Returning to Grindelwald could wait. Charlie had promised to visit his parents, after all.
Performing the appropriate long-distance Apparation, he ended up at the Order outpost, where he took the closed floo to New Zealand, where after reporting to McGonagall, he apparated to Australia and then around the country as quickly as he could until he found the Ministry, which was not in the same place as the muggle counterpart, but in Sydney, considered something of a cultural center, at least in his understanding. He knew that his father had, relatively quickly, achieved a high-level administrative position in an office that was simply called 'Muggo Affairs', making use of the term the local wizards seemed to prefer to assign to the nonmagical.
It's a wonder how he stands it, though, considering he's never been further away from getting to play around with their technology.
Had anyone been around to say as much, he would have offered a wan smile, but that was not the case. He was currently trying to get into the building, which was disguised as a simple fishing shack.
"You one of those Order buggers, then?" the man standing guard prompted.
"Quite," he answered, not entirely able to resist acting the Brit when the other wizard had just noticed. The Australians seemed to think they were pompous and overly traditional, and while he came from perhaps the least pompous family on the island, he felt compelled to demonstrate their was such a thing as not being pompous enough, going all the way past humble and ending up boorish.
"Look an awful like the muggo-kisser who just started up, so I'll be guessing you're going to see him. Prob'ly more trouble than you're worth," he said, getting out of the way. Charlie nodded curtly and stepped past, guessing it was not really the doorman's decision whether or not a foreign guest was to be admitted. Most likely, he was to report anyone who looked suspicious, and if this particular visitor did turn out to be bad, well, he could hardly look suspicious unless Arthur Weasley did, could he?
Inside the fish shack, having been given some idea of it by his parents, he tapped the strange wooden carvings with his wand before a hole in the floor opened up and he found himself falling down a translucent, angled tube. He could see the unfamiliar undersea life all around him, including a passing Bunyip, which was fascinating since he had only heard of them inhabiting rivers. Unfortunately, the opportunity for observation was quickly at an end, as he arrived at the end of the tube, where he practically fell onto the slick floor of a translucent room, where two guards in red and brown robes were watching.
"A visitor, then. State your name and business," one said after seeing him struggle a moment.
"I'm Charlie Weasley," he told them, realizing they were both witches almost instantly, considering their faces were perfectly unobstructed. Well, I'm sure they'll do the job just fine. Do law enforcement personnel never wear masks here, though? He supposed it was more transparent than the Auror Corps, but he reminded himself he really had no idea what to expect, and his expectations were probably just going to get him thinking the wrong thing.
"You're here to see-"
"Arthur, yes, he's my father. I'm delivering news in person."
"Very well. Take a left when you see the bouncing dogs; the Ministry of Magical Breeding has had another meltdown and they're blaming the Structures Ministry again."
"Right. I'll be sure to avoid that," he said. "Thank you."
He set off down a translucent hallway, the sea all around him. It was rather like a muggle conception of Atlantis, if he ignored the spells that most likely directed ships and boats around the rather large systems of bubbles and tubes. The hallways were just as busy as those in the British Ministry, at least according to memory, and this was made worse by the bouncing tri-colored dogs that appeared to have been inflated like balloons. Fortunately, they did not seem to have been harmed; if anything they looked like they were enjoying it.
"Charlie."
"Dad." He looked around before finding the older man standing right in front of him.
"What are you doing gracing my lunch hour?"
"I'm just- I've got a message about Grindlewald, and I don't know how much I can trust the owl post."
"That's probably for the best, son. Around here, most people seem honest and true, but back home it was the same, really, the problem was that they were being inundated with totally false information for decades. The more I worked in the muggle world, the more I saw that what we've been hearing about them is totally wrong."
"Why isn't this place like back home, then?" he asked, following his father down another translucent tube. He noticed a blue tang swimming past, looking rather lost.
"As near as I can figure, it's because they don't have a Department of Mysteries. I reckon there are some secrets, but it's just not on the same level. Anyway, they're not far off. Many of them get the Australian Prophet, even though the average wizard on the street knows it's rubbish. It's got a completely bollocks idea of what drives urban violence, what kind of policies would be good for local businesses, you get the idea. I've some mates down at the pub and they can show you basically where and how the paper gets it wrong. I should introduce you to Ned Nelson, he's a good Healer and he treats muggles sometimes-"
"I get it, Dad; you don't need to tell me it's all propaganda. So, basically, it's the same, but they're just a few years behind or something?"
"It's not exactly the same. People have different reasons for believing things and different issues around here versus back home. Local dark wizards are basically just obsessed with gold, so it won't be long before You-Know-Who wins them over, because he's got all the gold in the world."
"It doesn't sound like we can really prevent them from joining him. I'll be surprised if he doesn't have them already."
"The Ministry here is tossing around a few ideas like decoupling from the goblin banks, which might actually work, but of course the opposition just wants to kidnap their children somewhere. Magical education in Australia is less centralized, but there's still a single department that runs the whole thing." It looked like his father had about enough of that line of conversation. He had not opened the letter he had been given about Grindelwald.
"Would you like to talk about anything else?" he asked.
"Your brothers have been doing well in business. Molly's been helping me with things. Percy wanted to get a job here by his own merit, though some of the opposition wanted him for his experience anyway; they want to see what's been going on in Crouch's office. I haven't checked to see if he's a fugitive yet."
"Well, I'm probably a fugitive. If anyone back home remembers Bill, they'll probably just decide he's a fugitive because they haven't seen him in a while. At least the goblins aren't likely to give up his location whilst he's making them gold. I should really ask him what their plans are for dealing with the effects of the Stone."
"I haven't heard anything from him in weeks. Properly, I haven't heard anything from my sons. I have missed you, all of you, you know."
"I know, Dad, I've missed you and Mum as much."
"Charlie, I would not be surprised to find a place for you here, working with us-" He shook his head.
"I'm not a quill-twiddler, Dad. I'm not saying there's a damn thing wrong with being one, it's just not what I am. I've got to be out there."
"Right. Right. Did you ever think about playing Quidditch as a professional?"
"Come off it; I'm not that good. I loved it, but I couldn't... I wouldn't be able to keep up at that level. The twins were the same; they said business was what they wanted. Getting a chance to study dragons was like a dream for me; I really only wish I could still do it." After all the long absences he had taken and all the controversy surrounding his family and those like it, the firm decided not to keep him on. He could subsist off savings for a while, but he had already sold his Romanian flat and he no longer knew where he was going to sleep at night. There was something especially hard about moving away from all that he had built as a young man who had just started to make a life for himself.
"I'll bet you've got to be back already," the older wizard said. "No time to see your mother?"
"That's why I brought a letter," Charlie said, shaking his head a bit. "Wouldn't want it turning into a game of firecall."
"The muggles have the same expression," his father said. "They just call it telephone; that's the only difference. Can you believe it?"
"I'll bet it mostly happens in half blood families; someone who lives in both worlds starts to use an expression and then remembers that no one else has any context."
"That could be it. Well, I'll see you later."
"Yeah. That's a promise, Dad."
Taking a floo out of the Ausrtralian Ministry to the New Zealand Ministry, he thought that might have been quicker than the other way, but there was some reason to doubt the Ministry there would have let him through. They most likely were aware the Order had a presence on their island, assuming they had some idea of what the Order was. In his understanding, they had never really made waves internationally. Most people probably thought Voldemort wasn't so serious of a problem if he just disappeared one day.
Charlie apparated to the hole Ron's friend left in the warding in the base and took the closed floo to Iceland, which he had asked to have set up only in the previous month. Grindelwald had specifically forbidden them from setting up an Order base on the island, and he said that he had told the same thing to the Death Eaters. Haven't seen their representative in a while.
Apparating to the appropriate village, he got an idea of where in Greenland the facility was, though the oddly nice Vitez offered to apparate him straight there anyway. He's keeping up their leader's whole thing about showing all the other secret organizations all his secrets. It was a way in which he essentially pretended to be idealistic; on the face of it he was optimistic that those trying to change things for the better would realize the Statute was the root of their problems, but the blood purists had already stated the exact opposite. It was true that for them, existing governments were an obstacle at best, but they were more worried about the muggles. They're not the only ones, either.
It was only nine days since Rupnik told him that there had been an investigator from Massachusetts, of all places, and Grindelwald had to modify his memories after they managed to capture them. Apparently, the Americans had some kind of secret task force for preserving Secrecy, and they had gotten wind of the whole operation on Iceland. Charlie honestly could not guess whether or not he hoped that they were fooled; sometimes it seemed that the diplomatic meetings in the village were the only chance reason had in prevailing over fear and anger. As little as he liked the old dark warlock, he was accomplishing something real in giving them a chance to talk with the Death Eaters, who knew they would not be put on a list, arrested, or just tracked down and killed over things they said. Their usual tricks in saying that he was a Ministry plant were not working, because it was well established that no one was allowed to visit the Icelandic village for diplomatic reasons without being wanted by at least one government.
In the past few weeks, he seemed to have made some amount of progress with Travers, who was a well-traveled wizard himself. Without the ability to deflect his questions, the dark wizard admitted there was a lot he did not know about the specific nature of blood purism, which was why for him at least it was more about dark magic and the preservation of familial lines. It seemed at least remotely based on what Voldemort himself appeared to believe, which fit his self-description as a loyalist.
The Death Eater, however, was not there, and had probably not heard anything about the breeding program, which most likely would have prompted him to turn on Grindelwald, if there were any trace of blood purist in him, because that many magical children would almost certainly draw nonmagical attention to themselves, even if they were well-contained, because in a few years they would be performing accidental magic. Might have been some kind of measure to appease the blood purists, though. If they're so worried about losing the advantage of Secrecy because of the greater number of muggles, what makes sense is to increase the population in some way. The problem with that logic is just that, though, this approach of throwing caution to the wind right alongside the birth of a bunch of children is just never going to appeal to the blood purists.
As detestable as they were, it took very little time actually speaking to them to discover that everything they did, they did for their children. Some of them claimed outright that the motivation for all of their actions was the natural force of parental love, though some of them were not actually parents. Travers had told him on a few occasions that the distinction was actually blurred; parents protected their children because of genetic similarity, protecting the children of their relatives was one off that, and protecting the wizarding world as a whole was one off that. If this breeding facility is what I think it is, they're going to hate it about as much as the Weasley family.
When he reached the appropriate place, he saw that it was a massive viking ship on a lake hedged in by mountains, one of which serving as the vantage point from which he and the Vitez looked down upon the ship.
"Does Gridelwald get tired of building monuments to his own arrogance?"
"I haven't seen it yet. If he ever needs to move the damn thing, we can get it to jump out of the lake into the sea."
Charlie realized he could take a minute to wonder what he meant by 'jump', whether there were wards on the hull, whether there was someone who could levitate ships, or whether it could simply sprout legs and jump. He also realized it was pointless, however. Might as well see what's going on in there. Rupnik seemed to pick up on his intentions, however.
"I'm afraid we can't let anyone near the incubation. We agreed to hedge out as many possible risks as we could."
"I beg your pardon- the incubation?"
"The mothers, yes, the witches who agreed to this. They're on potions to minimize their gestation time."
"I'm sure they'll appreciate that- the incubation- How are you guaranteeing the safety of their children?" There was something else that had not been addressed. "Who the hell are the fathers?"
"They were pure donors. No matter how this war ends, the children are certain to be at least half, and there is no possible way that they will experience discrimination."
"That's going to be the least of their worries- I want the truth, now- are any of these women muggles?"
"What distinction is there?" the Vitez asked. "If a pure blood lies with anyone, the result is a magical child. In our world, there is no difference between muggle mothers and magical ones." Charlie had to stare at him before responding to keep from sputtering angrily.
"Whether you realize it or not, whether it's the right thing to do or not, people have loyalties based on where they were born, who their parents were, and... that sort of thing," he explained. "If you care about both the muggle world and the magical world, you can't let them go to war with each other."
"You must realize there are problems with the Statute; even now, Charlie Weasley. After all we have done to extend a hand to you and to your Order, you must realize that we alone lead the world to the optimal conclusion."
"That's exactly it- conclusion is the word I would use- Things are going to conclude because life as we know it is going to end! The muggles may not be very powerful, but that's only going to make them more afraid of us and more likely to react out of fear. This isn't what Dumbledore wanted; he saw Secrecy going away as an inevitability, and that meant that we had to make the- experience of finding out about magic, I don't know, positive. They couldn't be afraid, they couldn't hate us for not helping them, and they couldn't find out about us without our knowing it. The only thing worse than the muggles discovering we exist overnight is if only a small amount of them know- and we don't know that they know."
Never having been blessed with Percy's bureaucratic eloquence, he knew he was having some trouble making his points even as he made them. His annoyance, however, was not even mostly self-inflicted. Keeping a hand on his wand in case the the Vitez decided the time for talking was past, the ideals of his leader be damned, else revealed for the pretexts they were.
"There will be no battle here, Weasley," Rupnik said, apparently noticing his tensing without having looked. "Though I am perfectly confident in my abilities, it would not do to have our guests telling people they were attacked on diplomatic arrangements."
"Then I can just go," Charlie responded. "Tell your leader everything I said, and you can tell him I'm speaking on behalf of the Order. He is taking entirely too great of a risk, not just to the magical world but to these children and their mothers, and we don't stand for it." He exhaled sharply, his expression firm. "I really don't know how this is meant to appeal to the blood purists."
"Well, it's quite simple. We haven't told them about it. We don't intend to tell them until the children are grown. At that point, we shall possess a highly convenient army that is ready for anything the nonmagical can throw at us."
"I'm almost tempted to say 'we shall see about that', but it's pretty obvious I wouldn't like to see what happens. I don't know how you intend to have this army performing in battle, considering none of them have ever seen it before, and I really don't know how you're justifying this, whether it's some kind of consequence or some kind of ideal- anyway, how do you know no one in your organization is going to tell the blood purists?"
"They wouldn't be in our organization if we weren't sure they were committed to winning at all costs. This is the Greater Good, Weasley, the way Dumbledore was too afraid to imagine it."
"Fine. I'm not some kind of orator. If you keep secrets, though, you can always be betrayed. You told me; how do you know I'm not going to tell Travers, the Death Eater who's here sometimes?"
"Why would you tell him? Do you want the Death Eaters to be at war with us?"
"The only reason you told me is because you're pretty sure I'm not going to tell anyone? Okay, fine, that's really bloody clever. Congratulations, you suspected I wouldn't want a ton of babies to be dead or worse when Voldemort finds out about this place- but you've built this whole operation on a house of cards. There's only so far cleverness can get you, and if you haven't realized it yet, you will soon."
Charlie took his leave without further note. If I have any more stressful meetings tomorrow, I'm going to have to transfer to something else. I'm only good in the field.
