"News from the Wizarding World!" announced Vivian Ivins, slapping an issue of the Quibbler onto Nicolae Carpathia's desk. "It looks like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has taken over the Ministry of Magic!"

"Has he?" said Nicolae. He skimmed through the Quibbler, unconcerned. "It has only taken him, what, thirty years?"

"I wouldn't underestimate him," said Vivian cautiously. "Once he gains control of the wizarding world, he might try for the muggle one."

Vivian Ivins was what wizards called a squib, a person born into a wizarding family but without any magical abilities to show for it. She had tried to compensate for her inability to turn teacups into horned toads by learning to commune with the Spirit world and harnessing what little power she could from the Spirits. She had become quite good at divination, but it was a pale substitute for the kind of magic that real wizards could do. Her link to powerful members of wizarding communities had none-the-less proven to be quite a benefit for Nicolae. Not that he would ever let her know how important she was.

"Yes, woman, I know what he will try to do!" snapped Nicolae, throwing the Quibbler back at her. "What I want to know is why are you giving me this rubbish magazine? What happened to the Daily Prophet?" He picked up an ad that had fluttered out from between the pages and waved it in Vivian's face. "And what the hell is a nargle detector?"

"You-Know-Who has taken over the Daily Prophet!" whimpered Vivian. "It's not a reliable news source anymore. And a nargle is a mischevious creature that infects mistletoe-"

"Yes, thank you Vivian," Nicolae interrupted dismissively. "You may go." Vivian scooped up the Quibbler from his desk and hurried out of the office.

Even were it not for Vivian's background, Nicolae had become all too familiar with wizard-kind during his brief stint as President of Romania. On his first day, he was greeted in his office by a polite wizard in brilliant purple robes who had informed him that Romania was currently in the middle of a dragon crisis.

"But not to worry," said the wizard in purple robes cheerfully, before hopping into the fireplace and vanishing, "we're taking care of the matter. We've got Charlie Weasley on it, and he's one of the best dragon handlers in all of Europe." The wizard's words would have inspired slightly more confidence had his hat not been on fire at the time.

Nicolae had soon found himself at the center of a war between Dragon Rights Activists and the Anti-Dragon Protection Agencies, who argued over whether Romania's dragons were a national treasure that needed to be protected or a menace to society that needed to be eliminated. He was on the verge of ordering Leon Fortunato to have both groups killed when thankfully he had been propelled into his current position as Secretary-General of the UN, leaving his Vice President to deal with the dragon crisis.

Nicolae had, through Vivian, been hearing rumors that a villainous wizard from the past had recently returned to power, but he was hardly concerned. Whatever this Lord Voldy fellow tried to do, it was he, Nicolae, who would win in the end. The world was his. His Master had guaranteed it.

The muggle world at least. Nicolae wouldn't get to rule the wizarding world. His Master had informed him of that almost at the beginning.

"The Enemy leaves them to their own devices," Lucifer had explained. "So I do too. Since they're wizards, their souls go to me anyways."

"That seems strange," Nicolae had said. "Was it not the Enemy that made them wizards?"

"Well, the way I heard it," said Lucifer, "—and, mind, this was through Beelzebub back when he and Gabriel were still on speaking terms—was that Pharoah hired a couple of wizards to compete against the miracles God was performing through Moses. There were only supposed to be three plagues of Egypt, but the wizards kept copying them. The Enemy was forced to keep adding new plagues to make himself seem more impressive. Eventually he got so annoyed with the wizards for trying to discredit him that he stopped speaking to wizard-kind completely."

"I might have a similar problem though." mused Nicolae. "If I perform wonders, the wizards will copy them. Will people not simply assume I am a wizard?"

"Ah!" said Lucifer. "But we have a card to play that they don't. Wizards can't raise the dead!"

"Great!" said Nicolae. "So we will raise the dead. That is genius. Who is going to die?"

And Lucifer had suddenly remembered a very important soul he had to rush off and steal, so Nicolae had never gotten an answer.