"Alright then, let's get on with the interrogation. Weasley, are you ready?"
"Yes sir," called a skinny man with short red hair on the front row with a long roll of parchment and a quill.
...
"Alright then. Interrogation of unknown suspect on the tenth of September. Interrogators: Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister for Magic; Amelia Susan Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Court Scribe, Percy Ignatius Weasley. Would the suspect please give her full name?"
"Levy McGarden," Levy replied dutifully. "Levy spelt with a Y."
"No middle name?" Madam Bones asked sharply.
"If I have one I don't know what it is."
"Very well." Madam Bones swished her wand, but when nothing happened she frowned slightly and fixed her piercing eyes upon Levy. "It appears that we have no witch called Levy McGarden in our records. Which is very interesting considering we are supposed to have a file on every witch and wizard in our country. Care to explain that?"
What Levy tried to say was, "I'm not sure. What country am I in?"
What she actually said was, "That would be because I'm from another universe."
This sentence was followed by an immediate gasp as Levy tried to cover her mouth with her hands, only to be pulled up short by the chains binding her arms. What the hell? Why had she said that? She hadn't meant to say that at all but somehow the words seemed to have strolling out off her tongue totally unbidden.
"Oh no…" she heard Mavis mutter. "They can't… they can't have!"
The rest of the hall was deathly silent, as if everything and everyone in it had suddenly been buried five-hundred feet below the ground. Every eye was staring at Levy with mixed amounts of shock and incredulity - evidently whatever they had been expecting Levy to say, that had not been it. Even the red-haired scribe was staring with an open mouth, allowing ink to drop off the end of his quill and spatter across the parchment.
Eventually Fudge coughed slightly and said, "Excuse me? Where… did you say you were from?"
Levy's brain was struggling with what to say next but her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own and she said, "From another universe. We call that universe Earthland and I live in the city of Magnolia, in the country of Fiore."
"You expect us to believe something like that do you?"
"It's the truth. All the members of my guild that have been running around causing problems recently are from Earthland." Oh Gods, what was happening? She hadn't meant to say that either.
Fudge and Madam Bones took a glance at each other as the rest of the hall broke out into whispers, before Madam Bones cleared her throat and said, "If that fantastical story is true, how did you come to be here now?"
"I'm not entirely sure. Apparently it was something to do with a strange dragon attack that sent me and my friends from my universe to your own," Levy gushed out, even after she'd tried to keep her mouth shut and remain absolutely silent.
"I… see…" Madam Bones asked. "Are we sure she wasn't given a Babbling Beverage?"
"No, quite sure," Fudge was leaning forwards a little, his eyes bulging slightly. "It was definitely Veritaserum that was put in that water. I saw it administered myself. Everything that she's saying… is what she believes to be true."
"You drugged me!?" Levy gasped, shock radiating through her. Oh no! That wasn't fair!
Mavis' hand was over her mouth. She'd made a horrible miscalculation thanks to her lack of knowledge about this world. Truth serums did exist back in their world, but they were extremely rare, and were outlawed anyway. They certainly weren't allowed in trials. But evidently this world… had a very different set of rules.
What should she do? Should she reveal herself or would that just make it worse?
"It's possible there was a mistake in the brewing. Or that this girl is resistant to it. You know people can resist truth serum if they know how."
"Indeed they can… but I very much doubt that anyone seeking to lie to us would come up with a story like that unless they were incredibly stupid," Madam Bones murmured. "And I don't think this girl is stupid. She seems rather intelligent to me."
"P - Please… please understand… it wasn't our fault. We didn't ask to be here - it was a total accident," Levy blustered.
"Well… perhaps… this fantastical story… explains what your friend was talking about when he mentioned you were part of a guild of magic," said Fudge. "Magical guilds have not been around in our society since ancient times. Tell me about yours."
"Our guild's name is Fairy Tail," Levy felt tears appearing in her eyes as she continued to blurt out answers against her will, even though this was the kind of thing she would have said had she been asked about her guild anyway. "Guilds are where magic users, which we call mages in our world, can gather to find work when other people send requests to the guild for certain jobs with money rewards if the mage succeeds."
"You said the mark on your back is the mark of your guild? That means everyone in your guild has that mark?"
"Yes, and nobody else. It's forbidden by magical law for anyone to wear a guild mark unless they are part of that guild."
"You say that you have magic, yet you carry no wands. Do you not use them?"
"No, but we can use other magical items. We have two kinds of magic - Caster Type and Holder Type. Caster type magic is when the magic user channels magic out of their own bodies. Holder type is where they have to use special tools for the magic to work…"
"And what kind do you use?" Fudge seemed to be on a roll now.
"Caster Type."
"Which means you could actually still use your magic right now at this moment?"
"W… Well… my Solid Script Magic requires hand movements to pull it off so I can't really use it that well while chained like this… but I could still use it, yes…"
"Then that means… we haven't disarmed you at all. And your companion back in his cell can still use magic too," Fudge got to his feet amongst the hubbub that was breaking out. "Call in the extra security at once! Do it now!"
A couple of the Aurors hurriedly left the room, but Madam Bones choked a little and protested loudly. "Minister! Can't you see the poor girl is distressed and frightened? Bringing them in would only make the situation worse."
"Until we know exactly what we are dealing with here, I will not take any chances," Fudge growled forcefully.
"No, I really must protest. Don't you think this is a little extreme? She's just a girl that by all accounts doesn't seem to have done anything wrong…"
"We have to maintain our security as well as the security of others. If they can still use their magic that means they are still in a position where they could potentially harm us and I will not take the risk until we know exactly who they are and what they can do!"
"But we don't want to harm you," Levy screamed. "We want to be friends. We really don't want any trouble - we just want to find all of our friends again and then see if there's a way we can get back to…"
Suddenly the words died in Levy's throat and her entire body went rigid, stiffening up as if suddenly petrified. Her entire body suddenly felt as though it had been plunged into icy water, water that was seeping through her skin to chill her insides right down to the bone marrow. A horrible sense of despair began to form seemingly of its own accord in her gut, washing over her like a wave, as she felt every hair on her body stand up, her eyes wide, her mouth agape in a silent scream and feeling as if frost should be forming over her skin when it wasn't.
She faintly heard the heavy wooden doors behind her open again, and heard Mavis gasp slightly. Slowly, trembling without knowing why, Levy turned her head around to look towards the door out of the corner of her eye.
And she saw them. Four of them, gliding eerily, weightlessly, their towering bodies covered by long black cloaks that covered their entire form that billowed across the ground as if they didn't have feet, complete with a deep hood that covered their faces. Levy felt her eyes widening as they approached her, saw the Aurors backing away from them slightly as well, hearing the deathly quiet in the room as everything seemed to get darker and colder around her by the second.
Her heart was pounding in her chest but even it seemed to be feeling the cold that came with the creatures, and it practically stopped as it heard the horrible, unearthly rattling breaths that were coming from deep within the hoods of the… things…
And then a voice… in her head… a voice that wasn't hers, but that she remembered, creeping to the front of her mind unbidden…
"Are you Levy McGarden?"
"Yeah… I am. Who are you?" suddenly her own voice replied, but it sounded younger, a little more high-pitched.
"I'm… so sorry to have to tell you this… but its about your parents."
Levy froze up even more if that was at all possible. Oh gods, what was happening? This conversation… she knew this conversation… and it seemed to ring ever louder in her mind while everything else seemed to fog up, her vision going dark, struggling to see, but at the back of her eyes she could only seem to make out a fuzzy image of the moustached man from that day.
"There was an unfortunate incident at the ruins today. One of the passages that they were excavating… collapsed. There was a huge cave-in and… we spent hours searching for them, trying to dig them out, hoping they were alive but… I'm sorry. They didn't make it."
"….You're… you're lying…!"
"I wish I was, child. I wish I…"
"NO! NO, ITS NOT TRUE!" She could practically feel herself trying to charge past him out the door only to be held back, feel the tears that had started to pour their way down her face. "IT'S NOT TRUE! THEY'RE NOT DEAD! THEY'RE NOT! MUMMY! DADDY! COME BACK! COME BACK AND GET ME PLEASE! PLLLEAASSEEEEEE! MMUUUUMMMMYYYYYYYYYYY!"
...
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