The muggles go to war with themselves and the world tilts sharply. The Wizengamot breaks itself in two. For years there have been debates between those who prefer insularity, breaking off all connection to the Muggle world — including welcoming Muggleborns — and those who prefer openness and working with their unsuspecting neighbours, building a world that tolerates both, and on both sides.
Their war crosses Europe, crosses the entire world. They have guns that kill thousands. Seers say there will be worse weapons to come: poison gas, great tanks, bombs that destroy every living thing for years to come in one surge of white light. They say it will be the muggles' worst war, even while the muggles themselves say it will be over by Christmas.
Half the Wizengamot say they should intervene and help with the fight, limit the numbers of the dead. The other half scream that the muggles' way of killing is barbaric, that if they cannot be trusted to be kind to their own neighbours and stir up frenzies of hate, then they cannot be trusted not to turn on wizardkind the second they hear of them and call them traitors. Of course, no one calls Malfoy's speeches about how muggles do not deserve freedom, do not deserve to live, do not deserve anything more than to lick the dirt from wizards' boots, frenzies of hate.
They call them sensible, words that relay self-preservation. They say that yes, muggles are backwards and barbaric, that wizards' ways of killing are so much less grotesque. Wizards are too good for wars amongst their own; they know the importance of blood and life and sacred spirit. It isn't true, but the pretense is a comfort, and gives a sense of superiority that allows those who wish to further stomp on Muggleborns and squibs the chance to do so. No true human can have such disrespect for life, Lord Travers claims. Muggles are not human — just look at what they did in the seventeenth century. They have no magic but they covet it, and their jealousy leads to sin and wicked murder. Others claim the war should be stopped, while some say that it is a matter for the muggles and the muggles alone. So long as it does not harm the Wizarding world. But there is every chance that it might.
Arcturus watches every debate from athe gallery. The Assembly is just as split, as is the Minister's Council. The Wizengamot asks if Wizarding law allows intervention and discusses the matter with the International Confederation; the Assembly questions if it is the right thing to do; the Council tries to work out if the Ministry has the resources to even do anything about it, anyway.
The International Confederation is a rabble. Grandfather returns, furious, saying that he would have duelled Henry Potter to the death had it not been for the need to save face in front of the hostile foreign powers.
"Should not all wizardkind be united in a common goal?" he rants, pacing up and down his study in the Manor, Father and Arcturus watching from their respective seats. "Should not all wizardkind be the same?"
"But all wizardkind are not the same," Arcturus says. "Muggleborns aren't."
"Muggleborns are not a people. Not a nation. The German wizards would save their own, and so would some of our wizards fight on the behalf of the British government, to whom they owe no allegiance! Allegiance is not paid to a piece of land with ever-changing borders! Either we stop the war — which would require revealing and endangering ourselves, to people who clearly have an inbuilt bloodlust that has not faded in the past two centuries, and never will — or, we let the muggles kill themselves off! We cannot fight for the countries we belong to, because we are not the subject of the British Crown, and we never shall be subjects to those who would have had us killed! But some people seem to have forgotten the Stuarts and Cromwell, seem to think Daemonologie was just a fad!"
He pauses, and glares out of the window. "They may take our titles and our land and cover the green life that gives us our magic with factories, and mines. We should have stopped them already. But we will not give them our lives this time."
"But what if the muggles destroy the land?" Arcturus dares to ask, and his grandfather stares at him. "I don't want to fight for a Muggle government or its claims. But what if these weapons destroy the land and wildlife we cherish? What if magic fades even further?"
Living in big cities was dangerous, for many wizards. The Ministry had special wards around it in London, because of how clogged the skies were with pollution that killed off the magic of the land. Trains rattled beneath the ground there now. One tunnel had almost gone right through the Department of Mysteries before someone realised and hastily forced the architects to reroute. Magic was spirit and spirit was life and there was both far too much and far too little of that, nowadays.
Death would hurt magic. Poison gas would kill plants, as would tanks running over them, as would those grotesque bombs which were to wipe out all life.
"Then we should kill the muggles, not save them, if they have so little regard for life."
"What about their lives?"
"Their lives hold no magic," Father reminds him. "They are of little worth."
Of course. He knew that.
"Of course," Grandfather continues furiously, wringing his hands, "Henry Potter would have us stop the war entirely. Initiate peace. Force it, even. I say let them rot in their fields and incinerate themselves with their bombs. They were quick enough to burn us."
Two hundred years and nothing had changed. Hate, hate, hate. It is the only thing that seems to stick, it seems the greatest force in the world. Some claim that love is the opposite of hate, but Arcturus disagrees; people only ever seemed to fight hate with more of the same.
They did not come to a conclusion that day. They had many years left of the war, to deliberate and debate and hate and do nothing of use.
Arcturus is sent back to school, where his friends talk around the war, only ever saying what they thought of muggles, only ever putting value on their lives and never asking what could be done. Arcturus wants to know what could be done.
It is October by the time he gets up the will to speak with Harlan Prewett, a Gryffindor in his year, and grandson of the Lord Armand Prewett, who is staunchly in favour of assisting in the muggles' war, apparently in return for agricultural assistance. He seems the perfect person to talk to about this.
Prewett is suspicious of him, of course. Arcturus had sent a letter written in runes, slipped it into his bag when he passed him in Potions. They meet in the Astronomy Tower, right after dinner, when there is nobody there. Prewett gets there first, light red hair slicked back and dark eyes shining as he watches for Arcturus in the darkness. His eyes narrow when he finds him.
"You know Runes don't actually translate directly to the letters scholars have assigned them." His voice is smooth and cold, yet intrigued, too.
Arcturus smiled. "A bit of fun, Potter. I wanted to know if you were intelligent enough to work it out."
"It doesn't require intelligence. Only one class in Ancient Runes, which, I noticed, you did not partake in."
"My father taught me. I could sit the O.W.L.s in my sleep."
"Oh, is that so? What else did your father teach you?"
Arcturus steps closer. Prewett rests against a pillar, eyeing him with disdain. "The usual. How to turn a phrase, how to kill a man, how to speak before the Assembly and not stutter. He didn't teach me how to stop a war."
Prewett stares at him, then lets out a high, amused laugh. "And what war would you stop, Black? Are you having a dispute with the tenants again? Did your mother fuck another halfblood and disgrace your lineage?"
The words are sharp and venomous. His blood boils. The rumour has been persistent but it isn't true, he knows it isn't. He knows they are pureblood. He wouldn't be so good at magic if he wasn't.
"My mother has done no such thing. No, I'm talking about the Muggles' war."
Prewett's eyes light up, even more intrigued, and he finally pushes off of the pillar he was lounging against, moving towards Arcturus with an easy grace. "And what interest would Arcturus Black take in the affairs of muggles?"
He sighs and says, "The war may destroy our lands, too, our magic. Everybody is too busy squabbling to do anything meaningful."
"That's politics, Black." Potter laughs coldly. "If you think I've got the answers, I'm afraid you're mistaken. And if you think I'm going to tell you any of my grandfather's answers, then you're even more mistaken."
"I don't care for what your grandfather says. I care for the people of the land that will one day be mine. I care for the magic that is being diluted every day by Muggle persistence—"
"Ah, there it is. So you want rid of the Muggles."
"No," he says quickly, "no, not at all. I just think we need to stop them fighting. They'll ruin us, otherwise."
Prewett's face grows colder. "And of course it doesn't matter that they're ruining themselves. They've signed up in their millions for a war they think will bring them glory."
"It is disgustingly Gryffindor of them."
"It is human," Prewett tells him, leaning closer, eyes narrowed. His eyes are lighter than Arcturus thought, a hazel colour, flecked with a thousand different shades of honey. "It is their choice. It isn't for us to dictate."
"Your grandfather would disagree."
"Yes," Prewett says boldly, "he might. Lord Potter certainly would. We would all debate it over tea and decide who won that evening. I have my opinion and he has his. What do you have?"
"I think that Muggles need to be stopped. They need to be shown that life is sacred. Life is magic."
"They don't know about magic," Prewett says coolly, "why would they defend something that does not benefit them? Would you defend the crown that does not know you exist?"
"What if they did know?"
"And what would you do with them? Be killed, if they panic? Share the bounties of magic with people you deem unworthy?" Arcturus did not reply. He would never. They did not have magic, and clearly Fate had chosen it to be so. Only the most important people had magic. People like him.
"No. But they need to know. Then we can tell them the future and stop it, and stop them!"
"So, subjugation, then, is it?" Prewett sneers. "You're no different to the rest of your family, Black. Get out of my sight. You disgust me."
"I'm not trying to be different from my family," Arcturus replies, seething at the words. "I am trying to do something. Come up with the solution no one else has."
"There is no solution," Prewett says, and walks away. "Not for us to decide, anyway. As for the idea that muggles are destroying magic — perhaps consider that you're just not as brilliant as you've been told."
The words are cold and they are a lie. Arcturus knows that they must be a lie. Prewett only denies his brilliance — and his family's superiority — because his own grades are poor and his family's standing has fallen after his uncle spoke out in support of squibs' right to choose which world they live in.
Arcturus seethes on his way back to the Slytherin common room, thinking to himself that there must be a way to protect magical interests here. If Lord Prewett is interested in striking a bargain with the muggles, perhaps he, too, sees the benefits that they can wring out of the Muggle population. They do, admittedly, have far more agricultural resources than wizards do, even as they buy up and ruin all their natural land.
But Lord Prewett will not take his owl, when Arcturus writes to his estate, and he daren't send another. Father and Grandfather would be furious.
In the common room, Arcturus listens to the tirades against Muggle barbarism with growing weariness. "Yes," he says, "they are killing each other. Yes, it is unsophisticated, and cowardly, and foolish. But what about the effect this will have on us?"
Karl Nott laughs. "Then we kill them. They're asking for it."
"Life is sacred," Arcturus says. "Any wizard with an ounce of intelligence knows that magical theory is reliant on the idea that life inhabits magic, magic inhabits life. Think of all those souls lost, all those spirits broken. Think of the plants destroyed and trodden into the ground. All the power wasted, like they destroy us already."
"You read too much, Archie boy," says Florian Rosier, a fifth year, and he claps him on the back. Arcturus' cheeks rush with warmth. "Muggles won't destroy us. They don't have the power."
"They tried. Fire burns us all, and they're getting far too experimental with it."
"Then use a fire-protection potion," Nott says with disdain. "Honestly, Archie, why're you so worked up? Magic's perfectly safe, and the more muggles die, the fewer Mudbloods there are to steal it from us."
He supposes that is true.
"I'd like to make sure we are protected," Arcturus says. "We cannot know for certain that we shall be spared. Are deterrent wards of use when fire rains from the clouds themselves?"
No one can give him an answer. They look amongst themselves, wary. "Lord Black isn't going against Insularity, is he?"
"Of course not," Arcturus scoffs. "I am merely voicing my concerns. It does not undermine my grandfather's politics at all."
But his words reach the ears of his grandfather anyway, and in a week's time he is hauled into his tower office to be glowered at and told off.
"Grandfather, the Slytherin common room is a perfect place for debate. I was only flexing my arguing skills. It was rather amusing to see the boys' reactions, actually."
"Arcturus, this is a highly delicate matter. If you had concerns about policy, you could have come to me, but you do not undermine me, and in my own school!"
"I did not intend to undermine you, Grandfather," he says, the words coming out with more bite than he had intended. He is irritated; why should he not at least begin a discussion? He is sure that if he had parroted his grandfather's recent Assembly speech, there would have been no problem.
Prewett's words come back to him. He is no different than his family. Everyone thinks that he should not be, and he doesn't really want to be. But he has grown up entitled to everything and suddenly, he does not like the idea that he is not entitled to an opinion.
"I know that you do not sympathise with muggles," Grandfather continued, and Arcturus squirms, furious.
"Is that what you've heard? Who told you that — Parkinson, was it, I bet? He always has been jealous of my popularity."
"It matters not. But you cannot give the impression that you sympathise with the muggles."
"I was worried about magic!"
"And you expressed that with arguments very similar to those used by Lords Potter and Prewett recently." Grandfather sighs, rubs his temple. "You are a clever child, Arcturus. One day I am sure you will make a fine politician. But you must remember, that the way in which you express your opinions is just as important as the opinions themselves. Do not disgrace yourself. Merlin knows our family is still recovering from your uncle's exploits."
Uncle Phineas. No one has mentioned him in years, or his children. Arcturus had half-forgotten him. He is no longer certain that he would recognise his cousins if he saw them.
"I am sorry for my misstep, Grandfather," he says, firmly. "It won't happen again."
"I am sure it will not." His grandfather pats his hand affectionately. "Now, I may as well give you a cup of tea before you go rejoin your classmates. Tell me, what do you think of Professor Alandra? I've heard mixed reviews from the N.E.W.T. Arithmancy students?"
Arcturus loves Arithmancy, and so it is easy to discuss, and his grandfather knows this. Uncertainty fades when he is in this room. He knows who and what he is, when surrounded by family. It is just that, sometimes, he needs to be reminded.
Soon it is Christmas, and the family gathers for all their winter festivities. Aunts Lysandra and Violeta are both heavily pregnant, awaiting children in February. More little cousins for Arcturus to watch run wild around the gardens of their respective homes.
"Of course, we have no need of more children," Father chuckles, to Uncle Cygnus' annoyance, at the dinner table on Christmas Eve. "I have my heir and my spare and my little Princess." The little princess is Lycoris, who has been crying ever since she met a potential marriage match two days ago, and he pulled her hair and father told her that's just what young wizards do when they like young witches, and it does not matter if it hurts. "You've your Pollux, what do you need more for?"
"Some of us actually like children," Uncle Cygnus says, his irritation obvious, "instead of merely tolerating our offspring."
Arcturus stays silent, preferring to eat his perfectly boiled potatoes. "Speaking of," Grandfather cuts in, "I had a visit from Lord Longbottom recently, just before I left Hogwarts."
Father snorts. "What'd he want, to place that squib of his son's into Hogwarts?"
"We don't know the boy is a squib," Aunt Elladora says haughtily. "They haven't killed him yet, so presumably not."
Arcturus shivers. He still wonders what would have happened to Cora.
"Nothing of the sort," Grandfather says. "On the contrary, he was wondering if his other grandson, Harfang — the one who levitated the champagne tables at their spring ball last year, if you remember — might have a chance of marrying one of our girls. Now of course, there is Lycoris, and Harfang is only a couple of years younger than her, but if you two lovely ladies—" He raised his wine glass to aunts Lysandra and Violetta "—both have young witches, as anticipated, they could both be options. Longbottom is becoming quite a power-player in the Assembly, and one of the few who supports our ideas, and yet, is not subjected to disrespect by the likes of the Prewetts." Arcturus remembers Harlan Prewett's words to him in October, and goes cold. "Merely an idea."
Lycoris, who is sat beside Arcturus, turns to him and whispers, "I don't want to marry him."
"He's a lovely young boy," Arcturus whispers back.
"He picks his nose, I saw it, cousin Lillian was there—"
"I am sure he'll grow out of it," Arcturus assures her, amused.
The adults' conversation has already cycled on. Nobody but a child would challenge Grandfather in this setting.
"—Minister Aldery is a fool," Grandfather is saying now, as Arcturus listens back in. "He believes that the Muggles will end their own war! By Christmas! And if I am not mistaken, they have only a few hours left." Everybody laughs. Arcturus thinks of a young man face down in the mud with fire raining from the sky, and shivers. "He has, apparently — if rumour is to be believed — contacted the Muggle Prime Minister! Revealed us to him!"
There are gasps all round and Arcturus feels sickened. "And they have not retaliated?"
"They are too busy killing their own to bother with us. Our Minister offered his assistance. The Muggle Minister fainted." Cold, patronising laughter. "Nobody knows the outcome. Lord Travers told me, and you know how he embellishes, thinking himself more important than he really is."
"But the Muggles know about us?"
"Well, one does. If this rumour is to be believed, that is."
Arcturus is not sure he would believe whatever Lord Travers says. He is frequently drunk, and constantly rude, and said some horrible things about his mother the last time they met.
"This'll be the end of us," Aunt Elladora says with a scowl, "we'll have no choice but to kill them first."
Everybody knows Aunt Elladora doesn't need an excuse to kill muggles, but nobody says it. Arcturus wishes someone would; he wants to see what she will do. He is tired of only measuring the reactions of his school peers. He itches for gossip and drama and scandal. He itches for a fight, even if he doesn't know what that fight should be about.
He takes two dozen books from the manor library back to Hogwarts. If his grandfather bothers, he can just haul him into his office and chastise him, but he won't notice. They'll both be in the same place.
The books are on magical theory, on the boundaries of life and death and the spirit that binds them both to humanity. He needs to know if the muggles' fire and destruction is a threat to him, and he needs to know why there are no ghosts at Black Manor, and he needs to know everything.
No one takes him seriously; he is another schoolboy playing politics and his ideas aren't quite right for anybody. Arcturus will not whine about it, or cry, or make a scene, he will not show weakness and he will not bow to anything other than facts. Perhaps he should have accepted the Sorting Hat's offer of Ravenclaw, after all.
What he finds in these books, is that some spirits are bound with magic, where others are not. The spirit is intrinsic to life, one of the three primes, alongside soul and body. Spirit is also intrinsic to magic.
But nowhere does it say, in so many words, that one must have magic to have a spirit. It is the natural conclusion, but it isn't said explicitly, and Arcturus wonders, can he really regard that as fact?
Of course muggles are inferior. Of course Muggleborns don't have as strong magic. It is a matter of birth and of blood, and blood is life so blood is spirit so spirit is magic and blood is magic, too.
This does not settle the issue of the Muggles' war.
But Arcturus knows first hand what a world without magic feels like. He has walked through London with Uncle Cygnus, felt the pollution and smoke and stench of death clog his lungs and wrench at his spirit. It is not natural, and his magic never felt so distant as it did then. The connection to nature is vital to keeping one's connection to magic.
Uncle Phineas said differently. He said that there is magic everywhere, but the muggles have their own magic, only they call it science, and call real magic superstition. It can do things wizards can only dream of. It is what produces the smoke that ruins the air. But if magic is in that, too, perhaps all is not lost.
Still. Arcturus does not like the thought of death. He does not like the idea that the muggles have greater power over life and death than wizards do, and more importantly that they might have power over his life, his death.
But the war continues and there have not yet been any Wizarding casualties. By the beginning of summer he begins to think they will be safe, they will be fine. Muggles fight all the time, there is nothing special about this. His concerns fade, but his interest in spirits remains.