Vanguard

by kitsunerei88

[Sequel to Liar Liar and From America With Love] Revolutions don't begin with spellfire and flying Molotov Potions. Revolutions begin with people. This revolution begins with a pureblood boy standing trial for a ruse he and his halfblood cousin have perpetrated, and a halfblood bastard with a gift for uncovering secrets.

8. Chapter 8

Draco stalked down the train, Pansy at his side, looking for the compartment that held his friends. Only Blaise and Millicent, this year – despite continued searching, neither he nor Pansy had managed to find any trace of Harry. All their international connections, between the two of them, completely useless. And, as for Theo, if he knew what was good for him, he wouldn't be anywhere that Draco could find him, not after that show during the trial.

Draco didn't care about the trial itself; he couldn't care less if Archie Black had been convicted or acquitted. He only cared because of its impact on Harry, and Nott had stood up there and spewed out absolute trash about her, repeated from the Daily Prophet! Who would have thought that Theo would be so spineless, so easily swayed? He had known Harry, even if he had known her as Rigel. He had to have known that Harry would never have hurt a fly, not without being explicitly provoked, just as he had to have known that she was, if anything, too controlled in her magic. Draco could sooner see Pansy losing control of her magic and hurting someone before Rigel did. Their dorm arrangements this year would be interesting, to say the least, but at least Nott hadn't been made prefect.

Those honours had gone to Draco and Pansy, which was why they were only now hurrying down the corridors in search of their other two friends. The corridors seemed to be even more packed than usual, full of people walking up and down the train, peeking discreetly into train compartments as they passed. Draco's head was filled with, if possible, more nervous anticipation than he had expected. Here and there, he caught whispers.

"Do you think he'll be here this year? The Black Heir." A tiny girl, shamefully wearing a green-and-silver tie, was whispering to her friend as they went down the hallway.

"I mean, now that the ruse is exposed, there's no reason for him to be in America anymore, right?" her friend argued, equally quiet. "And it doesn't make any sense for the Black Heir to be schooled abroad. He has to be here somewhere."

Draco scowled. He hoped Archie Black would dare show his face at Hogwarts. Black was such a poor replacement for Rigel that Draco would leap at the chance to tell him so. If the world were a fair one, it would have been Rigel – Harry – who was the pureblood Black Heir, not Archie Black. Archie Black belonged wallowing with the Muggles that he so loved. He was an embarrassment to the nobility, to purebloods everywhere.

If only they had found her! They could have brought her home, gotten the charges out of the way, gotten an exception to the Hogwarts pureblood-only policy for her, and then she could have been back here with them, sharing their fifth year! He imagined, for a minute, Harry Potter in the girls' Hogwarts uniform, a dark shadow anxiously following him and Pansy on the train, worried about how people would react her now that her blood-status had been revealed. People would whisper about her, they would peer awkwardly at her, but Draco would stare them all down, and Pansy would be there. No one would dare say anything to her or about her, not with the two of them there.

Harry didn't even have her OWLs yet. How could she do anything without her OWLs? And with that, his dream dissipated into smoke, because as much as he wanted it, Rigel wasn't going to be at school with him this year.

Pansy paused at a compartment door, then slid it open to reveal Blaise and Millicent. Draco went in, dropping into the empty seat beside Blaise and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Manners normally dictate a greeting," Blaise said dryly, his dark eyes considering as he looked Draco over. "Bad prefect meeting?"

"The meeting was fine," Pansy replied with a sigh, sitting down with far more decorum beside Millicent, who politely folded the sheet of newspaper she had in hand, putting it aside. "Draco has simply not gotten over the fact that Rigel will not be returning to school, and I suspect the widespread rumour that Arcturus Black would be joining us instead has not improved things."

"Ah." Blaise nodded, understanding as he leaned back casually against the familiar worn red and black seats. "Well, if it helps any, he won't be. He's returning to the American Institute of Magic."

Draco jerked up, his face wrinkling into a frown. "Really? I mean, I'm glad, but why?"

"He's more than halfway through his Healing program there," Millicent replied, reaching for her paper and handing it over. Draco unfolded it: Bridge, the title read, but he didn't recognize it. The front page showed a stationary picture of Arcturus Rigel Black, this one surrounded by two others that Draco didn't recognize: Arcturus Rigel Black with John Jacob Kowalski and Nealan Yuanren Queenscove, read the tagline. He didn't recognize either of them, but he assumed they had to be more of Black's American friends. Millicent waved her hand for him keep reading. "He released this interview today."

"I don't recognize this paper," Draco said slowly, as he folded it again, turning it below the fold to read the interview itself. The paper didn't feel right. It was lighter than the Daily Prophet would have been, with fewer pages, and it was printed on a thin, easily ripped stock, with an odd greyish tinge instead of yellow. The ink was dark, black, coming off onto his hands, and the font was different, too. "The picture isn't moving?"

"They didn't charm it." Blaise shrugged, uncaring. "Charms are costly, and the paper was free. That doesn't matter – read the interview. It's not in the Daily Prophet, and they're certainly publishing risqué remarks. Correspondents use pseudonyms – chimaera is the interviewer, and if you want my guess, it was done in writing and they printed Black's answers verbatim."

Draco's lip curled up briefly, but he leaned forward, holding the paper between himself and Pansy so they could both read it. The train rattled, a little, by now long outside London, but Draco paid it no mind.

AN INTERVIEW WITH ARCTURUS RIGEL BLACK

Thank you for giving Bridge the exclusive opportunity to interview you. It's been a little more than a month since your conviction for aiding and abetting and conspiracy in blood identity theft. How have you been?

Things have been great, thank you for asking. It's been an adjustment, to living as myself in Wizarding Britain, but otherwise things really have been wonderful. I am very fortunate to have a wide community of friends and family surrounding me, and I am grateful beyond words for their love and support.

What did you think of your trial verdict?

Justice is nothing if not just. While I am disappointed not to have struck the blood identity theft laws, I am deeply heartened by Justice's comments throughout her decision. Justice recognized that blood identity theft is not a supportable offence – she stated that, to the extent that it might be responding to any real concerns, it is grossly disproportionate, overbroad, and cannot be justified. She further acknowledged that the harms caused by the law, to Muggleborns and halfbloods, is far greater than any harm to purebloods, and said that allowing the law to stand is fundamentally unjust.

It is an irony that I, as a pureblood, could not strike the law because I was too privileged to be subject to it, but I do believe that my sentence reflects that. As Justice herself said, she only deals in life, soul, and magic; to have lost only my Metamorphmagus abilities is a small price to pay for the verdict I received.

In your American Standard interview, published May of last year, you said that you intended to keep advocating for the rights of Muggleborns and halfbloods from America, where you are attending school. Has that changed? What are your plans now?

That has not changed. I am returning to the American Institute of Magic for my fifth year, where I am studying for a Healing certification with specialties in Infectious Disease and Muggle Medicine. Bluntly, even had I wanted to change schools, I could not have done so at this late stage – Hogwarts does not have a Healing program to speak of, and nearly all my courses for the past two years have been geared towards Healing: Charms for Healers, Transfigurations for Healers, Potions for Healers, and so on. I am also looking forward to beginning clinical rotations this year at the AIM teaching hospital.

I continue to be a strong advocate of Muggleborn and halfblood rights, but over the summer, through hearing from my supporters, I've learned so much more. It isn't just about repealing the laws for me, now – these laws are so widespread, so deep, that I firmly believe that only broader political change can bring us to a truly fair and equitable society. As it stands, Wizarding Britain is the only major wizarding community that continues to be ruled by the nobility, where political power is hereditary. Such a system isolates us and prevents us from adapting to the changing world around us. As much as we try to split ourselves off from the world, whether it be the Muggle world or the international magical community, we cannot. We share this planet with them. One Earth, and whether we are magical or Muggle, we share this planet, this pale blue dot ripping through the vastness of space.

What we do affects each other. The laws passed by the Wizengamot affect everyone, from the top to the bottom of wizarding society, and it is impossible to know how they will really affect people unless there is a way for everyone to have their views heard. I firmly believe that wider representation, from all parts of wizarding society, is a necessity; anything else makes us vulnerable as the world changes around us.

I was delighted that you contacted me for an interview. I think that Bridge fills a much-needed gap in Wizarding British news, providing independent reporting not only on Wizarding Britain but on Muggle Britain and the international magical and non-magical communities. I'm especially looking forward to your proposed columns on Muggle culture, as well – I love Muggle movies, so I'm excited to see what your columnists will think of my favourite films!

How is your cousin, Harry Potter?

Unfortunately, I haven't heard from her in months. I have to trust that, wherever she is, she is doing well. My cousin is one of the strongest people I have ever met, and she is a survivor. I believe that she will overcome whatever life throws her way.

Thank you for your time in responding to these questions. Do you have anything else you'd like to add?

This was in my interview with the American Standard, but I understand it was cut out of the version that circulated through Britain, so my apologies to your readers who follow the American Standard. Given the chance, I would like to emphasize to my British readers that the world is big. The world is more than what we see, the world is constantly surprising. Giving everyone the equal chance and opportunity to become their best selves can only make the world a better place. We are all mages, and we all have the ability to achieve greatness.

Thank you for the interview opportunity, Bridge.

Draco snorted, folding the paper up. Archie Black was even more of a fool than he had thought, if these were the ideas rattling around in his head. He wasn't sure what else he would have expected, but Rigel had never had any ridiculous notions like that. Black had to have picked them up in America.

"What absolute tripe," he said, shaking his head and letting go of the paper, letting Pansy pull it closer to her to finish her own read. "We all have the ability to achieve greatness? He sounds like he's drunk a Babbling Beverage. Where did you even get this, Millie?"

Millicent exchanged a glance with Blaise, and Draco got a subtle sense of uncertainty emanating from her. Blaise, too, gave off a mild disapproval, and he shook his head very slightly before turning to Draco.

"She got it from me," Blaise said, shrugging airily, his voice light. "And I got it from Hannah, who got it from one of her other friends."

"I thought it was interesting," Millicent added, leaning back in her seat to look out the train window. Rolling green hills and fields passed by outside their window. "I'm not sure what to think of it yet, but it's interesting."

Draco shook his head in disapproval, tugging the paper back from Pansy to look for the most inflammatory statement. "It's ridiculous, Millie. Prevents us from adapting to the world around us… What is he even talking about? A pale blue dot ripping through the vastness of space? He doesn't know anything!"

Millicent shrugged, refusing to make any eye-contact, and Draco felt a cool defensiveness coming from her. "He's also backed by the Kowalskis and the Queenscoves."

"And who are they?" Draco replied, his voice skeptical, then he looked at the picture again. Kowalski couldn't be a pureblood, not with that face, and while he couldn't tell much about Queenscove, who wore a sword around? The picture was ridiculous – it was just Black trying to add some consequence to his name, some legitimacy to his remarks, when he had none.

A brief silence, before Millicent replied, her voice curt. "Kowalski is the son of the Head of Foreign Affairs at the Magical Congress of the United States of America, and the Queenscoves are one of the most prominent, well-connected families in Wizarding Canada. I think they have some connections with the old families in Wizarding China, too. I don't want to talk about this, Draco."

"Then let's discuss something else, shall we?" Pansy cut in, leaning forward with a light smile, though Draco felt only cool disinterest from her. The compartment felt too big, too empty without Rigel and Theo in it. Pansy tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind one ear. "It was good of Lord Riddle to come to Platform 9 and 3/4s to see us all off to school, wasn't it?"

"He had little choice," Blaise replied, leaping at the change in conversation with something like gratefulness. "After the Daily Prophet's rehashing of all of Harry's actions as Rigel, some parents worried about sending their children back to school this year, even after it all died down. His appearance on the platform, assuring us all that we would be safe at school, was a good show of support."

His voice was bland, deadpan, but he was deeply amused by it even while he said it. Draco laughed a little – whatever dangers they had all faced over the last four years, Rigel had never been the cause of them. Rigel had always gotten caught up in trouble, it was true, but it was never of his own making. Indeed, more than once, he had defended the school from some of the unintended consequences of SOW Party plans.

Or she, Draco corrected himself. Harry Potter. That was her name, not Rigel. Rigel did not exist.

"Lord Riddle spoke about new safety measures, though." Pansy's voice was thoughtful. She had actually listened to the speech, while Draco had been distracted, looking against all hope for a familiar shock of messy, black hair. "I wonder what he meant by that. Does anyone have any ideas?"

Millicent turned back around, and even if she was smiling, Draco felt a sharp annoyance. "I would have thought that you and Draco would know best, since your families are, if anything, closer to Lord Riddle than either of ours."

"Regrettably, our personal advocacy on behalf of Harry Potter and our searches have led our parents to exclude us more than they normally would," Pansy replied, with a sigh, and there was a vague sense of disgust. "Not that Father typically involves me in his political affairs – I am almost sixteen, now, and it is past time that I was engaged. Much of my summer was spent preparing for various arranged marriage meetings."

"Pansy's right," Draco added, grimacing even as he cast an apologetic look at Pansy. He had known about the arranged marriage meetings, none of which Pansy had looked particularly thrilled about, and he also suspected that his father intended on putting forward an offer for her. Why else would his father have insisted that he emphasize their close connections over the past few years? It wouldn't be bad, marrying Pansy, he thought, and not for the first time – Pansy was pretty, she was intelligent, and given the dearth of pureblood girls in his generation, that was more than most could expect. It would be a good offer for her and would unite their significant financial and political prowess, but there was the concern of the Parkinson Wizengamot seat, too. "I was trying to have the charges against Harry dropped, and Father grew tired of hearing it. I wasn't able to eavesdrop as much as I normally would."

"Then, I suppose we'll have to find out with the rest of the proletariat," Blaise commented with a slight smile, and Draco knew that he was genuinely amused. "Do better next time, won't you?"

Draco smiled in reply, with a small huff of laughter, and they let it go. Outside, going north, it was becoming darker, as the train plunged into a cloudburst. Fat pellets of mixed rain and hail splattered on the window, the pitter-patter loud against the roof of their compartment. The water streamed down the windows, until all Draco could see was a green-and-blue blur, mixed with intermittent flashes of yellow. Thunder echoed in the distance.

Pansy regaled them with tales from her worst marriage meetings, none of which Draco was particularly surprised to hear. His only surprise, really, was in who the Lord Parkinson had deemed it appropriate to arrange meetings with, none of which he thought were good choices. They were all uniformly awful.

"Martin Audley barely spoke to me the entire meeting – he let his father speak on his behalf, and all he did was stare at me, like I was a horse or a cow. His father wasn't much better, honestly. Then, as we were preparing to leave, Martin says, and I quote," Pansy paused, taking a deep breath, her face marked with disgust even if her emotions were radiating a vindictive sort of pleasure. "Her tits are small, but her ass is nice, so I'll take her."

Draco choked, even as both Millicent and Blaise dissolved into laughter.

"I assume you said no," he said, after he recovered. "The Audleys, really?"

"Their lands border ours, so it was a matter of etiquette." Pansy wrinkled her tiny, upturned nose. "And of course, I said no. Father didn't even wait the customary three days to decline it."

Millicent and Blaise had both spent a part of their holidays abroad – Geneva, for Millicent, observing the International Confederation of Wizards, and Italy for Blaise. Blaise had brought back jewellery for Hannah, but in Draco's view, it was a little early in their relationship for such expensive ring.

"I don't think it would be so bad if it were a necklace or bracelet," he said slowly, turning the ring over and examining the black opal set on top. It was a perfect, oval-cut stone, shimmering with a bit of hidden power, set in polished gold band. "It's beautiful, but this is an engagement gift, not a courting gift, Blaise."

Blaise sighed, looking down at it mournfully. "I worried as much. But the other things I brought back for her are small – a lace shawl from Venice, a little Murano glass sparrow. I worry it's not enough."

Millicent and Pansy exchanged a look, while Draco tried to find polite words to explain that Venetian lace and Murano glass were plenty luxurious, almost a little too much in and of themselves. "Blaise," he started slowly, but the train slowed.

Draco frowned, and Blaise stood and looked out the window. They couldn't be at school yet. Millicent pulled out her wand, casting a quick Tempus Charm – it was barely four in the afternoon, but it was almost as dark as night. He could barely see outside, but Blaise evidently saw something, because he turned around sharply.

"We're on the bridge over the ravine," he said briefly, his wand in his hand and his nostrils flaring. He nearly stepped over Draco on his haste to the sliding door of the compartment. "There are shapes outside the window. I need to go find Hannah, excuse me."

He was gone before Draco could ask him anything else.

There was the crash, an explosion, from farther down the train, and the lights flickered, went off. Draco looked at both Pansy and Millicent, squinting a little in the sudden darkness – Pansy had her wand out and wore a determined look on her face, pushing herself between Millicent and the window for a look. She was a frightening dueller, if Draco could say so himself. She had Millicent behind her, though the tall, bulky girl looked nervous. He flicked his wrist, bringing his wand in hand.

"We need walk the train," Pansy said quietly, almost too quiet to be heard over the sound of the wind, the rain outside, and now, things breaking farther down the train. Their carriage rattled, a little – they were on a bridge, Blaise had said, and Draco suddenly felt very insecure. "Lumos! We're prefects now, Draco – the younger students are our responsibility."

Draco hesitated and winced. Pansy was right, but he took one look at Millicent – she didn't have much experience in duelling and hadn't come out consistently to Draco's duelling club. She was pale, her brown eyes huge.

"I'll follow," she said, taking a deep breath. "Right behind you."

"No, between us," Draco decided quickly. He thought he could hear something else, from the corridor – yelling, the sound of carriage doors opening, slamming shut. They had to go. "I'll lead, then Millie, you stay in the middle, and Pansy can bring up the rear."

The noise amplified a hundred-fold as soon as they were in the corridor, where it seemed like fifty students were streaming past, yelling for their siblings, their friends. Ron Weasley was there, his freckles standing out starkly in his white face, and Draco nearly collided face-first into him. Weasley was one of the Gryffindor prefects, his counterpart being Parvati Patil.

"Watch where you're going," Draco snapped, waspish given the sounds, the feelings, echoing up and down the train and pushing a tiny underclassman aside. "You, get back in your compartment – running around like an animal isn't going to help!"

"Watch where you're going," Weasley retorted, similarly pushing another student out of the way as he fought to move forward, his wand out. More swearing up ahead, and this time, Draco saw the light of spell-fire.

Weasley swallowed. "That was my sister," he muttered, brushing past Draco and hurrying down the long aisle. "I'm going ahead. Later, Malfoy."

Draco shook his head, fighting the urge to plunge in behind him. He was not an idiot Gryffindor, rushing headlong into danger, and besides, the aisle was crowded, hectic, too full of curious students who wanted to know what was happening. The smarter ones saw spell-fire and dove back into their compartments – the rest, Draco started herding back into their compartments.

"Come on, get out of the corridors," he growled at more than one student. "I'm a prefect, get out of the way, get in your compartments until we know what is happening!"

He could hear Pansy doing the same, and they left Millicent with a compartment of scared looking first years, since they probably didn't know the right way to hold their wands yet. Millicent looked all too nervous as they left her behind, but Draco gave her a stern stare and a meaningful look at the five little first-years. She swallowed, nodded, and went with them with a weak sort of smile.

"It'll be fine," he heard her say behind him. "Don't worry. Tell me, what are your names? Where are you from?"

The sound of pitched fighting and spell-fire grew louder as they inched closer, pushing past students, trying to clear the hallway. All too soon, someone slammed into Draco, shoving him backwards against one wall of the train, and he barely had a chance to raise his wand.

"Get out of the way," the man snarled at him, shoving past him to go farther down the train. He wasn't a student.

"Impedimenta!" Draco heard Pansy's cry, and he was in it – he was in the thick of things, and his wand was out. He left his assaulter to Pansy's tender mercies, behind him, comforting himself with the sound of her voiced spells, as he looked forward into the morass of people crowding the hallway for several feet in front of him. All of them were moving, fighting, part of one large, amorphous being. He could hear Weasley's voice in the mass, too – multiple Weasleys, unless he was much mistaken. Ginny Weasley was spitting in rage, and he heard a Bat Bogey Hex being thrown.

He couldn't see. It was too dark, the small flicking wand-lights bobbing over the scene weren't enough for him to separate friend and foe. If he couldn't see, he couldn't aim.

"Lumos Maxima!" he yelled, wincing as the bright light shone from the tip of his wand, and he detached without further thought, sending it soaring to the ceiling. The sudden brightness was a both a boon and a curse – the light was blinding, too bright, but he could see, he could see the half-dozen masked witches and wizards in pitched battle with four redheads in the corridors. Ernest MacMillan had his compartment door half-open, and he and Justin Finch-Fletchley were firing from behind cover, and he thought he saw Cho Chang and another Ravenclaw on the other side of the battle, wands out and entering the fray.

"Incarcerous!" Draco roared, pointing his wand at one of the masked wizards, who batted his spell away as if it was nothing, sending a Flipendo back at him. "Depulso!"

The wizard batted that one away, too, while Draco dodged a Stupefy spell. There was a crash, and the train rocked – he heard someone screaming a Bombardment Charm up ahead. "Pertus! Stupefy! Impedimenta!"

"Do not hurt the children!" Another masked man was yelling, and Draco pushed forward, casting a Protego to deflect a wayward Stunning spell. "My Lord does not want the children harmed! They're only children, you useless lot of amateurs – move!"

"I'll give you child, you steaming sack of shit!" One of the Weasley twins yelled in reply, as the other one launched a firecracker into the corridor. Draco dodged and shielded, and not a moment too soon as it exploded – not once, but four times in close succession, bright sparks careening through the air, blinding everyone worse than Draco's Lumos spell.

"Anti-Apparition Wards are down!" he heard another man cry, while he tried to blink the blindness away. "Go, go, go! Morsmordre!"

Green light streamed upwards, through a gaping hole that had been opened in the roof of the train. Draco swore, sending another Impedimenta spell at one of the masked figures, but his target twisted and was gone.

"Fuck!" One of the Weasley twins swore, then he twisted in the air and disappeared. Draco could hear the hard crack! of Apparition running up and down the train – they weren't Apparating away, he realized, just up and down the train. Draco whipped around, seeing Pansy's white face, and they both grimaced and started running back, the way they came.

The masked witches and wizards were slamming open compartment doors, throwing what looked like papers, and Draco heard screaming, shrieking, crying from down the train. There was a wild, cackling laughter coming from one of the witches as she ran, as she Apparated every few steps, throwing curses back at the Weasley twin who was chasing her. Whichever one it was, he dodged, but couldn't pin her down with any of his spells, either. The other Ravenclaw, the one with Cho, was Apparating up and down the train as well, having no more success than the Weasley Twins were, and there just weren't enough of them. Without Apparition, he and Pansy were slow, too slow to catch up to the high-speed chase, and then, with a final bang, they were gone.

Twenty minutes of mayhem, a gaping hole in the rooftop, and they were gone.

Draco looked up, panting slightly, and he could just see a pale, green light shining through the rain pouring into the train. He inched back towards the hole, to where he could see the shape better, pushing his wet bangs out of his face, ignoring the chill seeping through his robes.

It was a skull – a gigantic, green skull, with a serpent hanging out of its jaws, a macabre tongue that writhed in the air as the jaws opened and closed, rotating slowly in the air above the train. It was disgusting, vulgar in its crudeness.

Pansy was staring up at the skull beside him, her nose wrinkled in distaste. The rain plastered her blonde hair to her head, a few strands stuck to her face. She looked at Draco and sighed, shaking her head.

"Come on," she said, her voice strangely loud after the fight, echoing weirdly above the sound of the wind and rain. "Let's go find Millie, and Blaise. And I want to see what the papers are."

The train shuddered, and with a jerk, it trembled to life. Draco and Pansy picked their way carefully back down the train, amid the debris of broken compartment doors, and they weren't the only ones. Upper-years, and not only prefects, were coming out of their compartments, checking on their friends, their Housemates, the new first-years.

They stopped by Millicent's new compartment to pick her up, but she was holding onto one of the new first years, who was crying. Two others looked on the verge of tears too, while the other two were trying and failing to hold themselves together.

"They came by, opened the doors, threw these papers at us," Millicent told them quietly, nodding at the papers littering the ground as she rubbed the back of the girl crying in her arms. "I tried to hex them, but I wasn't fast enough. Sorry."

"It's fine, Millie," Draco said, picking up one of the papers. "As long as no one was hurt."

"I don't think they were trying to hurt anyone, Drake," Pansy said, picking up a sheet of paper of her own. "They meant to scare us, to make a point, but not to hurt us."

Draco looked at the paper in his hands – the water made the ink run, but the headline was still clear. NOWHERE IS SAFE, it read. He took a deep breath, leaned down, and started gathering the papers strewn on the floor. The first years didn't need to see this. He hesitated, his eyes lingering on the first years – they needed someone to comfort them, and for now, Millicent was it. "We're going back to our compartment, Millie – come when you can, all right?"

She nodded, distracted. "When I can, yes. If I can't, can you make sure my trunk gets to school?"

"Of course," Pansy replied, holding the sliding door politely open for Draco.

Blaise was already sitting in their compartment, his eyes skimming over the paper in his hands, his worry rubbing against Draco's consciousness.

"Abbott?" Draco couldn't help but ask. He would have expected Blaise to be stuck to his girlfriend for the rest of the trip. Blaise was not a reasonable person about Abbott at the best of times.

Blaise waved the paper in his hands – it was identical to the dozen or so that Draco held. "Hannah read this and said she needed to go talk to someone. I tried to follow but she was gone before I could. I could still smell her, but I didn't see where she could have gone…" He pressed his lips together in frustration and shook his head. "I will find her later."

Pansy sat down, twisting wet blonde locks in a rope and tossing it over her shoulder, out of the way, before she picked up the one of the papers. "Nowhere is safe," she read, blue eyes skimming the rest of the short tract. "Wizarding Britain has lost its way… Lord Riddle, a false prophet… forced to demean ourselves before those of lesser blood, what on earth is that about?"

"The ICW is my guess," Blaise replied, expressionless. Draco picked up a sheet himself, the cleanest one he could find, with only a few wet splotches on it. "There are also a lot of comments blaming our economy on Lord Riddle and the SOW Party. It's mad, but there you have it."

"Dumbledore's group?" Draco muttered, skimming it for himself. It was utter madness, blaming Lord Riddle, the weak Ministry, the SOW Party for all the ills of Wizarding Britain. Even the words used – false prophet, straying from the path of greatness – sounded absurd. "Or the people behind the new paper, Bridge?"

"Think with your head, Draco, not your prejudices." Blaise shook his head, frowning in disapproval, which Draco felt sharply with his empathy. "Forced to demean ourselves before those of lesser blood? Lord Dumbledore is for blood equality and always has been, and while I haven't much experience with Bridge, they published an update from the Muggle British Parliament and have a column promoting Muggle culture. They're likely, if anything, even more pro-integration and pro-Muggle than Lord Dumbledore. More than that, the paper itself is different – it smells different, it feels different, it's heavier and the ink doesn't come off as easily. It's higher quality."

"They moved fast, whoever they are," Pansy murmured, tucking the paper she held away in her bag. "The title is a direct reference to Lord Riddle's morning speech, as is the attack. Thank heaven they weren't aiming to hurt anyone."

"I will raise with my father the issue of security on the school train." Draco paused, then sighed. "I wish we had Rigel with us. He would have been able to do something about this."

There was a brief pause, before Pansy corrected him. "Harry," she said, her voice soft, leaning back against the plush train seats and looking out the window. "Her name is Harry."

Back at school, they were met with another surprise before they had even sat down to the Welcome Feast. Dolores Umbridge, Senior Prosecutor for the Ministry of Magic, dominated the Entrance Hall, directing students into lines while the Heads of Houses and Lord Dumbledore stood by. Their faces were calm, impassive, but Draco could feel a bright, burning fury from both Professors Sprout and McGonagall, and his godfather's left eyebrow was twitching. Not a good sign, in Draco's experience.

"Professor Umbridge," Draco heard Dumbledore say, no smile on his normally cheerful face. "Surely statements can wait until the children have eaten. They have had a long journey from London, and they are no doubt starving."

"Once I have them in order, the ones I am not interviewing may go ahead," Umbridge replied, her high-pitched, girlish voice uncaring as she separated Millicent from her group of first years, who clung to her. They started crying, but she merely confirmed that Millicent was a Slytherin fifth year and pushed her towards the other Slytherins, making a tutting noise at the first years. None of the crowd of first-years, Draco saw, looked very happy – they all looked pale, terrified. "The Ministry will need the freshest evidence possible to track down the persons responsible for this crime."

"I hardly think that one night will make a difference," Professor McGonagall snapped, her voice harsh as she went to her Gryffindors.

Umbridge twittered, her laugh light and condescending. "My dear Professor McGonagall, with all due respect, you have not been trained in these matters as I have. The Minister for Magic and Lord Riddle himself have tasked me with a review of Hogwarts, including both educational quality and safety, and I have been granted the authority to see it done in the manner I see fit. An attack on the Hogwarts Express is a serious matter – I am sure that, if you'd like to contact the Minister or Lord Riddle, they would be all too happy to confirm this for you. Again."

"Well," Draco heard Pansy say beside him, her voice cool, almost a little amused even if he felt nothing of the like echoing from her. "I suppose we now know what Lord Riddle's new safety precautions are."

XXX

Neal hated the nobility, he decided. He absolutely hated the nobility, and he hated being noble, and he hated the million etiquette rules he apparently now had to learn, the hundreds of family names and reputations he now had to memorize, and he really hated the family trees.

"You know you're all inbred, right?" he said conversationally, about three hours into staring at the complicated mess. It looked like someone had barfed a ball of yarn all over his library worktable. "Or, I guess you're less inbred than most, but I'm shocked that Archie doesn't have a massive protuberant jaw and underbite like the Habsburgs developed. I mean, tabernak."

"The Blacks have always struggled with madness," Blake replied, waving one dismissive hand. "And pureblood genetics – we either inherit our ancestors' gifts wholly or not at all, so as long as the blood is kept pure…"

"That is such utter and complete merde." Neal shook his head in disgust, throwing his arms up and throwing a tiny gust of wind at the offending parchment. The paper lifted a little, but it didn't flip over as he intended. His sword really needed to be out of non-being for him to call a stronger wind. "Magic does make genetics behave a little strangely, but it's not that severe. After marrying your first cousins for so long, there should be obvious, quantifiable effects – look at Iceland, or Ashkenazi Jews! Tay-Sachs! Ellis-van Creveld disease! Hemophilia!"

"I don't know what those are, Queenscove," Blake said patiently, holding down a corner of the grotesque family tree with one hand before Neal could throw another gust of wind at it. "But there are effects, or I suspect there are – look at the Fade. No one says as much, but it hits the purest bloodlines the hardest."

Neal scowled. Right, the Fade – he now lived in a world where children regularly died for no explicable reason. Or rather, there was an explicable, if incurable reason: according to the few studies that existed, the usual barrier that existed between soul and magic was fractured in children with the Fade, causing them to slowly weaken and die when their magical cores finally, after a prolonged and desperately awful process, detected no soul to hold them and fled into wild magic. The solution, the geneticists said, was simple: more genetic diversity. Marry and produce children with people who aren't as horrifically inbred.

That wasn't a message that had been received in Wizarding Britain, apparently.

"If you don't mind me asking…" Blake paused, tilting his head as if to search for the words. "Do Chinese heirloom-casting families not suffer the same? I imagine that heirloom-casting, and the need to be born in an heirloom-casting family to practice it, is very similar to blood-status. Would an heirloom-caster not marry another heirloom-caster?"

Neal shook his head, flicking another wind spell at the cursed family tree, knowing it wouldn't do anything. "Different contexts. Heirloom casting is very strong on attack and defensive spells, but it's limited in purpose. I can't use my sword to Heal or Transfigure anything, for example. Heirloom-casters are powerful warriors, but little else – paper-casters have historically formed the political and educated classes, so it's common for a paper-caster to marry into an heirloom-caster family. Also, elemental magic is a major backbone to our casting style, so heirloom-caster families are always looking to bring in new elemental affinities. As a windmage, even with the same spells, my attack and defensive magic have very different effects than my brother Graeme, my sister and my mother, who are firemages. Clans with many elemental affinities survive wartime better."

"Ah." Blake's yellow-orange eyes lit up in understanding, and he leaned casually against the table. "And the most unusual elemental affinities are wild, cropping up only in halfbloods and Muggleborns, who are consequently more likely to marry into an heirloom-caster family."

"Something like that." Neal shrugged, slumping in his chair. He was tired. He didn't want to study this complete and utter merde in front of him. "What's your elemental affinity?"

Blake paused, thinking before giving his answer. It wasn't, to Neal's knowledge, an offensive question, but one never knew in Wizarding Britain. Blake would point it out, if it was – that was what Neal paid him for, after all.

"Ice," he said finally, then he tapped the parchment on the table. It folded, turning into a neat stack. "Back to work, Queenscove."

"Fitting." Neal grimaced. Blake had folded the ridiculous parchment tree into something like a book, and now it flipped like a book, too. Only seeing pieces of the awful family tree didn't make it any better.

"It's easier if you break it into pieces," Blake suggested, pointing at the title of the first page. "The Blacks. Lord Sirius Orion Black, Heir Arcturus Rigel Black. Who are their primary familial connections?"

Neal sighed, shutting his eyes in pain. Crissez the formal titles, as well. "On Archie's mother's side, the Fawleys, who are ridiculously inbred with the Albrights. More traditionally, the Blacks have links to the Travers, the Rosiers, the Malfoys, and the Lestranges."

"Very good."

His brain always felt like mush after Blake got through with it. Blake even said that he got a simplified version of noble etiquette, with only one type of bow instead of three, vastly simplified dancing (which Neal suspected was mainly because Blake didn't want to dance the follower's role), and he skipped most of the more ancient rituals. Thank all the gods, for that, because just the etiquette he was required to learn was awful. When would he ever need to know the protocol for a formal duel of honour, anyway?

As far as Neal was concerned, Blake was worth the gold that he was being paid. He didn't just spend hours teaching Neal everything he supposedly had to know about the Wizarding British nobles he now belonged with, their customs and their etiquette, he also took the lead in planning Neal's introduction to Society, advising on the image Neal should to portray to the Wizengamot, and pointing out key, potential ally families that most would likely align with Neal's interests – all of them, not just blood equality.

"In terms of blood equality, those families are obvious enough: Lord Dumbledore leads the pro-blood-equality pack, whose families also include the Blacks, the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Shacklebolts, the Prewetts, and Shafiqs. But about most of those families care little about international trade and politics – for that, you want to ally yourselves with other families with international connections: the Rosiers have many trade interests abroad, and the Shafiqs are well connected through South Asia." Blake paused, thinking it over. "The Shafiqs are Book of Copper only, but their interests may align closest with Queenscove for the moment. Once you're properly announced, I'll draft an invitation to the Lord Shafiq. The Lord Rosier, too – while normally Dark and a part of the SOW Party, he is in disgrace and it's worth trying. More allies are better than less for your first day in the Wizengamot. We'll have the Lord Black introduce you formally to the other Light Families – no, wait. We'll host a small, exclusive event at Queenscove for the Light Families. Your holdings are formidable, and I want your likeliest allies to see them."

The announcement went out first in the Daily Prophet – a tiny ad, sharing space with births, deaths, betrothals, and marriage announcements. Nealan Yuanren Queenscove has claimed his birthright title and hereby declares himself the thirty-fifth Lord of Queenscove. Any challengers to title to present themselves at Queenscove by the tenth of September, or forever relinquish claim.

It sounded absolutely preposterous, and Blake didn't even let Neal have any fun with it by adding Knight of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, or even just Son of Song to his titles. The last one was even legitimate – Neal was a recognized son of the Chinese Song family of heirloom casters! Blake just had no sense of whimsy, that was the problem.

The announcement ran on the first of September, and there was no reaction to it. That didn't seem to bother Blake any – even without the attack on the school train (and why didn't the British use a Portkey Hub to get to school, anyway?), Blake hadn't thought the nobility would pay it any mind. It was enough for him to write formal letters seeking meetings with the Lords Shafiq and Rosier, but even those, he didn't expect much of a response – not until Neal's interview ran in Bridge, on the eighth, anyway.

Before then, his mother showed up. Neal was even able to leave Queenscove for the afternoon, to meet her at Heathrow and help her Floo back to his new holdings.

"Mama, you didn't need to come," he told her, that very first day, struggling with his language a little. His Mandarin was rusty, not that it had ever been especially good. It was only a part-time home language, whereas he had done primary school in French, and AIM was, of course, in English. "This country, it isn't safe."

Song Mei Ling looked up at him, her eyes entirely skeptical. She was a full head shorter than him and didn't look a day older than the day she had married his father, and yet somehow Neal still felt like cowering before her. "All the more reason, Yuanren, for me to come. Or shall I remind you of which family member did not make his school Triwizard team?"

Neal scowled. His family would never let him live it down. "Mama, we've gone through this! John is a Natural Legilimens, and he had new technology!"

"And yet, your loss could have been prevented if you had trained more," his mother replied, her voice implacable, and Neal fought the urge to roll his eyes. There was no arguing around her, so he changed the topic instead.

"But what about your work, Mama?" he asked, taking his mother's carry on and leading the way out of the airport. "And Papa?"

"I can find a position teaching Mandarin as easily in Edinburgh or London as I can in Montréal, Yuanren." His mother shook her head, stern. "For the moment, you need me more than your father."

Surprisingly, Blake agreed. The morning they had met, he had given her a formal bow, in the Wizarding British style, the same one what he had taught Neal, and his mother had risen from the breakfast table and bowed right back at him, though her hands were folded neatly in front of her.

Blake raised an eyebrow, then glanced at Neal. "I had not realized that you knew any formal etiquette at all."

"He doesn't," his mother said, bowing again, this one somehow slightly apologetic. "I saw no need to teach my sons formal Chinese etiquette, living in Canada as we do."

"Ah. Understandable." Blake nodded, bowing again in reply. If Neal didn't intercede, he wondered if his mother and Blake would spend all afternoon bowing to each other. Kel did this sometimes, when she came to visit, and he would always have to poke her and remind her that they weren't in Japan. Blake offered his mother a small smile. "It is a pleasure to have you here, however. As Nealan may have told you, we are planning a small event next week for members of select noble families that he may find himself allied with when the Wizengamot re-opens. Your assistance would be much appreciated."

"Hmm," his mother had replied, taking her fan out from where it hung at her waist, discreetly folded within the pleats of her long skirt and using it to tap her lower lip. "And I assume this event is for the purpose of showing off my son's well designed and easily defended fortress as well as his wealth?"

A full smile crept across Blake's face, and Neal was horrified to see a similar one dancing one his mother's lips. "I think you and I understand each other perfectly, Lady Queenscove. Nealan, did you complete the questions for your interview with Bridge? Bring them to me, let me review them."

"My least favourite aunt calls me Nealan," Neal complained, heading to the library where he had left his interview answers.

Neal's interview with Bridge was, in his opinion, far more boring than Archie's had been. His questions only dealt with his background, how he had come to Britain, his claiming of the title, and his plans for the House Queenscove. The whole thing didn't even feel real – Blake had taken his responses and completely rewritten them. He and his background had been fluffed up: he was the third son of the powerful Queenscove family, a well-connected family of Wizarding Canada directly descended from House Queenscove. On his mother's side, he was a member of the Song Family, another old wizarding family whose members historically formed part of the formidable Chinese Army, then the Chinese Auror Corps. His brother Graeme Yuanrong Queenscove was an Auror in Montreal, while his brother William Yuanxi Queenscove was a political analyst with the Canadian delegation to the International Confederation of Wizards. They were a warrior family, his mother had been very pleased to read, as if she hadn't hovered over Blake's shoulder emphasizing that very point, and the rest of that section was an outline of their extensive accomplishments.

Neal had just given up at that point and headed for the lists. At least, there, his sword wasn't constantly correcting him at every move.

Blake had also cleaned up his answer on how he had come to Britain and claimed the title. The whole thing was surreal – he had taken out all the whimsy of Neal's summer backpacking abroad. Instead, Neal had been on a wizard's traditional Grand Tour, including a visit with his brother in Geneva, and had decided to research his family background in Britain on the way home. He had arrived on Queenscove lands only to find the family seat empty, and after considerable thought and consultation with his family, he had decided to claim the title.

That was an outright lie, but both Blake and his mother considered that it was better not to have Neal look like a complete idiot who had stumbled into his title purely though curiosity and stupidity. Even if there was no one in Wizarding Britain who could challenge him for title, it made Queenscove look like a united front, which was another reason for puffing them all up. The thought of facing off against Neal Queenscove was to be intimidating – the thought of taking on the entire Queenscove clan was to be terrifying.

Neal was also amused to be informed that his future plans were very much in line with Archie's, in Bridge the week before, if put in even more stark terms. Having grown up in Wizarding Canada, he apparently said, I was deeply shocked to find that Wizarding Britain has no equivalent to the House of Commons. I am a strong believer in equal representation, and I intend on using my seat, and my vote, in the Wizengamot to push for widespread enfranchisement and the establishment of a House of Commons. For the time being, I intend on acting as a de facto representative to the Wizengamot and would be pleased to hear from mages living on or near Queenscove about the issues most concerning to you and to your families. Aside from this, I am also a firm believer in blood equality and the merits of participating in the global economy, so I will be pushing for change that will bring Wizarding Britain back into the good graces of the International Confederation of Wizards. Without the sanctions, I hope that international trade will open, bringing the economy out of the slump it has been in for many decades.

Positively inflammatory, Blake had reported, and Castle Queenscove had nearly purred. Neal's castle liked standing up for those who had no voice of their own – the thing was obsessed with chivalry, based on the books it kept dumping on Neal's bedside table.

Sometimes, Neal even read them.

Both Lords Shafiq and Rosier had responded after the interview ran in Bridge, but it was many more letters of negotiation that Blake dictated for him before Neal met with either of them. Lord Shafiq had insisted on their first meeting occurring on his lands, in the south of England, and Blake had deemed it appropriate to agree since Lord Shafiq would likely be attending at Queenscove with the Light families later that week. Lord Rosier, however, would not be, so Blake had insisted that Neal meet with him only on Queenscove grounds.

"For both meetings, remember – you're Book of Gold, wherever you might have been raised. Your holdings are as impressive as theirs. Don't let them walk over you," Blake said, fixing Neal's appearance. Neal had foregone robes, instead adopting the traditional surcoat of Chinese heirloom-casters. In all honestly, Neal would have preferred to be in a T-shirt and a well-broken in pair of jeans – it wasn't like his sword skill was any more or less in the traditional surcoat, but it was all about impression. The surcoat complemented his sword, hanging obviously at his waist. Blake, stiff in a collared shirt, trousers and a waistcoat, wouldn't be going to these meetings with Neal.

Lord Shafiq was a thin, nut-brown man whose eyes lingered with some interest on Neal's sword, but he didn't comment. Instead, there was a slight glimmer of approval, before the old man invited him into one of his finer parlours and his wife served them a sweet, milky chai. Neal had run entirely off Blake's talking points, emphasizing their commonalities in their views on blood equality and international connections. The meeting had gone well – well enough, indeed, that Lord Shafiq offered to introduce him to one of his younger daughters, to see if they might suit.

"You said no, of course," Blake said, when Neal returned, completely calm in the face of Neal waving his arms frantically in the air, spluttering in panic.

"Osti, of course I said no!" Neal howled back at him, hopping up and down and little in alarm. "Who asks that? I said I was seeing someone, and then when he asked more, I said that she was Japanese and finishing her studies at Mahoutokoro!"

Blake nodded, satisfied. "A good response. I can work with that. Do note, Queenscove, that arranged marriages are the norm here. The Lord Shafiq is a good connection but were you to be looking at marriage prospects within Wizarding Britain, you should be looking at Book of Silver, at bare minimum."

Neal tried to hex him, but Blake obviously expected it and dodged. It hadn't been a serious attempt anyway.

His meeting with Lord Rosier, later that afternoon, also went well. On Blake's recommendation, Neal had taken him on a private tour of his extensive grounds, before they sat down to business – international trade. As Blake had predicted, his father, still being in disgrace, was open to new political allies, especially one keen on opening the international markets. Neal was reasonably certain that, even if he and Lord Rosier hadn't come to any specific agreements, Lord Rosier would not be opposing his entry in the Wizengamot.

The day of the event, as Blake called it, Neal loosened the wards on the Floo. Neal didn't even like the Floo very much – what was even the point of his ravelins, his walls, and his killing field if there was a Floo that could bypass all his defensive fortifications? The problem was that the closest and best Apparition point to his grounds was about an hour's brisk walk away from the castle itself, which was incredibly inconvenient, not only for his guests, but for Neal himself. For the moment, he had decided to keep the Floo connection, but had instead made Blake help him redouble the wards on the Floo, adding in a required passcode, and he added in a destructive fail-safe to collapse the entry point if needed. The fail-safe, unfortunately, collapsed his fireplace, but in the event of an attack, at bare minimum the Floo itself would be a bottleneck and he could collapse it before too many people got in.

Sirius was the first to arrive, along with Remus Lupin, whom Neal recognized vaguely from his few trips to Grimmauld Place. He was followed by a stiff woman with iron-grey hair, tightly curled and pinned to her head.

"Lady Augusta Longbottom," Blake muttered to him. He had, thankfully, remained behind for this event. "The Longbottoms generally vote with Lord Dumbledore and the Light faction but have been known to change their position occasionally and vote in favour of SOW Party initiatives."

Lady Longbottom looked around, frowning a little. "Overdoing it on the medieval aesthetic, are we?" she said critically, and Neal saw his mother, smiling, going to intercept her.

"We are a family of warriors," she said, pulling her fan out delicately and using it to shield the lower part of her face with an air of embarrassment, casting her eyes down. "We have, I must say, never grown fully accustomed to living in peace, and are regrettably more comfortable in these settings."

In short, Neal thought, suppressing a roll of his eyes, we're more than prepared to defend ourselves, so don't even think about crossing us.

Lady Longbottom was followed by a middle-aged, rotund man that Blake identified as the Heir Ollivander, then by a tall, Black man wearing a round cap, decorated with a diamond pattern worked in silver and gold thread. The Lord Shacklebolt, in person, apparently. The Lord Shafiq followed shortly thereafter, with a friendly nod towards Neal and a formal bow to his mother, followed by the Lord Nond, a young, slight, somewhat waif-like blond shadow. Lord Naxen arrived next, his clear hazel eyes keen as he examined the tapestries lining Neal's great hall, followed shortly by one of the Prewetts – not the current Lord, Fabian Prewett, but his younger brother, Gideon. Finally, Raoul Goldenlake, the Heir Goldenlake, who was built like a mountain and wore a bright, friendly smile, nearly fell out of the fireplace.

"Oh, it's nice to arrive somewhere where I don't have to stoop to get out of the fireplace," he said, sighing in relief, stepping into Neal's great hall. He looked around, dark eyes considering, before offering a friendly, polite bow to Neal. "Your hall is impressive, Lord Queenscove, and I look forward to talking with you further. I was very interested in your remarks in Bridge – I'm very impressed with your decision to take up the title, especially given what you must have heard about our little nation."

"Thank you," Neal replied, a little flummoxed for response, but he didn't have the time to think through a proper reply right then and there, or to look to Blake for help. "I'm, uh, also looking forward to talking with you further. I'm sorry, but I think that is everyone – Lord Dumbledore sent his regrets, and I have had no response from any of the other invited families."

"Understandable," Goldenlake sighed, looking away to admire the great hall again. "An attack on the Hogwarts Express is serious, and Lord Dumbledore is already going to have to answer questions about it to the Wizengamot. As for the rest, it is their loss – already, I am glad that I came."

The whole evening was, as far as Neal was concerned, an aggravating, headache-inducing play of manners. His mother obviously enjoyed it, and Neal would have thought that Blake would have as well. But he hadn't accounted for the loss of status that Blake must have recently suffered, as well as who Blake must have been before Neal arrived in Wizarding Britain.

"What are you doing here?" That was a question that more than one of Neal's guests directed at him, while Blake stood, still as stone, expressionless by Neal's side. Some of them were just curious – others wore a look of slight distaste, though it couldn't have been because of Blake's blood-status. Neal hoped that it wasn't because of Blake's blood-status, but he didn't really know.

"I'm the Lord Queenscove's personal assistant," Blake would reply, his voice cool and devoid of emotion. "It is a pleasure to see you again." He would then bow, a lower bow than Neal had been taught, one that made Neal grit his teeth to see. He didn't need an explicit explanation to know that Blake, by the rules of the society he now lived in, was in some way debasing himself before these nobles.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," Lady Longbottom had sneered, on seeing him, and Neal privately resolved to put her in his black books. Heir Ollivander, too, wrinkled his nose at Blake, while the Lords Shacklebolt, Shafiq, and Nond seemed content with his answer and proceeded to ignore him entirely throughout the evening. Only Prewett studied him, clear hazel eyes sympathetic, and Goldenlake tried to say hello and smile, but Blake ignored them both – knowing him, Neal guessed that the sympathy was worse than the derision.

The whole thing seemed rather pointless. They chatted about light things, about their families, about their summers when their children were at home, about Quidditch or business or holidays. Neal answered a wide range of questions about his family, about his Grand Tour through Europe, about his decision to claim the title (which had been massaged into something with considerably more deliberation). Neal felt like a puppet, mechanically smiling and answering questions, while inside he was dying of boredom. It wasn't that he didn't like many of them – he did seem to have a lot in common with Heir Goldenlake, getting sucked into a conversation about European duelling circuit rankings, with Lord Naxen listening in interest, and he and Prewett spoke at some length about common sights they had both seen in France.

They just hadn't talked about anything of substance, and even if Queenscove was purring contentedly in the back of his mind, Neal didn't see the point. None of this seemed to get Neal any closer to his goal of leaving Queenscove. He hadn't gotten to know anyone well enough to be able to entrust his castle with them – as if Queenscove would even allow that, yet.

"Don't expect so much, so early," Blake said, at the end of the evening, drinking a final, tiny cup of tea that his mother had brewed. "The purpose of tonight was to give you a soft introduction to some of the people who will form your allies in the Wizengamot – and to show them why they should take you seriously. They saw your holdings, they toured some of your protective defenses, and you gave them ample reason not to become your enemy. Thank you, Lady Queenscove, for all your assistance."

"My pleasure," Neal's mother said, two hands on her own small teacup, made in the Chinese style. "It has been far too long since I've dipped into politics of any kind – I enjoyed it."

All of that led to this day, the opening of the Wizengamot. Blake was by early in the morning, checking Neal's chosen outfit.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" Neal complained, letting the other boy fix his knee-length surcoat. This was a nicer one than he had worn for either his meetings with Lord Shafiq or Lord Rosier or the event he had had at Queenscove, after which he had tightened the wards on the Floo to ensure that none of his guests from that night could enter without an invitation. This surcoat had his personal arms embroidered on it – the Queenscove ship and crown, quartered with the Song family crest, worked gold on green. "You do work, don't you?"

"The main project I am working on has its first meeting this afternoon," Blake replied brusquely, tugging at the back of Neal's collar straight. "I can simply work later, to compensate for the late start I will have this morning. Now." He walked around, looking at Neal critically, before nodding. "You look about as good as you ever will. Good luck – the Lord Black will help you, as much as he can, and do try to avoid being kicked out of the Wizengamot. With the seat being alive, I think it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that you are the rightful Lord, but you should expect much hesitation from SOW Party families in any event. Still, with the attack on the Hogwarts Express, my hope is that they'll be more interested in putting Lord Dumbledore on the spot than dealing with you."

"Sounds wonderful," Neal replied, gritting his teeth and looking at himself in the mirror. He looked good – he looked like the version of himself that he remembered his mother dressing him up to be, for their very few visits to her family in China. There were moments, here and there, where his farther-flung family members would try to guilt his mother for marrying his father, but that was always easily settled by him and his brothers and sister on the training courts – he and Graeme, even as children, were bigger than most of his similarly-aged cousins, and while Will was small, he was fast and tricky, and Jessa had always had a vicious streak to her. He wished this problem were one that could be managed the same way.

It didn't matter. Queenscove wanted him to act like its Lord and attending the Wizengamot was one of the primary functions of a Lord. So, he would have to attend and do what he must, and maybe he should even try to find some fun with it. He was a Book of Gold noble, after all, and the way Blake put it, that meant he could pull rank if he wanted. And Sirius would be going with him, that day, to make sure he got in. He checked his sword, belted formally at his waist today, and he ran one finger lightly over the metal-and-bone hilt.

"All will go well, Yuanren," his mother said, waiting by the fireplace in the hall, reaching up to wrap him in a rare hug. "Know your worth. Hold your head with pride. Many of the nobles here are provincial fools and know nothing about the world – have pity for them only. You will do well."

"Thank you, Mama," Neal muttered, leaning down to return the hug. "I will."

Sirius was waiting for him at Grimmauld Place, in his best robes – black velvet, gleaming a little in the light, with shining dragon-hide leather boots. His face was grim, if resigned. "Ready for hell on earth?"

"No," Neal admitted bluntly, brushing a bit of extra soot off himself. "But I never will be, so let's just go."

"Truer words," Sirius grumbled, shaking his head and leading the way out the front doors of Grimmauld Place, heading to the shadowed corner that marked his Apparition Point. "We'll Apparate there – it's not far, close to the Wizarding Courts of Law in Diagon Alley, and Apparating makes more sense than Floo. I'll Side-Along you."

The Wizengamot was an imposing building, with grim, dark stone reaching up to the sky in two square towers, joined in the middle by a squat, heavily carved, domed building with wide, arched windows in the middle. A dozen wide, low-lying steps spilled out from a double set of wooden doors, themselves shadowed in an arch, with symbols that Neal didn't recognize on both sides of the heavy, black doors – something that looked like an M, bisected in the middle by a wand, with the two feet of the letter resting on a set of scales. He noticed two stars, dotting the bottom of the insignia, as he followed Sirius inside the building.

Inside, it was all dark, carved granite, veined with shimmering lines of silver and gold. The same symbol kept cropping up, throughout the huge, echoing, nearly empty floor, over and over again – glowing faintly on the floor, repeated over and over again on the walls. There were low benches resting along the edges of the floor, some of them occupied by people, talking in hushed voices. The ceilings were too high, and the air too still, too silent. Neal couldn't help but rest one hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw – he wished he had had the foresight, as his brother Will did, to train himself to use his wand in his non-dominant hand so that he could wield both at the same time. He wondered if it might not be too late for that, now.

Crossing that giant, glossy floor felt like walking over a dark, bottomless pool, lit only by the skylights in the dome – one central circle, shining a spotlight onto the centre of the floor, and twelve long rectangular slits like a clock. Sirius didn't even seem to notice, making a beeline as he was for the wide doors on the other end. There was a wizard guarding the doors, tall, but with sloped shoulders and a protruding beer belly. "Lord Black," the wizard nodded in recognition, but then he turned to Neal. "And you are…?"

"Lord Nealan Yuanren Queenscove," Sirius replied for him, his voice haughty. "He claimed his title earlier this summer – the announcement was on the first of September in the Daily Prophet, and there have been no challengers. Let us pass."

The wizard hesitated, looking Neal over nervously. On one hand, offending a noble was not an intelligent thing to do, and he wasn't being paid to ask questions of his superiors, but on the other, this was completely out of the ordinary and he was being paid to provide nominal protection to the members of the Wizengamot. His eyes lingered on Neal's unorthodox dress, on the sword belted at his waist, at Neal's hand on the hilt of his blade. "Let me see the notice, then."

Sirius pulled out a copy of the Daily Prophet from September the first, already open to the Announcements page. Blake had been fastidious in following the etiquette for a new claim, so Neal knew that all the formalities had been followed, and then some. The wizard examined the paper, reading the notice, then he took another long, lingering look at Neal.

"I assure you this is the Lord Queenscove," Sirius said, his voice now betraying a hint of annoyance. "As you can see, the usual protocol for claiming a title has been completed – the advertisement was done in the Daily Prophet, more than ten days in advance of the sitting. Do let us pass, Stokes."

The wizard bit his lip, then he seemed to make a snap decision. "Without the sword, then. No weapons in the Wizengamot."

Neal raised an eyebrow, aiming for the same haughty, annoyed tone that Sirius had achieved. His words came out slower, more considering, though there was an edge behind them. "Do you strip members of the Wizengamot of their wands, as well? The Lord Black had not informed me."

"No," the wizard blustered, flushing suddenly. "But a wand is, it's different. It's a fundamental right, but your sword—"

"As a traditional heirloom-caster, my sword is my wand." Neal glared at him, crossing his arms over his chest. It wouldn't work, anyway – Neal was fully bonded to his heirloom, and he could not be parted from it. That was the primary advantage of heirloom-casting over wand use, and the main reason why the powerful Chinese Auror Corps was still more than eighty-percent heirloom-casters. Wands could be broken, and a wand-user could be disarmed, but once bonded, an heirloom could not be broken or separated from its user.

"I don't know about that," the wizard said, frowning in reply, skeptical. "I've never heard of such a thing. Leave your sword, Lord Queenscove, and you may pass."

All Neal wanted to do was make a point, and there were people behind him, now. He sighed theatrically, a noble Lord who was being asked completely unreasonable things and sent his sword into non-being with a practiced flick of his hand. Stokes let them pass and, not even five steps past him, with another practiced gesture, Neal retrieved it and sheathed it back at his waist. There were murmurs from the room, but Neal ignored them. He was an heirloom-caster, and that much should have been obvious from his name, from his dress, from his weapon itself.

"My lord Queenscove, it is good to see you." Lord Shafiq greeted him with a short bow that Neal politely returned, before heading towards the section marked for Book of Gold members. That section was by far the sparsest – many seats sat dark, and their names were dimmed. Presumably, those seats were for noble families whose lines had fully died out, or who hadn't had anyone claim their titles. There, to the far left, Neal could make out his own seat – the golden letters spelling out Queenscove, sitting beside the seat glowing Black. The Black seat was next to one that read Peverell, since, as Neal understood it, Sirius was currently holding the Lord Peverell's proxy. Farther down, he could see the Ollivander and Longbottom seats, with the Lord Ollivander and Lady Longbottom already present and talking. There were a few other names, in that section, all bunched together, names that Neal vaguely recognized but who hadn't responded to his invitation.

There were dozens of seats, of names, below his row, with names reading Malfoy, Parkinson, Lestrange, Crouch, or Greengrass, just to name a few. He ignored the whispers that surrounded him as he marched, unseeing, across the floor to the gold section and began taking the long stairs to his own seat, a few steps behind Sirius. The Lord Malfoy, a tall, broad-shouldered man with long, white-blonde hair, stood, stepping in front of him and blocking the steps, looming over him.

"And you are…?" His voice was cool, icy.

"Nealan Yuanren Queenscove," Neal replied, equally cold. Hold your head high, he heard his mother's voice echoing in his head. The Lord Malfoy might be one of the most powerful nobles in Wizarding Britain, but Wizarding Britain was only one small country in the wider world, he reminded himself. The Lord Malfoy was no one at all in the world Neal came from – his mother would laugh if Neal was cowed by him, and it would be worse than the Triwizard Tournament debacle. "I am the Lord Queenscove. Let me pass, please."

"When was your claim issued?" Lord Malfoy demanded, one hand on a walking stick. Neal's blade hummed under his hand; he would be damned if Malfoy wasn't hiding his wand or a blade within his stick. Neal casually slid his hand down, holding his blade just under the hilt, the first position before a draw. If there was to be combat, he generally preferred his blade.

"September the first, in the Announcements of the Daily Prophet, as per protocol." Neal caught Sirius' eye; Archie's father had paused, a few steps above the Lord Malfoy. "Sirius, if you wouldn't mind…?"

"Not at all," Sirius said, pulling out the newspaper once more and handing it to the Lord Malfoy. "There was also an interview, Lucius, in Bridge a week ago – the time for challenges is past. His seat is lit, and he has the right, and the obligation, to attend."

The other man curled his lip in disgust at the mention of Bridge, but he looked down to examine the Daily Prophet announcement carefully. Neal tapped one foot in apparent annoyance – the point of the formal announcement was for the other nobility to raise their objections, generally through a challenge. The fact that no one had done so, or that no one had paid attention to the Announcements section of the Daily Prophet on September the first, that wasn't his problem. A minute passed, then two, and Neal sighed.

"I assure you, Lucius, I have already checked the Book of Gold," Sirius added, his voice a little impatient. "He's in it – the thirty-fifth Lord of Queenscove. Let's just get on with the sittings."

The Lord Malfoy looked up from the Prophet, frowning sternly at Neal. Even as he was looking at Neal, his words were clearly intended for Sirius. "You can hardly expect that one vote will make a difference to the proceedings today, Sirius. I will let it go for now, but you can rest assured that I will be looking into Queenscove farther." He shoved the copy of the Prophet into Neal's chest, turning to sit back in his own seat.

If Neal hadn't been subtly set for some sort of action, he would have stumbled. Instead, he took the paper in hand and continued his way up the steps, breathing slowly through his nose. He privately resolved to tighten the security on his Floo. Again. Was it even worth having the Floo? It was a long hike over his grounds to his castle, sure, but balancing security and the convenience of the Floo…

"What does that mean, Lucius?" Sirius' voice was sharp, if low. "The proceedings today?"

The Lord Malfoy ignored him, and Sirius made a low noise like a growl in the back of his throat.

"I hate it when they blindside us," Sirius muttered lowly to Neal, as they took their own seats. "I have a bad feeling about this, and I hate not knowing what's coming."

Neal nodded, not knowing how else to react, and settled into his first day in the Wizengamot. From his seat, the highest of the occupied seats in his section, he had a clear view of both the section for the Book of Silver families, to his right, and across from him the Book of Copper families. Both sections were larger in number than his, though that was likely only because they had fewer empty seats – he supposed that, since the Book of Gold families were the oldest, more of them had died out than the others. There were only perhaps thirty lit seats in his section, while there were probably fifty or so in the Silver section, and maybe seventy-five in the Copper. The lit names, too, reflected the degree of nobility – in his section, names glowed a bright gold, while the Silver section gleamed silver and the Copper names were a burnished copper.

In the middle of the Silver section, Neal picked out the name Riddle glowing bright in centre of a large group of nobles, all talking quietly amongst themselves. He studied the mage – from across the room, he doubted the man would notice. The Lord Riddle was middle-aged, with piercing blue-grey eyes and a strong, square jawline, streaks of grey at his temples. He exuded a sense of power, of authority, and the people around him uniformly deferred to him.

Blake had said that there were some oddities about the Lord Riddle's title and its provenance – like Queenscove, it was thought to be a dead house, and Lord Riddle had apparently resurrected it. The problem was, if anyone did any research, the name Riddle hadn't appeared ever in the past. It wasn't like Neal's House, where the Lords Queenscove had been documented throughout the history books, in court records, in the annals of the proceedings of the Wizengamot, in the news of the time, for their achievements, their scandals, their idiocies. There wasn't a single mention of a previous Lord Riddle, not even at times when there should have been; neither prominent Riddles, nor idiot Riddles, not any Riddles at all. No engagements, no births, and no obituaries. Even if the Book of Silver named Lord Riddles through approximately 1620, the copies made and kept by many noble families didn't document a House Riddle before the 1950s.

"That could be because most copies of the Book of Silver made by noble families only documented extant lines," Blake had said, his voice even and thoughtful, "but there are other problems. There is no known Riddle manor, either now or in the records – I haven't any idea how he could have claimed title without one, and it flies in the face of the known theories. Even the families that don't have manors today had them previously, and it was always sensational when one was lost. However, the Lord Riddle is a powerful wizard, Lord-level – we do not ask questions. It's enough to know that he is noble, of the Book of Silver, and that he leads the SOW Party."

Ultimately, Neal supposed it didn't really matter – who cared if Riddle's noble title was somewhat suspicious? In any other country in the world, a noble title was meaningless, and obviously the Wizarding British nobility had chosen not to investigate it further, so it didn't matter at all. He moved on, to a different group of Lords and Ladies, all clustered around an elderly, grim-faced wizard with sharp blue eyes and a long, white beard.

"Lord Albus Perceval Wulfric Brian Dumbledore," Sirius said, beside him, his voice low. "The leader of the Light Families."

"You're among them?" Neal asked, keeping his voice down as well. "Blake said that you were politically Neutral, though he expected you would turn Light again."

"He was right." Sirius sighed. "With Archie being, well, Archie… it was the best thing to do. It looks like we're starting – Elder Marchbanks looks ready to begin."

Neal nodded, settling in with a sigh. He had never really had a head for politics – Will was the political one in the family, and he wouldn't be shocked if his brother was one day the official Canadian ambassador to the International Confederation of Wizards. He would have said Prime Minister of Wizarding Canada, but he didn't think that Will could be convinced to leave Tina, and he didn't think Tina would ever be swayed from her job at the International Wizarding Criminal Court.

Will would have enjoyed this, Neal thought grouchily, listening to the discussion. Blake had worried that Neal's place among them would be added by a last-minute motion to the agenda, but it seemed like no one cared enough to protest. There were several assessing glares at him from various Lords and Ladies, whom Sirius named for him – Lestrange, Carrow, Rowle, Yaxley among them, and then Neal stopped paying attention, adopting an expression of casual disinterest instead. Most of the people staring at him were members of the SOW Party, and they all seemed to have greater concerns. They were talking quietly to each other, something like a nervous energy running between them.

The proceedings of the Wizengamot were awful, ridiculously immature. Two hours in, the Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot were still throwing veiled insults at each other over the attack on the Hogwarts Express, and Neal could practically feel Sirius vibrating in the seat beside him as Lord Dumbledore fielded question after question. The attack had occurred on a bridge over running water, playing havoc with the monitoring spells, and the wards over the train had been broken. They had to have someone accomplished in ward construction or curse-breaking with them for it, especially to lift the Anti-Apparition Wards, since the wards were anchored by multiple power stones. The train's Guardian, the Trolley Lady, had been somehow waylaid so that she could not come to the defense of the students, while others broke into the train itself from the roof. From there, it seemed that the attackers had been content to throw pamphlets throughout the train, before sending their vulgar skull-and-serpent symbol soaring into the sky. Since they were close to Hogsmeade Station, and the Head Girl and Head Boy had both reported, by Patronus, that the situation was stable and under control, the decision had been made to simply bring the children to school post-haste.

Lord Dumbledore was a poor position with the attack, but still managed to turn some part of it back on the Ministry, currently appointed by the SOW Party. They had had more than two weeks, they had questioned the students many times, and yet no progress had been made finding the perpetrators of the crime. As Neal understood it, there was virtually no effort to find the perpetrators based on anything other than the students' testimony – the words on the pamphlet itself, the symbol thrown into the sky,were being ignored. He drew a connection to the attack on the Quidditch World Cup, more than a year ago, and even brought up the attacks on the Triwizard Tournament, the resurrection of a new, self-described, Dark Lord.

Neal felt his ears perk in interest, a little – he had been in the room, at AIM, watching the final match when the Hogwarts team had been kidnapped, forced to a cemetery. They had all escaped, with Harry Potter having drawn attention away from her teammates as they had fled. She had then been captured, her blood used in an arcane, Dark resurrection ritual, and tortured – he hadn't been able to hear her screams, but he had seen them. Her escape had been luck, skill, and a certain amount of good timing.

And yet, it seemed like over the summer, the focus had been on her – on Harry Potter, revealed halfblood, and on her cousin, Archie Black. On their crimes, instead of the ones committed against her. How was that, for priorities?

It seemed like Lord Dumbledore had brought the latter point up before, but he was greeted with skepticism, even a little laughter, from the SOW Party members. Whoever had interfered with the Tournament was clearly a madman with delusions of grandeur, and they would be caught in time. They weren't worth the attention that Lord Dumbledore was attempting to place on them, and there was nothing connecting the events at all. Even the pamphlets themselves had serious differences, in tone and in style, which made it all seem that much more likely that it was simply a copycat crime, rather than a pattern. Lord Dumbledore was growing senile, seeing things that weren't there.

It was painfully aggravating, and Neal shifted, gritting his teeth. It had only been a couple hours, and he was going to need to find some way of surviving these for the foreseeable future. He would have to develop new fantasies about Yuki, or sneak in those stupid treatises on chivalry that his castle always wanted him to read (for all the good that they did, here), or maybe he would remind himself, ad nauseum, about the wonders of Montréal. Skiing at Mont Tremblant, a Styrofoam cup of hot cocoa at the bottom of the hill, a dinner of poutine piled high with smoked meat. Brisk air on his face as he skated, as he joined his siblings in a casual game of pick-up hockey, not that any of them were especially good but it was a good excuse to plow into them and knock them over, for them to slide into the edges of the rink. A warm winter's evening, lounging in front of the fireplace at home, surrounded by his family while they argued in three different languages at once.

Eventually, the topic was shelved – it would be up to Madam Umbridge, currently stationed at Hogwarts, to continue the investigation as she saw fit, and an update would be provided to the Wizengamot before the next sittings in October. They moved onto legislation, and Madam Marchbanks called Lord Riddle to the floor.

Neal felt Sirius stiffen, beside him.

"Good afternoon, Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot," the statesman said, a broad smile coming across his face. Neal felt chills going down his spine – knowing what he did about the man and his political stances, he couldn't imagine that this was a good sign. "Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to a piece of legislation that we and the Save Our World Party have been working on for many years: The Marriage Law."

XXX

AIM was a breath of fresh air. The late summer sun, beaming into the Pettingill Hall common room, was warm, and it was amazing being surrounded again by Healing books, Hermione and John by his side. There was theatre, there were auditions – AIM had always been a place where Archie could be himself, more than anywhere else, and even if home wasn't all that different now, AIM would always be special to him. The only difference now was that it was better – he wasn't Harry Potter anymore, he was Arcturus Rigel Black. The first time Archie saw his dorm room door, on the fourth floor of Pettingill Hall, he nearly burst into tears.

"What is it?" Hermione asked, glancing quizzically from Archie's face to his bedroom door. It was the same as every other door along the hallway – the same plain white, with a chalkboard set into it for decoration.

"It has my name on it," Archie sniffled, pointing at the round, white cursive. The big, round, simple A, the B with the extra little line at the top. "Archie Black. It says my name on it, Hermione!"

Hermione looked at the placard, then at Archie, and there was a moment where it seemed like she didn't know what to say. Eventually, she just sighed, patted him on the back, and went to unpack in her own room.

His room was felt a little smaller than before, but on reflection, it was only that his wardrobe was bigger. That was good, because he had two new sets of Healer's robes for his weekly rotations at the teaching hospital, where he would be learning how to take medical histories, interview patients, triage, and where he would be shadowing fully licensed Healers as they went about their duties. His room also now came equipped with two bookshelves, instead of just one, and with Archie's much reduced library since the Ministry raid, he was actually able to display all of his books properly. His classes were pretty much all Healing focused, now, and he couldn't imagine anything better.

There was a mysterious, bulky package on his desk when he arrived. He picked it up, eyeing it curiously, and a tiny vial of potion fell out. He held it up to the light, peering at it – it was an odd colour, grey, and some parts of it looked like it had congealed or separated. He shook it, and little dark flakes rose from the bottom of the vial, then settled again. Potions didn't do that, he didn't think – not complete ones, anyway. Harry always said that one of the best ways to tell when a potion was complete was that all the constituent parts would have melded into one, homogenous whole. He didn't recognize it, but then, that didn't mean much. He was good at Potions, but he wasn't Harry.

He shook his head, putting down the vial in favour of picking up the letter it had come with. He half expected that it was from Harry (who else would be sending him random, possibly incomplete potions?), but raised an eyebrow when he saw the formal, noble handwriting that had never been trained into him or Harry. The first page was relatively short, and a quick riffle through the rest of the package showed that the rest of it was copies of other correspondence, which didn't seem to be intended for him. He flipped back to the first page, hoping that it would have some answers.

Potter, he read. I find myself quite unsurprised to learn that you've apparently been committing blood identity theft for years to go to Hogwarts. While I can't say that this is a good life choice, you have my appreciation for your sheer nerves in doing such a thing.

I understand that you recently escaped the clutches of Britain's new resident Dark Lord. I write to warn you, even though it is very much against my sensibilities to do so. This Lord Voldemort is no Lord Riddle and will not be content to take the political route; he wants a revolution, probably in blood. I suspect that, since you have so recently escaped his attentions, he will probably be searching for you. I enclose, for your edification, a set of letters my mother had in her possession. My mother is, I suspect, his torture expert. Do with it what you will.

While it shocks me to be writing this, please don't let yourself be tortured into insanity. I enclose also a sample of something I've been working on for some time – if you take it before taking Cruciatus, your mind will be more resilient to its effects. I assume that you can reverse-engineer it, but if not, you'll have to meet me in person and beg me for the full recipe. It is not a finished product, though, as I never did enough tests on it to demonstrate how effective it might be.

It was signed Caelum Lestrange, and Archie's eyebrow went up even higher. Both of his eyebrows, really, since he could actually only raise one eyebrow so high. He supposed that Harry and Lestrange were friends, of a sort – they had done their Potions Guild internships together, and there was that incident at the third year SOW Party Gala when Harry had put him in his place. But after their last year, when he had had to interrupt their dance because Harry was trying to stomp all over his feet, he hadn't been sure. And, given that Lestrange apparently developed and tested a torture-insulation potion, Archie would prefer that Harry wasn't friendly with him, yet... He hesitated, looking through the letter again, flipping through the other papers Lestrange had sent.

It was meant for Harry, but it was important for Dad to know, too, and for Neal and for everyone back in Britain. And it obviously wasn't a private letter – Lestrange had sent it to him, and how could Archie have known to send it on to Harry without opening it and reading it? And knowing what it said, how could Archie not act on it?

And he would send on a copy with Harry, along with the vial, as soon as he had a way of doing so. He didn't think the vial would be interesting to anyone except Harry, nor would anyone else be able to work out whatever Lestrange had done. He would only take a copy of the information and send it on to Dad and Aldon and everyone in Britain. He couldn't use the regular owl post, though – there was a good chance that dad's post was being monitored, so that wouldn't work. He would use the No-Maj post and send it to Christie Blake, Aldon's mum, instead, and ask Aldon to pass it on. There would probably be time to slip out to town after classes at the end of the week, or, in the worst case scenario, he could always take the school shuttle on the weekend.

Things were a little different, being Archie Black at school, instead of Harry Potter. At first, some of his classmates stared at him, even though they had to know what he looked like, after last year. Once he had dropped his disguise in that awful tournament final, he had never put it back on. Still, with it only being a week or so before school ended and exams began, most of his classmates probably hadn't gotten used to it, not unless they were his friends. A few of his classmates, even a few of his professors, stumbled over his name, but that would work itself out, in time.

His interview in Bridge sounded fantastic, when Hermione finally managed to slip him a copy. The paper had technically come out the day that they were heading back to America, but he hadn't had the chance to grab a copy before going to Heathrow. It had his favourite picture of himself, bracketed by John on one side and Neal on the other, instead of the formal pictures of himself alone. His words sounded good, too – Hermione and Aldon had really edited him to sound smart, and even if they were his words, there was something more to them.

The attack on the Hogwarts Express hit the news in America on the third of September, a minor article in the American Standard that sent Hermione into a tizzy.

"The Ministry condemned the attack," she said, her mouth a thin, drawn line. "But based on the Prophet, they're blowing it up a lot. On one hand, it's good that they aren't trying to cover it up, but the SOW Party is trying to get something from this, I would swear it. They're using this to attack Lord Dumbledore's credibility, which already shot after the Rigel Black Scandal."

Archie let out a worried, slightly guilty sigh. "And my trial didn't help, did it?"

Hermione looked at him, head tilted, and her eyes softened a little. "No, not really. You did the best you could, Archie – there really were no better options. It was gone the minute the ruse was up, and there wasn't really anything you could have done."

Archie joined some of her BSA meetings, this year – only her Advocacy and Policy Committee meetings, though, since he didn't need any mentorship and he already had a social group. He met Sally Hopkins, their British yearmate, for almost the first time, as well as a few of Hermione's other friends: halfblood Oliver Kepnes, newblood Erica McRae, newblood Molly O'Dea. Truth be told, he barely paid attention during these meetings – he mainly enjoyed watching Hermione. Hermione knew how to run a meeting, and there was something so attractive about listening to her run through an agenda, her clear voice cutting through all the nonsense.

Or maybe Archie was just an idiot in love, because when he tried to explain it to John, John had just shot him a look of helpless amusement.

"Do you also have a thing for her when she's wearing her power suit?" John ventured, stifling a laugh. "Because, like… you have been telling me about her bringing motions for approval for the last ten minutes."

Archie flushed. He did, in fact, also like Hermione very much in her navy-blue suit.

"Competence kink," John snorted, then his shoulders started shaking, and then he gave up and laughed until he cried.

Archie auditioned for Grease, doing well enough to make the final callback for Danny Zuko, only to lose against Evin Larse over the stupid chemistry test again. If Hermione would only join theatre, he was sure that he could blow the chemistry test out of the water, but his voice just hadn't meshed well with any of the Sandy candidates. Sandy went to Thea McKinnon, who had spent half her summer in vocal training and could belt her lines as powerfully as Evin, now. Archie ended up with Kenickie, which… well, pregnancy subplot or not, he got to sing Greased Lightning on a stage, so there was that.

It was a week and a half after classes started, on his way back from his very first round of clinical rotations, that he walked into his room a saw a toucan on his desk. The bird looked at him, and clapped its giant, yellow beak a couple times, a demand in its beady red-rimmed eyes. Archie tilted his head, reaching for the Owl Treats that he kept around – were toucans carnivorous? He didn't think so. He offered one anyway, and the bird peered closely at it before turning around and flipping its tail feathers at him.

He would have to figure out what toucans ate, he supposed, then he saw the sheet of paper on his desk. It was a little ragged and heavily spotted, but he would recognize Harry's handwriting anywhere. He leapt for it, a bright grin spreading across his face. It had been so long since he had last heard from her!

Don't worry, I'm fine, she started, and Archie laughed in delight, because that was how she always started her letters. I'm glad to see that you survived the summer – I don't get a lot of news, here, but I'm really sorry you were convicted in my absence, and I'm sorry you lost your Metamorphmagus gift. I wish you hadn't gone back at all.

It wasn't the I told you so that he had half been expecting from her, and Archie breathed a small sigh of relief. She had left it at her own feelings, and Archie could only be happy with that, especially because she probably didn't know about the decision that he had gotten. If she had, she would understand why he did it, and why he didn't regret it, but it was hard to understand without that context. He was found guilty, and he had lost a part of his magic. To most mages, those would have been serious, crippling blows.

I'm glad you're back in America, if only because I'll be able to write to you more now that you're out of Britain. I'm still not able to tell you where I am, or too much information, which must be frustrating, but suffice it to say I'm getting a whole new experience in potions-brewing! There are so many techniques that aren't taught in school, and I'm very fortunate to have found myself in a place where I can keep learning. I'm really enjoying myself, Archie – it feels awful to say that, when I know you've had such a hard summer, but it's fascinating and I really hope I can share it with you, one day.

Archie couldn't help but burst into laughter, again. That was how he had felt for the first few years of his life at AIM – somehow guilty for enjoying himself, when he knew that Harry was suffering at Hogwarts! It was odd, being on the other side, and also realizing that this must have been how Harry would have felt. Hogwarts had always been worth it to her, even if Archie couldn't have understood it, just as Archie's choices here and now were worth it to him. Maybe he could have told her, all along, about AIM – from the opposite perspective, the fact that Harry was enjoying herself only made him feel happy for her, not resentful for her choices.

Well, he lived, and he learned. There was no use being sorry for it now, but he resolved to show her everything when she came back, as soon as he could. Maybe he would start by sending her books now, some of his favourites. That was a fantastic idea, on further thought – what should he send her? He wished he had his old library, the one that the Aurors had confiscated, but despite Percy's best efforts, he had never gotten anything back from them.

My friend, the toucan, will need a day to rest, but he'll carry a message back to me, if you want. Would you feed him? He eats fruit, mainly, and I promised him that you would feed him new, interesting North American fruits if he carried my letter to you. At least a few kinds, please, otherwise I might not be able to convince him to carry messages for me again!

I miss you, and give my love to Mum and Dad, and Addy and Sirius and Remus, if you can. Harry.

Fortunately, Archie had already made a copy of Lestrange's letters for Aldon and Dad, but he hadn't gotten around to sending it yet, since he still needed to get into town for the No-Maj post office. One of the worst parts about Neal having graduated was that he no longer had a convenient upper-year friend to ask to take him to town, so it was either the student shuttle, or he would have to ask one of John's friends. Faleron had a car, he thought. Archie would just slide Harry's letter, too, into the No-Maj post for Aldon to pass on to Dad.

Harry, he wrote the next day, the toucan having been satisfied with the selection of apples, pears, oranges, peaches, dates, bananas and blueberries that he had managed to swipe from the dining hall. It's great to hear from you!

His letter was rather longer than any he had written before, telling her all about his summer, about Justice's decision, about his first few weeks at AIM. He told her about all the things he hadn't before – about movies he had seen, the books he had read, the theatre he had been working on. He didn't worry about whether she would understand it, anymore – she either would, or she wouldn't, and if she didn't, she could always ask him. He told her about Bridge, telling her to keep an eye out for it and to try to read it, if she could – he told her about his hopes, for wider representation, for a world where people could make their own way, on their own merit, making their own choices for self-determination. He slipped in a copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s writings, figuring he could always get another copy, and then he capped it all off with a short note about Justice's words.

Justice said that she would have struck the law, if it was you in front of her instead of me. If you want to go back, you can – if they charge you, Aldon can invoke Justice for your trial. It's a risk, but without blood identity theft, the rest of your charges are pretty minor, or there are other defenses for them (like self-defence, to be super obvious!).

He paused for a minute, eyeing his words carefully. While having the law be struck would be wonderful, not just for him but for all newbloods and halfbloods, he didn't want to put any pressure on her to do it. He wanted her to do it, of course he did, but he wanted her to do it because it was her own choice to do it. If he wanted Harry to respect his decisions, then he absolutely had to respect hers.

He hesitated, then he added one more line to that paragraph: It's up to you. Your risk to take, your choice to make.

He signed off, packaged it all up and offered it to the toucan, who gave him a very long-suffering kind of look.

"I fed you every kind of fruit in the dining hall, I'll have you know," he informed it sternly.

The toucan clapped its beak again, once, before it begrudgingly allowed Archie to tie the package to it and leapt out the window, falling about six feet in the air before the wind caught its wings. Archie watched it wheel upwards, finding a couple updrafts, before it turned and soared south.

Archie was busier at AIM than he had ever been before. It wasn't just his classes, which were becoming more interesting day by day, it was managing them with his new rotations at the teaching hospital, which were amazing and let him work with real patients. He loved it – he loved chatting with patients, making them feel comfortable as he took their medical histories, he loved shadowing Healers around the hospital as they went about their duties, he loved helping to develop treatment plans. Sometimes, he even had John with him on rotations, since John had opted for Emergency Healing and therefore was required to do rotations with every department, to get a general background in every area and to know when to refer cases to each area. He looked forward to every Friday, his assigned rotation day.

He had rehearsals three times a week, he went to Hermione's BSA meetings sometimes, and on top of that, writing for a newspaper was hard. It was just a once a week column, and he had a fun column about No-Maj culture! How hard could it be, he had thought, to produce seven hundred and fifty words per week on a recent No-Maj movie or book?

Very hard, it turned out, because he wanted to do a good job of it. He couldn't just give everything five stars out of five, much as he wanted to, because that wasn't very helpful, and gushing would get old fast. Reading the book, or watching the movie, that was only the fun part. Next, Archie had to think about the book or the movie, and he had to do it critically, and sometimes he found that he didn't like the book or movie so much afterwards. He split them evenly – a movie review one week, and a book review the next. Babe, then the week after, a book by a British author, Northern Lights, which had been repackaged as The Golden Compass in America. The Prophecy, a terrifying horror film in which review Archie confessed that he was a cowardly lion and didn't like horror films at all, followed by The Prestige, another British fantasy novel that had kept him awake thinking for far too many hours at night.

Writing the reviews always took an evening or two, but getting them into Bridge headquarters was an adventure all its own. They didn't have time for No-Maj post, which took a week to get over the Atlantic, or for owl post, which took almost the same amount of time, depending on owl. Their news needed to be current, and with the word count of what needed to go in, telephone transcription just wasn't feasible, not that Archie had a working phone at AIM anyway. The answer was, apparently, the internet.

Archie had an email account now. Every Saturday, he and Hermione either took the shuttle into town, or they caught a ride in with someone. Both of them would head for the public library, sign up for an hour with the computer, and type out their reports to send back to Britain by email. Derrick, or whoever he had gotten to help him with Bridge, had clearly set up in the No-Maj world, where No-Maj electronics worked. Email correspondence was a beautiful thing, even if it took him most of the first Saturday just to figure out how to type!

He tried to plan ahead, so that he could file two reports on a Saturday, one for a movie and one for a book, but Hermione wasn't so lucky. Her news, as an international political correspondent, had to be current, so it seemed like she was always working, she always had to go into town to send in a new report, she always had something else to do. Archie went along with her, usually, and somehow wheedled dates out of her on Saturdays after their reports were sent in. Unlike Archie, Hermione actually knew how to type, so at least typing up her reports didn't take more than a half-hour or so.

It was about three weeks before he heard back from Harry, with the same toucan. It was a shorter message, but then, Harry wasn't given to long correspondences – she had always been a terrible penfriend.

Archie, he read. I am very glad to hear from you too, and whatever else might have happened, I'm happy to hear you sounding like you, if that makes any sense. I really enjoyed your letter, and I'm looking forward to reading the book you sent me, even if I don't think I can really appreciate it without the context.

For your last point, I don't think I can go back, not yet at least. There are the charges, and they are one thing, but there is also Voldemort, the so-called Dark Lord who resurrected himself with my blood in the Tournament. I'm not sure how much you remember about my second year, the basilisk? I'm fairly certain that Voldemort is the same fragment of memory who tried to possess me then, so he (it?) has been fixated on me ever since. If anything, based on Lestrange's letter, he is likely worse about me, now. I did leave my knife in his gut. I'd be a sitting duck, waiting for trial, so I don't think I can. In addition, I'm not sure how much use one law is - it's only one law, and Riddle doesn't need the law anymore, because pureblood prejudice is rooted so deep into our culture now. I'm sorry.

There'll be an opportunity for me to move onto somewhere new in a couple weeks, so I'm very excited! I have two dozen new ingredients in my bag to experiment with right now, and soon I'm going to need a new bag. I won't tell you where, in case this falls into wrong hands, but look for my next "owl"!

Archie smiled – he hadn't really, he thought, expected anything different, and Harry made a fair point. He personally thought at symbolic victories were important too, but he hadn't connected Lestrange's letter to her current situation, and anyway, it was good for her to be out in the world! He scrawled a reply to that effect, then went to get Harry's toucan friend more fruit from the dining hall.

By mid-October, Archie had finally gotten into a rhythm. There were classes, every weekday, with rotations on Friday afternoons. There were rehearsals, Monday, Tuesday and Thursdays. There were Hermione's BSA meetings, here and there when he could make it out, and in between everything else there were movies to see, books to read, and reviews to write. There were letters from Dad, though they tended to be pretty light since Archie thought their owl post was still being monitored, but Archie loved writing back to him anyway. He kept his own letters about Hermione, about Healing, about theatre – Dad could read his reviews in Bridge for movie and book news!

He was hovering over a notebook, one Wednesday evening towards the end of October, when Hermione barrelled into his bedroom. Archie had barely gotten his door open before she was inside, stewing and shoving a sheet of paper under his nose.

"Hello to you too, dear. What's up?" Archie said with a bit of a grin, taking the sheet of paper from her. He was always happy to see Hermione, and he didn't see her anywhere near as often as he would have liked.

"It passed, Archie," Hermione said, pushing past him into his dorm room and throwing herself on his bed. Her voice was thick with tears. Angry ones, Archie suspected. She grabbed a corner of Archie's blanket and used it to wipe her eyes. "The Marriage Law. It passed third reading this morning."

"What?" Archie looked down at the paper she had shoved at him, skimming it quickly. It was messy, a disjointed scrawl from someone taking notes on the side of a telephone booth – not Hermione, another one of her friends. Halfbloods required to marry purebloods. Marriages between halfbloods or between halfbloods and Muggleborns not to be recognized as legitimate. Halfbloods may not decline a formal offer of marriage with a pureblood. Shit.

He stepped backwards, reaching numbly for his desk chair and sinking into it. He had known that it had passed the first reading, and the second reading too, Dad having written him both times, but on some level, he had never really expected it to pass. It was too wide-reaching, such a huge violation on people's rights, and Dad had always said that as long as the Light families held strong, it wouldn't pass.

Though, he supposed Dad hadn't said so recently.

"Between the Rigel Black Scandal and the attack on the Hogwarts Express, Lord Dumbledore couldn't hold his faction together for the votes." Hermione sniffed, running one hand through her messy curls. "See, this is the problem with having your political system be a hereditary oligarchy! Almost none of the Wizengamot are halfbloods, so it doesn't affect them or their families directly. In fact, it favours them – they can now force someone to marry family members whom they worry won't be able to marry off otherwise. It's ripe for abuse."

"But why? Why now?" Archie couldn't help but ask, his eyebrows furrowing. Harry was safe, since was outside the country and she was protected by their on-paper betrothal. But there were others: Derrick, Saoirse. Sean. Aldon."What is the point?"

"Other than consolidating power into pureblood hands and the money grab when halfbloods die and their estates escheat to the Ministry because they have no legitimate heirs?" Hermione laughed, a bitter sound. "My guess is, population sustainability. They think they're dying out, Arch – with the Fade, their official birthrate is about 1.4 per couple. It's artificially depressed, since they don't recognize illegitimate births or magical-Muggle pairings; if you include in the undocumented communities the birthrate is estimated to be around 2.2, which is really quite healthy. But the SOW Party doesn't want to include those kinds of people, of course."

Archie shook his head, the corners of his lips turning down as he tried to think it through. Hermione was probably right, and he supposed it didn't really matter why they had done it. Now that the law was in place, they would need a three-quarters majority to repeal it, he remembered.

That was so many votes. The Light faction had never managed to pull more than about forty percent of the Wizengamot. Never. He swallowed, trying to focus. "I don't – I don't understand. How could this happen?"

Hermione shook her head, taking a trembling breath. "I don't know. I'm waiting for the vote count, still – Derrick said he would email me a vote count once he hears from Neal, and of course Bridge will publish them, but until them we won't know who voted for or against."

Archie nodded, biting his lip. He was sure that Dad would let him know, as would Neal. But the impact of the law … he didn't even know. His brain just couldn't encompass it, yet. "What do we do next? How do we stop this, fix it, repeal it?"

There was a long moment of silence, and a deep sigh as Hermione sat up, rubbing her eyes dry. Archie didn't comment – Hermione hated crying, and she hated it more if anyone commented on it. "We keep fighting it, Arch. We just keep on fighting."

Both MACUSA and the ICW released condemnation statements against Wizarding Britain that week. Wizarding Canada and Australia formally put a full trade embargo on all imports from and exports to Wizarding Britain, cutting the supplies of many needed potions ingredients, wandwoods, and other magical items. Wizarding Germany opened a new blood refugee program for British halfblood mages being forced into marriage, which was quickly duplicated by the Wizarding Nordic Union. Even Wizarding France, usually one of the more conservative European countries, began arguing over new, greatly increased, taxes on homes owned by "non-resident" wizarding families, an indirect measure targeting the wealthiest British magical families who still had vacation homes in France – the Malfoys, the Lestranges, the Bulstrodes, the Rosiers, and the Puceys among them.

XXX

The Marriage Law was not good.

That much Aldon could say, reading both the report in the Daily Prophet and in Bridge, which included the lists of who had voted for and against the measure, each time. Queenscove had been utterly useless for that – indeed, the man had shot him a completely bewildered look when Aldon had asked.

"You can't seriously expect me to remember like, a hundred names from a five-minute vote, can you?" The emerald-eyed man blinked at him, opened-mouthed, leaning back and perching, almost, on the table in the great hall, where he had come as soon as Aldon had Flooed in.

"You had a whole five minutes – what were you doing instead?" Aldon had retorted, crossing his arms. Queenscove had his strengths, but common sense was not one of them. He was smart, learning all the names and backgrounds he needed quickly, but sometimes, things that just seemed logical to Aldon simply didn't occur to him. "And all you had to do was note the names of the dissenters – that would only be, what, forty-five names?"

Queenscove glared at him. "That's a lot of names, Blake."

Aldon had sighed and given up. He would find out with everyone else, but at least a few of Dumbledore's allies had to have turned on him for that vote, as well as all the Neutrals, for it to pass.

It was the Longbottoms, just as it had been in 1981. There were also the Ollivanders, and three other families – one of the Book of Silver, two of the Book of Copper. All of them had Heirs who were either unmarried or whom they worried about marrying well – Neville Longbottom was a sweet boy, second in line to the family seat, and he worked hard, but Aldon understood why the Longbottoms worried. Heir Ollivander was well past the age when most Heirs were expected to marry, and he had a train of six or seven failed engagements, all of them having the other party breaking it off. Aldon could name people who had had more, including his own parents, but they had all involved that person breaking it off, not the other side. And, while Lord and Lady Rosier had been the poster couple for the success of a later marriage, look at how that had turned out?

Aldon took copious notes, in the black notebook sealed with his blood in which he now kept nearly everything. It wasn't just information on the Wizengamot and on their own allies – there was also a set of curious letters that Archie had mailed him in the Muggle post, that he hadn't quite decided what to do with yet, a copy of a tract that had been thrown on the Hogwarts Express, correspondence from a few friends at Hogwarts who were still writing him.

Aldon would be a target for the Marriage Law, he knew. He was, disowned or not, still a blood noble, an illegitimate castoff from an otherwise legitimate family. As a blood noble, he still had some quasi-noble status, even if it wasn't a particularly good one; there were certain noble privileges that he still had, certain rituals that he could still perform. He could still claim a noble manor, he could still call a formal duel of honour, and he could still demand a trial by Justice Incarnate. His mother had insisted that he memorize the list of privileges of blood nobles as a child, not that he had known why.

He was also raised as a pureblood and, dare he say it, he was relatively good-looking. He was known to be intelligent, and he was, under his former name and status, well-known in the nobility. He was well-connected, and there would always be hope that, if he married and was publicly considered pure, the Rosiers might take him back and the other family would win nobility in the bargain. Before, as a pureblood Heir, he had been sought after – now, as a public halfblood who could not refuse, he would only be more so.

At one time, he suspected he would have viewed this as an opportunity. Arranged marriages were par for the course for Wizarding nobility, and Aldon had always expected to marry someone tolerable through an appropriate arrangement that brought benefits to both families. In that light, this law was no different – even if he could not refuse, he expected he would have enough offers that he would be able to play them off each other, securing a tolerable spouse and his pureblood status back in one fell swoop. If he was lucky, that faceless family might even have money, and from there, he was sure he would be able to angle for other things. A prominent position in the Ministry. Ample business as a consultant. Eventually, reinstatement as the Rosier Heir. Before this summer, Aldon would have settled.

There was just one problem with that.

Long, dark hair, not a strand out of place. Perfectly groomed eyebrows, framing large, dark eyes that always seemed considering, an upturned nose, and a small, rose-petal mouth. A delicate, fragile, frame, often curled into something small, catlike – when she sat, she would tuck her legs under her, or pull them up to her chest. Tiny hands, their nails decorated with silver and pink flowers, wrapped around a mug, a textbook, a pencil decorated with bears. Her feet, her toenails painted a matching shade of pink to her fingers, in elegant, pretty heels that still only brought the top of her head level with Aldon's eyes.

She danced. He had only seen her dance once, but that one time… It had been something he had never seen before, something he had never had the imagination to picture. It was music turned into movement, music turned alive, and the magic she had drawn in the air had pulled everything together, given the piece body and soul. He thought that she carried a little bit of music with her wherever she went – there was a sort of grace, a musical sort of awareness, to all her movements, as if there was always a song playing somewhere in in her mind.

And her mind, her mind was something else entirely. She worked magic with numbers, her quick mind jumping through dozen steps at a time. When he would get stuck on a problem, taking probably far too long to turn to her for help, she would take one of her pencils and work it out in the span of five minutes or less, skipping at least three intermediate steps that Aldon would have needed to write out. Her words in explaining it were always curt, straightforward, never more than necessary, and then she would turn away, returning to her own book.

He saw a whole new side of her, working on the ACD pitch. He saw how much love she poured into the device, how much almost desperate yearning she had in her eyes when she looked down at it. He saw the fear she had, the slight tremble in her normally graceful movements throughout the presentation day, and he saw how she wrestled with her fear and delivered a competent presentation anyway. He saw her face when Blake & Associates decided to fund her project – shock, mixed with joy, mixed with something like validation, and that night, he saw her smile.

When she smiled, when she laughed, it lit up her entire face. She was normally beautiful, but it was a doll-like beauty, fixed and still. When she smiled, she came alive, and her normal, usual beauty turned into something real, incandescent. Aldon sometimes thought he would do virtually anything for another one of those smiles.

He hadn't seen enough of them, over the summer. Maybe a handful – a small one in a bookstore over a physics textbook, another eating ramen that day when he was far too flustered to enjoy it, the bright, beaming, joyful one the day that Blake & Associates had agreed to partner with her. A few around John, or Archie and her friends. He wanted to see more of them – no, that wasn't right. He wanted to be the one to bring more of them on her face. He wanted her to smile that way because of things he had done, gifts that he had given her, he wanted her to smile like that just for him.

She would never look twice at you that way, he tried telling himself, more than once. What have you got? No castle, not even a manor, and even if he made a decent income, between his work and what Queenscove paid him for consulting, it wasn't anything like the vast resources he had had as Aldon Rosier. He didn't have any real political power, either – his limited influence over Bridge, over Archie, only went so far. And he had glanced through her romances, sometimes left on a table or chair while she went to make tea – she liked knights, she liked heroes, she liked men who could pick up a weapon in her defense. Aldon was terrible at duelling.

The only problem with that was that his idiot, animal brain didn't accept that reasoning. She didn't come from Britain, it told him, so maybe she didn't care about the manor, or the money, or the political power. She thought he was good-looking – she had even said, that first day in the Muggle shop, you clean up nicely, don't you? She thought he was intelligent, not that she had ever said so, but she never spoke to Archie, or Hermione, or even John about the ACD the way she did him. She never simplified it for him – she always just expected he would keep up with her mentally, and for the most part, he did. His idiot animal brain would bring these points up, every time he tried to talk some sense into himself.

It didn't work, because he was a fool. A stubborn one. And with the Marriage Law passed, Aldon decided that it would be best if he simply played least in sight for a while. A very long while. Having reviewed the legislation, a copy of which had made it into Bridge, the fortunate part was that the no-refusals clause was formatted around a formal proposal of marriage, which had to be done in person, since he was of age. There was no real need for Aldon to cross into or through the main areas of Wizarding Britain, and besides – Aldon was busy.

Aldon was busier than he had ever been in his entire life, which he supposed didn't say much considering that, until this point, he had largely lived a life of frozen, paralytic leisure. He hadn't needed to work for income, it was true, but he also hadn't enjoyed himself to the same extent that he was now. He liked working – he liked spending his weekends consulting with Queenscove, who was nothing if not entertaining, he liked plotting the steps to flipping Wizarding Britain upside down, and he liked spending most of the rest of his time working on the ACD. He liked trying to run his brain through magical theory, trying to work out how to turn the proto-runes article into a useable system for other spells, or more complex spells, helping to frame the discussion and pick what problems with the ACD that Francesca and his company would take their runs at, what new things they would try, from week to week.

It had taken them about three weeks to come to terms on the ACD project, agreeable to both her and to Blake & Associates. Percy had referred her to a solicitor in his office, a good one, and she had been separately represented through the negotiations. As it was, given the amount of risk that Blake & Associates would be taking on, as well as the amount of work they would be putting in to develop as well as fund it, they had come down on a little over two-thirds – seventy percent of the proceeds would go to Blake & Associates, while thirty would remain Francesca's interest. The documents were sent to her by Muggle airmail, unbelievably faster than owl post if one just paid for express shipping, and returned in record time, then work began in earnest.

First and foremost, they had determined that they needed a test subject and a test ACD that wasn't John Kowalski. Aldon was busy conducting background research and working with Albert McEvoy, their experimental Charms researcher, to develop something to test magical frequency, and they were narrowing down on who, in the office, had a magical frequency that might resonate with a workable electromagnetic frequency. Early tests suggested that Aldon himself could be a fit, and Aldon would fight tooth and nail to be the one selected, if at all possible.

At the same time, Aldon was also working directly with Francesca on the runic aspect, developing other spells that could work within the limitations of the technology that existed. While Aldon agreed that having the ACD be able to perform set sequences of spells, such as Pertus/Stupefy, might be useful as an intermediate step before proceeding to a full system of magical channelling, he thought that a more useful area of expansion might be warding.

"A ward is essentially a woven set of several spells, but from a runic perspective, it launches as one spell," Aldon said, in a meeting in mid-October, at noon his time but early morning for her. The communication orb they were using was his orb – as both the current magical theorist and the Runes expert, it made sense for him to be the lead from Blake & Associates. "Based on your description of the microcontroller, I think we could simply put one of each proto-rune on the ACD itself and have the proto-runes flash the sequence. That would be useful while leaving the matter of a user interface for later development."

There was silence for a minute or two, and Aldon could almost picture her from across the Atlantic: legs tucked up, a notebook across her knees and a pencil in hand as her other hand rested on her comm orb, a green so pale it was almost white, beside her. "Um, but wouldn't that cut into the efficiency of the ACD? How many proto-runes would a ward need? One of the ACD's strengths is that, because it's runic, it is extremely efficient on both time and magic expended. As it stands, it doesn't even take a full second to cast Fortis – the spell launches at the speed of magic itself. If I am picturing your idea right, each proto-rune would have to flash in turn, and that adds an element of time..."

"We can do some testing for timing, once we have a viable test subject," Aldon replied, taking notes – almost verbatim from what she had said. He had to, because otherwise there was always the risk that he would just fall into the sound of her voice, and he would have no idea what she said. "Runically, it would depend on the number of spells woven, but for a five-spell woven ward, I would hazard a guess at about a hundred and fifty runes, but I don't imagine each proto-rune would need to be visible for more than a half-second—"

There was a rustle of paper from the other side, and Aldon could picture her narrowed brow, the unhappy look on her face. "That would be seventy-five seconds to cast. Over a minute."

She sounded almost offended, and Aldon laughed. "Francesca, the equivalent ward with a wand would take at least five minutes to cast – I would have to cast the formation spell defining the boundaries for the ward, then I would need to add in each of the component spells, weaving them together. A minute, by ward standards, is obscenely quick."

There was silence from the orb, and Aldon thought she had let go of her connection, perhaps to write something down. But a few minutes passed, and he wished he could see her face, that he might know what she was thinking: if she was considering it, if she was unconvinced, if she was just trying to find a way to refuse.

"We could look for other ways to optimize the casting process," Aldon added, trying to sound reassuring. "Such as by formatting the pattern of proto-runes on the panel, like a computer keyboard. It doesn't need to be logical, just fast."

Another few seconds of silence, then a sigh from the other end. "I guess it's worth considering further," she murmured, her voice slow and almost resigned.

"Great," Albert cut into the discussion, and Aldon blinked because he had almost forgotten that the lean Charms researcher was there, sitting beside him for this meeting, as well as Christie. "Excellent idea, but do you think that, for the parts of the project that only involve the runes, you could have those discussions outside of the group meetings? I mean, it's all very interesting, but Aldon, you have the direct comm orb connection and it's not really relevant to our areas of work, and our time is better spent working on our pieces of the project."

Aldon paused in surprise, but Albert was right. It made sense, and he couldn't think up any principled reason why they shouldn't, even he had a niggling sense of discomfort with the idea. It wasn't as if Francesca would be there, in front of him, and it wasn't as though they hadn't spent time alone before, once even behind a closed door. But at the same time, that was only once, and it was in a public place, and every other time he had spent time alone with her had been with people nearby, the doors open, and in broad daylight. But again, it wasn't as if Francesca would actually be there, she would be five time zones away in America, and his discomfort sounded more unreasonable even as he thought about it.

He realized he had been silent for too long, Albert and Christie both giving him puzzled looks. He coughed, embarrassed, and reached for the communication orb. "Yes, I think that would be best," he said agreeably. "Francesca, when do you finish your classes? I can make myself available."

"Classes are done at three, but I dance until five-thirty, usually – I can be available at six, if that works for you?" Francesca's voice seemed almost hesitant, and calculating the time difference in his head, Aldon knew it would be eleven at night, by his time. That was late, very late, improperly late. But she wouldn't actually be there with him and there wasn't any reason he shouldn't. Even work – he could always sleep in the next day and have a late start to his workday, too.

"Six at your time works," he replied, a little stiffly. And so, his evenings, too, were spent hovering over a communication orb, listening to her soft voice as they talked through the finer points of her ACD, trying to ignore the persistent fantasy of her talking to him like this in person, late at night, in his bedroom. Their bedroom. He needed to go place his head in a bucket of water and hold it there until he drowned of shame.

Between managing Queenscove's entrance into Society, the Marriage Law, and the driving push of ACD development, Aldon had almost forgotten about the letter that he had sent to Cedric Diggory, weeks ago. But Diggory, it seemed, had not, and it was a week after the Marriage Law passed that he spotted the unfamiliar owl, perched on the balcony of Christie's penthouse, a tightly furled scroll in its claws.

Aldon opened the sliding door and retrieved the letter from the bird, who immediately took wing, diving off the balcony. He glanced it the letter suspiciously, returning inside to his bedroom, and pulled out his wand to check it over – he hadn't recognized the handwriting, and even if no one could trap him into marriage by letter, he was cautious. There was nothing, so Aldon reached for a knife and pried open the plain red seal.

Blake, he read. My apologies for my long delay in responding to your letter. To be honest, I didn't know what to make of it, and you didn't provide me with any reasons as to why you were asking. But, after thinking it over and seeing the events of the past couple months, I think it's fair for me to hear you out.

After that, there was just a date, a time, a set of Apparition coordinates, and Diggory's signature. Aldon smiled, a broad one, and took a note of the information in his trusty black notebook. He didn't need the rest, so he set fire to the letter with a quick Incendio, and watched it burn to ashes.

XXX

ANs: This marks probably the halfway point of Vanguard, actually - a shock! Personal commentary, for the few readers I haven't completely alienated one way or another; obviously, there are a few points of difference here from TFF, and the reason for this is that all of rev arc was planned prior to mbm revealing information on either the Fade or Riddle's backstory. The politics are also different here, so if Riddle wasn't noble before, there's no way he wouldn't have found a way to "ennoble" himself somehow. The explanation for the Fade, especially the soul-body interface is an important thing for later. And no, Harry doesn't come back yet, because at this point, the risk for her personally in coming back is far greater than any benefit that might be gained, and she's not suicidal or stupid.

For those of you who do not have me followed as an author, I reformatted Smoke and Ashes as "Flashes", which is now a series of companion one-shots and extra tidbits. Chapter 2 of Flashes includes an interesting memorandum of law, Ministry v. Aldon Étienne Blake Rosier, addressing the question: why hasn't anyone pursued Aldon for blood identity theft?

It is both meek and my birthday just before the next installment is posted and, as a present, we'd love to hear your feedback! And thank you to meek as always for her beta, and trust me when I say that what gets posted is both less alienating and inflammatory that my first draft, and also much better. So happy birthday to meek, my almost-birthday and almost-name twin and The Best Beta! And also thanks to mercury who named all the Queenscoves properly so they didn't have really wonky sounding Chinese names.

Next Chapter: Our lands are under fire / Our villages fall prey to pillage / How can we stay on the sideline / How long will we take this lying down? / It is time to join forces / Let the eagles beak burst on our shields / Unite (The Uprising, by Eluveitie)