Despite originally planning to only question Magnolia about whatever knowledge she may possess of Solomon Grundy, I slowly found the scope of my questions increasing as I learned more about not just Grundy, but other notable figures of this time.
Who was this ‘Superman’? Why did he wear such odd, colorful apparel? Similarly, why did the otherwise practically-dressed Batman have pointy ears sticking up out of his hood? Was he some manner of intelligent beast or being or perhaps he was simply using a partial transfiguration to mimic a bat?
Magnolia strove to assist me with my questions, but there was much she as a muggle did not know and each answer just left me with more questions. What was this Justice League organization that the news muggles had spoken of? Was it some branch of the ICW? Magnolia didn’t know what the ICW was, but apparently the Justice League answered to some muggle organization called the United Nations that I’d never heard of before, which seemed both idiotic and improbable.
Furthermore, while it seemed that some members of this Justice League were publicly known to be wizards, specifically Giovanni Zatara with whom I was hoping to meet later today, the others were not considered as such. Superman and a green being called the Martian Manhunter were supposedly aliens, a likely story, while Wonder Woman was an Amazonian Princess and Aquaman was the king of Atlantis, which was even more far-fetched. No merman would ever agree to be ruled by a human and the Amazons of Greece had gone extinct during the Roman occupation of the region more than two millennia ago.
Magnolia was in the middle of telling me about the hero Green Arrow––apparently just an ordinary muggle with a bow and some enchanted arrows and yet he somehow had equal status to his far more magical peers––when someone started pounding on the door behind me. I’d intentionally not included it in the silencing charm, but this disruption had come at a rather inconvenient moment.
“One moment,” I told Magnolia sharply, cutting her off mid sentence.
I turned around and flicked my wand at the door, removing the locking charm I’d cast on earlier, and the door sprang open, revealing an older, rather heavyset muggle man in the same uniform as Magnolia was wearing. He looked rather surprised for a moment, then scowled furiously, “And who are you supposed to be?” he barked at me. “Maggie, there you are! Have you been locked in here with your boyfriend this entire time? You’ve been missing for more than an hour and the tables aren’t clean, the trash hasn’t been taken out, and you should have been at the counter fifteen minutes ago! What do you think––”
I flicked my wand and his voice turned into garbled nonsense as my spell tied his tongue into a knot. “Shut up,” I ordered. “Confundo,” I cast, pouring slightly more power into the spell than was strictly necessary out of annoyance. “Magnolia is occupied and should not be disturbed. You didn’t see me. You will not mark this against Magnolia and will cover for her duties yourself today.”
The man stared blankly at me for several seconds, then tried to repeat what I’d told him. A downward flick of my wand canceled my jinx and a swish closed and relocked the door. I turned back to Magnolia, who was once again staring at me with wide eyes.
“You…You just––”
“He will not bother us further. Please continue,”
Magnolia nodded rapidly. “Right, yeah. Right. I was…I was telling you about Green Arrow, right?”
“Yes, the archer with ‘trick arrows’ as you called them. I believe I have heard enough about him. I see this picture from Monday contains a number of younger individuals. Are they members of this Justice League as well?”
In the end, I spent nearly four entire hours questioning Magnolia, who proved herself to be a valuable resource. She could easily answer the majority of my questions, and when she was unable to do so, often she could use her little rectangle––she called it her ‘smartphone’––to find the information I needed. I was unsurprised when several terms I asked her about proved utterly inscrutable to her––she’d never heard of Hogwarts, the ICW, the Ministry of Magic, or several other notable wizarding organizations––it seemed the wizarding world had gone slightly public but had kept the spread of information mostly contained.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
What I learned surprised me, but ultimately did make some amount of sense. It seemed that Grindlewald had ultimately succeeded in starting another great war amongst the muggles, his German puppet launching an invasion into Poland just a few short years after my disappearance. I had to connect a number of dots since the information that Magnolia gave me was only what the muggles were aware of, but it seemed that a number of Grindelwald’s wizards had begun to assist the muggles in their war, and to counter this the ICW had created an organization called the Justice Society of America, revealing a limited number of talented wizards and powerful beings to the muggles for the very first time.
Eventually Grindelwald was likely defeated and his muggle minions with him, and wizards attempted to fade back into obscurity, but the damage had already been done. Muggles now knew about magic, but only to a very limited extent.
A few years ago, some new conflict broke out that was once again too large in scale to hide from the muggles. Once again, a small group of wizards were assembled into a new, public organization called the Justice League to combat this issue and give the muggles something to focus on. Since then, the organization had grown slightly and now fought against other wizards breaking the statute of secrecy and against muggles who were using dangerous magical objects against one another.
It was a rather genius solution, I decided after some thought. It kept the majority of the wizarding world hidden from the world while allowing small slip ups and disasters too large to be easily contained to be explained without the need for too much obliviation. Muggle cameras had greatly improved over the past few decades, and they now had far better ways to share information than before, putting the statute in its old form at risk. Now however, anything a lucky muggle stumbled upon could easily be explained away as the business of ‘superheroes’. It was utterly brilliant!
I rolled up my sleeve and checked the time on my watch. I needed to get some food and then head to the theater soon. I didn’t have much time, but I was still hoping to catch Zatara before his performance.
“You have been of great help to me,” I told Magnolia. At some point during my questioning she grabbed both of us a chair from the stack behind her, allowing us to sit side by side and giving me a better few of her smartphone screen.
“Um, I’m happy to have helped? Are you going to,” she mimed waving a wand at herself, “me now?” She sounded slightly scared, but was clearly trying to put up a strong facade.
“Will you tell anyone about our meeting today?” I asked her curiously. I had been planning to obliviate her, but perhaps that was no longer necessary. She would simply chalk my presence up to some sort of superhero or supervillain nonsense and continue with her muggle life.
“Um, no? I mean, no, no. Of course I won’t.”
“Then I do not believe that will be necessary. However…” I hummed thoughtfully. It would feel wrong to not reward her with some manner of trinket for the aid she’d given me today. “Do you ail from any muggle afflictions?”
“Huh?”
I sighed. “Hold still,” I ordered. I twirled my wand through a complex series of half-circle movements, causing the tip to light up with a soft blue glow, then ran my wand up and down Magnolia’s body.
Huh, nothing at all. She was as healthy as a muggle could reasonably be. I remembered reading that muggles were often riddled with ills and injuries that their crude medicine could not fix and that healing was often a fine form of payment for a useful muggle. Sure the book I’d read that in was nearly seven-hundred years old, but it contained a lot of other good ideas!
“Hmm, not that then. What struggles plague your life, Magnolia?”
She stared at me blankly for several seconds. That was the problem with muggles, even the ones you thought seemed clever enough were ultimately just muggles. She looked around the room, then bit her lip. “I mean…the air conditioning in my car’s been broken for a few weeks and I don’t have the money to get it fixed?” she said tentatively.
That seemed simple enough. “Take me to this car and I shall repair it as payment for the aid you’ve given me today.”