Chapter 1 - Secrets

It turned out to be a rather boring week at the office, according to Tony. He actually had taken up the habit of shooting spitballs at McGee when he wasn't looking. A bit of a childish habit, but he couldn't help it. He already threw balls of paper into his boss's wastebasket, which happened to be a new record for him. He flicked rubber bands at Ziva across the bullpen, which almost resulted in him losing an arm. He even pulled a few pranks on Abby, containing a few bright pink decorations. Note to never decorate a Goth's office with frilly, pink streamers and furniture; they tend to be overprotective of their territory.
After the fourth spitball, McGee looked up to glare at Dinozzo once again.
"Will you stop that?"
Tony faked a sigh of impatience, while shuffling papers on his desk, pretending to be involved with paperwork. "What are you talking about, probie?"
"Weren't you just shooting spitballs at my face?"
Tony turned in his chair and gave him a serious look. He paused for a moment, debating with himself. He decided that he hadn't had anything interesting to do since Ziva attacked him, he went for it. "Why, yes, I am."
McGee just gave him a blank stare. "Don't you think that's a bit childish?"
"So? I'm having a good time, I don't know about you."
"Well, being on the receiving end tends to annoy most people," McGee said with a stern look.
"It's not meant for the enjoyment of the receiver, but for the shooter. I would have guessed you learned that in high school, probie!" Tony said shocked.
McGee glared at him and opened his mouth to snap back when the boss came briskly into the pen, slapping Dinozzo in the back of the head.
"Play nice, Dinozzo!"
"Boss! I was just-"
"Shooting spitballs at McGee?" Gibbs said cocking his brow while bending down to pick up his gear.
Tony changed the topic. "Going somewhere, boss?"
"Yup, grab your gear. We're heading out to the airport."
"The airport? Where are we heading?" Ziva said speaking for the first time, since her 'arm wrestling' act with Tony.
"Britain. Don't ask for details, until we're on the flight," Gibbs said, heading towards the elevator.
"Britain? Hopping across the great pond, are we?" Dinozzo said smiling with a bounce in his step.
Ignoring his comment, Ziva said, "Why not? Should we not get detailed on everything that has happened? Was it a murder, a terrorist attack?"
"I said no details until we're on the plane, David," Gibbs said pushing the elevator button.
McGee barely made it through before the doors closed. "Why can't we know?" he asked.
"Top secret, McGee. And I don't want to have to say it again. No more questions until we're on the damn plane," Gibbs said seriously.
Everyone looked at Gibbs from the corner of their eyes, not saying a word. They were all thinking the same thing: 'What was the secret?'

Chapter 2 - Answers

When the team arrived at the plane, Tony whistled. "Wow! Look at her! This is for us?"
"Gate G5. Yup this is it, Dinozzo," Gibbs said. He headed over to a woman who was descending the stairs from the plane.
The rest of the team quickly went to catch up with their boss.
"I'm Special Agent Gibbs, and we're from NCIS. Are you our pilot?"
"Oh, yes of course. I'm Hestia Jones, and I'll be your pilot today heading into Britain. Is everyone here?"
"Yes we are. Were you given directions to where you're supposed to be taking us?" Gibbs asked while the pilot led them over to the stairs.
Ziva shot a look at Gibbs. "You do not even know where we are going? Do you think that is wise? We are heading over to a foreign country and we do not even know why we are going there in the first place? How do you know this is not a trap?"
"The director told us we could trust these people. He told them their directions and he said we would get filled in on the plane."
"And you trust the director? Well, I can tell you that I-do-not. I would like to know what we are getting ourselves into, before we are trapped two-thousand feet above the ground," Ziva said seriously, her accent getting heavier.
"The Minister of England himself contacted me and told me that he needed our help. He refused to say over the line. He told me that the director set the traveling arrangements and just to do what we were told. He said we would get filled in as soon as we boarded the plane," Gibbs said.
Hestia Jones interrupted their conversation. "Agent Gibbs, we need to board the plane in order to arrive on time. I was given instructions to insist that you will be very comfortable during your flight. A man is waiting for you inside to fill you in on the case. Our flight will give you enough time to absorb what he needs to tell you."
"Well okay then! Let's get moving! I want to see what the inside of this thing looks like!" Dinozzo said, impatient to get on the small plane.
"So what are you waiting for, Dinozzo?" Gibbs said giving him the look that said 'Get-your-ass-moving'.
Tony gave him a blank stare then bolted up the stairs with one-hundred pounds of luggage flying all over the place.
The rest of the team and the pilot looked on amused and much more slowly went after him.
Inside was like their very own private lounge. There was a bar in the back, and the seats were made of velvet instead of leather. The sides of the plane were lined with built in couches, and there was a giant plasma towards the front, which Dinozzo didn't waste any time to try it out. In fact he was so entranced with their form of transportation that he didn't even notice the scarred man sitting in one of the seats.
He could have been forty or fifty; no one could tell from the number of scars that coincided his face. He had an eye-patch over his left eye and he had a crutch leaning against his armrest. He seemed relaxed, but to the trained eye a person such as Gibbs and Ziva could tell that he was ready if someone tried to lift a finger on him.
They looked at him suspiciously as he stood up.
Hestia quickly walked in between them. "Special Agent Gibbs, this is Alastor Moody, he is as close as you can get to the person in charge of the case. Moody, this is Special Agent Gibbs and his team."
As they shook hands Gibbs narrowed his eyes at the man. "What do you mean, as close as I can get to the person in charge of the case?"
When the man spoke, he had a rough voice, almost like he was growling. "Well, I'm a police officer, as you call them, of some sort. I found the bodies, and since there are not any kind of officials that deal with this sort of thing, we called you."
"What do you mean? Britain has one of the top NCIS agencies in the world. Why call us?"Gibbs said getting frustrated.
The man became impatient. He said gruffly, "Stop asking questions! Let me finish first, then you can ask away! For now just shut it and listen! Agent Gibbs, Hestia Jones and I are quite different from you and your team. We have special qualities that you will never learn and will never have-"
"What are you talking about?" Gibbs interrupted again.
Moody started to turn red. "Do you ever shut up? Do you want to get filled in or not? So keep quiet or you'll end up heading back to your precious headquarters empty-handed!"
His short, yet loud outburst even caught Tony's attention. He looked at each of them in turn, eying down Gibbs for a bit longer than the others. Satisfied he continued, "We're wizards."
Hestia cleared her throat, earning a growl from Moody. He shot her a glare, "Well, she's a witch, and I'm a wizard."
Gibbs had enough. "Are you telling me you brought us all the way out here to tell us a lunatic story? Mr. Moody, we are one of the best NCIS teams in the U.S. and you're making a mockery of our department!"
Moody gave another growl and pulled a short stick from up his sleeve. He waved it once and immediately a small fire appeared on the middle of the floor. The whole team froze. He waved the stick again and a shot of water poured out of the end of it. With a quick flick of his wrist the water froze in midair, suspended.
Suspicious, Ziva went forward cautiously and touched the frozen water with a fingertip. She gasped. "Magic."
Studying their stunned faces, Moody made the water and fire disappear in a puff of smoke and steam. He slipped the stick back up his sleeve and continued, "Now you see, the magical world is right in front of your eyes, you muggles, or non-magic folk, are just too blind to see it. You keep your minds closed, so you miss all of the more interesting things that happen around you. You tend to dismiss a large double-decker bus speeding through the streets, or a large castle enchanted to look like a run-down mansion.
"Although we are generally peaceful people, there are some pschychotic witches and wizard among us. Most of them are pure-blood maniacs. These particular families have had magic in their families for generations and don't believe that anyone with 'impure' blood should have anything to do with the magical world at all. In fact, many of them think they would be doing the wizarding world a favor by exterminating them all.
"In our world, we have a school called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which we train children with magical abilities to control their magic. You see, when witches or wizards kill, we use the killing curse. It's one of three forbidden curses and completely illegal. Any use of one of these curses sends you a one way ticket to Azkaban, the wizarding prison. This case that the Ministry's entrusting to you is highly unusual in the wizarding world, because this murder didn't happen with result of the killing curse.
"One student, Justin Finch-Fletchley, sixteen years old, muggle-born, from the Hufflepuff House was murdered by a muggle weapon. A gun, I believe it's called. We called you because he was the son of a naval officer. There is only so much the ministry and the school can do to catch the culprit. We've questioned every student and faculty member of the school, and we still came up empty-handed. We're not allowed to use the truth potion on anyone without probable cause, and the Ministry Officials are being asses and not helping out a murder at one of the supposed safest places in the world. They want to keep everything hushed up. They've gone as far as intercepting letters sent by the students to keep the story from leaking out to the press. If that happens the public will go in a frenzy, taking all of their kids out of the school. If that happens the Ministry loses their control over everyone.
"We've contacted you because you have the best record in solving practically unsolvable cases in the world. You have muggle ways of solving cases that we have no way of going about. Will you help us stop this sick son of a bitch from harming any other innocent students?" Moody growled.
Gibbs sat down and stared off to the side. Tony, McGee, and Ziva, just looked at him expectantly. It was his call.
He stood up and walked over to the bar. He took a glass and filled it with whiskey. After taking a sip he turned around, and looked stared at them. "Well, what are we waiting for? Get this plane off the ground. We've got a case to solve. Moody, I think we have a bit of filling in to do."
Hestia immediately ran into the cockpit.
As the plane engines roared to life, Moody said, "Well since I'm being honest now I can take this damned this off." He took off the eye-patch, revealing an empty eye-socket. Moody took out his wand again and waved it over the eye-patch. It immediately transformed into an eyeball, twice the size of his good eye. He popped it into the socket and it started to roll around in his skull. He leaned back in his chair.
"So what do you want to know?" Moody asked, catching Dinozzo's attention again.
When Tony turned around he saw the magical eye rolling disgustingly in its socket. "Yelch!!
His small outburst earned him a slap from his boss.

Chapter 3 - Arrival

Gibbs came out of the cockpit and went over to his three team members. Ziva was reading leisurely out of a magazine and McGee was sleeping with his mouth open in the chair next to her. So, naturally, Tony was sitting across from him trying to throw little scraps of paper into McGee's mouth, but upon seeing the brisk pace of his boss, he stuffed the paper into his chair and snapped to attention.

"Buckle up people, it's gonna be a bumpy ride," Gibbs said sitting down to buckle up himself.

While buckling up Ziva said, "Are we going through turbulence?"

Tony crumpled the piece of paper he had and threw it at McGee's head, jerking the sleeping team member awake.

"Nope. Landing. There's storm clouds ahead, so we're gonna be bouncing around a bit."

And sure enough, as soon as they buckled their seat belts, the plane dipped, jerked and rose, shaking from side to side. They had to hold on to their armrests just to stay in their seats. McGee was gripping his hands so hard they turned white, his eyes were closed and his face was scrunched. Tony wasn't doing much better; he was trying hard not to fly forward out of his seat. Whenever he finally straightened himself, the plane tipped and he fell into his boss, who wasn't having fun with Dinozzo falling into his lap every thirty seconds. Gibbs and Ziva weren't having as much difficulty with their balance as the other two, but they still struggled to remain in their seats.

Apparently, which they found out later, that Hestia was a terrible flier. In fact she barely passed her flight exam five years ago, and this was her first flight since then. When they landed, they jerked so hard that Tony flew forward so fast that his seat belt snapped. He was sent crashing into McGee, then rolling along the floor when the plane turned. Once it jerked to a stop, Moody came out of the cockpit saying, "So everyone have a safe flight?"

All of the NCIS members shot him a look.

"You can create fire and water, freeze things in midair, but you can't cast a spell or something that will help us stay in our seats?" Dinozzo said picking himself up of the ground.

"Hmm, I think you're talking about the sticking charm. One wave and you can stick your rump to the seat like glue," Moody gruffed.

"And you couldn't put that on us while experiencing a flight like that?!" Tony said rubbing the back of his head.

Moody just shrugged. "Forgot," he said turning around to retrieve Hestia.

Tony looked dumbfounded, while Gibbs smirked. He was beginning to like the gruff wizard. 'Wizard. Still can't get my mind wrapped around that,' he thought.

When Hestia and Moody came back out of the cockpit, Hestia spoke first. "Sorry about the landing! I turned out to be a little rusty at the landing..."

"A little rusty?! How long was it since you last flew a plane?!" Tony exclaimed.

"Uhh, a few years..."

"How long exactly is a few years?" Ziva interrupted.

Hestia grew a bit nervous. She didn't like how the female NCIS agent was looking at her. "Five years."

"Five 'years'?" McGee asked shell-shocked.

"She got us here in one piece, didn't she? SO stop complaining. We're wizards. Even if we did fall out of the sky, we wouldn't crash and burn," Moody growled.

"Even so. I thought it was incredibly stupid. What if you were knocked out from the turbulence? Or-"

Gibbs cut Ziva off in mid-sentence. "So, we gonna get going or what?"

Ziva gave an impatient look.