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"I still don't like it," Hermione Granger muttered as they walked back through the forest. Harry Potter tried not to sigh as his friends began another round of arguing.
"It's brilliant!" Ron Weasley disagreed. "The Death Eaters are never going to think of looking for us in a Muggle supermarket. I mean, who expects wizards to have Muggle money, even?"
"It's a good thing Hermione's parents set up a bank account for her, otherwise we wouldn't have had any," Harry pointed out. He certainly didn't have an ordinary bank account. If he'd ever had enough money to make it worthwhile, the Dursleys would have found some way to take it off him.
"It takes us all out of the wards for too long," Hermione fretted. "If anyone came up with a halfway decent way of locating us, we'd be sitting ducks."
"Come on," Ron said, "nobody did. Besides, who would look for us out here?"
"Uh." Harry stopped dead, staring at the teenager leaning against a tree just outside their wards. It was the kid they had met in London, when the Death Eaters had tried to ambush them in the cafe. But what was he doing here?
The kid tossed an apple in the air, caught it and ostentatiously started polishing it on his jacket. "Hi," he said easily. He seemed entirely unsurprised to see them.
Hermione looked at him narrowly. "How did you find us?" she demanded.
The kid — Alex, Harry remembered — looked at his apple and sighed. "Nice to see you again, too," he said pointedly.
"Not that it isn't nice to see a friendly face, Alex," Harry said hurriedly, "but we are supposed to be in hiding."
Alex nodded. "It's taken months to find you the way you keep moving around."
"Uh, yeah, about that," Ron said, shifting uneasily.
"Don't worry, I'm pretty sure no one else is watching for your bank card," Alex said. "Lucky I was nearby, really. Then of course it took ages to find your tent." Hermione raised a questioning eyebrow. Alex shrugged. "I watched my GPS, and marked when I got turned around. I can't get in, but it wasn't too hard to figure out where it had to be. How does it work?"
"Shouldn't you be in school?" Harry countered, trying to gain some control of the conversation. Actually, now he thought about it, it was a good question. Harry had kind of lost track of the date, but he was fairly sure that it was long enough after Christmas that Muggle schools should be open again.
Alex scowled. "I should," he said bitterly, "but someone decided I needed some extra training, and here I am." He kicked morosely at the leaf litter.
"Training for what?" Hermione pressed. Another good question, Harry thought. He casually put his hand in his jacket pocket and took a firm grip on his wand, just in case.
"Doesn't matter," Alex said, still scowling. He forced a smile onto his face with obvious effort. "The important thing is that someone has caught up with you. Any chance of letting me into your camp, we really need to sit down and talk. We don't know nearly enough about this Lord Voldemort of yours—"
"No!" Harry shouted, too late to stop the kid saying Voldemort's name. He had his wand out in an instant, but a squad of half a dozen Snatchers apparated in before he could get even a basic protection spell up.
"Well, well, if it isn't Harry Potter himself," one of the Snatchers said. "We are honoured."
Alex shot a look at Harry. "It's a spell," Harry explained, not lowering his wand an inch. "Saying his name really does attract his attention now."
"Ah." Alex fiddled with the fruit he was holding, nervously pulling the stalk off. "Apple?" he offered, lobbing it towards the Snatchers.
The one who had spoken caught it neatly with a levitation charm, a few feet in front of himself. "I'm not your teacher, kid," he sneered. Then the apple exploded.
The shock left Harry reeling, trying to blink the stars out of his eyes and the ringing out of his ears. By the time he could see and hear again, the Snatchers were unconscious in a pile and Alex and four men in camouflage gear were efficiently tying them up with plastic zip-ties. "What?" he managed to groan.
"Flash grenade," Alex explained. He looked up and grinned.
"Disguised as an apple?" one of the men asked. "Cub, where do you get your toys from?"
"What can I say?" Alex said with an amused shrug. "Smithers loves a challenge."
"What does that even mean?" Ron complained. "Who are these guys anyway, and where did they come from?"
"I guess you passed the camouflage exam," Alex said to the men. Harry finally noticed the shallow trenches the men must have been lying in. Covered in leaves they would have been all but invisible.
"The kid's got a point, Cub," another of the men said. "You owe us some explanations."
"I'm told I really don't," Alex said. He obviously wasn't happy about the idea.
"You owe us, if you want us to tell you anything about our Dark Lord problem," Harry said pointedly.
"And I suppose you're going to insist on me telling you here, where anyone could be listening?" Alex asked innocently.
Harry grinned, catching his meaning. "It would be really unfortunate if there were people standing nearby," he said. "Who knows what they might overhear?"
The men looked amused. Hermione didn't. "The Statute of Secrecy," she began.
"Won't matter if You Know Who wins," Harry interrupted. "So far he's only officially persecuting muggleborn wizards and witches, but the Death Eaters are already going after Muggles when they want some fun."
"Muggles?" Alex asked.
"People who don't have magic," Harry told him.
One of the men smoothing the leaf litter back down snorted. "Magic," he said disgustedly.
Alex smirked but otherwise ignored him. "Apparently people can be read in to the secret," he told Harry. "I have been, though my boss wasn't too pleased. These guys have signed the paperwork, though they haven't been told yet."
The soldiers — they couldn't be anything else — stopped what they were doing and looked at him. "I signed what?" one of them asked.
"That non-disclosure agreement," another said pensively.
"Wasn't just about me," Alex confirmed cheerfully.
"You're serious about this, Cub?" the previously sceptical one asked.
"Oh yes," Alex said. "Could one of you demonstrate, maybe? Nothing too flashy."
Harry rolled his eyes at the eagerness Alex couldn't keep out of his voice. They kid had been a bit busy trying not to be hit by Unforgivables last time. "Alright," he said, and set the leaves dancing in complicated waterfalls. He tried to shape them into the outline of Fawkes, or at least a bird, but what he ended up with was rather more... abstract.
"Wow," one of the soldiers said as Harry let the leaves fall back to the ground. "I imagine it's useful for more than covering our tracks?" Harry nodded. Now was not the time to set Hermione off on a lecture about the limits of magic.
"So why all the song and dance about not being able to tell us?" another soldier asked.
Alex shrugged. "It was funny?"
There was a moment's silence, then the men burst out laughing. "Remind me never to play poker with you," the one of them told Alex.
"What are the rules again?" Alex said with a perfect poker face. "Actually I really was told not to brief you unless I had to. Wizards aren't just being paranoid about hiding away. Witch-hunts were real."
The men sobered up rapidly at that thought. Three of them arranged themselves across from Harry and his friends while the fourth stood guard over the Snatchers. "Explanations?"
"How long have we got?" Alex asked, once again becoming too serious for his age.
"The chopper is ten minutes out," he was told. Ron looked alarmed, so Harry quickly shook his head. 'No need to get worried' was all the message Ron needed right then; he'd explain about helicopters later.
"I'll make this quick, then," Alex said. "Magic exists. There's a whole magical community living in hidden pockets around the country, and the rest of the world too I guess. They currently have a bad guy making a major power play."
"How bad?"
"As bad as they come, and he's got control of their government. These three," Alex nodded at Harry, "are the core of the resistance."
"But they're kids," one of the men protested.
"We're old enough," Harry said, nettled. Too many people who actually knew about Voldemort had tried to keep him out of the fight. He wasn't about to take that attitude from a bunch of muggles who hadn't lived through six years of Voldemort's attention.
"Eighteen," Alex supplied. Harry wasn't sure how old he was, but he was clearly a lot younger than that.
The man looked at Harry, then Alex, then lifted his eyes skywards. "When did the world go mad?" he asked no one in particular.
"When someone made a prophecy that either I killed Tom Riddle or he killed me," Harry said with feeling. His life would have been so much simpler if it hadn't been for Sibyl Trelawny.
The men all stared at him. "Shit, kid," one of them said. Harry smiled wryly.
"Meet Harry James Potter," Alex said. Harry gave him a surprised look, not expecting Alex to know his full name. Or any of his name for that matter. Alex grinned, clearly enjoying himself. "Hermione Jean Granger," he continued, gesturing at Hermione, then looked apologetically at Ron. "Sorry, we couldn't find any record for you, and didn't want to risk raising any red flags asking wizards."
Ron preened a little. "Ron Weasley," he introduced himself.
Alex sighed. "I was hoping wizards would have more interesting names," he said.
"A lot do," Hermione said disapprovingly.
"My middle name is Bilius," Ron offered.
"And you admit to it?" one of the men joked.
"And your name is?" Hermione fired back.
"This is K-unit," Alex said smoothly. "Wolf, Fox, Eagle, and Snake is the one guarding the prisoners. I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to tell each other their real names, never mind us."
"How about you?" Hermione asked. "Who are you, and how do you know so much?"
Alex smiled brightly. "Hi, I'm Alex Rider, MI6."