"How am I supposed to oppose that?" said Quinn, looking at everyone. "I can't decimate Paris in a day with a single spell or bring London to its knees in a week. . . the latter one, I think, is Dumbledore still understating his destructive capabilities— or maybe you've genuinely gotten weaker with your age— I don't know. But the fact remains that people like the Headmaster and Grindelwald have enough power to disregard the norms and rules. . ." He paused, and it seemed like someone had sucked all sound from the room. ". . . and the same goes for the Dark Lord," what had started as a conscious effort had now before a habit. "The thing I care the most for in this world is my family and friends. Grindelwald is dead, and Headmaster isn't going to attack my loved ones— at least, I hope not— but that can't be said for the Dark Lord."
Quinn straight out rudely pointed at Dumbledore. "People like him and the Dark Lord can stroll into our homes, rip the ward apart, and do whatever they like without care—"
"I would never do such things, Mr. West," said Dumbledore, his eyes earnest.
"— it doesn't matter if you would or not, but the Dark Lord definitely would. He will come to my house, threaten my family, and if we are not careful, we will be lying dead on the floor: maybe battered beyond recognition or simply perhaps granted a peaceful death by a shot of the Killing Curse. Even if somehow are able to escape death, I'm sure we're going to end up as puppets."
"Do you think your family will face such a fate?" asked James, sounding doubtful. The West family was the strongest in the country; they could surely hire security.
Quinn shook his head. "The normal person doesn't understand what an Auror, or more importantly, what a Hit Wizard is truly capable of." He jutted his chin to James and Moody. "These two are essentially living weapons. They're trained with magic that was solely created to take down people. An Auror can wreak havoc that would seem horrifying to normal folk. . . but even then, someone like James Potter has this blatant misunderstanding."
He turned to Dumbledore and asked, "Tell them, Headmaster. Would you be concerned about facing a coordinated team of Aurors? A team of highly coordinated Aurors, launching an operation to take you down, for which they had prepared. Be honest. None of your diplomatic, evasive answers."
Dumbledore pursed his lips, making his beard cover his lips. He didn't vocalize his thoughts and simply gave a shake of his head as a response. Making some people in the room blink in surprise.
"What that meant was that if he desired, Headmaster could wipe a couple of Auror teams without breaking a sweat," Quinn said bluntly, which Dumbledore wasn't willing to put into words.
Moody and James didn't look they agreed; maybe it was their pride, or they genuinely believed that they could take Dumbledore out.
"As for what I believe? Is that even a question? The people who have reached the two Dark Lords and Dumbledore levels of magic can be counted on your fingers. And when you take into factor that Headmaster was born in the eighties and the Dark Lord in the nineties. . . puts the rarity of such people into context," said Quinn. "Even among those people, not all are battle oriented. . . . My teacher, Alan D. Baddeley; pit him against the Headmaster and Dark Lord together in a battle of the minds, he'd rip their minds into shreds as if he was tearing bread at the dinner table, then turn these powerful men into doing his bidding— but if you put him in a duel against them, he'd be destroyed.
How many of those rare individuals do you think will come to risk facing someone as ruthless as the Dark Lord. Without fail, all of them are accomplished in their lives; they won't come to defend my family for money— they will have plenty of it. Why would they protect my family for something they already have and can earn more by doing much simpler and safer work. All my family can do is make preparations to delay the Dark Lord reaching them so they could escape. . . . Why else do you think did my grandfather flee the country during the war?
So yes, to answer that question, I do love my family," said Quinn sarcastically. "But now this is out, my family is at risk if it reaches the ears of the Dark Lord," he stared at everyone in the office. "I would be very displeased if this somehow got out. . . I prefer not to have a conversation with my grandfather that we need to leave the country because I put my nose where it doesn't belong."
That was a conversation that would come inevitably, but he preferred it to be as late as possible. After all, he knew exactly what his grandfather would ask him the moment he broke the conversation. He was explicitly told to stay away, and it wouldn't matter to George that it was much before they had the 'stay away' conversation. He'd move in and use the chips he held over Quinn.
Quinn was done. He leaned comfortably into his chair and looked ahead with a bland expression as if waiting for them to say something or end this meeting. He was done with speaking and answering questions. The way the conversation had went, he had done enough damage that the moment he stepped out, the people would jump Dumbledore with their questions.
"Nevertheless, you could've said something," spoke Dumbledore.
"So could have you," Quinn shrugged, "to all these people and so many more."
It seemed that everyone had become fed up with Quinn and Dumbledore's conversation where they couldn't understand what they were talking about.
"Would one you tell us what the hell are you talking about?!" Harry put everyone's thoughts into loud words.
Quinn got up from his chair and buttoned up his suit. "I'll leave that to the Headmaster. I'm done here for today. As for Hogwarts security, for which I was called here, there's no reason to be concerned about me compromising it— the most I will be doing is visiting Hogsmeade."
He faced McGonagall, "I'll be sitting down with Professor Flitwick as he asked me to, but I'll be visiting the AID office before that. I hope that's not a problem."
McGonagall had no opposition. She was too interested in what Dumbledore was going to tell them. She allowed Quinn to visit AID. He immediately exited the tense place that was the Headmaster's Office.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Quinn knocked on the door of the Arithmancy classroom.
The knock made everyone in the classroom turn towards the door.
"Mr. West!" Septima Vector, the Arithmancy professor, exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Good afternoon, Professor," smiled Quinn. "Looks like you're still stringing beautiful magic with numbers. I was visiting Hogwarts on some business with the Headmaster. As for your classroom, I'm here to ask if I could borrow one of your students."
Vector's smile seemed to indicate that she knew precisely who Quinn was talking about. "Of course, you can—"
Before she could even complete the sentence, a blonde bullet walked past her with the elegance of a floating cloud and arrived beside Quinn, grabbing onto his arm.
"— take her," Vector chuckled and shook her head. "Please return her before her next class."
"Will do," Quinn turned to the girl beside him and smiled, "Shall we?"
Luna Lovegood nodded with her eyes staring at Quinn.
"You didn't tell me you were coming," she said.
"It was a last-minute thing, and I thought I'd give you a surprise. How's sixth-year treating you?"
"It's the same as fifth-year, which was same as fourth-year, same as third-year. . ."
"Really? I thought with me gone, Hogwarts would be less fun. I was the life of the party after all."
Luna tilted her head cutely and muttered: "Party?"
Quinn chuckled before asking in a softer tone, "Has anyone tried to act stupid with you? Tell me, and I'll whip up something in the workshop you can throw at them to make the rest of their years absolutely miserable."
"It's okay. I can do it on my own."
"Yes, you can," Quinn grinned and side hugged the shorter girl. "How's AID going? Is Astoria handling the office well? Any clients she had to turn away for any reason?"
"We completed the request of every person who came in. Everyone's happy. . . and have their names added into the debt ledger."
"Good, good, that's the most important part. Any projects that you two are doing?"
"Un, we're in the middle of updating your first-year notes."
"My notes? Are you adding something?"
"Not like that. We're trying to rearrange how the information is presented. As Astoria said: we're making it more digestible. We even did the research for it."
"Oh, what did you do?"
"Last year, we took one chapter from every notebook of every subject from the first year and made different mockups, each with a different design. We showed them to a lot of different first-year and second=year people for feedback. By the end of the year, we had decided upon the final version of the design.
Then through the summer break, we slowly worked through all the chapters in all the notebooks for the first year. We're going to review the design one last time, and by the end of the week, we're going to send the new designs to Scrinvenshaft for printing."
"Are you going to expand to the other years?" asked Quinn. He hadn't taught Astoria, so he didn't know if the younger Greengrass could handle the educational content from higher years, but he knew Luna, and she could gulp everything taught in the Hogwarts classroom like a thirsty traveler in the desert.
"If this is a success, we're going to repeat the process for the second and third-year notes and complete the process in the next year. If the updated notes fail, we're going to put the project on long-term development to see what went wrong."
Quinn was impressed. He had told both of them that they needed to do something other than solving the clents' problems isn't going to get work out as that got boring quickly, and doing personal projects was the best way to utilize AID— which was also what he had done.
"We are trying to do something."
Quinn asked what it was.
"We're going to start a monthly newspaper. Everything from what happened in Hogwarts to what is happening outside, from magic to history. Everything is going to be in one place. It's going to be both new and familiar. Plus, we have decided to involve the AID cards. We haven't decided where we're going to use them."
"Maybe you could use them to access the paper."
"Nuh-uh, that's too easy. That idea was rejected was the one we rejected first."
"Ouch, that hurt. Well, whatever you do, send me one of those newspapers if it is built to be taken out of Hogwarts."
Quinn smiled as Luna's eyes shined. He had dropped a little hint, and as he had expected, Luna had taken inspiration from it.
"Where are we going?" asked Luna.
"To bust Astoria out of her class, wherever that is," Quinn sighed. "Why do these halls feels so foreign without Recon. How am I going to find where she is?"
"You can ask me," she said. "I know."
"You're smart."
"I know. You're smart too."
"Thank you."
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-*-*-*-*-*-*-
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Quinn West - MC - From focused to random.
Albus Dumbledore - Headmaster - Trapped in his office with questions.
Luna Lovegood - Best Friend - Still the same, but also smarter.
FictionOnlyReader - Author - Three works done.
