The door to the phone booth opened with a jerk, and Felix stepped into the gilded foyer, making his way to the information desk.
“Hello, may I ask where Meeting Room Number Two is?”
A middle-aged blonde witch looked absently at the badge on his chest, the bulletin board behind her had various signs posted on it, but these were obstructed by an exaggerated notice, “Felix Hap … Oh, Mr. Hap, Mr. Scrimgeour explained the situation, please follow me –”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I haven’t registered my wand.”
The witch said warmly, “That is not a necessary procedure, my dear. I hear you are an expert in muggle studies? I have a copy of Simple Spells to Muddled Muggles at home, but I haven’t read it much to tell the difference between good and bad … Little Tim always makes a mess of the house.”
She led Felix to the elevator area and glanced at the floor, “We’re going to the third floor – oh, look out!” As she spoke, a flock of paper planes flew into the elevator along the gap in the golden grate door, and she explained, “These are the notes the Ministry uses to deliver messages-”
Once inside the elevator, the paper planes hovered slowly against the ceiling, coloured in a light purple with a “Ministry of Magic” stamp on the side of their wings.
“- We used to communicate with owls, you can imagine the air quality here … and the feces problem, the tables, and chairs got messed up, after we switched to these little things, the ministry’s cleaning work was reduced by a third. .”
“Excuse me, I’m not sure of your name yet?” Felix had to interrupt the rhythm of her speech.
“Rae Defina, where was I, oh yes -” she began to tell how her five-year-old son had managed the feat of drawing the entire Quidditch League team logo with a single bag of flour, “he will lead the national team to victory.” She said proudly.
“Ms. Defina, I heard that the L.C.A comic book publisher recently came out with a new set of comic books that are very popular.”
“Yes, I haven’t paid much attention to it, what’s it called?”
“It’s called-”
The elevator stopped, and two wizards came in from outside, one is a brown short-bearded male wizard with a scarlet face, wearing a black wizard’s robe; the other one is an old man with white hair and beard, he is wearing a rough grey trench coat with a brown vest inside.
The old man tilted his head slightly sideways, “Amos, there’s something wrong with your procedure, drastically wrong. And you keep going around in circles, the whole time, I can see that Tina is teaching me a lot.”
Amos, the male wizard in the wizard’s robe, said uneasily, “I know you are very concerned about the survival of the hippogriff, but this matter doesn’t really have something to do with you, does it? You don’t even own it.”
“I can’t just ignore it because it has an owner, I’m just fighting for the legal rights that belong to it.”
“But you’re retired, Mr. Scamander.”
“In theory, I just stopped going out that much as before…, but I didn’t stop working, if you knew how much work I had to do in a day, you wouldn’t think like this.”
“You’re already on your 52nd revised edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, so why don’t you complete another edition?”
The older man looked at the other man’s side of the face, “I do have that plan, but– we’ve gone off-topic–again, I’ve been commissioned by my friends–which also includes three affectionate little ones — to question the work processes of the Ministry of Magic. I don’t think you hired me as a consultant to keep me quiet.”
“Of course! Many of the Ministry’s magical creature sanctuaries need your advice.”
The elevator door opened, and the two men stepped out –
“Mr. Hap, we’ve arrived as well.” Defina the receptionist said, and Felix bowed slightly, “Thank you, is it on this floor, I can find it myself.”
He took a few steps out and turned back, “BTW, the name of that book is The Strange Adventures of Mick the Little Wizard, and it’s available at several bookshops.”
Felix followed the two wizards and watched as they stopped in front of a spacious office. He looked up and read it, “Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures”.
The male wizard in the black wizard’s robe entered the office, leaving the old man waiting outside, and Felix approached, “Mr. Newton Scamander?”
The old man tilted his head and glanced over him, “You are …”
“Felix Hap, Professor of Ancient Runes at Hogwarts.” Felix introduced himself, “We just met at the elevator.”
Newt’s eyes fell on him, “Yes, yes, that’s right … Mr. Hap, I’ve heard of you, young Rolf has mentioned you.”
Felix said, “I was very interested in your research when I was in school and collected some newspaper clippings, but unfortunately I didn’t find much of it.”
“I did publish a few articles in my early years, which were not taken seriously at the time -” Newt said, “that was a long time ago.”
“For a while in school, I was obsessed with how to deal with them, making sure I didn’t get myself hurt if I met one.” Felix said.
Newt’s eyes lit up, “That’s what I researched, rescuing, nurturing, protecting … I also taught other wizards to understand them instead of being fearful-”
“So, Potter and the others eventually found you?” Felix said, “I overheard a few sentences in the elevator, and I assume you were discussing the case of the Hogwarts Hippogriff that attacked the students.”
“Potter? Harry Potter?”
“Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and of course, the center of the vortex, Rubeus Hagrid and his Buckbeak.”
Newt nodded, “That would be correct, they wrote to tell me that a Hippogriff is treated unfairly and implored me to come forward. To be honest, I’ve been away from the Ministry of Magic for many years, and it’s not quite the same as when I left. Sorry – it’s a lot different.”
He tilted his head in a gesture of disappointment, “Tina advised me to write in peace, but there are things you see that you can’t just pretend you didn’t see – and if the horned serpents’ horns start to glow, you have to respond – you know what I mean?”
“We can’t stand the injustice that is happening right in front of us.”
“Yes, you summed it up very well – oh, just a moment, I need to solve some small trouble -” Newt quickly reached into his pocket and took out a silver pocket watch, which abruptly expanded and looked like it would soon explode.
“Mr. Scamander–” Felix stared, casting a human shield charm on himself.
“Don’t worry, it’s not broken–” Newt said hastily, and the front cover of the silver pocket watch popped open violently, from which a pink nose resembling a duck’s beak poked out, and the next second, a palm-sized Niffler burst out of the pocket watch and crawled nimbly on top of Newt.
The next moment, two more Niffler appeared, one of which looked at the smooth lid of the pocket watch and groomed its black soft fur, while the other seemed to have taken a fancy to the silver bracelet.
Felix curiously sized them up, a dark, furry Niffler somewhere between a mole and a platypus, with an uncanny fervour for shiny things.
“Hey! Valen, Sal, Thorpe, settle down.” Newt murmured as he nimbly grabbed Niffler, which is standing on his shoulder and struggling to pull the silver button, then he shoved it back into his pocket watch. He tossed the other two in and closed the front cover.
Newt looked around, to see if someone noticed it, then he stuffed the pocket watch back into his pocket and winked at Felix: “In theory, I can’t bring my magical creature friends … but they’ve only been born for a short time and I just can’t be assured.”
———-
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