Cataclysm

by kitsunerei88

[Sequel to Vanguard] Lord Riddle is dead, and the Ministry has fallen. What began as revolution becomes a war, and wars are never easy – not least because of the enemy.

4. Chapter 4

The paper lay on the table, unassuming and yet somehow threatening.

It wasn't Bridge. The paper used was far higher quality than the stock that Bridge used, with a yellow tinge rather than grey – not parchment, which would be too expensive for any paper, but something clearly meant to remind the reader of parchment. The font, even from a distance, was markedly different, taller and starker than the standard Times New Roman used by Bridge, and the paper was folded differently. Bridge was folded like a magazine, almost-square pages flipping like a book – the Daily Prophet was long, rectangular, with articles above and below the fold.

Above the fold, Archie got his second glimpse of Voldemort. He had seen the man at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, but not since, and he was struck anew by how young the man seemed. He looked no older than Aldon or Neal, for all that he was standing in a position of authority in front of the Wizengamot. He recognized Pansy Parkinson, standing behind the man to his left, with the Lady Lestrange behind and to the right.

They had been preparing for this, Archie reminded himself. Armand Abbott had gotten the letter to return to work a few days ago, and they knew the Daily Prophet was being set up anew. They just hadn't known the story Voldemort would try to sell, nor the reaction to their own very public statement. Armand worked in international news and hadn't been able to find out anything further. Even Aldon only had ideas – it would be tricky, he said, because Voldemort would want the world to know he had taken over, but he wouldn't want a mass resistance.

Nothing for it, Archie told himself, reaching for the paper. He didn't want to read the paper yet, but he had to know what the other side was saying. He steeled himself and flipped below the fold.

"A NEW WORLD," the title announced.

A press conference was held today by Voldemort, political unknown but rising star, on the steps to the Wizengamot.

"It is with great sorrow that I announce today the passing of Lord Tom Marvolo Riddle, leader of the Save Our World Party and political visionary," he said, reading off prepared remarks. "A scant three weeks ago, the Ministry of Magic and the SOW Party suffered a very serious attack. Lord Riddle, as well as many others, fell in the defense of our great nation. A mere week ago, there was a further, horrific Fiendfyre attack in the Lower Alleys, in which thousands are believed to have perished. In this time of emergency, the Minister of Magic, still gravely ill, has appointed me as deputy-in-charge, with a wide-ranging mandate to re-establish our sense of security, and to ensure our safety.

"Our nation, our heritage, and our very way of life is under attack. While we continue to investigate these insidious crimes, it is clear that there are those among us who have come under the sway of radical, underground paper, the so-called Bridge. Bridge claims to promote non-violent resistance, but we have evidence linking the organization to militant insurgent groups such as the Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish. These are groups are well known to have long terrorized Wizarding Britain. Further, we have also uncovered the identities of the people behind Bridge. They are Muggleborns, halfbloods, and purebloods, some of whom were educated within Britain and many of whom were not, and they receive support from an extremist, international lobbying group, the British International Association.

"Several noble families are under suspicion of using Bridge to further their own political aims, with even more families implicated by association. It is time to shine a light into some of the most shadowed reaches of government. To this end, I am suspending noble privilege in all aspects of government, and I urge the wizarding citizens of Great Britain to strongly reconsider any social customs which give precedence to those already born into a charmed life. For too long our great nation has been held hostage by the whims of only a few. We watch a noble class profit off our toil, filling their vaults at Gringotts and living large on their estates while we saw little benefit for ourselves. Political power is held in the hands of a favoured few, the highest positions in government being awarded not on merit, but to the closest friends and allies of the nobility. They throw lavish parties and elegant events, enjoying luxuries of which we can only dream, while we struggle simply to buy wands and send our children to school. Through their errors on the international stage, we have borne the brunt of the trade sanctions. It is not surprising that a new, united insurgency has arisen.

"This must end. The Lord Riddle is dead, may he rest in peace. The powers formerly delegated to the Wizengamot and the nobility are now vested in me. I, on behalf of the new Ministry of Magic, will immediately begin work to address our economic concerns and quell this unrest at its source. Internationally, we must begin enacting our own trade protection measures rather than constantly suffering the effects of foreign trade embargoes. Internally, we will conduct a full anti-corruption investigation throughout both the Ministry and the former nobility. Finally, and most importantly, we will immediately begin strengthening the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to address our serious security concerns, to preserve our own national sovereignty from foreign influence, and to protect our valued culture.

"I realize that this change is sudden and will seem shocking to some. But it is my belief that, in time, these changes, supported by hard work from both the Ministry and the citizens of Wizarding Britain, will build a better future for ourselves and for our families."

The Daily Prophet successfully stopped Voldemort just after the conference to ask a few more questions pertaining to his background and history.

"Thank you for the question," he replied with a small smile. "But I am afraid that there is little of interest. I grew up in a small wizarding village in Northumbria, in a non-noble but pureblood family. My parents, unfortunately now deceased, could not afford to send me to Hogwarts. I was very fortunate, however, that my parents were both highly skilled and able to homeschool me. Most of us are not so lucky."

Further updates regarding both the anti-corruption investigation and the recent attacks are expected within the week.

Archie read the article once, then twice. There was a part of his brain that tried to compute it and failed. Voldemort wasn't a heroic rescuer come to the aid of Wizarding Britain. He had been behind the attack on the Ministry and on Malfoy Manor both, and had succeeded with his coup. He had been behind the Lower Alleys attack as well – Aldon had information confirming it. And what about the entirety of last year? What about the Bulstrode Mansion attack, or the attack on the Hogwarts Express, or the burning of the Daily Prophet offices?

Everything he said about Bridge – it wasn't untrue, but it was also so incredibly wrong that he didn't even know where to begin. Bridge had promoted non-violent resistance until the Lower Alleys attack, which had completely changed the picture. It was Voldemort who had always been violent, who had always resorted to violence, and it was members of Bridge who were trying to stop the violence! As for the Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish, he knew that they had longstanding difficulties with the Ministry of Magic, but they had their reasons. And everything about foreign influence! Foreign influence wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and people who were schooled outside of Britain were still British. The British International Association was still British, they weren't foreign meddlers in their own country, and they were hardly extremist.

It didn't make any sense, and it was infuriating. Archie sat and stared at the paper in silence, trying to think it through and getting nowhere. At one point he got up for a mug of coffee, in the hope that it would jumpstart his brain, but it didn't help – by the third and fourth times he read it through, it was only more infuriating. How could someone just stand there and lie like that? How could the people that stood behind him allow for it? How could people believe it?

Voldemort was using them. He had taken half of their talking points, emphasized the noble and non-noble inequality, woven in the economic problems, and then he turned around and blamed them for the attacks!

No amount of sugar and milk in his coffee helped.

There was obviously some strategy to it, but Archie had never been good at political thinking. It was the sort of thing that he consulted Dad for, or Harry, or Hermione if it had to do with international politics. But Dad was off with Uncle James, and Harry was with Leo, and he couldn't possibly pull her away when Leo clearly needed her so much more than he did right now. No doubt either of them would explain it to him later if he needed it, but Archie wanted to know now, and he was supposed to be a leader in this resistance movement – he had to know.

The front door opened – no alarm, so it was someone that the wards recognized well. Archie looked up to see Hermione coming into the kitchen, a rolled-up copy of the Daily Prophet in her own hands. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips pursed – Archie had no trouble discerning her feelings.

"You've read it, too," he said, gesturing to the paper. He wanted to stand up, give her a hug or a kiss, but from experience he knew that she wouldn't appreciate it right now. "I don't really know what to make of it. It's just—"

"It's despicable," Hermione finished for him, slapping her copy of the Daily Prophet on the table. "But it's logical, if you don't look too closely, which just makes it worse. We're going to have to do so much work to manage this, Archie – I just got the Wizarding Nordic Union to agree to taking two hundred refugees. I'm going to have to do so much work to keep them on board, with the Daily Prophet saying that we're the terrorists."

"I don't understand how anyone can believe this, though." Archie gestured helplessly at the paper. "Look, I mean – Pansy Parkinson is standing there! Lady Lestrange is there! Lady Lestrange was charged for the attack on the Unity Ball not even six months ago! How can anyone fall for this?"

Hermione shook her head furiously, her thick hair bouncing in the air. "Voldemort doesn't want to fight a war, Archie, he's just a despot who wants to rule Britain with no opposition. Most people aren't going to want to fight a war. People mostly want stability, especially if they don't think the changes will affect them. If they're purebloods, then what they'll see is opportunity – someone is promising to address the economic problems that they care about, there's a vague hint that they'll have more of a voice later, and they just want to be safe."

"But what about last year?" Archie looked up, his forehead creasing in disbelief. "Voldemort's trying to pin the coup and the Lower Alleys attacks on us, but what about last year? People died in those attacks too!"

Hermione grimaced. "The Daily Prophet's routine of obfuscation last year, especially through the Bulstrode Mansion attack, really worked. People can't tell which attack was a terrorist attack, which were accidents, and which were completely unrelated. For the people who lost someone in those attacks, a lot of them are already with us – but it's not going to bring anyone new to us. I don't think he can deny the Unity Ball attack, but after that there were only the attacks on Azkaban and on the Daily Prophet, and the Daily Prophet attack was only reported in Bridge. The coup and the Lower Alleys attack, too, were published first by Bridge, so I think a lot of it will come down to whether people trust Bridge. A lot of people don't."

"Okay," Archie said, resting his head in his hands. "So we still need to convince the public, but how? We're the ones behind Bridge, we're the ones who blew the whistle, we know we didn't do it and we already trust ourselves—"

Hermione laughed, an amused and somehow sad sound. "Oh, Archie. We really don't – you remember how long it took for Lord Dumbledore and most of the Light faction to come on board after we released the statement?"

"Almost a week," Archie replied with a wince. It had taken most of a week of meetings, hours spent at the Shafiqs, the Goldenlakes, the Longbottoms, the Naxens, the Nonds and more to get even two-thirds of the Light families behind them. Even now, some of them were skeptical, and he never did sway either the Longbottoms or the Ollivanders. "But you know – Lord Dumbledore never enforces a party line. He never did in the Wizengamot, so that's not really a surprise."

Hermione sighed. "We're balancing a shaking tray of too many dishes and trying not to break any of them. Most of the Light families don't trust us, they only trust Dumbledore, and no one trusts Aldon. He's – well, he didn't do himself any favours at negotiations, and the only confirmation we have linking Voldemort to the Lower Alleys attack is his word. As for last year's attacks, we really only have my analysis of the similarities between them, and I only said that it was likely the work of a single terrorist, probably Voldemort but not necessarily him. Formally, the Bulstrode Mansion attack was put down as an accident, and most of the others were a string of copy-cat incidents. Voldemort can use the same argument for the Daily Prophet attack, but it's better strategically for him to try to pin that on us, too."

"But why?" Archie threw his hands in the air. "Why us? Why would we burn down the Daily Prophet?"

Hermione laughed again, almost helplessly. "Um, because with the Prophet out of the way, we became the primary news source for Wizarding Britain?"

Archie winced. "Right. All right. Okay. This is bad. What do we about it, 'Mione?"

She shook her head. "Deny it, I think. I don't know, really. Point out the inaccuracies, to the extent that we can, and you, Sirius and James will have to deal with Dumbledore and the Light faction, try to keep them from pulling out. Voldemort can't hide the Ministry Unity Ball attack, or Azkaban attack, and there have to be other similarities between those and the other attacks, too. Hopefully, this posture won't last. Anyway, that isn't why I came – I mean, of course I wanted to check on you too, but I also need to talk to you about refugee logistics."

Archie sighed, folding his copy of the paper and standing up. "All right. Refugee logistics. I'll make some tea. What's up?"

Hermione flashed him a small smile. "Assuming I and everyone we have at the ICW can convince the Wizarding Nordic Union to stay in, I'm going to need some help planning some travel routes for the refugees to avoid the attention of either Wizarding or Muggle Britain. They're planning on settling our refugees in a wizarding community on a Norwegian island called Stord, but getting there will be a problem – there's a Floo point, if they can get into Oslo or Bergen, but the refugees…"

She paused, an embarrassed look coming across her face. Archie smiled, knowing exactly she meant. "Whatever their blood status, 'Mione, most of them have never left the Alleys. Remember what I was like when I first arrived at AIM?"

"I know, I know, but the best of them look like they stepped out of a Renaissance Faire, the worst like they came out of a fantasy convention," Hermione said, putting her head in her hands. "I shouldn't find this as frustrating as I do, but it's posing huge logistical problems. Ideally, I would have split them into smaller groups and sent some through the Muggle systems – our contacts in the Wizarding Nordic Union can make them disappear once they're there, but none of them have any Muggle identification at all so that's entirely out. I'm going to need Portkeys, at least a dozen, and they're going to need to be exceptionally overpowered to reach from here to Stord."

"I'll talk to Aunt Lily about the Portkeys," Archie replied immediately from beside the stove where the kettle was starting to steam. At least this was a problem he could solve – Aunt Lily was one of the most powerful witches he knew, and Portkeys were Charms-based. If anyone would be able to manage that kind of transport, it would be her.

"Thank you." Hermione sighed. "The last group, we can send through the north of Scotland – one of the McKinnons has a boat and they'll pilot the refugees to Stord. In some ways, the logistics are only the easiest part. It's…"

She stopped again, just as the kettle started whistling. Archie pulled it off, filling one of Mum's flowery teapots and throwing in a few bags to steep. He waited, listening – Hermione wasn't at a loss for words often, but it was when she was most vulnerable. Hermione always poured everything she had into what she did, and he thought that sometimes she needed to slow down and process her emotions. She never left enough time for herself.

"Arch, we have a group of people who have been quite isolated, and they're already traumatised by what they've gone through." Hermione's voice was quiet. "They've lost so many people – no one in that group lost no one. And we're going to take them, and for their own safety we're going to drop them in a whole new world. I don't know what Wizarding Britain was thinking, isolating themselves from the No-Maj world to the extent they did, but… just the shock of a different language and different cultural norms would be bad enough, but for these people, that will just be the start."

"I adjusted," Archie reminded her softly, taking a seat beside her and resting a hand on her shoulder. "So did Harry, in her year abroad, though I don't know much about it from her side. Even Aldon managed to pull it off, and he's so stiff and conservative I thought he was going to break before he bent."

Hermione snorted. "If you call his ridiculous penchant for waistcoats adapting."

Archie laughed. "But he did! I even heard him complaining the other day about not having his laptop at Rosier Place. We adapted, and the refugees can do it too."

"You adapted in completely different circumstances, though." Hermione shook her head, reaching for the pot of tea and pouring herself a mug. "You were really excited about going abroad, and Aldon had a lot of support. It would have been much harder for him if you and John hadn't gone to flush him out, dragged him out for new clothes, and then taken him through the Tube. We can't provide that much personalized support to the refugees, Archie – there are too many of them, and too few of us, and they're traumatised to boot. Many of them won't want to change."

"We can still do what we can to ease the transition for them, 'Mione." Archie reached for her hand. "What do you think would help?"

Hermione sighed again, looking into her mug of tea. "I don't know how much we can do, Archie. I'm talking to Eleni Hurst about it – she and the other Healers from the Maywell Clinic have an established presence in the Lower Alleys. She's going to try to talk to everyone, start managing expectations. If I could get a few other leaders in the Alleys to do the same, leading by example, it could make a huge difference."

"I'll mention it to Harry," Archie said, though he grimaced at the thought. It wasn't that he didn't think that Harry couldn't help, because he knew that she could, and would, but he didn't want to put it on her. "But she and Leo are both… well."

Harry had had a whole life in the Alleys. She wasn't like Archie who had flitted down to the Lower Alleys only a few times – Harry had had an apartment there, friends, a community. She had never told him very much about it, but Archie guessed that the Alleys had been a sort of freedom for her from the ruse, much the way that No-Maj London had been for him. The Lower Alleys had been special to her, even if she hadn't lived there, though Archie could remember summer breaks and winter holidays where Harry had practically lived there. He had meant to check in on her, had tried to a few times, but between his meetings with the Light faction and reading the missives from their other allies he hadn't had the time. Harry, too, was often gone, spending hours every day with Leo. The few times Archie had managed to find her in her Potions lab, she had been decidedly non-talkative over endless cauldrons of Healing and ward-making potions. And Leo, of course, had been the Rogue of the Lower Alleys, and he had to have taken the loss of his home, his community, hard.

Hermione nodded, not needing Archie to explain. "They're as traumatised as the rest."

She finished her tea and went off to confirm the refugee situation with the Wizarding Nordic Union. Over the next week, Archie read the Daily Prophet from cover to cover, every morning. There were dozens of fluff articles, all subtly or not-so-subtly praising the new government. The Ministry was cutting down on excess, prioritizing previously drastically underfunded areas, particularly the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and lmproper Use of Magic offices. The anti-corruption investigation resulted in charges against the Malfoys, the Lord and Lady Parkinson, Master Severus Snape, and a slew of other non-supportive noble and non-noble families.

Bridge had a full response the next week, denying any responsibility for the attacks. Archie didn't know how much help it would be – many of the things that were said were at least partially true. The Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish did have a conflicted history with the Ministry of Magic, and many of the people in Bridge were Muggleborns and halfbloods who had been educated outside Britain. They were being funded by the British International Association, which was a lobbying group, even if they weren't extremist. Clarifications were made, but there was only so much they could do on that angle.

Instead, they reinforced the lines. They republished last year's article linking the Bulstode Mansion fire to the various terrorist attacks, drawing attention back again and again to the mysterious sign that had appeared in the air above. But that sign wasn't replicated over the Lower Alleys massacre, and they couldn't find a witness who had seen it on the night of the coup, so there was little they could draw on other than Aldon's word to say that Voldemort had been behind either of them. A few paltry days later, and the Daily Prophet had an article suggesting that it had been Bridge supporters, long dissatisfied with the Ministry of Magic and stoked by the rhetoric, behind both attacks. Lesser-blooded and poorly educated abroad, the perpetrators had lost control of the Fiendfyre they had summoned, which had destroyed the Alleys and them with it.

Worst of all, the Light faction began threatening to withdraw from the treaty, and Archie was caught in a new round of negotiations. Dumbledore, fortunately, joined him and Dad for about half of the meetings with his traditional supports, so most of them didn't withdraw. But there was no way that it could last long-term, and Archie knew it. He felt like a circus performer, sitting on top of a unicycle while balancing cups and bowls and plates on his head, wobbling without the ability to do any magic to hold it all together.

It had to end, and soon. For now, Uncle James had enough of a force to challenge Voldemort on his grounds, and so he, Dad and Uncle Remus were caught up in planning for a major attack on Malfoy Manor. They needed to destabilize Voldemort before he could become too entrenched in Wizarding British politics, before he became the new normal. The best way to do that would be for what remained of the past government to handle the threat.

Archie could only hope that it would succeed. That it would succeed, and that the war would be over. Then they could argue over what came next without the fear of violence.

XXX

Pandora Parkinson was terrifying.

Pansy hated her, and she hated her more because Pandora was herself. A different version of herself, a version of herself that she never wanted to be, but the version of herself that kept her alive and in Voldemort's good graces. Pandora was uncaring, hard – Pandora was focused entirely on the things that she wanted, and she didn't care who she hurt in the process.

But Pandora was also free. Pandora feared nothing, Pandora cared nothing for what others thought of her, and that feeling was intoxicating. Pandora said exactly what she thought, charitable or not, politically correct or not, proper or not, and Pansy enjoyed it. Pandora was herself, perhaps one of the purest versions of herself that could have existed, the sharp adult to the sharp child that Pansy had been before she had learned to lie.

Pandora was the one who had planned Voldemort's entry strategy into Wizarding Britain. She was the one who had devised Voldemort's plain but inspiring backstory; Voldemort himself had been inclined to something grand, to claiming heritage from some of the greatest wizards who had ever lived, but she had convinced him that in this case, less was more. It was better that the populace see themselves in him, that he be one of them, with only a little more power, charisma, and daring. She was the one who had opted to use the Bridge talking points, minus the blood discrimination laws so critical for Voldemort to expand, as well as blaming Bridge for the attacks – people were already dissatisfied, and a clever person could capitalize on the opportunity posed by the enemy paper for widespread control.

When Voldemort had lost control of Scar, his lead man in the Alleys, it was Pandora who had altered his original plans to make them salvageable with her wider political strategy. It was Pandora who had suggested that starting points of the blaze should be the Auror outposts, that it could later be framed on Bridge, and it had been Pandora that had vetoed the use of the Dark Mark.

Voldemort had been very disappointed. He loved the Dark Mark, he thought it was the grand personification of his great and noble organization. It was a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth! Some of his followers even called themselves the Death Eaters, for goodness' sake. Pandora couldn't believe it.

"Do you want to be a teenage terrorist playing at politics, or do you want to rule this country?" she had demanded. The Dark Mark, the trademark names: they were idiotic, immature, a symbol of teenage rebellion, a waving flag that Voldemort was a child who could not be trusted, a doodle on the edges of parchment of OWL students who did not want to study for their exams. If he wanted to be legitimate, he needed to either drop the symbol entirely or find something clean, bland, and inoffensive. Voldemort had been furious, about to order Bellatrix to torture her for the insult, when the younger Lestrange had interrupted with his harsh, rude laughter.

"She is entirely correct," he had drawled. "It will only attract more of the same kind of followers, people of the same ilk as my mother. The time for terror is done, and dropping the symbol now allows you to disassociate yourself from the attacks of the last year."

Voldemort, shockingly, had let it go, and the modified Lower Alleys attack plan had gone off without a hitch that very night. Pansy wished she could have sent warning, but Voldemort had kept her at his side the entire evening, until it was too late. It was all she could do, slipping out of Voldemort's rooms in the early hours of the morning, to decode Aldon's risky note and send back a very hasty reply confirming that Voldemort had indeed been behind the attack.

But therein lay the problem. Pandora Parkinson was a living, breathing personality of her own, and when Pansy handed over the reins of her control, it was Pandora in charge. And Pandora believed in Voldemort, Pandora wanted the world that he would create, and Pandora would happily use Pansy's considerable skill at political manipulation and social strategy to achieve her aims. Pandora could no more undersell her talent or purposely sabotage one of Voldemort's plans than Pansy herself, funnelling information whenever and wherever she could to Aldon on the other side, could betray her friends on the outside.

Pandora Parkinson was terrifying, and Pansy never wanted to be her. But Pandora was also who she had to be to survive, so each and every day, Pansy woke up, pulled on her robes, and she handed control to her alter ego.

XXX

Draco's suite of rooms had shrunk. Before, his mother had had a bedroom in his suite, but that had disappeared a few days after she had left. His sitting room was smaller too, and there was only one chair at the lonely table where meals appeared, three times a day. A house-elf always appeared with his evening meal, and always asked if there was anything else that they could bring him to make him more comfortable.

They would bring him books, Quidditch magazines, even a Snitch that he could let go and chase around his miniscule rooms. They wouldn't bring him a broom, not that Draco had the space to fly one, but they brought him two packs of Exploding Snap cards. There were a few days where Draco thought about asking for the most ridiculous things he could think of, but when the house-elves actually brought him the mimbulus mimbletonia that he had asked for and the plant had promptly sprayed him in pus, he thought better of it.

Harry visited, once every few days, but something felt different. She was Rigel, and she had all of Rigel's memories, but there was something about her that wasn't Rigel. She radiated the same guilt, as overwhelming as it ever was, but otherwise she carried herself very differently. She was less guarded as herself, more relaxed. She spoke easier, she smiled easier, she was a little lighter now, but it was more than that.

She was confident now, about topics other than Potions. She didn't shy away from any areas where they might disagree, and she very bluntly told him, when he raised it, that the idea that halfbloods and Muggleborns had more dangerous magic was preposterous. The blood discrimination laws were something she fundamentally disagreed with, on every level, and she saw nothing in them worth saving at all. When Draco, thinking to change the topic, asked her about her visits to other SOW Party families, she had only shrugged, launching into a story about being at the Avery residence, where they had been summarily dismissed by house-elf. She didn't seem to care about the insult that being escorted from the grounds by house-elf represented.

Most of her attention, however, was focused on the outside world, on the aftermath of a major Fiendfyre attack in the Lower Alleys. She was perpetually worried about the refugees, about someone called Leo, and the oscillating waves of crushing grief, worry, and determination kept him from pressing her too much for more.

No one else told him anything about what was happening outside his four walls. Even his mother's letters were brief, telling him more about Geneva, Switzerland and the ICW, than the happenings of Wizarding Britain.

So, instead, Draco asked for Bridge, and then he asked for the Daily Prophet. Bridge came only once per week, but the Daily Prophet came every day.

The first day of the Prophet was the worst. Voldemort was standing on the front page, and Draco could hardly breathe for the emotions, the scents, the sounds that assaulted him. The man was standing in front of the Wizengamot, dressed in robes far finer than the ones that he had worn to attack Malfoy Manor, but all Draco could see was that night: the window gallery in flames, the grand chandelier crashed down across two sofas and a coffee table, a monster at the head of the room standing over the body of Lord Riddle. He swam for a long, endless minute, drowning in fear and anger and alien joy, smelling acrid smoke and pungent fear-sweat.

Then he blinked, and the memory was gone. He was only staring down at the moving picture of Voldemort making a speech, in the same position as Lord Riddle had stood so many times. Pansy was standing behind him, a little to one side, a tiny, pleased smile on her lips. He took a deep breath, trying to block her image from his sight and flipped the paper below the fold, where he could read it without having to look at the photograph.

The article just did not compute in his head. He wanted to say it was wrong – there were parts of it what were wrong, but for the most part it simply did not compute. There were words on the page, but they did not make sense, strung together in that row. He didn't understand it. The Minister for Magic wasn't gravely ill, he was dead, and he didn't even know what to think about the rest.

The next days were only worse. He, Uncle Severus, and his mother were all charged with corruption within the week, as were Pansy's parents, and he couldn't recognize himself, or his family, in the descriptions that were written. There were days that he couldn't bring himself to read the paper at all, long days where he stared at the menacing roll on the side table and couldn't bear to even open it. He always caught up later, through either boredom or a morbid curiosity, and he always spent the rest of that day, or evening, stewing.

Between the ideals espoused by Bridge and those of the Daily Prophet, between Pansy standing beside Voldemort and Harry and Blaise standing with Black and Rosier, there didn't seem to be any space left in the middle for him. It felt like he had to make a decision, and he didn't know where he stood. Where should he stand?

Harry was a halfblood, but she was also the most powerful and skilled witch he knew. But she also met so many of the SOW Party talking points. Her magic was different, even a little wild, and if someone wanted to make a case that halfbloods were dangerous, then Harry was a prime example. But Harry, even when her magic was at its wildest and most uncontrolled, had never harmed anyone except in the most extreme cases of self-defence. Other than potions, Harry had had no experience in any other kind of magic when she started at Hogwarts, and he remembered the struggle she had had with her magic for almost the entire first two months. She had caught up quickly, faster than he could have imagined, but the fact remained that there was no reason to think she would. Finally, he doubted that Harry had grown up with the same pureblood culture that he and Pansy shared, because Black behaved nothing like her and, as herself, she seemed far more like Black than like Rigel. Pureblood culture was clearly something that she had learned for the ruse, not natural to her.

Harry's words, that she was not an exception, bothered him. He had assumed, for the past year, that she was. One person, that was easy for him to justify, but it now connected that Rosier was a halfblood, too. If it hadn't come out so publicly, Draco would never have suspected – while Rosier might not have been the academic and magical superstar that Harry represented, neither was he a failure of a wizard. And culturally, of course, he had been raised as pureblooded as Draco himself.

They could both be exceptions, but the fact of the matter was, he only knew two halfbloods. If two out of two were exceptional, then were either of them exceptional? He had never cared to know any other halfbloods, so he didn't know.

He also didn't know what to think about the governmental change being promoted, either by Voldemort or the Wizengamot. His gut said that it was wrong, that there was nothing wrong with the past government, but he wasn't sure anymore whether that was right. He didn't know, and so many of the things that the Daily Prophet published were new to him. He had known about the Lower Alleys before, but he hadn't known they were so extensive. He hadn't known how much Hogwarts cost to attend, nor had he truly known about the economic disparity between himself and the others. He had known he was wealthy, but imagine not being able to afford a wand, that most critical of magical implements.

He didn't have a wand currently, nor the ability to buy one.

He gave up on challenging Rosier for title. He didn't have a wand, and even if he convinced someone to lend him one or to buy him one, it would never work for him as his own wand did. They said that the wand chose the wizard, so it wasn't as if he could owl-order one. Even if he managed to get away from Rosier Place, there was an arrest-on-sight order out for him, so he couldn't just walk into Diagon Alley, access the Malfoy family vault at Gringotts and go to Master Ollivander's for a new wand.

From the Daily Prophet, it now seemed too risky for Draco to escape from Rosier Place and go to one of his traditional allies. The families he had been closest to had all been at Malfoy Manor, and he hadn't any idea what had become of any of them other than Pansy. Some of them had to have been helping Voldemort, because not all of them had been charged with corruption, but otherwise he had no idea. Many noble families were cracking up, paying the issued fines on demand in the hope of saving their manors. A few weeks ago, Draco had been confident that there were any number of families that would have been honoured to help him and give him sanctuary; now he wasn't so sure.

He gave up, and when Rosier himself came by, at the end of the week, he was only lounging on the sofa in his sitting room with a Quidditch magazine he had read fourteen times in hand.

"You know the statement," Rosier said, without beating around the bush. He was brusque, inconsiderate, but Draco could feel the intense worry and tiredness he was emanating.

"I intend no harm to you, to Rosier Place, or to anyone at Rosier Place," Draco reeled off, long used to the phrase, without thinking. This was routine by now, a test that he had failed six times thus far, and a test that he no longer expected to pass. Harry said he gave the test to everyone when they entered the grounds, but he and Rosier had never really gotten on, so he couldn't help but wonder if Rosier would always say he failed regardless of whether he did or not.

Rosier blinked – once, then twice. There was a flash of surprise, one that was quickly hidden, not that it made a difference when Draco could feel it in his core.

"Very well," Rosier said, after a brief pause and a frown of consideration. "You have the freedom of Rosier Place. I caution you against walking on the grounds, as they are heavily mined, but I will ensure that you receive a map within the next day showing the general boundaries where it is safe to walk should you wish to go outside. You may explore the common areas at your leisure, or I can request one of our elves show you around."

"Er…" Draco paused, now equally taken aback. "I can leave my rooms?"

Rosier sighed, a hint of annoyance colouring the air. "Did I not say so? Yes, you pass. If you'll excuse me."

Draco nodded, and Rosier disappeared down the hallway.

It was nice being able to leave his rooms, but in some ways it was more disorienting and troubling than staying within them, staring at a paper that seemed like a pet gone feral. He was with other people, but he wasn't one of them; they were always busy, talking about something or other, and some of their accents were hard for him to place. Few people acknowledged him, other than with a glance or an occasional nod before returning to their own conversations, and Draco didn't know how to approach anyone.

These weren't his kind of people, and he couldn't help but wonder who was pureblood, who was halfblood, who was Muggleborn. He saw the girl that Rosier had been with at the Ministry Unity Ball, working every day in a closed section of the Rosier library with a small group of others, and he wondered if they were all lesser-blooded and what they were all doing secluded in the library every day. Harry came by, as often as she had visited him before, but Draco now learned that she always did so with Lionel Hurst, likely Leo, and that she almost always had other business with Rosier. They would seal themselves, without him, in one of Rosier's reception rooms for hours, a ward on the door to prevent eavesdropping.

He didn't know most of Rosier's other visitors, even if he recognized them. The Lord Queenscove came by often, bullying Rosier into going to Queenscove for training. Cedric Diggory was there once, giving Draco a friendly nod before sequestering himself in a reception room with Rosier, the former Lady Rosier, and Professor Moody for a long meeting. Draco would have thought that he had known the former Lady Rosier best of anyone at this residence, since the elder Rosiers had been in the Lord Riddle's inner circle, but instead the former Lady Rosier seemed like a complete stranger. She sized him up, considering, every time she saw him.

People didn't even dress the same. He always wore robes, but Rosier, every time he caught a glimpse of him, never did. Neither did the former Lady Rosier, who was jarring out of robes, nor Professor Moody, nor any of the group who regularly gathered in the library. Harry, when she showed up, sometimes wore robes, and Blaise and Abbott, the one time he had seen them, were robed, but they were the exceptions. It seemed that, in the Rosier household, Muggle dress was the norm.

Everything had changed around him. Everything felt alien, and even free from his room and surrounded by people, Draco had never felt more alone.

XXX

Aldon faced his first and only challenge for title at six-thirty in the morning on July 3, 1996.

Formal challenges for title followed a specific etiquette. First, there was a declaration of intent from the challenger naming the time and date, delivered a minimum of three days in advance. Aldon had received this declaration by owl post, five days ago, from a third cousin named Owen Thomas. Aldon barely knew him, the family linkage being so distant, but he knew that his cousin was about ten years older than him, worked as an Auror, and was neither noble nor wealthy. He could appreciate why Thomas had opted to challenge him; with the Rosier title came the Rosier wealth, along with the manor. If the positions were reversed, and if he thought he could win, he might consider the same.

After the declaration of intent came the negotiation period. Negotiations could go until the date and time of the challenge itself, but if there was no resolution and the challenge was not withdrawn, then it would proceed on the date and time stated. With five days given, Aldon had asked around for more information about his third cousin.

Thomas was newly married, with a child on the way. He was a good Auror but had never been promoted off street patrols, and the Auror salaries had been frozen for years. He was in debt, and he and his wife lived in a rented apartment in one of the upper-class neighbourhoods of the Lower Alleys. He wanted a bigger place to live, for him and his family, but he couldn't afford the cost for the permit for a new magical household, let alone for the construction of a new building and wards. Aldon had written back, three days ago, naming a generous sum in exchange for a withdrawal of the challenge; not enough to pay for everything, but enough to cover his debts, the permit, and some of the construction.

Thomas hadn't replied. And that meant that on the stated date and time, he would be at Rosier Place for a formal challenge for title.

Title challenges were brutally difficult for the challenger. Aldon, as the sitting Lord, was permitted to use whatever spells, tricks, or weapons he had in his arsenal, including the powers behind Rosier Place. His manor would not accept a Lord that was clearly weaker than the sitting Lord, and so a challenger needed to demonstrate not only that they were stronger than the sitting Lord, but that they had the strength to dominate Rosier Place. The only thing that the challenger had in his favour was that all interference was forbidden – Aldon could not ask for help. Aldon could not ask Lina to build a trap for Thomas for him, nor could he trigger her blood-spells which littered the grounds, and he could not ask Neal for backup. To ensure that Aldon had no help, Rosier Place would seal itself during the challenge and no other person would be permitted to leave their rooms. Most of his guests would sleep through it.

The challenge started the moment the challenger stepped on the grounds. It did not end until one of them yielded or died.

So, on July 3, 1996 at six in the morning, Aldon woke up, and he picked up the long, flat case that held his sniper rifle, and he went to the roof of Rosier Place. He was freezing cold, cold enough to pull on one of the hated sweatshirts that Alex had thrown in his face, and his hands felt numb. He took his time, setting up the weapon, checking that all the parts were in order with hands that didn't quite feel real, checking down his sight to make sure that it was clear.

At exactly six-thirty, Owen Thomas crossed the wards on the western side of the Rosier Place. That was unexpected, though Aldon felt the ripple in his wards, and it only took him a few minutes to reposition. Then, at exactly six-thirty-six in the morning of July 6, 1996, Aldon stared down his sight, his breathing soft and even, his finger numb and heavy, and he shot Owen Thomas.

Aldon was not a good dueller. Three months of boot camp with Alexander Willoughby Dragić had taught him so, and he was constantly reminded of the fact when Neal forced him out into the lists with him. Aldon was zero to a hundred to both Alex and Neal, and even if they both had said he had improved, he was not a dueller. He was not a fighter, and his chances of surviving a wand duel with a cousin a decade his senior, with eight years of experience as a street patrol Auror, were nigh to none. Aldon had no interest in relinquishing his title, nor in being murdered for it, so he shot to kill.

That didn't mean that his breath didn't catch, that he didn't shudder, or that he didn't feel something heavy in his chest when he looked down at the body of his cousin.

"Sorry," Neal said, shaking his head as he shut the man's light brown eyes, only a half-dozen shades darker than Aldon's own. Aldon had asked Neal to stay the night before, in a spare bedroom in family quarters because he hadn't wanted to let it be widely known that he would be facing a title challenge in the morning. Lina was busy, Christie would have worried, and he didn't want Francesca or anyone at Blake & Associates to know. They would sleep through it, he had hoped, and he would never have to say anything about it. But he had wanted a Healer on site for this morning, and between Neal, Archie, and Hermione, he knew who he trusted the most to say nothing about it to anyone.

"I had hoped that a body shot…" Aldon sighed, turning away with a swallow. Neal was speaking in French, as he usually did when it was only the two of them, and with time it was becoming easier to simply respond in the same language. "That I would have hit something less critical. Damaging enough to force him to yield, but not kill him."

"Hard at that distance." Neal stood up, brushing his hands off on his jeans. "Especially in a magical environment. I'm impressed you made the shot at all. What do you want to do with the body?"

"We'll send him back to his wife." Aldon shook his head, clapping his numb, shaking hands, and one of his house-elves appeared. "Rolly, would you… please."

The house-elf bowed, his expression serious. "Of course, my Lord."

"Send a thousand Galleons with the casket," Aldon added. It was the amount he had offered for Thomas to withdraw his challenge, and enough to pay down Thomas' debts, pay for his burial, and for his wife to survive on until their child was born and she could return to work herself. He recalled that she, too, worked at the Ministry. "And I'll draft a personal letter expressing my condolences and promise safe passage from Britain if she wants to flee. We can slide them into one of the groups headed to the Wizarding Nordic Union."

Neal studied him for a moment, then reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder. "You did what you had to do, Aldon. It's not your fault."

Aldon shook him off, rough. "I never said it was."

It took him more than an hour to draft a suitable letter expressing his condolences, his handwriting uncommonly messy, and another thirty minutes of thought before he tucked in a copy of Thomas' declaration of intent, just in case Thomas hadn't spoken to his wife about the challenge. The casket went out, just past eight in the morning, and Aldon tried to block it out of this mind. He had letters to decode, meetings to plan. According to Swallow, Voldemort was still aiming at legitimacy, using softer methods to try to sway people to his side; Vulture confirmed that he had been given considerable leeway to keep the wilder elements of Voldemort's army in line. Three hours of work, but when he looked at what he had completed, it didn't look like he had been at it for more than an hour.

At noon, Archie had arranged a meeting with the Lord Potter to discuss the use of a small group of Aurors, which Aldon desperately needed. He needed to secure the Floo, which was akin to having a half-open door in their wards, and the treaty clearly specified that all military action went through the Lord Potter. Aldon only needed a few people for a strike on the Floo Regulatory Authority, but even a few people meant he needed to deal with the Lord Potter. Aldon couldn't think of a worse day for it – he didn't want to leave the study, let alone face off against the erstwhile former Head Auror.

But it was necessary, and it wasn't that he disliked Lord Potter. To be entirely honest, Aldon neither liked nor disliked the Lord Potter. He could honestly say that he found Sirius annoying but generally helpful, and he disliked most of the others within the Light faction, but he only found the Lord Potter mildly irritating. According to Archie, however, the Lord Potter had no love for him. As Archie put it, Aldon's attitude at the treaty negotiations had put him off, but Aldon hadn't had a choice but to behave as he had. There was a certain image of himself he had needed to portray to defend himself and his House during the treaty negotiations, and if Lord Potter didn't like it, well. There was also his proposal, or more accurately his father's offer to open negotiations for an arranged marriage with Harriett Potter, but he had formally withdrawn it and if the Lord Potter still felt it was an issue, then that was his problem and not Aldon's.

Aldon didn't feel as sharp as he needed to be, but he took a deep breath and slid into the chair on the other side of the kitchen table, nodding at Sirius and hiding his surprise to see Harry and Hurst at the table. Archie came in behind him, taking the last seat.

"Still going around armed?" Lord Potter's voice was carefully neutral, even if he was eyeing the handgun at Aldon's side with suspicion.

"Challenge period," Aldon replied, his voice short as a flash of the morning came back to him. The cream-coloured scroll of parchment, sealed in red with the Rosier crest, looking somehow completely inadequate stuck on top of the plain, wooden casket.

"Challenge period only lasts a month from when you take title." The Lord Potter frowned, looking at him sternly over the thin rim of his glasses. "And the dates and times are always scheduled. It should be over by now."

"It is a month to issue challenge," Aldon corrected, terse, settling uncomfortably in his seat and fighting valiantly to turn his tone into something a little less bland and emotionless, a little more flippant. "And even after the challenge period, there is always a risk. I have no formal Heir at this time, so I expect that I must be cautious of attempts on my life for the foreseeable future."

The Lord Potter sighed. "Sirius—"

"I don't mind," Sirius confirmed, shooting the Lord Potter a quick glance. "If it makes Aldon feel more comfortable to have his pistol, we don't mind. I've never seen him draw it."

"Hmm." The Lord Potter didn't look convinced, but let it go. "All right, then. You wanted to talk. What about?"

Aldon leaned forward, blocking the image of the brown casket leaving Rosier Place from his mind. He glanced over at Harry and Leo, sitting on one side of the table. "Should these two…"

"I thought they might be useful, so I invited them," Archie cut in with a quick smile. "They know a lot of people, might have some ideas for strategy and things too. Go on, Al."

Aldon nodded, ignoring the nickname, and focused on the Lord Potter with some effort. "The Floo Regulatory Authority. We have a problem – the Floo provides a gap in the wards for all our manors and our safe houses. We can password them and build in a few protective measures, but they still create a weakness in our wards. Passwords are easier to break than a solid ward, and collapse spells are a last-resort measure. They would cause structural damage to our homes that we can little afford, and they could be difficult to trigger in the midst of an attack, when we would need them most. We aren't using the Floo Network currently as it is, with the risks of being caught mid-transit. I would like to request a few of your fighters for a strike on the Floo Regulatory Authority to remove our manors and safe houses from the Floo Network."

Lord Potter's expression had shifted as he listened, a frown growing across his face. "If I thought that we were going to be in a longer war," he started slowly, "I would have no hesitation in supporting you. However, as I'm sure you know, we're planning a major strike on Malfoy Manor later this month, and I really do need all my fighters. Between the former Aurors, the Improper Use of Magic officers, and the people we've managed to pull from the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures, we currently have a slight edge in trained people, and we need to strike soon, before Voldemort's ranks can swell much more. Unless you have information that Voldemort has successfully attracted more recruits?"

Aldon tilted his head back and forth for a moment, weighing what to say. A breeze ruffled the curtains, bringing on with it a damp, earthy scent, and suddenly Aldon was looking down at his third cousin: tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered as Aldon was not, and still in death.

The ground had been damp that morning.

He blinked, swallowing.

Neither Swallow nor Vulture had given him any solid numbers, he remembered. He didn't think either of them knew – Vulture still wasn't trusted, which was something Aldon would need to address at some point, and he suspected Swallow was consulted only on high-level decisions. At the time of the coup, Voldemort had had perhaps sixty dedicated followers; immediately after the coup, if all the survivors Swallow had reported had joined Voldemort, that would be a force of around seventy. That had been more than a month ago now.

"My sources say that he has," Aldon replied slowly, and it wasn't a lie. "But they are not clear on the numbers. At minimum, seventy, and I can say that Master Regulus Black, the best Ward Master in Britain, is with them. I would argue that this puts the warding issue at an even higher priority, regardless of the attack you're planning. If any wizard can figure out how to exploit the Floo weakness, it will be Master Black."

The Lord Potter tapped his fingers on the table – not rude, just thinking, a snapping noise that reminded Aldon of quiet clicks of his scope that morning. Aldon shook his head, a slight motion, dispelling the sound.

"You make a good case, Lord Rosier, but I just can't justify the use of resources. We need to strike now, before Voldemort is secure in his position and before he can recruit too widely. As it is, my core fighting force is only a hundred, since we have to keep the rest on guard for our manors, and the Welsh and Scots are contributing only an extra forty between them. Though…" The Lord Potter raised an eyebrow. "You undoubtedly already know that."

Aldon didn't deny it. Lina and Moody were both involved in the Lord Potter's plans, and Neal, also included, had been most helpful. Lord Potter was confident that the attack had good odds of success; while Voldemort held Malfoy Manor, he wasn't a Malfoy and couldn't formally claim the Manor. He couldn't harness the power or invoke most of the inbuilt ward defenses of Malfoy Manor, and his force would almost certainly be smaller than Lord Potter's. Neal thought Lord Potter was probably right, and that it was worth the risk. Aldon didn't disagree, but contingency plans were important.

"If we succeed with the Malfoy Manor strike, then we also won't need to remove our manors and safe houses," the Lord Potter continued, and he even sounded a little apologetic about it. "A strike on the Floo Regulatory Authority will be a risk for whoever I send, and I really do need every fighter I can get right now."

There was a small noise from Harry, sitting to Lord Potter's left, a huff of annoyance that she didn't quite stifle fast enough. The Lord Potter shot her a stern look, but her face smoothed over, expressionless, as easily as Rigel's had once done in the Slytherin Common Room.

"I would only need a few people," Aldon argued, leaning forward. His hands were gripping each other under the table, very tightly, his fingernails leaving small indents. "A strike on the Floo Regulatory Authority is constrained and faster to plan, and the intent would be to remain secret. Should all go well, the Authority should not know that the strike has occurred at all. It decreases risk for all of us while you plan your attack on Malfoy Manor. Further, should you succeed with your attack, it would not be difficult to re-register onto the Network once the hostilities are over."

"That's if your plan succeeds," the Lord Potter countered, shaking his head regretfully. "And if anything went wrong, it could put the larger strike in jeopardy. I can't risk it. Let's talk after the Malfoy Manor strike, if we don't succeed."

"We have detailed information about the Floo Regulatory Authority," Hurst interrupted, his voice a little flat. "I… used to know a few people who worked at the offices, and I've hit them before to connect the public Floo stations. They will also need to be disconnected. I'll do it – higher chance of success if I do it too."

"I'll go as well," Harry said, her voice quiet and with a worried look towards her friend. "With the two of us—"

"Harry…" The Lord Potter sighed, shutting his eyes, but Harry had a mulish expression on her face that Aldon recognized very well from Rigel.

"Dad, you can stop me from being involved in the Malfoy Manor strike, but I'm not part of your group. Neither is Leo." Harry's mouth was a stubborn line. "It's important, and after the Alleys… I'm volunteering. Is two enough, Leo?"

There was a pause. "We can bring Marek to watch our backs. Three should do it."

"Three. Do you think three is enough, Aldon?"

Aldon looked at her for a long moment. She didn't look like Rigel, and her appearance no longer made his core ring, but there was something about her still that screamed Rigel. Her chin was softer, rounder, even if her mouth was set in Rigel's stubbornness. She had a round face, without Rigel's sharper cheekbones, but her bright eyes were determined, just as Rigel's so often had been. Her hair was much longer, a womanly length, but Aldon could hardly tell with it tied in a knot at the back of her head, out of her way.

He shouldn't accept the offer, not with her father right there, not when her father had clearly told her not to be involved. But taking the manor houses off the Floo Network was important, it needed to be done for all their safety, and she was offering. And Harry, as Rigel or not, had always been an exception.

"If three is what I have, then three is what I will work with," Aldon replied, his own voice sounding rather more flat than usual. "We'll make it work. If that does not interrupt your plans too much, Lord Potter."

There was another long silence, but Lord Potter seemed focused on his daughter. Harry shook her head, firm, and the Lord Potter sighed. "Keep me informed," he said finally. "And for the love of Merlin, don't get caught."

Aldon should have felt something, Apparating home from the meeting and walking across his grounds. He had gotten what he needed, so he should have been pleased. Or, at least, he should have had a vague sense of satisfaction.

He didn't. He felt nothing, numb, as if everything around him was passing him by. His hands had stopped trembling, or rather he had forced them to, but his limbs were still filled with a strange, numb, buzzing, and he still felt the kick of the rifle against his shoulder.

It had only been a few hours ago, but his grounds were clean, the spot where he had gunned down his cousin clean and bare. Even the grass didn't show any sign that a body had lain there, the blood having soaked through to the ground.

Only a few hours ago, in this spot, Aldon had killed a man he hadn't even known.

Owen Thomas was a man so distantly related to himself that Aldon had never met him. He had known his name and basic information, in the way that any pureblood noble knew his family tree, but they had not run in the same circles. Their last common ancestor had been Aldon's twice-great-grandparents; Thomas' great-grandmother, sister to Aldon's great-grandfather, had married into a prominent, if non-noble family. It was such a distant relation.

His cousin had had so many things working for him in his life. He had gone to Hogwarts, a Gryffindor, and he had become an Auror. He was married, his wife also working in the Ministry, and they were expecting. They lived in a very nice apartment in Unicorn District, which Hurst had informed him was one of the nicest areas of the Lower Alleys. They had been respectable. Thomas had just striven for more.

He wished his cousin hadn't.

The whole day felt wrong, surreal. He hadn't slept enough, though Neal had tried to send him to bed at what he called a reasonable hour, and he had rolled around for what felt like half the night before falling into an exhausted sleep and waking up at his usual six in the morning. There had been no coffee today, nor a Wideye Potion, but Aldon didn't feel tired. The day simply felt unreal, like he was experiencing it all through a glass barrier.

He should check on the ACD project, he thought vaguely, taking the steps to his manor, one that was uncomfortably feeling more like his own with every passing day. The ACD group of Blake & Associaties, which was an intensely pared down unit of himself, Christie, Francesca, Albert, Jessica and Aman, had taken over the two study rooms in the library. It had taken a month and significant investment to plate the smaller of the two rooms in plastic: two thin sheets of polycarbonate, blue and silver, trapping a thin layer of insulating potion in aerogels. The door to that study room was plated the same way, with words reading No Magic Allowed, Please Keep Door Shut prominent to the rest of the library, as they hoped it would decrease the ambient magical noise within sufficiently for electronics to function. There had to be some amount that was tolerated by electronics, because witches and wizards who lived in Muggle neighbourhoods such as Christie's used them without difficulty. It was only in magic-soaked environments such as magic schools or ancestral manors that electronics developed an unfortunate tendency to explode.

Francesca had lost something she called a boombox in the process, as it exploded a few days after the plating was done, but two weeks later it did seem like electronics could be used in the room. There was no power outlet, nor a way to connect to the outside, but it was progress enough for them to continue work on the ACD.

He paused in the corridor. The ballroom was open, one side of the wide doors ajar, and he hadn't opened it. As far as he knew, it had been shut since the SOW Party Gala when he was fifteen.

It was dark inside the ballroom – whoever had opened it had either not gone in, or they had left the lights off. Aldon frowned, reaching to his manor. Neal said that Queenscove fought him regularly, having its own opinions about how things should be done, but Rosier Place had never shown any personality of its own.

Rosier Place gave him a flash of the inside. Francesca was taking a few careful steps within, nervous as she looked around. She couldn't see anything in the darkness – but the chandelier took wand magic to light, he remembered.

He followed, drawing his wand and flicking off the spell to light the grand chandelier. Pale daylight flooded the room – it was a variant of Lumos Maxima, a cross between that spell and the Sunrise Charm. Francesca gasped, whirling around, her eyes wide.

"My apologies," Aldon said, looking down. "I … saw the door was open."

She didn't reply. Instead, when he looked back at her, she had turned back around and was looking around the grand ballroom.

Things had been different between them since the night of the Lower Alleys attack. She had never spoken of that night, and Aldon had taken his lead from her. If she didn't want to talk about it, then it was all the better that he did not, either. But she was softer when she spoke to him now, without the edge of cold professionalism she had adopted after the Unity Ball. It wasn't the same as before, but something new, something cautious and uncertain.

He was still interested. She knew it. They didn't talk about it.

The ballroom was, at least, clean. The house-elves had kept it cleared of dust, through it had the still, faintly musky smell of a room that had been shut for a long time. The floors were done in slate tile, two different shades of grey forming a great, seven-pointed star on the ground. The walls were plain stone, broken every dozen steps by wide, curved staircases leading to the seven balconies. Two for each balcony, sweeping towards the left and the right, and at the top of each, two wooden doors that would open to the outside. They would, if opened, have a beautiful view of the Rosier grounds.

Francesca took a few more steps in, running one hand lightly along one of the carved balustrades lining the stairs. Aldon swallowed, taking a few steps towards the closest staircase and steadying himself against a rail.

"It was … inspired by a prince's garden in Germany," he heard himself offering, his voice dry. "The balconies. If you go outside from that one in the centre, there are other steps that lead directly into the garden."

"It's beautiful," she murmured distantly, glancing up towards the domed ceiling. One of Aldon's ancestors had had the ceiling painted in the Muggle style of the time, and the ceiling was covered in images of flying witches and wizards with painted dragons in each corner. There were originally glitter-spells and movement charms imbued in the paint, but those had worn off a century ago, leaving only the colour. It was no more than a Muggle painting now.

"My ancestors liked their comforts." Aldon looked around his ballroom anew. Even if it was a part of his house, he had only been in the ballroom for his dance lessons and for the SOW Party Gala. But it was a very beautiful room; the spacing between the balconies on the other side were even, the star on the floor subtly marked the dance floor, and even the painted ceiling, Muggle as it was, glowed, reflecting the chandelier.

"I was – I was looking for a place to dance," Francesca said, abrupt, turning around to face him. Her voice was too loud, a little embarrassed, but determined. Aldon frowned – it was unlike her. "There are too many people and traps outside, and so—so I went looking. I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize." That couldn't be what she was thinking, though she wasn't lying – or rather, not fully. He thought she probably had been looking for a place to dance, or at least be alone, but there was something she wasn't telling him. "Rosier Place is…"

He hesitated, the ten feet between them seeming small. Rosier Place was jointly hers, and in theory she had some authority over his manor. He didn't know if she had realized it, and she certainly hadn't taken advantage of the other things that he had told her were equally hers. She had never asked about the Rosier bank accounts, but instead she had offered to pay him rent. He had declined, but his house-elves reported that she still regularly offered to contribute to household expenses.

She didn't think of Rosier Place as her own, so he corrected himself. "Anything we can do for you would be our pleasure. I will … I will find some time to restructure the light spells for the ballroom for you to trigger with a paper charm, and you may dance here whenever you please."

"No, I—" Francesca shook her head, and Aldon's core vibrated again. Not a lie, but there was something she was hiding. "I'm fine – I had just – I missed dance, that's all. I couldn't use a space so – so grand."

"No one else is using it." Aldon looked away, glancing up at the balcony behind him. "You might as well. It hasn't even been opened in two years."

"I still—" Francesca fell silent. "I don't even have any music. I broke my CD player when we were testing the magic-free room."

Aldon thought for a moment, then raised his wand and concentrated. "Incipio Musica."

The sound of a quickstep began playing in the ballroom. It wasn't as loud as musicians would have been, and the notes were tinny and too small for the space, but it was there.

"The quickstep?" Francesca laughed, the sound a little off even as she asked.

Aldon swallowed dryly. "Incipio Musica requires that I know the song rather well, since it's… running off my memories of it to play. I'm afraid I don't know any of the music that Archie or Neal know and the, er, quickstep is rather frozen in my mind. My apologies."

"Hm." The noise she made was soft. "The quickstep is really – it's only a pairs song. I can't – it's not really something I can solo to."

Aldon hesitated, unsure. He shouldn't, but then, he didn't know what else he was supposed to do, either. She hadn't left – she hadn't bid her goodbyes and walked away, as she sometimes did, and she was chewing on something in her mind.

"Would you … care to dance, then?" he asked, uncertain. "I – I know how much you love dance. You must be missing it."

There was a long silence, as Francesca studied the ceiling, then she turned to look at each of the seven balconies. Her dark eyes were thoughtful.

"I guess – well, why not?" she said with a shaky breath, and Aldon felt some part of the surreal glass distance around him cracking. "Just – just once."

He took a deep, calming breath, approaching her carefully and trying to give her every opportunity to decide otherwise. He reached out towards her, hoping that his hands weren't shaking, but waited for her to put her hand in his, her other on his shoulder.

Her heels were not very high today, barely an inch. Without them, she was quite a bit shorter than he was, the top of her head level to his eyes, but she wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was fixed downwards, on Aldon's waistcoat just under her hand. Her hold was light, her left hand slightly bunched while her right was loose in his hand. She felt small in his arms, warm, and her hair gave off the scent of strawberries.

He swallowed, hard, struggling to come to the surface of the icy numbness that coated him. He wanted this to be real, he wanted to feel her warm body against his. He wanted her to be real, here, in the Rosier Place ballroom, one night of dancing that could be added to as many nights of dancing as she wanted. A ballroom like this was made for her, or for someone like her, for someone who loved dance and music and who would use this ballroom more than once in a decade. It was a beautiful room, deserving to be used, and he barely noticed that Francesca's hand in his was light, loose, or that she was biting her lower lip in thought.

They weren't doing anything complicated. They hadn't even left the ground, nor were they following any choreography. Aldon wasn't sure if he would even remember the complex choreography that she had created for the Ministry Unity Ball, if that was as burned into his memory just like the music. He had never tried it again, but it didn't seem like she was trying that either. She was relying on him, letting him lead her wherever he wished, and he spun her around in simple circles on the floor.

She didn't say anything, and Aldon searched for something to say. "Are you…" He hesitated. "Enjoying your stay at Rosier Place?"

There was a moment before she replied, and she still didn't look at him. "It's very nice."

"Is there anything I can do to make it more comfortable for you?"

"No. Everything is wonderful. The – your house-elves are very kind." She stopped a moment, letting Aldon turn her into a spin. "Um."

"Um?"

She was silent, her hand falling back in his, and they went on another round of the room. She was chewing on her words, the way she sometimes did when they used to speak by communication orb, and Aldon fought his urge to prod her into saying more.

The song had finished and had started once over again before she spoke.

"What was – um." She took a deep breath, and her voice when she continued was uncommonly hard. "What was that box this morning?"

Aldon froze, and Francesca stumbled, not expecting him to stop. He caught her, unthinking, scrambling for something, anything to say. "Er – I'm sorry?"

Time. More time for him to scramble for a lie, a half-lie, but caskets were readily identifiable, a particular size and shape. His mind was blank, a useless buzz filling the space instead of brilliant solutions.

"I woke early, a little after six," she said, quiet. "I couldn't get back to sleep. I – the wards, I think. Or maybe it was the manor. I don't know. I left my room and went for a walk. Not outside, just – just in the common areas. I heard a gunshot, somewhere above me."

She should have been sealed in her rooms, the way the others had been. He had assumed that she was, and that she would still be sleeping. Francesca and the others working on the ACD generally woke around eight, ate breakfast around eight-thirty, then began work by nine.

But he was sworn to her, and she was the joint owner for Rosier Place with him. Rosier Place must have made an exception for her, or as a joint owner, she must have had the right to be involved in his title challenges. He didn't know. He should have looked it up, but it hadn't occurred to him to do so.

He should have used his silencer that morning. He had one. But he had wanted Neal to hear the shot, so that Neal could try the doors immediately, so that he could meet up with Neal as soon as possible and they could run out towards his challenger. If he was alive and yielded, Neal would have tried to Heal him.

But it had taken two minutes for Neal's door to unlock, and another minute for Aldon to meet him, and then another four or five minutes to get out on the grounds. And Thomas was dead. Aldon reminded himself to breathe, schooling the reaction from his face and his body.

Francesca was still speaking. "I saw you and Neal running out on the grounds. I didn't follow, but you looked…" She paused, searching for words. "Upset, when you returned."

"Er—" Aldon said, then he cleared his throat, but Francesca hadn't stopped talking.

"I – I was already awake, so I got a book and a mug of tea – and I found a place where I could read, where I had, um, a view of the grounds. There's a window seat—" She cut herself off with a deep breath, looking away. "I saw the casket going out this morning, saw you running after it with a letter. Who died?"

Aldon bit his lower lip, looking for a way out. He could say it had been someone else, but that didn't make sense, not when everyone else was still here, when all was normal except for him. He felt strange, a little numb and icy, but that meant nothing to the bustle of Rosier Place. He could say he had been attacked, but it had been just Thomas, and just him, and it didn't look like an attack. Aldon had murdered him in cold blood, with a sniper rifle, long before Thomas was even in range of any spells. Long before Thomas could even see him on the rooftop, long before Thomas had even thought to guard himself against anything.

Bullets travelled faster than spells. Aldon tried to imagine it, what it would have been like, for Thomas – crossing over the wards, stepping onto the ancestral Rosier grounds. Was he confident, when he came, or was he nervous? Neal thought he would have been a combination of both. The only information Thomas could have had was Aldon's own performance at the Unity Ball, which Alex described for him as "an absolute fucking shitshow." Neal said that was being kind, and unleashed a description including prolific French and Chinese swearing, which Alex considered seriously before elaborating his own description to include Serbian profanity as well.

Thomas must have been reasonably confident he would succeed, so he would have crossed onto the Rosier lands with a sort of eager caution, perhaps. But he also had to have been somewhat nervous, because no one walked into a challenge without anxiety. Perhaps he had talked himself up beforehand, or perhaps he had focused on the things that he hoped to achieve. Aldon didn't know.

He wondered how Thomas felt about the six minutes of solitude. It had taken Aldon six minutes to reposition, to aim, and to fire. The grounds would have been quiet, nothing but the wind and the morning damp, silent. Thomas would have been on the alert, waiting for spells, waiting for Aldon to trigger something, and his wand had been in his hand when Aldon reached him. But there would have been nothing, nothing but the cold morning air and the fresh scent of dew on grass, and Aldon wondered if that had made him more confident, or less.

Death had come with the crack of a gun, possibly an unknown noise to him, and no light of spell fire.

He didn't want to tell her. He didn't want Francesca, standing in the circle of his arms, to know that he had taken a life this morning and he hadn't even had the decency to do it with his magic. He didn't want her to look at him and think less of him for it.

But there was no point in obfuscating. Francesca was smarter than that. She likely had her guesses, and his reaction had said enough. "It's not something—"

"Stop." Francesca looked up at him, her dark eyes hard. "Don't – don't put me on a pedestal, Aldon. Don't say that it's something I shouldn't know. You said if you died, I'd hold Rosier Place. If that's how it is, then you need to talk to me about things. You tell me – you say it's dangerous, but you make everything easy for me. You say there's a war, but you make it like it doesn't exist for me. If there's any chance that I'm going to have to hold Rosier Place, then – then you need to tell me what I need to know. I – in case you forgot, I was in the Tournament, too. I watched my friends being attacked, until AIM withdrew. I was here for the trial. I planned our performance at the Unity Ball, and I coordinated your conversations with Archie at AIM. I was with you in the Lower Alleys – it was my magic that used the spells you wrote for me. I'm not – I'm not useless, so don't treat me like I am."

His grip on her waist, on her hand, tightened. "You're not useless. I would simply rather that you focus on – on the things that you need to focus on. I – this morning – you don't need to know. It's over."

"And if things had happened differently?" She demanded, leaning forwards slightly, her voice low. "I woke for a reason. Was there a chance, this morning, that I would be holding Rosier Place? Was there a chance that you would be leaving in that box?"

Aldon looked away. "Neal had instructions to get you out. Lina would have gotten you out too."

"What would he be getting me out from?"

She was relentless, her grip stronger in his and her left hand digging into his shoulder. He didn't want to tell her. Aldon had killed this morning, and that wasn't something he wanted her to know.

"Do I need to ask Neal instead?" They had stopped dancing, long minutes ago, and the quickstep was annoying, repetitive in his ears. "Do I need to ask Neal who you killed this morning? Do I need to ask Neal what kind of danger you might have put me in, without telling me?"

He thought she would push him away, but her grip was as hard as ever.

"A third cousin," he said, the words twisting out of his mouth almost against his will. "He challenged me for the title. I tried to stop it earlier. I tried to pay him off, but he didn't accept it, because he wanted the title and all that came with it. I suppose – I suppose had I fallen, you would have had a chance to defend the title yourself. You are... currently the next in line."

Silence, but she didn't let go of him either. Her expression was hard, unreadable, and Aldon didn't know what to make of it.

This was Francesca. Francesca was soft. Francesca liked makeup and dance and romance novels. This was Francesca, who didn't have a wand and walked around a school as safe as AIM with a guard roster because John, her de-facto older brother, commanded it so. This was Francesca, who took care in how she dressed every morning, Francesca who only wore skirts and rarely let people see her without a layer of makeup, Francesca who loved beautiful things and painted them in movement and light in the air.

But this was also Francesca who made the ACD. This was Francesca who, in her own way, wanted to burn the world down as much as Aldon did. More than Aldon did, perhaps; Aldon only wanted to take down the British Ministry of Magic, but Francesca wanted to take down the whole wand-using establishment. This was Francesca who had pushed herself and John through the reportedly brutal AIM Trials and through the Tournament, Francesca who had gotten on a stage with him at the Unity Ball and turned beauty into a weapon. This was Francesca, lightning witch.

Some magical theorists had done research into what core types meant. Purebloods, and many halfbloods and Muggleborns, tended to fall within the big four: fire, water, earth or air. Eastern witches and wizards tended to regard metal as a separate element, and read air as wind, but most of the people Aldon knew fell, quite strictly, within those lines. Archie and Hermione, like almost half of all Healers, had water cores; Harry and Alice had fire cores. Ed had an earth core, and Neal was synonymous with his winter wind. And Aldon himself was an ice core, a variant on water. Some theorists said that witches and wizards with water cores were easy-going, laid back and even keeled in personality, while those with fire cores had burning passion and a will to get things done. Those with earth cores were said to be steady and reliable, while air or wind cores were flighty and temperamental. For the most part, Aldon thought it was meaningless garbage. He, by that theory, was supposed to be stiff, stubborn and unchanging, which by the evidence of the last few years was utter garbage.

They said that those with lightning cores were explosive. They were quiet, unremarkable, barely even noticeable, until the thunder cracked and suddenly, they were there, bright and shining and unmistakeable.

How could he have forgotten? For all that Francesca was soft, for all that she loved beautiful things and didn't have a wand, she still had an edge to her. She still wanted to light the world on fire. Somewhere, after his first kiss, he had missed it – he had mixed her with a million pictures of what he thought any other girl or woman would have wanted, and somewhere in there he had lost her.

"I see," she said, her voice calm, relaxing, and Aldon blinked.

"I killed someone this morning, Francesca," he repeated, not entirely clear that she understood. She had asked him, yes, but perhaps she hadn't quite connected it in her head, perhaps she didn't feel the blood slick on his hands right now.

She gave him a very odd look. "Yes."

Aldon blinked, not sure if he should repeat himself again. He did it anyway. "I killed someone."

"Yes," she agreed, nodding as if he were particularly slow. "And I think – if Neal was helping you and he knew, then it was probably necessary."

Aldon felt the rest of the glass bubble around him dissolving, disappearing slowly into the air. He drew in a long breath, one that felt like the first one he had taken all day. "Neal wasn't helping. No one can help on a title challenge. Neal was there in case – in case we needed Healing."

Francesca shrugged, the movement tiny. "Neal wouldn't have been involved at all unless he thought it was necessary."

"Oh."

She didn't seem to care. She didn't seem to care, and Aldon was still holding her, and there was still music in the air.

Not knowing what else to do, Aldon started leading her on another round as the quickstep started over again. Aldon felt strange, light, almost giddy. Maybe he had killed someone, but Francesca didn't seem to care. He could dance this quickstep forever, if she wanted him to dance it with her. He would learn a dozen new dances if she wanted him to dance with her.

He would redo the whole manor if she wanted it. He would likely have to – it had only been a little more than a month, and Francesca was chafing at needing to use owls instead of the internet. Aldon himself missed using his laptop, the risk of Apparating to Christie's penthouse in London a little too much to do with any regularity. The research didn't exist yet to support full insulation of Muggle electronics from magic, but it would have to soon.

"Aldon."

"Hmm?" He looked down – Francesca had subtly wormed herself a little closer to him, and he hadn't argued. He should have, he was sure.

"So – so what do I need to know? If you – if anything happens."

Aldon couldn't help but tug her in a little closer. His dance tutor had once said that in a waltz, he should be able to hold a sheet of parchment between himself and his partner without magic, so really, the loose way they had been dancing before was incorrect. She was warm against him. "Nothing will happen. He was – my only challenger. The challenge period is over, and the fact I sent him back in a box – money or not, people will talk. They will think twice."

She stared up at him, considering, and he saw doubt in her dark eyes and grimaced.

"I'll – I'll show you the keys," he murmured, looking away. "The primal keystone, and the wards to seal the manor. But I don't—"

He stopped, trying to phrase it properly.

"You don't…?"

"If I fall," he said finally, leaning down to whisper in her ear. "Don't stay here, Francesca. Don't claim the manor. Just get the research and development team out and let the Rosier House fall. The ACD is bigger than Wizarding Britain. Holding the manor isn't worth anything."

She didn't answer for a few minutes. Her expression was thoughtful, and she felt small, comfortable in his arms.

"Okay," she conceded, her voice quiet. "What else is happening, right now? With the war?"

Aldon sighed, looking away and thinking about what he could say. What he could say, what he wanted to say, and what he should say.

He could say just about anything. He could tell her that nothing important was happening at all, and she almost certainly wouldn't believe him, nor could he hide it from her if she went and asked Neal, or Archie, or Hermione. She was close, as close as someone like Francesca ever really got to anyone, with all three, and at least Archie and Hermione would tell her everything they knew, and she would know that Aldon was lying to her. And if he lied to her, she wouldn't trust him.

If he lied to her again, she would probably be right not to trust him.

He could say that it wasn't for her to know, or that she shouldn't know, but he suspected that would go over about as well as trying to avoid telling her about the title challenge. She was in Wizarding Britain. If Aldon died, she was the next in line to Rosier Place, and she had some status, some limited powers, with his manor while he was alive. They were linked, the two of them, by his own making. There were things she needed to know, and there was that thing about trust. If he told her outright that he wouldn't tell her, that was him telling her that he did not trust her.

He didn't like the inevitable conclusion, but it stared at him in the face and dared him to deny it. And he could, but he wouldn't, because even if he didn't survive these years, he wanted Francesca to, and that meant there were things she needed to know.

"Harry, Lionel Hurst and I are planning an attack on the Floo Regulatory Authority," he said quietly, keeping his voice low. "We need to remove all of the safe houses off the Floo Network, because it compromises our security. Then we probably need to work out a better way of transporting people between our safe houses, because Apparating, crossing into unwarded space, is always going to be dangerous. I was considering Portkeys, which can be coded to cross particular wards, but the difficulty of that would be that if anyone misplaced one, it would be a trivial matter for someone else to break in. There's always coding magical signatures into the wards, but practically that can only be done for a few people…"

Francesca's hand slid down his chest, and he stopped, barely breathing, but it was only a motion for him to stop babbling.

"Couldn't you just set up a different Floo Network?" Her voice was thoughtful. "In Wizarding America, there are three Floo networks: Magifloo, Floowhere, and Public Floo. You can only Floo to something that's on the same network, so there are these crowded Floo hubs to change networks. It's – they're really scary, always too crowded with people running everywhere, but it's something."

Aldon hadn't known that – or, if he had, he had forgotten it. He tilted his head, considering. "It would need to be a very limited network," he murmured, thinking it through. "Here. Queenscove. Peverell Hall. Possibly Grimmauld Place, though Grimmauld Place is at greater risk than the others, so maybe not. But we don't know how to set up a Floo Network – the Floo Regulatory Authority has always guarded the secret and maintained the network."

Francesca shrugged. "If you can get the plans, we can – I think we can work out how to set up a Floo Network. It's not a secret in America, just technical, and not very well known to the public. It – I don't think it is necessarily ideal, it doesn't solve the problem, it just – I guess it only makes it so no one can Floo in except from another safe house. I can – we can think about it."

"It would be a step in the right direction, at least," Aldon said, his spirits lightening. She was so close to him, and she wasn't angry at him, and those facts alone were things for which to be grateful. "I will ask Harry and Hurst to look for the Network plans, or a manual, or other guide, so long as they can do so safely. Anything that might help."

Francesca nodded, and a small smile flickered across her face. "And? That – that can't be everything."

Aldon was silent for a moment, his feet moving them without thought across the floor. When he was silent for a moment too long, Francesca slowly started pulling away, and Aldon could feel the sliver of cool air separating them. He'd let her go, of course he would, but he didn't want to, and the next words came out of his mouth without any conscious thought.

"The Lord Potter is planning a major strike on Malfoy Manor, being held by Voldemort, within the next three weeks – the goal is to destabilize him before he is truly entrenched, while the numbers are still in our favour and before Voldemort can recruit too extensively," he said, all in a rush. "Lina, Moody, Neal and the Queenscoves are all involved in that strike."

Francesca stopped pulling away, fitting in snugly against his side once more, and Aldon silently breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't that this moment could last forever, and he could feel the magic draining out of it already, but he wanted it to make it last. As long as possible, or forever, and this room could be hers, and he'd make the internet work at Rosier Place somehow, if she would just stay here in the circle of his arms. He chanced a glance down at her, and saw she was looking away, worried.

"Three weeks. I can't – I have enough materials to make maybe five more prototype ACDs, but I can't – I won't be able to get more materials in that time, and we're not ready," she said, her voice soft. "Five prototypes, and only for the people who fit within our range…"

"Start with the Queenscoves." Aldon's reply was immediate, and he didn't even think about it. He didn't have to think – the Queenscoves were his closest personal allies for the moment, bar none, and Neal already had exposure to the ACD. They would be easiest to train on its use, but Aldon also had no compunction about favouring his personal allies. Not if there were so few ACDs, and he didn't know how most of Lord Potter's army would react to them anyway. "If there's only five, start with the Queenscoves, and then the Lord Black. Then Harry, and Hurst, but they're less of a priority – they won't be in the main attack, and the Floo Regulatory Authority strike shouldn't need it."

Francesca nodded. "Albert and I will go test them this week, then," she said. "And let's hope – we'll have to hope that the magic-free room is insulated enough that we can build in there. And I'll need a generator."

Aldon smiled, looking down at her. If she wanted a generator, he would find a way to get her one. "I'll put it on my list."

He wanted to kiss her.

He didn't.

XXX

The Floo Regulatory Authority was housed in a building about three stories high, just steps off Craftsmen's Alleys. The outer façade was clean white stone, cut in a way to preserve its natural grainy texture, not at all weathered with the times. A set of low, flat steps led to the wide wooden doors, while windows marked the three floors of the building. The shutters were open, meant to be decorative, and Leo had no doubt that the windows were well warded.

That didn't matter. Rosier had had an inside person at the Floo Regulatory Authority, and Leo had been there before. It was a public building, and not one that managed money, just an administrative office, so the wards were weak. The Ministry didn't care about the threat of burglars, and to be fair to them, the Floo Regulatory Authority was a very bad target unless one was interested in the Floo itself.

Few people were. A Floo connection cost only three Sickles per month, and Floo Powder consistently cost only two Sickles per scoop. It was easier to pay the Floo Regulatory Authority for a secure transportation network than to try and reinvent it.

"There." Harry's voice was a whisper in his ear. He glanced over – she was scanning the building, and she gestured towards one of the upper levels. "Third floor, second from the left. The red ribbons."

"Could've made it easier for us," Marek muttered darkly. "Climbin' this building is going to make you stand out. A lower floor, even?"

Wordlessly, Leo pulled out his wand and slapped his lieutenant with a Disillusionment Charm. Since the Alleys burned, he had hardly been talkative, yet Harry and Marek still hung around him. He didn't know why. "It's an opening into the building – the ribbons hold something to deal with the wards. Don't complain. Keep a lookout somewhere discreet. Usual alarm spells if you see something off."

Leo could barely make Marek out against the background, but he heard the sigh. "You got it, boss. Good luck."

"Don't need luck," Leo retorted, almost a little harsh, but no one commented. No one ever commented. They should. "Let's just get this over with."

He couldn't see Marek's reaction, but he felt the slight breeze as his lieutenant slipped away. He glanced at Harry, whose green eyes were staring at him in concern, but she quickly blinked and looked away, back at the dark building.

"Shall we?" She asked instead, her voice mild.

"Can you climb, or do I need to levitate you?"

She shrugged, not bothered by the abrupt question. "I'll climb. I practiced, when I was abroad. Mostly in trees, but I'll keep up, Leo. Don't worry about me."

Leo snorted, but he didn't comment, and neither did she. Instead, he cast another Disillusionment Charm on himself and headed for the building. Harry could follow, or not.

She followed him, more often than not. Leo hadn't asked, but she somehow found him and checked in on him and on the other refugees from the Lower Alleys every day, bringing Potions and spending time helping his mother Heal the injured. He suspected that she had gotten into a row with her parents when she returned and that she was partially avoiding being at home, but he hadn't asked her about it.

He would have once, he knew. Not anymore. The new rules of their friendship were simple: he didn't push her, and since he didn't push her, she didn't push him. He let her follow him, and they didn't talk at all except about what needed to be done. He didn't want to talk about anything else.

What was there to talk about, anyway? How he felt didn't matter – it didn't change the fact Rispah was missing, presumed dead, along with most of his closest friends in the Alleys. It didn't change the fact that a third of his Alleys, both in population and in area, was gone. It didn't change the fact that he had failed to protect the people who had counted on him.

Talking meant nothing. All he could do was act, and so when Rosier said he needed someone to break into the Floo Regulatory Authority to remove safe houses, including the places that some of his own people were being housed, of course he had volunteered.

He wished Harry hadn't come with him. This was something he could have done alone, a straightforward task that didn't need more than one person. But she had volunteered almost as soon as he had, and her father hadn't been able to talk her out of it, and with her along he hadn't had much choice but to bring Marek along too.

The stone was rough under his hands, but he found handholds easily, and he heard the rasp of cloth on stone that told him that Harry wasn't far behind. He ignored her in favour of reaching for the next stone, the next handhold, the next ledge.

The ribbons were tied to a weakness in the wards, a ward tag that would let Leo and Harry slip inside with no one the wiser. He grabbed one just before hoisting himself onto the window ledge and swinging his legs inside.

He was standing inside an office, one with a grand desk on one side, stacked high with parchment. The chair behind the desk was huge and leather, pulled slightly away from the desk, and an inkwell held two elegant eagle feather quills. Leo shook his head, giving the scrolls a cursory glance over – several letters from the Ministry, a firm request for details of the Floo Network, supply contracts with various ingredient supply companies…

There was a rustle of paper behind him, and he saw Harry pulling out a notepad and pen. She slipped behind the desk, looking at the contracts while muttering. "Scottish fireflowers, that's not surprising, but I suspect that can probably be replaced by just about any kind of fireflower… Woundwort, that is a little surprising, and it's mixed with ground Ashwinder eggs and salamander blood. That can't be everything, but it's a good start."

"Reinventing Floo powder?"

The question was meant to be playful, a little teasing, but when it came out, it was monotone, rude. He wondered if she would snap at him, or if she would glare, or maybe she would simply walk away from him. It would be better if she did.

But she didn't even look at him, still penning ingredients into her notebook. "If Aldon does manage to make a new Floo Network, it would be better if we could make our own Floo Powder. Be stupid to be caught buying Floo Powder in an apothecary."

"Breaking a six-hundred-year secret?"

Harry flipped through the pages on the desk, checking the names and amounts and making a few more notes. "It can hardly be that secret – there are Floo Networks worldwide. If it weren't for the fact that Ignatia Wildsmith managed to curse the recipe so that no one could write it down, it would be common knowledge." She closed her notebook, tucking it away, and pulled out her wand. "I'll figure it out. Let's move on. Hominem Revelio!"

Leo dodged ahead of her, and he was halfway to the door before the spell dissipated, unable to find a hidden wizard. The corridor outside was dark, silent, and they moved down the hallway slowly. Leo kept his ears sharp, while Harry cast Revelio spells every two or three steps. He wasn't sure why she bothered; the spell wouldn't give a different answer so quickly, and Marek would give them a warning if he saw anyone approaching the building. But he also didn't see any harm in it, so he let it be, padding down the wide, wooden staircase onto the second floor.

The Network itself was kept underground, from what Rosier's contact had said, but most of the analysts who managed the system worked on the second floor. Rosier suspected that this was where they would be most likely find a manual, or some other guide to how to take their safehouses off the Network. Leo had only ever broken in to put something on the Network before, and he would have appreciated if Rosier could have provided them with a little more information, but Rosier had only shaken his head.

"My contact isn't one of the analysts," he had said, curt, and Leo hadn't asked anything farther.

They walked into a huge room, cavernous in the darkness. Windows lined nearly three sides of the room, looming, most with huge desks underneath scattered with more parchment, quills, and messy diagrams. The room felt too still, empty, as if it was waiting for something. It smelled of new parchment and ink, spilled coffee and the slightly smoky scent of old magic.

"Somewhere in the centre, I think," Harry murmured to him, ghosting ahead and methodically riffling through one of the stacks of parchment on a central desk. "New analysts start in the middle of the room, and they move to the windows as they gain experience. New analysts are the most likely to still need to rely on a manual."

"Or, we should just avoid the windows because someone might see us," Leo countered, but his voice didn't have much bite to it as he picked another desk at random and began opening the drawers. They needed to find a manual of some kind, not only for Rosier but for themselves. Putting things onto the Network was much easier than taking things off. All he had had to do to add a node was slide a work order to add a Floo point, purposely misdescribing the location, into the appropriate stack of paper with other work orders. No one ever thought to look into people putting their homes, new restaurants or businesses onto the Network.

Taking things off the Network was very different. No one chose to take their homes off the Network. There was no convenient stack of removal work orders at the Floo Regulatory Authority, and any request to remove a location necessarily drew attention. They also couldn't simply disguise the location removed as something else, as they did to put something on the Network, because it would likely only result in the wrong location being removed. Taking something off the Network, especially locations that had been on it for centuries or more, needed a deeper understanding of the magical principles involved.

The desk he was searching didn't seem to have anything helpful, so he moved onto the next one. There had to be a guide or manual of some kind, somewhere, if only because the process of setting up a Floo Network was an industry secret. The most junior analysts would still be studying how to operate the Floo Network, which Rosier thought was likely runic in setup. Every analyst hired at the Floo Regulatory Authority in the past fifteen years had had a NEWT in Ancient Runes, and wands hadn't been as common in the fourteenth century, which was when the Floo Network had its origins.

Harry had shuddered, her expression turning to stone at the mere mention of runes, but she hadn't said anything further about it. Leo hadn't asked.

"I found it," Harry said, four desks over, holding up an old, bound volume. "It includes helpful diagrams, but I hope things will be tagged, too. My runes aren't that good. Come on."

Leo nodded, shutting the last drawer he had been looking through. Harry cast another Hominem Revelio spell, which came back empty, though Leo hadn't expected otherwise. Burgling the Floo Regulatory Authority was hardly a challenge, not compared to other targets he had hit before. They had had everything in their favour for this task – an inside man to create a hole in the wards, a weakly defended office building, and surprise.

He could do with a little more danger, personally. A little danger would have gotten his adrenaline pumping, given something physical to focus on. If he were alone, he would have considered doing something to draw attention, something that he would need to fight his way out from, something that would let him move for a few minutes instead of being trapped with his thoughts. But he couldn't – not with Harry following him. He had no doubt that she could fight, but, well…

What Leo wanted, he didn't want to risk for her.

He followed her grimly in the silence as she led the way down two more flights of stairs into the basement, tossing small Lumos in the air after they were out of sight of any windows. There were grand, carved doors at the bottom, and Harry examined them with a keen, if troubled, eye.

"I don't like this," she murmured, pulling her wand out and hitting it with a spell that she didn't explain. There was a grand, bell-like noise, but Leo didn't hear any wailing alarms, no whisper of spellwork. "Locked. Alohomora!"

There was nothing, no satisfying click. Harry shook her head. "Resero!"

Nothing. Absently, Leo reached over the touched the handle, hissing and withdrawing his hand when it burned him. Harry shot him a worried look, but he shook his head. He shouldn't have tried, it was stupid, and it wasn't as if the door wouldn't have protections against brute force. He gestured for her to go back to working on the door as he breathed through it, checking his hand.

It was an angry red, but not that bad, just painful. He flexed his fingers, checking to see how bad it was, and winced as another flicker of pain went up his arm.

"Don't aggravate it," Harry said, throwing him another worried look. "I can Heal it, Leo. If you want."

"Don't bother," Leo retorted. "The door is more important. We can't know for certain whether we've tripped any alarms, and we might have to move fast if anyone shows up."

Harry frowned, but turned back to the door. "You don't have to do this to yourself, Leo."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Harry shook her head, resigned, and raised her wand again. "Evulgate!"

The door glowed, and Harry examined it, an annoyed look coming into her eyes. "It wants a password."

"Check the book."

"It can't be that easy, can it?" Harry looked down at her manual, frowning as she paged through the first few pages. "No, there's no way it can be that easy."

"People are stupid." Leo shrugged, gesturing to the book. "Check to see if there's something in the book."

Harry was skeptical, but turned to the book and kept paging through it. Rosier wanted them to be in and out of the Floo Regulatory Authority, removing the locations they needed, and he wanted it done with no one the wiser.

Leo had asked how opposed Rosier would be to something blunter, and Rosier had shrugged. It was more important to get them off the Network, so the fall-back plan would be for him and Harry to destroy enough of the Network to make it look like a general attack, rather than one with a specific purpose. If it were just him, he would have gone for that right off – it was much easier than the delicate operation that Rosier wanted. But Harry, beside him, seemed keen to at least try to keep their entry and exit a complete secret, rather than falling back on the destruction plan.

"At least I have unlimited attempts," he heard Harry muttering as she flicked rune after rune at the door. Most of them did nothing, but there were a few that made the runes on the door glow lightly. Those made her frown, and she shifted slightly, throwing another grouping of runes. "It's not one rune – it's a series. Hmm…"

Her notebook came back out, and she crouched down, making notes. She put the manual in front of her, flicking through the pages. Leo glanced back down at his burned hand, flexing his fingers again to check for mobility, then he pulled out his wand to cast a Tempus – it had been an hour already, between scaling the walls, searching for the manual, and now at the door.

Harry ignored him, pulling out another book from the small bag that she was carrying – a rune dictionary. She set it on the floor, picking her way through it and comparing the entries with something in the manual. "Oh, for—"

She rolled her eyes and flicked through the runic dictionary again, picking out three more runes. "It's just the bloody motto for the Floo Regulatory Authority, in runic form," she muttered to him, annoyed. "What idiocy!"

"If thirty analysts need to know the passcode, it can't be that hard," Leo replied, crossing his arms over his chest. A few months ago, the words would have been light, mischievous, and he would have paired it with a bump on her shoulder, or a tug at her new ponytail, or something. Today, the words just felt heavy, harsh, and the most he could do was gesture meaninglessly in the air to show that he hadn't meant it that way.

Harry tilted her head in acknowledgement and flicked a series of seven runes against the carved door. They glowed, bright orange, and there was a sound of shifting wood and metal, and the door swung forward.

Inside the room, there was a huge wheel, set around a huge, hot fire and flue. Leo reached out, touching the great, carved stone lightly. It was warm, a second flash of heat aggravating his burn, and he pulled it back quickly as Harry leaned over to examine it in more detail.

Underneath the table were thousands of pins, each marked with a parchment tag noting its location. Many of the flags were old, yellowed, and Harry visibly winced as she looked them over. She stared at them all for a moment, then flicked her wand at the wheel. "Accio Grimmauld Place pin!"

Nothing happened, and Leo laughed, leaning over to look at the tags. The room was warm, almost too warm, the air hot and choking.

"It was worth a try," Harry said with a tiny smile, barely audible over the crackling of the flames. She reached for the Floo manual and squatted down to be eye-level with the pins, flipping the manual open and running one finger down what seemed to be a table of contents. "Would have saved us time if it had worked. There has to be something in here about how it's organized – ah, a section on adding and removing locations onto the Floo Network. Give me a few minutes."

Leo shook his head. The room was too dark, the heat inducing sleepiness, and their Lumos charms too weak for reading for any length of time to be feasible. This would take longer than a few minutes, and he leaned over and started looking through the tiny parchment tags.

The tags weren't in runes, or at least not fully. They were location names, or family names, and family names tended to be followed by a runic symbol or a number – no doubt because there were multiple houses attached to any given family. The Burrow. The Rook. Diggory 143. Fawcett 4661a. He moved on, taking a few steps around the wheel.

Harry was standing up now, the manual open on the top of the contraption, and she was tracing something on the table. Some of the runes on the wheel were lighting up, and the lower level, holding the pins, rotated to face her. She nodded, apparently understanding something, and crouched back down to look at the parchment tags. "It's organized by region. I've found London. What did you register the public Floo stations as?"

"Youssef Residence, Wilson's Bakery…" Leo leaned down where she was, and grimaced. There were a thousand pins in the section devoted to London region alone, and he started paging through them, looking for names he recognized, Harry beside him. "This is going to take hours."

"It's only one in the morning," Harry replied, sounding grim. "We have four hours until sunrise, so we better get started. You start from that side – London will be the hardest."

Leo shut his eyes, steeling himself for a very painful and tedious few hours, before he leaned over and started paging through the tags.

It was too warm, and too long, and it made his eyes hurt reading the spidery, ancient handwriting to find the reference tags for the forty-seven locations that they had to remove. He kept at it, fueled by a hard determination, fighting the soporific heat of the flames in front of them. Harry found Grimmauld Place first, ripping it out with a satisfied look on her face, while Leo, starting from the other side, found most of the ones in the Lower Alleys – the former Dancing Phoenix was there, the Maywell Clinic, sixteen public Floo stations that he and the Rogues before him had hidden under various family and business names, including six in Alley districts unaffected by the Fiendfyre.

It would be inconvenient to disable them, but he pulled out the pins anyway. Hidden as they were, the public Floo stations were as much a risk as they were a convenience, for an enemy that obviously didn't care about collateral damage. Any of the Court of the Rogue who still lived, who hadn't died in the Fiendfrye or who weren't among his refugees, would need to find other ways of travelling.

They moved onto the Southeast, then the West Country, the Midlands, Northumberland. Rosier Place came off, then Peverell Hall, an unusually difficult tag to find where the ink had almost completely faded from view. The Shafiq Mansion came off, then Dumbledore Tower, then Goldenlake Manor, Naxen Hall, Queenscove. Nearly half of the Scottish pins came out, then almost all the Irish locations, though neither had ever had many Floo connections. Harry had paused, seeing the gap left, then had quickly moved to shift the other tags to hide the gap.

"We better hope no one looks too closely at this," she said, her voice quiet in the silence. "It looks weird that there are so few locations in Scotland and Ireland."

Leo gave the wheel a cursory once-over. He couldn't tell the difference – or rather, if there was a difference, it wouldn't be obvious at a glance. There were still thousands of pins stuck in the table, and they had spent another two and a half hours searching for the locations to remove. Leo still thought it would have been more efficient to simply blow it up.

"It looks fine," he replied, gathering the pins to pour into Harry's small bag. "It's almost dawn. We should hurry."

Harry nodded, swinging the bag back over her shoulder and walking over the room carefully to ensure that nothing appeared amiss. The room was clear, looking almost the same as when they arrived, and they left, shutting the runic door behind them. There was a hard, satisfying click, and they made their way up to the main level.

The back door was locked, but it was a faster exit than the windows, and much less risky than the front doors. Leo put another Disillusionment Charm on himself, Harry doing the same, and they slipped out into the back alley. Harry carefully locked the door after them with a simple Colloportus, waiting to hear the mechanism clicking behind her, while Leo sent a tiny, all clear signal spell to Marek and headed for the meeting point, almost six hundred metres away, out in Diagon Alley near Florean Fortescue's.

Marek was already waiting when he arrived, and Harry was only steps behind him as she dropped her own Disillusionment Charm.

"So?" Leo asked.

"Quiet as a mouse," his lieutenant reported, giving both him and Harry a small grin. "All good?"

"All good," Harry confirmed, expressionless. "Back to Rosier Place – I'm sure Aldon is waiting. We're hours later than we expected we would be."

Leo didn't reply, but he nodded a confirmation when Harry glanced back at him, waving at her to go ahead. He would follow, but he needed a moment to himself – just a moment to stand, to look around the dark streets of Diagon Alley, the most upscale and well known of the hidden Alleys in London. They were all his Alleys, or they had been once, but none of them felt the same.

It was the height of summer, but the Alleys were still, silent and cold. If Leo concentrated, he thought he could feel the heartbeat that was missing, the soul that had been torn away, the empty gap in the Alleys that Leo wasn't sure could ever be filled again.

It hurt.

He turned on the spot and Disapparated.

XXX

ANs: This was a very hard chapter to write and I suck at writing I'm sorry everyone. I am also very bad at writing despotic-pretending-not-to-be-despotic-tyrant, so everyone can thank meek_bookworm and my spouse for their patient editing for that news article! And this was also the chapter where Francesca ended up being a surprise to everyone, including her writer, and uh... I didn't expect her to throw down against Aldon in this chapter. But she did and much editing had to happen for later plot planning as a result. Why, Chess?

So those of you who check my profile for the update schedule will already know this, but after this chapter, the next one won't be released until May 22, 2020 because of the Rigel Black Exchange happening on AO3, which will include a handful of works from yours truly, including what you can consider several cut-scenes from RevArc, one spin-off raised-by-Christie!Aldon and, hopefully, a dozen other Rigel Black fics from others! Everything will be released on May 10, 2020 at archive of our own (without spaces).org [SLASH] collections [SLASH] RigelBlackEx [SLASH] works.

As always, please leave me a comment or review, they are the fuel that keeps the engine going.