—PROLOGUE—

"A revolt is not a revolution, and a revolution is not a restoration."

-Ancient Goblin Proverb

"I ask all of you — who does this law protect? Us, or them? I refuse to bow down any longer."

– Gellert Grindelwald.

Is this a moral tale, fiction with a fix of truth to teach you the lessons you need to learn?

No. That is sadly not the case. There is no moral to this story. There is no morality in this war.

Truthfully, this is the story of the wheel turning, of the endless cycle of unbroken misery.

This is the story of the brute's boot on the back of your neck.

The moment you learn to stand, you've planted your foot on another person's skull. It is the unnatural order of things. It is the pile of bodies we are born on. It is the way we always were.

You can only hope that you are a part of the "us".

She went by many names. Morgana the Unlikely. Morgana the Morose. It did not matter anymore what prefix was fixated to the end of her title. She may as well let her body and bones disintegrate into the rock that she ploughed.

Who was she? A slave too talented to kill. Deep in the mountain, deep at its heart, where the hollowed chasm glittered with the hard shards of quartz crystals, she dug and dug. If she did not find the treasure she was looking for, she would die here, her body entombed in the glittering womb of the craggy earth, as nothing more than a footnote in history.

The last four decades of the Goblin Kingdom would one day be studied in Universities as the most complex and turbulent period of revolution in their empire. It would be hotly debated, rewritten with revisionist lenses, studied and reviewed as a bloody turning point, as several centuries' worth of political repression erupting.

Morgana would always be at the centre of it all. A symbol of the resistance, of struggle, of contention—although her origins were ordinary enough.

The youngest child of three, the fate of her family rested on the backs of her two older brothers. A policy of parity made opportunity hard to come by in their society, and the only way to stand apart was to be a skilled metal smith; to make weapons, to mint gold, to work with metal was the only road to a better life. Morgana's parents were artisans—they designed furniture and restored antique goods, so their humble hopes rested on the success of their son.

The three children were all born with a competitive streak, hot as iron. Although Morgana was the youngest and female, she was just as eager to prove herself. Their parents knew that teaching Morgana would spur on their sons too, so all three were trained in the art of metalwork before they could even write or read.

While the middle son produced fine instruments, he never had the natural skills of his sister. They were often playfully competitive, driving the other's successes as they learned the goblin's first and most ancient craft. While his designs were clumsy, they were strong. Morgana's were delicate, dexterous and deft. The eldest brother was power hungry, desperate to beat them both, but he never possessed the skills of his younger siblings, and within him, envy began to brew.

At the age of twelve, Morgana was expected to give up her education and dedicate herself to the skills of the hearth and home—as was the custom of the goblins. She was expected to become a mother for more metal smiths, more warriors, more goblins.

Yet her skills were unprecedented, outstripping both her older brothers. Her parents recognised her talent and continued her education. She was not allowed to enter the Royal Academy like her brothers, so her parents pooled all their gold to pay for her private tuition. A young goblin named Orlick, an expert metal smith belonging to the unprejudiced sort, agreed to teach her everything he knew. Talent was talent, wherever it was found, and it was a resource to be mined and utilised like any other.

Ironically, the first thing Orlick taught her was how to make an axe. The best weapons should first be tools, Orlick taught her, and so they made many axes. Pickaxes, mattocks, long fauchards with iron bills.

Now, she grunted with the effort of the axe in her blistered hands. Much further below, she heard the other prisoners chipping away at the hard stone, loud and high cracks echoing up to her. In her hands now, the axe was neither a tool nor a weapon. Blunt and poorly made, it was just a weight, a reminder of her imprisonment.

If she could get her hands on some metal, thing would be different. The other prisoners, most who now hated her for her failure, could rally again. They could have weapons. Morgana could make something out of anything. She had surpassed Orlick's skills by the age of sixteen. He recommended her another tutor, a goblin within the King's royal circle, an expert in dragon traps and hunting weapons. Here, she mingled with the nobility. The more she excelled, the more she caught the ageing King's eye, impressed by her hard work and adroit handiwork.

It was hard to remember being that young. So many decades ago, in a time where she had known peace, or what had seemed like peace then. Life has not been fair or good; she had been barred from attending the Royal Academy; she was expected to marry by the time she turned eighteen so that she could begin having children. She pressed against a future that collapsed on her like rubble. She wanted the heat, the spark, the cool steam of her skill. But while that past life had been oppressive, it was nothing like her current life, a life of tyranny and torment, a life of bestial slavery.

The Goblin King was selected from his people not because of a royal linage, but because he was the greatest metal smith within the Kingdom. He was expected to work the hardest, to produce the greatest innovation and creations, to lead his industry as well as his subjects. When he grew too tired or ill to work, he would select the next King, the next great Metal Worker, and begin training them to take his place.

When the King was ready to retire, he held the competition for all of the Royal Academy students who were of age. They worked for weeks to present their creations, forming swords and shields, elaborate dirks or fortified suits of armour. The King was unsatisfied with all of their work, including Morgana's two brothers. It was their greatest disappointment and rejection.

In all this time, since they had entered the Academy, Morgana had not seen her brothers. The days of their youth, their silly competitions, could not have prepared the two goblins for their sister's sudden infamy. The King had called forth the student that his own weapon's smith had been tutoring. Morgana was given only one night to complete a piece of metalwork that would prove that her skills were unparalleled. That would set her apart from the entire Royal Academy, make her known to the empire.

And she did.

The best weapons should first be tools. She created a hammer, a large mallet, strong enough to crack the skull of a dragon, light enough for a child to wield. She had melted it over the fire of a Norwegian Ridgeback and used the dragon's venom as a coolant, making the metal indestructible.

There had been a moment, when she had handed the mallet to the King, where the enormity of what she was doing had sunk in. She was only seventeen, too young to realise the waves she was creating. All she felt was pride like coal, burning where her heart ought to be. That she had been noticed. That she had won.

When the King named Morgana the next leader of the Kingdom, riots broke out.

A female could never lead their people, protect their borders, direct their armies. The crown must go to her next of kin, to a male, to someone capable of leading them. When the King refused this, protests turned to revolts. Orlick hid Morgana deep in the mountain. The crowning ceremony was delayed with the hopes that the controversy would die away.

But from the very house she had been forced to flee, a plot was brewing. Morgana's brothers stole her hammer, and with it, they murdered the King. The eldest took the crown, the youngest kept Morgana's hammer. It was a deal they struck so they could each gain power over their sister, but their jealousies and competitiveness continued to brew, as they both envied the other's spoils. To have both her crown and her hammer would make one unstoppable.

It was the destruction of their family and of their kingdom.

There was resistance, of course, at first. Waves of supporters who wanted her to be crowned. There were battles in the streets. Average citizens took their pickaxes and ploughs and tried to attack the royal military. They stood no chance.

Even the inner royal circle tried to assassinate the two brothers—but it was impossible to get near the King while his brother wielded the hammer. No one could withstand it's mighty blow. It crunched armour, it turned steel to dust. The eldest brother grew tyrannical, protected by the fear of his subjects. The youngest brother became a thug, addicted to the power of his violence.

Morgana had her supporters to begin with. There were those who recognised what was right and what was fair and what would be best for the progression and creativity of their Kingdom. They were now either dead or in the pit below her, digging with their axes, the chains dangling from their feet.

She was defeated, in body and in spirit. She had been down in the bowls of the mountain for over four decades. All defectors of the current regime had been killed in waves, and since then, no one was willing to say as much as a complaint against the King.

Beneath the earth for so many years, cut off from her own Kingdom, Morgana had no idea that the goblins had turned their eyes beyond their own borders. That they had invaded the Wizarding world. That they now possessed wands, that they had taken hold of Gringotts, that they were struggling for control over the humans.

If she had known that there was a new resistance thrumming underground, a new threat to the goblin's tyranny, an insurgency made up of a different species with the same goal, perhaps she would have felt a flicker of hope for the first time in many years.

But all she knew was her misery. Morgana the Miserable. She was sure that would be the epitaph given in the history books.

He went by many names. The Chosen One. The Boy Who Lived. It did not matter what epitaph they attached to him anymore. Harry Potter was in no way destined to fight in this battle. He was not chosen to defeat the goblins. He was no longer an Auror, he was no longer the leader of the Order. In fact, the vocational powers of his childhood had been plucked away. Providence had dealt a new hand to their children instead, and he was their guardian, their guide, their audience.

He looked at Albus, Rose and Scorpius and had to stop himself from grimacing, knowing how heavy the burden of a prophecy was on a seventeen year olds' shoulders.

Even now, he had to divert his tired eyes, he had to pretend to look elsewhere so he could avoid their stares. They stood before him in a row, an unmoveable surly wall of three. Rose the tallest, by perhaps an inch, then Scorpius, then Albus—so small by contrast, almost half a head shorter. It was the hardest to look at him.

They had come into his office carrying the same air and energy he had once carried, the air of expectations, of impossible destiny, or responsibility. As if he had denied them their duty and he was to blame.

Rose, all freckled and fierce, her blue eyes like bolts of electricity. She was always balled fists and hunched shoulders, ready to fight.

Scorpius was slick and stony faced, hard to read, as if some part of him had been shut down in order to survive. He spoke in short, analytical bursts. He always had his wand in his hand—even now, it was clutched in his spindly fingers—and his eyes were always scanning. A vigilant vigilante in the making.

Albus was so soft, so young, so much like Harry had when he had gone off to find Horcruxes. That had been his task, and at the time it seemed impossible, but at least he had some sort of roadmap left by Dumbledore, some sort of objective. Destroy Voldemort's soul, kill Voldemort, the world would be free from his cruelty. But this was murkier. The borders were blurry. It was hard to distinguish the enemy, harder still to find the way to end the fight. Albus was quiet and sensitive, with the hands of a Healer, not a fighter.

Harry would sometimes sit up late at night, pacing the Defence Against the Dark Art's office that Lupin had once tutored him in, trying to keep his itching eyes open as he relived the last two years. What could he have done differently? It had started so long before Gladstone, before even Kingsley. What if he could have seen it earlier, back when Romnuk's gangs first started appearing, back when James was just a toddler and Albus was a baby and Lily wasn't even born. What if the Auror department had cracked down harder, had gone after them, had locked them up?

But he remembered when they tried to imprison the gang members in Azkaban and the welfare agencies had protested locking up foreign non-beings in Wizard prisons. Send them back for the King to deal with, they said, but the King never dealt with them. They let it slide and slide, they kept giving concessions. Maybe if Harry had acted sooner, more harshly. Maybe if they had fought wand rights harder. Maybe if they had sent Dementors after Romnuk—but he stopped there, feeling sick and oily inside, knowing that this is how the wheel turns. He was turning into the despots he once despised.

So he was relieved he was no longer an Auror and no longer the leader of the Order. He was glad not to be the Chosen One. For the first time in a very long time, Harry Potter's moral compass was muddled.

It was hard to find fault. There was no point trying, anyway. Everyone was guilty these days. Everyone had blood on their hands, including him. The Ministry, the Order, the Goblin Gangs. Even the bystanders were guilty, the straw man masses that had let their hymns of progress become regressive, that had turned their cheeks away and turned their brains off. Everyone was guilty, so who could restore justice? Who could meter out a punishment? Everyone was guilty, and nobody was.

The guiltless ones were the ones too young to have helped make the mess. The last of the innocent were the students who Harry desperately tried to teach. They would be sent like lambs to the slaughter, and this thought kept him up at night, unable to sleep, his head throbbing so much it was reminiscent of his aching scar.

All the wars he had lived through had twisted him. They had made him bitter and hard. They had worn away his idealism. He understood now the outlook of Mad-Eye Moody, of Dumbledore. Their jaded and thorny morality. He was turning into them. The debris of all his battles has chipped away at Harry until there was very little left.

Only the youngest generations, fresh eyed and full of optimism, could stand a chance of creating a better world, and they would be the ones sent off to fight. Whoever survived would become like him, and the wheel would forever turn.

Harry Potter could not look at Rose, Scorpius or Albus as they stood before his desk, demanding that they be allowed to strategize and fight. Looking at them only reminded him that they were pieces in a perilous chess game.

So while the remainder of his mauled morality begged Harry to keep them in the dark, he simply couldn't anymore. They were the last hope left. When the three of them showed up that afternoon in his office—fists clenched, eyes darting, face tender—and demanded that they were allowed to sit into the next Order meeting, Harry had no choice but to finally meet their eyes and agree.

He was not the Chosen One anymore. They were.

I insist that there is no moral to this story—perhaps there are lessons, but they are lessons unlearned.

The truth is, we all turn into our worst enemies. The truth is, war is the great machine that keeps the cosmos churning. The social order is in constant revolt, whether one can see it or not. Even during peace, the revolt must be quietly fed, it must eat away at the corners. There is always struggle, valiant or pitiable. It is struggle coloured in the metal-stench of blood.

But struggle can never quite quench the great thirst for revolution, the ravenous revolutionaries. The revolt is in our blood and we all bleed.

A/N: The last and final installation of The Revolt is now underway! Thanks for your reviews, support and patience. Updates won't be too regular, but follow my tumblr and instagram to stay in touch during the in-between periods.

Let's get this crazy show on the road, shall we?