"Message received. Loud and clear."
The old man might still have a few tricks to teach his son after all. If there was one thing Draco had overlooked in their arsenal of weapons, it was the traditional lordly industry. Agriculture. Who owned large swathes of land in Britain? Who profited from the fruits of the land? Yes. One of the few sources of power left open to the Senior Malfoy after his stint in Azkaban.
Old fashioned protectionism. Lucius allowed himself a slight grimace as he sipped his tea. He hadn't been sure anyone would take the bait. Pumpkin tariffs snuck into the next wizarding farm bill, along with quotas on imported mandrake root and bubotuber seeds. It should have seemed like an innocent act, by local lords promoting their tenants' crops. Obviously someone hadn't taken it as such. Still, he had to admire their subtlety – The girl's death could have been coincidence. Only one who knew the game would have taken it as a cease and desist warning. But – by the same note, one who knew the game would know better than to respond,
"We are, each of us, trying to flush the other out. Two hunters, circling." Bloody brilliant! One day, if they survived all of this, he'd be sure to properly thank the Granger girl for inciting this new game.
"Well that was a load of useless shite." Draco was pacing new holes in Hermione's carpet. Again.
The bug's observations had been less than helpful. "So, the plant PR manager was giving her the grand tour of the extraction and filtering floors and stopped to give her a fresh-squeezed glass, straight from the QC spigot to try. Of course, she couldn't refuse. So she took a drink. And promptly choked on a seed."
"A seed that A) shouldn't have been possible to be in the glass given the type of filtration unit the plant supposedly has, and B) was not possibly large enough to asphyxiate her in the first place, no matter how it lodged."
"What do you mean?"
"Look," Hermione grabbed a notebook and quickly sketched a diagram, "This is the size of the pumpkin seed they retrieved at St, Mungos." She'd had to threaten Skeeter at wandpoint to retrieve the memory so she could measure the bloody thing. Sometimes she really did love magical memories. "And this is the cross section of the average larynx. See? It was a small seed, just theoretically plausible enough to escape filtration if you didn't actually know how the plant worked. No matter how it could have lodged in her throat, air would get by. It would have been unpleasant and deeply uncomfortable. But she would have lived long enough to make it to the hospital."
"What about laryngospasm? Swelling from the irritation?"
"Theoretically, maybe. But then they should not have been able to extract the seed at St. Mungos like it was never lodged there to begin with."
"So what? She died of another cause? Did someone perform engorgio on the seed just as she was swallowing? Or was it actually poison?"
"Very good questions. I haven't a clue."
"Damnit Granger!"
"Hush Malfoy. What else do we know?"
"The PR manager."
"Yes?"
"Either a very good actor or truly uninvolved."
"Indeed, who else?"
"The factory workers."
"Are?"
"House elves."
"Yes. Belonging to?"
"House Curcuby"
"Who are?"
"Minor family, Old, but non-pureblood, wealth entirely dependent upon agriculture and agricultural processing products."
"Exactly, specifically – they made their fortunes following the discovery of the new world by adapting native species to grow in England. Made a great deal of money by introducing novel cultivars to the British public. In particular – the pumpkin, from which they took their family name in the 16th century."
"Oh."
"Yes, Malfoy. Oh."
"So, Granger, why has no one mentioned this before? Not you, not Lovegood, not Potter nor Longbottom? Shouldn't someone on in this little cabal have thought to wonder before now about a family who takes its bloody name from the plant that is causing all this trouble?"
"Good questions, Malfoy, but I suspect you know why already."
"So, it's not Potter's mysterious Free-Elves after all that are trying to kill us?"
"Didn't say that either."
"Come on, G, you're driving me nuts here, just spit it out already, for Merlin's sake!"
"I would if I knew, Malfoy, but think about it, when was the last time you or anyone else actually ever saw a genuine member of house Curcuby out and about? Even a minor lord should have at least one child enrolled in Hogwarts within the past 25 years. Have you ever heard of one?"
"Well fuck me, Granger. This is some fucked up shit we're getting into now. You're saying that an entire fucking minor house disappeared off the face of the planet, leaving behind only house elves and hirelings, and no one fucking noticed? When could this have happened?"
"At least you didn't ask how."
"Right now I don't fucking care how! These were our people, Granger! And from what you're saying, they're all gone and no one knew or cared. How many other houses have vanished and we were too blind to see? We just kept drinking our magic juice like good little babes without a care in the world while our friends and families were picked off one by one? Fucking hell!"
Draco was shaking. Suddenly, this really brought it home. What they were fighting against. It wasn't just some vaguely evil conspiracy that was slowly fighting a war of attrition and ignorance with wizard kind, it was an evil conspiracy that could vanish entire families and take over their lands and holdings without anyone questioning them. They had access to a chemical agent of such potent mind control that the best brains in their little cabal still couldn't figure out how they worked, and they were fighting to win. It was a wonder any wizards were still alive at all. "We're totally fucked, aren't we?"
"Malfoy, the wizarding world was fucked six ways from Sunday even without genocidal pumpkin-juice purveyors, between dark lords, pollution, cultural and technological stagnation, not to mention the Muggle question, we were already in a world of hurt. It's just one more trial we have to overcome."
"Damn you Gryffindors. Do even think about how stupid you sound? All we can save the world! This and tally-ho! That."
"You love it, Snake-boy. Someone has to give you slippery Slytherins the motivation to get up and fight for the rest of us."
". . . I just can't win with you, can I?"
The Cabal decided it was time to meet.
"We really need a name for ourselves." Harry groaned, while waiting his turn to cast a series of detection spells and wards to ensure their privacy.
"What, like "Order of the Phoenix?" "Dumbledore's Army?"" Draco couldn't resist the taunt.
"Seriously, dude? Better than "Death Eaters."" Neville scoffed.
"Boys!" Luna flounced over, "Stop fighting, I just finished evicting the Hinkypinks. You don't want your bad vibes attracting them back in to the room."
"I thought Hinkypinks were supposed to be some sort of giant horned purple rat like creature that lived in the jungles of Malaysia?" Nevile queried doubtfully.
"No, those are the Snorkwracks." Draco insisted.
"Are you sure?"
"Boys! Focus!"
"Oh right, where were we?"
"Name."
"Boys! It's your turn on the wards."
"Damnit, G!"
They were, at Hermione's insistence, casting concentric warding rings around the grounds, the cottage and the meeting room of a remote Muggle hunting lodge in the mountains of Wales. It really did feel like something from the wars. Hermione wasn't one to rely on the wards of ancient manors, infested as they were with secret elf passages, tattling paintings, and ghosts. So, here they were, each caster, of varying interests and skills practicing out their detection spells and nasty wards. All to keep out a few hypothetical evil elves. Luna, of course, had the most varied and fanciful intruder detection spells, while the Malfoys, Senior, Junior, and Mrs, had the deadliest defensive wards, and of course Hermione had the fanciest spyware detection devices (though where she had scrounged those up, no one had any idea – When asked, she had cheerfully responded with "Ebay!" a statement which common consensus determined had to be a lie.)
At last, they were finally settled around the table, with tea and biscuits. And then, the yelling began.
So many threads they were trying to tie, so many ends to weave together. Such a tangled mess. It made the wars with Voldemort look almost easy. Then they only had to kill a psychotic, soul-fragmented megalomaniac, and now? Everyone wanted to know what was being done and by whom and how they were fit into the puzzle. All at once.
"So, we're sure they're all gone?" Harry was the first to get a word in when the noise died down. "All the Curcubies?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Narcissa nodded. As the social Doyenne of the group, she was the one to review her records of social gatherings and Ministry balls. Not to mention the social pages of the Prophet and Quibbler. Whomever their enemy were, they hadn't managed to cover up that loose end. Clever, but not clever enough to bother faking up some heirs of the line to parade around. Curious. And yet, everyone had all assumed the family to exist and never thought twice about it.
"So who's running the show?"
"The elves?"
"Do they have human agents?"
"House elves can't harm their masters!"
"Remember Dobby? Or Kreacher?"
"What about the wild elves?"
"We never did prove that little theory of yours, Potter."
"Didn't disprove it either."
"Well, some human has to be in charge. Factories and estates and lordships can't be run by elves."
"Unless they have damned good glamours."
"Or the elf equivalent of imperio."
"Or access to enough money to buy off a human to act in their stead."
"Or a disgruntled werewolf."
"Let's stick with money. They have it. Pumpkins are a big business. Everyone drinks pumpkin-juice. Hence the need to import it from overseas."
"So, the Curcubies, or whomever they are, probably are just one branch of what is really the same intercontinental genocide syndicate?"
"We really have no evidence one way or the other."
"We don't need evidence, we need a plan."
"Will you shut up? All of you children!" Lucius had finally had enough, "Is this how your Order meetings used to run? I'm embarrassed we ever lost a war to you."
"Oh no, Malfoy," Hermione replied sweetly, "The Order meetings were ever so much more chaotic. Just be glad we didn't invite the Weasleys to this tete a tete."
"Remember Mad-eye?"
"Constant vigilance!"
"Those were the days."
"A little focus would be nice."
"Spoilsports."
"No wonder the death eaters always were torturing people. They never got to have any fun at their secret meetings."
Fortunately for Lucius' budding headache, Granger finally deigned to take charge of her little gang of children. Somehow, though his son steadfastly maintained a straight face, he just knew Draco was laughing silently on the inside, as if to mock him for sticking his neck in to their affairs.
Eventually, they managed to get down to business. Someone was going to have to investigate the Curcubies. They were also going to have to continue to press for legislation to subtly pressure the pumpkin farmers. To pretend as if they had never received the threat from Wendy's death. Meanwhile, there was still the problem of finding out the extent of the rot- what other families might have disappeared without a ripple or were in the process of being betrayed from within. And that was the easy part of the cabal's triune goals. Draco gave his report on their progress in pushing through tiny acts and amendments to weaken the antisecrecy laws, and Hermione gave a (possibly overly technical) lecture on her latest advances and tweaks to her antipollution technology. Luna reported on Dennis Creevy and Susan Bones' endeavors to identify and re-engineer both magical and muggle products for each others' markets. And Harry and Neville rehashed their continued failure to make inroads into understanding or combatting the mechanism behind the pumpkin-juice-induced mindfuck.
All in all, it was a rather frustrating meeting, in Hermione's opinion. Still, it did appear that everyone had a job to do, and was doing it as competently as could be expected. She knew things like this couldn't be ruhsed, and yet everyday she felt like they were up against a ticking clock of doom. When would steady progress yield to a bolt of luck or inspiration? What they needed was a true catalyst.
"What if. . ." Hermione suddenly caught herself musing out loud, interrupting yet another incipient fight between Draco and Harry.
"Yes?" Malfoy, Senior arched one perfect eyebrow in her general direction. Miss Granger nay have been an overambitious chit with grandiose dreams, but that didn't mean her ideas were totally without merit,
"What if we poisoned the pumpkin crop?" Hermione waited until the rest of the room was silent before posing her question.
"What, like all the pumpkin crops, everywhere?"
"Are you insane?"
"How?"
"What would the pumpkin-weevils survive on?"
"Chemical, biological, or magical?" Draco caught on quickly to where she was going.
"Yes."
"Do you want it to look like an accident or deliberate?"
"Yes." This time it was Lucius who answered, the beginnings of a slow gleam coming to life in his flinty eyes.
"Oooh. . . I like it." Even Narcissa was starting to smile. Subtle it wasn't. But the opening shots in the war had already been fired. "We need teams." Narcissa clapped her hands sharply. She wasn't a former socialite for nothing, Organization was totally her thing.
"Mr. Longbottom, you're in charge of magical pesticide. It needs to be pumpkin-specific. Under no circumstance to affect other squash varietals. Ms. Lovegood, you're in charge of breeding magical pests. Locusts, weevils, knephoppers, as long as they only attack pumpkins. Mr. Potter, you have counterparts in the muggle world? I want muggle-style pesticides. Mr Weasely (George), you've got accidental disasters. We need sudden fires, unexplained drought, burst irrigation systems. Draco – You're in charge of PR, we need panics about what-do-muggles-call-it? E-colon? Boycotts on agribusiness? I don't know, what, but coordinated attempts by both magicals and muggles to avoid pumpkin products. Miss Abbott – You're in charge of maps. I want full intelligence on the major world-wide punpkin farm locations. I want to know where England's imports are coming from and what the growing seasons are. Granger – You're in charge of overseeing. The attacks need to appear random at first. Muggle means Magical means different countries, different seasons, different producers. Lucius, darling, you're in charge of covering our tracks. Coordinate with each team in data gathering and execution. Do what you do best. No one in this room right here, right now, can ever be allowed to be linked back to our actions.
"Wow." Harry mouthed to Hermione across the room. He'd never seen the normally icily composed Narcissa ever deign to say so many words at once. And like obedient school children, pens and quills around the room were busily taking notes and making plans.
At last, they were going to war, and throwing all caution to the wind.
A war on pumpkins.
Halloween would never be the same again.
-TBC-
A/N – Oops. Another long wait before updates, and it's short, but at least it's up. I see by the name of this file on my computer that I started this chapter in June, and last accessed it two months ago. In my defense. I did move in June. Back up to the sane side of the country. Yay! Only to get hit by a bloody great hurricane only 4 months after leaving the festering swamp. What sense does that make? Never have I been so glad that I opted to live in the deeply uncool (but well above sea level) part of town.