Chapter Three

The White Council

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McGonagall led Harry onto the farm, brushing aside its creaking gate. As Harry walked through the gate, he felt an uncomfortable pressure buzzing against his temples. The pressure vanished with another step.

Though the sun hadn’t reached the top of the sky here, the air felt thick and hot, sticky with humidity that Little Whinging’s drought lacked. A gravel road crunched under his trainers on their way up to the house. Harry felt a light sweat trickle from his brow. He wiped it irritably, and wondered if he was to be dragged around like luggage for the rest of the summer.

The farm had all the hallmarks Harry would expect: a silo and a barn sitting opposite the house’s face, and a chicken coop not far from there, and a tractor and pickup truck sat in between. But as he looked, he noticed an odd quality about the farm. Its barn and coop were made of wood as rotten as the fence’s, and rust had all but eaten the silo. The tractor had tall weeds growing around it. Only the house and truck looked at all functional, and then only in comparison to the remaining fixtures of the farm.

McGonagall led him through a defunct vegetable patch to the front porch. She ascended its creaky steps and rapped sharply on the door. Her wand, Harry noticed, had disappeared back into her robes, and her posture had relaxed. Harry hastily stuffed his own wand back in his pocket before the door cracked open.

A single eye peered through the crack. “I thought it would be you,” a gruff voice said in an accent Harry had never before heard. “You never were one to give up easy.”

“As I recall, you used to find that charming,” McGonagall replied. There was a musical tinge in her voice that Harry couldn’t recall ever hearing from her. It was certainly a tone she never took with any Gryffindor. “Might we come in?” she asked of the eye.

“Not so fast.” The eye narrowed. Harry could see years’ worth of distrust weight heavily on the man’s gaze. In an even gruffer tone, he demanded, “When did we first meet?”

McGonagall drew herself upright. Her pleasant tone faded into a more familiar lecture. “Glasgow,” she answered, “shortly after the war. You were quite rude, and so I hexed you with—“

“Enough.”

The door flew open, revealing a man roughly Harry’s height. He possessed thinning white hair and wrinkles that put him close to McGonagall’s age. His faded flannel shirt and jeans stretched over a paunch that hid his belt buckle. A staff of polished wood sat in his hand, its end resting on the floor. His eyes glimmered with the energy of a much younger soul as they fell full on McGonagall’s smile.

“C’mon in, Minnie,” he said. “Anything to avoid hearing that tired old saw again.”

He stepped aside for McGonagall to enter. As Harry followed, he felt the man’s gaze press heavily upon him. The man examined him with open suspicion, though his slight smile never flinched. “So, this is the kid, huh?” he asked.

McGonagall nodded. “This is Harry Potter,” she said, and added with a pointed glare at Harry, “a student at Hogwarts. Harry, this is Ebenezer McCoy.”

Harry’s hand disappeared into McCoy’s handshake. It was numbing, but mercifully brief, as McCoy then led them both into the farmhouse.

Inside, the farmhouse struck Harry as strange in its ordinariness. His summers with the Dursleys had kept Harry grounded in his sense of wonder for the wizarding world. But the dim hallway welcomed him with unmoving pictures hung on its walls, and a chipped grandfather clock at the end. It seemed as ordinary as any other Muggle house he had ever visited. That alone made it bizarre by wizarding standards.

They adjourned to a sitting room with large, friendly windows that faced the gravel drive. Harry gingerly lowered himself next to McGonagall on a sofa that looked too old to recall an era in which it could have been deemed fashionable. Everything about the farmhouse felt that way to Harry. The walls’ white paint had yellowed, and the furniture had faded, and Harry spied a light coat of dust covering the mantle’s knickknacks that would have sent his aunt into conniptions. The whole house had aged in a comfortable, relaxed fashion that set its occupants at ease.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” McCoy said from the doorway. “I’ll be back in a minute with drinks.”

The uncomfortable silence that followed made Harry squirm. He looked over at McGonagall, who stared idly around the room, her eyes distant with memory. “If he’s an old friend of yours, I don’t see why you need me here, Professor,” he told her softly, archly. “Doesn’t he want the post?”

McGonagall looked slowly to Harry. A tight smile pursed her lips. “I am counting on you to be your irascible self, Potter, nothing more.”

McCoy walked back into the room and passed out three bottles before settling into a patchwork easy chair whose upholstery matched his shirt. Harry noticed that only he had received root beer, while the bottles that McCoy and McGonagall had were unmarked and home-bottled. “So, what’s the occasion?” McCoy asked. “I can’t imagine you’d poof halfway around the globe just to hear ‘no’ in person, Minnie.”

While Harry reeled at the nickname, McGonagall pushed away her beer. “That’s precisely why I came, Ebenezer. Or rather, I came to transfigure your ‘no’ into something more positive.”

Bemusement spread in the wake of McCoy’s generous sip of his own bottle. “And I suppose you trotted out one of your prized students to change my mind?” He chuckled and looked at the uncomfortable Harry. “How about it, kid? You gonna convince me to drop everything and move halfway around the world to teach you not to pick fights with strange wizards?”

While Harry scowled, McGonagall smiled. “Perish the thought. Mister Potter is a far cry from our best student. Besides which, you’re too clever a wizard to fall for such puerile manipulation.”

“Mmm. And too humble a wizard to be taken in with ego-stroking.”

“Quite.”

McCoy took another sip and pondered his visitors. Harry could feel the old man’s eyes pressing into his, a literal pressure that made him squirm and break contact. After a moment, McCoy set his bottle aside and laced his fingers together. “No,” he said soberly. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

“You ‘won’t’ do it,” McGonagall corrected him archly. “You see, ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ are substantially different words.”

His eyebrows dropped to match hers. “Be fair, Minnie. Ten years ago, I could have dropped everything to help you out. You know I’d do that now if I could. But I’m a Senior Councilmember now, and I’ve got my own war to fight. You can’t expect me to abandon the White Council to baby-sit your boy here from one rogue wizard.”

The last of the familiar warmth drained from McGonagall’s voice. She sat straight and proper, becoming the McGonagall Harry knew. “Then I clearly expected too much,” she said. “Far be it for me to risk the ire of your White Council. Heaven knows you would never ask me to defy my government to help a friend in need.”

A storm front gathered in McCoy’s face. He half rose, and his voice rose to match. “I haven’t forgotten what I owe, Minerva. Don’t—“

“What’s the White Council?” Harry asked loudly. He had tired of being McGonagall’s silent bargaining chip, and disliked the idea of watching them bicker back and forth. Hermione and Ron did more than enough of that to give him his fill. “Is it part of the Ministry?”

Both of them settled back into their seats. McCoy regarded Harry skeptically, glancing briefly at McGonagall, who offered nothing. “No,” he said. “No, the Council and the Ministry don’t have anything to do with each other. Period. End of story.”

“It’s all right, Ebenezer,” McGonagall said. “Potter is more than capable of keeping secrets.” She gave Harry an irritated look, one he was happy to match, and said, “The White Council is a secret political body of wizards that governs its community of wizards and witches.”

Harry blinked. “But that’s what the Ministry is,” he said.

She nodded. “Correct. Both the Ministry and the White Council have their own citizenry for whom they claim responsibility. The division is made by region, or by bloodline, when regional disagreements arise.”

“But I’ve never heard of them before.” Harry would be the first to admit that his Muggle upbringing left him at a disadvantage in the wizarding world. But even he should have been aware of a second wizard government so large as to stretch all the way to America.

“You wouldn’t have,” MyCoy said. “The Ministry and the Council were at war a long time ago, right around the when the Black Plague was taking care of Europe’s population problems. They finally got tired of killing each other, and came up with a set of accords. Both governments live in secret from ordinary folks, and more importantly, from each other.”

“The Ministry and Council remain aware of each other,” McGonagall said, “but avoid all contact and interference. It has kept the peace for countless generations.”

Harry looked between them. He had forgotten his anger for the moment, confused and surprised by the sudden knowledge that an entirely separate world of wizarding existed. “But you want him to teach at Hogwarts? Won’t that violate those accords? How should you two even know each other?”

McCoy’s expression softened as he looked back to McGonagall. “I didn’t have a lot of love for the rules back in my younger days. Truth be told, I don’t shine to them much now, if it means peoples’ lives. But I didn’t lie when I say I couldn’t disappear from my responsibilities.”

Opposite McCoy’s genuinely affectionate expression, McGonagall looked cold. “Such a shame,” she said. “I think you’re depriving our students of a marvelous opportunity.”

“I’m running a war, Minnie. Don’t suppose you could take time out from chasing down your little rogue wizard to help me beat an entire Court of vampires?” McCoy asked sardonically.

“Well, I see you were right,” said McGonagall. “I’m sorry to have wasted both our time, just as I’m sorry to deprive my students of such a fine example of wizardry.” She stood in a huff, straightening her robes with a sharp gesture. “May I freshen up before we go?” she asked.

McCoy made an overly gracious gesture toward the hallway. McGonagall returned it in kind with a bow and then exited, leaving Harry alone and uncomfortable with McCoy.

The old man’s eyes felt heavy against Harry’s skull, so he did everything in his power to avoid them, letting his gaze wander around the room. Something about the room bothered Harry, but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

Finally, McCoy must have grown tired of the silence. “So, you plan on beating ol’ Snake Face by yourself?” he asked.

The idle mockery in his tone made Harry bristle. “Yes,” he replied in kind, heavily sarcastic, “I plan on doing exactly that.”

“Minnie seems to think you’ll be road kill before you take two steps. She must be worried if she’s coming all this way to ask me to baby sit.”

It was all Harry could do not to pull out his wand and wipe the smug smile off of McCoy’s face. “Professor McGonagall is wrong,” Harry said in a strained voice. “I don’t need help, and I’m certainly no baby that needs looking after.”

Abruptly, the smile on McCoy’s face vanished. He leaned forward with a seriousness he hadn’t yet demonstrated to Harry, steepling his fingers between his knees. “I’ve squared off against him once, back in my younger days. Was lucky to come out of it with my skin. This is nothing against you, but you aren’t ready. You don’t have what it takes. Voldemort is going to kill you without missing a step. Why pick a fight you can’t win?”

Harry knew he should have been angry, but wasn’t. He had asked himself the same question any number of times over the summer. Why fight Voldemort? Because a prophecy told him he would? Because his parents’ deaths had all but assured that he would never have a normal life? Because Dumbledore’s death demanded justice?

“Because someone has to,” Harry said. “Voldemort and his Death Eaters kill and threaten whoever they want, and they get away with it because people are afraid. Voldemort rules through fear. It’s been this way for so long that people are even afraid to say his name. It’s cost me my family. I won’t live like that. I’ll never live like that. Voldemort will have to kill me, because I won’t live in fear. Not now. Not ever.”

McCoy remained silent in the wake of Harry’s words. Then, slowly, he smiled a genuine smile, and leaned back. “Well, all right, Hoss. All right.”

McGonagall chose this opportune moment to reappear in the hall. “Well, shall we be off, Potter? We’ve taken enough of Mister McCoy’s time.”

“Drop the act, Minnie. You’ve got me.” McCoy stood and made a big show of brushing his hands clean. “I gotta say, you sure can pick ‘em. The boy doesn’t have two bits of brain sitting underneath that crow’s nest, but he’s got guts.”

She mirrored his genuine smile. Harry watched the pair ruefully, feeling used, and experiencing more than a touch of déjà vu. “I recall your admiration for both of those qualities, being that you exemplify them. So you’ll take the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts?” asked McGonagall.

McCoy walked to the fireplace, shaking his head. “Nope. I wasn’t lying when I said I couldn’t. But,” he added before she could protest, “I’ll do you the next best thing. Someone I think your boy Harry is going to like.” He took a small, long, dusty box from the mantle and opened it. A short, old wand of polished oak lay inside. McCoy shook the cobwebs from its handle before gripping it. “I imagine the Ministry’s still watching you? Okay. It’s been a while, but I think I can still side-along a pair.”

Now McGonagall expressed confusion, to which Harry felt a sharp twinge of schadenfreude, even though he was just as confused. “Fine, yes. But where are we going?” she asked.

McCoy smiled enigmatically. “Chicago. We have to meet your new professor.”

To Be Continued

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And now this crossover finally begins! Or rather, it will next chapter, when our other Harry enters the narrative with both blasting rods blazing.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Harry Potter and the White Wizard. How I wish I could say this story sprang from my mind alone, but like so many others, I had to steal quite a bit of it from another author. And no, I’m not talking about the normal amount of borrowing that is the practice of fanfiction.

This story came to be as a result of Bruce Willis’s summer blockbuster, Live Free or Die Hard. I went to see the movie with my roommate and our friend, the author Isamu. He and we have been friends for years, and like so many others of our kind, spent much of the summer in theaters jumping from one blockbuster to the next.

After the movie, we stood in the theater parking lot conversing, coming down off the adrenaline high of watching a man best a VTOL fighter jet with nothing but his wits (honestly, this was an amazing scene, regardless or perhaps because of its stupidity). And, as so many conversations do, this one wandered. We spoke of other movies we saw and liked this year, which led us to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. All three of us had read and watched Harry for years, and had finished the final literary installment of his adventures. This, then, led to our discussion of other magical narratives.

And that’s when something magical happened.

I can’t say who came up with the idea first. I would say it was I. Isamu would insist that it was he. He is, of course, a pathological liar who cannot be trusted. But regardless, two key items of interest came into play in the conversation that formed the basis of this story:

1. Harry Potter is a wizard student who attends a school that is in annual need of a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

2. Harry Dresden, the titular hero of The Dresden Files, is a wizard detective/cop/brawler who is well versed in the art of defending against the dark arts.

A later search on Google confirmed that no one had ever done this before (if I’m wrong, please send a message or a review to let me know, so that I can plug the story). We joked about it in that parking lot, coming up with scenarios in which Harry Dresden and Harry Potter would ensue in a cavalcade of hi-jinx. Then we both agreed that neither of us had the time or energy to pick the story up.

Then I wrote it.

So now I say to Isamu, I’m sorry for poaching the story, and more sorry for not giving credit where credit is due sooner. Understand, reader, that much of the story you read here sprang from our collective imagination. I dedicate this story to him as much as I do to you and to our pair of Harry’s. Of course, the genius style and diction in the coming chapters are all mine.

And for those Harry Potter fans who have never read The Dresden Files, I want you to go Google him, Wikipedia him, and then venture to your nearest book store and purchase the paperback copy of Storm Front, the first novel of The Dresden Files. Everyone should have a wizard detective/cop/brawler in his or her lives. I know Harry Potter will.

Enjoy the show.

Cyberwraith9

Ghost of the Net

And your Muggle Extraordinaire