Peripheral characters were created by me, but all recognizable names and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling. A few historical figures also appear; they obviously belong to themselves.
Chapter One: The Meeting of the Council
London, February 1945
The city was as black as a war widow's mourning dress. No twinkling lights blazed from any window, public or private. Even the stars seemed to have gotten the message, and had taken refuge behind low clouds. The streets were silent and for the most part empty, but fear and tension lingered in the air like the residual smoke from bombed-out buildings.
One monument, which bore silent witness to almost a thousand years of English history, lay as dark as the rest. Soldiers patrolled its grounds watchfully. But no sentry, however diligent, saw what happened in a dark inner chamber of one of the many buildings comprising the Tower of London. Had anyone on guard duty observed the six cloaked figures suddenly appear in one of the tower rooms, materializing out of thin air, he might have thought the stresses of war had finally driven him over the edge.
Inside the room, one of the wizards drew a wand from his cloak and lit a strange blaze in the enormous fireplace at one end of the room. It burned smokelessly with a violet light, throwing tall shadows around the high stone walls. The six men removed their cloaks and seated themselves around a table in the center.
"What's all this about, Fitzherbert?" said an irritable voice. Its owner was a short, stout man dressed in dark red robes. "And why on earth did you have us meet in this--this--" he sputtered, looking outraged around him--"Muggle stronghold? Especially now, when things are so dangerous?"
Godfrey Fitzherbert, the British Minister of Magic, looked reprovingly at the man who had spoken, then extended his glance to the rest of the circle. "You will find out very shortly, Edward," he replied. "First, I wish to thank you all for apparating here from the safety of your homes during this time. The Ministry appreciates the risk you took to do so. You will see why we needed to meet here, but before I get to that, allow me to remind you all where the situation now stands."
He arose from his chair and leaned forward with his hands resting on the table. "We are, of course, the first War Council to convene since the end of the Goblin Rebellions. There was some resistance at the Ministry to the idea of creating the Council; this is, after all, a war between Muggles, not wizards. The controversy ended when the bombing raids began. We may be able to put anti-explosion and fireproof charms on our homes, but we are not immune to the shortages the war has brought about, nor, more importantly, to the suffering of the innocent around us." Fitzherbert looked around the table, at each face in turn, as he spoke.
"The continent has faced even more devastation than we have. Eastern Europe invaded, Austria annexed, most of Europe now occupied. Hitler's armies have laid waste any place which dared resist their advances. For the last six years, we have done what we could--without revealing our own existence, of course--to help the Allied Forces, and for this, His Majesty and the Prime Minister are most grateful. We were able to supply specially-trained falcons to MI5 to capture pigeons that the Nazis sent in to courier information to their spies here. And I hardly need mention that the concealment charms which our special forces put around the D-Day preparations were most successful."
"Oh, were they?," interrupted a thin, gray-haired wizard to his left. "If that were the case, my son Phillip might not be dead now."
Fitzherbert inclined his head. "Forgive me, Rodney. You are right. The Germans knew an attack was coming, of course; they just weren't sure where it would be. There was a leak somewhere--" his eyes narrowed as he glanced around the table--"somehow Hitler, claiming a premonition, found out that it would be at Calais. We were able to counteract that somewhat by sending in a spy who acted at enormous personal risk to cast a Confundus charm as close to German headquarters as he could get. It helped, but there were still many losses. Too many. I'm sorry, Rodney."
He paused, then continued in a softer voice. "And if you will pardon me for speaking about something so personally painful to you, I would like to say that Phillip had the right idea. Not many wizards have enlisted in the Muggle armies; I wish more had done so. This is not just about political power struggles between non-magical peoples, gentlemen. This war is about the struggle between the forces of good and evil."
Edward Bragg now snorted. "Oh come now, Godfrey," he said. "It's bad, yes indeed--but don't you think you're being a bit histrionic now?" He looked around the table with a smile, expecting to see the same on other faces. To his surprise, they were all impassive and stony, eyes fixed on the Minister. His own smile retreated quickly.
"No, I don't," said Fitzherbert slowly. "I don't think I'm being at all histrionic, Edward. I'm about to ask Rafael Aquitaine, our liaison with the Continental Council, to share something with you, and I tell you this now--you won't believe it when you hear it. It is evil of the greatest magnitude, evil so appalling and so sinister that the mind turns away from it in disbelief. But believe it you must. I assure you that it is true." He sat down and turned to the wizard at his right. "Rafael?"
A wizard robed in dark blue stood up. Though his English was flawless and unaccented, his olive complexion and black eyes showed his Gallic heritage.
"Thank you, Minister. My friends and fellow Council members," he began somberly. "We have several things to share with you tonight that are of huge significance. We will start with this: Through the network of spies established on the continent, we have learned of the existence of horrifying places that the Nazis have established. They are called concentration camps. People are being sent there in droves. Most are Jews--Hitler's great scapegoat for Germany's economic woes--but Gypsies, homosexuals, and Poles are also sent there, as is any German citizen who dares to speak up against the Third Reich.
"Most of these people are murdered upon arrival at the camps. The ones who are not murdered are enslaved, starved, and subjected to unimaginable abuses. Unspeakable 'medical experiments.' The victims arrive by the thousands every day." He stared around the table, his dark eyes intense as he emphasized: "Thousands. Every day. There are half a dozen of these camps that we've pinpointed; we strongly suspect there may be more."
"And what proof have you of this?" An upper-crust accent from the end of the table. "Begging your pardon, Aquitaine, but really, I have trouble believing that the Nazis would have the resources necessary for these vast operations while they're knee-deep in combat, and losing badly at the moment."
"I know it seems unbelievable, Malfoy," replied Aquitaine quietly. "I can only surmise that Hitler's program of ethnic cleansing has gone from legalized murder to outright insanity. As for proof...we have indications which you will see later on in the meeting. And I've personally interviewed escapees from a few of these camps." He paused, a haunted look darkening his handsome face. "I am more than convinced of their sincerity."
"Anything you can share with us, Rafael?" asked Rodney Pickett. "Photographs, for instance? Did you administer Veritaserum to ascertain the truthfulness of their testimony?"
Aquitaine sighed. "Rodney, believe me--if you saw these men, you would understand why I was reluctant to subject them to anything more rigorous than a simple interview. They were practically dead when they were brought to me...walking skeletons held together by skin and desperation. In their condition, Veritaserum might well have killed them; photographing them, when they've spent months hiding from Nazi searchlights, seemed too cruel."
"But what is it we're supposed to do?" queried Bragg. "I suppose we could send undercover forces to try and liberate these places, but given how well the Nazis must be guarding them, it seems terribly risky, and highly prone to failure."
Aquitaine raised one finely-shaped eyebrow. "You haven't even heard the rest of it, Edward. Allow me to continue." Bragg inclined his head.
"Up until now," continued Aquitaine, "we've been relatively sheltered from the effects of the war. But everything the Muggles are subjected to now is about to be visited upon us...only worse. Far, far worse."
"What do you mean, Rafael?" inquired Pickett anxiously.
"I mean, Rodney," said Aquitaine, "that a wizard has penetrated the inner circles of the Nazi leaders, and is using this program of extermination to his own ends. His minions, placed among the Gestapo, are rounding up all Muggle-born or half-Muggle witches and wizards on the continent, and sending them to these camps, under the convenient accusation of being political dissidents. And who would dare to speak up in their defense? No one who wishes to stay alive. So now they too are being slaughtered in these camps, because this madman wants to rid the entire wizarding world of what he considers non-pure blood."
"Is that really such a bad thing?" drawled Malfoy.
As a man, the others at the table turned to look at him. He smirked at the aghast expressions on their faces. "Oh, I know it comes as no surprise to anyone here that I don't like them. I simply don't trust them. They could revert to their Muggle roots and betray us at any time. And to have it happen now, when the Muggles are under siege? Think of what irreparable harm exposure of our world could do right now. We'd be an instant scapegoat--much as the Jews are for the Germans--and we'd back to the stakes and gallows of the Dark Ages."
"Hadrian Malfoy," said Godfrey Fitzherbert slowly, in a voice that shook with rage, "that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Yes, we all know how you feel about allowing any children other than purebloods to attend Hogwarts. As an acting member of the Board of Governors of the school, you've made your position more than clear on a number of occasions. But I wouldn't have believed that even you could condone the wholesale slaughter of Muggle-born magical people!"
Malfoy shrugged. "What you see as prejudice, Godfrey, I see as merely a matter of survival. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I'd say." He began to lean back in his chair with a smug smile, when a sudden flash of light from the other end of the table hit him like a bolt of lightning. There was a muffled BOOM, and from the chair where Hadrian Malfoy had sat an instant ago, a small green snake dropped to the floor.
The tension around the table exploded into cathartic laughter. "Showing your true form at last, Malfoy?" cackled Rodney Pickett.
"Too bad you won't be able to apparate home until the spell wears off," snickered Fitzherbert. "But don't worry--you can slip out through the Traitor's Gate!" There were more guffaws from the table.
"Watch out for hungry Muggles!" called Edward Bragg as the snake slid underneath the door and disappeared. "They'll eat anything they can find these days!"
As the laughter around the table subsided, Aquitaine shook his head. "What is he doing on the War Council anyway?" he asked Fitzherbert.
The Minister sighed. "Money talks, Rafael. You've been in politics long enough to know how that works. I didn't want him on the Council, but I was overruled once he found a way to smuggle in shipments of things we needed--or wanted--from the continent." His voice was bitter. "In a black market economy, a profiteer can write his own ticket; some people simply can't see past the bottoms of their empty cauldrons. And actually, I've always been suspicious of his motives for wanting to be on the Council." He tapped his quill angrily on the desk. "I'm pretty sure, in fact, that he was the leak on the Calais landing--" the quill snapped in half--"but I can't prove it, dammit. Therefore I can't remove him. Yet."
"So we watch what we say in the official meetings," interrupted Bragg, "and hold unofficial meetings to which he won't be invited. Let's get back to what Aquitaine was telling us. Who is the wizard in the Nazi bosom, Rafael?"
Aquitaine pursed his lips briefly before answering: "Grindelwald."
Bragg sucked in his breath with a hiss. Pickett turned pale. Fitzherbert nodded grimly. The other wizard present at the table remained impassive.
"Just wait," Aquitaine said grimly. "The news gets even worse. Minister, if you'd like to take over?"
"Thank you, Rafael." Fitzherbert rose and walked a few steps toward the wall where a large map of Europe hung. It was clearly as ancient as the White Tower itself. Illuminated letters on mottled brown parchment showed the Latin names of the various countries. An observant tourist might have noticed a curious paradox: although the map was obviously centuries old, the borders were those of the present day. But this room had never been a stop on any Beefeater tour.
"The monarchs of England--the smart ones, anyway--have always had a wizard or two on their councils to serve them." He looked at Bragg. "This map is the reason we needed to meet here tonight, Edward. We could not remove it from this room for study elsewhere. It has been one of England's most useful tools in times of war, and if it were removed from this wall...well, let's just say that it would make the Crown Jewels look no better protected than a rhinestone tiara in a junk shop."
"If it works so well," interjected Bragg, "what about the wars we've lost? What about the Hundred Years War, for instance?"
"Well, not every monarch took advantage of it," explained Fitzherbert. "Some were downright dangerous for wizards to approach. And in that particular war, we had a very powerful magical opponent in Joan of Arc."
"That's so," agreed Bragg. "But in that case," with a nervous glance at Aquitaine, "shouldn't we be more careful about who sees this map? No offense intended, of course, Rafael," he added in a jocular tone.
"None taken," Aquitaine shot back coolly.
Fitzherbert sighed. "Really, Edward...given the situation, don't you think we're past the point of shouting insults at each other across the Channel?"
Bragg nodded, conceding the point.
"Anyway," continued the Minister, "the map was created by Rowena Ravenclaw, who was lover and advisor to William the Conqueror. Quite the scandal in her day, but she was always an interesting woman." His smile made it easy to guess which house he'd been in at Hogwarts. He tapped the map with his wand and said, "Martialis animatis!"
At once, the map floated off the wall and down to the table, rotating ninety degrees on the way. It hovered a few inches above the table's surface; as it lit up with a dim glow, tiny mountains arose, miniature forests sprouted, and water welled up from underground springs, flowed into rivers and out to the seas, which crested in lazy waves along the edges. Here and there, small bands of tiny soldiers wearing different colors appeared, some moving across the terrain towards other destinations, some engaged with other bands of minuscule combatants.
Fitzherbert walked back to the table and stood over it, using his wand as a pointer. "As you can see, this map shows us the progress and whereabouts of the armies involved in the war," he explained. "We can see the progress of the Muggle armies on the continent and in England; the figures in the blue are the Allies, the ones in red are the Axis forces.
"Now, while this map was extremely useful for strategy in the Middle Ages, it has severe limitations when it comes to modern warfare. We can see the general location of battles and troops, but we cannot pinpoint exactly where the forces are, or whether we're talking about air force or ground troops. But we can see something here"--his wand hovered over Germany--"which no Muggle can. These figures in black are Wizard soldiers, which have not appeared on this map since the fourteenth century."
"But what are they up to?" asked Pickett. His hands were laced together so tightly in front of him that the knuckles glared white.
"From what we've learned, Grindelwald has now killed every Muggle-born of occupied Europe that he could find, using his Nazi connections to have their names submitted for deportation," replied Fitzherbert quietly. "Besides his minions in the Gestapo, he's managed to place Dark wizards among the Nazi guards at the camps themselves. Our agents can't even get close. Now we've learned that he is massing this army. Their mission is to invade every country not under Hitler's regime, and begin deporting every single non-pureblood witch and wizard for execution."
No one spoke for a full minute.
"These camps..." said Bragg finally. "Do they appear on the map as well?"
Fitzherbert answered, "Yes, Edward; those are the indications Rafael mentioned earlier to Malfoy, who I'm just as glad is not here to see this. Rafael and I spent the morning searching the wizarding military archives, looking for anything we could find on this map. We found a spell which shows battle casualties and we tested it earlier today. It gives a rough idea of which side is suffering more casualties, which we expected--but it showed something else we didn't expect." His eyes rested apologetically on Rodney Pickett. "I'm sorry--this will be a bit gruesome."
"Go ahead," said Pickett evenly.
Fitzherbert nodded his thanks, then tapped his wand over the map again. "Moribundus revelatio."
At first glance, it wasn't too bad. Some of the tiny soldiers on either side looked up and rolled their eyes. They threw down their weapons and hurled themselves onto the ground. Their performance was almost comical.
But then, across Germany and Eastern Europe, in places nowhere near the troops of soldiers, single drops of blood welled up on the map like puncture wounds. Tendrils of smoke appeared in the air over the drops of blood. The smoke grew thicker; the air in the room began to stink of copper and charred flesh. Small trickles began to work their way outward as more blood oozed up from somewhere underneath; the trickles turned into streams. What the ground could absorb soaked in, turning the earth itself into a horrifying, rapidly blossoming bloodstain; and still the blood flowed faster, until the rivers ran red, and then the oceans, and then the oceans themselves began to overflow. The blood began to drip thickly onto the table beneath.
Edward Bragg screamed as the scarlet mess spattered onto his robes, staining the dark red black. "Stop! For the love of God, stop it!" he screamed in a shrill voice.
Fitzherbert waved his wand. "Finite Incantatem," he murmured. The rivers of blood slowed, and then ran backwards, disappearing again into pinpoints of blood which hesitated for an instant, then vanished completely. The air cleared, the oceans turned blue, the smell was gone, and Bragg's robe was clean again--but the men in the room were forever changed by what they had witnessed.
Rodney Pickett looked as if he were about to faint. "A bit gruesome, Godfrey?" he choked. "My God...my God..." But his words were lost in the sounds of Bragg's sobs.
Fitzherbert laid his wand on the table. "I trust this will serve as sufficient proof of what we have told you," he said, almost too low to be heard.
Aquitaine spoke into the silence. "Unfortunately, we learned of Grindelwald's plans too late to start organizing our own army. At this point, our only course is to stop Grindelwald himself. Our information leads us to believe that there is much quarreling among his followers. There is no one who commands enough loyalty to take over, should Grindelwald himself be removed from power. And we know of only one man powerful enough to take him on and have any chance at all of defeating him."
He turned to the figure nearest the fire, who had hitherto remained silent, and all the other heads swiveled to follow suit. Fitzherbert addressed the wizard who had transfigured Hadrian Malfoy into a snake.
"Well, Albus? What do you say?"