nightseer

Explosions


Yumiko’s job was a dull one. She watched the shelves, marked any changes in the monitoring devices, sent out the occasional warning, and made the once in a blue moon visit to a surprised muggle family years before their child was supposed to start magical schooling. There were the very rare times she sent an emergency memo to a case worker when a family had a severe negative reaction, but Yumiko didn’t like to think about those until she had to. She had a hard enough time controlling her temper without tempting fate.

Looking up at the clock, Yumiko sighed softly. This day was proving to be beyond dull. It was mind numbingly boring. There hadn’t been one single disturbance, not even from the children who were shopping for wands for the upcoming school year—muggle born children never could resist the urge to try their wands out once, just to see if magic was really real.

Yumiko sighed again. What she wouldn’t give for something to happen.

‘Be careful what you wish for’ is a muggle saying, but everyone can use wish magic and the word wish isn’t required to call on it.

It started off as a delicate ping-ping that sent Yumiko running down the aisles, looking for the source. The sound kept growing as she got closer to the device. By the time she found the right aisle, the pinging was gone, replaced with a constant screech. Yumiko cast a muffling charm on her ears, put her hands over that, and raced down the aisle to the glowing and screaming Accidental Magic Monitor.

AMM’s were typically very imprecise unless they were set to monitor a specific child. Most of Yumiko’s time was in fact spent figuring out which child was responsible before sending off a warning or leaving to meet with the parents of said child to explain why children were not allowed to use magic during the holidays.

The AMM currently screaming its magical lungs out was far from the typical AMM. It was designed to monitor accidental magic and to monitor the child in question for any magic cast on the child as well. The thing had driven Yumiko nuts for the first year after the child’s guardian had brought the young boy in and paid for the upgraded device, which went off every time the boy was taken to a Healer, something that had happened quite often during that first year as the damage the boy’s first guardians had done was healed.

But the constant alarms had eventually slowed to the standard three month check up, and Black always sent an owl to her to warn her when those were. After the prank on the boy’s sixth birthday and her personally visiting their apartment to chew the man out, there hadn’t been another alarm beyond the boy’s visits to his Healer.

Yumiko stared at the silver device in shock and anger. It wasn’t an attack and it definitely wasn’t a standard visit to the boy’s Healer.

This was an explosion of accidental magic from a very powerful child in front of a muggle child.

Growling under her breath about stupid males, Yumiko flicked her wand several times, sending off a Patronus memo to her department head and summoning her bag, before Apparating directly to the site.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

For Yumiko, it was a simple fact of life that all men were idiots. It was just an accepted law of nature in her mind and nothing would change that. The only difference was how much stupid God had given the males she encountered.

Three minutes into Black’s babbled explanation of what happened and Yumiko was positive Black had received five times the normal amount of stupid. The one good thing Black had going for him at the moment was he hadn’t asked her out on a date yet like he had the first time he had walked into her office. If he did and proved he had six times the normal amount, not five, Yumiko was sure she would give into her urge to hex the moron.

“Just shut up! You knew this would happen and you still didn’t bring him to the Ministry so you could use one of the wards rooms.” She poked him with her wand when he opened his mouth, and smirked when he held his hands up in surrender. Then she noticed how he edging backwards to where she had knocked his wand earlier. “Don’t even think about it. I don’t care if you warded your apartment when you moved in; setting him off like this was still a monumentally stupid thing to do. That boy has the power to blow this whole block up!”

Yumiko knew her temper was the reason she was in the Accidental Magic Department of Magical Children’s Services and not a case worker, but when she was confronted with stupidity like Black’s, it was difficult to ignore her need to scream.

“Come to think of it, why are you in a muggle neighborhood? Don’t you know how dangerous this is? What if some muggle caught you practicing magic? What if your apartment wasn’t soundproofed and the muggles had heard this?” She waved her wand around to indicate the mess of broken glass, wood, fabric, metal, and stuffing strewn across the apartment. “Do you have any idea how much work that would make for me?” she demanded, glaring at him for all she was worth.

Black matched her glare for glare, and crossed his arms as he stared her down. “Do you have any idea who my godson is? It’s safer for him to live in a muggle neighborhood. If we lived with wizards, we’d never get a moments peace in between dark wizards trying to kill him and idiotic fangirls beating down our door. We had enough trouble in London with that and Dumbledore. I’m not repeating the experience here.”

“Oh please,” Yumiko scoffed, rolling her eyes and vaguely aware the two boys were watching them argue, the underage wizard still pale and shaky as his friend tried to push him back towards the bedrooms and away from her. “You expect me to believe you were harassed by Dumbledore because the boy is named after the Potter boy? Everyone knows the kid is in hiding with his aunt. Try again, Black.”

Black smirked at her. Smirked. At her. Yumiko fingered her wand, debating what hex would be best to knock some of the stupid out of him. She had no illusions she was capable of completely removing the stupid—men were far too attached to their stupidity.

“Not named after. Is.” He walked over to an exploded filling cabinet, dug through what was left, and pulled free what was clearly a spelled file folder as it was still in one piece. He flipped through it before pulling out a piece of parchment and handing it to her.

“Harry James Potter, born July thirty first, nineteen eighty at three twenty seven in the morning. Lily broke James’s hand halfway through popping Prongslet out. I had to take over hand squeezing duty until another Healer fixed James up and sent him back in. I still have scars from her nails…”

Yumiko paled as she read the birth certificate, hearing Black’s babbling but not registering it. The Potter boy lived in her district. Hers. Not Rukia’s, not Akio’s. No, the brat lived in hers, and Black had not once mentioned or asked about warding or security companies in all the times he had been to her office. Imagining the worst, Yumiko shoved a bit of magic into her eyes to activate her family’s magic sight and looked at the apartment, really looked at it.

Nothing. There was nothing beyond magic absorbing wards and basic home security spells. No secrecy spells. No notice not. No muggle repelling charms—she had to admit those would have set off alarms since this was a muggle neighborhood, but still, the moron was playing games with his godson’s life.

“Have you lost your mind, you inbred, pureblood fool!” she screeched, knocking the file from his hands and scattering papers everywhere. She advanced on him, poking him with her sparking wand every other word. “You have the Boy Who Lived in your care and you don’t have one ward against dark magic in place. You don’t have spells against reporters! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Black opened his mouth to reply, then snapped it shut, frowning at the hallway behind her. “Where did the boys go?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Yusuke barely got his hands out in time to stop himself from face planting into the floor when Harry suddenly squeaked and ran to his bedroom. He blinked at the torn up carpet and padding for a moment, then stood up and ran after his friend.

Yusuke was a little surprised Harry had taken off, but he was more surprised it had taken as long as it had. He wasn’t old enough or mature enough to truly understand, but as a child of a broken home whose mother drank more than she slept some weeks, Yusuke instinctively recognized when someone else had their own family problems. Harry was cool with Sirius and Keiko’s dad, but anytime Keiko’s mom raised her voice like the strange woman just had or they were around a really heavy weight man, Harry got twitchy. Yusuke thought it had something to do with the people Harry had lived with before Sirius and pretended Harry’s issues didn’t exist most of the time.

Pretending it didn’t exist was exactly what Yusuke was going to do now. It was the only way his was going to get some answers.

Everything in the apartment was ripped apart except for walls, them and the beds. Yusuke figured it had something to do with magic and he was a little upset Harry hadn’t told him before…Okay, he was royally pissed off Harry hadn’t told him before, but he’d try to wait until Harry explained why. He was more concerned with making sure Harry didn’t have another fit. Yusuke didn’t know if Harry would have enough control to not blow him up.

Although, Yusuke did have to admit if he had the ability to blow stuff up and someone had told him one of his parents’ friends was responsible for their deaths, he would have blown everything up, too.

Even with that thought rolling in his head, it was difficult for Yusuke to walk into Harry’s room with his normal cocky walk but he tried. Harry, who was curled up in the corner farthest from the door, flinched and curled up a little more. Yusuke felt guilty. He didn’t know why he felt guilty, Harry was the one who could blow stuff up and had scared years off Yusuke’s life, but he did.

“So...” Yusuke looked around the room, seriously awed at the sheer destruction of everything, and decided being a smartass about Harry being a walking bomb was a bad idea light years past the time he had eaten Keiko’s clay and worm sweet buns. “Magic, huh?”

It was a lame thing to say, but it got a hesitant nod and a tiny, insecure smile from Harry. Yusuke walked over, being as casual as he could. He cleared some junk out of the way and sat down on the floor next to Harry. He nudged him with his shoulder in a friendly way, silently saying they were cool even though Yusuke wasn’t sure if they were.

Yusuke sat there in awkward silence, not knowing what to say but knowing one of them needed to say something. It was like the time they had fought at school and then were locked in a storage closet via Keiko until they worked things out, and just like that time, Yusuke didn’t want to be the first one to speak. This time it wasn’t from pride; no, this time Harry owed him an explanation.

“My aunt and uncle hate magic,” Harry whispered, making Yusuke jolt slightly in surprise. “Th-they told me it wasn’t real and punished me any time I talked about weird stuff that sounded magicy. I-I didn’t know why, but they-they…” He sniffed and wiped his face with his sleeve, and Yusuke realized he was crying.

Yusuke shoulder bumped him again. Harry stiffened at the contact, and Yusuke muttered something Sirius had taking to frowning at him for and wrapped an arm around Harry in a hug.

Suddenly, Harry had his arms wrapped around Yusuke's waist and was crying and babbling everything out in one huge rush. Yusuke’s arms automatically wrapped around him and rubbed his back even as Yusuke thought about calling him a girly-boy and pushing him off—he was heavy and Yusuke was pissed about Harry keeping secrets. But Yusuke sat there and listened and put the pieces together. All of Harry’s little oddities, like how he got uncomfortable when teachers praised his work or when Sirius bought him something and why he didn’t like playing tag and hide-and-go-seek, started to make sense to Yusuke.

Yusuke wondered if it was possible to send someone a paint bomb without the postal service catching on. He was too small to kick this Vernon guy’s ass now, but he could prank the hell out of him. He would have to talk to Sirius. He needed this guy’s address and there had to be some really cool magic pranks he could use, too.