"So what, exactly, are the Unseelie Accords?" I finally asked the question that I should have a month earlier. In my defense, I was distracted. But as it finally got to the 21st of January—the Friday on which the Red Cap's slightly-vague threat would probably be up—it was clear the Ministry wasn't going to sign and I needed to know what they were refusing.
"You know the 'old laws' that you sometimes hear about from conservative types?" Bob, my skull-bound spirit-of-intellect began. "Basically that. It's a huge compendium of things you're not allowed to do, and the penalties for doing them. It's mostly international. You know, basically to settle disputes between wizards and vampires and giants and such. It doesn't say a lot about internal rules for, say, wizards."
"Oh! I see why they don't want to sign, then!" Mathilda exclaimed. She was still the only person that I'd told about Bob, so the three of us were locked and silenced in a spare classroom. If we learned anything useful, it would get passed on to Dumbledore and his crew. I must have looked more confused, so she went on, "There may be a ton of rules in there that are worse than what we've worked out on our own. We've pretty much been on top for centuries."
I nodded, thinking I was getting it, "Might be harder to keep the other magical races under the Ministry and ICW's thumb if they suddenly have all these old rights back."
"Pretty much," Bob agreed. "One of the reasons for putting up the Veil in the first place was to prevent the sidhe from enforcing the penalties for reneging on the Accords. It's been downhill for most of the races that used to be on even footing ever since."
"Seems a lot, though," Mathilda mused. "If we had that much power, why not just force renegotiation?"
Bob considered for a moment, and offered, "While I don't know for sure what they were thinking, faerie contracts are typically twistier than even demonic ones. Only the sidhe really know everything that's in the Accords. Lots of fine print. While the top-line items are easy enough to keep in mind, there are a lot of subclauses if you want to get nasty. And the ones they protect most are the sidhe. The wizarding government of the time may have figured it was worth it to take any drastic steps necessary to throw the whole thing out."
"Got it: nobody in the government wants to sign it because it gives the evil faerie lawyers too much power," I summed up. "How bad would it be if they had to anyway?"
"It worked pretty well for aeons," Bob rolled his eyeflames in what was his equivalent of a sarcastic shrug. "Overall, they're pretty fair. Modern thought might consider some of the rules barbaric, or at least archaic. There are a lot of weregild clauses, for example: if you can pay off the family of someone you murdered, that's it for penalties."
"I wonder if anyone at the Ministry even remembers why they broke it in the first place," I mused. "Since hardly anyone seems to believe in faeries anymore. Do they even have a copy of it to look at and decide they don't want to sign it?"
"Probably in one of the Ministry or ICW libraries," Mathilda answered. "Purebloods don't throw away books. And we're as mad for legal precedent as the muggle government."
"But this is a long document?" I asked.
"Thousands of pages, in a modern book format," Bob agreed.
"So even if they have a complete copy it's probably in older languages at this point that not everyone can read. They may have just punted on deciding that they couldn't really get a full understanding of the whole thing in a month," I said. The official line in the paper was about not negotiating with terrorists (which made me laugh because Maeve thought declaring themselves an enemy nation would avoid that label), stationing rapid-response teams of hit wizards, and improving the wards at key spots.
One thing to be said about all the dark lords of the 20th century: the wizarding world was pretty comfortable fighting a shadow war against opponents that could attack at any location. If anything, they were probably less concerned about fighting Nevernever monsters than squads of apparating dark wizards. Muggles had only had about half a century to adjust to the idea of enemies targeting population centers without having to push through a whole army or navy and miles of terrain first. Wizards had been fighting that way forever. It was probably part of why they were so crazy.
Speaking of crazy, as soon as Mathilda and I walked back into the Gryffindor common room after the discussion, a frazzled Alexis intercepted me and insisted, "You're a guy, Harry! Tell him he's being insane. Tell them all they're being insane!"
I clearly felt like she was the insane one with that non sequitur, but Mathilda seemed to know what was going on and asked, "Quidditch practice all weekend?"
"And every evening for the next two weeks! He's so obsessed with the Ravenclaw match I don't even think he's thought about Valentine's Day coming up! Gaah!" she barely stifled a scream. The younger kids around the room were boggling a little, watching their senior prefect freaking out right in the common room.
"I'll try to get him to chill out," I promised. "Guess he's down at the pitch?"
She rolled her eyes and said, "Of course he is."
While Mathilda took my roommate's exasperated girlfriend off to talk and calm down, I headed right back out to talk to said roommate. I hadn't even had a chance to go stow Bob back in my trunk. Sadly, Alexis' potion-perfume for holding her boyfriend's attention wasn't any closer to being finished than my potion for countering cheater creature speed. And I was hesitant to point out that maybe if they couldn't work things out without chemical assistance…
We were about an hour after dinner, so it was full dark outside, especially with the clouds that hung over the castle. It was easy to make out the quidditch practice across the grounds, as broom riding silhouettes whipped past the bright lights of the stadium. Fortunately, the clouds were part of a warm front, so it wasn't particularly cold for a Scottish winter, and the temperature-control runes I'd worked into my duster were having no problem keeping up with the 40-something temperature. Since I'd gotten the coat for Christmas, I'd basically given up on wearing robes outside of classes, and nobody had said anything. I'd spent most of my enchanting time for the month putting various protective enchantments on the coat, though I could probably still do more.
"Harry! Come t'see practice?" Oliver asked, hopefully, from where he was floating only a little ways off of the ground coaching the rest of the team on drills. Tonight, it seemed to be bludger evasion: the girls were looping around as the twins swatted the aggressive iron cannonballs at them.
"Came to intervene, man," I answered. I had his attention and he floated down closer to me to talk. "Lexi is pissed you're ignoring her for all this practice."
"She'll get o'er it," he waved off. "All our matches got moved to the back half o' the year. I really need t'show what we're made of. It's my last chance at the cup before the professional leagues!"
"You won it last year, though," I argued.
"True 'nough," he shrugged. "But t'was close and we barely got it on points. Hopin' t'have a real blowout this year."
"Might not have a girlfriend when you do, though."
It looked like I might be getting through with him when there was a sudden cold gust of wind, dropping the temperature to nearly freezing in a moment. "Might be time t'pack it in, anyway," Oliver took the out. "Was supposed t'be a cold front comin' in. Might be bad weather for flyin' if it gets windy."
And it was. The gust hadn't really let up, and within moments it had turned into a gale. The clouds above were being pushed across the sky, revealing the bright gibbous moon and stars. Seeing Oliver waving them in, the six players fought their way down, the force of the wind notably affecting their trajectories. "Sure you don't want to keep going, Ollie?" George asked, somewhat sarcastically.
"We could really practice our aerodynamics against gale force winds," Fred added, helping his brother wrestle the bludgers back into their case.
"Yeah, yeah. If it's like this on game day, you'll be wishin' I'd drilled you on it. But Harry was just pointin' out that it's the weekend, social lives, and all o' that."
"Saved us from a giant snake and Ollie's practices: our hero!" Katie grinned, and the rest of the team didn't disagree.
"I think I'll shower in the dorms," Angelina mused. "Don't want to walk across the grounds wet with this wind."
I hung out while they got their brooms and other gear put away, and the eight of us started to trudge across the grass back to the castle, the wind pushing against us so we almost had to lean into it to make progress. I'd find out later that the entire region was getting gales up to 70 miles per hour, and that wasn't even half the freak winter weather that hit the northern midwestern United States.
And then, suddenly, with a roaring of wind, it stopped.
While it was still cold, the winds hadn't died down so much as they'd disappeared. The abrupt change made my ears pop like I'd suddenly changed altitudes. Ginny even stumbled a bit, having been leaning hard into the wind that had vanished. "Back to the pitch?" Fred joked.
But nobody answered, because our eyes were glued above, where the stars and moon were suddenly smeared in the sky, as if seen through a rainy window. Well, more like through a frost-covered one: over only a few seconds, fractal patterns danced across the sky, outlining an invisible dome that had sprung into being.
"Did someone activate the war wards, maybe?" Alicia supposed.
"Too far out," Oliver disagreed, looking down the edge of the dome. "It's got most of the forest and probably Hogsmeade in it, not just the grounds."
"Guys. That starfield isn't quite right," Angelina, the best at astronomy class, noticed. "And I see hints of the Northern Lights which weren't supposed to be visible tonight…"
"Those aren't the Northern Lights," I disagreed, peering into the darkness, watching the tiny bright forms move and get closer. I could almost make out little gossamer wings on little humanoid figures. And if I was right about what I was seeing, they were carrying little spears.
Wrong stars, an army of true fae pixies incoming, and an interface around the school that was building up frost energy. I hoped I was wrong but I feared I was right.
"We just got sucked into the Nevernever."