap up without getting into longfic territory, I decided to go with this one.

When I am more or less satisfied with things, which will probably involve at least one (but likely two or three) more parts, I'll post it in FF.net as a one-shot.