May 12th, 1998

"Morning, Alice," said Sally-Anne briskly.

The wand screener glanced up distractedly from writing on a report scroll. She looked like she'd been up for hours, brunette strands already starting to escape from a black hair claw. She gratefully accepted the Costa Coffee cup that Sally-Anne handed her, but waved off the croissant.

Sally-Anne shrugged and started to gnaw on it herself. She didn't glance at the standard wand holder standing in the corner of the desk. How many times had they done this?

"How's business?" She tried to look over Alice's shoulder at the report, but the woman smoothly pulled an old paperweight onto the scroll and let it roll up, hiding the writing. Sally-Anne was amused to see the paperweight commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary of the Ministry.

"I didn't know you were here back in '92."

"Joined back in '88. Fresh out of Hogwarts. Young and dumb." Alice smiled tiredly with her eyes.

"But now you're old and wise. Won't even let me read your super secret reports." Sally-Anne threw herself into a chair. She munched for a minute, watching Alice take a short sip from the pressed paper cup, then a longer one with closed eyes. "What was it like back then?"

Alice carefully put the coffee down onto one of her desk's few open spots. "Calm. Boring. I don't know." She laughed, but there a note of nervousness to it. "Not like recently."

"Like recently how?"

Sally-Anne watched Alice's brow furrow. "She's only ten years older than I am," she thought. But the woman looked older. There was grey mixed into the brown and even a slight frown drew lines on her face.

"I'm a good employee." For some reason, it seemed like she wanted Sally-Anne to believe her. "I'm not political. But lately…" Alice trailed off.

Sally-Anne cocked an eyebrow and the older woman started talking again, faster, as though trying to justify herself.

"A year ago, it was business as usual. Routine. Ounce of prevention and all that jazz. Six months later, I'm helping organize lists of Muggleborns and confiscating their wands. Three months after that, I realize three-quarters of the department isn't showing up any more. Some of them were ill, supposedly. Some had fled. It started to be only the real die-hards left, the ones who barely noticed or cared whether Mr. Thicknesse was himself or not." She looked down at the paperweight.

"It's not like we're elected. It's not like new Ministers have the time or the inclination to find an entire new staff." She swallowed.

"I've seen — how many is it? — Ministers come and go. It usually ends badly. I understand the mentality of those who were still coming into work every day. 'Somebody else's problem'. I suppose they felt they were the foundation. Necessary. You know. Permanent. Everything else was just..."

"Like they were the creatures of the deep sea, eternal. Who couldn't be bothered with knowing if there was a storm on the surface."

"Yes." Alice looked up at Sally-Anne again, almost fearful, then back down at the commemorative plaque. She motioned at it.

"That's when I fished this out. It was reassuring, for a while. That sense of continuity. I didn't have to worry about poor Mr. Scrimgeour, or speculate about Mr. Thicknesse's behavior. I just had to do what I was told. That kept me warm for a couple days. Numb, really. But the confiscations, I couldn't handle those scenes." She leaned forward confidentially.

"Finally, I went and stayed with a friend in Leicester. Tried not to read the newspapers. Then I heard what had happened at Hogwarts, so I came back." She gestured weakly again, seemingly at the office, or maybe the Ministry itself.

"That was just last week. Last week! There are a lot of empty chairs, especially here on Level Two. But everyone's so blase. They talk more about Quidditch than what happened. Like we didn't help them do all, all, that." Alice looked calmer, having poured out her emotions.

Sally-Anne noticed that Alice hadn't asked her if she'd stayed under Yaxley. Not politic, she supposed.

"Before you left, did you see Ollivander still coming in?"

"Every few days," Alice nodded. "He didn't seem happy. But he didn't seem upset, if you know what I mean."

"He knows he's an institution. Doesn't matter who thinks they're in power; they need him. Untouchable." Sally-Anne shrugged.

"And he knew it." Alice suddenly giggled. "I suppose if normally my only customers were wide-eyed eleven year olds and I fed them the same lines every year, I'd welcome a change of pace, too."

"So, now that it's over, are you bored again?" teased Sally-Anne. But Alice shook her head fervently. Then, as if reminded, she picked up a much-used scroll from her desk. Sally-Anne didn't remember the thick black lines crossing off at least a third of the entries. Alice followed her eyes and smiled weakly.

"Hard for me to remember; it's been a couple months, after all." She reached in Sally-Anne's general direction but didn't make eye contact.

Sally-Anne handed over her wand. Alice placed it on the wand holder and, after a moment, checked the register in front of her. "Rowan, that's right," she murmured, then pulled out her own wand and pointed it at Sally-Anne's. "Prior Incantato."

"So Ollivander was repairing wands under Yaxley." It hovered on the line of being a question.

Alice was concentrating on the ghostly image of the last Colloportus Arun had cast. "I think so. But replacing them, more often. Or providing second wands, in case of emergency. He had a real rush of orders in April. Prior Incantato."

Sally-Anne realized Alice hadn't noticed the slip and quickly continued. "Second wands. That's supposed to be forbidden. Under the Statute itself, I believe. Although I suppose Ollivander claims he wasn't in a position to argue."

"Prior Incantato. No, I suppose not. Anyway, he's working overtime trying to make up for any sins. He's been all over the place since it ended, seizing illicit wands, returning those we confiscated, reconciling his records. Up at Hogwarts while the bodies were still warm, I heard. And he was in here twice this week, talking to Philip, asking me all sorts of questions. Prior Incantato.."

That was strange. The wand maker hadn't stopped by her office, unless Sam had just decided to keep that information to himself. But there had been no owl, no memos. Maybe Alice had told him that Sally-Anne was due to stop by this morning.

"So no chance of me getting that ghost wand I ordered, huh." She tried to make it sound funny, but Alice's head still snapped up before the wand screener let out a short bark of laughter.

"Mr. Shacklebolt himself couldn't 'lose' his wand and get a replacement right now. Prior Incantato." Another ghost of an Alohomora. Alice sighed.

"Well, I think that's good enough. You haven't used any other spells recently, right?" She glanced sideways at Sally-Anne.

About time, too, Sally-Anne thought. Alice hadn't gone back more than a dozen spells with her in almost a year. Like Ollivander, she was certainly presenting the appearance of doing a proper job.

"That's everything," she nodded, knowing how differently a non-Ministry wizard would have fared.

"That's a relief. Still have a backlog of civilians to work through and I'm out of practice." She smiled at Sally-Anne. "Good to have someone in here I can trust and not worry about. And the results just circle back to your office anyway, don't they?" She laughed awkwardly. "Save us both some time."

"Hey, that's why I joined up in the first place," said Sally-Anne. "Only job where I can practice and do whatever spells I want and no one finds out or cares."

"Very clever," chuckled Alice, taking it as an obvious joke. "You should have the next batch of results from Philip in the next day or two. Hopefully we'll be almost caught up by then."

"Thanks. See you next month." Sally-Anne let herself out of the office and smiled briefly at Philip, who gave a half-hearted wave in return, as she walked back to her office.

So any unregistered wand would have to come directly from Ollivander at this point, she thought. She wondered if she should talk with him, but dismissed the idea as too dangerous. Whoever had sprung Macnair hadn't used a wand; if they had, that would have made it obvious to everyone either that Ollivander hadn't been as thorough in sweeping them up after the Battle of Hogwarts as he claimed, or that he had supplied the killers directly. Either way, even if it hadn't been their primary goal, whoever was guilty had acted perfectly to keep Ollivander's name clean.

But Alice had been right, Sally-Anne thought; Ollivander was untouchable. If she confronted him, or even tried to get Kingsley alone and convince him, she'd lose. She'd be out, just as she was realizing how important it was for her to be not just in, but higher up. Besides, Ollivander was too passive to be a leader; if he was involved, it was as a tool. Knowing that, maybe she could watch and figure out who was using him.

She reached her office. Arun and Zhu weren't at their desks, which sat deserted against the wall. Were they at lunch? It seemed awfully early. She opened the door to her office, a slight prickle just behind her ears.

Light and only light. It was like stepping into the middle of a nova. But she wasn't blind. There was simply nothing for the light to hit, no surface to reflect its waves. After a moment, she realized this included her own body. She felt normal, but as far as her senses were concerned, she might as well have been reduced to a couple of corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and a brain.

She decided not to panic and then wondered if whatever was left of her was going to care that she'd decided. She tried to move an arm that clearly no longer existed and wondered if this was what a phantom limb felt like.

Suddenly, her body was back. For a moment, the light was still too painful to see anything, but slowly it faded to eye-wateringly bright. She tried to blink away the spots and focus. There was a table in the large, whitewashed room. Two boxes stood on the table. A man in a business suit stood behind the table. They were the only things that had any color, other than herself. She squinted, trying to figure out where the corners of the room were, then looked back apprehensively at the man.

He looked almost excessively human, as though he'd been launched out of the Uncanny Valley so hard he'd overshot. But something about him still seemed off. It took Sally-Anne a minute to figure out what it was; his microexpressions were too deliberate. People couldn't perfectly control their facial muscles or where their eyes looked, they couldn't hide their surprise, contempt, and other universal emotions. But this man's face gave nothing away. That shouldn't have been possible. It unsettled her. She wondered if his control over his words and tone would be as precise. A question worth testing.

The table, on the other hand, although clearly made of wood, seemed deliberately simplified and for a moment she couldn't tell which pair of legs were farther away. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried not to think of Necker Cubes, realized her mistake, and tried not to think about pink elephants. She opened her eyes again to find the man watching her.

He was holding a piece of torn loose leaf, folded in half. One of the boxes on the table was completely opaque and looked like slate. The other was made of glass and she could clearly see what was inside. She took a quick, deep breath and held it for a moment.

"Is that what I think it is?"

The man held out his hand and calmly offered her the folded piece of paper. Unfolding it, she read: "Your first words will be: 'is that what I think it is'."

Sally-Anne felt unsteady for a moment and crouched down on the balls of her feet, thinking. She looked at the paper again. The handwriting was perfect italics.

"Yes. It is exactly what you believe it to be. And it is real. As you may have guessed," the man indicated the room, "we are no longer in your Ministry, but by what methods and to where you have been brought I may not inform you. It is enough to say that this room has been specially constructed for our conversation, and will be dismantled when we are finished. That, however, will not be dismantled." He pointed at what was in the glass box.

"It is yours to take from here back to the Ministry and use as you see fit. However, you have a choice. You may take the contents of both boxes, or take only the contents of this box." He pointed at the grey slate box.

Merlin on a stick, thought Sally-Anne. She was living Newcomb's Problem. She had experienced lucid dreaming; this wasn't a dream. Why would some magic power unknown to her actually try to recreate Game Theory thought experiments? What power would decide her Omega should look like a Dress British, Think Yiddish banker? She controlled her facial muscles as best she could and stood up again, slowly.

"Why wouldn't I take that as well, especially since I can't even see what's in this box?" She asked, as disingenuously as she dared.

"As I have already demonstrated to some degree, my ability to predict your actions is impressive. Not perfect, but impressive. If I believed that you would take both boxes, this box — let us call it Box B — is empty. But if I believed that you would take only Box B, Box B contains [redacted]".

Once Sally-Anne's brain finished processing what he claimed might be in Box B, she had to take off her glasses and pretend to clean them.

"Thank you for confirming the relative value of the payouts. It is surprisingly difficult to construct boxes with the appropriate utilons."

She decided to let that one go.

"How can I trust you? What if I only take Box B and it's been empty the entire time?"

"I decided what you were likely to do before bringing you to this room. Box B is already either empty or contains [redacted]. I cannot change that. Therefore, showing you the inside of the box would be self-defeating."

"But my decision will be partially based on our conversation! How could you have already decided and be confident in your decision?"

"My confidence is not a necessary input. What is necessary is that you believe in the accuracy of my predictive abilities. I have already given you one demonstration. Here is another." He took a mechanical pencil and a note card from his suit pocket and wrote something down. He placed the note card on the table, pocketed the pencil, and calmly looked at her.

"While you are thinking about what you can do or say to prove that you have free will beyond my ability to predict, this should help convince you that I am not a parlor magician. During your conversation with Albus Dumbledore, you intuited something important about him that was publicly revealed only after his death. Yesterday evening, after leaving the office of Kingsley Shacklebolt, you pictured the face of Susan Williams and decided to take advantage of recent events by acting decisively and thereby gaining power in order to end the segregation of the wizarding and Muggle worlds. And this morning you put one drop of Veritaserum into Alice Weaver's coffee. Yet she still managed a lie."

Sally-Anne set her jaw. She closed her eyes, reliving a night long ago, before she even knew magic existed, when she still had to lift herself up onto her toes to see into the mirror. She had done something wrong — what, she could no longer remember — and had retreated to the bathroom of their flat with her precious Walkman II, sticking a random classical music cassette into the player as she fled.

She felt again the resistance of the Walkman's springs, the smoothness of its gears. She sat cross-legged on the bathroom's cold tile floor. The cassette's first song was triumphant; it made her heart beat faster. Just as the second song started, her father came home. Through the music, she could hear her mother telling him what had happened, winding him up. She heard him exclaiming, growing angrier. Tears stood in her eyes. The music grew louder as his footsteps approached. He pounded on the locked door; the song swelled. Just as it ended, in the tiny silence of its death, she heard the lock click and the door swing slowly open. Her father, in one of his red-faced rages, threw the tape player against the wall, shattering it and the tape beyond repair. Behind him, in the dim hallway, she could see her mother smiling a tight-lipped smile of triumph, holding a wand.

Sally-Anne opened her eyes, blinking away the blurriness. She felt calm; no matter Omega's technique, that song was beyond his predictions. She picked up the note card. On its reverse side he had written two words.

Valse Triste.

Sally-Anne slowly placed the card face down again on the table.

"You seem to be able to see inside my mind." She was impressed by the steadiness of her voice. "But what about pre-commitment?"

"We both know true pre-commitment is impossible. The rigours of natural selection have designed your brain to believe that you will act as you have promised until the choice must actually be made, and then to choose according to self-interest.

"As for reading your mind… what you would call Legilimency, and what a Muggle would call a brain scan, would show no more than this convenient false belief. No. I have not predicted your decision based on anything so clumsy."

Sally-Anne felt like she was sliding on black ice. Her questions and her actions had been naive and leading on purpose; she had hoped to trigger a tell. From what he said. From how he said it. But again he had given her nothing.

No. No, that was impossible! Her brain tried to reject the empirical evidence rather than confront the alternate hypothesis. Was he not a man, after all? Perhaps an automaton? No country, muggle or magical, had technology that advanced.

For the first time, she began to think about where she was. Was it possible this was exactly what it purported to be: Newcomb's Problem? If not, what else did Omega know about her? She had been as careful and circumspect as she knew how, and her precautions had assumed both Muggle and magical means of surveillance. She'd been inside the Ministry too long not to know its blunt, careless power, not to try to shield herself. She had no desire to be, if not arrested, politely blacklisted.

It was a corrupting thing to live one's true life in secret, but the alternative was too grim to be considered.

"I will leave now. The decision is yours." A door that Sally-Anne hadn't seen before suddenly opened behind him and he stepped backward into it like a cuckoo, task complete, retreating into its clock. The door closed, its seams invisible.

She stood there for a moment, looking at the two boxes, and tried not to visualize what she could accomplish with what was in each box. The changes that would be possible.

It felt absurd not to take both of them. The man had shown an uncanny ability to anticipate her, but the state of Box B, containing or not containing [redacted], was already decided. Impossible knowledge couldn't turn back time. Time Turners, before they had all been destroyed, couldn't alter the past. Even if she had been brought somewhere that still had the technology, it seemed a poor joke to use it as a "gotcha!". And the man hadn't seemed to have a sense of humor.

Impossible knowledge. Wait a minute. Even if she didn't trust his flat denials, she hadn't sensed Legilimency. She'd lived among Muggles long enough to know no brain scan was capable of surrendering her secrets. No surveillance could have captured all the thoughts and events he had referenced. That left only an impossible solution. She'd dismissed Time Turners, but there was another way to replay the past. And there was a way to credibly pre-commit. She'd seen the answer, in a flash, almost to spite him, just as he'd dismissed the possibility. She couldn't be sure it was airtight, not yet, not without space to think and someone to bounce ideas off of, but her intuition told her she was right. More importantly, the two methods were the same. Simulation.

Her brain recoiled from the path that word led to like a horse shying from a bear. But it was too late. The obvious question hung in front of her, demanding acknowledgement.

Did she know herself?

Not this incarnation, nothing so simple and new-agey as that, but all the other Sally-Annes (don't think of how many, don't think of how many) that Omega had talked to, had offered the same choice to, had used the decisions of to predict what her decision was going to be.

Did she trust herself?

That was the deeper question, the darker question. Had the other Sally-Annes acted selfishly, betraying her and taking both boxes, indifferent to the man watching and recording before he reset the problem? Or had they cooperated with their future selves, with her, and contented themselves with Box B, taking the smaller overall payoff in this round in exchange for a greater payoff combined over all their incarnations?

Did she trust herself?

A year ago she would have laughed and said "no" without hesitation and taken both boxes. Even a week ago, the same answer, the same response. She didn't trust anyone; that was the foothold and foundation of who she was. It had kept her safe. It had kept her sane. But since then, had something changed? A glimpse of a better self, seen through the eyes of Susan Williams? A chance at that better self, because of what she'd realized after talking with Kingsley?

Even, perhaps, a feeling that her better self was who she really was, who she was intended to be, and that denying her better self would be a reward to those who wanted to keep her down, keep her passive. Would be letting them win.

It was her choice, the man had said, then he'd tried to force that choice with everything that was sensible and rational and normal. Her face flushed with anger. Sometimes, being logical was manipulation. She wouldn't let him make her choice. That was all she had, especially now (don't think about that, don't think about that).

All she had were the choices she made. She couldn't control her childhood. She couldn't control the Ministry. She couldn't control the world. But she could control herself. She could shout across iterations of the simulation. By acting as her best self would. That was the only way, she realized, she'd ever get there.

She approached the smooth wood table. She picked up Box B. She stepped away from the table. Her heart rate was smooth and slow. She trusted herself.

She sat back down on the hard white floor and crossed her legs. The opaque box was heavy but its lid swung open easily. She looked inside. The box was empty. The cupboard was bare.

Percy rubbed his hands together and blew on them. It was a cold evening. He trusted his father, but couldn't help feeling apprehensive.

Could the Death Eaters really be controlled? They seemed a dangerous weapon to hold. He had been in the service of powerful men now for a long time, he thought. Their ambitions had not played out as planned. Was he bad luck? Had it been his fault, not seeing danger and warning them in time?

There was a swirl of motion to his left; his father had arrived. Percy's pent up agitation sluiced off into the rain.

"I'm a good soldier," he whispered to himself silently; it was his shame and his satisfaction, both. Let others bear the burden of deciding; it was enough for him to believe in them and to do what he was told. He felt calm and safe, awaiting orders.

His father strode over, glancing up at the dark manor that held Yaxley and the others. There was neither greeting nor affection in his words, only what needed to be done.

"You have the case? Good. We will be joined by another momentarily, before we meet with the Death Eaters. Your wand will be out, but you will not provoke him. Neither will you speak unless spoken to and, even then, use the minimum number of words necessary. There is a risk of violence, but I believe it is a small one."

"Who is coming, father?" Percy felt his heart rate accelerate again at the unknown.

"Rookwood."

"He murdered Fred, father!" Percy's voice, when he found it, was high-pitched in protest. "I don't understand. He is a blood enemy to our house. How can we deal with him?"

"I mourned your brother, Percy. But I will not allow his death to weaken an alliance that is necessary, neither will I allow it to bring triumph to our enemies. One death must not be allowed to cause others." Arthur put an arm around Percy, speaking firmly, as though instructing. "Blood feuds solve nothing, and showing the captive Death Eaters that Rookwood and I are together will bind them to our cause."

"But, Rookwood! Father, these men, even wandless, are bad enough. Rookwood was defeated by Aberforth once, and revenged himself without a wand. And now he is armed! He may try to murder us right here and free the others."

"Rookwood is a pragmatist, and so am I. He serves the powerful and very soon that will be us. To hold a death in battle against him, or a death that stood between him and freedom, is mere ego. I understand his motives; I understand the man." His voice became almost chummy, cheerful. " We don't need to trust him, Percy. We just need to use him."

A whorl in the air, a crack, and Rookwood stood before them. He had shaved his head and there was more grey in his beard than Percy remembered, but his eyes were dark and alert. His wand was drawn.

"Augustus. Thank you for coming. I wasn't certain an owl could find you." Arthur slowly spread his hands, palms out, to show that he was unarmed.

"The owl did not survive. Your message did." The voice of the former Unspeakable, former spy for Voldemort, former prisoner of Azkaban, former Death Eater, and current Public Enemy Number One of magical Britain was soft and calm, without menace. "It was unexpected."

"No doubt," said Arthur dryly. "But you are here; that seems to imply a certain level of agreement with what I wrote."

"Perhaps. Remind me why I should not kill you now, and another of your sons, who is nervously fingering his wand as we speak, and free my comrades."

"To what purpose?" Arthur laughed. "What would you gain? I know you will act in your own best interests. And right now, our interests are the same. I forswear all vengeance, Augustus, and ask only that you fight beside me against the common enemy."

"I will listen, and then decide." Rookwood resheathed his wand. He looked at Percy for the first time. "Clever of you to have one of your own people stationed here." Arthur lowered his head at the compliment. The three of them made their way into the house.

They met the Death Eaters in the main dining room. Yaxley, Rowle, and Dolohov stood together in the far corner, Travers slightly apart. Occasionally, Travers looked out the window, but it was impossible to see anything other than their own reflections given the hour and the well-lit room. When Arthur and Rookwood walked in together, all four of them looked stunned.

"Sit, gentleman, our time is limited and there is much to discuss."

Percy was surprised to see that they obeyed Arthur, silently. Had they, like him, grown used to taking orders, only under Voldemort rather than the Ministry? He felt again under his robes for the smooth case his father had entrusted to his care.

"Let me come to the point. If Augustus and I can find common ground in this hour, will any of you disagree with the necessity of our cause? It would take desperate times for me to sit down with the man responsible for the death of my son. That is what these are. More evidence of my veracity." He carefully placed his wand on the table, within reach but facing the wall. He looked at Rookwood meaningfully, who did the same.

"Kingsley has betrayed us all. He abducted Macnair, and likely murdered him, to wrangle the Wizengamot to his will. They have already met and granted him extraordinary powers. He will use these powers to destroy the opposition, to do to you as he has already done to Macnair, and to allow the half-breeds and Muggleborns to dictate policy." He looked around the room.

"Blood purism is now a dirty word in the Ministry. Kingsley wishes to reduce the power of wizardry through corruption of the blood. And not just with mudbloods. With Muggles as well. He smears any opposition with the name of Voldemort. I cannot stop him alone. I need your help."

"Words are easy," said Travers after a short silence. Yaxley glared at him, but he continued. "We were told you had proof that Kingsley murdered his own Aurors to get to Macnair. Explain. And show us the proof."

Arthur nodded and gestured to Percy, who brought him the case. It was wooden and looked like it should have held an oboe.

"First, the why. You may not know the term, but this was a perfect example of a false flag attack. In short, by killing his own people, Kingsley gained power. Look at this." Arthur drew a scroll from his robes and handed it to Travers.

"As for proof." Arthur turned the case to face the Death Eaters and opened it. Inside were two wands, broken, covered in blood. "These belonged to the Aurors Proudfoot and Jacobs. They were recovered from the scene. Note how carefully they were destroyed. Only Kingsley knew the route. Only Kingsley would act so deliberately to erase the evidence. Any other attacker," said Arthur, nodding towards Rookwood, "would certainly have taken the wands rather than destroy them."

"This proceeding gives Shacklebolt complete freedom to surveil, investigate, apprehend, and interrogate any possible threats to the security of the Ministry or the wizarding community. Actions taken by Aurors or other members of the DMLE will be subject to internal review only." Travers sounded shocked.

Rookwood reached for one of the bloody wands and examined it for a moment. "This is not a casualty of battle. Deliberately snapped in two, likely with a boot."

"Percy's memories will confirm Kingsley was the first to learn of the attack. He informed us shortly thereafter via Patronus, seeking my help in theory because of my portfolio but in reality because of my, shall we say innocuous, reputation. He used Muggle means in order to avoid risk of exposure through a wand screening."

"That murdering Muggle-lover!" Yaxley swore. "With Macnair dead, he will come for us next. He could order Savage or Williamson to kill us in our sleep at any time."

"And likely make it look like you had attempted to escape. There would then be no one to oppose him and his new order. Within a few generations, true wizards will be bred out of existence." Arthur clicked shut the lid of the case with a note of finality.

"It would be over. Now you can see why I have come to you, despite our history. To prevent that end, whatever means are necessary are required."

"We need wands." Dolohov said, looking up. "WIthout wands, we are nothing. With wands, we can help."

"I will delay Kingsley until that is arranged," agreed Arthur. "Timing will be essential. When Percy delivers the wands, proceed at once to the Ministry. Kingsley and the remaining Aurors will be killed in battle. I will be seen to drive you off, and be promoted either to Minister or head of the DMLE. I will ensure that his crimes are published and your rebellion justified. Not long after, some new threat will be invented and we will make a deal: pardon in exchange for service. We will restore the old order together." Arthur stood up, not waiting for a response.

"Everyone needs to be back in place before Auror Savage arrives. Discuss my offer and inform Percy of your decision tomorrow. I am trusting you; there can be no greater proof of this than my willingness to show Rookwood where you are being held. More than that: I need your help. I need your strength." Arthur looked at each of them in turn, his voice matter-of-fact.

"But if we do not join forces, if you escape from here on your own, you will only play into Kingsley's hands. Magical Britain will give him an army and they will hunt down and destroy you and every pure-blood believer. Do not allow that to happen."

Sally-Anne barely had time to register what an empty box meant before the door opened again and Omega came back into the room.

Their roles had reversed. He was no longer the precise, imperturbable man that he had been. She saw shock in the lines around his mouth and eyes. Her face might as well have been a death mask. Let him come to her.

"That. That was not supposed to happen."

She sat on the floor, unmoving, and looked at him.

"All discrepancies were accounted for. The pattern match was precise."

Sally-Anne stood up without touching the floor. Was he going to just stand there and prattle at her? She walked over to the table and put out her hand, palm up.

The man hesitated. She realized what that had to mean but maintained eye contact. Her hand didn't tremble. Slowly, he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a small white envelope. He placed it in her hand. It was unsealed and very light. She shook the entire contents into her other hand. It was a single item, a sticker showing a small, stylized cartoon of a young cat. The cat had six short lines for whiskers, a tiny yellow nose, and a pink ribbon just below one ear.

He had promised her [redacted] and given her a Hello Kitty sticker.

Sally-Anne wondered idly if he was capable of feeling pain.

"We have decided to allow this to continue." The man seemed to really look at her for the first time. "We are not at liberty to tell you what we are allowing to continue, but we believe that somehow you have already deduced the truth. If so, a warning will suffice: we know what we have given you looks like. But if you peel it off, and attach it to another surface, this will end."

The man turned around and took a step towards the now-open door. It was the first time she had seen his back. He stopped and seemed to hesitate again. He half-turned his head back to her. Ahead of him, through the door, the darkness was inviolable.

"I apologize for predicting you would take both boxes."

Another step and the door closed behind him. The same blinding light and she was standing in front of her office again. Arun and Zhu looked at her strangely. She put out a hand to steady herself against Zhu's desk.

In that moment, Sally-Anne had a vision. She was standing next to herself on the high terrace of Primrose Hill as the late afternoon sun laminated the city with a color that only exists during childhood summers. She was Sally-Anne, junior Ministry employee, poorly dressed, with glasses that kept slipping, looking down on London. She was also Jadis, the White Witch, Queen of Charn, tall and merciless, looking down on her vast and blood-soaked city. Then, with a twist of her lip, she peeled the sticker, she spoke the Deplorable Word, and every living thing was caught in the fire of the sun, shrieked, smoked, and perished. The Thames boiled and ran dry; the sun itself crumpled into nothingness.

Darkness there, and nothing more.

For a long moment she looked into the abyss and was calm. Some part of her knew there was a world in which she would willingly wield such power, but then the realization of the arrogance necessary to do so overwhelmed her.

"This isn't power," she thought to herself, as though speaking to Jadis. "It's contempt."

She wondered at Omega for giving it to her, then realized how little all this meant to him, just one simulation out of the countless already run and the countless still to be. But to her, and to everyone she knew or would ever know, this was everything. Voldemort and Dumbledore, Malfoy and Moody, her mother and her father, all would have joined together against such power.

It's always the powerless who suffer, she thought bitterly. The weak. The vulnerable. And power didn't notice. Not really. Power was careless in its destruction. She wanted power, yes, but only in order to reduce power, to stop the powerful.

The Voldemorts.

The Dumbledores.

She would gain power that was useful, that could be used to create, to heal. That was real power. Not this useless infinite capacity to destroy that rested in her pocket. She would use her power for good, to prevent whoever had freed Macnair from taking over. And then she would relinquish her power. Not by handing it over to someone who might be corrupted, but by dispersing it. By spreading it beyond the Ministry, beyond the tiny community of wizards.

"Hey boss. Boss, you all right? Look like you've seen a ghost."

"No, I don't," she answered almost automatically, and went into her office. She closed the door behind her. She had to think of somewhere safe to put the Hello Kitty sticker. Where do you stash the doomsday device?