29th September, 1826.

A casual observer might have said that the boy and the room were at odds, intent on out doing each other at incongruity.

At least, he might have said that if he had the time or the inclination to study the scene long, which would put him in the class of wit cracking idlers, the masters of cafés and university corridors, so he might have added that together they resembled some painting done by a seventeenth century philosopher with pretensions to artistic talent, to illustrate the superiority of man to the rest of Creation.

The young man was undeniably handsome, in the severe style of Classical statues with the paint worn off them: pale hair and pale skin and pale eyes, respectably and soberly dressed, but awkwardly, with his cravat slightly askew and bulges swelling on his shoulders, beneath his coat where shirt and waistcoat had bunched together, giving the uncomfortable impression that he might really be a statue: some surviving Roman copy of a better done Greek original, some Apollo or Hermes or Achilles who, tired of being gawked at, had crept down off his pedestal and hastily thrown on the first clothes that had come his way, with only the barest idea of how to do up the fastenings.

He had taken up temporary residence in the back room of a café, a hybrid cell, part storeroom, part parlour, with a few solid tables surrounded by rickety stools, expensive lamp brackets on the walls, a testament to more prosperous days, dust on the floor, grime on the walls and mould in the corners, fireplace choked with ash and windows obscured by crates half full of spare cutlery and vegetables (the room was adjacent to the kitchen), in need of cleaning and habitation to be reputable, or further neglect to be quaint.

And he was waiting.

There was a definite air of anticipation, though he didn't look at his watch, if he possessed a watch, or pace, or look towards the door, or start every time there was a noise in the street; more than anything else, he was doing nothing, and statue or no, he didn't look the type to be idle without a purpose.

What he was waiting for came soon enough, if not by the usual means, at least not what the majority of the populace might call usual, as the man entered with a magical 'pop' and not by the door or even a window.

However he arrived, he looked benign enough: a nondescript sort of fellow, neither plain nor handsome, with abundant and hopelessly disordered sandy-brown hair and clever hazel eyes, clad in a dusty brown robe that made the floor look polished to a shine by comparison; an impoverished scholar in an old dressing gown, or a monk without a tonsure. For a few moments he seemed confused, as if he had come somewhere other than where he had intended to, then his eyes lit upon his fair haired companion, and his expression changed, sharply, and his robe billowed a little, as if his knees had buckled beneath its folds. "Lucien!"

"Hello, Combeferre," returned the other, extending a hand.

"When I got the letter, I half thought it was one of Aurelien's less tasteful jests, except that I couldn't conceive of him learning to use the Muggle post," Combeferre was less mild mannered, now, and flustered enough to be slightly ridiculous. "After two years, you say 'hello.' Mon Dieu, do you know I've had howlers from your mother every other week?"

"What do you mean?"

"Where did you go? They had aurors searching for you; nobody detected even a trace of magic."

"That would be because I didn't use any. I said I was leaving for a while."

"Mon ami, did you think to mention an estimated time of return?"

"Well…" he considered, letting his proffered hand fall and using his other to prop his chin. "Oh, damn. Was there much trouble?"

"Other than your mother's hysteria, and your father petitioning your grandfather to have the aurors search for you, and every acquaintance you've ever had pestered to keep his eyes open, no, no trouble at all," Combeferre looked at the newly found fugitive with mingled curiosity and exasperation. "Irresponsibility isn't like you. Myself, I thought you must be dead-- where have you been?"

"Studying," said the boy, which recalled him to his purpose, and he sat up straighter. "Which is why I wrote you in the first place."

"But studying what? And where? Aurelien is learning business from an uncle in Lyon and studiously avoiding a respectable marriage, Jean is apprenticed to a poet who swears he can conjure up the muses with the proper incantation in some new form of verse and Eduoard-- well, that's a tale of woes for another day-- but you vanished."

"Oddly enough, I've been here, studying law--"

"At the Moldu school?"

"Oui, at the university. In two years I've learned enough to have a rudimentary understanding, and I've read over some of our old legal documents, from before the introduction of the Statute, and the complexity of some of them, the mixture of magic and eloquence, is extraordinary. And alarming, once you realise what they imply; I've looked around a bit, and I think I've seen enough to justify my suspicions. Jérémie, we have to do something."

"At least that explains why you're dressed for a pantomime," Combeferre eyed his friend's clothing sceptically. "To begin with, owl your mother."

"That's not-" catching his friend's expression, the fair haired man capitulated. "Hysterics?"

"Well," Combeferre shrugged. "You know Madame Enjolras. I haven't seen her, of course, but she was anxious enough to contact me, and that, surely, indicates something."

The younger Enjolras grimaced wryly; he was well aware of his family's capacity for snobbery. Their blood was ancient, older than the idea of France, which many of them felt made them superior to it, and their wealth, unlike that of many aristocratic clans, had, though it had dipped and struggled and rebounded at half strength on innumerable occasions, endured to the present. Inevitable flights, emigrations and name changes with the passing of centuries and the fall of the various regimes which they had supported had left enormous gaps in the family records and their exact origins were shrouded in mystery, but according to family tradition their most ancient ancestor had been one Delphos, reputed to be a son of Apollo and skilled in the art of divination, who had given his name to a famous sanctuary in Greece. The less charitable, of course, noted that the ancient Romans had claimed contradictorily to be descended from both Romulus and Aeneas, and offered more evidence to support their assertions that la famille Enjolras.

"All right, I concede the point," in defeat, Enjolras was irritable. "I'll send off a letter or two and face parental recriminations. But that was hardly what I wanted to discuss with you."

"No, I know. You've got that look about you; I know how obsessed you can become when you're struck by these moral epiphanies," Combeferre finally took a seat and proffered the hand he hadn't deigned to give his friend before. "It is good to see you. I thought a kappa, or something equally outlandish, must have got you. What do we have to do something about?"

Enjolras shook his hand, grudgingly. "I hardly thought I'd have to tell you."

"Mon ami, I have studied many things in my time, but mind reading isn't one of them."

"But you have read the French provisions under the Secrecy Statute, haven't you?"

"In years gone by, oui."

"And found it to be perfectly equitable?"

"Oh, of course not, Lucien. We've had this discussion before. To begin with, the Statute itself was written by a group of extremely paranoid aristocrats and any one member of the draft committee was likely to belong to a country at war with the homelands of at least half of the other members. What I wonder at, given the political climate of the age, is that it got written at all. Secondly, while some of our own stipulations regarding Muggles and such offspring of theirs as possess magical talent certainly bordered on barbaric, we are not anywhere near so backward as some of our fellow nations, and by dint of hard work and reasonable debate, a good many of those laws have been repealed. Think of the 1815 statute, following England's lead, that defined Muggles as 'beings,' with basic rights, and it has been projected that by the end of the century they'll have got through a law banning the use of memory charms on any non-consenting being."

"1815, the twentieth century," Enjolras slapped his palm on the table, giving Combeferre an exasperated look. "Your trouble is that you're always half a century behind or a whole one ahead, when it's now that an entire class of people with inborn talent are being reduced to serfdom. Whatever the scholars may predict, conditions are not improving. Since the Muggle revolution their have been increased strictures, and I cannot conceive of any law that would deny the right to use memory charms. Too much depends on keeping people ignorant. If they could comprehend what had been done to them, if their families learned what had become of them-- Jérémie, our society not only condones, but relies on these atrocities; the Council supports the aristocrats, and the Muggle kings comply, no doubt for their own purposes. It's inexcusable. You haven't seen."

"No, not what you have, evidently," Combeferre looked pensive. "But I've seen a few things of my own. Luc, I don't claim to understand quite what you're suggesting, but from your tone, it sounds radical."

"I'm not sure what I'm suggesting, yet. Only that things have to change. We've built a world on foundations of lies and secrecy, and it's causing suffering on both sides of the wall. I've made a comparative study of legislation from before and after the Statute was instituted and-- well, I'm half taught, and I have only the barest grasp of the complexities, but even I can mark the difference. Intellectually, we've crippled ourselves. All the emphasis we place on magical ability, all the cantrips we're taught in place of the ability to reason. How does a man's aptitude for spell casting relate to his proficiency as an administrator? It may ensure his strength of will, but it's no guarantee as to his intellect--"

"Or to his moral capacity, I understand you."

"And the Muggles-- you can't imagine the things they die of. Typhoid, cholera, pneumonia, tuberculosis, bubonic plague. They don't see a hundred years, most of them don't see fifty. Their physicians are fumbling along with potions we discarded centuries ago; I've heard the medical students talk. Nor can they produce what we can, not with just their hands to work with. We're sinking into our own separate savageries, because we refuse to acknowledge that more than one class of society has anything to contribute."

It was peculiarly engrossing, this outburst of fervour. Two years worth of thoughts, analysis, half contrived plans and half grown ideals all tumbling out, haphazardly, in untutored rhetoric, and Combeferre, caught up in it, reached out and grasped Enjolras' wrist. "Conclusion," he demanded. "What's your solution? Your ideal resolution of this untenable situation. Say you could wave that disused wand of yours."

"You want me to conjure up utopia?"

"Precisely." Combeferre's tone was both scholarly and authoritative. He was, alas, one of those unfortunates who, despite all their aspirations, inevitably end as professors or librarians. "After two years, you tell me you don't know what you want? That's not like you at all. You know, but you think I'll disapprove, so you're breaking it to me slowly, so I've agreed with you before I know quite what you're plotting. Don't think I don't know you, Enjolras."

"No," Enjolras' brow furrowed. "There you're wrong. It's not what I want that eludes me, but rather how to achieve it, which is part of why I need your help. But very well: put simply, I think the much vaunted International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy should be reversed. Whatever the reasons for implementing it in the first place, which have never struck me as particularly compelling, they no longer apply. We need a single government and a single society, not two separate ones striving against each other and grinding the people to pulp between them. A government representing both Wizards and Muggles, and elected from both communities, rather than magic or birth or money being allowed to determine a man's fitness for office. Equality-- like the old revolutionaries said: liberté, egalité, fraternité."

Something that fell between a hiss and a low whistle escaped Combeferre's lips, and he withdrew his hand. "Even if that was achieved here, and I doubt they'll allow you to step in and strip away all their reforms without a protest, it would mean war. England, Germany, Italy, China, the wizards of other nations wouldn't tolerate France depriving them of their anonymity. Because once the box is opened, mon ami, everything comes out, for good or for ill."

"So we must proceed with caution," Enjolras concurred, gravely. "To begin with, I could well be wrong; I want to test the waters. Your opinion is invaluable, but we need others. Nobody thinks of the Muggles; I confess I didn't, to start with, except to find out what I could about the lives of Muggle-borns. But I've learned a few things since, and they're discontent, Jérémie. Perhaps not enough to act, not yet, but they have in the past and they will again in the future. They want what a wholly Muggle, or wholly Wizarding, government could never provide: the liberty of their philosophers and the prosperity of our industry. What our fellows think of the matter I've been away too long to be sure. And then there are the Muggle-borns. They concern me most of all. If it turns out to be true of France, odds are it'll be true of other nations as well. Then we've only to find allies."

"We is it, already?" Combeferre regarded him affectionately, despite his ire. "I swear, you're incorrigible. You've got your heart set on this mad scheme, and I'm expected to play Tiresias to your Pentheus and give you advice you've no intention of heeding."

"Tell me I'm wrong. Can you tell me honestly that they don't put incompetent after incompetent in the chairs of the Council, because their colleagues know what would happen if it came to a duel? That the cries of a Muggle child matter less than those of a Wizard one? That we don't waste half our resources on this ridiculous secrecy? That the laws are as fair as they would have us believe? That the rumours of the Malfoy's mansions that we used to thrill ourselves with as children don't give you a less exhilarating thrill when you consider what those rumours might be based on?"

"No, I can't. Your motives have never worried me. Those least of all. But you're not telling me everything, and you know full well that--"

"You'll help me?" Enjolras was triumphant now. "I was counting on it, Combeferre."

"Yes, I'll help you. Though I can't claim to know how. You're the new expert on Muggles, and God knows I'm not well enough acquainted with polite society to learn anything there. I'm not the man you need for that at all; you should have written to Jean.

"Do you think he'd come?"

"How can I say? He, like all of us, is cloistered away somewhere," Combeferre gestured vaguely out a boarded window, into the unknown. "Avoiding his responsibilities."

"If by that you're inferring that I'm in hiding," Enjolras shook his head, "you've missed the mark again. My conscience brought me here and, I confess, my curiosity."

"Oh, nonsense," Combeferre snorted, amused. "Don't play at innocence with me, you're not so much of a fool. 'No one detected a trace of magic,' I said, and you replied, 'because I didn't use any.' Not even to heat a little water, or get those ridiculous Moldu garments properly fastened? Perhaps you didn't know your grandfather had his men looking for you, though I can't see how you could have missed it, even utterly immersed in the Muggle world, but you knew somebody would be looking, and you didn't want to draw attention to yourself."

"Not until I'd sorted a few things out, no," Enjolras confessed, wryly. "But that's neither here nor there, and I wasn't actively avoiding anyone."

"Only inactively."

"All right, M'sieur l'auror. Perhaps you ought to take up that profession yourself. Haven't you chided me enough? What I wanted to know was whether you thought Prouvaire would assist us."

"Honestly, Lucien. You know him at least as well as I do. Why would I know better than you?"

"In two years, men can change," Enjolras looked uncomfortable. "If he remembers me at all, I daresay he's as affronted as you seem to be. Besides, not knowing his ideals, I wouldn't presume on an old acquaintance for so serious a matter unless I was desperate. However rash you think me, I'm not entirely without thought. This is only for the dedicated to risk."

"So you wouldn't presume on old friends, would you?"

"That was entirely different," Enjolras smiled, a rare and charming expression. "Mon ami, I knew you wouldn't fail me."

"Ahh," Combeferre offered his hand again, and Enjolras took it, solemn once more. "Well, I can't vouch for Prouvaire absolutely. To begin with, the fact that I know his whereabouts doesn't mean that I've associated with him all that much, and anyway you know what happened to his parents during the Muggle Revolution. But as far as I can tell, he's much as he always was. He'll hear you out, if nothing else, and whatever he decides, I doubt he'll go running to the Council and denounce you as a traitor."

"Then that is settled."

"Indeed. You can send off two owls at once."

"No," Enjolras grimaced, recollecting his promise. "On second thought, you owl him. I'll write to Maman; the Muggle post will find her eventually, they found you easily enough, however inconspicuous we may try to be, and she'll set things right with the authorities. In the meantime, being arrested by aurors while trying to send off an owl at the post office would be inconvenient, to say the least."

"As you wish, m'sieur, though I doubt I'm the person best qualified to explain what you're after. Where shall I tell him to come, if he should deign to accept the invitation?"

"Here, I suppose. I've reserved this room every evening for a month, in case we needed somewhere private to talk. The walls of my lodgings are thin enough that every Muggle on the street could hear us plotting."

"A whole month? Didn't the owner think that odd?"

"No doubt he did," Enjolras' expression was as grave as ever, but there was a subtle glint of humour in his eyes. "Unfortunately, I still haven't got the hang of Muggle currency. I may very well have offered him a tremendous fortune in exchange for this service, as he didn't seem hurried to question his luck."

"Mon Dieu, he must think you're mad."

"Foreign, more likely. Which is perhaps for the best, though it galls me."

"Perhaps so," Combeferre agreed, stifling his chuckles. "And, presuming our old friend does come, Apparating as I did, how do you intend to explain these extraordinary arrivals, if he should chance to enter? Even foreign Muggles couldn't appear and disappear at will, last I heard."

"There is," Enjolras turned and coolly pointed a finger towards the far wall, adjacent to a disused alley. "Another door."

"Ingenious," the scholarly boy acknowledged, still barely containing his mirth. "You've thought of everything."

"Then stop laughing at me," Enjolras suggested, dryly. "Surely you have business to attend to. Come to that, what have you been doing with yourself these past years?"

"Business being done, we can turn to civility, I see," Combeferre retorted, but he stopped laughing. "Since you enquire so politely, mon ami, I have been studying medicine at various places-- they shunt us poor students around the hospitals on broomsticks as if we were training to stop bludgers instead of to fix broken bones-- but as they'll command my attention only four days out of the week, I shall have as much time to assist you as you care to use."

"And more than I have spare to use you. These Muggle professors are veritable slave drivers. Their despots learn their tyranny from their school masters, I'm certain. How long do you think it'll take to get a reply from Prouvaire?"

"Hard to tell. I'd hazard a week, to be safe. None of his owls are particularly reliable. I think he picks them for their plumage."

"All right, then. Ask him to meet us here, at six 'o'clock, ten days hence. Whether the answer's yes or no, we'll reconvene here then and plan our next move. And in the meantime, Combeferre, you ought to acquire some Muggle attire. You're conspicuous, like that."

"Do you mean to say I shall have to dress like you?" Combeferre plucked at the sleeves of his robe, looking dismayed. "It's hard enough to keep from laughing just looking at you, without being stuffed into those outlandish garments myself."

"Sacrifices, mon ami," if Enjolras' lips didn't twitch, his eyebrows certainly did. "One must make sacrifices."

"So I'm told," Combeferre rose, shaking his head. "And I strongly suspect I am being willed to go and write a certain letter. Subtlety was never your strength, Lucien."

"Another reason why I require your assistance."

"To teach you tact? God save me from that task, old friend. I would almost certainly fail, and if I succeeded the world would be a less candid place. Still, if I must give a lesson, I must: write to your mother!" And with that parting injunction, and a friendly nod, Combeferre departed with a barely audible 'pop,' leaving Enjolras to leave in a fashion more acceptable to those not wielding wands.

His smile was back, lingering and unconscious; not intended to charm, merely an expression of joy.

It had begun.