The African witch crouched next to him was quite capable in a scrape, and Charlie had little doubts of her ability to survive the next encounter. Their last, however, had left him with more questions than answers. Though they had tried approaching the raid on Goldstein's hidden fortress with caution and still failed, he was uneasy about the dark presence in Casablanca and decided research was necessary before the pair of them could begin to plan for a strike on their escaped enemy. He imagined what his father would say about spending as much time as he already had when there was no sister to recover, nothing to be gained but another corpse, but he could rationalize it with the other dark wizards. There was some reason the Death Eaters were reaching out to them, and he had to have some idea of what it was. All he had seen so far were Travers, Lestrange, and a shorter wizard trailing behind them, and he knew the first two to be perpetrators of some of the most violent crimes out of all of them. He wished he knew what that meant, but he couldn't imagine it would go well for the good people of Barbary.
Consequently, he had looked into regional developments into dark magic, and could make no more sense of it than Wahde. He had an idea of what people could do out of what he had seen, a handful of shields that had a chance of blocking dark curses, and some bizarre transfigurations that seemed less useful than horrifying, but he reminded himself that that was only what people lived to remember.
They infiltrated the building the same way as last time, knowing the wizards supposed to be there were not flying in. Charlie was aware some of the blood purists who kept track of families would recognize a Weasley on sight, and though he had not seen any of them, it was a simple matter of changing his hair to a chestnut color and donning long, blue robes his companion transfigured. This is their first meeting. Wahde's been watching the place for weeks, and they don't all know each other.
"Who are you?" Lestrange asked after trying French. Fair, I suppose. The Vichy Wizards were down here, if I remember correctly. History had never been his best class.
"I am Alexandru of Wallachia." he answered, adopting the accent he heard all the time at work. "This promising young lady is a student of mine, and some might say it was coincidental she heard of this meeting, but I disagree. There is a grand order to things, no?"
He explained that she had been in contact with some of the dark wizards of the Maghreb, whom he could name, and that they had been interested in his position in the Black Sea Sorcerers. All he knew about them from work was that they were mad enough to try to become masters of the dragons, meaning none of them lived long.
Fortunately, Lestrange seemed to accept his explanation, mostly because it was inconceivable that either he or Wahde were Aurors or Unspeakables, the probability of being sent on such a mission with no reinforcements was entirely negligible. Moreover, if their treachery were revealed, the dark magic sent after them would reduce them to slime.
The meeting started with Bakr of the Draa addressing everyone from the center of the room in Arabic. Wadhe had been hearing it enough that she could understand it, which had been an essential part of the plan. He was a smaller man, and he wore a black robe over a multi-colored tunic. White runes shone brightly on his hands, but from a distance and with Charlie's limited experience, they were, of course, illegible. As he rotated to see everyone, he spoke with a clarity and conviction that told of years of experience in war and advanced magic. The African witch next to him explained that the Magicians of Light were testing his patience with the expansion of their control of North Africa from their home in Egypt, and his sentiment was met with universal agreement. 'Alexandru' kept his eyes out for Said, who would most likely serve as Goldstein's contact, but to his surprise he saw the Brit he suspected as a dark wizard weeks ago. He ran rather than attacking us- did he assume we were allies of his? Why?
Inching closer and forcing Wadhe to follow him, he saw a man who carried himself differently than expected. There was none of the wear and tear he had seen in the other wizard, and the man looked a little different in general, less than would serve as a disguise, obviously, but enough that he was already concluding that they must really be different wizards.
"It's nothing," he muttered, though the witch in his company kept her eyes on the speaker. Smart. "He's someone else." Well, he might be someone else, but it's not nothing.
The next dignitary to speak was the Pasha Karamanli from Tripolitania, calling for a decisive, united front against the order of the same enemies, the better to secede the Maghreb from their control. He warned the other wizards about foreigners in their midst who would drag them to other conflicts. He explained that the foreigners never paid their debts, and were not to be trusted.
"What's he mean by that?"
"He runs a racket," Wadhe answered quickly.
The meeting continued and there was, as expected, no mention of a runaway Hogwarts student, but at long last Travers had a chance to speak. He was bloodthirsty, Charlie knew, but as he thought about it the rest of them were no different. The dignified way he spoke his Arabic was almost wasted; having killed innocent people would never have counted against him. Said. We have to focus on finding Said.
"If I may," he started, as Travers concluded his address. According to Wadhe, his speech was oddly absent of anything related to helping Voldemort, only of unity and joint strength in times of war. "What of the Egyptians in this very room?"
It seemed a few of the dark wizards understood his words, or at least the way he looked around.
"The point of all of our words, words where there should be action- is unity across all lands, that dark magic unites us in strength-" Travers started back, quickly repeating himself in Arabic. It appeared the first speaker and a few of his friends disagreed, however. They came here to exchange secrets, not fight in each other's wars. If talk of unity amounts to more than generally good relations, they're against it.
"Bakr of the Draa is saying we should find them. Egypt is the North, but it is not the Barbary Coast." the witch next to him explained. "He is saying we should let them speak and have their loyalties made clear."
That makes sense. Dark Wizards from Egypt would not want their country torn to shreds in the effort to rid Africa of the Magicians of Light. From what Bill says about them, they take their culture seriously, and have a small magical school in Giza. It stands to reason that they might even warn their enemies that the dark wizards of the Maghreb are plotting against them.
It appeared it was time for Said to speak. Charlie's eyes narrowed. We can't just follow him out of here- he can always disapparate. Even with Wahde's disguise, he would be suspicious of us. The witch wore a thin white dress and veil more typical of the North, which had been easy enough to transfigure. The Egyptian's words mostly took an insulted tone, and there was no need for translation. He had, after all, come all this way to attend a meeting and share his knowledge, and now they were suspecting him. 'Alexandru' wondered what exactly he had to share, since he could not have been much older than seventeen, but that had been the reason Wadhe suspected he had for going to Uagadou in the first place.
Said told of a dark shield in which he had made a few developments with the shape-changing magic he learned at school with the reasonable hope that it would counteract some of the unpredictability in dark magic, but what was surprising came after that. He explained that their enemies in Egypt essentially aligned themselves with the International Confederation of Wizards, as well as the majority of Ministries in the world. They were known for communicating with British and the French most notably, and he had no love for either people whatsoever.
If he had hoped to make that his whole speech, he was disappointed when someone asked about anyone he knew to be at odds with any of them, since he knew so much about the Magicians of Light and their enemies. He's got no way out, really. I reckon if he said he didn't know anything about them, everyone would have thought he was protecting them. The Egyptian sighed and explained that he knew of a young wizard who recently escaped Hogwarts, pursued as an enemy by those who aligned themselves against the Death Eaters, though mostly for personal reasons. He knew little else about them, but the young wizard himself contended that he had been hounded by the servants of Voldemort, that they had killed his mother in front of him and captured his father, taking him away in a prison of his own design.
All eyes were on Travers and Lestrange, the other man appearing to have escaped general notice.
The Pasha Karamanli tried to speak at the same time as someone of his party, a witch in yellow with a wooden bowl that must have contained something glowing, as it was the only way he could see her face under the large, flat headdress she wore. She carried an ivory mask of her own face at her hip. They glared for a moment before the witch was allowed to voice her question first.
"What of the wizard?" she asked. "Why should we care about what happened to him?"
Wadhe muttered that she suspected the speaker was from Benin, a kingdom that had been intimately familiar with the slave trade.
"Well, there's no reason to hold it against her specifically." Charlie muttered back. It's understood that if anything, we should be more concerned with her being a dark witch.
Said had chosen to answer the question in Arabic, meaning another translation was required. Essentially, he was interested in dark magic, and apparently practiced in a form of soul magic that gave him mastery over any other individual, assuming he could put the enchantment on him or her. He showed promise for his age, a learned prodigy as far as necessity would carry him, but, to have peace with the Death Eaters and the everyone else in the room, the Egyptian was willing to sacrifice him. 'Alexandru' turned to suppress his scowl.
"What?" Wadhe asked. "This is what we-"
"It figures, doesn't it? That's how you know who the bad blokes are- they turn on each other at a moment's notice."
Some level of comprehension was passing through the witch.
"I would never-"
"You were going to kill him the moment you saw him. So was I- it was all about revenge, not anyone that was any kind of threat to us." He gestured about, casting a muffling charm. Fortunately the discussion would have masked their words if nothing else. "Now we've surrounded ourselves with threats, and it was just to kill a runaway- what is he, fourth-year now? He belongs in the ground, sure, but what about everyone else?"
"What are you suggesting?"
"Just because you've spent a long time making a mistake doesn't mean you need to keep making it. He should never have involved my sister and definitely not your brother, but there wasn't a damn thing wrong with pitching a tent in the wild and leaving the madhouse to the mad." As he thought about it, the thing that concerned him most was that even if the boy had no qualms about his choices, he should have at least considered the risk to himself incurred by bringing everyone with him- and if Harper were connected with the Death Eaters, it was guaranteed to be the same problem again. At the very least, he should never have killed the hostage to escape, because he still had a small chance of survival. It seems unlikely he can't connect his actions with their consequences. He probably sees people not even as assets and liabilities, but as assets and dysfunctional assets. People and things should be helping him by default, and when they're not helping him, he just finds some way to make them.
As Wahde stared at him, Said had given the floor to someone else, a wizard he could not recognize in body paint like zebra stripes and a skirt that looked oddly like a kilt. That one'll be from Ethiopia. When warding came to Africa, there were those who preferred illustration and patterns to written words. When eventually his comments were translated, they revealed his concern for the growing Arabic presence in the North, the fact that they were all speaking the language being a worrying sign in his regard. Various ranking voices deliberated before almost unanimously deciding that despite being a foreign influence, the Majlis of Magic had brought unity with them, if unity by force, an understandable mechanism. It was better, in any event, that old conflicts were put to rest, that they could better resolve the matters at hand. A wizard identifying himself as Kisotho Fusotho wearing a burning woolen blanket shouted that if it were not for the Arabic language, the meeting would be impossible. Charlie wondered how he had not noticed before, but decided there was never a dull moment where he might have. He quietly thanked Wadhe for her patience.
They're not going to ask him to produce Anthony. If anything, he'll be listening out for his cue to leave; there's too much to lose and not enough to gain. He wanted to play the game with the adults like every junior Death Eater at Hogwarts, but there's too much conflicting interest on the table.
The more he thought about it, the more confusing it seemed. The dark wizards spoke to each other like they had never met before; what was all the talk of unity? They seemed to have little common ground except as some kind of illegal research group. They could not seem to come to a conclusion about anything. From what his companion could tell, Travers had asked the Egyptian nothing at all about Goldstein's location, only circumstances surrounding the death of his parents. Were they not involved with it? How else could they not know?
It hit him. He tapped Wahde on the shoulder.
"Listen carefully- we have to leave. We'll ask someone here to get some details out of Said, then we're out. Whatever they manage to develop or demonstrate here, it's not worth it."
They found Bakr of the Draa and promised to arrange support from the Black Sea Sorcerers against the Magicians of Light, as he attested they were causing problems for Eastern Europe through Turkey. As he was concerned about Egypt, however, he should like some information on either the Egyptian or the young wizard under his care. It seemed odd to him that he was so relevant to what they were discussing, but they knew so little about him. He was almost concerned that some strings were being pulled to protect Said from being properly questioned.
He knew the wizard would see a bribe where one was proposed, but the effective phase of the plan was the implication that someone who had arranged the meeting was protecting Egyptian interests. The dark wizard assured Charlie that under no circumstances would infiltrators survive, and explained where Said could be found. Apparently, the Egyptian had encountered a Death Eater in the Ashanti Kingdom, learned of his efforts to spread the influence of Voldemort, and invited him to the meeting as an opportunity. The anonymous wizard went to Casablanca with him and put up the gold for proper living arrangements, as the Egyptian would be inclined to provide translation services. A few days before the meeting, Bakr met the two of them at a teahouse of some sort where he picked up something about a boy a few years younger than Said.
'Alexandru' thanked the wizard and relayed that his allies had been concerned about what kind of united front he would find in the Maghreb, and he would tell them he had been pleasantly surprised. In reality, the opposite was true. He had feared some kind of massive force finding common ground and sharing secrets- the truth was, they had enough in common to be an illegal research group of some sort, but in his estimation most of the wizards in the room were murderers, warlords, or politicians. Their interests could never be held by magical study while other concerns forced themselves to the forefront. They rightfully withheld their trust as they exchanged pleasantries and shared whatever old news they could spare.
They found the wizard they almost recognized earlier. He scowled at something invisible, marring the placid indifference on his pale face.
"Why are we following him?" Wahde asked at a hiss.
"We need to catch him before he apparates. Bakr mentioned a Death Eater earlier, and it couldn't have been Travers or Lestrange- they've never seen Said in their lives, and they didn't know about what happened to the Goldsteins."
They reached the hallway first, finding their target had stopped to talk to someone else, when it looked like he had been on his way out.
"You are not making sense. How do you know-"
"The Death Eaters are a microcosm of what we saw in there- they're a bunch of dark wizards with different intentions who spend a lot of time hiding things from each other," he explained. Days ago, he had told her as much about them and Voldemort as he knew, mostly to pass the time, but this was something even he was just figuring out. I should have learned how they worked in Hogwarts. "There are quite a few of them at this point, more than I've seen in any real fighting force around here, but bringing more in only makes them more divided along ideological lines. I should've known there was a reason lords and ladies were doing business with common criminals."
The dark wizard came out into the hallway, leaving them no more time to talk. All the same, it seemed he knew why they were there.
"Your English is rather good for a Romanian," he started, tossing a long strand of black hair out of his face. "By all means, though, continue trying to follow me."
"It's about Goldstein-"
"No need to worry about him, friend. He's not coming out of his box any time soon," the Death Eater explained before sauntering off to disapparate. Charlie supposed he could have stunned the man if he felt like it, or tried, anyway, but it seemed a futile effort. With their cover undone, they had no pretext for following him home, and as he disappeared a few steps away, they had no way of following him.
"That must be why Said offered to exchange him for the good will of the Death Eaters. He's already been considering it. As soon as he heard the kid was a personal enemy of theirs, he went to the Ashanti Kingdom..." he trailed off.
The pair of them went down the elevator in disappointment. They were lucky they had not been outed and killed, he knew, but it felt like a waste of a few weeks getting ready to realize their real target had escaped their grasp again. It all seems too coincidental in the first place.
Reaching the ground floor of the building, however, their disappointment was immediately replaced with confusion.
A gaunt, wide-eyed man with long black hair stared directly at them. One of the wizards from before had a wand to his throat, though it appeared he was not presenting a threat.
"They're saying they caught him trying to sneak in-" Wahde started. "Is he an enemy?"
"He's a friend of ours," Charlie called out with what confidence he could manage. "Please, whatever he told you, he's in more trouble with the Black Sea Sorcerers than you. This display of incompetence and impropriety will not be taken lightly." His companion did her best to translate as he strode over to the man and struck him with an open palm. The wizard from Ethiopia stepped back almost instinctively. The captive man met his eyes.
"Why?" His voice was pained and soft.
"Alexandru, they're asking us to prove we know him," the witch behind him explained. Our cover is slipping- no, no, Merlin, why?!
With all the wisdom of Merlin he could not have said what was happening; it was all so fast and so perfectly ruthless. All he could do was pray their luck would continue to be so unfairly good to them, closing his eyes a moment to get his bearings as he tried to think of an answer to all the questions everyone was asking.
