Chapter Text
It's an ordinary Thursday for Q, which means it's in no way an ordinary day for the average Brit. He's spent the morning stewing over the new design for 004's new stiletto's with the little pistols in the toe box and the switch blade in the heel. After two cups of Earl Grey he's moved on to the issue of 008's stun rounds getting stuck in the chamber of his .45 ACP. After a brief lunch break, which lasts about fifteen minutes and forty-two seconds before all hell breaks loose, he's talking two agents in Mumbai through deactivating a bomb in the middle of a busy market street, and then relaxes from the adrenalin high by tinkering with 007's new gun design. Unfortunately his ordinary Thursday goes wonky when alarms start blaring at four twenty-six in the afternoon.
With a muttered curse Q pulls up his security features to localize and hopefully track the breach so MI6 can send out an agent to neutralize whatever threat has broken through some of his security. It takes thirteen seconds to locate the breach, and the information that it's heading for sends figurative ice water down Q's back. It's the security around Q-branch personnel that's being flicked through, heading for Q's own files.
"Q, why are your alarms going off?" M's dulcet voice asks from the speaker of his smartphone.
"Just a small security breach," Q mutters, glaring at his computer and activating the protocols he has for situations like this, "Someone's hacked into the Q-branch personnel files, nothing major"
He's tracing the breach and closing the holes in his walls at the same time and eventually the intruder notices and goes to pull out. Only Q's got him trapped, or at least he thinks he does, and then the intruder twists his code and slips under Q's security with a shimmy that makes Q a little starry -eyed because that was brilliant. But now it's a chase, because the intruder knows Q's on to him and Q needs to locate the signal that's cracked through his security to keep his departments personnel safe. There is a brilliant little jaunt through London, into the South of France, across the Sahara and into Peru before his tracking system localizes the break-in to a hazard zone in Scotland and after three seconds of stalling panic that Q can almost taste in the code that's been leading him on a merry little chase, the little blip he's been tracking fizzles out and disappears.
"That's actually a little creepy," Eve's voice breaks into his thoughts and he looks up from his screen to see most of his subordinates and Eve staring at him with worried expressions on their faces.
"What?" Q blinks, only to realize that he's been smiling for the last - however long it's been.
"You know you mutter to yourself when you chase people on the computer?" Eve smirks at him before asking what happened and where they need to send an agent.
Q's a little upset that Eve's laughing at him but explains what the problem was and where they need to go. The coordinates he gives her make her pause.
"That's a hazard zone," She frowns and takes everything up to M, muttering to herself all the way.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Harry/Hamish is a little pissed that everyone is hanging around for winter break this year because of the stupid Yule Ball, but he forgets to be upset when he finally gets a lead on his family. Both his parents have passed, unfortunately, however he does unearth the birth certificate of a Quentin Whishaw who was born to Mary and Arthur thirteen years before Hamish. Unfortunately his brother's files have been locked down behind some rather impressive security measures, for reasons unknown to Harry/Hamish. After studying the security measures for twelve hours and eight cups of Earl Grey he begins carefully slipping through the little lines of code with delicate quick movements and long pauses, at four twenty-six in the afternoon he knows he's tripped something because added security has popped up. He takes two minutes to browse Quentin's files and make a few quick notes in his journal about where he lives currently so he can look him up this summer, and then turns about to leave. Only he's stuck in whatever security measures have been erected in the last few minutes he's been stalled. Thinking fast he pulls out from a rather awkward angle that messes up a bit of his firewall, but admits it's worth it to not get caught by whatever shady government official is keeping him away from the last of his family. He runs subroutines and protocols until his fingers ache and then freezes when his location is compromised.
Fuck.
Harry/Hamish snaps his finger onto his reset key and watches every little line of code he's ever written fizzle out and crash to "Neverland", which is a separate drive that will hold all his data in a sort of suspension to keep it hidden. At least if they come to Hogwarts, assuming they can see past the 'anti-muggle' wards, they can't pin it on him as his computer is completely blank. He may be the only student in the school with a computer, but they can't blame anything on him! It's only circumstantial evidence. It's just his luck that he spends the next fourteen hours rewriting code to get his computer somewhere near it's beautiful old self and completely misses the stupid ball that he's supposed to be contractually obligated to attend. Not that it matters in the least to him. He gets slapped by his date, receives detention from McGonagall and still has his magic. It was worth it.
The school finally clears, mostly. And Harry/Hamish no longer has to worry about his dorm-mates cluttering up his head with useless drivel. Finally there is peace. For all of two days, and then chaos erupts bringing with it a dangerous blonde man in an expensive Tom Ford suit and spiffy, leather oxfords. The man takes one look at Har-Hamish and sighs with a look of exasperated amusement.
"Of course it is," He smiles thinly and walks straight towards Har-Hamish.
"Can I help you?" Hamish shuffles nervously and wrings the sleeves of his cardi behind his back, trying not to bite his lip.
"You wouldn't happen to have an older brother and a computer by any chance?"
Oh. Oh, crap.
"Who wants to know?" Hamish leans backwards, narrowing his eyes. This must be one of those shadowy government official's people.
"MI6," The man smiles charmingly, and Hamish pales. Oh, dear lord, could his luck get any worse?
"Would you mind coming with me for a while?"
"Let me just tell my Head of House and grab some things," Hamish nods shakily and heads back into Hogwarts with the man on his heels like he's not about to drag him into some form of interrogation and then make the problem disappear.
He gets Flitwick's confused approval to leave school for the rest of the break and then leaves a note on his desk in case he doesn't come back. It includes a will that is to be mailed to Gringotts if he doesn't turn up by the end of the school year.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-
When Bond returns from 'neutralizing' the threat in the Scottish hazard zone, he returns with a smug little grin on his face and a fourteen year old kid with messy black hair, green eyes and thick rimmed glasses. The debrief is surprisingly quick, M only yells twice during the entire conversation. A miracle. After Bond finishes his retelling of events he goes to find Q, who is agonizing over the apparently dead and completely useless computer that was supposedly used to hack into their systems.
"So, do you want to meet him?" Bond finally asks after Q has nearly killed himself trying to find a way to start the stupid thing.
"He's not dead?" Q blinks up at him with a wary hope.
"He's fourteen, so no, he's not dead," Bond narrows his eyes.
"Well, that's a first," Q mutters, but nods his head and allows himself to be led away from his work for a little while so he can meet this little genius.
And really, Bond could have said something before he shoved Q into the interrogation room. Because Q was not expecting to look at a little mirror of himself. Really, really not. He stares for approximately thirty-eight seconds before moving to sit across the table from the boy.
"Hello," the kid mutters quietly, staring at him with his mother's green eyes behind huge glasses.
"Hello," Q replies, a little awkwardly, "I'm Q, they didn't give me your name,"
"It's Hamish," the boy answers, "Hamish Whishaw. Are you Quentin?"
Q pauses at the name and then double takes at his own.
"How did you get my name?"
"Your birth certificate," Hamish replies slowly reaching for the little bag at his feet.
Q tenses slightly, because Hamish is an unknown and anything could be in that bag (well not anything, anything. Someone probably went through it before it was returned to Hamish). The boy pulls out a folder filled with papers and slides it across the table to him.
"I recently found a letter from my mother, my adoptive mother, explaining where I came from. It came with my birth certificate so I went digging for more information but a lot of it was buried under government security. I only recently found out about you and my files are still in Neverland so I don't have copies here," Hamish explains while Q flips through the folder.
He does remember the heartbroken sobbing his mother indulged in after coming home from the hospital. He even remembers the police stopping by every few months until he was fifteen to inform his mother that they hadn't found anything. His father had left after that, and his mother got a little distant.
"I'd like to run a DNA test to confirm this," Q finally says, looking up at Hamish.
"Please, if I've got the wrong person, I'm so screwed. I didn't know I was hacking into MI6, I just thought it was a government conspiracy or something," the boy flushes towards the end and Q smiles a bit. He remembers that feeling when he first got caught, so awkward.
After stepping out briefly to grab the necessary equipment, Q takes a quick buccal swab from Harry and goes off to compare it to his own. It's positive. Q sends the results to M before digging into the files and moving every mention of Hamish Whishaw into secure files under his own. After that's done he pauses for a brief moment to let the thought of a brother sink in completely.