Part one – A Secret Gathering
The scene of our humble drama takes place in the year 2000, in Northern Scotland. Let it be explained that the time and place matter little to the author; indeed, she has taken some liberties with the settings, trying to indicate by this that she strives to cloud the present play in a shrine of generalisation, of great lessons about human nature, human failures, and human achievements. Any dedicated reader should devoutly keep this in mind, and never even suggest that the author doesn't have an inkling of what Northern Scotland looked like a few years ago. Thank you.
Where was I? Ah, right, the settings.
Scotland was at the time a true mirror of the rest of the world. A huge battlefield stretched as far as the eye could see: nothing but hovering Dark Marks, streams of glistening green light, and the smell of powder – wizards often lighted Weasley Whizz-bangs to cheer up after the grisliest scenes of murder and destruction.
Are you asking a question already, gentle reader? Or should I say, inquisitive reader? Yes? Don't witches light Weasley Whizz-bangs too?
Ah, despite your obtrusiveness, you may have a point, clever reader. The answer is a downright no. Witches did not light Weasley Whizz-bangs. As a matter of fact, witches did not cast Dark Marks or green streaks either. Witches were indeed very much confined to selected fields such as breeding, teaching, journalism, or Wizengamoting – you can feel JKR herself tried to right matters by hinting at a few women in positions of responsibility, but they are not many, nor well described. But I digress again, please excuse me – let us go back to our main track, shall we? We are in need of some action.
So, despite the climate of disgusting male chauvinism, one cold January morning, before dawn, a distinctly female figure slipped out of a nondescript Hogsmeade house and walked briskly towards Hogwarts. The witch let a strand of frizzy hair slip out of her robe's hood, thus indicating to you, dense reader, that she is none other than the infamous Hermione Granger, who already graduated from school as we can't have under aged participants here, political correctness and all, you have seen the rating, you understand the need to skip a few years after canon, don't you? I can't post chan, you see, it's contrary to the anti-child-pornography laws of my country, and Mr. W. doesn't like it either, war on obscenities and all, so let's call it quits and go on with the story, shall we?
Hermione walked through the entrance gates, thus entering the scene, and here, faithful reader, do you cease to be a reader to become a spectator. Or at least you would if we had had the courage to step into our model's footprints and to write a full-blown play. But human nature is only what it is, you know, feeble and cowardly, so we shall not derive from the well-beaten path of omniscient narrative. If you are tempted to criticise this choice, and feel you should enlighten us as to our horrendous lack of writing skills, mastery of POV shifts and proper spelling, do stop reading. That way, you won't bother me – and it's just too bad if you don't get to see how Hermione paced up and down the makeshift stage in a distinctively impatient manner. You won't get to hear her impatient mutterings, her anxious staring at her watch, and her cursing – the last not being a bad thing, after all, as we can't have you listening to too much cussing, it would have nefarious consequences on an already impressive rating.
"Why are you so late?" she asked to an out-of-breath Ginevra that had barely just entered the scene as well, some time after Hermione's own arrival. (Do note how she waited for another protagonist to appear before she began to talk. We can't have the main protagonist talking to herself that soon in the story, can we? Madness only comes in act the third act, as you well know) "The meeting was scheduled to begin twenty minutes before dawn! Where are the others?"
"This is your fault, Hermione! How could you expect us all to know when the sun is supposed to rise? We all have watches and magically-powered alarm-clocks, you know, we don't give much notice to the time the sun goes up, especially as it tends to change every day!"
Hermione refrained from lifting her eyes skywards with great trouble. Dealing with people that are not intimately acquainted with the lives, customs and means of time-measurement of ancient Greeks can be so tiresome at times. As it is to deal with readers who didn't get the allusions to… ah, well, I'll have to spell it out in the author's notes, I suppose.
"Ginny, the entire future of the wizarding world is at stake. Death Eater wives will be arriving shortly. I didn't have my morning cup of coffee as Severus was not yet awake to bring it to me in bed. Don't you feel how dire the situation really is?"
(We beg you pardon, sycophantic reader, to thus rape cannon without regard for Vaseline®, but for the benefit of all those readers who spend time with us right now instead of refreshing the Ashwinder main page, let us suppose that Snape is not evil and that he and our heroine are happily married at the time of these events. You do understand that not including Snape in the story would have meant losing a large part of the readership, and this is something I cannot really afford, as you well realise.)
The last argument had made young Ginevra hear reason. There are things you must not do under any circumstances, and contrary a caffeine-deprived Hermione figured in good place among them.
"Mother is coming soon, I suppose. And Padma is on her way too, I saw her coming. But why are Death Eater wives coming too?"
"Not all of them are coming, only Narcissa and Pansy – they'll tell the others what the plan is – don't fidget, I'll tell you all what the plan is, when all the other Order witches are here too – ah, here they arrive!"
We shall be so bold as to suppose that you, addicted reader, have not ingested sufficient quantities of caffeine to deal with the detailed arrival of all these witches either, and shall therefore skip to the point where they are all present, have greeted each other, and exchanged comments about their respective appearances, robes, the weather, their husbands' sexual prowess of the night, what juicy piece of fic they had last read, and other subjects we shall not delve into for lack of time, interest, and broadband.
"My dear friends," began Hermione, "you certainly wonder why I had you all wake up so early to come here…"
A chorus of approvals met her statement.
"We have been at war for several years now. Several years of tensions, of hatred, of deaths. None of us witches has ever raised a wand against another – no, we know that putting stinging salve in the opponent's contact lens solution is a much more efficient way of getting one's way. Yet all of us have lost at least a father, a husband, or a son – often more, sometimes all three at once. All of us have had to deal with the loss of a child we suffered hours long to put into the world – have to sleep each night in a cold, empty, desolate bed, with a vibrating wand for only company, as our significant other got blasted away by a stray Avada."
Murmurs of agreement rose from the assembly. The death toll was quite not that high yet, but you really had to allow some literary liberties in so good a speech.
"And yet, what are we doing to prevent this sad occurrences? What have we undertaken to stop our male counterparts from taking each other's lives? We have no one but ourselves to blame for this war - we should have stopped it days, months, years ago!"
The word "how" hovered on every pair of lips. On every upper pair of lips, need we precise. We shall also precise that no conjecture was ever emitted here regarding the possible stiffness of Englishwomen's lower pairs of lips, no, that would be a bit cheeky, even for us. Englishwomen are, however, allowed to ask "how" like good little sycophants, they won't necessarily be hexed for doing so.
Hermione let a few instants pass by to enjoy the budding suspense.
"The means, sisters, is not easy. But it is within our reach…"
The suspense went up another few notches. The audience was quivering, staring at Hermione's lips in the hope of her delivering this miraculous solution. The author, noticing that you, drooling reader, have adopted the same posture, therefore decided to place a cliffhanger right here, at the end of the first part of her first multi-chaptered fic. Yes, she is evil, and you may just want to leave her a review to tell her so. Whilst reviewing, do take the opportunity to tell her in great lengths how wonderful, beautiful and masterful her fic is. Thank you for reading.
A/N: The characters are all borrowed from JK Rowling. No disrespect is meant, no money is made, no harm is intended. The plot is shamelessly stolen from a Great Playwright you have certainly recognised by now – House points to those who did, anyway :)