Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, receive monetary or other compensation from these works nor do I profit from them in any way other than the enjoyment I personally derive from developing these stories. All characters, locations and situations existing within the universe of Harry Potter, not existing in the real world, are the properties of their respective copyright holders. I am just borrowing them from time to time and carefully leaving the keys in the basket by the door and the petrol tank topped off. I also carefully hang up Hermione's, Luna's, Lavender's, Padma's and Parvati's (and any other ladies') robes when they have been removed to keep them from wrinkling.

WARNING: Relationships may not be what they seem. If there is something unusual going on, you will know it from the notes at the beginning of a chapter. Fair warning though, if polyamorous relationships are a squick for you, these are not the droids you're looking for.

-oOoOo-

41 kilometers East of Llanon, United Kingdom, 39 kilometers South Southwest of Newtown, United Kingdom, Malfoy Manor; 2:23 am UTC July 18, 2000

The ward alarms awoke everyone in the house except Lucius, who had already been awake, reviewing his plans in his study. Someone had come calling and they weren't here for a polite, social call. Draco, wand in hand, was peering out through his bedroom window. The wards were being struck by volley after volley of reductos and Avada Kadavras. In a few minutes, the wards would be glowing incandescent with the amount of spell fire striking them. Although they were the best Goblin-cast wards gold could acquire, even they would be unable to withstand this barrage for more than a few hours.

A house elf popped into the room. "Master Draco! Lord Lucius orders babies away. Yous must all leave nows!"

"Tasket, you and Tisket get the children ready for travel," Draco commanded. The house elf popped out.

"Who is attacking us, Draco?" Pansy asked in a panic. She had never seen this kind of spell barrage before.

"Does it matter? It's clear they want to kill us. While I would like to know who it is as well, I don't want to be here when the wards are breached," Tracey said, looking at Draco piercingly.

"Ladies, have the elves pack whatever items you want to keep and get ready to go," Draco said and took hold of Pansy and Tracey and kissed them. "When I am ready, we will be leaving," Draco said resolutely.

"Tisket," Draco called.

Tisket and Tasket popped in at the same time. Tisket had his twin daughters in her arms and Tasket had his son in a carrier on his back. Tasket pulled Tisket over to Draco. "Tisket, Tasket, if you feel the wards weaken more than half-way, you are to pop my wives, my children and I away from here. Do you both understand?" Draco asked.

The two house elves nodded vehemently.

"Good. Tisket, please stay with Pansy. Tasket, please stay with Tracey," he then turned to his wives. "Ladies, I am going to talk with Father and Mother. I shall return here shortly." Draco turned and left the room without looking back.

"Snicker!" Pansy shouted. Pansy's house elf popped in.

"Snicker, pack all of the items I showed you last week as well as all my clothing in the closet into trunks and pop them to Gringott's," Pansy explained.

"Yes, Master Draco's Miss Pansy," the little elf said as he began packing a number of items in the room into a trunk the appeared next to the busy elf.

Tracey nodded, "You planned for an evacuation. That is excellent," she said to Pansy.

"I learned from the best," Pansy said with a smirk. The facade of calm rapidly crumbled, however and Pansy ran to Tracey crying. Tracey wrapped the younger witch up in an embrace.

"It will be alright, Little Love. We have house elves around us to pop us out in the unlikely event they get through the wards. Knowing the way Lord Malfoy's mind works, there are contingencies within contingencies. Our job is to insure the household remains intact enough to function after losing the manor. Crying won't accomplish that now. You can melt into a little puddle after we're in a private, warded room somewhere safe," Tracey said. Pansy looked up into Tracey's eyes and Tracey took this opportunity to move their relationship closer by giving her a passionate kiss.

Pansy's eyes widened in surprise but then closed as she tentatively returned the kiss.

Tracey pushed the younger witch away. "And we'll do more of that as well. Right now, we have to pack!" Tracey said with a hint of promise in her exclamation, "And whomever is out there will have to kill me first before they touch My Pansy." If looks could kill, Tracey's gaze would vaporize every single magic user who dared attack the wards.

Tracey brought herself down to earth again. "Doodles!" she exclaimed. A house elf wearing pocket-covered fatigues appeared. "Doodles, pack the house. Involve all house elves not specifically involved with Master Draco, Master Lucius, Mistress Narcissa or Mistress Pansy. If any other elves are also packing the house, let me know immediately. Once a trunk is packed, it is to be shrunk and placed in a master trunk. Once a master trunk is full, it is to be popped to Gringott's for storage. If I call you again, you will need to immediately pop to my side. Do you understand?" she asked the elf in a terse manner.

"Mistress Tracey, Doodles understands and will carry out your orders. Doodles has fourteen house elves working on the orders already knowing theys coming, Mistress Tracey," the elf barked out, and stood as if he were at attention.

"Carry on, Doodles," Tracey said. The house elf popped away.

-oOoOo-

Draco knocked at his father's study door where he could hear Lucius and Narcissa having a rather boisterous discussion.

"This is preposterous. Where are the aurors? Where's the Chosen One? There are dozens of them out there..." Narcissa was cut off by Draco's knock on the door jam. They both turned to look at their son.

"More like hundreds, Mother. I would say two to three hundred. Quite possibly every fanatical, living death eater is upon Corsal Hill. As we have no other allies other than the elves, there is probably little we can do except hope they don't have enough energy reserves to break through," Draco explained. "As far as Potter is concerned, I imagine he is still somewhat preoccupied with trying to procreate. It is, after all, what I was doing when we were so rudely interrupted," he said with a raised eyebrow directed at his parents, bringing a rosy hue to Narcissa's face and a self-satisfied smirk to Lucius.

"Be that is it may..." she was once again interrupted, this time by Lucius.

"Well, I suppose that does change the equations somewhat. Narcissa, what are you still doing here? Get the elves to packing the house and once that is done, take the keys and go to Gringott's. I still have allies there. Well-paid allies who will keep us safe from the ministry and the vermin outside," Lucius said. He then turned to Draco. "What are you doing here? You should be overseeing your wives' work."

"Overseeing my wives work is nearly as sure a way to die as pulling a wand on a goblin within Gringott's, Father, though not nearly as quick or painless as the goblins would manage," He chuckled evilly. "Besides, watching Mother's house elves clash with my house elves and Tracey's house elves over who packs what would be too amusing to watch and Pansy would tear my arms off and beat me senseless with the wet end for laughing at their antics," Draco said the last while pantomiming being hit repeatedly with a squishing, slurping object every few seconds.

Even Lucius smiled at this, while Narcissa was scowling, trying her best not to laugh as well.

Lucius' face took on one of contemplation. "Narcissa, as Lord Malfoy, I am instructing you to take this satchel of vault keys and leave immediately for Gringott's. Draco, the elves with your children shall accompany Narcissa to the bank. They will leave now!" Lucius ordered, looking between the two of them.

Narcissa looked down at her shoes. "As my husband commands," she said quietly.

Draco met his father's eyes and nodded. "Tisket! Tasket! The two elves popped in with their infant burden and two very surprised young women.

Before the elves or women could speak, Draco cut them off. "Tisket, Tasket, you are to take Lady Malfoy, my children and my wives to Gringott's immediately."

Pansy and Tracey both opened their mouths to speak. Lucius cut them off. "There will be no arguments. Your presence is not needed here and you would only be a distraction to Draco and I, slowing us in the tasks we need to have accomplished."

"Doodles!" Tracey yelled. The pocket-covered house elf appeared.

"Yes Mistress Tracey?" the elf asked.

"You and the rest of the elves have two hours left to pack or until the wards fall or until Lord Malfoy orders you to leave. You are all to leave then and are to pop to Gringott's. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mistress Tracey," the little elf said and popped away.

Lucius looked at Tracey in exasperation and roared, "Tisket, Tasket, now means NOW!" He would walk through the fires of the seven levels of Hell for his grandchildren, his wife, his beautiful daughters-in-law and his son, not that he'd let Draco or his daughters-in-law know that tidbit of information.

The two elves blurred into action. Tisket took Narcissa's hand, Tasket grabbed hold of Tracey and Pansy and all eight of them popped out of the room, leaving Lucius and Draco alone in the study listening as the remaining house elves continued packing the last-minute items from the manor.

"Why is it women act like such emotional fools at times?" Lucius asked rhetorically.

Draco, however, chose to answer his father. "Probably because some man is being an idiot and not giving them all of the information to make an informed decision," Draco responded, giving his father a pointed look.

Lucius chuckled. "Yes, well, be that as it may, we have work to do before we can greet our guests properly," Lucius said.

Draco simply nodded and reviewed the checklists on Lucius' desk that they had been previously working from.

Draco began working from the list with his name at the top. "Snippy!" Draco called, and yet another house elf appeared. "Snippy, you are apparently my emergency escape elf. If you sense the wards fall, pop me to Gringott's immediately," Draco calmly told the newly-arrived elf.

"Yes, Mister Draco. I is doing as you say," Snippy said and immediately got close enough to Draco to touch him yet stayed out of his way.

It was then that he noticed Coopa, his father's personal elf, was doing the same with Lucius. Draco began walking to the entryway of the manor, occasionally stopping at seeming random points and checking the red and a blue potions located on a formerly disillusioned shelf. He then removed the spells from the potion jars which kept them from breaking open on impact, recast the disillusionment charm and moved to the next seemingly random location. Somehow his godfather, Severus Snape, had determined a method of creating a fiendfyre-like effect by mixing these two potions together. For the right price, Severus had made his father several dozen pairs of the potions. Lucius had then placed them strategically around the manor to assist the conflagration he had planned in the event someone attempted to take the ancestral home from his family, regardless of who came calling. While Draco was focused on his task, he noticed a number of the elves packing and shrinking various items from the manor, including the polished marble slabs lining the entryway. In their place, the elves were laying down a quick-drying, white slurry he recognized as an incendiary stone. When ignited, it would become somewhat liquified and hold in place anything or anyone standing on its surface. It would even prevent apparation unless the person didn't mind splinching their feet off. Father is leaving nothing to chance, it would seem, he thought.

Finished with his potions task, Draco looked down at his list. The next item would take some finesse that could not merely be entrusted to a house elf. Not even one of Snippy's obvious skill. "To the basement, Snippy," Draco said. The house elf popped them both to the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement.

Through his muggle connections (Lucius was never truly a blood-purist, just an elitist, arrogant ass), Lucius had purchased a number of large terracotta urns that were glazed on the exterior but left porous on the interior. These man-sized urns were placed under major structural members of the wooden beams supporting the house.

Each urn had been carefully placed and generously filled with a rather odd potion, as Draco thought of it. Two parts finely-powdered sulfur, seventy-two parts finely ground, red hematite mixed with twenty-eight parts powdered aluminium, and finally twenty-nine parts barium nitrate, mixed in at the very end, very cautiously. Draco involuntarily shuddered at the memory of working with Severus to make this final ingredient. No one would ever believe that the dour potions master destroyed more cauldrons in one week than Longbottom had in seven years of potions. Cast on each urn was a preservation charm. Just above the mouth of each were a pair of vials containing the two parts of the fiendfyre potion, also with preservation charms cast upon them. Draco was here to insure the charms remained in place and had not been tampered with or weakened in some way.

Draco spent no more than half a minute checking each of the hundred urns.

With the last item checked off his list, he returned to Lucius' study to find Lucius had just checked off the next-to-the-last item on his list.

Lucius walked into the safe in his study. It was really a vault, but he did not like to think of it as such. He carefully set the dials on the GubraithianFunerium.

Lucius pulled a lever on the device, connecting the timer on the magical crematorium device to the wards surrounding the manor. Once the wards fell, activation of the device was irreversible. He almost wished he could stay to watch the fools prattle about in their mad dash of realization.

He checked off the item from his list and verified all items were now checked off.

He looked at Draco's list and noted it, too, was complete.

"Draco," Lucius said, "it is time for us to depart and let the rabble loot and pillage."

"Yes Father," Draco responded with a wry smile, having some idea of what would happen when the attackers entered.

"Coopa, Snippy, signal to the remainder of the elves that the manor and its lands are to be abandoned and they are to pop to Gringotts. You may take us to Gringotts once that is done," Lucius commanded the two elves.

Coopa and Snippy closed their eyes for a moment and called out to the other elves still in and around the manor. All responded with an affirmative. "Alls done, Master Malfoy," Coopa said. The two elves popped their charges to the lobby of Gringotts.

-oOoOo-

Rudolphus Lestrange and Antonin Dolohov stood on a hill East of Malfoy Manor, surveying the progress of the attack. The dome of the wards over the manor was alight as if on fire. It had glowed through all the colors of the rainbow and now pulsed a bright blue, the intensity of which rose with each spell striking it.

The host of nearly five hundred marked and unmarked wizards and witches had been firing curses at the wards for two days. Already more than half of them had exhausted their magical cores and were laying in wizarding tents around the area, recharging their energy in the event the wards were unexpectedly strong.

"I would have thought they would fight back, or at least call for parlay," Dolohov said, gesturing towards the manor with his hand.

"Malfoy has the best wards on his manor the goblins would sell. He likely thinks he's invincible inside," Lestrange responded, an evil chuckle punctuating his comment.

"We'll demonstrate to him how far from reality that is," Dolohov said.

The dome had begun expanding as the spell fire continued. The energies being absorbed were causing the wards to bleed enough energy to cause the air near the dome to ignite violently.

Suddenly, an earth-shattering rumble drowned out all other sounds as the wards fell. A massive backwash of magic washed over the gathered host. Those who had been casting were the recipients of the backlash and fell to the ground in convulsions.

Once the wave of distorted magic receded, Dolohov pointed his wand at his throat and cast a sonorus. "Siege teams to your positions. We enter the manor in two minutes," he said, then canceled the sonorus. This was the signal for the hundred-odd marked followers kept in reserve to apparate to the edge of the ward boundary.

"Rudolphus, I will be back with our prisoners shortly," Dolohov said, shaking hands with his comrade.

"Try to keep the women and children alive for later entertainment," Lestrange said, "I want some intimate fun as well, Antonin, as well as a bit of revenge for Bella."

Dolohov nodded and then apparated to the edge of where the wards had stood. The followers gathered on him and walked towards the main entrance to the manor. Smaller groups had apparated to be near the various other known exits from the manor to insure no one escaped.

"While I don't expect anyone inside to be coherent enough to apparate, just to be safe, put up our anti-apparation and portkey wards," Dolohov said to his lieutenant. Five wizards raised the ordered wards. No one would be getting out of the manor via magical means. Dolohov nodded to the men in approval.

Still meeting no resistance, the Death Eaters entered the foyer of Malfoy Manor. "Find the blood traitors. Take them alive if possible. Kill them as painfully as possible otherwise," Dolohov ordered. He then grabbed the nearest recruit.

"Go tell Lord Lestrange that we have entered. He is on the hill to the East," Dolohov instructed the recruit. She nodded and ran out the entryway to the hill in question.

Dolohov remained in the foyer to coordinate the capture while the remaining men and women searched the manor.

Another recruit came running into the entryway from deeper within the manor. "Sir! We've found a vault in what appears to be Malfoy's study!" the recruit said in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the former inner-circle death eater.

"Well, take me there," Dolohov ordered. The recruit nodded, turned and began walking quickly back to Lucius' study.

They entered the study and the recruit pointed at the thick door, clearly left open in haste.

Dolohov walked up to the door of the safe and peered inside. There were bookshelves, most of which stood empty, racks of potions, a few covered paintings, some rolled tapestries and other items. A motion caught his eye and he turned to look at the large wooden box covered in dials. He instantly recognized it and fear gripped him.

"Run! Get out! NOW!" he yelled as he turned to run. It was too late. The dial had just moved from nine to eight.

A GubraithianFunerium was designed to provide an eternal funeral flame for the dearly departed. It was, in effect, a tunable, stored spell sequence. It could burn a mild flame, about the size of a house elf, for two hundred years. It could burn a fire the size of a pipe match for thousands of years. The amount of time the Funerium was active dictated how large a flame it would burn. Lucius had set it to burn for fifteen minutes.

The dial rolled to Seven. The death eater recruits within earshot turned to run. Dolohov was halfway turned around.

Six. The recruit Dolohov had ordered to update Rudolphus had just reached the top of the hill where he was waiting.

Five. Dolohov was at the threshold of the vault and continued screaming "Run!" as frantically as was possible. The anti-apparation wards they had put up when the manor wards fell were the very things that were going to kill him. The spells on the urns were triggered. The two potion bottles atop each shattered, causing the potions to mix. The disillusioned shelves with the potions released from the walls, causing the vials to fall and shatter, mixing their contents to add to the conflagration.

Four. The death eaters and death eater recruits who heard Dolohov began panicking and heading towards the entryway, only to find their escape suddenly blocked by fires. If Dolohov was frightened, it must be unimaginably horrific. The fiendfyre from the potions in the urns ignited with, had anyone been looking, a white-hot flash. The fires beginning to burn in the hallways and the entryway flared into life.

Three. The Funerium began to glow yellow. No one saw this, however, as everyone nearby was running like rats from a sinking ship. Dolohov had made it to the door of Lucius' study. Others were just beginning to turn and run themselves. On the hill to the East, Rudolphus had a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "The blood traitors will be wish they had not betrayed our Lord," he thought. The contents of the urns began burning at over twenty-five hundred degrees Celsius; the urns channeling the fire within upwards towards the support beams above.

Two. The glow from the Funerium was becoming incandescent. The tapestries hanging on the walls of Lucius' study began smoldering, the paint on the walls began blackening from the heat. Dolohov could feel the back of his scalp burning and his clothes burning into his back and legs. Other death eaters who had been in Lucius' study were screaming as their eyeballs burst and their hair burned. Rudolphus noted a single window in the manor glowing as brightly as the noon day sun. He also saw the orange flicker of flames in some of the other windows. Like blow torches, each urn was cutting through the beam above at an incredible rate.

One. The air temperature in Lucius' study reached two thousand degrees Celsius, causing a shockwave that began to radiate outwards. Dolohov, who had made it less than five meters from the study door was incinerated, as were the other death eaters still in the study. The walls of the study vaporized, adding to the shockwave. Rudolphus began to throw his arm in front of his face to shield his eyes from the rapidly brightening glow. He began yelling an anguished "No!" The shockwave propagated through the manor as a wave front, not following the hallways or doorways, but radiating outward from the Funerium. All of the support beams above the urns burned through and the fires burst through the floor.

Zero. Even as it began to fall from the lack of support beams, the manor house blew skyward. The fireball blew outward ten meters beyond the edge of the structure in all directions. The thermal pulse caused everyone within twenty meters of the house to be carbonized. All of the death eaters waiting on the hill above the manor were knocked off their feet by the overpressured blast of air. The fireball continued to grow until it reached the boundary of the former wards.

True to form, the Funerium burned everything and anything within the fire field's boundaries, down to the granite foundation stones, for fifteen minutes. The fire was dazzlingly white hot. The nature of the magic of the Funerium prevented a conventional explosion and held all the destruction to within a sphere whose diameter was based on the duration of the burn. In this particular case, the Funerium had been specifically ordered by Lucius as a means to kill anyone within the boundaries of the manor building when set for its shortest burn time. In this, he succeeded most effectively.

Of the five hundred and eleven death eaters and unmarked recruits brought to the felling of the wards, ninety-two had died as a result of the destruction of the manor. Rudolphus ordered the remaining forces to apparate or use their port keys. Nothing, he knew, was going to survive this devastation.

Once the Funerium completed its set duration of burn, the magic was consumed. Under normal circumstances, set for a long duration, the flame would simply flicker out. In this particular case, when the Funerium's magic was complete, it left behind a disc of white-hot lime two hundred meters in diameter. Since the wards had collapsed, and the magic of the Funerium exhausted, muggle military satellites showed a frightening anomaly in Wales.

-oOoOo-

1 kilometers East of Bordon, United Kingdom, Oakhanger, United Kingdom, Skynet 4 Oakhanger Telemetry and Command Station; 4:18 am UTC July 20, 2000

Flight Sergeant Niles Broadmoore was bored, as usual, and had stood up to stretch just as an alarm sounded on his console and a map overlay displayed over the live imagery coming from Skynet 4D. The words "Thermal Anomaly" blinked white on a red background at the top of his screen. He immediately sat down and pulled up the coordinates of the anomaly the computer identified. This had happened several times in the past when some widget or gizmo had gone wildly out of calibration, but 4D had just undergone a complete health check days before.

When the coordinates appeared, shock was the first reaction. Bloody hell! That's Wales! he thought.

He reached over and slapped the red mushroom button between his station and the next. This was no drill and it certainly wasn't a sensor gone awry. But there was a protocol for this and he followed it, beginning diagnostics on the sensors which measured planetary surface temperature.

Ninety seconds later, a disheveled Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Grindley entered the room. "You do realize it's bloody four in the morning, don't you, Sergeant? What's the emergency?"

"Yes, Sir. We have a large thermal anomaly in Wales, sir. Telemetry indicates a nearly perfect circle, two hundred meters in diameter at North fifty-two degrees, twelve minutes, forty-two seconds, West three degrees, thirty-two minutes, forty-five seconds. Thermal sensors indicate surface temperature exceeds twenty-five hundred degrees C. Thermal gradient is flat, indicating edge-to-edge temperature differs less than ten degrees C. I have already run cursory diagnostics on the thermal sensors on unit 4D and no errors were found. I was in the process of directing the sensors of 4E at the site to confirm the anomaly. Sir!"

"Carry on, Sergeant. Good work," Grindley said, looking over the sergeant's shoulder. "When 4E has acquisition of the target location, let me know. I am just going to grab a cup," and walked over to the coffee urn.

"Yes sir," the sergeant replied.

Grindley poured his cup of coffee, topped it with a dash of cream and savored the rich bitterness. He drained the cup and was about to pour a second one when the sergeant called him back over.

"Sir! Readings from 4E confirm findings from 4D," the sergeant said, continuing to type commands on his console and waiting for the minute-long delay between sending the satellite the instructions and the confirmation the satellite had received and was executing those instructions.

"Sir, diagnostics of the thermal sensors on 4E indicate no errors found. Radiation detectors on both 4D and 4E show no anomalies. What the hell could cause something like that, sir?" the sergeant asked.

Grindley picked up the telephone then looked at the sergeant's display once more. "I have no idea whatsoever, Sergeant," he said and dialed a seven-digit number.

"Sir, this is Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Grindley at Oakhanger. We have a Code Alpha incident", Grindley spoke into the telephone. "Yes, Sir! Specifics are as follows, Sir," as Grindley repeated the location and nature of the issue. He paused a moment. "No Sir! This is definitely not a hoax. Yes, Sir. I can be reached at Oakhanger nine, zed, seven, zed, zed, six." He paused to listen further. "Yes sir! Good morning to you as well, Sir." Grindley replaced the handset onto its cradle.

The sergeant was looking at Grindley clearly thinking he preferred it that Grindley spoke to the ranking officers and the sergeant spoke to the satellites.

"Sergeant, do us a favor and start a fresh urn of coffee. The day crew is going to be coming in a bit early this morning," Grindley said in a friendly tone of voice.

"When should we be expecting them, Sir?" the sergeant asked.

Grindley rubbed his face with both hands and looked up at the clock. "In about twenty minutes, Sergeant."

While some might think the day crew starting early would mean getting out on time, Sergeant Broadmoore had been in the Service long enough to know it just meant his shift was not going to be over any time soon. He walked towards the urn to begin the makings of a fresh batch of coffee. He had a feeling he was going to need it.

-oOoOo-

1 kilometers East of Bordon, United Kingdom, Oakhanger, United Kingdom, Skynet 4 Oakhanger Telemetry and Command Station; 4:52 am UTC July 18, 2000

"Late as usual. They tell you twenty minutes and it'll be the start of their shift when they stroll in," Grindley said to the sergeant.

Four Redcaps came through the door with weapons out and charged, surprising both men. The RMPs looked around the room, yelled "Clear" to the outside corridor, yelled "ATTENTION!" and then braced to attention, barring the double doors from closing.

Grindley and Broadmoore, both of whom had been talking at Broadmoore's console, braced to attention as well.

Air Chief Marshall Sir Peter Squire walked into the room with a Group Captain, as well as a Brigadier and two Colonels from the Royal Army. There was also an older, distinguished gentleman wearing a suit who looked as if he was about to model Huntsman and had a face few were likely to not know due to his numerous appearances on television and news print.

"Please stand at ease, Gentlemen," Sir Squire said.

As Grindley and Broadmoore stood an ounce more relaxed, they were both consciously concentrating on their breathing. While they had read articles about this man, neither had ever had an opportunity to see, much less be in the same room with him.

"Ted, let's get these two men out of here to where we can speak with them and let the day crew take over information gathering for us," the Duke of Wales said.

"Yes, Your Highness," the Air Chief Marshall said. He then turned to the two. "Sergeant, Commander, shall we move our discussion to the conference room at the end of the hall so we can get out of the way of your relief?" he asked rhetorically and gestured for them to follow him.

Both the sergeant and the lieutenant commander were still somewhat suffering from shock but followed on behind.

As the general staff left the room, the room became ordered chaos as the day shift poured in, filling every station with a few doubled up and began their data collection. Their operations commander and the two RA Colonels stayed in the room.

-oOoOo-

Closing notes for this chapter:

I have seen far too many stories wherein dramatic, earth-shattering events in the magical world had little or no effect on the mundane world. As you can likely tell from this story so far, I don't subscribe to the "Blind Muggle" theory.