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.

16. Chapter 16

Archie reached for one of the sandwiches at the end of the table—roast beef with some sort of fancy mustard that had spicy whole grains in it. He thought about it a second, looking up at the grim-faced warriors around the room, and grabbed two more sandwiches. And a mug of coffee. It was going to be a long, long meeting.

"Might as well start," Uncle James said, heaving a sigh. Dumbledore wasn't there, but strangely it felt like the Headmaster of Hogwarts was more present than he had ever been. "Who wants first?"

Awkward silence met his words, which wasn't something that had ever happened at these meetings. People were usually eager to jump in and provide their reports to the rest of the group, and for the most part Archie, or Lina, or someone needed to take charge and gently direct the meeting into something that looked like an agenda instead of pure chaos. Looking around, it seemed like a third of the room were trying to avoid attention, or they were already biting into sandwiches. A few, like Ron Weasley and Marcus Flint, were looking around with discomfort—it was their first meeting, so Archie thought he could understand the feeling. He caught Lina's eye, and the woman shook her head.

"Weasley," she said, looking over at Ron. "You start. Report on the action at Hogwarts, I think we all need the context and closure."

"Er—" Ron shifted in his seat. He was only a few chairs away from Archie, so Archie could see that his ears had gone pink. "I'm not really—"

"You're the only one here who was at Hogwarts throughout the attack, so you might as well," Lina snapped. "Report."

Ron hesitated, then he reached for his glass of water. "I woke up at around four-thirty that morning, and I was sitting in the window of my dorm when I saw the lights outside the front gates. They were bobbing, so I was worried—I went down to the common room to get a better view. In the common room, I could see that it wasn't just the front gates, the trees in the Forbidden Forest were moving strangely too. I called for one of the professors. Used the messenger bird spell that all prefects are taught."

"Why were you awake at four-thirty in the morning?" The Lord Prewett frowned at him, his words a little sharp. "Early, isn't it?"

"I don't sleep that well." Ron shrugged, his shoulders shifting awkwardly. "I fall asleep fast, but I wake up too early when I'm stressed."

"That's not relevant." Lina waved her hand, her eyebrows pinched together in annoyance. "Move on."

"Professor Flitwick came," Ron said quickly, picking up from where he had left off. "He took a look outside, did some spells, and then told me to wake everyone in my house and then in Slytherin and have all the student assemble in the Great Hall. I did that—I woke my sister to help with the Gryffindors, then when most of the boys were at least awake, I went down to the Slytherin common room to wake them up. They don't, er, have any prefects left in Slytherin, they all withdrew for the year. One of the girls was in the common room, and she helped me there."

Lina was making a motion with her hand for him to move on.

"I was halfway up the stairs from the dungeons when Voldemort's ultimatum came through—"

"Time?" Moody interrupted.

"Er—" Ron hesitated again. "Just past five in the morning? I'm not sure, I was hurrying to the Great Hall and didn't check."

"The man says he'll attack in an hour if you don't surrender, and you don't think it might be important to check the time?" Moody growled, glaring at Ron, whose ears had darkened to a deeper shade of red.

"He's not a soldier," Dad cut in, giving Moody a look of warning. "No one's blaming you for not checking the time, Ron. Just go on."

Ron nodded, taking a gulp of his water. "Yeah, so I went to the Great Hall and went to speak to Dumbledore. The other professors were already gone, shoring up the defences on the grounds and in the castle, and Neville was going to arrange the evacuation plans. Dumbledore asked me to take a group of upper-year volunteers to arrange a defence from the towers, and Cho to organize the students to prepare for evacuation. It took me a bit to get volunteers, and we were running upstairs when Neville returned. It must have been just after six, then, because Voldemort had started hitting the castle wards, with great big gobs of power."

"Who cares about finesse when you have that much power available to you?" Neal snorted, his green eyes narrowing.

Ron shifted his shoulders again—not a disagreement, just an acknowledgement. "Anyway, I'm not sure how much more I can tell you. Voldemort attacked, and I felt Dumbledore collapse the passageways under the school, then the group going through the Forbidden Forest got onto the grounds. Er, I think Voldemort split his group into three, one for the passageways, one for the Forest, and one at the gates. The group coming through the Forest split, half going to try to break the wards at the walls and half to harry us."

"Numbers?" Lina asked, her voice cutting in sharply.

"Maybe seventy in the Forbidden Forest group?" Ron grimaced. "I didn't count."

"We did find eighteen of Voldemort's casualties in the passageways under the school, too," Uncle James added, not unkindly. "Three routes of attack sound right. Go on, Ron."

"Yeah. Er, Flint's group showed up maybe a half-hour or hour after that. I wasn't really paying attention to the time, sorry. Rosier came up to join us too, with his rifle, and started trying to pick people off. With the distance to the towers, we were really only slowing them down with covering fire, we didn't manage to inflict many casualties. The rain kept them from targeting us, but it was hard to aim down, too." Ron paused, gathering his thoughts. "The front gates fell, just as the sky was getting a bit lighter, and Voldemort got on the grounds. The castle kept shaking—it felt like he was trying to collapse the building under us, but the castle held. A little while after that, we heard a massive boom, absolutely deafening, and the castle started glowing. White, with a tint of blue. The backup forces arrived not long after that, and Voldemort skedaddled."

"Skedaddled, did he?" Moody shook his head. "Need to work on your reporting, Weasley."

"He's not an enlisted soldier," Dad repeated with a glance at Moody, but he didn't press it. "What I don't understand is, what happened? What was that spell? Dumbledore was fine when we arrived—tired, it looked like, but fine. And then the next thing we know, Professor McGonagall is announcing his death."

There was another awkward pause—Archie, too, had wondered about that, but he hadn't wanted to ask. It had seemed insensitive in the aftermath of the Hogwarts battle and with Dumbledore's funeral soon after.

"He spent his life force casting a spell to block Voldemort from taking the castle," Moody replied gruffly, looking away. "Surprised he knew the spells."

Moody said it like he was stating the obvious, like it was something that they should all have understood, but from a cursory glance around the room, Archie could see that most of the others didn't know what he meant. A quick look at Hermione showed that her lips were pursed as she put together bits and pieces of their Healing training—Archie knew about the magical core, of course, and he knew that within the core was their life-force, but no one had ever suggested that it was possible to use their life-force as magic. It was supposed to be sealed off, untouchable by any mage.

"Cracking the seal on your own life-force and spending it gives you an enormous boost of power," Lina added, her voice flat and matter-of-fact. "But you pay for it with your soul. There are arguments that the life-force is synonymous with the soul, but the theory doesn't really matter. In practice, do it and you become a Soulless, just as if the Dementors had gotten to you. Depending on how much power the witch or wizard spent, it could be hours or days to Fade. Nothing anyone can do about it, but good for last wishes and the like."

"The Fade…" Hermione sounded thoughtful. "Like in children?"

"I don't know, nor do I care." Lina shook her head, obviously discomfited. "The spells to break the seal for life force magic are advanced magic. I couldn't tell you where Dumbledore learned it; as far as I know, only Stormwings are taught the skill, and in theory only."

"Did his spell work?" The Lady Longbottom was more pragmatic. "Did he succeed?"

There was another pause, as Lina considered the question. "He certainly imbued more protections into the castle than it had previously. We can't be sure of the extent of those protections, but when I advanced, I could see that Voldemort hadn't managed to gain entry to the castle even though the Entrance Hall doors were broken. The Hogwarts wards were bonded in the building itself—it made the castle harder to bombard, but when the doors cracked open, so did the Hogwarts wards."

"Hogwarts was supposed to have our strongest wards." Lord Prewett leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him with an expression of cool anger. "And yet it held for only a few hours, while Queenscove was held for weeks with no effect. Why is that? How could this have been prevented?"

"Uncle Fabian, Hogwarts was well-defended for a school," Ron spoke up, sounding more sure of himself than before and almost a little defensive. "But it wasn't a fortress. It had secret passages out to Hogsmeade and only one low-lying outer wall which left a gap for the Forbidden Forest. Queenscove is an actual fortress—it has outer and inner curtain walls, six ravelins and probably no more than two gates."

Neal glanced over at him, his green eyes suspicious. "And how would you know that, good sir?"

"Percy writes me." Ron looked away, embarrassed. "I was interested in how Queenscove held out during the siege."

"I must have a word with Percy about revealing our secrets, then. In the lists." Neal leaned back, and it was only through years of knowing him that Archie could see the wicked glint in his eye. It seemed out of place, before Archie remembered that for Neal, Dumbledore was no one at all. Unlike Archie, who had grown up in a family that looked up to Dumbledore, Dumbledore really was just another Lord to Neal, no different from the Potters or the Prewetts or any other family. Neal looked down the table from where he was sitting. "But Ron is right. Queenscove is a fortress. Our ravelins prevented Voldemort from blasting us with the same kind of power that he used at Hogwarts—the triangular shape splits his power, spreading it out over a larger area. And since outer walls look over the ravelins, we can fire over the ravelins from a defended position, just like the ravelins provide flank and rear support on a wall assault."

"Building in stronger defences for Hogwarts would have meant physical fortifications or earthworks—far more than we'd have been able to do without being noticed." Uncle James shook his head. "It's done, and Hogwarts is well behind the Scottish border. Next update? Aldon?"

"Voldemort's troops are badly demoralized," Aldon said, sounding somewhat clinical and detached. "He had an overall casualty rate of more than a third in Scotland, which includes people who are simply missing in action rather than confirmed killed in action. I suspect that many of those missing have simply run. This is having a spiralling effect on Voldemort himself: the more that he loses, the more he lashes out at his own soldiers, and as a result, the more demoralized they become. It was always bad, but before, some of the troops could dream of glory—now they do not."

"Do we have numbers?" Moody demanded. "He has to be recruiting, now."

Aldon's lips tilted into a half-smile with no humour in it. "Better. He's beginning a formal conscription. Before, he informally pressured people into enlisting, often with a threat to their families—beginning in about a week, according to my source in the Department of Justice, all wand-holders between the ages of eighteen and forty will be expected to appear before the Ministry of Magic, and to show evidence of why they should not be pressed into service. Failure to appear will, in itself, be a crime.

"The wizarding identification cards put into effect in January will be of service to Voldemort here, since anyone who has one and who hasn't managed to break the tracking spells on them will be easily located by Voldemort and his troops. My sense is that we might have some breathing room while he rebuilds, but the losses in Scotland have destabilized him further. He was never very stable, but is even less so now.

"Finally," Aldon said, and his smile spread across his face. "Voldemort has fired both of his Stormwings. His relationship with them was never very good, since they refused to bow to him or to his usual methods, and he was deeply disappointed that they did not bring him victory in Scotland."

"Voldemort barely listened to them in Scotland." Lina snorted, rolling her eyes. "Sending his army into the Highlands when we were using guerilla tactics was a beginner's mistake. Neither of his Stormwings would have ever recommended it."

"That conforms to what my sources have advised me," Aldon agreed. "Both Stormwings had learned, by the end of the Scottish campaign, to remain silent unless their specific guidance was requested, in which case Voldemort would hear them out and, half the time, dismiss it."

"Fool," Lina muttered.

"But a powerful fool," Moody countered in a growl. "I don't care that his forces are demoralized or that he's needs to recruit. Power does funny things to people's heads. The man is like a cornered snake, hissing and biting at everything he can. This is when he's going to use his power to try to punch his way out. Constant vigilance!"

"There are still the outstanding warrants on Grimmauld Place, and for the Shafiqs and Shacklebolts," Aldon added. "But I do not think that outstanding warrants will have much effect on him now. Previously, one of my own inside sources had been able to corral Voldemort and his army into obeying the constraints of the law in the name of legitimacy—she has since been blown, so we can no longer rely on that."

"Is she all right?" Archie piped up, looking over at Aldon in worry. He had read too many articles in the Daily Prophet about captured rebel collaborators and spies, and the worst part was that while he helped to tabulate all the information and pass it around, he never knew if Voldemort had actually captured any of their people. Aldon kept the identity of his informants on a strict need-to-know basis.

"She's fine," Aldon looked over at him with a quick smile. "She escaped before they could arrest her."

Archie nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. The Daily Prophet was never very clear on what happened to caught spies and collaborators, but combined with their other information, Archie knew that it was nothing good. Hermione reached over and squeezed his hand, before leaning forward to join the conversation herself.

"Conscription is going to spark more refugee requests," she said. "We're already seeing a small, preliminary uptick. People within the Ministry are tipping off the people they care about before the formal announcement is made, so that they can run. Some of them are coming through us, but mostly not. Still, I do have good news—both Scotland and Ireland have sent independent delegations to the ICW, and they've put formal recognition of both states onto their May agenda. Scotland is also seeking official ICW military aid under the responsibility to protect doctrine, while Ireland is making a pitch that Voldemort's regime should be declared a threat to the stability of the Statute of Secrecy and calling for broad international involvement."

"Is that likely to succeed?" Uncle James asked, with a slight frown. "I mean, they've never helped before…"

"Some countries will probably provide military aid—not from every state, but MACUSA, Wizarding Germany and a few others are likely to put together a peacekeeping force for the Muggle cities," John said, his voice coming from the communication orb just a little too quiet to be easily heard. Aldon reached over and cast a Sonorus charm on the orb.

"Thank god." Tonks sighed, dark circles under her eyes. "We had a quieter few months with the siege on Queenscove and the Scottish campaign, but the Met needs as much help as it can get. There are a bloody thousand Muggle murders unsolved in the past year and a bit, all of which have hints of magical involvement, and it's a goddamn nightmare. DCI Singh has been going on about how we can't possibly protect our Muggle neighbours, not with our numbers. There's only forty of us for all of Muggle Britain."

"Well, you can probably expect a force from the ICW in a few weeks, then," John said, and Archie could hear the smile in his voice. "But they won't be fighting in the war—they'll just be coming to protect No-Majs, really. Sovereignty rules."

"Sovereignty rules?" Tonks prompted.

"Every country is a sovereign nation and is therefore entitled to self-determination." Gerry's voice was the next to come out of the orb. "Foreign nations are not supposed to intercede in another nation's internal affairs. Not every country accepts the responsibility to protect doctrine, which allows a foreign state to intercede to protect civilians—rather, most don't, which is why the ICW relies so heavily on sanctions to express international disapproval. Even the countries that do, like MACUSA and Wizarding Germany, are leery about taking any actions that directly impact the end result of another nation's internal conflict. We're not sure how the ICW will take Wizarding Ireland's pitch. I expect that it'll lead to another declaration, and potentially sanctions on any countries aiding Voldemort."

"The sanctioning of countries aiding Wizarding Britain isn't unusual," John added, but he sounded skeptical. "But mostly declarations are tied to a specific incident, or they're vague and just refer to the humanitarian crisis. I think a lot of countries, MACUSA included, would be inclined to agree, but I'm not sure that the threat to the Statute is going to be convincing. It's too speculative, since we don't actually know Voldemort's position on the Statute of Secrecy. A better argument would be to draw the comparison between the Lower Alleys, Wales, and the attack on Hogwarts School—it shows a clear pattern of behaviour."

"Hermione, the BIA still has contacts in Wizarding Ireland, isn't that right?" Lina asked, turning to her.

"Yes, we do," Hermione confirmed.

"Would you suggest that platform to them? Riordan's new in politics, and so is her entire department of foreign affairs—I don't want there to be any possible aid for Voldemort, especially not from Wizarding Russia or the more sympathetic elements of Wizarding France," Lina replied flatly. "Durmstrang and Beauxbatons have preserved a vocal pureblood supremacist minority in both countries, and Russia is notoriously neutral on the blood equality issue. I don't want to worry about Voldemort managing to solicit aid from either of them."

"France isn't likely anyway," Gerry said, while Hermione nodded and made a note on her pad of paper. "Their minority has never gained anything like power since the Grindelwald Wars, and France itself is mostly integrated with the Muggle world. Even their fringe, pureblood supremacist element looks very different than that of Wizarding Britain."

"Still." Lina grimaced. "I would not like to be surprised."

"You never like surprises." Moody's smile made the scars on his face pull, and Archie realized he had never seen the man smile before. "No Stormwing does. Training beats it out of us. Constant vigilance!"

"You're mad," Lina retorted, then she turned to the rest of the table. "But he is right. It is possible that Voldemort will need time to collect his units and shore up his position, but he is also dangerously unstable and cornered. He also needs to be seen acting after the overwhelming loss of Scotland, so it's also possible that he'll strike at any of us. He knows who we are, he knows where he can find us. That said, we need to keep our own momentum rolling. We luckily had fewer casualties than we could have hoped for in Scotland—nine, to be exact—so we need to be planning our next strikes within Britain itself."

"What is the plan for units?" Neal looked over at Lina, his brows pinching together in worry. "Queenscove might be a fortress, but it still needs units to stand sentry on the walls and so on. I am not willing to give up any more units than I have, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we stripped ourselves down to the bare minimum of people we needed for the Scottish campaign."

There was a murmur of agreement around the table. During the Scottish campaign, at least the safehouse leaders could be reasonably sure that Voldemort was preoccupied in the north—having him back on English soil had made everyone tense.

"With the war in England itself now, there's no reason why we need to pull units from anywhere except during specific strikes," Uncle James interceded, looking over at Neal. "We need places to house the units between strikes anyway. In some ways, fighting in England is easier because we have more safehouses and this is our home territory—we might not have the force of numbers of the Scots, but we're much better able to rotate our units through our safehouses and come to each other's aid."

"What are the Scots doing now, anyway?" The Lord Naxen asked, his mouth turned downwards in disapproval. "Now that they have their independence, with our help, what assistance are they planning on providing to us?"

"Troops for the northern border zones," Dad said, leaning forward on Archie's other side. "It's in their interest to enforce a border zone, so they are sending reinforcements to Queenscove, Goldenlake, and Naxen. We're going to call back the units you have presently stationed there for the south and for our next strikes."

"And where are these next strikes planned to be?" Lady Longbottom asked, sounding much less critical than Archie had learned to expect from her.

Lina, Moody, and Uncle James exchanged a look, and Uncle James shook his head. "These meetings are too large, and it's strictly need-to-know information. We'll be in contact if you need to know. For now, entrench your estate as much as possible to take an attack."

"Longbottom Manor does not have physical walls, or any sort of barriers," Lady Longbottom replied stiffly. "They were taken down in the seventeenth century, after the need for physical defences was past and the manor renovated. Would you please explain how those of us without medieval fortresses are supposed to entrench?"

"Strengthening your wards is always a good beginning." Uncle James reached for his mug.

"Then assume they'll break your wards." Moody laughed, without any humour at all. "That is where most Lords fail—they put too much faith in their wards and in their powers over their grounds. If you think about what might happen and build in defences for after your wards collapse, you'll be ahead of the game."

"Mostly, for inner-ground defences, you want to think about bleeding the enemy," Lina finished, looking grim. "Killing as many attackers as possible with spells set into the grounds, typically with a manual trigger. You want to ensure that whatever force comes through on the other side is much smaller, badly demoralized by the loss of their comrades-in-arms, and preferably wounded. I don't have time to review Longbottom Manor and make recommendations, but we have several Stormwing trainees with us on Service—we can send one to you for a review."

"I don't suppose—" Ron cut in, his face torn between interest and embarrassment. "Would I be able to tag along for one of those reviews?"

"Your mother—" the Lord Prewett objected, but Lina's voice was louder.

"I don't see why not," she said, waving a hand. "Especially if you organize a list of the safehouses who need help with entrenchment."

"Done," Ron replied a little too quickly, avoiding looking at his uncle. "Should I put you at the top of the list, Lady Longbottom?"

"Please."

"Is that offer also open to communities?" Harry asked, her bright green eyes sharp. "Leo and I are starting to hear from our community contacts, and the formal announcement of the conscriptions is only going to make it worse. There's open talk of resistance in Godric's Hollow. They aren't even trying to keep it secret anymore."

"The Lower Alleys are the same," Leo said, a flicker of empty grief on his face, gone almost as quickly as it appeared, the only sign of the Fiendfyre attack of so many months ago.

"Communities are harder to defend." Lina shook her head. "No easily defined boundaries, and talk about resistance is still a long way from picking up a wand."

"But it's a good sign," Uncle James interrupted, shooting Lina a look. "It means they're likely to accept a new government instead of rising up themselves. I think we need to encourage these talks, see if they come to anything more than talks."

"I don't disagree," Lina said, though the wrinkle on her face said otherwise. "Mostly. But encouraging these talks will be dangerous. Communities are not like safehouses—we can't control who comes in or out. For every person that openly talks about resisting the Ministry, you should assume that there is one person that supports Voldemort and who will report to him the minute the opportunity is there, and three people standing in the wings to see how the wind blows."

"So, maybe we support them," Archie suggested, pushing his plate aside. Of his three sandwiches, only one was left. "We have a lot of spies and informants, don't we? We ask them to drop a word here and there, gauge the temperature of their communities, make a few suggestions here and there. Maybe they don't have to pick up their wands to resist, Lina—maybe we just want to get them to the point where they won't resist us. And we can make note of people that we think might be especially helpful."

"We've been doing that for months," Aldon said dryly. "I had no intentions of stopping."

"A symbol." Harry looked around, scooting forward in her chair with a recognizable glint in her eyes and a smile crossing her face. "What we need is a symbol. Not a bridge, which is too closely identified with us. Something that's very clearly anti-Voldemort, but not identified with us. People who are against him will copy the symbol, and it'll turn into a popular drive. When people against Voldemort see it, they'll feel like they are part of a larger movement; when Voldemort or his fanatics see it, it should demoralize them more. It'll make even a small movement look big."

"Are you suggesting petty vandalism, cuz?" Archie asked, breaking out into a grin.

"Some might call it petty vandalism, but I call it a study in semiotics," Harry retorted, turning her nose up in a fake expression of snootiness.

"What's the symbol?" Moody asked, considering. "As Harry said—it should not be associated with us."

There was a moment of silence—Archie exchanged a look with Harry, who was looking upwards in thought, then Aldon coughed.

"I might have one, but it is rather vulgar," he muttered. "It will work most effectively against Voldemort and his inner circle, and it does rely somewhat on whether the population believes that Voldemort was behind the attacks on Lord Riddle's Ministry before the coup. There are easier symbols, like the Ministry symbol in flames, or a broken lock, or a few broken links of chain—"

"Spit it out, boy," Moody growled.

Aldon cleared his throat. "Well, Voldemort had a symbol. He used it in the attack on the Quidditch World Cup, the skull with a snake coming out of its mouth. He called it the Dark Mark, and we haven't seen it since, likely because someone within Voldemort's organization dissuaded him from using it. But perverting the image somehow will have a greater effect on him than any other symbol."

"Perverting it, eh?" Moody's sole brown eye held a hint of humour, though his electric-blue eye still whipped around the room with wary caution. "And, you said, vulgar."

"Vulgar just means common, you know," Hermione added, with a slight frown. "Not inappropriate or obscene. It comes from the Latin vulgaris, or the common people."

Aldon coughed again, ignoring both her and Moody. "Well, I rather thought that it would be fitting to hang the damn skull with the snake. Voldemort will hate it. And the more he reacts to it publicly, we can hope that others will adopt it."

There was a pause, and then a round of snickers and laughs around the table.

"I like it," Harry declared, her smile small but genuine. "Leo and I will do it—we'll stick it first somewhere prominent in Diagon Alley, and I'll drop one somewhere in Godric's Hollow in a week, and we can throw them through the remaining Alleys and other wizarding communities too."

"Good." Lina yawned, and motioned for someone to pass her the plate of sandwiches. "Should we move onto safehouse reports?"

By the time the meeting finished, over three hours later, Archie was ready for a nap. Two mugs of coffee did nothing, and the to-do list for what information would need to go into Bridge, what information would have to stay out of Bridge, and what the information he needed to pass to different groups was swimming in his head. Hermione had returned with them back to Grimmauld Place but had quickly slipped out the back route and headed for a Muggle train back to Oxford. She needed to call her contacts in Ireland, she reminded him, and Muggle telephones were still the most reliable method of reaching them.

Archie had once asked her how she could still move about as easily as she did, without having the Ministry of Magic after her. She had shrugged, saying that she had never been very prominent in Wizarding Britain, and they had never really gotten a fix on her appearance, either.

Should they even be calling Wizarding Britain Wizarding Britain anymore? They were the British Isles, but without Ireland and Scotland, it was only really England and Wales. With the genocide in Wales, he wondered whether Wales could even really be included, though he supposed the land itself still fell under the Ministry of Magic. More accurately, he thought it was probably just Wizarding England, now.

"You look beat," Dad said, shaking his head. "Go have a lie-down. I can wake you for supper."

"I don't even think I need supper." Archie grimaced. "I'm pretty sure I ate about seven sandwiches just to stay awake. It's the carbs, they're weighing me down."

"There were a lot of sandwiches." Dad grinned. "You weren't the only one. I'll make something light and leave it out in case you wake up and are hungry, how does that sound?"

"Thanks, Dad. You're the greatest, you know?" Archie fought another yawn.

"Only when you tell me so." Dad patted him on the shoulder. "Go on, have a nap."

"Yeah."

When he woke, it was dark, and Grimmauld Place was shuddering. He flailed for a moment, thinking he was dreaming, but then there was a pounding on his door.

"Archie!" he heard Dad hollering, and he startled upright.

The building shuddered again. An attack—the attack on Grimmauld Place that they been anticipating for months, he realized. They had run so many drills that Archie had started wondering if it would ever really come, since they were in the heart of London. He had thought there was just too much risk to the Statute of Secrecy.

He was wrong.

The building shuddered again, and he heard the sound of wood splitting. The outer fence or gate, maybe. He didn't know, and there was no time to think about it.

"I'm up!" he yelled, grabbing his wand and reaching for the backpack he had prepared months ago. It carried only the essentials: clothes, a Healing kit, the pouch of Battle Potions Harry had made for him. He knew the drill—he knew his orders.

He slammed into Dad, looking ghost-white in the hallway. "Do what you gotta do, Dad," he said, wrapping him in the tightest hug he could squeeze in a few seconds. "I'll see you later. Potter Place."

Dad nodded, his returning hug every bit as fierce as Archie's, before he tore away. "Go. Orders."

Archie nodded and ran downstairs. He could hear the shouting from their Auror unit, heading either outside into the gardens as the first line of defence, or from the third storey as covering fire. They would Apparate out after Dad dropped the Anti-Apparation wards and set the final trap, just as Dad would. Archie headed first for the kitchen, where he grabbed the list of runic shortcodes pinned close to the kitchen counter. One look around, quick, showed that the kitchen table was still stacked full of papers, and Archie couldn't tell if they were important or not.

The building shook again, and this time there was a horrendous crack, as if the ground itself was splitting. Archie didn't have time, so he whipped out his wand and set the kitchen table on fire.

Then he ran for the Portkey Hub and drew the runic shortcode to Rosier Place. He needed to report the loss of Grimmauld Place, just in case the bombs didn't destroy the Hub first.

XXX

Ed sat across from him, a small smile on his face as he regaled Aldon with yet another tale from his trip overseas. Francesca, sitting beside him with her hands moving gracefully over her traditional-style tea set, was bored—he could tell by the rhythmic way she handled the tea accessories and the slightly vacant look in her eyes that her thoughts were thousand miles away. He could understand the feeling. As much as he loved Ed, he had heard this particular story about the chimaeras in Africa at least twice before. Once, he knew that he would have listened to these stories over and over happily—now, he couldn't help but wonder if his time was better spent elsewhere.

He did need to entertain Ed, he reminded himself sharply. Ed had access to him, and while they rarely spoke of anything of importance, Ed was expected to carry reports of him back to Voldemort. Aldon knew from Vulture that Ed was to be searching for the secrets behind the ACD—with the exception of Francesca, Aldon was careful to keep the remainder of Blake & Associates out of sight during these meetings. Francesca had said that he had tried to pry her on her education and background when they were alone, but she had avoided being alone with him since. Francesca didn't like Edmund, but then, she didn't like people, as a rule.

He didn't want to entertain Ed today. Grimmauld Place had been lost two nights ago; Archie had shown up at Rosier Place near midnight, close to a panic, setting off the alarms. They had expected to lose Grimmauld Place, and by every measure the plan had been a complete success: Archie, Sirius, and the entire unit stationed at Grimmauld Place had escaped, all the valuable documents had been burned, and the townhouse had been blown sky-high. They had accounted for, at best guess, near twenty or twenty-five of Voldemort's followers, with only the loss of the manor building itself as the price.

It was, as Lina said, a perfect victory. They had lost no one, and their plans had gone off with no problems. Sirius had a very well-trained unit, and he had set the timer on the bombs himself just before Apparating. Better, they had inflicted serious casualties onto Voldemort's forces, perhaps the single biggest loss for Voldemort in any strike since Malfoy Manor. But Aldon couldn't help feeling like they had lost something, because they had one fewer safehouse than they had had before. The London safehouse too, the easiest and most direct connection to their few international allies.

In his annoyance, it took him a minute to realize that Ed's story had taken an unorthodox turn. He was talking about his and Alice's journey across Central Asia, which they had decided to do the old-fashioned way by rail.

But they hadn't done that. From the Africa leg of their trip, they had taken an International Portkey directly to Sri Lanka. Even if Aldon hadn't known that, the reaction of his core would have tipped him off. It was thorny in his chest, reacting to the lie.

"Is that so?" Aldon asked, taking one of the tiny aroma cups of tea that Francesca offered to him and sniffing it. He kept his tone the same: bored but polite. "And how was the train? Surely it was a long journey, several days at least. Even the train from London to Hogwarts was a full day."

"More than two weeks," Ed confirmed. "And the sleep lodging was uncomfortable—we were near the back of the train, which rocked up and down. We did have an excellent view of the scenery, and once we caught the view of a magnificent garden that one of the Russian wizards had cultivated. I was shocked that he had been able to grow such an impressive garden so far north."

Aldon nodded slowly, thinking fast. He couldn't be entirely sure of Ed's meaning, but he thought that his friend was telling him his location in Malfoy Manor. After the return from the Scottish campaign, both Ed and Alice had been moved back to Malfoy Manor—the fear quotient of the Lestrange Manor was apparently deemed subpar with Bellatrix full-time in residence at the Malfoys, and Voldemort had wanted to keep an eye on them.

Ed was saying that he and Alice were being kept the back of the house, somewhere with a good view of the grounds—but also, for security, Aldon had to assume that they were on an upper storey. Otherwise they'd be able to clamber out a window and make a run for it. By the reference to the gardens, that meant somewhere with a view of the Malfoy gardens.

There had to be a hundred rooms that fit that description.

"What was in the garden?" Aldon asked, working to continue sounding bored. "If it was so impressive."

"It went by so quickly, I couldn't tell for certain," Ed lied. "We did catch a statue of a phoenix rising from the ashes, however, and another of a centaur. They were very well made."

Aldon didn't remember whether the Malfoy gardens had those statues, but they had to be another clue. He made a note of it for later—Malfoy could likely help him narrow down the rooms. He didn't think he could get much further on that point, not without more information on Malfoy Manor. "I see," he said instead, handing his aroma cup back to Francesca with a brief nod of approval. "How was the train otherwise? Crowded?"

"Very much so," Ed confirmed. "Easily a hundred people—more likely a hundred and fifty. In retrospect, we ought not have taken the train at all—Portkeys or even Apparation would have been better."

An expression of regret, tied into the numbers at Malfoy Manor. Even accurate, based on the guesses that Aldon had from his other spies and the constructed information from the shifter alliance surveillance team, and far higher than the numbers that Ed had given him before. Not that Aldon hadn't known that Ed was lying before, but this was different. This was Ed trying to tell him useful information under some other cover.

The question was, why? Voldemort knew that Ed would pass information to him—Ed's value was in the fact that he was allowed into Rosier Place at all. Voldemort also knew that Aldon was a Truth-Speaker, because all of the British Isles knew, so there had never been much point in Ed trying to conceal information from him. The fact that Ed was attempting some sort of subterfuge, and seemed to be dropping hints as to where they were being kept…

"Apparently there had been a reorganization of the train in the last year—all the sleeping cars were moved to the back, while the dining cart and other entertainments were moved to the front. Alice and I didn't spend much time outside of our sleeping quarters, though. Alice was too motion-sick to move." Ed paused. "We looked to get off the train near Irkutsk, but with the language barrier, it wasn't possible—we needed an interpreter but didn't have one."

"I see," Aldon nodded, taking the teacup that Francesca offered him and outwardly showing more interest in the tea than in his friend, even while he put the pieces together. Malfoy Manor had been reorganized. Most people were staying in the rear wings, and he and Alice were probably largely confined to their quarters. They wanted out, but they needed help. Alice might be injured. He took a sip of tea. "I would have helped, if I could."

His tone was nonchalant, his shoulders loose, and from an outside perspective he hoped that it sounded like a meaningless platitude. Ed gave no outward sign, moving on to talk about their journey through Wizarding China. There was little else that Ed could tell him that he didn't already know, even as he pried for more information and confirmation where he could. The reality was, after Voldemort began sending Ed to Rosier Place, Ed had even less access to relevant information than he had had previously.

He found Lina in the training yard after Ed left, in a one-on-one sparring match against Alex's second. Élodie was one of Lina's oldest friends, Aldon had learned, a part of her life from before being the supposed Lady Rosier. Accordingly, she had to be at least Lina's age, if not older, and yet the woman looked and moved like someone fifteen years younger. She had a gun, while Lina was using her wand and her handgun interchangeably.

Élodie was faster than his mother. Even if Lina had the benefit of magic, Aldon had long since learned that magic was something that one could work around with enough cleverness. Spells could be dodged, something that Alex and Neal had forced him to practice; unpleasant area-effect spells tolerated or ignored or circumvented entirely with more creativity. For the dhampir, gifted with both inhuman speed and strength, magic was only one more thing to consider.

Lina laid down a smokescreen too heavy for Élodie to get a clear shot, but the same spell meant that she couldn't aim either. Élodie dove into the grey cloud, and Aldon could hear the sound of thrashing movement—when the smoke cleared, Lina was on the ground, and Élodie had a knife pressed against the back of her neck.

"I yield," Lina muttered, her face in the dirt as Aldon's had been only that morning. Élodie stood up, letting Lina stand, and Aldon cleared his throat.

"Lina, can I have a word?" he asked, waving his hand to grab her attention. She caught sight of him and raised her hand in a motion to wait, then turned to Élodie. Most likely they were deconstructing their match—it was common after any bouts with the dhampir, though somewhat less so for the regular army. Aldon always seemed to go into those feedback discussions with absolutely nothing to say to his opponent, only to receive a dozen criticisms about the way he had moved, the way he had switched his weaponry, his distancing, or his other tactical decisions.

It was a minute before Lina came over, tucking her wand and firearm away. "Aldon."

Aldon looked back over the training yard—it was always busy, especially since Rosier Place had tripled its forces after the Scottish campaign. With the Scots taking care of the defence of their northernmost borders, Aldon had pulled two of the units formerly stationed at Queenscove, and everyone was required to do at least an hour of training a day. Most did more, and Aldon's gardens would never be the same.

He motioned his mother further away from the other people in the training yard, and lowered his voice. "It's Ed. Edmund."

"I do know who Edmund is," Lina replied dryly, crossing her arms over her chest. "What about him?"

"He asked for help. He—" Aldon hesitated, looking around. No one was close enough to listen in, not that it would be very secret anyway, but he lowered his voice. "If I could break him and Alice out of Malfoy Manor, they could provide more fulsome information—"

Lina's eyebrow went up. "Didn't you say something not long ago about how Edmund rarely had useful information that you didn't have anyway? Something about how Voldemort keeps him from as much important information as he can?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Has Edmund promised anything if he is freed? Has he intimated having particular knowledge, or being able to provide us with a specific advantage in the war? What does he plan on doing if we do manage to help him escape?"

"He hasn't managed to say anything specific, but—" Aldon stopped, trying to find a rationale. He had a sinking feeling in his chest. "He does have an injury, but I'm sure he will find a way to help, even if it isn't directly in combat. He could assist in the Hebrides, at the dragon reservations, for example. I'm sure Weasley and Scamander would appreciate it."

Lina sighed heavily, looking away. "I knew this day would come," she muttered, before she looked square at Aldon. "We don't have the forces for this, Aldon. I'm sure you remember what happened the last time we tried to take Malfoy Manor—since then, from all the information we have, Voldemort has only entrenched further into the manor and increased his forces. He might not be the Lord, but it will still take everything we have and luck to take it."

"But with the foreign units arriving this week," Aldon tried. He had known what Lina would most likely say, but he had to ask. "We have more forces, and this doesn't need to be something to take the manor necessarily, just an extraction plan for Edmund and Alice—"

"Edmund could have left any time he wanted," Lina pointed out. "He willingly goes back, every single time."

Aldon scowled. Now that he was with Francesca, he understood far too well what pressure Ed was under. Were it him, he would reliably return, too. "He has little choice. Voldemort holds his wife."

Lina sighed again, with a slight shake of her head. "I know, it was only a justification that you could use to handle your feelings. I'm sorry, Aldon. We are getting foreign forces, but they are earmarked for defence of the Muggle cities: London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff, and so on. They're going to take control over Heathrow's Terminal M and the Portkey Hub and hold it—it's better than we expected. But they won't be helping us advance the war. I can't give you the people for even a targeted strike on Malfoy Manor, it's too dangerous. We need to focus on strategic locations, and we need to bleed the enemy more. We are in a very good position now though, so when you see Edmund next, you can suggest that maybe he only needs to lie low and hold out for another few months."

"How many months?" Aldon looked down at the ground to hide his expression of annoyance. He did understand, but he didn't like it—nor was he done asking. Lina and the army might refuse, but there was Harry and Leo and their independent strike team, too.

"Six, maybe." Lina stared at him beadily, lowering her voice in warning. "Don't do anything stupid, Aldon."

"I won't," Aldon said, shaking his head quickly. Lina narrowed her eyes.

"I mean it."

"As do I," Aldon replied, letting a frown of consternation cross his own face, as if he was offended that Lina had even asked again. "I won't do anything stupid, Lina. Excuse me, I need to go find my assistant."

She stared at him, suspicious, but she let it go. Admittedly, Aldon didn't give her much choice—he had already turned on his heel and disappeared back into the manor.

He found Malfoy in the room that he had secured as his office, not far from Aldon's study. It had been a reading room before, but Malfoy had only kept one of the bookcases. All the comfortable armchairs had been stripped out, replaced with a hard, wooden table and a set of four wooden chairs. Only the carpet had been kept, a plush emerald green that somehow seemed incongruous with the harshness of the remainder of the furnishings. Even the curtains had been removed, allowing in the cold, afternoon sunlight. Malfoy himself was frowning at a roll of parchment—they had had an influx of people offering to act as informants after the conscription announcements, and Malfoy was screening them.

"Would you happen to know where Harry and Leo are?" Aldon asked, leaning faux-casually in the doorway.

Malfoy looked up from his work. A pause, a slight twitch of his eyebrows. "What is it, Rosier? You're tense. And upset."

"We're at war, of course I'm tense and upset."

"Not in the usual way." Malfoy tilted his head, gesturing with a quill to one of the other chairs in the room. "It's different. More desperation than our situation right now really warrants. Harry and Leo are planning another mission in Diagon Alley—they're going to carve that snake-hanged skull into the statue of Riddle near the north end this time, I think. Is this urgent?"

Aldon grimaced, striding in to sit down in the offered chair. It was urgent, because Ed would never have asked for help otherwise, but at the same time, Ed hadn't indicated any specific urgency. He couldn't really answer. "Not as urgent as the symbols, I do not think. But I need to discuss a potential extraction plan with them, and given the location, it will need additional planning. And assistance from you, too."

"From me?" Malfoy straightened from his sheet of parchment, studying him with sharp blue eyes. "Where is it?"

"Malfoy Manor," Aldon replied grimly. Malfoy already knew about Edmund, and he even knew that Edmund had visited today, since he had had to remain out of sight. "Today, during my meeting with Edmund, he gave his location in Malfoy Manor and asked for help. They're in the back, one of the rooms with a view of the gardens, and of statues of a phoenix and a centaur. Almost certainly an upper floor. I spoke to Lina, but she cannot help. She said that striking at Malfoy Manor would still be too dangerous, so there wouldn't be any troop support."

"A room with a view of the gardens and both the centaur and phoenix statues? There are only a few rooms that fit that description—they're at the end of the east wing, in one of the corner rooms." Malfoy shook his head, the twist across his lips the only outward sign of his anger. "We should have struck at Malfoy Manor as soon as we were done in Scotland. We knew Voldemort was centralized there, and if we'd moved before they passed the conscription laws… We'll need to hit Malfoy Manor eventually."

"Lina said that we still need to make targeted, strategic strikes and bleed the enemy." Aldon leaned forward in his seat. "And that it might be another six months before we can liberate Malfoy Manor. Harry and Leo?"

"Pansy is in Malfoy Manor too, isn't she?" Malfoy scowled, but he was looking away, to Aldon's relief. "I'll reach out to Harry and Leo. Extracting three can't be any harder than extracting two. And Malfoy Manor is mine. There has to be something else that I, the presumptive Lord Malfoy, can do. I'll think on it and do a bit of research."

Aldon hesitated, his Sealing Curse closing around his throat as the information that Swallow was a spy almost came to his lips. That information was still strictly need-to-know information, but Aldon was creative enough to find a way to tell Malfoy if he really considered it important. At the same time, he thought that perhaps Swallow's role should be something that Malfoy found out from her directly. It wasn't as if Malfoy had believed any of the other information floating from Voldemort's camp about her, and perhaps Malfoy wouldn't believe him even if he did tell him.

Was there really any harm to not telling Malfoy? Right now, they didn't even have a plan—perhaps Malfoy would find nothing, or Harry and Leo too would refuse, and it would all come to naught. And say that they weren't able to come to any sort of plan at all; in that case, it would be safer for Swallow if he said nothing at all. He could always change his mind later, when they had more of a plan.

But say that everything went ahead. Swallow had acted as a spy only though desperation, and her most recent correspondences were clear that she was out of Voldemort's favour. She hadn't said that she was in any particular danger, but if she needed to be extracted, Aldon did not want to stand in the way.

At the same time, Swallow had been one of his most highly ranked informants. Even out of favour, she had access to more information than nearly all his other informants, a situation that would only improve if she was able to regain Voldemort's favour. It was no exaggeration to say that Swallow's information could turn the tide of the war. Aldon had few enough spies in Voldemort's inner circle that he could not truly afford to lose her.

He could leave it Swallow. He doubted that Swallow would report any extraction attempt, and he could leave it to Swallow to decide whether she wished to be extracted or not. Even if she did decide to return with them, Aldon would still have Lestrange. Lestrange had been passing better information since their encounter outside Hogsmeade, and so while he could not really afford the loss of even one informant, it was a risk that he could take.

And if she did decide to stay, it wasn't as if whoever managed to get in would then stop and refuse to extract Ed and Alice. Chances were, it would be Harry and Leo, and he could not imagine it of them.

"Very well," he said, rising from his chair. "I—I appreciate it, Malfoy."

"It's nothing." Malfoy nodded, and a small, not unfriendly, smile flickered across his face.

XXX

Pandora stewed in a back corner of the former Malfoy formal dining room, now Voldemort's base of operations. Voldemort sat in the grand throne at the head of the room, silver encrusted with emeralds that could not have been comfortable, while beside him, in Pandora's chair, sat Bellatrix Lestrange. Both of those chairs had been raised on dais, nearly a foot higher than the rest of the stripped-down room. By contrast, Pandora's chair, hard and wooden and an ache on her backside, was tucked almost out of sight. Few people were paying attention to her, a fact that made her furious and grateful in equal measure.

It had been almost two weeks since the disastrous attack on Hogwarts. Pandora had been right. She had been right, and it absolutely galled her that not only had Voldemort ordered her punished for having given the advice to retreat, but she had been punished again for daring to tell him that she had told him so. She had told him that striking at Hogwarts would be a bad idea, she had told him that a loss at Hogwarts would put him in a much weaker position moving forward, and the very end result showed that she had been right.

And Voldemort wouldn't acknowledge it. Instead, he was listening to Bellatrix Lestrange, that insane bitch, because she said what he wanted to hear. She talked about how they would win everything back, as if a hundred and fifty foreign witches and wizards weren't even now streaming into England and Wales in support of the resistance, as if they hadn't already effectively lost not just Scotland, but the north of England. And Voldemort listened to her.

He was just another man. Someone else that she needed to control through sweet smiles and gentle suggestion, rather than someone who would listen to her because she was, in her own right, sharp and intelligent and correct. She was seething, and the worst part was, she had no choice but to see this through.

She had thrown her dice when she joined Voldemort's army. The future that awaited her if they lost the war—imprisonment, if not worse—was not something that she wanted to contemplate. Voldemort had to salvage a ceasefire, at the very least, and maintain his power if she wanted to avoid that future.

That, much to her displeasure, meant that she needed to linger in this very room, waiting and watching for a moment when she could win her way back into Voldemort's favour. It would happen—the people that Voldemort surrounded himself with were idiotic sycophants, without a single original idea among them. There would come a time when he needed a new idea, or a new suggestion, and there Pandora would be, ready to take her position back.

It didn't make the waiting any easier, especially because her body was still stiff and sore from the last punishment. Voldemort hadn't even allowed a Healer last time, so Pandora supposed that she was fortunate that Voldemort had ordered the younger Lestrange to do it instead of Bellatrix. Whatever one might say about Caelum Lestrange, he did nothing unnecessary, even if she was fairly certain he had nothing except Potions and hatred between his ears.

There was a flicker of movement in the doorway, only a few feet away from her. She turned her head, wincing slightly at the pain, to see Edmund Rookwood limping into the room. His face was grim, as it usually was during these report meetings, and in a brief, momentary flash, Pandora felt sorry for him.

Sorry for him? She shook herself. She had no reason to feel sorry for him. It was a very strange feeling and she didn't like it. She didn't even know Edmund Rookwood; she didn't recall meeting him but once in her life.

But sometimes, he glanced at her with a pleading expression on his face, as if there was something that she ought to know and didn't. Sometimes, someone would say something to her, and she would have no memory of the events to which they were referring. Sometimes, she even wondered if something was wrong about her memories. There was something about them that seemed curious and constructed—she had many memories of her childhood, but sometime after she was seven or eight, they seemed to dry up, becoming fewer and farther between. She usually assumed that life had simply been very dull and not memorable, but it was very odd.

Voldemort had noticed Rookwood enter, and motioned him forwards. Pandora caught sight of the huge, black-stoned signet ring on his finger—clearly some family's heirloom, and she fought to keep her disgust from showing. For someone who had eliminated the nobility, Voldemort certainly tried to adopt as many markers of the status as possible.

"Rookwood," Voldemort drawled, his hand reaching over to clasp Bellatrix's. "What news, my friend?"

There was a brief second of silence before Rookwood's jaw unstuck. "Aldon's forces have swelled since the Scottish campaign. Before the campaign, I rarely counted more than a handful of soldiers at his manor—now, there are at least two dozen. Likely more, since Aldon does try to keep me from as much information as possible."

"What about his defences?" Voldemort stared at him, his dark blue eyes intense. There was no outward sign, but Pandora knew all too well that Voldemort was wielding his formidable Legilimency on Rookwood. Voldemort used Legilimency almost all the time, long past the time any other wizard would have tired. Pandora had not thrown her lot in with him for nothing.

"Still magical in nature. No walls." Rookwood fell silent.

"And the nature of those defences?"

"I would not know. I would guess that they are powerful—I can feel the strength of the magic when I cross the grounds. There are many spells." Rookwood's hands were locked behind his back, gripping each other tightly. Too tightly—they were white and shaking.

Normally, Pandora wouldn't have seen it. From the front, the way that his hands were locked behind his back was well-hidden, but there was something strange about it. Rookwood was always stiff when reporting, but Pandora studied his shaking hands. Was that normal?

Something about it bothered her. But she hadn't seen him report from behind before, so perhaps this was normal. She should forget about it. It was unimportant.

She frowned suddenly. That thought was inconsistent. Pandora was not one to dismiss observations as unimportant. Every observation was important, if not for now then for something at a later time. And it likely wouldn't have occurred to her if she hadn't just been considering how some of her memories seemed to be overly constructed. What if her memories were lying to her? What if she couldn't trust her thoughts?

Rookwood's hands were important. She stared at them, concentrating. They shook like leaves while Rookwood reported, as he handed everything he knew or guessed about Aldon, about Aldon's wife, about the Rosier Place defences, about the resistance's next plans. More units in the south meant they had more reinforcements than the foreigners flooding in, and they had more money coming in from abroad as well. Any resistance government would be bought and paid for by foreigners.

"That is everything of importance, sir," Pandora heard Rookwood say. "Otherwise, I simply recounted more tales from my honeymoon—Aldon and his wife enjoy the stories."

Voldemort shook his head. "Do better next time, Rookwood," he said, waving a hand to dismiss him, and then Pandora saw it.

Rookwood's hands stilled, loosening behind his back. He was relieved. Why would Rookwood be relieved? Merely being dismissed would be one reason, but every other time Pandora had seen him leave he had been tensed until he left the room. And his shoulders were still stiff, so this was something else.

There was something else. She couldn't be entirely certain, but she was sure enough.

"Sir," she interrupted, standing. There was an uncommon sense of panic within her, which didn't fit. Pandora was never panicked. Pandora was focused, Pandora was determined, Pandora now had something gripped between her teeth and she knew it. "That is not everything. There is something else. I do not know what it is, but I strongly recommend re-examining him."

Voldemort's eyes were hard and considering as they rested on her, rifling through her mind. Pandora made her way forwards, ignoring Rookwood, who had frozen. The strange feeling of panic disappeared.

"Other than what he has advised, his memories include only tea with the Lord Rosier and his wife, and the said regaling of several very dull stories about his Grand Tour," Voldemort said slowly. "Are you suggesting that Rookwood is still able to lie to me?"

Pandora dipped a polite, deferential curtsey, lowering her eyes coquettishly. "I am suggesting that Rookwood and Rosier are close enough that there may be double meanings in the tales they tell each other," she said, picking her words with care. "They have been best friends nearly their entire lives, and by now have met each other often enough that a code may have been established. I suggest you reconsider any conversation that seems especially meaningless, sir."

Rookwood had gone pale, which was more a sign of his guilt than anything else. Voldemort glared at him, and the slight twitch of his eyebrow a few seconds later was all that Pandora needed to know that her hunch had been right. Pandora was always right.

"He seems to be trying to formulate some sort of escape plan," Voldemort murmured, leaning back in his throne. He glanced over at Pandora, a small smile crossing his lips. "What shall we do about that, Pandora? Since you identified it, it is only proper that you have a say."

"Of course," Pandora murmured, hiding her annoyance at his tone. She should have a say because she was brilliant, not because she was pretty, not because she happened to be saying something that he wanted to hear, not because of any other justification. "Sir, we should leave it. Rookwood has already set his plan in motion. A plea of this nature—Rosier will hardly be able to resist. He'll come for Rookwood, and Rosier is a greater prize. We set greater surveillance on the Rookwoods, and when Rosier comes, we capture him."

There was a long pause, as Voldemort studied her, and then he smiled.

"Wisely said, my dear," he murmured, before he raised his hand to her. "Come, sit with me. I have other things to discuss with you. Bella, find another chair."

Pandora smiled, and went.

Several layers beneath Pandora, Pansy shook. That had been close—too close. Pansy had pushed too hard, shoving her own thoughts at Pandora. But Pandora was nothing if not overconfident. As long as Pansy was careful moving forward, Pandora would forget about it, and forget about any hint that her memories were being hidden from herself.

She would have to send warning about Edmund. It was too bad about his plans, but Aldon was smart, and he wouldn't fall for it with her warning. And, based on Pandora's plan, she could try to push for better treatment for Edmund and Alice in the meantime.

This could be fixed. She was still in control.

She hoped.

XXX

"Mum, I really don't think—" Ron said, searching his mind for the right phrase. He was pretty sure there wasn't one—Mum had always been set in her ways, and Dad's passing had only made it worse. "Look, you know that this year is basically shot anyway, right? So many kids missed the year, all the sixth- and seventh-year core classes were amalgamated by Christmas."

"Half of my year is gone too," Ginny added beside him, but from her distant, resigned tone, Ron knew that she didn't think Mum would listen to her. She wasn't wrong—even Ron didn't really think Mum would listen to them.

"Then you'll both be ahead," Mum replied crabbily, moving around in the Prewett House kitchens and reaching for a container of flour. "Both of you are going back to Hogwarts when it opens, and that's final. Your schooling is important."

"The war is important, too, Mum," Ron said, trying to make himself sound firm. "My point is, I don't think going back to school is going to be of any benefit to us, either—no one's writing their NEWTs this year. Hell—"

"Language," Mum barked.

Ron winced. "No one even knows if the OWLs are happening this year. The Wizarding Examination Authority was run by the Ministry of Magic, and in the circumstances, no one knows whether they still exist. The professors were acting like they were, but in reality, I don't think it's a priority. Even Nev's taken a position as a messenger for the resistance, and someone taught him how to Apparate. I can be of more use here—"

"Doing what, exactly?" Mum snapped. "Following around the warmages like a lost puppy?"

Ron swallowed. It was true that he had spent most of the time off, nearly three weeks, coordinating defensive entrenchment reviews and following the Stormwings on trips to the various safehouses. It was mostly the trainees who went, but sometimes Moody would help too.

It was fascinating. Ron hadn't ever encountered anything that drew his attention as much as chess did, not until he began listening to the Stormwings talk. Chess had always been special for him—a game that he could lose himself in, which tested his wits against someone else in a way that other wizarding games didn't. Exploding Snap always had a sense of randomness, because the deck was primed to explode at some point, and while Quidditch was great, it didn't quite scratch that peculiar itch that chess always had for him. Nothing but chess did.

But that was until he started working with the Stormwings. Sure, he mostly just followed them around and took notes about what they said. The Longbottom Manor, the Stormwings thought, could benefit from spells that had a side effect of creating earthworks or other physical obstacles, because while they didn't have a large contingent of trained troops, they did have expansive grounds. By contrast, safehouses with smaller grounds needed to focus on spells that killed quickly and efficiently, since they didn't have large grounds to spread it out, and any spells that created physical obstacles would be more likely to cause bigger problems for them later. Every safehouse was different, but Ron felt like he had learned more in the last three weeks than he had in the past year. Possibly the last two, or even three years.

Mum had turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest, smudging flour onto her chest. "Do you know what those warmages are? They're the carrion of the battlefields. They prey on war, and on the good people who fight in them. The ones on our side aren't very different than the ones that fought for Voldemort—the former Lady Rosier even ran her own mercenary business where she earned thousands of Galleons killing people for money. Not because there was any greater principle, but for money. These are not people to admire, Ron."

"I—" Ron fell silent. He had no idea how to explain the feelings he had rushing through him. Maybe it wasn't a respectable profession, but everything about the war drew him. It was like chess—it engaged some part of him that never got fed otherwise. But it was more than chess, too. Maintaining the safehouses mattered in a way that chess didn't. Nobody doubted that a properly fortified safehouse would save lives.

"Mum, Ron has a point," Bill said, cutting in from the back. Ron turned around. His oldest brother was leaning against the back wall, fresh off a patrol shift with his long, red hair tied out of his face. "No one will really expect anyone to be finishing school right now, and Hogwarts is really just going to be a safe place where families can send their kids to get them out of the war zone. I don't think anyone will really be learning anything. And Ron is seventeen, Ginny sixteen. They're both old enough to enlist if they want."

"William Weasley." Mum turned to face him, placing her hands on her hips. "You are not seriously suggesting that your youngest brother and only sister enlist?"

Bill shrugged. "Mum, people younger than them both are already involved, on both sides. It's their country, too, and I don't think that fighting it is going to do any good. By the expressions on their faces, their minds are made up."

"That's right," Ginny announced. "I'm going to enlist."

"Ginevra Weasley, you are not enlisting in the war," Mum yelled, whipping around to face her. Ron had seen Mum and Ginny going at it many times in the past—Ginny was more of a tomboy than Mum had ever wanted in her only daughter, with no real interest in anything in the kitchen and too much interest in duelling and broomsticks besides, while Ginny found Mum suffocating. This, though, was different. Ginny's words had been calm, and her expression now was obstinate. Ginny would need to be tied up not to enlist.

Mum knew it, too, and her voice dropped to a stern whisper. "To your rooms, both of you. We aren't discussing this anymore. You're both returning to school on Sunday, and that's final."

"Or what?" Ginny challenged, her brown eyes sparking. "You'll throw us out of Prewett House? You'll clap us in irons, send us to Rosier's prison cells? I'm sixteen, Ron is seventeen. Dad is dead, and everyone else is involved in the war, and you just want us to hide at Hogwarts? What will you do to us if we don't?"

"That's enough!" Mum roared. "You'll both be back at school if I have to drag you both there myself, and if I have to tell the professors to hold you there!"

She turned around and headed into the pantry, dusting flour off her hands as she went in search for another ingredient, and the door closed shut behind her. Bill came forward to rest his hands on their shoulders. Ron exchanged a look with Ginny, who was gritting her teeth, a mulish look on her face.

"Go on," Bill murmured to them, nodding to the open door behind them. "I'll talk to Mum. She's just worried about you—you're the youngest, you're both still school age, so you're the only ones that she feels like she can really protect still."

"Are you going to talk her into letting us stay and enlist?" Ginny asked warily. "Or are you just going soothe her, tell her how we feel and hope she changes her mind?"

Bill shrugged. "I thought I'd start with the feelings and see where it goes, Gin. I'll try, all right?"

"Trying isn't good enough," Ginny snapped. "I'm enlisting, Bill. I don't care what Mum says, and the only question is whether I'm going to have to sneak out to do it, or not."

She turned around and stormed out of the kitchens. Ron glanced at Bill, whose eyebrows were raised, and he sighed. "I'll keep an eye on her, but she's right. We can both do more good here than we will at Hogwarts, and we want to do it."

Bill made a small motion with his head in acknowledgement, neither agreement or otherwise, and from his grimace he knew what Ron was saying. Ron slapped him on the shoulder and disappeared out the hallway after Ginny.

Sometimes, he was surprised that his family had come from nobility. The Prewetts were even Book of Silver, or something like that, and as far as Ron understood it most noble families tried to marry their children to each other. Mum had fallen madly in love with Dad though, and even if the Weasleys weren't noble, they were prominent and Light. The Prewetts also weren't like the Potters, or the Blacks, or anything like the Malfoys or Rosiers—they were noble, but they weren't rich, they didn't have any house-elves, and their manor house was small. Their two units, Bill included, were camped in the yard, one in the front and the other in the back.

The halls were broad, painted in minimalist white. The floors were hardwood, swept clean, while the windows that opened every few feet along his left side were curtained in sky blue. Along his right side, the doors that opened into the reading room the sitting room, the family room, the dining room and the recreation room were walnut. Ginny wasn't in any of those rooms, so he shook his head, took the stairs up to the second floor by twos, and stopped by her bedroom door instead.

He rapped twice on her door. "Gin?"

"Go away, Ron."

"Look, Gin." Ron paused, leaning slightly on the door. "I get it. I'm on your side, here. D'you want to talk about it?"

"No. Just leave me alone."

Ron frowned.

He thought that, as far as his siblings went, he and Ginny were pretty close. They were the two youngest, and also the two that were born the closest together aside from the twins. They were also the only ones born after the twins, and the problem with the twins was that the twins always had each other, a special connection that they shared with no one else. Fred and George Weasley were a unit, and they always looked first to each other, and only after that did the rest of their siblings come into the picture. Percy, four years older than him, had seemed far too old and had been, well, Percy, while Charlie and Bill were almost a decade older than him. By the time Ron was old enough to remember them, they had both been away at Hogwarts for most of the year.

Most of the time, if Ron had wanted to play with anyone as a kid, it had been Ginny. He remembered chasing after his brothers, but Percy had always wanted to read, and the twins were a world unto themselves. It was him and Ginny, Ginny and him, right until he went to Hogwarts.

He knew Ginny. Right now, after a spat like that with Mum, Ginny should have been hugely upset. She should have been crying—she never liked anyone to see her cry and always hid it, but Ron always knew. Ron even knew that Ginny really only cried out of anger. When Ginny was sad, she withdrew into silence, but she didn't cry.

She wasn't crying now. He knew the sound of Ginny's voice when she was crying, and she hadn't been crying. Her voice was calm and contemplative, but there was something chilling about it. He didn't like it.

The whole interaction downstairs had been unlike her. She should have argued more—she should have backed him up the entire way, and the Ginny he knew would have been up in Mum's face, yelling at her about how they were old enough, how they were ready. How this was their world too, and they should be allowed to take some responsibility for what their world looked like at the end. And except for one brief outburst at the end, Ginny had been a silent shadow beside him.

Ginny and silent were never a good combination. A silent Ginny meant that she was plotting, or that something was seriously wrong.

She had told him to go away, but Ron had ignored those very words often enough in the past. If Ginny had been crying, she would have told him the exact same thing, and Ron would have thought nothing about barging in. But if Ginny was plotting something, then he wasn't likely to get anything out of her anyway—she would just feed him a bunch of bullshit, then find a way to get him to leave. It was better for him just to back off and wait, see what she had planned.

And, if the plan seemed like it might work, maybe he would join her. He had no intention of going back to Hogwarts—even if Mum dragged him back, he was seventeen and a legal adult, so he was just going to leave. It would even be easier to just enlist and leave from Hogwarts than from Prewett House. Between Mum and the professors, Ron would take the professors.

He hesitated, then pulled out his wand and muttered an alarm spell at her door. Nothing too loud, just something that would let him know if Ginny opened the door so he could check on her then. Or follow her. Whichever looked like it would work better. He'd play it by ear.

His room was next door, so he left his door open when he threw himself on his narrow bed. Moody had lent him some books on strategy and tactics, some wizarding and some Muggle, and Ron was consuming them in great gulps and swallows. There was a difference, he learned, between strategy and tactics—strategy was what he knew, more like chess, where he plotted out the overall course of the war, while tactics were the immediate solution to the immediate problem. What he had done in his armchair in the Gryffindor Common Room, thinking about the progress of the war, was strategy; what he had done the morning of the Hogwarts attack, directing the defence from the towers, had been tactics.

Moody thought he showed promise. His Defence Against the Dark Arts needed work, as did his Duelling, but he had a knack for strategy, and in a time of war Moody had said that could be important. That was one thing, and if anyone had asked him, Ron would have said that of course he just wanted to be of help, but…

But really, he just liked it. He didn't know if he could describe how, or why—there was something about putting his mind against other people's, of trying to outsmart someone in a very real, very visceral kind of way. This wasn't like school, nor was it like any other kind of game. The stakes were higher, with real lives and real consequences, and it thrilled him like nothing else.

And that wasn't something that he should feel. People were dying, so how could he feel this way? How could he enjoy war? More than that, how could he tell Mum that he felt more alive in the last three weeks trailing the Stormwing trainees like a lost puppy and plotting traps that would kill dozens of people than he had possibly ever felt in his entire life? It was like he was a puzzle piece, and he had suddenly clicked into the right place.

He didn't want to think about that, so instead he cracked open The Grindelwald Wars: A Military Analysis and started reading. At its maximum extent, Grindelwald had controlled Wizarding Germany, most of Wizarding Belgium and France, the entire north of Italy and half of the Eastern European states. The Allied wizarding powers had had to chip away at his base, forcing Grindelwald to spread his forces too thin by timing their strikes closely together, while draining him economically to make continued warfare unsustainable. It was fascinating, and he almost missed the sound of cursing from the room next door.

The cursing was followed by more cursing, then some banging and thuds. Ron set his book down upside down on his bed, mentally smacking himself in the face—of course Ginny wouldn't be going out her door. He had no idea what he had been thinking. The hallway was too long, with too many opportunities to be caught. The doors and Portkey Hub would be watched, and they were only on the second floor. He knocked on their adjoining wall, just to let Ginny know that he could hear her, but there was an almighty thump and Ron looked out his window to see her swinging one leg out of the window.

Damn it. He grabbed his wand and went to work on his own window. It was locked—of course the window was bloody locked—and it took him three spells and a Stormwing rune that Jukka had taught him to spring it open. By now, Ginny had swung both feet out the window, and Ron could see that she was carrying her broomstick out, too.

It would be fastest for her to ride it out, but she would be far too noticeable. The Prewett grounds weren't very big, and the two units they had made them positively crowded. There were always people on watch, and if Ginny wanted to slip by undetected, the best thing to would be to walk with confidence and act as if she was herself heading on patrol. In the darkness, no one would think twice at someone walking towards the edges of the grounds, especially if she walked a bit of a circle along the wards.

He wrestled the window open, just as Ginny made it out, hopped on her broomstick, and floated to the ground. "Gin!" he hissed.

She ignored him. He knew that she had heard him from the toss of her hair, but she didn't look at him or reply. He sighed—he didn't have a broom, but if he went out the hallway, he'd probably be caught himself and she would be gone by the time he got out the front doors.

It was only the second floor, he reminded himself harshly even as he swung his own legs out of the window. Thank the gods that he had the same build as Bill and Percy—lanky and tall, so his shoulders just cleared the width of the window. He lowered himself down gingerly, shut his eyes, and hoped no one was looking out the downstairs window as he steeled himself and let go of the windowsill.

A four-foot drop sounded a lot smaller in theory than it was in practice. His legs gave out on him as he fell, with a quiet oof, onto his behind.

It was dark, and Ron scrambled to his feet with a wince, looking for his sister. He could just see her slipping off towards the side—their bedrooms faced the front of the house, where tents marked the first of the units that had taken up station at Prewett House. He ignored them.

"Ginny!" he hissed again, but she still ignored him. "Gin!"

He sighed and hurried after her. Ginny had always been in better shape than him, but fortunately she wasn't hurrying—she was aiming more for quiet than speed, and even if she picked up her pace a little as they got further away from the house, he still caught up to her before she hit the wards. She couldn't really have been trying to avoid him. Probably she knew that Ron wouldn't really try to stop her—or, if he did, she was mean with a wand and Ron had been on the bad side of her Bat Bogey Hex a few too many times.

"What do you want, Ron?" she hissed back, as he caught her by the arm and spun her around. "I'm leaving—Mum's totally unreasonable, and I'm not like you. I only just turned sixteen, so if Mum drags me back to Hogwarts, I don't get to just waltz out the next day. I'm out of here."

"Ginny…" Ron hesitated, trying to figure out what to say. He had thought through following her, but less so what he was going to say to her if she did try to run. "Look, think about this. Where are you going to go?"

"Rosier Place." She looked away, scuffing the ground a bit with her foot. "Marcus Flint offered me a spot in his air unit after Hogwarts. I'm going to take him up on it. Rosier will put me in contact with him."

Ron winced. Mum would kill her. And him, if he let her go, but at the same time he understood. It wasn't like Hogwarts this year would hold anything for either of them. Ginny might not have been failing her classes like Ron was, but she wouldn't be alone in writing her OWLs next year, and he too wanted to stay and be involved in the war. "Take me with you."

"I can't, Ron." Ginny shook her head. "I would, but I can't—Rosier Place is in Kent, and it's going to be all-night flying. My broom can't handle two for that distance. You can go back to Hogwarts fine. You know the professors won't hold you, you're of age, and you can enlist directly from there."

"Then what the hell do you expect me to tell Mum in the morning?!" Ron threw up his hands. "She'll kill me!"

"Just don't tell her anything," Ginny retorted. "Rosier will send a message over, or Flint, as soon as I've enlisted, and it'll be fine. Just keep your big fat mouth shut."

"As if Mum won't march over to Rosier Place or wherever Flint's units are stationed to drag you back," Ron moaned, running one hand through his hair.

"Mum is completely unreasonable about us, and you know it." Ginny tossed her hair over her shoulder angrily. "I'm her darling little girl, and you're her baby boy—she'll never let us go. We have to just reach out and take what we want, Ron. We can't look for her to let us do what we want."

Ron shook his head, a little helpless—he didn't know what to say, and then he saw it.

It was tiny, a flicker in the air that he had only caught because it was dark and the night was still, and because of where he was standing. The air was bulging, forming a huge bubble in the air fifteen feet behind Ginny, the curve bending the scant moonlight shining onto the Prewett House grounds. He froze, his mouth open, and Ginny followed his gaze.

That wasn't the air, he realized, his thoughts moving sluggishly as if through mud. Those were the wards. The Prewett House wards were shifting, contorting inwards in a sickly, billowing way. A single narrow point protruded from the bulge, a wand or knife or some other sharp implement digging inwards.

The ward was about to pop.

"Shit," Ginny whispered. "Oh, goddamn bloody shit."

XXX

AN: Here we go, rollicking towards the conclusion! In a handful of chapters, anyway. meek says the first 2000 words of this are boring but I liked them and think it has important details in it so I kept it, my apologies :( I also feel bad if I upload less than 15K in a chapter for CC, so there's that. Thanks as always to meek_bookworm for the beta-read, and to everyone who reads and leaves me a review or comment and swings over to the discord to chat!