Sjstaudt: Right series, but 'Mr. Daye' should have given you a hint that we're dealing with Simone Torquill, not to be confused with her twin sister Sylvia. :-)
Now that Volume 3 of RWBY is complete, I've put up a poll regarding exactly what to do about my planned crossover with that series. Even if you aren't interested, there is an option that would affect this story's update rate, so it would still behoove you to at least take a look at it.
Two more pieces of fan-art on my profile, both from Anna-chan17. In other news, I'm shocked at how wide-spread you guys are. The story stats show a whopping 73 countries represented!
Disclaimer: For all that they were critical to the last book, was there ever an explanation on what the criteria for forming a life debt were or why Rowling claimed Ginny didn't owe Harry one for saving her in the Chamber of Secrets? If not, I don't own the Harry Potter series; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.
Chapter 12
The Enemy of My Enemy
The wind whipping past Jen's face brought out a smile, and she swung her body in another vertical loop just because she could. She could deem this test of her new flight spell a resounding success.
When she snuck into the Davises' home and murdered their patriarch several months prior, she had noticed that her original manner of unassisted flight – conjuring up a gravity well a set distance from her body and then perpetually 'falling' into it – had a number of flaws she had not previously paid any mind, most importantly that while her spell was adequate for flights in a straight line and at a single speed, changing speeds was difficult and maneuverability was all but a dream. She had decided then that she would need to make some changes, and the news over the summer that the Death Eaters had been seen fighting alongside harpies had only driven home just how important aerial superiority could be in the future. Thankfully, her unique method of spellcasting gave her an advantage. Unlike most witches, she did not treat levitation, summoning, or banishing as individual and unrelated spells; all three were force vectors applied to an object, just in different directions and at different intensities. By applying that knowledge to her newest challenge, she had engineered a method of flight that was almost embarrassing in its simplicity, although it had also been rather slow. A weightlessness component added into it quickly alleviated that issue, and this was the result: incredible speed in all three dimensions, hovering at will, and all the maneuverability she could ever need thanks to possessing zero effective mass and therefore having no inertia.
She was also working on an arithmantic breakdown for her new spell, from which she hoped to discern a usable set of wand movements. They were not important for her, but unless she risked putting any future members of House Black through the same ritual that made her wandless magic possible – a ritual that had exactly one recorded survival – she would need to make this spell usable with a focus if she wanted it to be accessible to later generations, and unlike secondary foci, a formal spell could be cast in multiple places simultaneously.
Still, those were all problems for tomorrow. Today, she only had one thing to worry about: what she was going to do about the white wizard trying to kill her, and what Priest could possibly mean when the letter he finally sent her said they had run into a problem.
Her feet landed on the gravel beneath her without jarring a single pebble out of place, and Jen frowned thoughtfully as she dismissed the spell. She never expected to have to fight hand-to-hand while flying, but if being weightless took that option completely off the table, it was something else she would need to keep in mind.
The rusted warehouse she stood before was obviously abandoned, or it had been before the pair of black mages took up residence within. She opened the heavy metal door and peered through the gloom within, a chuckle soon slipping out. "I don't know if they were going for horror movie chic, but they nailed it," she muttered to herself.
For all the space Menagerie and Priest had available to them, they were not taking advantage of it. A few lanterns hung unsupported in the air and created puddles of light with long stretches of darkness in between. In one corner stood several cheap desks and a couple of chairs, five lanterns positioned above to provide adequate lighting for anyone working, and another group of lights were clustered around the section of chainlink fence they had stolen from somewhere and supported between two stacks of crates. The rest of the building was still filled with more crates and boxes and pallets, merchandise that presumably had been forgotten over the years. She nonchalantly made her way from lamp to lamp, trusting her sonar more than her eyes to find any obstacles in her path, and once she reached it, she gazed thoughtfully at the strange stretch of fencing. "Do you know where the two people who stole you went?" she finally asked.
The twelve, maybe thirteen-year-old boy who was tied to the metal frightfully shook his head.
"Of course not. That would make things too easy." Her hand reached out to pat the Muggle boy on his bared chest, though if the desperate sobs that slipped through the gag in his mouth were any indication, Jen's attempt at comforting was unappreciated. "Hey!" she shouted at the stacks that blocked her view of the depths of the warehouse. "One of you left your toy out!" No words answered her, only the increased squirming of their captive. After another second or two, she added, "If someone doesn't claim him, I'm taking him for myself!"
The motion beneath her hand stopped.
"That won't be necessary, Queen," a smooth voice from directly behind her said, and Jen jerked at the unexpected sound. Priest stepped out of the shadows to stand beside her, dressed once again in a full suit. "Thank you for coming on such short notice. Menagerie is still looking for something, but she should not be too long."
Jen rolled her eyes. "That's unfortunate. I wouldn't mind her taking a little longer than that. And no offense," she added, her fingernails tapping on the skin of the shirtless boy in front of them, "but this is the worst stripping job I've ever seen. It's almost impressive in how bad it is."
"His shirt gave us enough material to tie him up. There was no need for further disrobing after that."
"Right." The dark-skinned man merely nodded and said nothing, and after a couple of moments she was the one whose patience broke. "You said there was a problem?"
"I did. As a result of our many years of experience, Menagerie and I know a number of different methods by which to locate our targets. In this case, however, the vast majority have failed." Curiously, Priest's voice showed no concern with that fact. He almost sounded like it was at best a remote concern.
Jen was not quite so restrained, but she was also the one being active hunted. "Failed. It's been three weeks since you got here, and you still don't know where he is?!" Priest just shook his head, and she took a moment to try to calm herself down. "Is that as bad a sign as I think it is?"
"Yes and no. We have successfully hunted other white mages who we have had difficulty tracking down, but generally with greater collateral damage. Unfortunately, for an enemy to be under that many anti-divination spells means he is either paranoid or highly experienced in the way we do things." She shook her head in disappointment. If they had asked her, she could have told them that already; the Baron was not one to provide warnings unnecessarily, and he himself had told her she needed to be careful around this white wizard. "Either option is a poor one. That is not to say that all is lost; we still have a few tricks left to try, and one of them we have never found to fail completely, even if it can be hindered. That is why our young assistant is here," he added with a wave to the captive.
Mutters came from the same corridor of crates Priest had presumably exited, and soon enough a head of pink hair came into view. "So you are here, after all," sneered Menagerie. "And here I hoped Priest had just finally cracked. Why the hell did you give her our location, vlákes?"
The avatar of Sutekh just smiled at the chiding tone. "If the white wizard is as canny as we presume him to be, an extra set of hands can only be of use in killing him. Do not be jealous."
"Jealous?!" The tattooed witch laughed harshly and brandished a strange knife at Jen. "Not even you could mess up reading people that badly. Queenie over here has nothing I could be jealous of."
"I don't know. You sound a little defensive to me." Eyeing the long weapon still pointing at her for just a moment, particularly the sharp hook sprouting from the front of the blade, she smiled. "Nice knife."
"You got a problem with it?"
"Not at all. It's just, I thought it was guys who had to have something big and hard to make up for what they lacked." Cocking her head, she taunted, "Unless there's something I should know?"
The smile she received in response was dark and cold. "You'll get to know how it feels to get stabbed if you keep talking."
"Oh, that'd be a neat trick! I own dildos deadlier that that."
"And on that note," Priest said, stepping in between them, "I think we should return to the business that brought us here in the first place. Menagerie, if you would? Queen, you might want to take a step back. This is going to get messy."
The other black witch gave her a dismissive glance over one shoulder before plunging the point of her knife's hook into the Muggle's belly, and Jen looked over at Priest. "There is a point to this, I assume?"
"Of course. There are many useful tracking methods we employ, but one that has yet to fail us is splanchomancy. So long as our quarry has chosen to hide himself amongst the public and use them to cloak his own movements, there is no way for him to truly hide from us, and white wizards rarely stay off on their own. They prefer to position themselves where they can vanish into a crowd."
"Splanchomancy?" she repeated, the rest of the black wizard's commentary only being noted peripherally. "I've read about that, but never have I actually seen it in use."
"Then you are in luck. However abrasive Menagerie can be, she truly has a talent for this form of divination. It should be quite an educational experience," he said with a small smile.
Jen turned her head back to the pink-haired witch and her victim. Splanchomancy, also known as anthropomancy, was a form of haruspicy, or divination through reading entrails. More specifically, it was reading the entrails of a still-living human being and preferably a virgin, which explained why it was a young boy from whom Menagerie was currently pulling out loop after loop of pink intestine. The older of the black witches did nothing about her victim's muffled screams as she ran portions of the squishy tube through her fingers and used her blade to hack out other sections, and soon enough the entire length of his intestines lay in a wide pile at her feet. The process was not yet finished, though. Reaching in, Menagerie first pulled out a dark organ that Jen recognized as a spleen and bit it in several places, and then she slid the knife back in and withdrew the child's liver amidst a waterfall of blood. This she did not try to eat, though she did cut into it multiple times to peer inside. Several minutes after the process began, she stumbled away from the fencing toward the group of desks, Priest moving to follow her.
Though she took a step in that direction as well, Jen did not immediately join them. It was silly, she knew, but instead she walked back over to the dying boy's body. The red puddle beneath her feet threatened to send her to the ground, but she ignored that to lean in and press a small kiss on the child's forehead. "Thank you," she murmured against his trembling skin, "for with your death, you have helped me stay alive. May you find the peace we took from you when you reach Guinea."
As soon as that was done, she hurried to join her current allies; she might not be a Metamorphmagus like Dora, but the Black blood running through her veins let her fight back the blush that wanted to light up her cheeks by the time she reached them. Thanking her victims, at least the ones who had not angered her or had done her no ill beforehand, was a habit she had gotten into when she was just starting off on the path of Voodoo. Elsie had mocked her multiple times for it – what good was thanking the dead, particularly when she was the one who murdered them? – but in her childish mind, there was a feeling of fairness to it that she thought right and proper. When she grew older, she had cast away that last expectation of fairness, but she never had gotten around to breaking herself of her custom. It hurt no one, and for all that it could be seen as embarrassing for a black witch to do, there was still just something appropriate about it.
The other black mages had not noticed her absence, too preoccupied with the extremely rough sketch Menagerie was drawing on a sheet of parchment. A few lines crisscrossed the space, radiating in a web that originated from a few central points with the exception of the thickest one that swerved drunkenly across the sheet, and large blots of ink were splattered throughout seemingly at random. "This is the best I could get," the pink-haired witch explained as she glared at her drawing. "Either our wizard abandoned tradition and hid himself away somewhere remote or he's found a spell that makes even splanchomancy difficult."
"Unfortunately for us, I think it might be the latter," Jen said slowly. Her finger followed the thick line from its starting point toward the right-hand side of the drawing. Maps had never been something she paid much attention to because of her blindness, but this matched one of the few important ones she had done her best to learn since regaining her sight. "I think this might be the Thames, and that would make these"—she pointed to the web—"the A roads and motorways within the Greater London area."
"From your tone, I take it this is not good news?" asked Priest.
She shook her head. "It's not bad news, not compared to having to search the whole island for him, but it's still more that 1,500 square kilometers of the most densely populated area of the country. That gives him plenty of places where he can hide, especially since he can move from place to place quickly and easily by either magic or Muggle means."
A wet crunch sounded from a short distance away, and Jen whipped her eyes over to find the source. Two large beasts were gathered around the boy's corpse, one gorging itself on the pile of viscera on the ground while the other had just bitten off his leg. Neither were animals she recognized: the one munching on the discarded intestines was feline in structure, though no big cat had a head that blocky or grey-green scales covering its body, and its companion could have been mistaken for a shaggy wolf were it not for the overlarge saber teeth or the sharply pointed antlers growing out of its head. It was possible that she had simply never heard of these creatures – Luna was the zoologist of their group, not her – but considering that Tiamat granted the black magic of life alchemy, she turned to the more likely culprit. "Those are yours, I'm guessing?"
Menagerie just shot her a prideful smirk and turned back to the rough map she had drawn. "If this place is as big as you say it is, we need to start searching now. You're the local here; where's the best place to go first?"
"Considering he can move anywhere he wants at any time he wants, I'm not sure there is a best place. We might as well start near the edges, though. If he's smart, he'd look for dilapidated urban areas where people will be less likely to stumble upon him…"
Ginny watched the locked door closely. It was just about time for the last period of the day to let out, and she knew if she did not get her quarry's attention now, she would have a hard time scrounging up the courage to try again. She was already having second thoughts as it was.
Soon enough, the ringing from the bell tower echoed down into the dungeons, and a minute later, the door leading to the Potions classroom opened up to let out the people who were foolish enough to volunteer for another two years under Snape. The few Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs in the class were the first to flee, followed by a trickle of mixed Ravenclaws and Slytherins. Spotting a head of blond hair, she pointed her wand at the boy's bag and whispered, "Accio."
Just as she wanted, the pull on Malfoy's bag jerked the Snake in her direction, and he looked around with narrowed eyes for a long moment before he smirked. A few long steps led him away from the rest of the class and to the same wall she was leaning against. For a moment Ginny was worried that she could be seen through the Notice-Me-Not Charm Bill had taught her a couple of years before, but he took up a position several feet away from her without saying a word, and for all the strange glances he received from the other Slytherins, none of them moved on to her. The line of students trailed off, but still she kept her silence; she knew from Hermione's ranting earlier in the year that there was one more person in the sixth-year Potions class, and sure enough, Black eventually walked out. The Ravenclaw raised one eyebrow in Malfoy's direction, and then the older witch's purple eyes rolled smoothly to stare directly at Ginny. Just when she thought she was about to have a heart attack from how fast her heart was pounding, the dark-haired girl shrugged her shoulders and walked off, one hand toying absently with an earring.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Malfoy taunted once no one else was in sight.
Forcing her shoulders back, Ginny nodded. It was now or never, and she was not going to show weakness to a Malfoy of all people. A flick of her wand and a muttered incantation took down the spell. "Malfoy."
"Weasley," he replied, a small grin peering nastily at her. "And here I was, thinking you had rejected my proposal. You certainly took your time making up your mind."
"I haven't said I'm accepting your 'proposal' yet." Of all the comments she could have made, that was among the weakest, and from Malfoy's expression, he knew it, too. The truth was that she was seriously considering taking him up on his offer. She had spent the last couple of weeks checking the things he had told her when he ambushed her, and to her shock, several of his claims, such as the Chang family's wealth or the Potters' history of marrying within the old Pureblood families, had checked out. And then, to make matters even more complicated, Black, whom Ginny knew had a terrible relationship with Malfoy regardless of them being cousins, had come up to her at Luna's request and verified even more. The rich witch had even suggested she make a deal with Malfoy despite being told nothing of the situation!
If two people who hated each other and knew nothing of the other's conversation were still in agreement about a topic, the chances that it was a lie dropped lower and lower.
Unaware of her thoughts, the Slytherin just nodded. "Fair enough, but you aren't rejecting it, either. So why get my attention if you haven't made up your mind?"
"I want some answers." He nodded pompously, like he was granting her some great boon, and she tempered the urge to punch him in the mouth like Hermione had claimed to do back when the bushy brunette was a third-year. She wouldn't get any answers out of him if she knocked out his too-shiny teeth. "Your parents hate mine, and you and Ron have gotten into lots of arguments since you got here. But now you're saying that you want to 'help' me. Why?"
"That's a very good question," he praised. "You're right: my father despises yours, and I don't like your brother in the slightest. But your father and your brother aren't you. Do you know what I see when I look at you?"
She crossed her arms and shot him a look that just dared him to make fun of her.
"I see a girl who was raised away from wizarding society, who knows little about the workings of her own culture and has practically no money to her name, but instead of futilely fighting the system the way her father does, she's working within it to get what she wants. She found herself a noble family who likes her and has her eyes on their famous heir so she can live the lifestyle she never had growing up—"
"That's not what I'm doing at all!" Ginny shouted, anger warring with disgust at being described like that. He was making her sound like she was some dishonest, manipulative, scheming… Slytherin! "I didn't fall in love with Danny for his money!"
He rolled his eyes and mockingly countered, "Oh, you didn't? You're saying that you would feel the same way about him if he weren't a rich hero, if he were just a regular wizard instead of the much-adored Boy-Who-Lived?"
That… That was a stupid question! Danny was a hero, but not because of what people said about him. That was just the kind of person he was. Yes, of course she loved him for it; he saved her when she was in danger, when she was dying in the Chamber of Secrets and had no one she could go to for help. Danny wouldn't be Danny if he weren't a hero, so what was the point of imagining him without those qualities? She wouldn't be in love with Danny then, just some other person wearing his face and calling himself by his name.
"Didn't think so," Malfoy continued when she did not say anything in reply, "so spare me your offended indignation. I don't have a problem with you going after your hero so you can climb the social ladder. In fact, I applaud it. You want to know why I'm willing to help? The answer is, how could I not lend a hand when finally there's a Weasley who's actually acting like the Pureblood she is?"
Ginny reared back as if he had slapped her across the face. "How dare you?! I'm not a bigot like you, Malfoy! I don't look down on Muggleborns because of their parents like all your mates do! We might not have a lot of money, but we would never associate with you and your—"
Malfoy cut her off by laughing uproariously. "Dear Merlin, you actually believe that, don't you?" he choked out. "Don't you know your own family's history?"
"Of course I do," she lied. Her parents had told them about their aunts and uncles and cousins, but she had a feeling he was talking about stuff that happened centuries ago and no longer mattered to anyone. That she had never learned, but the Weasleys weren't Dark; they looked for what they could do to make the world a better place now rather than boast about what their great-great-great-grandfather did hundreds of years ago.
"Clearly you don't. If you did, you wouldn't have said something so incredibly wrong." At long last getting ahold of himself, Malfoy shook his head. "Let me enlighten you. Your family was never noble, but you used to have money. You used to rub elbows with Houses like the Notts and the Blacks and the Greengrasses. If you spent the time tracking down Ministry records to check your family tree, you'd find that your ancestors even married into those kinds of families." His eyes grew distant for a moment, and he added, "In fact, I want to say that a Weasley married a Black only a couple of generations ago. Septimus and Cedrella, I think?"
Swallowing the shocked sound that almost slipped out at hearing her paternal grandparents' names – Her grandmother was a Black? She and Jennifer Black were cousins of some kind?! Why had no one ever mentioned that to her?! – she haltingly replied, "W-Well, even if we did, we don't anymore. We stopped because we're actually decent people and refuse to spend our time around anyone who looks down on other people for a stupid reason like who their parents are."
"Sure, and your brother insulted me the first time we met on the Hogwarts express for some reason other than just because your father hates my father."
She opened her mouth to deny that, but the words wouldn't come. Now that she thought about it, she knew that Ron and Malfoy had gotten into a big fight early on in their first year, but no one had ever told her just how the fight started. Her dad, in fact, had been proud when McGonagall wrote a letter telling them about it, or he was until her mum got mad at him for not taking it seriously. Ron and she had always known that Lucius Malfoy was an awful person, but was picking a fight with this Malfoy because of who his father was any better than how the Pureblood fanatics bullied Muggleborns? Even though Malfoy was a bigot, that was no reason for them to stoop to his level.
"And that's the reason you're willing to help me? Because I'm acting like how you think a Pureblood should act?" Black helping her because Luna asked her to, Malfoy helping her because he thought she trying to become 'acceptable' to society; weren't people who were Dark supposed to be self-centered and selfish, caring only about themselves? If Black and Malfoy were being honest, they were acting like they were really some strange variant of Light people.
"Isn't that reason enough?"
Ginny had no good response to that. Silence hung between them for a time before she finally admitted, "I don't remember if you ever said what kind of help you were offering."
"Like I told you, everything you need to get a hook in Potter you can get with enough gold," he answered with a shrug. "You don't have it, but I do. I'm more than happy to hand you all the galleons you need for better outfits and makeup and maybe even the dates themselves."
"I don't need your—" Clamping down on her instinctive rejection of his charity, she took a couple of deep breaths. If he was right – and her reasons for thinking he might not be were dwindling the more he talked – then she really did need that money. It just pained her to admit to it. "Let's say I agree and accept your gold. You're going to expect me to pay it back, aren't you? And with interest?"
Malfoy waggled his hand from side to side, a laid-back motion that was at complete odds with how she had always believed him to be. "I will want compensation of some kind, but no, this isn't a straight loan. That wouldn't make any sense. If you succeed in earning Potter's affections and become Lady Potter, paying me back in galleons would be trivial; if you fail, you won't have the money to pay me back at all. No, it's much better if you owe me a couple of favors once we're out of Hogwarts and in the real world."
"What kind of favors are you talking about?" she asked, a little voice in the back of her head screaming at her with how suspicious that sounded. If there was one thing she had learned about the other houses at Hogwarts, it was that it was a terrible idea to make an open-ended deal with a Slytherin and be beholden to them later on.
"I don't know. Oh, come on," he said when she just glared at his flippant answer, "what kind of person do you take me for? It's not like I'm going to force you to do anything illegal or immoral. I just don't know what I'll need someone to help me with in the future, so I can't tell you exactly what I'll want. After everything I'm willing to do to get you what you want, is it really that unfair for me to be able to ask you to do the same for me later on?"
Okay, that wasn't too bad. And, she realized with a hidden smile, if he did try to use his favors to make her do something she didn't want to do, she could always just tell him no. This agreement was not going to be inescapably binding like a life debt or something. In fact, there was no reason she had to repay him at all, no matter the reason he asked for her help. "That sounds acceptable," she told him.
"I'm glad you think so." Despite his droll voice, he stretched out his hand. "So do we have a deal?"
She clasped his hand in her own and gave it a single pump. "We have a deal."
The small room above the bar was quickly filling up, and Mad-Eye Moody flicked his wand to set off an ear-piercing whistle. "That's enough of that," he barked at the people gathered together. Fourteen of them in total; about three times the number he honestly thought would show up, but still far fewer than he expected he would eventually need. "Now, I know none of you know everyone in this room, but you should all at least recognize some of you. We can leave all the friendly introduction stuff till later. What's important now is that we all know why we're here, namely keeping Albus and the Order as a whole from being bloody stupid and picking a fight with the Ministry."
The group stilled at his declaration. He had hinted at this idea with all of them, either during the training sessions he had led or during the socializing once the official meetings were over, but this was the first time he had ever been this obvious about it. Several people looked over at each other cautiously, and finally one wizard found the courage to ask, "But if Dumbledore is right, if the Ministry is starting to move against us, shouldn't we take a stand against them in return?"
"Aye, we should," he said with a nod, "if he was right and if the Ministry thought we were an enemy. But he's not, and they don't." The assembled Order members looked at him in confusion. "I know Rufus Scrimgeour personally; we worked together several times when I was still an active Auror. We actually had a short chat a week ago, and do you know what he said? He told me that the real reason the DMLE's decided not to play ball anymore was because he got tired of members of the Order trying to interfere in how he ran his department and throwing spanners in the works when the Aurors went out to arrest the Death Eaters."
That was stretching the truth a little, though looking at the shock the people in front of him were putting on display, they couldn't handle the truth. In reality, it was anything but a 'short chat'; he had spent over an hour just arguing with Rufus to the point that the younger wizard would stop holding his cards so close to the vest and tell him what was going on, and then half of another convincing Rufus that he could be trusted with the information. What he had finally learned was disappointing and infuriating in equal measure: Albus and a small number of other Order members had caused so much trouble that the higher-ups DMLE refused to use the intelligence being forwarded to them for fear of being used as patsies and, in fact, were considering a blanket order that any Order member caught in the field was to be arrested for vigilanteism – actions that, while technically a crime in Britain, the Ministry had turned a blind eye to during the First Death Eater War and so far in the Second – with obstruction of justice charges to follow if the arrested members refused to cooperate once in custody.
Albus, had Mad-Eye said anything about this, would have taken it as further evidence that the Ministry was persecuting the Order. He, on the other hand, saw it for what it was: an alliance failing at the exact wrong time and for no good reason.
"But why would Dumbledore say the Ministry has turned against us if they aren't?"
"Let me tell you something you don't know about Albus Dumbledore, Washington," he said, though they all knew he was addressing all of them. "I first met him back in the Grindelwald War, fifty-something years ago. I've been good friends with him ever since. But if there's one thing Albus is absolutely awful at, it's playing well with others. In his mind, you're either with him or you're against him, and the idea of having allies who are working toward the same goal as him but go about it their own way? He just can't seem to wrap his head around that." Back when they first met, they had almost come to blows about a topic very similar to this one; Albus thought that if Continental governments were that desperate for Britain's aid, they should shut up and follow Britain's lead, but Mad-Eye had maintained the only way to defeat the ever-growing membership of the Knights of Walpurgis was for everyone to put their nationalistic pride aside and fight as the united defenders of Europe.
Albus singlehandedly ending the war by challenging and defeating Grindelwald in a duel hadn't done much to reveal the flaws in his opinions, unfortunately.
"So the Ministry doesn't want to cooperate any longer," one witch said dismissively. "That just means fewer bumbling bureaucrats we have to deal with. I don't see why that's so much of a problem. Even if they did set their sights on us, it isn't like they can do anything."
Thankfully, he was not the only one who stared at the idiotic witch in total disbelief; he even focused his roving eye on her to make sure she paid attention to what he was about to say. "There are two very big reasons you don't want the Ministry to decide to come after the Order," he growled at the woman. "First, the Ministry isn't our enemy; our enemy is the Death Eaters. We aren't the Ministry's enemies, either; again, that's the damn Death Eaters. There is absolutely no reason for either of us to waste our time or our resources fighting each other when there are heartless beasts running around murdering people in cold blood. That by itself should be a good enough reason not to make an enemy out of the Ministry."
"Because we're doing their jobs for them—"
"Second," he cut in loudly, "if the Ministry decided it was going to take on the Order, you would get bloody well slaughtered. The Magical Law Enforcement Patrol, what a lot of people think is the 'weakest' of the DMLE offices, still outnumbers the Order three to one all on its own. That's not counting the Hit Wizard Squad or the Auror Corps, or the administrators, all of whom are former Patrolmen, Hit Wizards, or Aurors. The total combatants the DMLE could bring to bear outnumber you four or even five to one, and let me tell you something, missy: you're no Auror. If you don't care about stopping the Death Eaters – and if you don't, I don't know why you're even here – you'd better start caring about not making an enemy of people who would tear through you like they can."
Washington hesitantly cleared his throat. "'You'? You're not counting yourself with us?"
He leaned back in his chair and let his electric-blue eye resume rolling around. "In a fight between the Order and the Ministry, one the Order started? I'd have a hard time deciding who to fight alongside. You'd deserve everything you'd get, and if I absolutely had to choose between a bunch of fools who got hopped up on their own importance enough to start a fight against the government just like the Death Eaters have done or the men and women who are just doing the best they can to keep this country in one piece, I don't think you'd like my answer."
That admission set worried glances flying among the gathered rebels, particularly those whom he and Albus had worked together to protect during that horrible ambush a few months before. Of course, it could also have been the unflattering comparison of several of the more confrontational Order members, none of whom he had invited to this meeting, to the very monsters they had banded together to defeat. "Like I said, not something anyone wants to deal with. Not me, not you, not the Ministry. I'd much rather we smooth things over with the DMLE and get back to fighting the real bad guys, but Albus's ego is getting in the way at the worst possible time, and I can't change every mind in the Order all on my own. I need your help to keep a fight that nobody really wants from starting."
"How are we supposed to do that? You don't want us to fight the rest of the Order, do you?"
"What did I just say about fighting your own allies instead of your enemies?" The wizard who had posed that question, along with everyone else in the room, relaxed somewhat at his blunt statement. "We're not trying to split the Order up or turn on anybody. We're just working together to keep anyone from making a dumb mistake that makes everything a hell of a lot worse for everybody. Talk to the rest of the Order, try to get them to understand just how bad things could be if we keep going down this road. And count yourselves lucky that I'm giving you the easy jobs," he added with a sour grunt. "Somebody's got to try to get this through Albus's thick skull, and none of you can do it. I'm stuck with that."
The impromptu inaugural meeting of the 'Second Order', as one fool witch called it, continued for several more minutes before he shooed them all out of the room and back to their own homes. Mad-Eye stretched his good leg and thumped out and down the stairs to the bar below, a couple of silver coins getting tossed into the bartender's hand. "Got any beer that isn't your regular crap?"
"Fresh goat piss. Probably'd taste better, too." A heavy mug was slammed next to his hands, the yellowish ale inside sloshing around and threatening to splash out. "Not that you're gonna drink it, anyway."
Mad-Eye grunted and took a swig from the flask he pulled out of his pocket. Single-malt scotch, three different pain-relieving potions, and a shot of Pepper-Up to keep that witch's brew from sending him into a never-ending nap. The old Healer he was buddies with hated his guts for drinking it all the time, but he had plenty more injuries than just his face and leg. When that much of his body had been hacked, burned, torn, frozen, melted, blasted, and generally cursed off him, it wasn't like he had a lot of options for effective pain control. "You're like a cheap whore. Gotta pay you to grab your attention for five minutes."
A single laugh was all his comment earned him, and the bartender leaned over and stroked his scraggly grey beard. "So what did my 'genius' brother bollix up beyond all recognition this time around?" Aberforth asked in a mutter.
Blue eyes, three of them, rolled over the few stragglers in the Hog's Head, and two wands threw up a variety of privacy charms before Mad-Eye answered the question. "He's gotten it in his head that Ministry has it out for him. Which it does, but that's only because of his own cock-ups."
"Wish I could say I don't think Albus'd play with a bunch of kids' heads like that, but I can't. It was a surprise, sure, but I'd believe he did it in a heartbeat. You should have heard the kinds of things he thought could be justified when he was younger. He said they were 'necessary actions to ensure the greatest good', but when Grindelwald tried to put those ideas into practice, the ICW called 'em 'war crimes'."
"I try not to think about it too much, or I'd smash his nose flat again myself." Another long pull from his flask preceded his next admission. "Most of my cadets went to Hogwarts."
Aberforth just let out an understanding hum at that. To those who didn't know him well, it would probably come as a surprise to hear that Mad-Eye had on more than one occasion been accused of coddling the cadets put under his supervision. He didn't wipe their noses for them or remind them to put on some mittens, but he definitely did what he could to keep them as safe as an Auror could be while they were still learning what they were doing. He remembered his own early years in the Corps, fighting in the bombed-out ruins of Muggle towns and mangled landscapes as part of the volunteer combat force attached to the French Chevalier Brigade who were fighting the Knights, and what was more, he remembered just how many newbie Aurors died out on those godforsaken fields defending terrified families from the evil bastards who were trying to take over the world.
So yeah, maybe he went a little out of his way to protect them and teach them all they needed to know to survive, even if that meant bending the truth from time to time. On paper, the criminals who died in firefights were all clean kills, no matter how confused the actual fight had been. One wizard whose little brother's life was threatened unless he informed a crime syndicate of when searches would be done in Knockturn had his acts covered up, and then was listed as mysteriously 'ill' around the same time that syndicate was wiped out to a man. And Tonks, whose incredible ability to look like anyone limited her to a provisional pass on her Stealth and Tracking exam, got a note in her file that said her clumsiness had improved a great deal and earned her her deserved rank when really she was no more graceful than she had been or ever would be.
That was the third reason for organizing this group inside the Order, the one he could never reveal. Once Black and Malfoy were gone, Albus had told everybody else that Tonks had chosen the Ministry over the Order and that he had heard rumors she was turning to the Dark. He had even assigned Shacklebolt to keep an eye on her whenever possible to make sure she did not use her knowledge of the Order's membership against them.
That shite wasn't gonna fly.
If he were a crueler man, Mad-Eye might have let the Ministry tear the Order apart for that disparagement of his latest and possibly greatest protégé and then just remade it from whomever survived the culling, but apparently he was too kind for his own good. He would do his best to keep the Order from arranging its own destruction, but whether or not Albus stayed in power was something he was just going to leave to the whims of Fate.
Aberforth raised bushy eyebrows at the thunderous expression on his face. "Looks like Albus finally made an enemy he can't afford to have coming after him. About time." Stepping back, the younger of the Dumbledore siblings picked up a glass and used a filthy rag to just dirty it up some more. "Some people say that there's nothing scarier than an angry mama bear protecting her cub, but even if that's true, I've always thought that cub's papa can't be much less dangerous."
"I'm not their father. They've got actual parents if they want that." A swig. "Most of 'em, anyway."
Neither man missed that he said nothing about the rest of Aberforth's comment.
Jen,
Sending you an overdone love sounds like it would be a hilarious idea, and I'm proud you think I was creative enough to come up with it. That is something I would love to take credit for.
But I can't. I didn't send you that letter.
I don't know exactly what was in it, but hearing that you thought it pretentious and possessive is not a good sign. I once had a fan write me letters like this, and I made the mistake of ignoring them. She then started stalking me, even breaking into my flat, and it took a Floo call to the police to find her and make it all stop. We both know you can take care of yourself if something like this happens to you, but between you and me, I would much prefer if you didn't have to deal with it at all. Just keep your eyes open, and don't overlook anyone. My stalker didn't look like the kind of person I would have expected it to be, and that oversight caused me a lot of trouble.
Be careful, Jen. I'll see you again soon.
With much love,
Viktor
It's all Greek to me: vlákes – idiot. It's worth noting that Menagerie called Priest this in fond exasperation, something Jen didn't pick up on because of her own unfamiliarity with the two.
…Maybe putting three evil characters together was a bad idea. I think they're starting to inspire each other, and that can't be good for the local wildlife. RIP, Stephen.
Silently Watches out.
