After graduating from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Mafalda Hopkirk secured a coveted, if dreadfully mundane, position within the Ministry of Magic. She currently served as the assistant to the Director of the Office for the Prevention of Misuse of Magic.
Her daily life was a monotonous stream of paperwork. Upon receiving an automated violation alert, Hopkirk's primary duty was to act as the bureaucratic messenger, drafting and dispatching the resulting warning letter to the alleged transgressor, meticulously citing the specific law that had been violated.
Only in cases deemed particularly egregious—serious breaches of the Statute of Secrecy or repeated dangerous magic—would she be authorized to notify the emergency response Auror teams for immediate action.
Today, however, the dull routine was shattered by a piece of parchment far more disruptive than any simple violation notice.
She sat in her cramped cubicle, the flickering gas lamp on her desk casting long, tired shadows on her face, rereading the reply. It wasn't the usual panicked denial or meek apology. It was an exceptionally articulate, point-by-point rebuttal.
The sender was Albert Anderson, a mere student who had just finished his first year at Hogwarts.
In his precise, elegantly sloping handwriting, Anderson confidently asserted that the Ministry was operating under a fundamental error. He provided airtight alibis: he had been on a family holiday in France, was completely wandless at the time of the alleged incident, and stated definitively that he possessed neither the theoretical knowledge nor the magical power to perform a high-level charm like the Summoning Spell (Accio).
He pointed out, with almost unsettling clarity, that the trace must have been a catastrophic systemic failure, triggered by the original, clumsy caster (whose name he did not use, but clearly implied was the rightful owner of the magical object). He concluded with a courteous yet firm demand for an official retraction and a written explanation for the error.
Hopkirk didn't for a moment believe the boy was lying. The evidence, or lack thereof, supported him entirely. Could a first-year student, only just learning the Wingardium Leviosa Charm, suddenly execute a powerful, complex spell like Accio—a spell that sometimes tripped up even Ministry apprentices? The idea was preposterous.
The Office for the Prevention of Misuse of Magic had undoubtedly made a mistake. It wasn't the first time the Ministry's tracing mechanism had coughed up a false positive, and Hopkirk wasn't shocked by the concept. But the resulting problem was entirely hers.
"This shouldn't be my problem," she muttered, drumming her quill on the desk.
Hopkirk, despite her title as "Assistant," was fundamentally a glorified paper-pusher. She was authorized to process compliance, not to investigate or overturn an official ruling. Her mandate was to send letters, not to engage in highly detailed, potentially embarrassing correspondence with a precocious minor who knew the law almost as well as she did.
Yet, she did have a choice, an informal power in the low-level bureaucracy: she could either forward the reply to her boss, the current Director of the Office Against the Abuse of Magic, or she could simply let the letter "disappear"—tossing it directly into the bin dedicated to non-essential, unaddressed complaints.
Her boss, a man consumed by larger, politically charged issues, would likely treat this highly localized, highly technical error with supreme apathy. He probably wouldn't even read the first paragraph before discarding it.
Mafalda Hopkirk was seconds away from exercising her silent administrative veto. She was already leaning toward the waste bin when a cold thread of memory stopped her. She recalled the fiasco from the previous year: the absurd, embarrassing incident involving a simple enchanted silk thread that had blown out of proportion.
A colleague, Natley, who had tried to bury that initial complaint, ended up being publicly exposed by the Daily Prophet and narrowly avoided being shunted off to the notoriously unpleasant Centaur Liaison Office.
"It just doesn't feel safe to throw it away," she sighed, rubbing her temples. The political fallout of ignoring a provably innocent and articulate wizard—especially one who was clearly capable of causing a stir—was a risk she wasn't prepared to take. "My job is to process. Let the Director handle the fallout."
Hopkirk placed the letter into the Urgent Inquiries tray on the Director's desk.
The outcome was exactly what she predicted: her superior didn't spare the parchment a second glance, merely sliding it off the tray and onto his already overflowing desk. By the next morning, Hopkirk saw the parchment crumpled and discarded in the bin, the matter dismissed as negligible.
What Hopkirk couldn't have known was that this exact sequence of events was precisely what Albert Anderson had counted on. He had deliberately leveraged the Ministry's known arrogance and systemic apathy to create a documented, discarded, and therefore perfectly deniable paper trail of his own innocence. Hopkirk, in her attempt to avoid a minor scandal, had unwittingly provided the first piece of kindling for the fire Albert planned to light.
Back at his home, Albert had set up a small, temporary study space, his attention divided between his remaining summer homework and the incoming post. He was meticulously categorizing the letters he'd received.
He opened the Weasley twins' reply first, which included a handwritten note from their father, Arthur Weasley, appended to the bottom.
"Fred and George send their deepest sympathies," Albert read, translating the twins' characteristic flair for dramatic empathy. Their main point, relayed from Mr. Weasley, was clear:
"...My father thinks this entire matter—the warning and the letter—is entirely trivial, Albert. He says you should simply write a brief, polite note to the Director explaining the situation, and it will disappear into the Ministry's vast, dusty filing system. He suggests you don't waste any more thought on such a small bureaucratic hiccup."
The final lines, written in the twins' conspiratorial scrawl, added: "By the way, Albert, Dad is absolutely obsessed with the yellow rubber ducky you sent him. He keeps asking us what its 'precise functional purpose' is in the Muggle world. We told him it's a ceremonial bath companion, but he thinks there must be more to it."
Albert chuckled softly at the thought of the twins' father, the ultimate Muggle artefact enthusiast, mystified by a simple toy.
"A small matter," Albert murmured, setting the letter aside. "Yes, entirely small for those with the privilege of indifference." Mr. Weasley, being an adult and a Ministry employee, simply saw the warning as disposable paper.
He picked up the second reply, this one from Professor Brod. The tone here was professorial and pragmatic. Brod also largely concurred with Mr. Weasley, advising that the matter was unlikely to progress beyond a simple warning, especially since Albert was known to be a careful and gifted student.
However, Professor Brod's letter contained the truly valuable intelligence Albert sought.
"...Regarding your query on the Society of Extraordinary Pharmacists, Albert, they are a preeminent organization, highly influential across Europe, tracing their lineage back to the medieval Guilds. Their Gold Card, while ostentatious, is a highly respected mark of expertise. It functions essentially as a license for restricted goods. Losing it, especially for someone like Hector Dagworth, is not a trivial matter. Mr. Dagworth, by the way, is somewhat of a legend—known for his excellent, though notoriously volatile, temper and an almost fanatical obsession with purity of ingredients."
Albert placed Professor Brod's letter neatly on top of the twins' reply. He picked up the smooth, heavy Gold Card again, running his finger over the sharp, cold edges.
"Trivial, you say?" Albert whispered to the empty room, looking from the discarded Ministry letter to the solid gold artifact. "The Ministry thinks a false trace is trivial. Mr. Weasley thinks a legal warning is trivial. But I guarantee that for Hector Dagworth, a missing Gold Card, which is his license to practice his fanatic obsession, is the absolute antithesis of trivial."
Albert's strategy was now refined: he wouldn't pursue the Ministry directly; he would simply wait for the owner to pursue him. When Dagworth eventually located him, Albert would present his official, now-discarded Ministry warning as evidence. He could then argue that the Ministry's faulty tracing system had mistaken Dagworth's Accio for his counter-magic, confirming Dagworth as the true reckless caster and Albert as the innocent victim of both the spell and the bureaucratic error.
This single incident—the lost card—was the perfect vector to expose the weakness of the Ministry's tracing technology and establish a legal precedent for his future, necessary use of non-traceable, wandless magic.
Albert set the letters aside and turned back to his mountain of summer homework. The assignments weren't intellectually challenging; they were merely time-consuming, requiring him to transcribe answers onto the required yards of parchment. He had deliberately avoided them during his French holiday, not wishing to taint the vacation with academic rigor.
He turned his focus instead to the stack of ancient runes texts gifted by McDougal. He wasn't simply reading; he was diving into a deep, meditative study of the geometric and linguistic structures of the old magic.
As he worked, focusing on the principles of Abjuration and Containment Runes—the very same protective charms woven into the Gold Card—he felt a familiar, subtle internal shift. It wasn't the brute-force rush of gaining experience points through simple practice, but a deep, foundational structural change in his magical core.
He felt the level on his Runic Magic skill quietly inch closer to Level 3.
This, Albert mused, was why he preferred the feeling of research over simple level-grinding. Each deciphered concept, each successfully traced line of ancient magical logic, gave him a profound, satisfying sense of accomplishment.
It was the success of creation and understanding, not just acquisition. The process of studying these books was directly fueling his magical expertise in a way that mere rote memorization never could.
Just a little more, and I'll have enough foundational knowledge to start truly experimenting with advanced runic arrays, he thought, making a mental connection between the Gold Card's simple Abjuration charm and the complex, self-adjusting runes he was studying.
A soft, insistent rap broke his concentration.
The door eased open, and Nia poked her head around the frame, her eyes bright with suppressed excitement. She was practically vibrating.
"Dad says you have to come to bed now," she announced with the authority of the family's messenger. "He wants an early night for everyone. Tomorrow is the big Diagon Alley shopping trip, and he doesn't want you tired."
Albert smiled, stretching lazily and trying to stifle a yawn that refused to be contained. "I hear you, messenger. The lure of new spell books and cauldrons is strong."
He looked down at the large, orange-ish feline still occupying the corner cushion. "Tom, time to move! Bedtime!"
Nia walked over and physically lifted the cat. She promptly set him down on the floor with a soft thud. "Walk by yourself, you lazy thing! You've gotten so heavy I can barely hold you anymore."
"That's why I'm telling you, Nia," Albert said, rubbing the cat's head sympathetically. "Tom needs to start an intensive exercise regime. His dignity is suffering from this unseemly lack of athleticism."
Tom let out a weak, offended mew but then, in a clear demonstration of understanding the stakes, he trotted obediently after Nia.
"Go on, little sister. Rest up for the big trip," Albert said, watching them go.
Albert turned back, closed the ink bottle, capped his fountain pen, and straightened the stack of completed parchment. The remaining homework could wait. He glanced at the window. The sky was a deep, velvety indigo.
Just as he was standing up, his sleek, well-fed owl, Sera, returned from her late-night hunt. She landed silently on her perch, having returned with no prey—a habit she had learned to respect since Albert explicitly forbade her from bringing dead mice into the house.
"Good night, Sera," Albert murmured, looking at the silent owl. He gave the night sky a final glance, covered his mouth to stifle one last, satisfying yawn, and finally retired to his own room, anticipating the chaotic, wonderful immersion of Diagon Alley the next morning.