Meetings and Observations

Augustus Rookwood and Fritz Schwarzkopf walk into the Meeting-Room side by side, the former giving no indication that he will leave when the meeting begins.

"Ah, Fritz, you have arrived! Good, now we can begin." I give Rookwood a glare. Leave or you will regret it.

"I haff asked Augustus to stay vith me today, Lucius." Schwarzkopf says smoothly. "These old bones can use the help moving about. He can stand behind my chair."

I sneer at him. I know full well that according to Schwarzkopf's warped sense of honor and kin, he has just accepted Rookwood as his successor in the Oligarchy, should he die in combat.

I had hoped that Draco would take his place. Dratted old man!

"Very well then, Fritz, it's your call." I shift my weight from side to side. "Greyback, what news from the inner workings of the forest?"

Fenrir Greyback moves forward from his place in the shadows. He is as dirty and unkempt as ever, and he reeks of blood and werewolf musk. "I have news only of what I have observed, lords. The forest seems… quieter than is typical. On the average day, I used to hear at least four different songs from the songbirds. I would watch the red foxes that always ate of my pack's scraps come from their dens to just outside the light of the fire. I would listen to the jumping of the little fishes in the streams.

"Now, though… Now I just hear silence where there was once music. I watch in vain, and listen in vain. Something is off, but I do not know what."

I pause in thought a moment. "Thank you, Greyback. You are dismissed."

I watch the big, rangy werewolf bow clumsily towards me, and then beat a hasty retreat.

To my right I see that the barely 5'5" tall Bearach O'Malley looks relieved - I'm not surprised. Greyback looks big enough to eat him – and his normally ruddy complexion returns to his face. The middle-aged O'Malley is singularly unremarkable in nearly every way, from his muddy brown eyes to his thinning brown hair.

I look to my left. My eyes fall on Khalid bin Imam bin Kadir al-Habshi, our arm in the Middle East. He wears a long caftan in the same shade of navy as my own Western-style robes – I imagine that he is more comfortable in the clothes of his people than in the garb of the West – and a kufi embroidered with Arabic writing. His lined and tanned face sports a white pencil moustache, and his dark eyes seem like chips of onyx in his face.

"Khalid, how are our… contacts… doing in your part of the world?"

He smiles maniacally. "They are doing well, and progressing at a fantastic rate! Our counterparts in the Muggle world are under the impression that this is a jihad against the Westerners, and the Wizarding ones believe that this is a fight against the Muggles, and only the Muggles. They will not stand in our way, Lucius."

"Good, good…"

"So ve are vell on ze vay to a position of power and fear in both vorlds, as Grindelwald once enjoyed sixty years ago?" Schwarzkopf asks. "Ve vill soon see the outbreak of Vorld Var III?"

"We should," al-Habshi replies.

No one can mistake the look in their eyes as anything other than insanity. Fritz has been searching for a replacement for his blood brother all these years, and Khalid has hunted for someone to back him in causing mass murder and bloodshed. He's worse than Greyback in that respect, the old son-of-a-dog.

"Bearach, what news from the Hog's Head?"

O'Malley shrugs. "There is little to say, Lucius. Aberforth Dumbledore has come to regard me as a regular, which means that I won't draw attention to myself by being there."

"Good, good… Fritz, how is your knee?"

Schwarzkopf scowls. "Potter managed to tear my menisci." At the other wizards' blank looks, he elaborates. "Ze tendons in my knee that hold veight. But, vith a bit of muscular regenerator and a regular cut-healing charm, I vas fine."

"That's good." al-Habshi says. "That is very good."

"Thank you for your concern, Lucius, Khalid."

"So," O'Malley interrupts. "What will be our next target?"

"I theenk zat something important to Potter vould be fair retribution." Schwarzkopf mutters, sullenly. Then, he sits us straighter in his seat. "I saw a house that could only have been held up by magic in Potter's mind with ze vord 'Devon' attached to it. Vhere is it, and can ve blow it up?"