The bulletin board downstairs in the Dining Hall had been gradually converted into a board for the VI. It had started with a photograph of Silvano Giorgio: a laughing blue-eyed boy bundled up against the snow all around him. His arms were around a young Caterina, her eyes sparkling and cheeks red with the cold. The Silvano in the picture was smiling, tall, and full to the brim with life.
Caterina had brought Isabella the picture of her and her brother, and Isabella had put it up on the board. It would motivate the VI to practice hard and remember what they were fighting for.
Then another picture and another picture had come: a small girl with curly black hair and a dimpled smile, a couple waving at the camera as a wind tousled their hair. More and more pictures of family members, of friends who had lost their lives in the rivolta.
To these, Isabella added magazine clippings and bits of the Potterwatch broadcast that Zala helped her copy down. The board grew to be completely covered by slips of paper and moving photographs. Occasionally, Isabella could see that someone practicing dueling would look over at the board, seem to steel themselves, and throw themselves back into the fight with a vengeance.
Fall passed and winter came in a blur of snow and sleet. The mountain was cold, but the Academia had an extensive heating system so that it was always warm inside. Castro would return from delivering messages looking decidedly frozen, his bald head hunched down amid his bright green feathers and ice melting on his wings.
One day Sergio, Tina, and Rosina came and found Isabella in the Main Hall. They all looked decidedly worried and jumpy.
"What's up?" Isabella asked them, setting aside her Potions homework.
"Have you got a letter from Great-Uncle Leo?" Sergio demanded.
"Um no, why?"
"He would have told you," Sergio muttered, evidently disgruntled. "You're the favorite."
"Excuse me?" Isabella asked, feeling her ears burn with embarrassment.
"Great-Uncle always writes us this time of year and tells us what day we're expected home," Tina explained, sitting down on the arm of Isabella's chair. "Only... he hasn't written."
"Maybe his letter's just late," Isabella suggested as Rosina perched on the other arm of her chair.
"No, it usually get here before," Rosina said, shaking her head. "Something's wrong."
"Well... I suppose... I could write him," Isabella offered.
"Thanks!" Tina said, giving her a one armed hug. "You're the best."
"When's the next VI meeting?" Rosina asked.
"Today, like always," Isabella said wearily. It seemed that everyone in the VI had to confirm the meeting days all the time even though there had never been a break from the meetings.
"We aren't meeting over the break, are we?" Sergio asked, standing awkwardly to the side.
"I don't think so," Isabella shrugged. "We'll probably meet the second day back."
"So you are going to write Great-Uncle, right?" Tina asked. "Like, today?"
"If you want me to," said Isabella.
"Yes," Tina nodded. "Today." The twin girls wandered off together, but Sergio remained behind.
"Well?" Isabella asked him.
"Do you think something might be wrong at home?" Sergio asked. "Do you think everyone's okay?"
"I think we would have gotten a letter if they weren't," Isabella told him. "Why are you so worried?"
"Because my sisters are," Sergio said, lowering his voice. "Look, we lost our parents, okay? We don't want to lose anyone else."
"It'll be fine, Sergio," she said yet again. "I'm sure it will be fine. I'll write Grandfather now." She pulled a clean piece of parchment out and dipped her quill in the ink. Sergio watched her for another moment, then abruptly turned and left. Isabella looked after him silently.
Sergio's mother and father, Great-Aunt Guilia's daughter and son-in-law, had died several years ago. Their mother Maria had been a Ministry employee and had been killed by a backfiring spell. Hyacinthus, their father, had become increasingly reckless after his wife's death. He had disappeared for a long time, turning up dead years later in Sicily. Tina and Rosina had been heartbroken, Sergio had been stoic. Now however... Isabella wasn't sure he could take another family member's death. She wrote the letter to grandfather. As an afterthought, she also wrote to Luna because she missed her slightly odd, dreamy roommate.
When she went to Castro to give him the letters, he snapped half-heartedly at her and tried to huddle his head even farther into his ruffled feathers.
"I know, I know," Isabella sighed. "Just take this south to Villa Petrroci and then take this one" - she held up the letter for Luna - "To Hogwarts. In that order, do you understand?"
Castro opened his beak wide in a silent, pitiful cry.
"Please, mia bella?" she begged. The augury glared at her and extended his leg for her to tie the letters on.
About a week later, Isabella was awakened late at night to the sound of tapping on her window. She sat up and saw a hawk huddled on the windowsill outside. She unlatched the window and very quickly opened it. The bird fluttered inside and she closed the window with a quiet snap.
She recognized the bird as coming from the Petrroci mews. Isabella was pretty sure the handsome Harris hawk was Tarquinius, her grandfather's personal bird. Tarquinius glared at her and shuffled his feet, hunching down in her still warm blankets.
"I'm sorry!" she whispered, trying not to wake Zala. The hawk clacked his beak angrily at her and shook his wings. After a while, when he was sufficiently warm, Tarquinius allowed her to untie the letter around his leg.
She quickly read the letter while Tarquinius made small sounds of complaint. She had to feed the hawk a bit of food that belonged to Zala's owl Fret. Castro usually hunted for himself or was rewarded with human food but the Harris hawks of the Petrroci family were used to hunting when they had to and being taken care of when their message was delivered.
The next morning, Isabella hunted down all three of her cousins at breakfast and let them read the letter from grandfather.
"Isabella, Sergio, Rosina, Tina,
Everything is fine here, I promise you. My letter has been delayed due to an uprising in Florence. Taddeo was injured, but he should be fine. He is at Santo Antonio's. His face was burned badly and he'll probably be scarred. As it is, I do not think it wise for you to return home for Christmas at this year. Guilia suggests Valentino take you down to the Muggle village to attend Church services.
Leonardo Petrroci."
"Florence?" Tina whispered, horrified. "That's so much farther north than ever!"
"I know," Isabella said quietly. "Do you know where I could get a newspaper?"
Tina sent her to the little atrium where the two staircases ended in front of the Main Hall's doors. Isabella found a small stack of newspapers on a rickety looking table and took one.
Shaking it open, Isabella saw the headline:
FLORENCE OVERRUN, REBELS TAKE CONTROL
Under this was written:
Ministry unable to stop the northward advance.
While Rome remains an ocean of Ministry control in an ever advancing tide of rebellion, Florence succumbed to the might of the rebel army last Thursday.
The rebel forces crested the Settignano hill Thursday in the early morning and began their descent into the city. Aurors attempted to hold off the army while families, both Muggle and wizard, were evacuated.
"Our kids were at school," a distressed Marius Sulla told a reporter. "We were trying to get them, but the crowds pushed us the opposite way. I don't even know if they're alive!" Only about one third of the population had been evacuated when the Aurors' defenses broke and the rebels swept into the city.
Hundreds were killed during the attack and over a thousand others perished in the fires that broke out across the city.
"I was running away from the fighting when I saw a family huddled in their doorway. The houses were burning behind me, so I knew I had to get that family to safety," survivor Christina de Milan recalls. "When I got close to them, I realized they were Muggles. They had a baby with them and they were terrified. I tried to get them to move, pulling and pushing them along away from the Piazza. I knew we had to get out of the city, but how...?"
Christina was one of many who stopped to help their Muggle neighbors escape the rampage. Most of the evacuees fled into the heart of the city to either the Basilica of Santa Croce or to Palazzo Vecchio. There, wizards attempted to Apparate as many people out as possible.
Meanwhile, a company of wizards hid inside the Pitti Palace and attempted to barricade the building. Luckily, far-famed Alberico Alvise arrived at the museum and helped the wizards gathered there to make every single one of the priceless works of art into Portkeys. Most of these were able to take about two hundred evacuees to locations outside of the city.
Boboli Gardens and the Piazza San Lorenzo were destroyed by the invaders. But by far the most tragic loss was that of the Belvedere Fort. About six hundred families - the majority of which were Muggles - had found refuge in the fort, barricading themselves within. The rebels, arriving on the scene and unable to penetrate the ancient fortress's defensives, set the building on fire. The people within, who had attempted to lock the rebels out, were instead locked within the now burning building. There were no survivors of the Belvedere massacre.
Facing the loss of almost two thousand lives, Signor de Piero was "shocked and horrified at this stupendous blow to our nation". He is unable to promise safe refuge to any of the survivors of Florence, instead urging them to find safety farther north or on the island of Sardina.
So far the rebels of captured control of Bari, Campobasso, Siena, and Florence. Battles are being fought in L'Aquila, Ancona, San Marino, and Palermo. The center of the conflict is undoubtedly Rome, where the Ministry of Magic is still scrambling to put up defenses while keeping the large population of Muggles safe."