When Clarke and Bellamy arrived in the charms room they were not the first ones there. Sterling was nervously twitching next to Monroe who was sitting awkwardly in one of the less dusty chairs. Clarke looked around the room, it looked like someone had cleaned. Before she could wonder who had and if it meant the room was compromised she noticed Sterling twiddling his wand. She made a note in her head that apparently he was a nervous cleaner. It didn't take long till all of the relevant people arrived. Bellamy, Octavia, Sterling, Monroe and Harper were nervous and clearly in emotional turmoil over the events of the day before. Raven had insisted on her presence and had recruited Jasper and Monty to the meeting. The boys had not been pleased to find out she'd left them out of her 'world domination' plans. Seeing as she and Bellamy were almost the last to arrive Clarke went straight to the front of the room and sat down on a desk considering how to start. Bellamy solved that problem for her.
"So what's this plan for world domination?" He gave a lopsided grin.
Clarke huffed, "Not world domination, just regional." Everyone in the room was focused on her and she silently thanked Bellamy for getting the quaffle flying. "Look our society has systemic flaws and is rife with corruption. Changing things from the inside is no longer possible, any honest effort would lead to being stonewalled, or taken care of." Clarke's hands fisted slightly at the mention of people being 'taken care of'.
"The entire upper echelon of our government needs to be overturned. And to do so we need to create the greatest diversion ever seen."
Clarke smiled at them, "If this is going to work, we're going to need two distinct branches. The first one, the one I need you for, is the riskiest. Your job would be to undermine the social acceptance of the status quo by engaging in well targeted pranks that highlight the injustices of the current system. This would undercut the political approval the current parties enjoy. You will need to be visible and not let people ignore the problems in our country. I trust Bellamy and you all are capable of being appropriately obnoxious." She smiled throwing a look at Bellamy while the others chuckled.
"The second branch of our efforts would be directly political. As the only child in my family, I'm entitled to a hereditary seat in the Wizengamot. At the moment, my mother is using it but I intend to take it back. With a seat in the Wizengamot, I can form a new political party. I want to found and lead a party that on the surface promotes a crackdown on corruption, promotes education reform, and some trade reform. It would generally be a slightly less objectionable party compared to the current parties in power. The goal will be to gain control of a majority of the Wizengamot and then the lead member of the party becomes Minister of Magic. When we have the majority in the Wizengamot we can put through laws that would reform our country while repealing some of the ridiculous laws that have been put in place by a corrupt system. It's going to take a lot of work, a lot of luck and our complete dedication but I believe we can do it." As she fell silent she watched and listened as murmuring broke out.
She was surprised when Bellamy spoke up first over the murmuring. He was looking at her with consideration after hearing her plan for the first time. "Well you're all sorts of a special kind of crazy, but it might just work. That said other than undermining political support what would we be doing?"
"Making enough noise that no one pays attention to what I'm doing in the Wizengamot. It's like muggle magic. I need you to be the magicians who keeps the spotlight focused on them while I organize the actual trick."
A surprised Harper spoke up from the side. "You know about muggle magic?"
Clarke tilted her head in confusion, "Of course, the entire process is fascinating, using others perceptions against them through the art of misdirection and sleight of hand making your audience deceive themselves, it is truly brilliant." She could feel her excitement and love of the topic shining through. Although the surprised looking faces confused her.
Octavia grinned, a strangely mischievous look on her face. "Who are your top five favorite muggle magicians?"
It was an easy enough question if odd, "Houdini, Jean Eugene, Jasper Maskelyne, Richard Pitchford, and Howard Thurston."
"Oh my god, you are as big of a nerd as Bell," Octavia lost it at that, laughing. The Gryffindors joined in with Octavia, they'd been forced to hear about history ad nauseum by Bellamy for years now. Even Raven's smile was twitching with suppressed mirth.
Clarke looked at Bellamy for help. He just shrugged his shoulders before commenting, "They seem to think knowing historical figures is weird. I don't get it either."
Rolling her eyes she waited for the assembled students to calm down. "There are massive problems that we could run into and we need them addressed before we can move forward."
"You mean like how you intend to gain a majority party in the Wizengamot? Cause I may not know politics, but I know that it isn't that easy." Raven crossed her arms glaring at her friend for leaving out information once again.
Clarke shifted, "I can't tell you. Its part of our problem. People have tried this before. And they have failed because they have underestimated just how far those in power are willing to go to keep the status quo, and because there is always someone who is capable of or willing to betray them. I don't know about you, but I don't want to find out what's on the other side of the veil or what it feels like to be kissed by a dementor. This leaves us with a problem, I can't tell you the intricacies of how to overthrow them because if it gets back to Jaha and his administration not only will we be stopped but anyone trying to use this method again will be stopped."
"So what, we just trust you to 'magically' overthrow the government while we risk our lives for you?" Octavia glared at her.
"Hey," Raven turned to Octavia, "hear her through before you start condemning her."
Clarke cleared her throat getting the attention of the room again. "Before we can actually plan in any detail or I can go over in detail the political side of things, we need to find a way to guarantee no one is going to end up betraying us. I'm not asking you to blindly trust me, I'm asking you to help me to find a way to prevent traitors that doesn't involve dark magic."
Raven raised an eyebrow, "Why can't we all just take unbreakable vows not to be turn coat traitors?" Monroe made a strangled sound while the halfbloods all straightened.
"Absolutely not! We are not voluntarily committing ourselves to slavery." Bellamy stood up angrily.
"That's a little harsh, it would work wouldn't it?" Raven glared at Bellamy.
Monty spoke up before Bellamy who was turning a surprising shade of red could reply. "If you accidently break the oath, even if it isn't intentional it still causes death Raven."
"So, just don't break it?" Raven frowned at him.
Clarke sighed, "Let's say in the oath we swear to never betray the rebellion. That would never work because if you even speak against the rebellion to cover your tracks you'll die. Or if we go specific to avoid accidental deaths of that sort, what happens if you talk to a possible recruit only to find out they were an undercover auror? You die. It would make having anyone who works in any meaningful way with the ministry almost guaranteed to die because of a fumble or mistake. Though there is a slight pain that the watchful know means that they are close to breaking their oath, it barely gives you enough time to stop yourself. There is a reason why the oath is so reviled in magical society."
"Well fuck." Raven slumped back into her chair. "Anyone else have an idea then?"
Jasper took a thinking position, "What about veritaserum? We just make sure everyone who joins up isn't a traitor and won't turn into one."
Bellamy nodded, "That could work."
Monty shoved Jasper slightly, "How would we afford that much veritaserum?"
Monroe answered him. "That's not all it wouldn't prevent someone from deciding to betray us down the line. We'd have to dose ourselves regularly."
Jasper replied to her, "But it could still work, and no magical slavery."
"Jasper, the cost would be insane, and the ingredients are class A restricted materials. Even with Clarke's connections getting or making more than three vials would be next to impossible and cost a small fortune." Monroe replied with an exasperated huff.
Clarke pinched her nose. "This is the problem every rebellion runs into, there just isn't a good option for this but it's absolutely necessary if we don't want to end up like the last people who tried."
"What exactly did happen to the last people who tried? You mentioned werewolves but I thought aurors just arrested them." Sterling said.
"Targeted werewolf attacks. The majority of the suspected members of the revolt were either mauled or turned into wolves themselves. They're now either dependent on the ministry for wolfsbane or dead. Our current trade relations with France were established at the time. It was never confirmed, but it's believed that Sydney, with Jaha's support, imported French werewolves infected with a strain of the curse specifically designed to make it faster acting and to have stronger effects. What I do know is that the French have a reputation for inhumane experimentation on magical creatures and have the largest black market for magical animal ingredients in the world." Clarke shook her head. "The point is we don't want to end up like them, dead, cursed, or politically isolated. What seats they still have are all hereditary and they couldn't pass a thing since both of the major parties won't deal with them at all."
"So, you want us to come up with a method of ensuring secrecy in spite of no one ever successfully figuring it out before?" Octavia said is disbelief, "You're not asking that much are ya princess." She rolled her eyes.
"What about magical contracts?" Harper suggested after a pregnant pause.
"They can be nullified if you know what you're doing. Historically they don't have a great track record, they either end up so tightly held that they are as bad as the oath or nullified, and you can never fully prevent loopholes." Bellamy replied.
"How on earth do you know that?" Raven asked surprised.
"I read." Bellamy said quickly, and then groaned on seeing that she wasn't going to take that as an answer. "I may have looked into trying to get some pureblood bigots to sign a contract that would prevent them from being dicks. Another problem is that if the contract is physically destroyed then it no longer holds. Someone signs the contract, then uses a switching spell with a fake, destroys the original and viola free from the contract."
"So, we have nothing?" Monroe frowned.
There was a pause before Jasper spoke up. "Why are we going with arguably legal methods? I mean we're already committing treason, so why not just go the whole way? Clarke you mentioned dark methods?"
Clarke grimaced, "Yes, the least objectionable being Hera's oath which would bind all of our loyalty but the price is a piece of our freewill. You'd never be able to change your mind. There would be no way for you to ever be convinced that our cause is wrong. It would be absolute and it would be effectively binding a piece of our souls to the cause."
Bellamy looked thoughtful, "Didn't the Dark Lord Anithikos in ancient Greece use that and then get assassinated by his own followers?"
Clarke nodded, "With the oath of Hera, you swear fealty to an idea or cause not a person. He spent most of his power trying to achieve personal gain instead of achieving the goals of their cause. His followers who were loyal to the cause, not the man, killed him."
"How do you know this Griffin?" Bellamy asked.
"Because I have his personal journal on magic he was writing at the time of his death. His second daughter inherited it and I had an ancestor who collected magical texts who bought it from her for six galleons and an enchanted duck." She shifted uneasily. "That book is one of the darkest in the family collection, most of the spells are horrendous."
"Is the only cost that we can never change our loyalties away from the group?" Bellamy brought the conversation back to the topic at hand.
"Yes, we'd lose the ability to change our minds about our commitment to the cause. So, if we take the oath we have to be sure that it's what we want." She paused thinking over the old pages she'd read through on several occasions. "Also, it will leave a physical mark."
"What like a tattoo?" Octavia asked, at Clarkes nod she grinned, "Badass, I'm down with that."
"What exactly does the oath involve?" Raven asked.
"We'd need to write down exactly what we'd be swearing to and make sure it's secure and doesn't have any obvious loopholes. Then we'd need a candle. Each person writes the oath with a blood quill. You will perform a binding curse on the parchment used for the oath. Then you burn the parchment with the candle next to your skin where you want the mark to appear. The smoke will sink into the skin and form a mark to anchor it. It's supposedly painful since it's tying a piece of your soul to your physical body." Clarke ran a hand through her hair. "There is no way around it since it involves soul and blood magic. Honestly, it's on the light side of the magic in the text, but even I can't be entirely sure what the consequences will be. It hasn't been performed to my knowledge since ancient Greece."
Jasper glanced at Octavia before straightening up in his seat. "Dangerous, basically untested ancient dark magic, count me in." He smiled brightly trying to hide his nerves.
Bellamy crossed his arms. "It would work?"
Clarke nodded, "It would and I'd be willing to take it first." She looked over at Octavia, "would that help your doubts about me?"
Octavia laughed, "Yeah, that would do it."
"So about this oath, how are we going to word it?" Raven asked while grinning.
-MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA-
"I think we have an acceptable oath. Monroe did you get the candles?" Clarke looked up from the parchment where they had been going over various versions of the oath.
"Yup, the house elves were very helpful at finding a candle with no magical properties made from pig's fat. Which is gross and they smell weird. Why couldn't the evil dark wizard make his magical oath of loyalty with a nice pine scented candle?" Monroe scrunched up her nose while setting down an armful of pig lard candles on the desk.
Raven laughed, "I think dark lords are contractually obligated to go with the grossest ingredients."
"We need a name for ourselves," Bellamy said from where he was bent over next to Clarke looking over the final draft of the oath. He looked up. "I mean what sort of proper rebellion doesn't have a name?"
Octavia looked up from the desk where she was doodling, not caring about the debate over the details of the contract. "Isn't the point not to get caught? Why do we need a name? Isn't this a secret war they don't know is a war till it's too late and all."
"She has a point Bellamy," Miller put in from where he was leaning against the chalkboard.
"What do you think we should call ourselves, 'The Bloods' or something equally obvious?" Raven piped up, seemingly daring him to call it something stupid.
"No," Bellamy scoffed. "Something meaningful that we can stand for. Like the Latrocinium!" He smiled at his own brilliance.
Clarke frowned while cracking her back after straightening up. "What on earth does that mean?"
"In ancient Rome a latrocinium was an undeclared war or banditry against the nation, typically conducted by the slaves or lower classes." He puffed up his chest with confidence. "It's exactly what we are, we just have one of the big wigs helping." He tipped his head towards Clarke.
"How do you even know that dude?" Jasper asked in disbelief.
"I read, and most magical texts predating 1900 are in Latin." He held himself with pride Clarke noted.
"Isn't that a bit obvious?" Clarke asked. "Like we'd literally be declaring our undeclared war?"
"I'm with her, way too obvious." Sterling put in.
"Wait, think about it. Clarke you need a name for your political party right?" Raven waited for Clarke to nod before continuing. "No one is going to actually look up what the Latin name you pick means. And even if they do isn't that exactly what a pretentious pureblood aiming to make their political name weeding out corruption would use. I mean a bigoted idiot would totally name themselves after a movement of the poor and feel self-aggrandized by doing it. It's kinda brilliant, even if I didn't come up with it." Raven looked around excited.
"She's right, I'd never make the connection." Monty added his opinion.
"It would clear up the phrasing in the last stanza of the oath," Clarke conceded. Looking around the group of excited teens she came to her decision. "Fine all in favor of naming ourselves the Latrocinium, raise your hand." It didn't take long for everyone to have their hand up. Clarke found herself smiling along with them. "Well then, I hear by declare the Latrocinium founded."
After a flurry of high fives and fist bumps Octavia spoke, "So are we getting this party started or what? My big mother hen of a brother is about to let me get a tattoo."
"Right," Clarke straightened herself up as the serious tone of the room returned. She pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and grabbed the blood quill. Carefully and without flinching she began to write out the oath.
"We swear loyalty to the goal of spreading the truth about the prejudice within our government and rooting out that corruption.
We swear to remain loyal to our brothers and sisters who also strive for this goal.
We swear to fight for the rights and acknowledgment of every magical British citizen regardless of ancestry, species, or magical ability.
We swear to fight for these goals through the Latrocinium."
She shook her hand after finishing, it was a lot of text. Pulling out her wand she tapped the paper lightly and said, "as einai." The paper glowed a dark red before rolling up. Clarke had actually felt the warmth of the spell running down her arm and into the paper. This was going to be a surprisingly powerful spell she realized. Looking up she smiled wryly at Monty who was holding out a candle that he'd just lit for her. Taking the candle, she set it on the desk next to the rolled up oath. Reaching up she quickly pulled off her tie, vest, and shirt till she was left in just her bra. Raven whistled causing her to roll her eyes. "Shut up Reyes."
Taking the candle, she held it so that the flame was next to the side of her ribs. Picking up the parchment she held it in the flame from the candle. The flame licked at the paper before catching quickly. The flames turned a vibrant unnatural red quickly devouring the paper. The smoke darkened to solid black before seemingly sinking into her skin where she held it. Once the candle stopped producing the magical smoke the flame went out. Placing the candle back on the desk Clarke glanced down at the pooling black on her skin.
"Well that wasn't so bad." Jasper said cheerfully. "I was expecting fireworks or something."
"Fuck!" Clarke hissed gripping the edge of the desk. She could feel something ripping inside her and not inside her at all. It was painful in a way that she had never experienced. The black ink swirled burning against her skin as it took a shape. Finally, it stopped moving leaving a circular knot. Clarke waited to make sure it was done. She reached for her shirt quickly pulling it back on. "It took, the spell definitely took."
Octavia jumped up, "I'm so next that was amazing!"
"No, you're not." Bellamy stepped in front of her. "I'll go next."
Clarke held out the blood quill.
-MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA-
Sometime later everyone had taken the oath. They'd found that when touching someone who also had the mark they could feel it heat up against their skin. There had been a lot of swearing at the feeling of a piece of their souls being tethered. But overall it had gone well. Octavia was poking at her new tattoo on her shoulder. Looking up from it she brought them back to the topic. "So princess, what's this secret political plot you can not divulge?"
Clarke snorted in amusement at Octavia's focus. "Wells and I were planning on taking control from inside the Traditionalist party, after all the leaders of the party are our parents. We needed a way to control senior party members. From the time my father died when I was eleven, till now I invested most of my free time in trying to understand everything about everyone who might be involved."
She looked over at Jasper, Monty and Raven. "Those black notebooks Wells and I were always writing stuff in? Those are all the intricacies of every ministry member's political and personal life we could dig up. We recorded and fact checked every piece of gossip. The result is that we have extensive blackmail material on almost every relevant political figure."
"Politically, the trap we're setting is simple. While the Wizengamot and ministry are focusing on the chaos being created by the Latrocinium, I can establish myself as a relatively harmless idealist tilting at windmills who doesn't understand the way things are yet. Several of my father's closer allies and fringe members of each party are likely to join up just to shake things up and to attract notice. I should be able to pull ten of the seventy-three seats into the Latrocinium party within the first year that way."
"Once I've established myself as relatively harmless, we start disgracing various key members of either party from elected seats. With the parties losing support because of the chaos you will be creating the Latrocinium party should start winning seats that members are going to be resigning from each election cycle. Remember we don't need the all the seats, just the majority. I estimate that we will need approximately twenty-five seats before we can put in place a Latrocinium as Minister of Magic. What's left of the Old Guard from the last rebellion should join once they realize I pose a legitimate political threat to the Traditionalist and Purist parties. After all they'll want their pound of flesh. Then we start doing everything we can to implicate and disgrace the French. The further we can strain their relationship with the Traditionalist party the less organized their response against you guys will be. Depending on how much public opinion we manage to turn against them we should be able to pull the greatest political coup to ever occur."
"You are so not humble." Monroe laughed.
"How much blackmail do you have exactly?" Bellamy asked cautiously.
"Seventeen notebooks filled completely. I'm on my eighteenth. Then I have Wells' financial tracking and legal evaluations." Clarke knew it was a bit excessive.
"Merlin's soggy balls." Octavia gaped.
"So are you all in?" Clarke asked.
Bellamy shifted so the mark on his forearm was visible, "Obviously. But if you meant with your crazy, yeah, yeah we are. Promise we get to drag Jaha out of office in chains?" He grinned viciously.
"And straight to Azkaban if I have my way." Clarke agreed.
"Good, then how do we start? Cause I have a feeling you'll end us if we start passing out fliers." He leaned against a desk.
"First things first we need to organize. This room will need to be secured. Miller would you be willing to enchant the door with a permanent notice me not and some silencing spells?" Clarke waited for Miller to nod from his post against the chalkboard. "Good, we need to start listing people to recruit, Bellamy I'm sure you can handle that. Then we need to work on breaking the ministry's hold over the werewolves. The ministry's greatest weapon in off the book actions. Monty, Jasper, I need you guys to go over my notes on wolfsbane and see if you can help me finish remaking the recipe so that it's easier and cheaper to make and most importantly so that it doesn't use any restricted ingredients. Raven, we're going to need a method of communication since all of us can't constantly be seen interacting with each other." Clarke paused to make sure she still had her audience. "Octavia, Harper we need a list of every bigoted bully in the school that you think poses an actual threat of retaliation, include teachers. Monroe, I need you to help set up routes we can all use to get to this room that don't intersect with each other. Sterling, I know it's super boring but I need you to find real estate that would work as a base of operations once we graduate from Hogwarts. Does anyone have any questions about what their jobs are?" She looked around.
Miller spoke up, "No offense but just to be sure you and Bellamy are in charge, not just you?"
Bellamy straightened, "I got one of us killed."
"And I can't do this without you. Someone is going to need to be in charge of the more militant side of the rebellion and you're the man for the job." Clarke interrupted him. "We can add it to our list Blake, find a way for us to meet and discuss our plans."
He nodded and the others settled comfortably with the agreed upon leadership.
"Use school owls to contact anyone you don't have a history of contact with from this point forward. Curfew is in half an hour. Anyone have anything else to add?" Clarke waited till it was clear they were done. "See you all next week, same place, same time. Good luck with your jobs." She smiled and then started picking things up. It didn't take long for the group to file out in pairs till it was just her. Breathing deeply, she let the stress leave her body, her hand gripping where she now bore the mark of the rebellion. It was real and it was happening. She hoped Wells would be proud. Turning she headed out into the hall. She was surprised to find Raven leaning against the wall outside the door.
"What are you still doing here?" She asked.
"Waiting for you Griffin." Raven pushed off from the wall.
"Do you have a problem with making communication devices?" Clarke asked puzzled.
"Nope, I can do that. Easy as pie, don't go doubting me there." Raven smiled as cocky as ever. "No, I just had to say I was right."
Clarke frowned, "About what?"
"I knew you would get me in trouble the moment you took the seat next to me in potions after the mess with Finn. You said I was wrong. I told you I'm never wrong and that you would owe me a galleon when it happened. Looks like I'm right, queen of trouble. I was just expecting a detention for throwing a punch. I wasn't expecting to get involved with a revolution." She turned and started walking towards the stairs. "You owe me a galleon Griffin."
Clarke laughed, "I'll get that to you."
"With interest," Raven yelled over her shoulder.