Speaking of the father of said boy, Kingsley Shacklebolt was currently doing his best to ignore Lucius Malfoy. The long, blonde-haired man was standing not far away from him with his usual superior smirk, looking down his nose slightly at everyone else in the room as if he knew, with one-hundred percent surety, that he was better than them.
And whenever he chipped in to make a comment, it was usually something that grated on Kingsley's nerves. Really, it was so frustrating to have the man - a known Death Eater - standing right there in the room and be unable to do anything about it.
Because when Lucius Malfoy appeared in the Ministry, he was rarely ever seen outside the company of the Minister himself. And said Minister was blindly refusing to believe that the Death Eaters were even in operation, let alone a threat.
And where were they right now? They were both with Cornelius Fudge and Rufus Scrimgeour in the Department of Mysteries, in the exact same room as the golden Fairy Sphere that had been found a few days ago, surrounded by several Unspeakables and a few more Aurors. Tonks would probably have been here too had she not been given the day off to catch up on her rest.
But there was another being in the room. Mavis was hovering just behind the tall Auror, her eyes locked on the Sphere shining in front of her. But of course Kingsley was the only one that could see her - she'd made sure of that. After they'd finished their business at Tenroujima, Charlie had escorted her into the Ministry on the pretence of going to visit his father, and then Arthur had taken her to meet up with Kingsley afterwards, and he, in turn had been able to bring her down here with the other Aurors.
"Can't you tell me anything more about all this?" Fudge asked as he twiddled his bowler hat in his hands slightly anxiously. "I need to know what these attacks mean and what this thing is supposed to be. If this keeps happening how long do you think we're going to be able to keep the information from leaking out. And how many people do you think will be angry with me for keeping that information concealed."
"We're doing our level best to track these people down, whoever they are," Scrimgeour promised. "All we know so far is that these strange occurrences seem to have begun after that meteor shower a few days ago.
A meteor shower that resulted in this… orb. And a couple of my Aurors have reported that they saw that self-same mark," he pointed to the Fairy Tail symbol etched into the side of the sphere, "tattooed on the one of the strangers in Brockenhurst. There is a link between them. We just don't know what it is."
"Well, he's right about that," Mavis said, which made Kingsley have to try very hard not to flinch and make sure nobody had heard her because Mavis could scream at the top of her lungs and nobody but him in the room would hear her. "That is definitely one of my Spheres. And I sense… there are two life-forms inside it. Both human."
Kingsley couldn't answer her for obvious reasons, but he slowly inclined his head to show that he'd understood.
"Well, then what is this thing?" Fudge pressed.
"We've been running magical tests on it," said an Unspeakable. "But nothing we've done has made any impact on it. We even threw a combined Bludgeoning Hex at it and it simply took the blow without any sign of damage."
"Of course it didn't," Mavis grinned smugly. "The Three Great Fairy Magics are not to be trifled with."
The Unspeakable continued. "All we know is that its a powerful shield and that there is, in fact, something inside it. Something that is very definitely still alive. We can't tell what it is… but its there."
"Well, I want that shield to be disabled as soon as possible," Fudge huffed. "If whatever's in there is capable of speaking English then I have some questions I want to ask them. I want this whole mess cleared up quickly. Do you realise how much of a fool I will look if the public hears of these people with unusual magic running amuck and I am powerless to do anything about it? The people want a Minister who can ensure that they are safe."
"If I might dare to venture a suggestion, Minister," Lucius Malfoy suddenly spoke up for the first time in his typical slow and superior drawl. "I won't even begin to pretend I know what's happening either but all this… perhaps it is part of some elaborate scheme to specifically make you look like a fool in front of the people."
"Scheme?" Fudge asked sharply. "Who by?"
"Well, like I said I don't even know that this is true," Lucius shrugged smarmily. "But these attacks, these unexplained phenomena… they could be orchestrated by someone seeking to gain power. Someone… who wishes to take your seat at the top. Someone… who seems to want the public believe that there is a cause for fear. Someone… powerful enough to potentially know spells we can only ever dream about."
Kingsley bristled slightly, seeing exactly where Lucius was going with this but unable to intervene. Unfortunately, Fudge seemed to understand what Lucius was implying too and his eyes widened as he breathed, "…Dumbledore."
"Well, it's only a suggestion of course," Lucius seemed unable to keep the smirk out of his voice. "But has he not been spreading the lie that the Dark Lord has returned to power for the whole summer.
You know as well as I do, Minister, that were the people to believe that story they might rally to Dumbledore in the hope he would protect them from a threat that didn't even exist. But you've been doing such an excellent job at exposing his lies to the world that perhaps he thought he needed to take things a step further. Perhaps he though… he needed to find of way of making sure the public really thought there was a threat… by making one."
Fudge gasped at the though, but Scrimgeour frowned. "I don't know. That doesn't sound like something Dumbledore would do. And more to the point these strange happenings don't sound like the kind of things the Dark Lord would do, and does not Dumbledore's story rest on the fact the Dark Lord is back? Even if he introduced a brand new threat, which I doubt, why would he make it so very different from the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters?"
"Who can work out the mind of such a man?" Lucius pointed out. "He is, I shall grudgingly admit, quite brilliant. Perhaps he has his reasons."
"Or perhaps everything you're implying is utter rubbish," Scrimgeour replied coolly, and Kingsley fought the urge to smile. Scrimgeour might not really believe Voldemort was back either but at least he didn't believe Dumbledore really was trying to gain power, it seemed."
"Enough," Fudge called out. "You have both… given me a lot to think about. I suppose we should adjourn for now but I want to be alerted the very instant that that Sphere…" he continued speaking, blissfully unaware of the fact that Mavis had just gasped, her eyes widening.
"What is it?" Kingsley dared to whisper through the corner of his mouth.
"The Sphere," Mavis whispered back. "It's power levels are dropping. Rapidly… it's time has come."
Right as she started speaking the Sphere suddenly flashed, drawing everyone's eyes. There were several more flashes, before the surface of the Sphere seemed to burn brighter and ripple like the surface of some strange orb of water… before it suddenly faded out of existence from the top down.
"It vanished!" Fudge acknowledged.
"Wands at the ready!" Scrimgeour cried immediately as all the Aurors, including Kingsley just because he had to, drew their wands and pointed them en masse at the space where the Sphere had been, which was still glowing with a brightish but slowly diminishing light. Everyone in the room was on tenterhooks, straining their eyes to see what had been inside when the light faded.
"I didn't expect this to happen," Mavis bit her lip as she strained to look as well. "What are we going to do now?"
What they eventually saw were two human forms lying on the ground, apparently unconscious - one of them male and the other female. But even as they all slowly began to lower their wands, the girl stirred, prompting them to raise them back up again.
"Nnnghhh…" Levy McGarden moaned as she pushed herself up slightly and massaged her forehead with one hand. "Whuthhapnnd? M'sure I wuz jrrsstt…" she rubbed her eyes slightly and looked up, blinking to try and clear both her vision and her mind, but at first only able to make out several tall silhouettes standing in front of her. "Guys?" she asked. "Gajeel? 'Zat you?"
And then everything swam into focus and she saw the multitude of strangers all pointing their wands at her. Immediately she snapped out of her haze and gasped, rolling onto her backside and scrambling backwards slightly, wide-eyed like a deer in the headlights.
"Who are you?" Scrimgeour demanded.
"What? What's happening?" Levy gasped, looking around at them all in shock. "Where am I? Who are you people? What happened to Acnologia and all my friends?"
"Those are all very good questions, Levy," the man suddenly said as he pushed himself upwards, recovering quite a bit quicker than the bluenette had. "And another good one is why are they all looking like they're about to attack us at any moment."
As the man pushed himself to his feet, several of the Aurors couldn't help but take a step back as they took a good look at him, taking in his long brown cloak, his heavily bandaged and scarred torso, his artificial left arm and leg and the sheer aura of power he seemed to exude.
"And I'd like to hear the answer to every one of them rather quickly," scowled Gildarts Clive.
...
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