Ron was certain that Nott was dead. Goyle and Bulstrode were with him, and it seemed neither knew how to feel about his passing, untimely as it was. They shared a look before turning back to him.

"He was going through a lot," Goyle said. "That was just from what I knew. It's annoying. There's so much going on all the time and I never know..."

"I can sympathize," Ron said. "I don't know what would have happened to him if he lived. Win or lose, he wouldn't have been looking forward to it."

"I thought you forgave people in the Order."

"Yeah, but you still can't let them get the idea they'll get away with it entirely," he said. "I'm not saying we'd get Azkaban up and running again, but if we win, we'll have to have something to do with loads of bastards who don't wind up in a graveyard. I'm actually starting to think this whole 'tortured for the rest of your life no matter what' approach was a big part of what made this conflict so terrible."

Neither of those waiting with him on a ridge above a contingent of enemies said anything. After all, none of their parents had ever set foot inside the prison, but either one of them might have complained about it back in school on behalf of a friend of a friend. The fact of the matter was that the penal system was set up as a means of feeding the Dementors and keeping them from running wild, not really as a place where people would go to receive appropriate punishments for their crimes, and in cases like those, there really was no way of hitting two thunderbirds with one curse. The system could only serve one end or another, and with the one the Ministry had chosen, came more than enough conflict.

He was reasonably certain that the two Death Eater spawn with him were counting up their sentences for their own actions under Malfoy, but he might as well remind them that service to the Order would be rewarded.

"What are we doing here?" Bulstrode asked. "Your American mates-"

"I sent them to another vantage point. They'll be the distraction if we need it, but we have to hope it won't come up."

The plan was fundamentally the same as before, but as far as he knew, the enemy had no counter to it except activating the marks, which was good enough for him. An enemy unit dead was about as good as an enemy unit under his control. I reckon it'll make each one of them try harder to resist the curse. Lucky I can break more than one of them at once now.

"What's with your eyes?" Goyle asked.

"No idea, but I'm getting that a lot lately. I try not to read too much into the question," he said, smirking a little.

The plain that the enemy forces were holding provided excellent visibility in all directions and their formation was such that they could watch each other, and it seemed like rather than trying to search for something, they were just awaiting orders. Still, if he overcame this, there was fundamentally nothing he could not overcome. Right as he was about to cast the first Imperius Curse, however, the anti-apparation jinx was lifted and the large unit moved away.

"What?" he asked. "Why are they splitting?"

"Why were they here in the first place?" Bulstrode asked.

"They're meant to be smashing Hermione's group- reckon they're still mopping up in the east, but someone killed a ground commander and their orders got mixed up. I'll have to send a fruitcake when this is over."

There it was again, the promise that at one point, the war would be over. Once again, he reminded himself that he was not necessarily being optimistic in thinking that it would end at some point, because all the indicators for half a decade indicated that it would not end in their favor. They had been losing, and losing, and all they could do was hold on and keep fighting for a chance to turn things around. 'Spose it's not so bad, though, having hope. It's kind of a fine line between that and wishful thinking. Same as the difference between giving up and moving on.

"Does this mean they're going after the mud- after-"

"No, it doesn't mean that, because she's clever enough to remove the anti apparation jinxes and get everyone out of there. If you're wondering what's going on in the grand scheme of things, we've managed to break the force of their invasion; they're going to have to turn it into a long war, and they're going to have to make good on their threats to kill everyone who disobeys. Their master doesn't care one way or another, as long as we've not got any way of winning and going after him. He's perfectly fine with it if we sit here fighting for the next fifty years."

There was no response. Perhaps his new associates had not been wondering what was going on in the large scale, and if that was the case he found it hard, but not impossible, to blame them. It was easy to get absorbed in basic tasks and ignore the big picture. Of course, that was why they had grand strategists, but they needed ground commanders just as much. People like Nott, who could only be pointed at a target and told to kill it, were fundamentally not helping that much. He could not have said whether or not the smart young wizard had ever realized as much before he died, but the desire to rise up in the ranks was not a bad thing; it was the taking on of additional responsibility.

"How are we tracking them?"

"A long war means splitting up. Trying to take over cities, towns, villages- anything you can take and hold. Once they get their orders about where to go, individual companies of wands will be assigned to different places. I can manipulate small amounts of them more easily, but I can't get large amounts, not without someone noticing and just wiping them all out."

"How do we respond to that?" Goyle asked.

"First off, we can be thankful that we survived the first round. Second, we have to kill Voldemort. There just isn't anything we can do on our end or in the short term. We can use the Imperius, not to the quantity, but the quality."

"You're looking for a real Death Eater," Bulstrode surmised.

"Anyone he marked himself, really. He got enough of your parents killed that he had to refill his top brass in short order. With the mark, we can track down a recent position, a recent hideout- as quickly as he can move, it isn't like him to keep moving just because he feels like it. If we can't have that, we'll get a clue to his new location by finding the old."

"You're saying we can't do anything more for those fighting," Goyle said. "We can't-"

"Not really, I just- It's critical that they keep fighting. It's- I can't even describe how important it is to keep organizing attacks and keep the coalition from expanding their control and killing more dissenters. The ground commanders have to keep it up, even with no end in sight. That's why we're going to go after them where they aren't split up."

"The continent."

"Yeah, the eastern bit. Won't have any dark magic detectors. Charlie always said there wasn't any point in bringing one of those to certain towns in Romania."

Together, they apparated to Albania. It was not easy, but if Ron had gotten good at one thing besides the Imperius Curse, it was Apparation, and bringing others across long distances was at least possible. When they arrived, he instantly felt a chill of early spring. Strange. I thought I'd always know where I was when I came out of that white void.

"Where is this place?" Bulstrode asked. "I haven't seen a manor in this style."

"It was in Nott's memories when Hermione interrogated him. She didn't like much of what we saw." He took a purposeful breath. Somehow, discussing someone dead so recently still had an effect on him, even after all the death he had seen. "Good a place as any to start. Should be coalition dobbers poking about."

Sure enough, there were three that they discovered were part of a detail looking for blood purist groups. It was not as if it was futile to look for dark wizards; it was the opposite; the country and that region of it in particular were so saturated with dark magic that no system of detection could help them isolate priorities. What was futile was looking for specific dark wizards.

In a matter of hours, the three of them had a decent idea of the patrols in the muggle town, and Ron met up with Bulstrode at the agreed location, presuming that her associate was still talking to someone. They looked down at the town from the hill where the old manor was perched, where he revealed everything he knew about their movements. The witch had been more interested in what exactly they were seeking out, and noticed an old house off a beaten path where a fair number of them seemed to be congregating.

"We'll want to avoid that area at first," he said. "We'll be over there once we have enough wands, but not before."

"How is it that you two seem so familiar with each other?" she asked after a moment. "I thought you didn't associate with our sort."

"Blood purists? Not really, not when I was in school. They spent enough time trying to kill me or my friends."

"I had only meant to say 'Slytherins'-", she started back, perhaps revealing that she and her boyfriend were not still purists, or if they were, they did not want to be identified as such. Hardly matters.

"I didn't mind Mafalda," he said. "You scared off a real trooper back then. Haven't heard a word of complaint out of her in two years at least." He shook his head. "I know it wasn't really your doing. Goyle... well, we worked together once before."

As he rejoined them, it seemed Bulstrode was content to leave it at that. Really, he was impressed that she could even speak to him, after everything he and his friends had done to her family, but he had insisted on sparing her life once, and perhaps that counted for something in her book. Goyle looked like he had not found anything.

"There was an old wizard going on about nothing," he said. "Just avoid the east quarter. Too many muggles."

Despite the fact that the nonmagical would not know what they were seeing, and it was possible that before long, Secrecy would be over, but no one wanted to be the one to ruin it. It was also poorly advised to draw as much attention to themselves that the muggles might notice. By consequence, they did the same as before, targeting small groups and stunning them before conjuring the instructions, more robust than last time, and putting each one of the patrolling units under the Imperius. There would, of course, be some that they controlled that could not use the curse themselves, or had not practiced with it, and as a result they were advised to move slowly, only attacking when they had a substantial advantage and when there was no chance that anyone else would catch them in the act.

"Does no one have your skill with the Imperius?" Bulstrode asked after a few hours. Much of the coalition wands in the town were under their control, and it seemed the rest had no idea. "How was it you who discovered the secret of cascading-"

"I'm not sure," he said after a moment. "I think it's that everyone has always tried to have it in a single spell. They tried to develop on the spell that existed, but they didn't understand the original spell in the first place, so that never worked. What they didn't realize was that there were other ways of developing offensive capability without adding a prefix to an incantation." He sighed a bit. "Hermione says that dark wizards fancy themselves as pioneers, and maybe they discover something or other, but they don't really learn much."

"I suppose no one thought about it like that," the witch said, task focused. "Where are we going?"

"Not the old house, but the rest of it. They won't be looking for dark magic, so they won't see us coming, but we have to act quickly if we want this to have any effect." He had an idea that maybe they could toss all the bodies at the enemy, because at the moment it was his only way of deriving an advantage, and if it was really the case that Evan was fated to kill Voldemort, then perhaps he was fated to have backup as well. At the same time, there was nothing to guarantee that his plan would work, and no one else to blame if it failed.

The three of them were more than enough to seize control of a coalition witch and her partner without raising an alarm. The cascade continued as before. With much of the town under his control, the minions were directed to that which turned out to be the old Gaunt residence, smashing the other enemies before anyone could be contacted, a product of pure numbers and speed. Dividing them up, his orders for them were to apparate to different towns in the country, two by two, looking for coalition wands, but that of course was already written, meaning once they took over other places, they would keep expanding without being ordered.

"Are we staying here?" Goyle asked. "Doesn't seem to be much point in three more wands."

"We're looking for targets they can't beat themselves. One thing I haven't told them to do is to form up and go after harder targets with larger numbers. They've been instructed to avoid anything they think they can't Imperius on their own."

"The problem is," Bulstrode realized. "-those are the exact types that we don't want getting wise to our plan. They could turn it around if they realize that we've been using the Imperius."

"They can turn them back just as easily," he said, agreeing. "If someone recovers the list of instructions, they'll know just how to counter our strategy. They'll also be able to recover their minions without killing them."

"We don't have a counter for that?"

"No; there's nothing we can do about it. That's why we have to stop it from happening. The three of us are going to search the chain of command for anyone powerful and kill them." To that end, he had already summoned one of his minions, an older man with steel eyes. "Tell us about the local authorities."

"It's incorrect to say that the magical governments of Albania and Macedon no longer exist," the puppeted wizard said after a moment. "While they exist, though, they know they answer to the coalition. Their ranks were emptied of those who would object to a curse mark."

"Predominantly, that would be anyone strong enough that they'd feel weaker with someone who could order them around like that, rather than stronger by virtue of belonging to a stronger force." It seemed his words impressed his two associates, not that he cared to keep track. "Was there anyone from around here who accepted anyway? Did they bring in anyone to deal with a powerful dark wizard if they found one?"

"I know of only one powerful wizard south of the Danube. The model of the coalition is to overwhelm entire countries with numbers, that skilled individuals were never needed." He sighed. "A committed fighting force that could forcibly control this much landmass is not something the continent has seen in centuries, and perhaps that is the reason there was little more than a gentleman's agreement in place to prevent such a terror from rising up."

"You haven't been voided of your sympathies," Bulstrode observed.

"I hardly fought the Imperius Curse when I felt it," he said. "It's a lesser known trick that you can retain some amount of control, at least in ways that hardly matter, if you give in rather than being entirely overwhelmed. Perhaps that's the way I've lived my entire life."

"I think he wants us to put him out of his misery, Weasley," Goyle said.

"I can't blame him if he does, but I won't," Ron said. "He's just learned like a lot of the rest of them that when you give someone else absolute power, you let them do whatever they want with you. Even if we can't kill Voldemort and all we end up doing is sealing him away in some other world, the ones who figured this out will be good teachers for the next generation."

"Please do it," he said the moment after they turned around to leave. "I was the mayor of an entire city, and at this point I only have any position because I speak perfect English and could convey the orders coming out of Britain. As far as I have been lowered, it still pains me that all I can ask is that you succeed."

"We'll do it all right," he muttered. "Where's this heavy hitter?"

"His name is Shacklebolt. He was assigned to this region after the Gaunt family managed to kill some of those with more local awareness. Should be in the capital's government building."

"We'll take care of him," Ron promised after a moment. What the hell happened? What the hell do we do now?

Presuming that the man had been marked, probably after being persuaded it was the only way, he decided not to tell the others that they were dealing with an Auror, and an old Order member. Though he would prefer to spare the wizard's life if at all possible, he could not ask his subordinates to risk their own in that effort. They apparated to the location provided to them, finding themselves in Tirana, or at least the magical part of it.

"Do you know this wizard?" Goyle asked, catching up to him as he walked at a fast pace.

"I did. Did you know Malfoy? Evan? Nott?"

"Looks like we've got something in common," he muttered after what seemed like a moment of thought. "You can't always kill people you'd want to kill."

They said nothing as they made their way to the target. It would have been simple to curse the people around him, but calling him out would be even simpler. Ron ordered the other two to apparate to a nearby rooftop in case things turned violent right away.

"SHACKLEBOLT!" he shouted. He was on a neat little street with regular witches and wizards milling about, but they started to go around him when he started making a scene. His allies seemed inclined to hang around.

"Ronald Weasley," the former Order member said, having apparated to the street. "What's the occasion?"

"I want to know why you took the mark."

"For what reason?"

"History. The future."

"I practically introduced it," he said after yet another pause. "The mark sounded like a good idea when we were talking about putting others under its control. It's strange, the way that works, that those who want the greatest power and the greatest control can usually bring about the existence of that power, but rarely end up having it in their hands. Of course, that's not really so strange when you look at the numbers, though, is it? To replace an existing system, you need enormous popular support, but to replace it with a dictatorship is precisely what makes those numbers irrelevant."

"I want to see if you can disobey the dark mark."

"You have a noble cause; I'll give you that much. The mark only provides my master with a convenient way of killing me, though."

"Many of us thought you were already dead," Ron said. "Don't disappoint us."

He did not want to think too much about whether or not Shacklebolt's life was forfeit, or if it was, when exactly that started. It's one of those times where it's even worse if I'm right. As he walked back over to the other two to apparate again, he saw their somewhat smug looks of a familiar situation had turned into genuine sympathy.

"We'll help you see this through," Bulstrode said after a moment. "Coming from us, it may not mean much, but we know what real loyalty is."

"Yeah," he said after a moment. "Thanks. I really need it."