Now all we need is for this ambiguity to play a role in the actual books. For instance:

Marcone badly desires, for some reason, to see something with a Wizard's Sight, the Third Eye, and naturally he asks Harry is there's a way to go about doing that for a limited time. Harry immediately thinks of the potion that Victor Sells had been marketing as a drug way back during the events of Storm Front.

When he gives it a bit more thought, he realizes just how insanely difficult making that potion had to have been -- certainly more advanced than anything Sells should have been able to come up with himself -- and this leads him into more thought on the Black Council. Not only had someone helped him out with some power, they'd probably supplied the recipe as well, and not many people have that kind of knowledge.

Harry goes to Bob to try and work out the details of the potion with an eye to getting a lead on the Black Council. They decide that what they really need is a sample, so Harry pops over to the Police Department to see if Murphy or Stallings (depending when this takes place) can help him out by having a look in the evidence locker. They confiscated enough of it that some of it should still be there unless it was removed -- and Harry figures that if a wizard removed it he might be able to find some kind of clue even then.

THEN *cue drumroll* His police buddy asks him when the stuff would have been confiscated. Harry can't remember the date. He thinks it was around the turn of the century, year 2000 or so, but he's not sure. They go through some records looking for any kind of paperwork regarding the drug in 1999-2001, but all the dates they find that might be relevant are mysteriously vague on the year. It either looks like someone forgot to fill it in, it's been smudged, damaged somehow, etc.

Harry thinks harder, but is completely unable to pin the date down to a specific year. He goes back home to ask Bob, because Bob would remember that based on those brand new skin magazines/novels Harry had bought him, and Bob draws a blank.

All they can figure out is that something happened in the year 2000. Something magical and very, very dangerous. Maybe all those computer malfunctions weren't based on what the computer geeks thought after all, maybe it really was the beginning of the Apocalypse.

*cue music*

P.S. I really wish I could write worth a damn so I could make this into a one-shot.