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.

6. Chapter 6

August bled into September. If it wasn't for the leaves slowly turning yellow, then gold, Aldon would hardly have noticed. The days seemed to pass in a blur—there was always something that needed to be done, new reports to decode and read, meetings to attend. That didn't account for things like trying to find a place in their organization for a sullen pureblood that Aldon was fairly certain was possibly the only person on their side less liked than Aldon himself, or coordinating with Sirius to liberate some alchemical materials from the Alchemy Guild with no one the wiser, or trying to study advanced ward construction from textbooks over which he inevitably fell asleep. Or Neal showing up every other day to interrupt him from whatever he was doing for training at Queenscove.

It wasn't that Aldon didn't understand the importance of physical training in the midst of war. It was just that he always seemed to have more urgent things to do, and he wasn't on the front lines anyway. He needed to be able to fight as a matter of emergency, but the war would come to him at Rosier Place, where he would have the full resources of his manor to help him. He didn't intend on being caught outside of his manor, or at all—at this point, considering he was the only one who knew the identities of all of his secret informants, he was the one that could, perhaps, least afford to be captured.

He had already put together multiple fail-safes for his informants. Each of them was code-named, then Lina, between efforts at recruitment, reorganizing the structure of their army and instructing budding commanders, had helped him seal the knowledge into his soul so that he couldn't, even under torture, divulge it. He couldn't even mention their real names anymore, and even thinking about their real names in his head was uncomfortable, the Curse he was under choking him in warning. If they won, he would deal with how to break it later. When he passed information to the others, he used code-names only. Lord Potter thought he was affecting airs and taking his spymaster role a little too seriously, but the fact was that he had gone to significant lengths to prevent himself from being able to identify his informants to anyone. It had its problems—he couldn't explain to anyone why Swallow needed to be left in her role, nor could he get much help manufacturing a situation where Vulture could plausibly get rid of the life debt he supposedly owed and earn an even higher position in Voldemort's Ministry. But overall, he considered it better safe than sorry, because it only took one slip from him and one eavesdropper for one or more of his precious spies to be caught and tortured to death.

In a very final sort of move, Aldon had gotten a suicide spell tattooed on one shoulder. If he were ever captured, he had no intention of being of any use to Voldemort. Sirius and Neal both knew about that part, as he had pulled them both aside quietly to show it. Neal's reaction had been a dark glare and an extra two hours of being pummelled in his lists; Sirius' face had taken on a grim cast, but he had listened to Aldon's explanation of his leather notebooks, the blood-wards to which would fall if he died and which included all the information his successor would need to know, with careful attention. Lina and Francesca both knew, if he fell, to secure the books before blowing up and abandoning Rosier Place entirely.

Francesca. On the rare moments he had an extra hour or two, he always stopped into his library, where Blake & Associates were working. They were so far ahead of him now that he knew he would need weeks to catch up on what they had done, but it couldn't be helped. It would probably be more useful to spend those few hours elsewhere, since they had to give him so much background before he could be of any help at all, but he couldn't resist looking into the group anyway.

She was there, at the centre of the knot of researchers, her dark hair piled on the top of her head as she explained the theoretical concepts behind the ACD, or drew diagrams to demonstrate her reasoning, or even as she studied books, taking notes in a pink spiral-bound notebook. She was as well-dressed here, at Rosier Place in the middle of a war, as she was when he had met her a little over a year ago. He felt as though he was stealing sips of wine when he looked at her—he shouldn't, he had a million other things to do, but sometimes he would find a spare moment and he just wanted to come and look at her.

She was here, in his manor, living with him and breathing the same air as him. Darius, clearly the most annoying of his ancestors, had taken to visiting him and giving him updates on what she had done each day, what she was wearing, what she was reading, whether she was happy—Aldon couldn't decide if Darius was trying to torture him or not, and pathetically he always listened anyway even if he told Darius that if he wanted to know he'd go look for her himself. His elves, his paintings, even his manor itself seemed almost too eager to please her—why else would it have opened the grand ballroom for her?

Things had changed, between the two of them. They spoke little—there was none of the easy camaraderie that had existed before the Unity Ball, and Aldon didn't think he even ranked as her friend anymore. They spoke when they had to, when Francesca needed his expertise on a runes or a magical theory matter, when he needed to tell her about yet another defensive spell that he had built into his manor, when he needed to update her on the ongoing war so that she would be able to react effectively if anything happened. He didn't dare think that there was anything more—she had never mentioned the night of the Lower Alleys attack to him again, and a few curious glances here and there at him meant nothing. He wanted to make sure she was comfortable and safe in his home, and that was all.

Darius didn't believe him, nor did he stop giving him daily updates. The idiot portrait seemed to think he still had a chance, but Darius came from a time and a set of rules that Aldon had already empirically discovered did not work.

He didn't know what would work, but it didn't matter. Aldon was busy. He was busy, and he was far too busy to attempt to court anyone, and the most he could do was try to make sure she was comfortable and safe and relatively happy. And when he snuck glances at her, every time he slipped into the library just to breathe the same air as her, just to see her talking, or smiling, or anything, those little glimpses would hold him through another day or two of sorting correspondences, considering risk, and studying wards.

It was late—one in the morning, or maybe two. Aldon was yawning, but there were only three pages left in this chapter of this Ward Construction textbook. It was on complex ward-weaves; beginning ward makers often made the mistake of adding more and more spells into their weaves, thinking that more spells would be harder to break. While it might seem logical that more spells would mean more to break, there was a stability issue as the number of spells increased, and often breaking one spell would lead to a cascade of failures. The way around it was setting up complex ward-weaves, and then spacing the wards slightly over a small area.

He would need to rearrange the Rosier wards, again. It felt as though he was reworking them endlessly, but if it kept Christie, and Blake & Associates, and Francesca safe, then it would be worth it to do it again. And again, and again, as many times as necessary.

There was a flash of silver in the corner of his eye, and Aldon turned to look. A border collie appeared, and Aldon's jaw tightened.

"Falcon, we have a problem," Finch's voice came out, quiet. There was another reason why Aldon kept his sources secret—he didn't only have sources within Voldemort's camp, but also within his allies' camps, and with those that were still formally neutral. Finch gave him information on the remainder of the Light faction unaffiliated with Bridge. "I have Seamus Finnegan and his mum here, at House Longbottom. They're not making a lot of sense, but it sounds like—like the Irish revolted. I talked them through what happened—we need to talk."

Aldon stared at Patronus a moment, as the border collie started fading, dissipating. It was a long message, for a Patronus to carry, and Aldon didn't remember where the Longbottom Manor was located. Somewhere in Cornwall, he thought. It didn't matter.

Finch wasn't lying, and Aldon didn't need to see him to know that. Something about his voice, pleading, tipped him off—Finch was tired, and he wasn't sure what to do, so he was reporting.

Aldon put his book down, his hand shaking slightly. He had no direct contact in Ireland, having had no opportunity to meet anyone in Ireland other than their three primary representatives, Saoirse Riordan, Mary Docherty, or Sean Docherty. It had been a problem he was considering on and off, in his non-existent time—finding an Irish person within their organization to pass him information. But he hadn't been able to bring any Irish students at Hogwarts to mind, so he had set it aside for later.

He shouldn't have. He needed more information, and he needed it now. He pulled out his wand, struggling to cast his own Patronus. It took him three tries before his faded merlin came into view, tilting its head at him. "Message received. Meet outside Leaky Cauldron, Muggle entrance, thirty minutes. Don't wear robes."

He stalked out of his rooms, heading down to Lina's rooms. Lina had always been a light sleeper, and he was sure that even if she had long since gone to bed, he could wake her. He had to wake her—he could not go out without letting someone know, because if anything happened, security measures had to be taken.

It only took a few minutes of pounding at her door for Lina to crack it open, her expression one of wary exhaustion. She glanced at him, and her eyes narrowed. "Aldon. What is it?"

"I need to go meet a contact," he replied, brushing his hair out of his face. Even with the new adrenaline coursing through his body, he was tired, a slow ache underlying sharp awareness. "Something happened—it appears that the Irish have revolted."

"Revolted?" Lina's eyes sharpened, and she leaned in the frame of her doorway. "Revolted how? Did they betray us, or is it something else?"

"I don't know." Aldon shook his head. Certainly, they had acted without informing Archie, or any of their other allies—Aldon would likely have hard about it, otherwise—but it sounded like they had acted against the Ministry, a common enemy. "I don't have enough information yet. I'm going to meet with Finch and find out what he knows."

Lina looked away from him, thinking. "Fine," she snapped. "I want Patronuses every half-hour from you, confirming your safety."

"I'll be in Muggle London," Aldon replied, shaking his head. "I don't know that I'll be able to. Give me two hours—I'll be in the vicinity of the Leaky Cauldron."

Lina didn't look very impressed with his answer, her eyes narrowing, but she didn't have any other response. They needed the information, and if that meant Aldon had to go meet a contact in person, that's what it meant. And if the Irish had betrayed them, they had to know.

"Take your gun and knife," Lina said finally. "And use them if you need to. Two hours, Aldon. Be back here in two hours, or I'm going to track you from the Leaky Cauldron."

Aldon nodded, stiff, and headed back to his rooms to get ready.

There was an empty bench across the street from the Leaky Cauldron, which was open all hours. He had no intention of meeting within the Leaky Cauldron, however—it was just too risky. There had to be a pub, café, or diner open at this hour. He settled down to wait.

The cold of the metal bench sank through his trousers. There was a breeze—it was cold, colder than Aldon had expected. He looked around warily, scanning the streets. This far downtown, it was never truly quiet, and he heard drunken laughter and singing echoing down the street from the local pub. A couple staggered past him towards Leicester Square Station, likely heading home after a very late-night drink. There were a lot of theatres around here, Aldon remembered. That was good, because it was less likely that he would be jumped here. Muggle muggers were a possibility, but he was more worried about the Ministry.

A nightclub would probably be the safest place for them to talk, but as a true pureblood, Finch wouldn't have any Muggle identification. Aldon, surprisingly, did—he had in fact been born in a Muggle hospital, his birth certificate held by Christie, so obtaining proper identification had been only a matter of tedious paperwork. They'd never get into one, or at least not without questions. Even if Finch had ID, however, no one would ever believe he was of age. Incredulity led to questions, and questions increased the likelihood they would be remembered.

Instead, Aldon thought towards Chinatown. There was always something open in Chinatown, though they wouldn't have an unending pot of coffee. Tea, yes, but not coffee. On the other hand, it was close, it was busy, and he doubted anyone would expect that he would be meeting with anyone in a slightly seedy Muggle Chinese restaurant at three in the morning.

Finch was late, slipping out of the Leaky Cauldron fifteen minutes after the ordered time. He was out of breath, panting in what looked like old-fashioned pyjamas with an old trench coat on top. Having lived in the Muggle world for a year now, Aldon could recognize how odd magical clothing must look to Muggles. The pyjamas and long coat were, admittedly, among the better clothing he could have picked—he only looked like he had been rustled out of bed quickly, which matched his expression as he glanced both ways and dashed across the street towards Aldon.

"Sorry, I'm late," he said, leaning over to catch his breath. "I had to wait for my parents to fall asleep—they turned in when I sent my message, but they were moving around a lot, and I didn't want to take the risk."

Aldon nodded—the explanation rang as true. "Let's go somewhere a little more comfortable. Come, and keep your wits about you."

It took him about fifteen minutes to find an open restaurant, and only a few minutes to be directed to a booth with a pot of tea and two plates of dumplings on the table in front of them.

"So?" Aldon prodded, pouring Finch a tiny cup of tea.

Finch shook his head. "Sorry. I was thinking about where to begin. Seamus and his mum showed up on our doorsteps around ten tonight—they didn't look good, Aldon. They're exhausted and terrified, and Seamus looks like—looks like he's just gone through something awful. We let them in, of course, brought them dinner and everything, and I talked to Seamus about it while Grandmother talked to his mum."

Aldon nodded slowly, listening. One of the things that made Finch a surprisingly good spy was that simply no one expected him to be one. He was open and friendly but had struggled at Hogwarts, enough that people thought he was harmless and a little incompetent. "What did Seamus have to say?"

"The Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish struck yesterday—a full rebellion, the kind that hasn't been seen in decades. Or, it could have been a few days, they didn't—Seamus and his family are from around Dublin, so they didn't know. The—the rebels took control of the Ministry offices, tracked down major families, took them hostage or murdered them. Floo lines are cut, so Seamus and his family didn't know anything about it. His dad bought them time to run, and they got a Portkey to the mainland." Finch paused, looking down at his chopsticks with a frown before giving up and picking up a dumpling with his fingers. "Grandmother is calling the DMLE about it."

"That's not good," Aldon muttered, trying to think it through. His mind wasn't very sharp, anymore—the half-hour he had been sitting, waiting, then walking had taken the edge off his adrenaline. He reached for a dumpling with his chopsticks. "This will be all over the Daily Prophet tomorrow, and as a Bridge ally, we're going to be guilty by association. We need a response, and we need a response fast. I don't know—what were they thinking?"

Finch shook his head. "I don't know. But Seamus said—Ireland has never been very stable. The Tuatha Dé, the Free Irish—they're known terrorists."

"Not helpful." Aldon shut his eyes, trying to think. An Irish revolt, even if they had acted against a common enemy, put Bridge as their putative allies in a terrible position. "I need more information. What else is your grandmother planning on doing?"

"I don't know for sure—it's not as though I have a voice, though, you know?" Finch shrugged uncomfortably, dipping a dumpling in sauce and popping it into his mouth. "Grandmother doesn't consult with me. I think we'll host the Finnegans for awhile, though, so I'll keep my ears open and try to talk to Seamus a bit more."

"That will have to do." Aldon sighed, rubbing his eyes and picking up a second dumpling. "Letters, as much as possible. In code. Keep me informed, and no names."

Finch nodded, and Aldon let him finish off most of the dumplings. He looked as exhausted as Aldon felt, and Aldon was too busy trying to think of an answer, any answer to the inevitable Daily Prophet challenge. What could they say? That they hadn't known, or that they had been betrayed? But with the loss at Malfoy Manor, Irish support was more important than ever—they had the largest semi-trained fighting force left, other than the Ministry itself.

But if the Irish had turned, then that hardly mattered, did it?

He made it home just before Lina's two-hour deadline. She was waiting in the main reception room in the family quarters, with a mug of coffee in her hands, staring at a fire she had started in the main grill.

"The Irish revolted," Aldon began, keeping his words short. "Finch didn't know a lot. They apparently took control of the Ministry offices, then started attacking specific families like the Finnegans."

"Seamus Finnegan was at school with you," Lina murmured, leaning forward. "Isn't that right?"

"Yes." Aldon frowned. "But I did not know him, if that is what you mean."

"No, not that." Lina looked up at him, brown eyes serious. "The only Irish permitted to attend Hogwarts are those from families that have demonstrated loyalty to the Ministry. Usually, that means working for the Ministry, or doing something else to prove their loyalty. In the Finnegans' case, Mara Finnegan turned in two Irish-speaking families to the Ministry for execution: the Malloys and the O'Deas."

Aldon blinked. He hadn't known that. "I didn't know."

"The Ministry kept it out of the Daily Prophet, as much as possible." Lina raised her mug to her lips, grim. "Daniel Malloy's brother, Darryl, was a Stormwing. I worked with him a few times as a mercenary. He died about five years ago on a mission in Eastern Europe, but he was Tuatha Dé. It's more consistent of what I know of them that they revolted against the Ministry, not us. We were just—a convenient distraction. With us as an alternative force, they can finally break free of British rule."

"I didn't know," Aldon repeated, a sick feeling churning in his stomach. He looked away. "I was the one who ordered that almost all the Irish Floo points be removed. I don't know how we spin this. How do we spin this?"

Lina studied him for a moment. "I don't know that we can, Aldon. Ideally, we come to an agreement with the Irish, and we make it as though this was planned. This is not entirely a bad thing, Aldon—in fact, this might be a good opportunity for us. The Irish acting independently splits the Ministry's attention, so they'll have fewer resources to come down on us. But we'll need to speak to the Irish as soon as possible. Send an owl to them now, and I'll send a Patronus to Docherty and to the Lord Black. We need a meeting with both them, and with Black and his group, as soon as possible."

"We're going to be behind the narrative," Aldon warned. "Daily Prophet will have this by tomorrow. My contact says a report was made to DMLE. They're going to be blaming us alongside the Irish tomorrow morning."

"We don't have a choice." Lina sighed, throwing back the rest of her mug of coffee. "But our publishing schedule works in our favour. If we need to, we'll say investigations are ongoing and sell it as responsible reporting."

It wasn't ideal, but Aldon nodded. Basic steps, he could do those.

The Daily Prophet was, as expected, lurid in its condemnation of the Irish rebellion and the presumed association of Bridge. Bridge was an association out to destroy Wizarding Britain as they knew it, a terrorist organization with no legitimacy, and it was because of them that their nation was shattering beneath them. The Irish had been an intrinsic part of Wizarding Britain for four hundred years, but with the internal support of Bridge, a fringe association had finally succeeded in mounting a major attack. The Ministry of Magic would be initiating a counterstrike against the Irish groups as soon as possible and would bring the perpetrators to justice.

The Irish Gales told a very different story. Saoirse Riordan stared out from the front page, seated in front of a glowing stone, while Sean Docherty held a spear beside her. An unknown woman, which the caption identified as Aoife Quinn, held what appeared to be a goblet in her hands; a man, marked as Eamon Haverty, carried a blazing sword. The article below announced a new dawn for Wizarding Ireland.

We, the Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish, are proud to announce that we have finally succeeded in throwing off the rule of Wizarding Britain. As of this morning, September 3, 1996, a company of our people succeeded in taking the Ministry of Magic offices in Dublin, the final stronghold of our oppressors. No more will we fear speaking our language in the open, and no more will we hide our traditional ways and heritage. We will not submit again to foreign tyranny; not so long as our four Treasures, long hidden from us, hold true.

In the coming weeks, we will begin consultations for the new government of Wizarding Ireland. All Irish mages are welcome to attend the open consultations, whether documented or undocumented, newblood, halfblood, or pureblood. These are differences that mean nothing to us, as we begin anew in creating our modern Irish state.

Below, there was a list of cities and dates for public consultations, a carefully planned tour that included every major Irish city and quite a few minor ones. Aldon thought it was stupidly overconfident of them, but when Lina saw it, left on the table in the family quarters dining room, she only shook her head.

"Did you never read traditional Irish mythology?" she asked, slightly scornful. "Riordan is sitting in front of the Lia Fáil—the fact that it's glowing means she's a direct descendant of the former kings of Ireland. Docherty, beside her, is holding the Spear of Lugh—no battle was ever sustained against it or against the man who held it. Quinn there is holding Dagda's Cauldron, from which no company ever went unsatisfied, while Haverty has Nùada's Sword, from which none have escaped once drawn. If the Irish have truly secured the Four Treasures, it will be very difficult for the Ministry to re-establish control over the country."

Aldon glanced down at the paper. "You are not upset."

"No." Lina took a seat at the table, reaching for the spelled carafe of coffee that the house-elves always left out for them. "The Ministry of Magic has not treated the Irish well, and they were never successfully integrated. Muggle Ireland has been independent from Muggle Britain for almost eighty years, and we are not so independent from our Muggle neighbours as we would like to believe. It is unusual for Wizarding borders not to follow Muggle ones, because the cultural instability underlying the borders often weighs more than magic. That was a part of what Lord Riddle and Voldemort fought so strongly against with the blood discrimination laws. They were limiting the effect of Muggle culture on Wizarding culture."

Aldon stared at her, not sure whether to believe her. "Films and books?"

"New ideas." Lina took a sip of her coffee. "Including ideas about our identity, about who we are as people, about humanity. You should read more, Aldon, and not just magical theory and warding textbooks."

It was two days before they managed to secure a meeting with the Irish. Considering that Riordan wouldn't respond to his owls or Patronus, it had taken Archie's direct involvement to convince Riordan and her allies to even attend for one meeting at Grimmauld Place. Her answer had said one meeting only, so it would only be Archie, the Lord Black, Hermione and Aldon himself there. Even Aldon had been a push, allowed only because Archie had insisted that he be there and only on the promise of his best behaviour. Aldon's commentary throughout the first round the negotiations had not been appreciated, apparently, though he had seen Riordan snickering at his words on more than one occasion.

Grimmauld Place, when he arrived, was tense. Hermione was sitting at the kitchen table already, while the Lord Black was setting out both a clear pitcher of water and a steaming teapot decorated with small irises. Someone had to have Confunded the Ministry surveillance operatives on Grimmauld Place, Aldon had guessed, or found another way to be rid of them temporarily.

"Remember," Hermione started, glancing at him as he followed Archie into the kitchen. "No snarky comments."

"You've said." Aldon retorted, settling into an empty seat at the table. "I'm here to listen, but to leave the interaction to you and Archie. I can follow directions, Hermione."

She shot him a skeptical look but didn't reply. Instead, they sat in silence, waiting.

The Irish were five minutes late, but as Riordan and Docherty walked into the kitchen, Aldon thought it was intentional. It was a symbol of their power, their ability to make Archie and the rest of them wait. Compared to how Aldon remembered them, defiant, reckless and angry, they carried themselves very differently; there was a pride about them now, and a grim determination. They had fought for something, they had won it, and they were not willing to give it up.

"You asked for a meeting," Riordan began, her voice cool. "In recognition of the fair and equal treatment and assistance you have provided us thus far, you have it."

Archie smiled, friendly, and reached to pour them tea. "And we appreciate it, believe us. Where is Mary? I expected her to come with you."

"My mum fell when we took Belfast," Sean replied, expressionless. "I am the interim spokesperson for the Free Irish."

Archie grimaced. "I'm so sorry to hear that. My condolences."

Sean shrugged. "It was for a good cause, one that she believed in. I couldn't ask for a better death for her."

"Let's talk about that, Saoirse, Sean." Archie leaned forward. "What happened, in Ireland? I thought we were allies."

For all that the question was serious, for all that he and Aldon, the Lord Black and Lord Potter and half of Bridge had spun their wheels on these questions for days, Archie only sounded curious. Archie was a hell of an actor, Aldon thought; he could not have pulled off this performance. If his gift wasn't ringing, he might have accepted the kind, non-judgemental tone.

"A better question is, what has happened?" Saoirse smiled, her blue eyes shining brightly. "The culmination of decades of planning and an opportune moment, and we took back our homeland. We do thank you for providing the distraction, as well as for removing ninety percent of our Floo access points. It was very helpful that the Ministry could not call for external assistance."

Aldon swallowed his sharp reply, looking towards Archie. Archie was in control of this discussion, and he was the one that they knew Riordan and Docherty trusted the most.

"But what happens now?" Archie pressed. "We had an agreement, Saoirse. Flouting the agreement, going off on your own—that's not something we expected. Where do we go from here? Where do you go from here?"

Saoirse looked at Sean, who only nodded. She glanced around the table, eyeing the Aldon and the Lord Black particularly closely. "Where does Ireland go from here? That was announced in the Irish Gales. Ireland is independent, and we will not submit again to your authority. We have consultations planned throughout Ireland—but that is none of your concern."

"You cannot expect that to go well," the Lord Black interjected, frowning furiously. "What about the British who live in Ireland? Ministry employees, or families like the Finnegans? And what about schooling, or Healing support, or representation at the ICW? Or taxation for your new state, even. You've never run a state before, and pushing for your independence was a part of our treaty!"

There was a moment of silence.

"You were an Auror once. Your friend, the Lord Potter, was Head Auror." Saoirse said, and the chill that emanated from her voice was nearly physical. A light breeze swept through the room—almost like Neal's wind, but Aldon didn't think she was controlling it. The designs on her dress were glittering, glowing, and Aldon remembered what Cedric had said to him once.

In traditional magic, the elements sometimes simply liked one person more than others. They weren't entirely controlled, and while Cedric could beg for assistance, he didn't always know what form that assistance would arrive in. Saoirse Riordan was not powerful by the usual, core-based standards used by most of the world, but she was incredibly powerful by traditional measures. At seventeen, she was already the High Priestess of the Tuatha Dé.

"Do you realize what your Aurors have done throughout Ireland? Do you know how many Irish mages your Aurors hunted down, captured, and hung because we dared to keep to our traditional ways? Did the Lord Potter know about that, or did he merely sign off on our execution warrants without thinking?" Her anger was palpable, running through the room in a wild, electric current. "Even with the fall of Wizarding Britain, even in asking for our assistance, you still called us terrorists. We had no reason to trust you, nor in your empty promises of promoting Irish independence after your war is over."

Sean reached out, touching Saoirse on the arm to calm her down. "You have to understand, this is a deeply personal issue for the both of us—we've both lost family and close friends over the years. Lord Black, we aren't ignorant of the problems of setting up an independent nation; but to be fair, Britain has never provided us with much in the way of support. Less than thirty percent of Irish mages were trained at Hogwarts over the last forty years, and we never had access to a lot of the services that you take for granted. We have learned self-sufficiency. We'd like to come to terms on Hogwarts and other issues, but if we can't, we'll manage. As for the British living in Ireland, we will be kinder than you have been. They will be given the option of swearing loyalty to the Irish state, or of repatriation back to Britain."

"Terms," Hermione interrupted, grabbing onto the word and clinging to it like a lifeline. "There terms that you would be willing to come to, then?"

Sean and Saoirse exchanged another long look.

"We'd consider it," Sean started, his voice carefully measured. "What are you offering?"

Hermione didn't look at Archie, or at Aldon. "A public statement in Bridge respecting your independence."

"Weak, Hermione." Saoirse laughed. "You can do better than that."

"What would you be willing to offer?" Hermione's voice was a challenge. "Obviously, you won't be keeping to our last treaty, and we can hardly offer a fair deal if we don't know what you're still willing to offer."

Saoirse tilted her head, then she smiled. "I like you, Hermione—always have. Ireland will continue to hold its borders against Voldemort. Any strike on our territory will be handled as a reconquest attempt. We're also still willing to take in refugees with ICW support."

"That isn't much." The Lord Black's face was stern.

"On the contrary, it's quite a lot for Ireland to offer." Saoirse shook her head, turning to face the Lord Black. "We are an independent nation, Lord Black. There is no reason for us to be involved in your civil war, and no other state is promising so much."

"And unlike other states, Voldemort intends on striking back at Ireland. By holding our own, we're splitting their forces for you." Sean looked around the table. "We don't expect you to come to our aid for any strikes on Ireland. We never did."

"All right. What do you want for this aid?" Archie pressed, a light smile flickering across his face as he shot his father a warning look. "We can't negotiate in vacuum. I don't know if I can make any promises, but I'll at least hear you out."

"You have always done that," Saoirse said agreeably. "I like that about you. We want public statements in support of Irish independence from both Bridge and the BIA. We further want support at the International Confederation of Wizards for recognition, and a magically binding oath from your generals—not just you, Archie, but the Lord Potter, the Lord Dumbledore, the Lord Rosier over there, the Lord Black, and any person with a direct control over your side of the war—that you will not seek Irish reconquest, nor will you lead or encourage others to pursue Irish reconquest. And we'd like an extradition treaty by which criminals, such as Mara Finnegan, are returned to face Irish justice."

There was a pause, but Aldon was already mentally taking notes. They couldn't agree to this—if the Irish wanted independence, they would be fighting against Voldemort anyway. Promising something that they would already have had to do was not an offer, and the only real offer on the table was increased refugee assistance, which they likely would have had to agree to anyway for an application for recognition in front of the ICW. He caught Archie's eye and made a small motion with his hand to cut off the negotiation.

"Saw that, Lord Rosier." Saiorse smirked. "Not very subtle."

Aldon sighed, turning to face her. "My apologies. But you're not bargaining in good faith, Lady Riordan. You would need to fight against Voldemort anyway to protect your newly claimed sovereignty, and you can hardly do otherwise than offer refugee assistance when doing so would be, in light of the decrees of the International Confederation of Wizards, a requirement of membership in any case. You're not offering anything in exchange for your demands."

"But an alliance between the two of us is still in your best interests, isn't it?" A smile flickered over Saiorse's face. "You and your treaty allies have to say something about us, since we were included on your initial statement against Voldemort. You might as well take the alliance, and if you win, come out with a friendly neighbour. We know you don't have the forces on your own to launch your own strikes against Ireland—why not accept Irish independence as the new reality, especially if you were going to support it anyway?"

Aldon pressed his lips together tightly, not having a response. The Irish had them over a barrel, and they knew it, but neither could they simply walk away. He looked over at Archie, who didn't look any happier than Aldon did, though Hermione was more considering.

"You knew we couldn't promise any of your demands, Saoirse," Archie said, sounding very final. "Just like you know I'm going to have to go back to the rest of our allies on this. This is a fundamental change to our agreement."

"Agreement or not, all that weighs is whether Ireland takes more refugees off your hands. Without ICW support, we can't take any more than what we already have, not if we're holding Voldemort off our shores." Saoirse turned to Sean. "Well, I think that accounts for everything, doesn't it? We've said everything we wanted, and we have a nation to build."

Sean nodded, rising from the table. "I think it does. We'll be watching Bridge, and the reports of the ICW. Archie, Hermione. Lord Black, Lord Rosier."

They left together, leaving a vacuum of silence after them.

"Well," the Lord Black said, looking like he had tasted something very sour. "We can't agree to it—they already broke their word once. There's no guarantee they would keep to any deal. A Britain without Ireland is—"

He fell silent, shaking his head. Shock, disapproval, or something else, Aldon didn't know.

"I don't think it's a question of agreement." Hermione eyebrows were narrowed in thought. "Muggle Ireland is not a part of Britain, except for Northern Ireland, so I'm not tied to the idea that we must remain one cohesive whole. The BIA is the same, and we have a large Irish contingent supportive of Irish independence. We would have to be neutral."

"They weren't here to come to an agreement," Aldon added, without looking at Hermione. He knew he was echoing her, but he didn't have to like it. "They were here to state their position and to see how we responded. We cannot look at this as an exchange. Our interests do align with Irish ones; it is to our benefit that they provide a distraction to Voldemort."

"And, I mean…" Archie sighed. "We were willing to promise steps towards Irish and Scottish independence before. If we turn around and say otherwise, we'll be telling the others that we're willing to renege on our promises, and we need the Scottish, Welsh and shifter support more than ever."

"But if we just fold, that tells the others they can go ahead and break the treaty without consequences." The Lord Black shook his head firmly. "That's not acceptable."

"What if we're just… honest?" Archie asked, looking around the table. His eyes were wide, earnest. "No, hear me out. Yeah, the Irish did something unexpected. We don't approve of what they did, or how they chose to do it, and we express disappointment that they felt like they couldn't trust us to abide by the treaty and put forward referendums on Irish independence at the end of the war. Then, we acknowledge their sovereignty, because doing anything else makes us look like we're hypocrites. It is what it is—let's not cover it up."

Aldon's first instinct was to recoil. His instinct was to put them in a position of power—find a way to spin it that made them look better, like they had predicted this, or even that it was jointly planned. It sounded weak to say that they had been taken by surprise, that they didn't know.

But it wasn't worse than any of the other options, and it was a very Archie kind of answer. He didn't have any other real ideas, or at least not any that could be acted on, and they needed a response as soon as possible.

"It'll have to be very carefully drafted," Hermione said finally, brushing her bushy hair out of the way with a sigh. "Ideally, we should also have some history in it—something to explain why Irish independence is so important to them and try to promote some understanding among our readers, but I don't know. It would have to be someone neutral, someone whose credentials are above-board, with unimpeachable character. Preferably someone well known."

"Lord Dumbledore?" The Lord Black suggested, and Aldon grimaced. "What, do you have another suggestion, Aldon?"

"Lord Dumbledore is not generally considered to be neutral." Aldon looked away. "The Irish certainly would not think he is neutral, since he is a part of the government that they view as having oppressed them. That's an awful idea. Further, with Hogwarts being open, the Lord Dumbledore does need to maintain the image of neutrality."

"He still might be able to suggest someone, though," the Lord Black snapped. "Unless you have any better ideas."

Aldon did not have any better ideas, and he only shook his head, looking away.

There was a moment of silence, before Archie broke in. "Let's ask Lord Dumbledore if he knows anyone, then. A wizarding historian, maybe. Hermione, can you help me with the Bridge statement?"

The article that came out, three days later, was as balanced and honest as Archie had promised. The first section was only a confirmation of what had happened, including relevant dates and description of the official takeover of Wizarding Ireland by the Irish. The next section was Archie, on behalf of Bridge, expressing his disappointment that the Irish had taken matters into their own hands rather than trusting their allies to hold to the treaty. The last section was the most complicated, simultaneously acknowledging Irish sovereignty as the new reality, while still expressing disapproval of their methods. Aldon suspected that much of that section had been written by Hermione; it was too nuanced to have been written by Archie.

On page three, there was a brief, dry-as-dust analysis on the root causes of the Irish independence movement penned by Bathilda Bagshot, the noted wizarding historian living in Godric's Hollow. Aldon read her article in more depth than the Archie's statement; most of the information in the article was new to him. The Irish were conquered in 1601, and laws were quickly passed to limit their political, social, and magical power. Traditional spell-casting was banned in favour of wand use, and all Irish witches and wizards were initially required to school at Hogwarts. The Irish had fought bitterly, rebelling at least once every half century throughout British rule, and only in the last fifty years had things changed—and for the worse. After the passage of the blood discrimination laws, most Irish witches and wizards found that they were denied status, and formally deprived of both education and job opportunities. As Irish witches and wizards were excluded from Wizarding Britain, their bonds tightened with their already independent Muggle counterparts, with the result that the political situation had become increasingly unstable over the last decades.

The article was dull, boring and nearly sleep-inducing, but it painted Irish independence as almost an inevitability, which Aldon thought might have been one of the most useful things for their alliance. They needed to move past the Irish revolt; while Voldemort being distracted by the new country on his doorstep was certainly to his benefit, any debate on the issue within Bridge would likely fracture their already patchy alliance.

With their summer losses, they needed to retreat and fortify. Ideally, they needed more forces—Aldon was hopeful that they would have more volunteers, once Voldemort showed his true colours. All Aldon's reports from within the Ministry indicated that Voldemort was unstable, a megalomaniac intent on enforcing his rule. In the meantime, the strategy was to focus on softer, somewhat less-grand methods of warfare: propaganda, minor guerilla strikes, and politics. Bridge was still encouraging resistance to the new government, while the Lord Black was identifying the likeliest supply chains to attack for maximum benefit. They had raided two shipments already, one for potions ingredients and the other for alchemical materials that Aldon needed, and Aldon trusted that there would be more. The Lord Potter, with Lina and Moody's help, had reorganized their forces into new, smaller combat units, and they were in the process of assessing every witch or wizard's skills and organizing a new training program for recruits. Archie and Hermione had put together a Healing protocol for every safehouse and a brief "first aid" Healing course, and were busy ensuring that every safehouse complied with their often-idealistic strictures. In their spare time, or maybe it was just for their own amusement, Lina and Moody had taken to sending Muggle letter bombs to the Ministry of Magic.

There were two more Stormwings in residence at Rosier Place, and another two at Queenscove. Lina would have preferred to spread them out more, but there just weren't enough of them and most of their allies were decidedly wary about having unknown, trained warmages in their manors. Three of the Stormwings were only trainees, on their Service Year, but Benjamin Levstein, called Faith, was newly returned from Wizarding Colombia. Levstein and one of the trainees, a surprisingly cheerful woman named Rosalie Silberman, took station at Queenscove, while Aldon took in the other two trainees, a man named Jukka Savinainen and a woman, Jelena Acimović. Neither spoke much, preferring to keep to themselves, but they fell into the rhythm of Rosier Place easily.

Despite much effort, it seemed that the alternate Floo network was more difficult, more expensive, and more complicated to construct than a series of new Portkey Hubs. Practically speaking, Albert's Mastery in Charms had been in mass-transit Portkeys, so the knowledge was already there. The required materials, being primarily silver wire that would be magically worked into a ring, were also easier to obtain than the rare magical ingredients that seemed to be required for an alternative Floo. The Lord Black's raid hadn't yielded the alchemical materials that Christie thought were needed for a new Floo network, only a lot of silver that could be shaped into wire, and it seemed that the materials needed for a Floo were even rarer than Aldon had suspected. Even the Alchemy Guild, it seemed, only made an order for those materials once every few years. And that was assuming that Christie had successfully identified all the components she needed, and if they were able to reverse-engineer the Floo system at all. They could order the materials, but it would take months to arrive, and ordering rare materials was something easily tracked.

Time was also of the essence. Apparition was risky, with all of their houses under Ministry surveillance, and while it was relatively easy for those at the larger manor homes, such as Rosier Place or Queenscove, to find alternate Apparition points and give Ministry officials the slip, it was far more dangerous than it had to be. A Portkey Hub system could be constructed now, whereas an alternate Floo Network would take months in obtaining supplies and reverse engineering.

Aldon's personal fascination with a Portkey Hub system didn't figure into it. He had always liked Charms, it was true, but from what Blake & Associates said, Portkey Hubs were de rigueur outside of Britain. The fact that he hadn't seen one before, and that he was interested in how Charms and Runes worked together in group spell-casting to create each Hub, that had nothing to do with their decision to proceed with the Portkey Hub system over an alternate Floo. Or, if it did, it was only because if he hadn't seen one, he could hope that Voldemort and his followers would have no idea what to do with one.

As was becoming normal for Aldon's slightly more experimental ideas, it was Rosier Place and Queenscove that prepared the first two Hubs. It took eight of them—the entire Blake & Associates team, Aldon, Neal and his best friend, Keladry Mindelan, two full days to set up the two Hubs. They were fully exhausted at the end of each day, but the Hubs were functional, six tests proving fast, effective and safe transit between Rosier Place and Queenscove.

After that, a Hub was set up at Grimmauld Place, then Potter Place, and then the entire Blake & Associates team was snuck into Hogwarts on one quiet weekend at the end of September to place a Hub in something that the Lord Dumbledore referred to as the Room of Hidden Things. Then the Scottish Clanhomes were added, and the shifter Warren, and a half-dozen other secure locations in ally territory.

It was a slow effort, but one done with increasing tension each time. Secure internal transportation was critical, and they rushed to finish each Portkey Hub as quickly and efficiently as possible. Every moment felt like waiting: for the next announcement, the next action, the next attack.

Instead, there was nothing.

XXX

Pandora lounged on the soft armchair at the head of the room, her head nestled in the corner between the puffy arm and back, her legs draped over the other arm, a book resting casually on her lap. Her hair was left down, and her robes were new, made of a flowing material that she found she liked very much. It felt slightly rough against her skin, almost papery, but it draped in a very appealing way.

It was a most unladylike position, and that was what Pandora loved about it. She was lounging, relaxing, in an extremely public way that would have been met by disapproval in her old world, but no one in this room dared to comment. Not when she enjoyed the favour of Voldemort himself.

Bellatrix Lestrange was very jealous of her. Fortunately, Bellatrix was also insane, and her pathetic attempts to regain Voldemort's attentions were laughable. The neckline of her robes had deepened, showing more cleavage, and their cut became tighter, clinging to her form.

Pandora wasn't concerned. It was vulgar, it was crass, it was the lowest form of desperation for a man's attention. Voldemort wouldn't fall for it, especially not for a hag old enough to be his mother.

It also showed how little Bellatrix paid attention to Voldemort. Despite his revolutionary words, Pandora suspected that Voldemort tended to social conservatism—he hated the world that was, but she thought that was more a factor of his personal exclusion from power, rather than any true desire for change. The man simply wanted power, and he wasn't especially concerned about how he got it. This was all patently obvious by the way that he was willing to change lines and strategies if he thought it would put him in a better position of control. That was all Voldemort really wanted: power, and control.

But Voldemort personally, Pandora thought was likely quite conservative. He had certainly cast a disapproving eye on some of Bellatrix's more extreme clothing choices over the last few months, and he was a pureblood supremacist of the kind on which the modern Wizarding Britain had been founded. Based on the words he sometimes chose to use, or the way he structured his speech, she often thought that Voldemort sounded like a person much older than he really was—as if he were in truth her grandfather's age, with merely the appearance of an eighteen-year-old. It was quaint, and she found it rather charming, as long as he didn't attempt to hold her, as a woman, to any of the other social expectations of the time.

They had that in common, she thought. Neither she nor Voldemort held much with social expectations. They were a tool for control, but that was all.

The sound of screaming, coming from the floor in front of her, didn't bother her in the least. It was Dawlish, and not for the first time this month. Voldemort had been furious after the Irish rebellion, and Dawlish had been possibly the most ineffective person ever in regaining control over the territory. He had tried mass Apparition onto the island twice, both strikes having been met with dismal failure. Both times, the Irish had identified the massing location, and routed them before they were ready—Apparition to the island, over open water, required substantial power. While it was a feat of which most witches and wizards were capable, it was magically exhausting, and both times they were found before they had recovered enough to fight.

Jan Zajac and Aydin Ozturk, their hired warmages, had recommended ships. An ocean away, the entire island of Ireland was enemy territory. Their Aurors needed a safe place where they could aggregate and fortify, that they could fall back to and defend if necessary, and they didn't have one. The Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish had been too thorough in expelling, arresting, or killing any Ministry officials and their families for any possible safe territory within Ireland itself.

Voldemort might have considered ships, but the problem was that the Ministry didn't have any. Ireland had been a part of Wizarding Britain for so long that they had always relied on magical methods of transportation: Floo, Apparition, Portkeys. The cost of obtaining any ships, particularly non-magical ones that wouldn't disappear within a few days, was prohibitive, building ships whether magical or non-magical was time-consuming, and she rather thought that Voldemort considered ships rather plebeian, not appropriate for a magical war.

Pandora could probably convince him otherwise, and ships could probably be obtained, but she didn't care. Who cared whether Ireland was a part of Wizarding Britain? It wasn't as if there were any real advantage to having the island be a part of their nation—while there were magical ingredients on the island that could not be found elsewhere, none of them were critical to the Wizarding British economy. No, the main reason why people were so insistent that the Irish could not simply leave was emotional. There were many British families who had moved to Ireland in the past four hundred years, or there were families that were now separated by a border. Ireland was supposed to be theirs, and a hundred Ministry-loyal families had now been displaced.

Fewer than Pandora had expected, if truth be told. She imagined that, between the concerns swirling around Voldemort's new government, and the one formed by the Tuatha Dé and the Free Irish, many families had preferred to take their chances in Ireland. And if they wanted to stay there, as far as Pandora was concerned, let them. It wasn't as if they brought much to Wizarding Britain.

She looked over at the scene in front of her, casting a lazy eye over the proceedings. Voldemort was standing, his own robes well-pressed—he cut a very handsome figure, she thought. He was tall and lean, without being thin or slender. His shoulders filled out his robes very nicely, and he carried himself with a cold confidence that she found very attractive.

He rarely smiled, but occasionally Pandora would win one from him. That was more than anyone else in his group. Bellatrix received a mixture of clearly manipulative praise and annoyance, which was clearly meant to control her, while he treated the younger Lestrange, Caelum, with a cautious respect as he kept many of the wilder elements of Voldemort's followers, including his own mother, in line. Dawlish, Voldemort appreciated for his firm grasp of the Ministry and Ministry affairs.

Or rather, he had done. The younger Lestrange was working Dawlish over well, even without the use of the Cruciatus Curse. The Auror was on the tile floor, bare from his waist up, and Pandora could clearly see the criss-cross pattern of the Whip Curse marking his back. The floor was slick with blood, and yet neither Caelum nor Voldemort had a speck of it on them.

Caelum hadn't gotten to breaking bones, and Pandora didn't think he would. Voldemort did not want Dawlish dead, or so injured that he could not function. Voldemort wanted a public punishment, and nothing more. Dawlish would be in pain, but he would walk from Malfoy Manor with a fresh motivation to produce some results. Or he would run, and Travers or Mulciber would have a good time hunting him down like an animal.

She turned back to her book, a wizarding history that she had found in the Malfoy Manor library. Their library had far too many histories for her liking—who cared about history, when it was being made around them? But histories did tell her more about people, and how people reacted, and that was useful for her to know.

"Pandora, darling?" she heard, and she looked up. Voldemort was not classically handsome. His nose and jawline were a little strong, but she found she quite liked it. His eyes, dark blue, were always piercing and sharp.

"Hmm?"

"Your opinion."

"My opinion on what?"

"The Irish problem." Voldemort's eyes narrowed. He did not like repeating himself, Pandora had learned, but she wasn't one to hang on any person's words. "Our next steps on Ireland. Dawlish is clearly inadequate for the job."

"You have had my opinion for weeks now." Pandora looked away, turning back to her book. "I think we are throwing too many resources at it—far more than the Irish warrant. Our losses are more than the island was worth in the first place."

"At the same time, this is not an action that we can let stand." Voldemort's voice held a hint of anger, but she wasn't worried. Voldemort had never turned Lestrange's wand at her—she had more to worry about with Bellatrix's random back-corridors attacks than she did from either Voldemort or the younger Lestrange. "We will look weak, letting this go."

"I never said we should let it go." Pandora looked up, the smallest glimmer of a smile coming across her lips. "There are many options to strike back, right here in Britain, at weaker targets. You can have your example, without taking the risks in Ireland."

Voldemort stared at her, considering. "Such as?"

Pandora glanced over at Bellatrix, hovering nearby, and the younger Lestrange, who wasn't looking at her but seemed to be listening closely. "Later," she said, flashing Voldemort a generous smile. "I have a few ideas."

There was a moment, and then he smiled back at her. "Later, indeed."

Far beneath the surface, locked in a corner of her mind where Voldemort couldn't see her, sense her, or feel her, Pansy shuddered and took notes.

XXX

Draco had a new wand: hawthorn and unicorn hair, just like his old one, made to the same dimensions. It was not an Ollivander wand, but one that his mother had sent him from abroad. The maker's mark, carved on the bottom of the wand, was unfamiliar, as was the wave-like design on the grip.

It shouldn't have worked. The wand chose the wizard, as Ollivander was fond of saying, and that was the conventional wisdom. It went against everything he had ever heard about wands that his new wand arrived in a box, sleek from Switzerland, that he opened it and picked it up and… it worked. There was the same warmth in his fingers, there was the same cascade of sparks as his core connected to the wand. He cast a Lumos charm, and the top of his wand was lit, and it was nothing for him to detach the ball of light and send it to the ceiling as he had done using his old wand. A Shield Charm came out, as quick and efficient as his old wand, and Draco didn't know how to feel about it.

This wasn't magic. Purchasing a wand shouldn't be a matter of listing specifications, then a box arriving by owl that held the wand that worked for him. Purchasing a wand was about the experience: it was that first trip to Ollivander's shop in Diagon Alley, the walls of the tiny shop stacked high with wand boxes. It was watching the eccentric old Mr. Ollivander, only a distant relation to the noble family, pulling box after box off the shelves, setting them on the desk, and handing him wands to try while describing woods and cores. It was picking up each wand, one by one, feeling the reactions of each one; some of them would try to leap out of his hands, some would do nothing, and there would be one, inevitably the last one, that would be right, that would spark in his hands and make magic.

But it was a wand. It wasn't his old wand, and it wasn't the magical experience that buying a wand was supposed to be, but his wand worked. It made the exact same magic as his old wand, and Draco's practical sense said that this was all that mattered. He had a wand, and he could help, he could do something about the situation they were in.

Or, he could do something if someone let him.

With the failure of the strike on Malfoy Manor and the Irish revolt, Harry and Blaise were no longer going door-to-door to SOW Party families, seeking support. It had been deemed too risky; even before the Malfoy Manor strike, they had been threatened and run off of multiple properties. The Notts, despite the death of the Lord Nott at the coup, had gone so far as inviting them in, serving tea, and calling the Ministry of Magic to arrest them. Had it not been for how well Blaise knew Theo, it would have been successful, and as it was they had had to fight their way out.

Draco didn't even know that Blaise could fight. Blaise had always, like Rigel, been one of his more academic friends, but unlike Rigel had shown little interest in developing combat skills.

After the failed strike on Malfoy Manor and the Irish revolt, however, it had been decided that any who wished to join would approach them, rather than the other way around. Bridge continued to advocate resistance and to recruit, but it seemed like his individual efforts, as Draco Malfoy, were unnecessary.

Not that they would have been very likely to be successful, anyway. The Malfoy name was worse than nothing, it seemed.

Harry had managed to speak to her father about putting him in the main fighting force. The Lord Potter had been skeptical, not least because Draco was only sixteen years old, but they were desperate for new recruits and she had insisted that he was up to it. He had found himself in a training group of fourteen others, all of whom were older, all of whom had worked at desks, in shops, or had stayed home before the war started. None of them were especially good at defence—only half had been able to cast a decent Shield Charm at the beginning.

Draco had tried to give some tips, that first week, just on the proper way to hold a wand and proper duelling stances. The man beside him, glaring at him suspiciously, had asked him roughly what he, a sixteen-year-old noble, could possibly know, and Draco had then, thinking it would be helpful, said that he had been the leader of the Hogwarts Duelling Club.

"You were the leader of a school club," the man said, scathing. "A little different than a war, don't you think?"

"It isn't exactly the same," Draco admitted, "but a lot of the base technique is the same, and you should be holding your wand at a sharper angle. It'll improve your reaction time, and that way you'll cast your shield faster."

"I've been holding a wand longer than you've been alive, boy," the man snapped. "Maybe you should go back to Hogwarts, safe with the rest of the children."

Draco held his tongue, feeling the man's defensiveness radiating from him, and gone back to his own corner. Later that day, he had spoken to their instructor, an Auror named Isaac Abernathy, only to be directed to focus on himself.

"It's none of your business what the others are doing, Malfoy," he said, weariness emanating from him. "I want to see you working on your own technique, rather than criticizing others."

"So, they're just—just bodies, then, are they?" Draco asked, incensed. "Bodies to throw out and be killed?"

Abernathy had stared at him for a moment, with tired hazel eyes, and there was a sharp sense of grief. "Even the best fighters can die in a war, Malfoy. I will see you tomorrow."

Things didn't get better, after that first day. Draco kept his comments to himself, but he refused to pretend like he was anything other than himself. He was better than everyone else in his training group, and the next week, when they moved into basic drills casting spells against the others, he blew them away—often literally.

He was faster. His footwork was better, and his wandwork was cleaner. Duelling Club might have just been a school club, but he had been teaching, training, and duelling others, one-on-one, for years. He had hoped that maybe, if he worked in silence and simply showed the others that his comments were worth listening to, things would improve.

Draco didn't need an apology, or grovelling, or anything like that. Just a little bit of respect, an understanding that just because he was young, just because he was a noble, didn't mean that he had nothing to add. He wanted to say things, to correct people on their posture or technique, tell them the things that had helped him improve, and he couldn't.

They were only getting angrier at him. Angrier, and more resentful, and he didn't need to hear the whispers about how he thought he was better than the rest of them, about how he didn't respect them, about how he didn't belong with them. He could feel it every time he stepped into the training ring, coming from all fourteen of his co-trainees.

He lasted eighteen days.

"Malfoy, if I can have a word?" Abernathy said, after the end of training that day. They had been working on combination spell-casting that day—two or three spells launched in succession, where they didn't expect the first spell to hit. They were common on the duelling circuit, and Draco had cottoned on easily. Combinations like Pertus-Stupefy or Expelliarmus-Stupefy simply made sense, and he had again demonstrated his dominance in the duelling circle. That day, for the first time, Abernathy threw two of the other trainees against him.

Draco still won.

"Sir," Draco replied, an acknowledgement as he stood at attention while the others were dismissed. Over two weeks, he had guessed that Abernathy had lost someone close to him in the Malfoy Manor strike—the man always radiated grief, and guilt, and sadness.

Abernathy sighed, looking him in the eye. "This is not your fault, Malfoy," he said, "but I think it best if you withdraw from training. You aren't learning very much here, and you're posing a distraction to the other students and they're struggling to focus."

Draco looked down. "But—I want to fight, Auror Abernathy. I was told to enter training, and—"

"I'll have a word with Lord Potter," the Auror replied, shaking his head, his voice slow and steady. "At this stage, if we had a unit willing to accept you into their regular ranks, I would recommend it. You're at the level where you ought to be training with a regular unit. The basics you might be missing would be covered by your regular unit."

"Yes, sir." Draco's shoulders slumped, and he trudged away. He didn't return to training.

The problem with the suggestion to find a regular unit was that there were none—or rather, there were none that were willing to take him. He thought there were units, but they were rather loosely formed and inconsistent, and he didn't know. He didn't know who the squad captains were, whom he would need to ask, and Lord Potter had banned Harry from being anywhere near the main army, so she didn't know either.

He waited a week for someone to tell him where to report to, but instead, Professor Lupin took him under his wing into a teaching assistant role. Professor Lupin had taken charge of teaching and training the weakest of the new recruits: mainly refugees from the Alleys, most of whom had never had formal schooling, some of whom had never even held a wand before. They were people who had had no reason to know him or to have an opinion about him, so the thinking was that he could be considered on his own merits. And Draco did have experience teaching.

Walking out onto the field, in the grounds of Potter Place where Professor Lupin was working with the volunteers, Draco had thought he was prepared. Harry had told him that most of this group hadn't gone to school, but he had worked with raw beginners before. With their changing professors in Defense every year, the people who had joined Duelling Club had often had a very scattered knowledge anyway. He often felt like he was going back to the beginning, revising basic Shield Charms and Lumos Charms.

He could do this. He wanted to be helpful, and he could teach.

But there was knowing about poverty and knowing that the people he would be helping to teach hadn't had much by way of formal schooling, and then there was seeing it. The group was larger than his training group, almost thirty people, a mix of men, women, and teenagers. They were talking quietly already.

They glanced at him, and he smiled weakly, feeling surprised, uncertain, uncomfortable. It wasn't as if he was dressed in the best robes, and he knew that this group had lost almost everything in the Fiendfyre attack in the Alleys, but their clothing was fit for nothing but scraps. They were threadbare, patched, faded and worn, and Draco couldn't be sure that they were even clean. He hid his discomfort as quickly as he could—war made for strange situations, and Draco would make it work. He had to make it work.

They ignored him, going back to talking to each other, and Draco realized that he barely understood them. Part of it were the words they used, but a bigger part of it was the accent—their vowels sounded strange, their consonants weren't as sharp as those he was accustomed to, and the rhythm of their words was off, a little uneven. But they didn't radiate dislike, or defensiveness, or anger at him, which was a relief after more than two weeks feeling his fellow recruits.

The dislike came later. Five days later, to be precise.

It was a thoughtless thing. Draco had gone over the Protego Charm, patiently, with a man named Toth, for about three days. The man was struggling to remember the technical details—Draco could see the effort he was putting in every day, but it seemed like things just didn't stick with him.

"You should write it down," Draco said, trying to hide his frustration. He was going over the same things, over and over again, instead of moving on. "If you review it before you sleep, every night, it will stick better."

Toth had looked at him, very direct with no hint of embarrassment. "I can't read."

Draco had frowned. This was no time for jokes. "I am being serious, Toth," he replied, letting himself take a stern tone. "If you don't learn Protego, you can't move onto the other forms of shielding. Protego is easiest of the shields to learn, and one of the fastest, but it's also the weakest. You must learn this."

The man glared at him, his eyebrows coming together in a frown. "I'm serious, too. I can't read."

Draco glared back, then he realized three things. First, they had become the centre of attention, with everyone else watching them. Second, his Empathy was ringing with anger, defensiveness, and dislike. Third, Toth probably really couldn't read.

He didn't know how to respond to that. Reading wasn't something that was taught at Hogwarts, but something taught at home. He had had tutors from when he was four, teaching him reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as subjects that he knew others wouldn't have, like penmanship, etiquette, and basic wand-casting. But even Harry, who hadn't had formal tutors, had learned how to read and write at an early age, and literacy was just so basic, that it had never occurred to him that some people really could not read.

He looked around—the other students were whispering, now, watching him, and he swallowed.

"I didn't realize," he said, looking down. "In that case, er, I'll just go over it again."

Despite his words, and his resolution to be more careful, he made the same mistake, not even two days later. Toth was not the only one in the group who couldn't read—about half of them could not, which he realized when he moved on to work with a young mother named Williams and tried drawing the words air to help her pronunciation. She looked at the letters, blushed, and muttered, radiating shame, that she had never been very good at her letters. She had a hard time telling apart the As and the Os, and instead Draco ended up sounding out the incantation very slowly for her.

He really had not intended on it. Despite what it looked like, he simply didn't realize how much the assumption of literacy permeated the way he thought, the way he taught. It was there in the background to most of his memory tricks, or to the way he explained things, or the helpful guides he wanted to make to help people. With two mistakes, and the same mistake, his mannerisms started to work against him. His students took his usual politeness and subtle discomfort as being stand-offish, and a week later he decided he needed to withdraw.

"I'm not being helpful, Professor Lupin," he explained. "They're—I'm making them uncomfortable, which is not a good learning environment for them, and I don't think the way I've learned to teach is really very helpful to them."

Professor Lupin reached out, resting one hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure? It's a process, and no one expects perfection."

"Yes." Draco's shoulders slumped. "I just—I'd like to be useful, Professor, and I don't think I am being useful here."

"All right." Professor Lupin's expression was sympathetic. "I'll have a word with James and Sirius, and we'll see where else you might fit in. Don't worry, we'll find somewhere for you to go."

Draco nodded. "Thank you."

It was early October, and Draco was back in his rooms at Rosier Place, staring at the roaring fire in his fireplace and feeling very out of place.

Draco hadn't been born for this, nor educated for it. He belonged in a different world. One with Lords and Ladies and nobility, with whirling summer garden parties and New Years Gala fundraisers; one where he was the Malfoy Heir, where he had the Parkinson Heiress on one side and the Black Heir on the other. But he glanced up at the wall across from him, pinned with lists of names, random thoughts, and newspaper articles: an overall view of what had happened thus far in the war.

His old world didn't exist anymore. He knew that. But there had to be a place for him in the new one. He just had to find it, so that he could get Pansy back with him. They could sort the rest out later.

XXX

John fixed his comm orb against his ear, propped his foot on the coffee table, and set a pad of paper against his leg to take notes. He waved a hand at Gerry, busy in their apartment's tiny kitchen, to keep it down so he could hear Chess better.

It was weird, being sixteen—almost seventeen—years old and basically living with his boyfriend in a one-bedroom apartment in Geneva. He should have been at school—Dad wanted him at school, but with Chess in Britain and him without a clear way of dragging her home to America short of knocking her out, stuffing her in a luggage case, and forcibly taking her across international borders, he wasn't leaving.

He'd thought about kidnapping her, but she would have probably just gone back. The thing about Chess was, even if she tended to follow rules and do what others told her to do, she mostly did because she didn't care enough to argue. It was when she decided that it was worth arguing that she sank her teeth in and refused to be swayed. He knew her well enough to know that this was one of those times.

Really, he wanted to be in Britain himself. If he was in Britain, Chess would not be staying with Aldon Rosier—she would, at the very least, be behind the four solid walls of Queenscove with someone who wasn't an absolute moron with no common sense and a set of morals straight from the seventeenth century. But no, instead, he was in Geneva, living with his nineteen-year-old future-ambassador-of-Wizarding-Germany boyfriend.

He tried not to think too much about it. There was no less weird option. No one would rent him a flat, he didn't know any of the regular MACUSA staff in Geneva well enough to impose, and he didn't want to crash with Tina and her fiancé for months on end.

"We finished the Portkey Hubs last week," Chess was saying, sounding almost a little absent. "I wish—it would have been more useful if we had finished them earlier."

"It'll still be useful in the future. What were the locations, again?" John bit the end of his pen, thinking over the possible refugee routes now that Portkey Hubs were an option. Madrid was out, the Spanish weren't usually part of the bloc headed by MACUSA, and the French were waffling as they always did. The closest friendly Portkey Hubs were likely Brussels or Amsterdam, but neither Belgium nor the Netherlands had much ability to provide for refugees, and it would probably be better to get any new groups of refugees right into either the Nordic Union or Germany. That meant Bergen, or maybe Koln.

"Um, Rosier Place is in Kent, I think—Aldon doesn't really know, but Lina said it was in Kent. Grimmauld Place is London, and Archie's cousin Harry is in Devon, I think? Queenscove is in Cumbria, and we have Portkey Hubs set up in—in Northumberland, East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, too." There was a pause on the other end. "But these are really small Hubs, John, not—nothing like in New York, or even like AIM. We set the transportation capacity at six, so—for refugees, it'll still be a hassle."

"Still better than individual Portkeys and a rickety boat to Norway," John muttered, making a note of the list of counties. "If we have more refugees, I think passing through Rosier Place would be easiest, it's physically the closest to the Continent. Koln might work as a transit point."

"Aldon is going to hate it," Chess replied bluntly. "He doesn't like it when strangers come through Rosier Place. He'll refuse, try to direct them elsewhere."

"Why?"

"Security risk." There was a noise, which John guessed was the sound of Chess flopping down on a sofa, or her bed, or something. "Aldon is a bit—paranoid."

"He's insane, that's what he is," John grumbled. Chess had heard his opinion before, but it didn't stop him from saying it again. Maybe if he said it often enough, she would believe him.

"John…" Chess sighed. "If I need to, I think I could probably talk him around. In terms of other good news, Archie talked the rest of the alliance into holding together. Lady Malfoy is going to have instructions to be neutral on the Irish revolt at the ICW, while Aldon says he's going to forge some alternate instructions for his spy in the official Wizarding British contingent to slip in to cause confusion."

"That'll be fun." John grinned, though he knew she couldn't see it. "Using the formal noble penmanship to his advantage. If they all write the same, it'll be that much harder to detect a forgery."

Chess laughed. "Yeah. Other than that, ACD development is going well! Neal, his brother Graeme and his cousin Fei all have them, as do Archie and Sirius. And we finally got in a new shipment of materials so we can start testing and equipping more people! I still don't like the frequency range we can serve, but with more data…"

"More data," John repeated with a sigh. It was a continuing refrain with her. The ACD was usually first and foremost in her thoughts, with everything else coming secondary, and surprisingly John found he missed it.

He wished he were there with her. Chess had never been good with words—she told him everything that had happened since she had arrived in Britain in their daily update calls, but without access to her mind, he couldn't see it for himself or form his own impressions.

"How is everything else?" He asked, changing the topic. "How is Rosier Place?"

There was a pause, and when she spoke, Chess' voice was cautious. "It's fine. Everything has been… quiet. Quieter than expected. Aldon has—there are two more Stormwings, or trainees I guess, patrolling the grounds even if he doesn't have a full force here. It's—well, I guess the other houses have more manpower, but I know Aldon's been working hard on the magical defenses."

"He should get a full force for Rosier Place." John tapped his pad of paper, thinking. For the moment, MACUSA was primarily interested in refugee routes and the general status of the war, not specific unit locations, but he wouldn't be surprised there came a point where he was asked for the latter. If MACUSA needed to do an extraction for their citizens, it would be information they would want to know. "Why hasn't he?"

Chess sighed. "He—I don't think he trusts any of the units. I don't really—I think there are Light and Dark politics involved, or something. Aldon is a Dark wizard, and the Lord Potter, who leads the military branch, is Light."

John shook his head, annoyed. He understood Wizarding British politics better than most, his new day job at MACUSA as a political analyst covering Wizarding Britain not helping, but he would never like them. There were parts of it that were just weird, and the entanglement of Light and Dark affinity with politics was one of them. "That's a stupid reason."

There was a noise on the other end, an uncomfortable shifting. "I—I don't want to argue about Aldon again, John. He's doing his best and—and I don't want to argue about it. He's been—a perfect gentleman."

"That's not what I'm worried about, Chess." John set his pad of paper down, and his pen, rubbing the back of his head. "Or maybe it is."

A pause. "I'm single, John. I'm not even—it's been months since I broke it off with Faleron. But, um, Aldon is busy anyway. I'm sure—I'm sure he's not thinking about anything like that, and he's the Lord Rosier now. We'll just—just get through the war, and I'll release him from his oath, and that'll be it."

John didn't think it would be as straightforward as that, but there was nothing to be said about it. "I just don't like it when you get hurt. You know that."

She laughed. "I know. But—but you'll always be there to help me pick up the pieces, right? We're—we're—"

"We're family," John finished, without a second of hesitation. "Anything happens, Chess, we've got you."

"Yeah." Even without seeing her, John knew she was smiling from the other side. "Miss you."

"Miss you too. Talk to you tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

John couldn't see her set down the orb—there was nothing on their connection showing it, but he still knew that she had done it. Their connection, so far apart, was far more tenuous, and all he could really tell was that she wasn't hurt, or injured, or ill. It was still comforting to have it there. He pulled the tiny comm orb out of his ear, tossing it onto the coffee table with a sigh.

"How is everything?" Gerry handed him a bowl of pasta, dropped on the sofa beside him and draped one arm over his shoulders. "Your sister?"

"She's fine." Even saying so, though, he leaned into Gerry, resting his head on his boyfriend's shoulder. "I'd just like if she were fine here, or in America, or anywhere except Wizarding Britain."

"Understandable." Gerry rested his head on John's. "What's this I heard about Koln?"

XXX

Archie blinked, and the words on the page were blurry. He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes tiredly. It felt like he could never catch a break—there was always something. After the Irish revolt, it seemed like almost everyone had questions for him.

The Clanmeet had dissolved into argument and spellfire—from what Quinn and Toby said, not entirely unusual—because about half the Clans thought they should break off from Wizarding Britain as well. They had numbers, and the Irish had shown that it could be done. Archie himself had been there, Dad pulling him to the ground when the first spell, from one of the MacLeods, had gone flying across the bowl-shaped valley that were their formal meeting grounds. It was Lady Ross who eventually established control and convinced everyone to stay in the alliance.

The Scots weren't the Irish. Even if the Scots had the same numbers as the Irish, they didn't have the same fighting force. The Irish had been held down to such an extent over the last half-century that nearly every mage had been prepared to fight—as a proportion of their population, the Irish had far more fighters and fewer civilians. They were an island, their geography keeping assistance from coming to the Ministry, but most importantly, they had had the element of surprise. With the blood discrimination laws, a larger and larger proportion of their population had become undocumented. Finally, most of them had schooled abroad, almost half at Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, developing a strong sense of unity in their mutual oppression and displacement. The Irish were more one nation than any other: pureblood, halfblood, newblood, they were all Irish.

The Scots didn't have that unity. The Scots had always been loyal to their Clans first, rather than to Scotland as a whole. They also had managed to shelter largely beneath the notice of Wizarding Britain—few in government knew they existed, and they had kept it that way. Most of theirs had schooled at Hogwarts—some of them even worked in the Ministry. Scottish newbloods had more in common with the general British halfblood and newblood contingent, and few made their way to the Clans even if they returned home. They were smaller, with less desperation and a smaller fighting force, and as the Lady Ross pointed out, they had a land border to defend.

Archie had breathed a sigh of relief, learning firsthand why the Lady Ross was so well-respected. She was formidable and, after her stern, no-nonsense words, reinforced with spells, his words were hardly even necessary. He was there largely to provide a face to their other collaborators: Bridge, the BIA, the Welsh, the shifter Alliance, the remaining Light faction families.

There were less Light faction families than he would have liked. The best response he had gotten from that group was silence, rather than support. The Light families tended to be of the view that the Irish revolt required a strong condemnation, if not outright retaliation. Most of those families had always been a little hesitant to trust him, relying heavily on Dad and Uncle James, and it was ultimately Uncle James and Lord Dumbledore who had kept that flank together. They didn't have the forces to retaliate, anyway.

The Welsh and shifters had fortunately remained neutral in the whole debacle, while the BIA had largely been supportive of both Irish independence and Bridge's position. Hermione, too, was supportive, pointing out that a stronger statement would likely give the Irish more grounds to decline providing refugee aid without hurting their claim for sovereignty and recognition before the ICW. Had Bridge threatened retaliation or stronger measures, the Irish could fairly say that they needed to conserve their resources to fight wars on two fronts; with Bridge acknowledging their independence, it would reflect badly on them if they didn't take in more refugees from their closest neighbour against an enemy that they, too, were fighting. If the Irish wanted ICW recognition, they needed more recognized allies in the ICW, including from the other nations now taking in British refugees: Wizarding America, Canada, Australia, the Nordic Union, Germany.

Overall, Archie didn't think their side had ever been in worse shape. The summer had started with the coup, and then there had been the burning of the Alleys. Their retaliation strike on Malfoy Manor had gone badly, and now the Irish had revolted. They looked completely lost, out of their depth, and Archie couldn't even leverage their few successes to boost morale.

Their few successes—breaking into the Floo Regulatory Authority, setting up the Portkey Hubs, strikes on Voldemort's supply chains and the small letter bombs to the Ministry—weren't exactly the sort of successes that he could publish in Bridge. As far as Aldon knew, the Ministry had not yet caught onto the fact that all the main Bridge safehouses were off the grid. It would be better if they didn't simply hand pieces of information to them on a silver platter, splashed across the front page of Bridge. Similarly, the Portkey Hubs that they now used instead were protected partly because few people had any in-depth knowledge of them, and it would be better if Voldemort and his Ministry didn't have forewarning about their existence. And he didn't want to be signing a confession for their few successful strikes, especially because at least two of them amounted to highway thievery. Not exactly glamourous, even if it got them materials, and the letter bombs were creating a very nervous and distracted atmosphere in the Ministry in which less got done than it should.

But without any other victories, there was little of hope to put into Bridge. In some ways, the Irish revolt, and their continuing success in holding Voldemort off their island, was the closest thing that they had to a win against Voldemort—while Bridge had been betrayed, the Irish had shown that throwing off Voldemort was possible. Otherwise, Archie was left to repeating the same points, the same warnings, the same rallying cries, and by October they were wearing thin.

They needed something to boost their morale. Archie needed something to boost his morale, and he didn't have anything.

Martin Luther King had struggled, he reminded himself, straightening at his desk and twisting his right arm over his left to stretch out his lower back. No one had ever said it would be easy, but there was right and there was wrong, and Voldemort was wrong. Archie had to hold strong and keep the coalition strong around him.

"Arch?"

Archie turned around, spotting Harry standing in his doorway. To most, he thought that she probably looked stoic and impassive, but he could still read the tiredness radiating from her in the almost too-sharp way that she moved. She had been spending too much time over her cauldron, brewing endless batches of Healing Potions for their safehouses, as well checking in on Leo daily. When he asked, she had mentioned that he seemed to be drinking a lot when he wasn't helping with the Lower Alleys refugees, but he hadn't wanted to press.

Months on, there was still a small part of him that did a double-take when he saw her as herself—she had only been back, undisguised, for a few months, while his mental picture of her for years had been Rigel Black. As herself, she was shorter. She still wore the same loose clothes that she had worn as Rigel, preferring brewing robes, tunics and breeches, but they did little to hide her figure. Her eyes were as bright as he remembered from their childhood, with the same laser-like focus, but they looked very different when the shape of her face had changed, becoming softer and rounder, her mouth and chin coming from Aunt Lily rather than Uncle James. Her hair was longer, coming just past shoulder-length, and she almost always pulled it either half up or entirely up in a short version of the ponytail that he recognized from their childhood.

He liked it. She looked like herself.

"Harry!" He smiled, trying for the trillion-watt smile that she always teased him for. "How are you?"

She looked him over, and the quirk of her eyebrow said that she knew perfectly well that whatever his expression, he was similarly tired and disheartened. "As good as you are, I think. What's wrong?"

Archie sighed, picking up his book and holding it up for her to see. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It was something else on leadership, in the same vein as Hermione had been giving him over the past few months. As much as he loved Hermione, and as well as he understood her intentions, the books were mostly useless. Language about leading yourself, and then understanding true leadership, all of this sounded very nice, but it didn't tell him how he was supposed to be inspiring his side to victory.

Harry tilted her head, considering. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I… don't really think that books about business strategy are very applicable to war."

Archie sighed again and threw the book on his bed. "Hermione thinks they're better than nothing. I mean, she already tried giving me Sun Tzu's The Art of War and that was awful, and then there was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and that was even worse, so… I guess it's business books, now."

Harry grinned, a little impish, and came into his room. She was carrying a wireless under one arm, the old-style one from the living room, which she put down beside her. "I don't think you need anything like that, Arch. Leo never needed books to teach him how to lead. I don't think you do, either."

"Yeah, well…" Archie's smile faded a little. "I was hoping they would give me some ideas on how to inspire people. We're like, five losses to nothing, and people are staring to lose faith in us. I'm so caught up in convincing people that what we're doing is right, that Voldemort is wrong—people are starting to wonder if they should strike out on their own, or take the risks of Voldemort's government. I'm just repeating the same things over and over again, but they're not having the same impact they did before. I'm not convincing anyone new, and the people who stuck with us are starting to doubt."

"Hmm." Harry tilted her head, then reached for the wireless. "I think this might cheer you up, then. I ran into Fred and George earlier today—they wanted to come and give you an update themselves, but they know you're busy and they were worried they might bother you, so I said I would let you know."

"They got the radio station working?" Archie perked up, shifting around to straddle his chair and resting his chin against his chair back. "Tell me they got it working!"

"Better, I think." Harry grinned, turning the wireless on. It was tuned already to the Wizarding Wireless Network, which was rehashing, again, the dangers of Bridge. She glanced back at Archie, seeing his wince. "Wait. Just wait. They said it would around now."

"Okay. I'm waiting."

They sat and waited, listening to the dry broadcaster spout on at length about terrorism, about the need for the Ministry to take stronger measures to put down the rebellion. That was what Bridge and their allied Light faction families had become, now—the rebellion. The terrorists. The reason that the rest of society could not be safe, and would not be safe, until they were stopped, killed, or arrested.

There were kill-on-sight orders for many Bridge members. Archie was one of them, as was his dad, and Uncle James, Harry, Uncle Remus. Alastor Moody was on the list, and the former Lady Rosier. Even Aldon had made the list. They had rehashed all their crimes, the usual suspects: assault, assault with a weapon, murder, sedition, treason, a thousand dry lines as they threw the law at them. Archie gritted his teeth—it was only the same propaganda that was in the Daily Prophet, repeated in a new medium, but he would always be upset hearing it.

There was a crackle across the report, then a loud klaxon blast, and Archie sat bolt upright.

"Well, that's a boring newscast, don't you think?" A voice drawled, and Archie grinned. It was one of the Weasleys—he couldn't be sure which, but he recognized their voices. "Don't you miss the days when the Wizarding Wireless Network wasn't just gloomy news reports and propaganda, Sound?"

"That I do, Fury," the other twin said agreeably. "I could have done without the Celestina Warbeck, granted, but I am definitely feeling like the last Weird Sisters album isn't receiving the love that it deserves. Bad luck for them, since they released it just before our government got taken over by a nutter."

"We should fix that, you think?" The first twin replied, almost a little airy. "The music first, the maybe we'll look at the government. All of you listening, if you're interested in a little music, a lot of fun, and yes, maybe a little politics here and there, check us out on the Underground, tuned to 104.5 and a dab of magic."

There was another crackle, and they were gone.

"Wow," Archie breathed, wide-eyed. The Weasleys were geniuses—if they weren't already on Voldemort's hitlist, they would be now, but they were geniuses. "That was brilliant!"

"They are, aren't they?" Harry reached to turn the wireless off, silencing the continued talk about terrorism. "They're really good at calming people down or boosting people's spirits. They did it all the time at Hogwarts."

"It's just what I needed." Archie grinned. "I needed something to put in Bridge—oh, but can I put them in Bridge? That will probably be too much of a security risk, won't it?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm sure they have some security measures in place, but it doesn't hurt to disassociate them from Bridge a little. You can still publish an article about it, but it might be advantageous to make them look independent. Enough for plausible deniability, at least—they'll pull in a bit of a different audience, one that might already be turned off Bridge."

"Yeah…" Archie looked away, the moment of joy turning back into stress. "But then, what do I put in Bridge? I can do a news report about a new radio station, fine, but I need more. Bridge needs to be seen doing something, too."

Harry looked away, thinking it over. "Well, what about… hmm. You could go out and try to do something big, like a public denunciation in Diagon Alley in front of the Ministry—"

"Like Enjolras, or Richard III?" Archie huffed a laugh. "I don't know. Big, stirring speeches like that—they work in theatre, but I don't know how well they do in real life. I think people want this to end, Harry, they want peace, and if I can't give them that, I need to give them something real. They're tired of ideals. They want solutions."

She nodded, grimacing. "You're right. It's also needlessly dangerous, which should discount it already. Let me think."

She fell silent, staring at a spot on the wall across from her. After a few minutes, Archie reached for his book again, paging through it half-heartedly. More ideals, that was what this book was filled with. Ideals and platitudes. Even another update from the International Confederation of Wizards, which had passed yet another resolution this week condemning Wizarding Britain for serious infringements on individual freedoms and the institution of martial law, weren't going to cut it. Wizarding Britain had been out of the international community for too long; most people saw no difference between the ICW then, and the ICW now.

"I can't hand you a solution, Arch," Harry said finally, interrupting his circular train of thought. "But I can hand out Protection Potions. I'll—I'll work out something with the Potions Guild. Announce it in Bridge. If they go to the Guild, the Guild will hand out one Protection Potion to them, free of charge, no questions asked. Handing out Potions for free isn't a crime, and it might push other Guilds into doing something too. It's not a solution, but it's something. Would that help?"

Archie stared at her for a second, and then he got up and dove at her. She caught him, almost a little late, surprised.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Archie said, squeezing Harry tight around her shoulders. "Thank you. It's something, and something is better than nothing."

She laughed, patting him on the back. "Don't worry about it. I brew all the time anyway, and I have a stock prepared. And the ingredients are cheap."

"Still." Archie pulled away, giving her his brightest smile—genuine, this time. "Thank you."

XXX

ANs: So, uh, for anyone who read Blake, you may enjoy speculating in the comments and reviews about how and the extent to which this chapter differs from that version of events? Thanks as always to meek_bookworm, who literally works twice as hard on CC as she did on the others because I am bad at writing war, and to the few of you who so reliably engage and comment! You make it easier to write the next chapter when I am uninspired and sad, so keep it up!