"Fire! The potion shop on the corner is burning!" shouted a man as he ran past the bookstore, calling for help to put out the flames. A single wand didn't seem to be enough.
Harry, Hermione, and Daphne, who were playing inside the store, rushed out like curious little kids to see what was happening.
Wanda followed immediately, just in case.
Then they saw it. A massive burst of flame rose up and, for a moment, took the shape of a giant lizard made of fire before lunging at two other shops. That's when they realized the fire wasn't natural. The affected shops were separated from each other, with other buildings in between, yet only those were burning. Someone was directing the attack.
Meanwhile, several wizards had gathered, casting large amounts of water with spells to contain the flames.
"Aunt Wanda… what is that?" asked Hermione, frightened, as the fire lizard took form again and slammed into another shop.
"It's a spell called Fiendfyre. Hard to control… and, of course, very hard to put out," Wanda replied seriously, without taking her eyes off one of the rooftops. There stood the culprit, directing the flames with his wand.
The man felt her gaze and turned in her direction. It was Daphne's bodyguard. Without wasting time, he Disapparated.
"So someone's attacking those places on purpose?" asked Harry, still unable to take his eyes off the fire.
"Yes. Maybe they messed with the wrong person," said Wanda with apparent calm.
Although, in truth, her thoughts were more direct. Or rather… more violent.
"Magic is amazing," Harry said in awe.
Several minutes passed before, with collective effort, the wizards managed to control the fire. The news spread quickly: a pyromaniac was taking revenge on stores owned by the Flint family.
And not just in Diagon Alley. Fires also broke out in other magical communities.
It was the topic of conversation for an entire week.
But by the third day, Wanda was no longer paying attention. She went on with her usual work, calm, as if nothing had happened.
Until one morning, just as she was opening the bookstore, visitors with bad intentions arrived.
Four hooded men entered the shop with wands in hand, pointing them at everyone like hostages.
"You. Walk to the storage room. Now. Or you die," one of them ordered Wanda.
"Sigh…" Wanda sighed as she looked at the idiots who had just entered. The moment she did, the attackers opened fire.
She raised a hand, and the green spells froze in mid-air, suspended as if time had stopped.
"Doesn't look like this is a robbery," Wanda murmured, as the hooded men stared at their own Avada Kedavra curses floating in the air.
One of them tried to attack again, but Wanda stopped him before he could move his wand. Then, she froze all the others.
She then focused on one of them.
The man's memories appeared before Wanda as a series of images projected directly into her mind.
A short servant, dressed entirely in black, approached them with a bag of gold.
"I need you to capture this witch. But be careful, she's quite strong. If you can't capture her, just kill her. Though the master said he wanted to make her his servant… a filthy half-blood like her shouldn't step foot in our noble mansion. Then find her son and kill him too. Leave no witnesses."
The servant dropped the bag and quickly left, hiding his face.
Wanda recognized him. He was one of the men she had seen accompanying the so-called Lord Flint.
She exited the assassin's mind and looked at him coldly. The hooded man's eyes were full of terror.
"You're not wizards," Wanda declared"not as an observation, but as an absolute fact. Then she added firmly, "And you will remember nothing about me."
As she finished speaking, blue bubbles began to emerge from the attackers' bodies. They felt something draining from within, but couldn't even scream"Wanda had them completely trapped.
The bubbles burst like soap. The attackers' eyes rolled back, and they collapsed unconscious, with no memory of what had happened.
Even the two customers returned to shopping as if nothing had occurred.
With a gesture, Wanda sent the attackers toward a wall of the bookstore, which opened as if obeying her will, revealing a hidden alley. Then, the wall closed again, as if nothing had ever happened.
At that moment, Loise came out from the storage room.
"Wanda, I heard some noise. Did something happen?" she asked, confused.
"No. Just a few lost people, but they're gone now," Wanda replied in her usual tone. "Is it okay if I step out for a moment? I forgot something."
"Sure, but come back soon. Even though we don't have many customers these days, people will soon start buying school supplies for the Hogwarts kids," Loise said calmly.
"Alright, it won't take long," Wanda replied, leaving the shop still in her work clothes.
And she was right. It took her almost twenty minutes to return, also bringing breakfast for Loise. The two of them sat and ate together, peacefully.
…
"The Watcher showed up again," Moody reported, pointing at the man who was screaming like a lunatic, demanding his magic be returned.
"My magic! Give it back! I'm from the Flint family! They'll find you! You have to give it back!" he shouted furiously, writhing while tied to a chair after having tried to attack an Auror. He was completely out of control. His voice suddenly broke.
"Please… give me back my magic… Without it I won't be a wizard… I won't be a pure-blood…"
His sobs echoed like a broken melody down the hallway of the headquarters.
"Is he connected to the other four?" Moody asked seriously, while his magical eye spun without pause.
"We're investigating, sir. The four are known criminals who frequent Knockturn Alley. And some witnesses saw this man in the same area. We might find more clues if we keep digging," the Auror replied formally.
"Tsk. Trash like this isn't worth ten minutes of my time… but the Ministry keeps nagging like bloody trolls. One more headache and I'm retiring from this damn job," Mad-Eye growled with clear irritation.
"Sir, we could ask the employees at the bookstore. Maybe they saw something."
"Let's go. I'll ask them myself," Moody said, spinning on his heel as his cane struck the ground with each step.
He had lost a leg a few months ago in combat against a dark wizard, and he still hadn't fully adjusted to the magical prosthesis.
After a couple of minutes, he and Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt arrived at Flourish & Blotts.
As soon as they walked through the door, they saw three children sitting behind the counter as if playing at being shopkeepers… though in reality, they were being punished. Beyond them, a red-haired woman was tidying the reading area, which was covered in fallen books.
Moody observed her intently.
Wanda was levitating several books without uttering a single incantation or using a wand. She did it with such skill and natural ease that it was unsettling.
"Wanda, there's a customer with a weird eye," said Daphne, eyeing Moody's spinning eye with obvious curiosity.
"Daphne, that's rude!" Harry quickly said.
"You have to apologize to the man with the weird eye or Wanda will punish us again," he added innocently.
"I don't know why I was punished! I was reading! You were the ones who knocked over the cabinet!" Hermione complained, clearly upset.
"It was Harry! He got scared of a little cockroach!" Daphne teased mischievously.
"That's not true! It was you! You bumped into me and made me fall into the bookshelf!" Harry protested indignantly.
"It was both of you! Not me!" Hermione snapped, crossing her arms.
While the children argued, Moody"who had little patience for childish drama"began to scowl.
Luckily, Wanda stepped in.
"Alright, stop fighting. Go sit on the couches and read."
"Okay!" the three replied in unison, jumping up and running toward the reading area, where the house-elf Laki brought them snacks and milk.
"What do you need?" Wanda asked, looking directly at Moody and Shacklebolt, who clearly weren't there to buy books.
"I'll get straight to the point. The guys we found next door… are they connected to you?" Moody asked bluntly.
"Sir…" Kingsley tried to intervene, but Moody raised a hand to silence him, while his magical eye locked onto Wanda… or rather, tried to.
The eye spun violently, as if trying to comprehend something impossible. The energy emanating from Wanda was so intense and stable it seemed to defy the very laws of magic.
That eye, built to see the invisible, was nearly bursting from the magical overload it was trying to decode. The pain Moody felt was so intense that, for a moment, he wished the damned thing would just stop working.
And then Wanda raised a hand.
Snap.
She snapped her fingers.
Moody's eye stopped. Dead still.
"It was me," Wanda said calmly, her voice as tranquil as a still lake, her smile barely perceptible.
"Why do you ask?"