It was a sunny summer day at the Rumania Dragon Resort. No clouds covered the sky but occasionally the shadow of great leathery wings would obscure it. The dragons were having a field day. Nobody was there to supervise them as they hunted wild animals, fought each other or took a bath in the river. Their humans were otherwise occupied and the dragons made sure to use the free time before they had to play according to the rules again.
On a sunny hill surrounded by forest a group of children, who counted as teenagers only barely stood in front of the figure of a black haired boy with a lighting shaped scar on his forehead.
Charles Potter paced in front of the assembled group, wearing a scowl that had everybody tense up.
"Alright guys", I exclaimed, "and girls, of course. All of you chose to come here on your own but I doubt you know what you signed up for. Albus Dumbledore is dead. The Dark Lord is going to come back to life soon. We only have one year, two if we're lucky, to prepare for the war that is sure to come. It will be a war that will shake the very foundations of our community. We have trained during the last three years. Most of your only had the Outtakes to practice, some even continued at home. Faced with real dark wizards however, this means nothing. Our Defense Professors taught as everything except defense against the Dark Arts at best and nothing at all at worst. Now with this change of plan I need you to develop even faster. Not through a crash course; the past year was an entire crash course. You know the spells, you can cast them. What you now need is battle experience." I looked everyone who stood in the front line into the eyes. My entire nest was there; Draco, Theo, Daphne, Tracey as well as Hermione, Lisa and Neville. Behind them a couple of younger students who would soon be second and third years where assembled. New Recruits, the only one known to me by name before I got them into the Outtakes was Colin Creevy.
"For the duration of your stay in this camp I won't be your classmate. I will be the Raven. I don't want to see any competition here. We're here to practice teamwork. But not only that. I know you won't ask any questions. None of you ever do and that is precisely why I trust you. I want to present you with a hypothetical scenario. Let's say there is this muggle orphanage that has a really bad reputation. They don't even try to make the place seem happy. The children are being bullied, donations go to the caretakers instead of buying better clothes for the children, stuff like that. Now I know for a fact that there are a lot of muggleborns out there with parents who detest the fact that their children got magic. They see those children as freaks, as being possessed by the devil or simply evil beings. They want to give those children away to an orphanage and just because they're afraid or angry or being stupid bastards they chose that awful orphanage to drop of their children. You can go and check for yourselves, all around the world orphaned muggleborns somehow always end up in the worst kind of places. If they aren't dripped off there by their parents then the caretakers will transfer them because the accidental magic of these children is causing all kinds of problems and complications.
Now let's say we want to change that. We want to have a law that allows us to check on young orphaned muggleborns. Maybe we even want to have magical orphanages. I'm not the first to have this idea. There have been made numerous attempts to get something like that passed but people just don't bother to go through with it. Nobody ever prints stuff like that in the papers. What can we do to draw attention to this kind of problems?" I paused for a moment before I continued:
"We need to get people fighting for the rights of magical children who are being abused my muggles. But that would mean fighting against muggles, and that's a terrible and dark and evil thing to do. Who fights against muggles? Death Eaters do. So let's say there was a group of Death Eaters rampaging through the village this hypothetical orphanage stands in. The orphanage is just one of many places destroyed but people will pay special attentions to it because it holds the only magicals in the village. People would come and fight the Death Eaters and the Death Eaters would flee eventually. It would be one great mess to obilivate all the muggles but of course there wouldn't be any reason to obilivate the muggleborns, even if they're to young to visit Hogwarts yet. They couldn't but notice the conditions those children had to live under. Now the uproar of the media about the Death Eater attack could be used to introduce the issue of the muggleborns. You can't protect every muggle village from magical attacks but you could protect every place with a few muggleborns in it that would be most likely to attract a Death Eater attack, since everybody knows those are after muggleborns too. If that is not enough soon somebody would get the idea of just putting all the muggleborn orphans into one orphanage. Protecting that would be far easier.
You know that I'm neither on the dark, nor on the light side. I always was and always will be my own side. It's a side that will stay secret and that nobody of must tell anybody about. That is why I have to use the other two sides to accomplish my aims. I will need half of you to act as fake Death Eaters attacking people and locations that need better protection and I need the second half of you to fight the first and to make sure people draw the right conclusions from it. When it gets serious the battles will be staged but for now I want each side to fight all out. We will try different combinations each time. For now, I want you to sort yourself alphabetically. The first half is presenting the Auror corps, the second are fake Death Eaters. Get to work."
While the students went to sort themselves accordingly I paced in front of them and gave out commands.
"We're doing our very first battle simulation today. I expect you to be horrible at it. But if you can't see your own faults clearly you'll just complain when I set you up for teamwork exercises. Team Light, you'll protect this hill. Death Eaters, hide in the forest and take them down. Use every spell you know that doesn't cause permanent damage. Don't worry, the resort has good healers..."
As it turned our I was right – they were horrible. However they had a full three weeks of training ahead of them and I was confident that by the end of it I could make them to work with each other.
The next day I took out my time turner as usual, went back 24 hours, drank a dose of elixir of life and an aging potion before making the slight adjustments in my appearance that turned me into Lestat Raven.
Disguised like that I went to welcome the next batch of recruits. It was a group of soon-to-be fifth to seventh years from both Hogwarts and Durmstrang. A couple of them I knew because they had siblings in my nest but aside from the Weasley twins I wasn't on first-name basis with anyone of them. Of course the twins wouldn't recognize me either aside from the obvious resemblance that I had explained away via relation.
Tom was already waiting for me as I came to assist him in forging our future main force. He too had prepared a similar welcoming speech about the war to come and the need to clean up the mess this world had become. I let him take the lead and for the moment just enjoyed the indeed very impressive show. Tom began his lessons with individual dueling and practically humiliated each and every one of the students. Then he partnered with me just to show what a real duel was supposed to look like.
Now unlike Tom or even Harry I wasn't exactly a genius at Defense. My strength didn't lay in dueling at all. I was quite good at charms but what made me really powerful was my talent to pull other people over at my side and to plan ahead to get all sorts of powerful magical artifacts. Still whenever I had visited Tom and especially during the last few weeks I had practiced a lot and trained together with him. Nekrys too gave me lessons and I used some turner time to practice in the Room of Requirement on my own. With all that time travel under my belt I was already almost a year older then I appeared during to the elixir of life. Count to that that I was very creative in using charms and transfiguration I was able to at least provide a decent show before Tom pulled out the big guns and utterly crushed me. I couldn't help but compare us to the brains and brawn.
This group too was separated into two teams who were to battle each other. Each group were to protect a flag on their own that symbolized their stronghold and to conquer the flag of the other team. This exercise ended as a bit more of a success. Somehow the twins managed to make the opposing team so angry that they went head over heels to crush them only to run right into dozens of traps they had set up. The smell of so many dung bombs being dropped in their heads was absolutely disgusting. I thought the whole thing was quite funny but Tom was not impressed. This was supposed to be a practice for battle not a prank war. He threw a few more insults around until I had to all but physically restrain the Weasleys from pranking the Dark Lord.
The next morning, after almost running into my younger self on the way to the bathroom, I went back another 24 hours, took another dose of my potions and morphed into the middle aged Raven.
As the Raven (no first name needed) I met up with Sirius and Remus who were in charge of the werewolves. Other then the students who came for the summer camp, these people were actually being prepared for their first battle. Remus had been training them for a month now and Sirius had worked with them for another three before that. I was here to test them.
The wolves didn't know exactly what the plan was (nobody but Tom and I did), they were merely being given a number of spells to learn.
"We've divided the wolves into three packs", Sirius explained to me once I arrived. "One specialized on dueling, one on physical shielding charms and patronus and one on dragon riding. You said you'd take over the last one yourself so Remus and I mainly worked on our teamwork with the other packs. Remus leads the shielding unit, I take care of the dueling team."
"Alright", I said, "let's test the shielding unit first. Black, please let you wolves attack the unit with rocks and boulders, as large and as heavy as they can."
When the wolves were busy I took Sirius aside for a private word.
"Have you told Lupin yet what the goal of this mission is?", I wanted to know.
"I had to", he admitted, "he wouldn't leave me alone about it. At first he outright refused to free the Death Eaters... He wanted to quit his job and everything. He even wanted to take his pack with him. But none of the wolves would follow him. They think... They think that this is the fist real chance to change anything they were given in decades. Even counting the Dark Lord! Remus still doesn't like it but he doesn't want them to be caught either. I'll keep an eye on him. He won't make any problems."
"I sincerely hope you are right", I said. "For his sake."
The performance of the shielding unit was good enough. Next I watched the dueling team fighting each other. I wished I would have more experience or at least something to compare their skills to other then the books. But at least they weren't just using stunners and disarming spells. That would have to be enough.
Dragon riding was another matter entirely. I had trained the animals personally, drilling them to fly in formations, spit fire all at once to accumulate a gigantic explosion and the like. Last week I came up with a system of simple commands presented in the form of multiple colored sparks and whirling lights that would translate for certain maneuvers. Both the dragons and the air force were to memorize those signs. While I was confident about the dragons abilities the werewolf air force now had to show me that they could handle the dangerous creatures just as well.
In the evening I turned back into Lestat after checking the time and making sure that the me from 24 hours ago wasn't around anymore and went to my meeting with Riddle.
"They're ready", was the first thing I said as I entered the room.
"About time", the Dark Lord muttered. "This werewolf won't make any problems?"
"If you're talking about Lupin, then no. Black has him under control."
"Control over Luin is only as good as control over Black. Black we only control through Potter and you are the one to control Potter." He looked up at me over his hands folded under his chin. "There are far too many gaps between me and the general of our main army for my liking."
"Lupin will not abandon Black", I said with certainty. "He's all that's left from his happy little world. He lost him once, he won't risk it again. Plus, there are the wolves themselves and I got them under control directly. Lupin is a great pack leader but he's not irreplaceable. We don't have to worry about Potter. His fate was sealed the moment he agreed to work with us. Someone as famous as him can never be a spy. Nobody will ever trust him again if this gets out and it will, eventually. As long as we don't force him to do anything he absolutely doesn't want to, we're fine."
"Still, why do we have to put people who have to be blackmailed in charge anyway? I have Death Eaters who could do the job."
"They're not just any people, Marvolo. They're important pieces of chess. They're key figures. I want to have them on my side because them working for the light could be very dangerous for us. Killing them however would be a waste of potential. You can't conquer the world with a herd of sheep. You need a pack of wolves."
"You're calling my Death Eaters a herd of sheep!?"
"That's what they are because that's what you made them to be", I scoffed. "Let's face it, the only decision your counterpart ever let them make is which of his shoes to lick first."
That seemed to seriously piss him off so I hurried to say: "I'm not saying he didn't have his hounds too. Wild mindless beasts, for sure, but loyal to the bone and useful if given a bit of freedom. But those all ended up in Azkaban. Which is why we have to get them back."
"I still think it would be better to train them a little longer. For example, if we were to strike on Halloween..."
I shook my head. "Really, Tom, that's so predictable! Everyone would know it was you. We want to mislead people, remember? The Quidditch World Cup is perfect. The whole ministry is tense, embarrassing them in front of the whole continent will shake them to the core. Security will be concentrated on the game. As soon as Malfoy starts his 'Drunken Death Eater Wannabee Attack' the place will be swarmed with aurors and nobody will be there to protect the prison. Nobody but the dementors, who just so happen to work for us. It's a fool proof plan and I won't have you mess this up just because you want to celebrate Halloween."
"You have absolutely no idea of the dark traditions, of-"
"No, I don't", I admitted freely, "and I don't care either way. But we will not come to the habit of accumulating our attacks on a single day each year. It will make us predictable, it will make us weak and I won't have it. No attacks on Halloween anymore. Don't force me to take out the sickle, Tom, this is non-negotiable."
Riddle glared at me even harder at the mention of the sickle that I had forced him to relocate his soul to last year. The sickle that was in my possession and that could be destroyed with but a word from me. I didn't like to remind him that I was holding his life in my hands but sometimes it was necessary to keep him on his toes.
Of course I didn't tell him the whole truth. There were other reasons why I wanted to hit the wizarding world during the world Cup. For one I planned to be present as Charles to have a decent alibi. I didn't think anyone would connect the dots just yet but you can never be sure. Also Harry wanted to spent time with me and it was important that I stayed as close to him as I could be bothered so that my betrayal would later crush him more thoroughly. The main reason however was that Luna would be online during the Cup. It was the only occasion aside from the choosing of the champions and the three tasks of the tournament that she would be able to cover for me during this year. Only when she was online could she be asked to start over the mission should it fail. Of course Tom didn't need to know that.
