Chapter 81 - A New Day Dawns
As the first light of dawn struck Hogwarts Castle on Wednesday morning, the place was a flurry of activity, far beyond the usual cleaning and food preparation that took place normally.
Albus Dumbledore had asked the house elves to create a suite of offices off the vestibule to his own office in the tower, should it be necessary for Harry to meet officially with anyone while he was at Hogwarts. He did not want the boy going to the Ministry unless it was necessary, and this arrangement was clearly more convenient for him. While constructing an office would normally have taken no more than an hour, the house elves were beside themselves at the honor of creating something for Harry Potter's use, and spent the entire night going to absurd lengths to create a perfect space for a king.
Owl traffic had increased 10-fold, so it was necessary to expand the Owlery. As that work was under way, hundreds of owls watched impatiently from perches all over the castle. The house elves responsible for keeping the castle clean were equally anxious for the expansion to be finished, as the mess under the places the owls were perched was horrible.
The Ministry's Office of Very Important Persons, which had been handling all of Harry's mail for months now, had asked Albus if it might set up an annex at Hogwarts to process screened letters on matters pertaining to the current crisis, for more immediate attention. While Albus realized that the Ministry under Minister Bones was a far cry from the sort of place it had been under Fudge, he was still concerned about appearances, even if no longer wary of a threat to the school or its students. He designated some unused rooms off the entryway, and those rooms were being outfitted now to serve as a Ministry Annex.
The kitchens at Hogwarts were always busy. The house elves who worked there had already reached out to the elves at the other big wizard houses, estates and castles across Britain for help. Thus, even with the much larger population residing in Hogwarts, the existing space was fine. Elves in kitchens across the country were preparing food that would be magically transported to the food preparation area at Hogwarts, and if additional elves were needed at any time, they would pop in as well. It was a pity so few paid any attention to the house elves, as they had one of the most efficient networks imaginable!
Down in the dungeons, a lone house elf stood vigilant guard in the quarters of Severus Snape and Harry Potter. Dobby arrived there to check on them once they had fallen asleep. He'd disabled Severus' wake-up charm, and blocked the floo. These wizards needed sleep, and no one was going to awaken them until Dobby felt they could be disturbed.
The same day was dawning over the big house on the Riddle estate in a remote part of muggle England, but all was quiet there. Lord Voldemort had chosen to continue to use his muggle father's home because it was isolated from the muggle community surrounding it, and also from wizarding communities. He really liked the isolation.
Aside from his faithful companion, the snake Nagini, he had a few house elves to tend to his needs, and he'd invited half a dozen of his Death Eaters to be in attendance at the casting of his spell. He'd chosen his audience chamber for the event – he always favored that grand space when engaging in activities that he felt were most representative of his self-styled role as a lord. It had been a glorious moment when he cast his spell! Everyone in the room went to sleep at once, as he drew on their power. He planned to awaken his Death Eaters in good time. It took him an hour to recover himself from the casting, and he just left them on the floor of the audience chamber and retired elsewhere in his manor.
Voldemort had hoped to be able to spend Monday night reveling in the sounds of the destruction and calamity he had wrought. He wanted to see fires burning, airplanes crashing, people at the mercy of their out-of-control contrivances, dying. Alas, he was too drained from the task of casting his spell to immediately enjoy the fruits of its impact. He had not been able to do much more than listen to some far away sirens and other muggle alarms, and content himself with the knowledge that no one was going to answer the alarms, put out the fires, stop the unfolding nightmare.
His grand plan was coming together! As a child at an orphanage, he learned to hate muggles and their mechanical devices. He had none of the things that they all seemed to covet. At the time, it pained him greatly, and for a while in his youth, he more than anything wanted those things. As he learned more about his own true nature, and of things from a world these muggles knew nothing of, his desires shifted. He concluded that muggles added no value to the world, and it would be a better place without them and all their mechanical devices. A priority in the plans he began to formulate while still in his teens had always been to create a world in which there were no muggles. In his youth, those plans usually featured something gloriously loud and bloody. The mechanics of such destruction were always the stumbling block. If the process took too long, resistance would develop. As he matured and assembled all the elements he would need to actually implement the plan, he realized that even with his trusted minions engaged in a process of eradication of the muggles, it just was not possible to accomplish the main objective, ridding the world of those useless muggles. As he considered other options and further refined his thinking, he finally understood that the best option was one that was quiet, fast and irreversible. He gave up the drama and thrill for the certainty of success.
The best option proved to be one he found poring over the old Slytherin notebooks capturing Salazar's remarkable work on Dark Magic. Those sleeping spells that figured prominently in some muggle fairy tales were based on ancient magic that had largely been lost to the world, but some of which had been preserved by Salazar in his notebooks. When he understood how to separate out the elements of the ancient spells, and discovered a means of world-wide casting, he knew he found the key to his life-long goal! A world with none but magical folk, all of whom were totally loyal to him and him alone, where his word went unquestioned, and his needs and desires the ones that set the agenda for all.
Voldemort understood that his spell was going to affect all of his Death Eaters when he cast it, but realized that worked to his advantage. Nagini had pointed it out several months, and he agreed that she was right – it would be better for him to keep even his Death Eaters at arm's length during the delicate final preparations, lest any of them come to understand what was to happen and take steps to undermine or alter what he proposed to do. To his horror, he had learned that at least two of his most trusted inner circle had broken faith with him and allied with his enemies! They were no better than muggles! But the bitter experience of seeing those he had carefully cultivated and ultimately rewarded with the gift of his favor made Voldemort understand that he could never fully know or trust anyone, and he was quite prepared to follow Nagini's suggestion. He'd been cutting himself off from everyone, even his most ardent followers for months now, lest any more create problems for him.
By using a spell that would put all humans to sleep, and to which he alone held the key to reversal, all would perish EXCEPT those to whom he showed favor. He could awaken his Death Eaters, and be sure they understood that it was only because of his mercy to them that they were alive. He was confident of their undying loyalty and gratitude once they realized how totally they owed everything to him. He could place a stasis charm on others, perhaps those about whom he was not really sure, and he would have decades to decide if he wanted them to live or not.
The casting of the spell into the ley lines, even though drawing most of the power from those who bore his Mark, still drained and exhausted him. However, time stretched before him, and he felt no urgency. He could take all the time he needed to refresh himself and replenish his magical reserves, and then begin a triumphant tour of all the places of interest to him, where he most wanted to personally revel in the destruction he had caused.
Because of his isolation in a muggle area, he had no way of knowing that all those with magic had been awakened within minutes of being put to sleep by his spell. The drain on the power of those who bore the Dark Mark had been most sudden and severe for those standing closest to him when he cast his spell. Thus, he had actually killed three of the six Death Eaters who had attended him as he cast; they were not sleeping, but were dead. He had completely destroyed the magical cores of two of the others, rendering them muggle by the time they fell to the floor of the audience room. The last one had lived and retained some magic, but he was unconscious from the drain when Harry Potter's counterspell cancelled the sleeping spell, and thus had no knowledge or awareness of that.
It would not be clear to an observer who did not have medical training and who knew what to look for, for a while yet, that the muggles were in stasis while they slept, and were in no imminent danger from dying from dehydration because of the sleeping spell.
As the dawn slowly brightened the sky on Wednesday morning, it was over a vastly changed world. Some had a much more accurate understanding of the changes than did others.