He threw aside the paper violently and pressed his face to the cool glass. An internal monologue of curses that would have caused Mundungus Fletcher to blush (or, at the very least, buy him a drink) pushed aside all other thoughts. The law books lay forgotten on his desk.

“Sir?” asked the young man anxiously.

“Shut up, Wrenchman,” he said brusquely. “So they won’t help us. They don’t see what disrespectful, ugly debauchery is polluting...” He stopped and rubbed his forehead. “How long has it been?”

Wrenchman thought of the two checks sitting next to his laptop, jammed into the library’s copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The two checks that should have been five. “Little under half a year,” he said, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“Half a year and none of those—” he sputtered into silence. “You were there, Wrenchman. You have been to those... places... You know what it is like, eh?”

“It was... very cold, sir,” said Wrenchman tentatively. “Erm, lots of screaming. People running around with magic wands. One of the stories had... well... I’d call it an orgy, but I could be over—” He caught his boss’s furious glance “—under-reacting,” he amended swiftly. “I’ve heard it’s nowhere near as bad as what’s going on in the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean areas,” he added on what he hoped was a cheerful note.

“Oh, yes,” he said sarcastically. “That would be bloody wonderful if we were talking about those fandoms. Harry Potter, Wrenchman. That’s what we’re here for, man.”

Wrenchman nodded and looked at his shoes.

“They will do nothing in this world,” he said carefully. “But then again, why exhaust our resources here...” He turned to the young collegian. “What is it they say about the best way to fix a problem...?”

“That the first step is admitting that you have a problem?” asked Wrenchman.

“No. The other thing.”

“All’s well that end’s well?”

“That would be for when we solve the problem, dimwit.”

“‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’?” offered Wrenchman. “That’s what my Soc. professor says—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your Soc. professor says!” yelled the man standing by the window. “I’m going to get rid of this fanfiction problem and make the Harry Potter fandom safe for little children again, like it’s supposed to be! And if the courts won’t make it illegal, we’ll go to the root of the problem!” he yelled, throwing a glass across the room.

“By asking the great authoress to put a stop to it?” asked Wrenchman feebly.

“Tried that. She won’t answer my email,” said the man. “But that’s not the issue,” he said, recovering quickly. “The root of the problem, Wrenchman, surely this isn’t that difficult for that B-average mind of yours?”

Wrenchman figured that he had a fifty-fifty chance of answering correctly. Ah, well, there was his shot in the dark: “The websites that house the... ahem... writing?”

The man turned on him, his voice reddening. “No, you incompetent—” he choked back his curse. He had been trying to work on that for Miranda’s sake. “We’re going to the root of the problem. The writers themselves.”

*********

Malcolm Ruthander had always seemed mild-mannered, but that was before he found his own personal crusade. It had crazed him, and there was little left of the gentle spirit that had once been his own. The coil had worn off. There was steel beneath.

“It usually only works in the reverse,” said Wrenchman over the whir of the fan and the collective hum of seven or so computers lined up in a row. “They can get out, but we can never get in. This should fix it...”

Ruthander settled down at one of the machines just as Wrenchman finished the connection. “A tame one to begin with,” he said, scrolling through the list of stories on the screen. “Nothing dangerous that we will be spotted too quickly...”

The Black Glass Wall by Fender Blackorn

Professor Snape contemplates his torturous life through the other side of a wall of the darkest, deepest crystal. Will he choose to stay in a world where no one understand him? No Slash, Read and Review

A short smile touched the corners of Ruthander’s mouth. “This will do. Enter the URLs into the other machines...” he instructed Wrenchman. “And why did you set them up like this? A circle, man, not a bloody line.”

Wrenchman jumped and hurried to do what his boss said, moving the tables so that each monitor faced another. The white and purple screens glowed strangely in the dark room, giving Ruthander a shadowed and sickly complexion. Wrenchman brought up the same story on the other computers, and as he did it seemed that he could hear the faint chiming of a bell. He hadn’t noticed that his palms were sweating until he sat down at the last computer and clicked onto fanfiction.net. The falls of his fingers on the keyboard seemed like thunder in the room as he typed in the URL. It loaded quickly. It was up.

“Hear it, Wrenchman!” said Ruthander, laughing softly. “Hear the other places... You have the device?”

“Right here, sir,” said Wrenchman, gulping. A small, black device that he had taken off an agent when she wasn’t looking sat in the palm of his hand. Ruthander snatched it away, and threw it into the center of the computer ring.

A crackle of electricity started from the device, and the screens shone more brightly than ever. The bell in Wrenchman’s ear was deafening now, the glow of the computers blinding. Bright, bright, bright, bright...

A strong hand grabbed his elbow roughly, and before he knew it he had been thrown forward into the plothole.

*********

It had a cool, musty smell to it. The air was damp, and candlelight flickered over his face as he struggled to regain his balance.

“Why in God’s name is everything purple?” asked Ruthander, rubbing his hands together briskly. “Fanfiction full of the wrong colors...” he muttered. “Where are we?”

“The dungeons, sir,” said Wrenchman. “I think that’s Professor Snape, too.”

Ruthander looked over his shoulder at the tall man in black looking solemnly at his potions cabinet. There was something subtly wrong, though. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Somewhere in the distance, an old violin started to wail mournfully.

“Interesting...” said Ruthander. “He’s a bit like I imagined.”

Snape burst into tears and tore at his shirt collar. Spots of blood appeared on his garments, and the Potions professor sank to the floor, curling up in a fetal position.

“Perhaps not, sir,” said Wrenchman.

“Debauchery,” breathed Ruthander. “This place will do quite nicely, though, quite nicely indeed.” He kicked aside the bawling Potions master and sat down in his chair, propping long legs up onto the desk. Resting his hands behind his head, he allowed himself to smile gently.

Wrenchman shivered. Snape sobbed.

“Well?” intoned Ruthander. “We have a schedule to maintain. Tie that”—he nudged Snape with his foot—“up and put him in the closet. We’ll need him later.”

Wrenchman nodded bitterly, removing the helpless character’s wand from his person as he looped some rope around the Potions master. He tried not to think how many young fangirls would have loved to be in his position at that point in time.

“And you remembered the book?” continued Ruthander. “We’ll need the mixture brewed just so. Then it will be as simple as...” The man smiled and snapped his fingers. Ruthander regarded his henchman’s hesitant expression. “This is victory, Wrenchman, you stupid fool; can’t you feel it?”

Wrenchman swallowed and nodded, lugging Snape into his own Potions cabinet. Most interestingly, he didn’t try to fight, but merely started gibbering about how much his mother didn’t love him.

The latch closed with a click. The employer and underling stood in silence.

“Sir...” began Wrenchman. “What exactly are you trying to do here? I-I don’t see how taking over one fanfiction will stop the f-fanwriters from writing...”

Ruthander tsked and glanced at some of the gruesome things in bottles around the office. “Wrenchman, you stupid, stupid man. This is only the beginning. Of course we cannot confront the writers directly. And they would never agree to see reason. We must fix this by ourselves; it’s for their own good... even if they don’t understand it. Go get some rest, Wrenchman. Tomorrow we pay a visit to a certain Academy...”