There wasn't a much more unpleasant surprise than reaching for one's own wand, only to find it missing from where it had been safely put away, and having no clue as to how it could have been misplaced.

"Fawkes," Albus said, patting down his belt pouch where he had most certainly stored his wand just minutes prior. "I don't suppose you saw anything peculiar take place just now? I don't recall falling asleep at my desk…"

Fawkes raised his crimson feathered head from where he'd tucked it under a wing and fixed Albus with an unmistakable look of disdain. It was a look Albus was somewhat familiar with. Albus was forced to admit that snoozing off at his desk perhaps wasn't a peculiar occurrence.

"Did I fall asleep?" he pressed. He stood, his desk chair scraping back, and shook out his robes, a delightful, lurid green set embroidered with watermelons, in tribute to the lovely sunny weather they were having this June. No wand clattered to the floor, sadly.

Fawkes cheeped and ducked back under his wing, unimpressed and unhelpful. Ah, those who thought a phoenix familiar was a blessing were sadly deluded as to the day to day benefit of a bird whose primary hobbies were sleeping, setting himself on fire, and using his powers to transport himself into the cupboards where Albus had stored his feed. Why, Fawkes couldn't even be called upon to heal a papercut. It was beneath him, Albus had deduced, which he supposed was reasonable.

At least Albus could be reassured that there had been no intruder. Not much could fool or enchant a phoenix, even if he had fallen susceptible to some kind of sleeping potion or charm. And, not to flatter himself, but he liked to think that he was somewhat of an accomplished wizard. He might very well fall asleep at his desk while reading through the minutes of a Wizengamot meeting about cauldron bottoms, but he liked to think he would notice more malicious influences upon his person, certainly the sort that would allow his wand to be stolen from him.

No, he had simply misplaced it. His wand must have fallen under his rather large and sturdy oaken desk. That was the only solution, surely? Albus cast out a hand to summon it to him. Accio Elder Wand.

There wasn't so much as a rattle, which he chose to find perplexing, rather than troubling. "Accio Elder Wand," he said, to no avail. He hummed, considering whether he'd ever been forced to summon his wand before. Not in recent memory. "Accio Deathstick. Accio Wand of Destiny. Accio wand!"

A clatter from the top drawer of his desk made him jump. Albus dragged open the drawer and ducked as his old wand threw itself at him, nearly taking out an eye.

"Oh dear," Albus said, utilising a well honed talent for under-exaggeration. Politics, after all, was all about pretending not to care about what the other side got up to, while secretly undermining their every move. He summoned his old wand again, far more gently this time, and tucked it into the belt pouch that previously had contained the Elder Wand. At least he was still armed, so to speak.

Sitting back down, Albus rang a bell that rang simultaneously in the kitchens. Within moments, a pot of Earl Grey tea and a plate of custard creams appeared on his desk. A single sherbet lemon had been tucked into the side of the saucer, which meant that Suggy was on duty in the kitchens. Albus smiled and placed it into the bowl on his desk.

"Thank you," he murmured, considerate of his manners, despite the upsetting revelation. Allowing it to steep, he clasped his hands together and cast his mind over the last hour of his memory.

He was in his office at Hogwarts and had been all day, apart from a brief visit to the Ministry in the morning to discuss with Alastor the rising dissatisfaction of the public with Eugenia Jenkins, the current Minister for Magic. Since then, he'd used his wand countless times, so he could assure himself that he hadn't lost it during his outing. Further, the Elder Wand had an unmistakable aura of menace that would be impossible to fake, especially considering no one ought to know he was in possession of it, so it couldn't have been swapped out. Perhaps it could be deduced, if one devoted enough research to the subject, but Albus was sceptical of the likelihood.

But perhaps that was hubris. It seemed he had lost it, after all.

No, for all his faults, that was unfair. Albus has safely stored it away in the same belt pouch he'd used for years. He'd enchanted it himself and knew that only he would be able to open it. To conclude, Albus hadn't lost the Elder Wand and he found it highly unlikely that it had been stolen.

Far more curiously and to his utmost dismay, it had simply disappeared.

"Jamie, darling, your friend Sirius is here!"

James groaned under his breath and wished his mum had listened when at age nine he'd asked her to stop calling him 'Jamie'. No such luck, sadly, and he was going to suffer for it, he just knew it.

"Jamie, darling!" Sirius hooted from downstairs, his voice full of delight. Much quieter, James heard, "pardon me, Mrs Potter, just wanted to make sure he heard you."

"Get up here, you prick!" James yelled, then winced. He was far too used to speaking to Sirius in the Gryffindor Common room. Nobody cared if he swore in the Gryffindor Common room.

At home, however…

"James Gabriel Potter, you wash your mouth out this instant!"

"Sorry, mum!"

Sirius thundered up the stairs and James yelled, "in here!" Moments later, his platonic soulmate, his other half, his blood brother, burst into the room with a holler of joy.

"Mate, your house has good vibes only!"

James grinned. "Yeah?"

"There's a rose garden, and your mum is baking bread, and she said you don't have a house elf! I had to carry all my stuff up by myself!" Sirius beamed, dumping a small, no doubt expanded, bag on the floor. "Fab!"

Sirius tackled him and they rolled around, in what wasn't really a hug, but wasn't really wrestling either. James eventually shoved Sirius off him and slumped onto the floor.

"I can't believe you're staying for two weeks."

"Best holiday ever."

"Haven't you been to, like, Greece?"

Sirius shrugged. "Yeah, but that was with mum and dad and Reggie. Fuck that. I'd rather spend my whole summer here than spend any of it with those weirdos."

It wasn't something that James understood, but he also knew that Sirius's mum was a real piece of work and that dad had always said to stay away from the Blacks if he could. 'Course, James was a rebel, so he'd befriended Sirius right away.

"Go on then, get the cloak out, mate. I want to sneak into the neighbour's garden and steal cabbages, isn't that what you country folk do? Let's see if we both still fit under it, I swear I've grown at least four inches."

"No way," James said, because if that was true, then Sirius had grown taller than he was, and that was not permitted. At least Remus would always be a beanpole that towered over them all, a constant he allowed.

Sirius smirked at him and James knew he'd immediately regret saying anything. "Yeah, I'm dead serious. I also grew a bit taller, too."

James groaned. "No, that's it, friendship over." He gave Sirius a kick on his way to the closest and fished around at the bottom of it for the cloak.

"You love me," Sirius said.

James turned up four dirty mags, which Sirius immediately seized, three pairs of boxers, clean, probably, the board game Battleships, and a fanged frisbee which immediately bit him.

"Ouch," he hissed, shaking it off his hand. It smacked Sirius on the face and bit his ear, which served him right for laying back on James's bed and flipping through the mags.

"Dude!"

There was nothing else in the bottom of the wardrobe, not even a shimmer of invisible fabric. James blinked, shoved his glasses further up his nose, and did a final sweep with his hand across the entire floor.

"It's gone," he hissed, when nothing was found.

"What?"

"The cloak! It's gone!"

What!"

They exchanged a panicked glance, then Sirius scrambled to his feet.

"Right, Jamie, you're an idiot. A blind one. Let's just, um, let's just search the room. It's got to be in here, right? Where did you last have it?"

"In the bottom of the wardrobe," James said, glaring at Sirius. "I'm not blind!"

Sirius tried a smile, but it was more of a wince. "Chill, chill. You're not blind. You're just an idiot. Did you store it without turning it inside out?"

"No!"

Together, they turned the room upside down, searching all the nooks and crannies. James discovered a nest of mice, several spiderwebs, and a doxie hidden in his curtain. Sirius found a puffskein, which gave him an allergic reaction that turned him pink and then disappeared into the cracks between the floorboard.

They did not find James's family heirloom, their greatest aid to mischief, the most wonderful of creations: the Cloak of Invisibility.

Their future of practical jokes was doomed.

The stereotype, Voldemort assumed, would be that he drank the blood of his enemies and feasted on their flesh. In fact, he preferred coffee—blood had too much of a cloying mouthfeel—and so was rather dissatisfied when his afternoon espresso was disturbed by a querulous servant of his, whose presence he had not requested.

Subduing the inclination to torture Lestrange's heir, for he saved that only for when his followers had truly failed him, Voldemort waved Rodolphus up from his bow and allowed him to sink into the other seat in his study. He took up his wand to cast a ward of silence upon the room, so that they would not be eavesdropped upon or otherwise disturbed, and then inspected his guest. Rodolphus seemed to struggle to sit still, tapping a foot and scowling at everything in the room but Voldemort himself.

"You appear to be troubled, Rodolphus," he concluded.

Tedious as it was to state the obvious, Rodolphus took it as the invitation it was to speak, throwing himself back out of the chair to pace before the fireplace, black robe whipping at his ankles. He was tall and broad shouldered, not unhandsome, but too dishevelled to truly be to Voldemort's tastes. The unshaven look merely made him appear unclean.

"Troubled, yes, my Lord, that's one word for it," Rodolphus spat. "Angered, is another. Furious."

Rodolphus continued in this vein for a moment, listing a multitude of synonyms for 'troubled' and Voldemort almost regretted initiating the man into his Inner Circle, for he truly demonstrated a lack of initiative and intelligence. But his father was a strong, powerful, and devoted follower, and it was important to reward loyalty. Carrot and stick, he reminded himself. Too much of one or the other would only result in weak leadership.

"Your point, Rodolphus?" he probed, when it seemed the man would do nothing but simply pace and growl.

"I intended to return today, betrothed to Bellatrix Black, and yet I have been thwarted by some guttershite she must have opened her legs for, pretending to be a Peverell." Rodolphus collapsed back into the armchair, scraping a hand through his hair. "As if the Peverell line continued with the Sacred Twenty-Eight none the wiser."

"Most curious," Voldemort said, amused by this development, aware that at least one descendant of the Peverells still lived—himself. "And how did the Patriarch Black take this development?"

Rodolphus sucked in a breath as if to spit upon the floor, then glanced at Voldemort, and clearly thought better of it. A wise choice, for no amount of familial relation to Voldemort's closest follower would have saved him from an excruciating evening of torture, had he chosen otherwise.

"He took one glance at the ring the imposter wore and accepted his suit, provided he matched the same offer that I had given. I spent several weeks in discussions with Cygnus… to be thrown aside like this is an outrage."

"Indeed," Voldemort soothed. "There is no better pairing for the pride of the Blacks than the heir to House Lestrange. Arcturus Black will soon realise that, or regret it."

This, sadly, was a lie. Rodolphus was a brute, with little talent for nuance. But had he married Bellatrix, it would truly tie the fate of the House of Black to Voldemort's own fate. With Narcissa paired with Lucius and Andromeda soon to marry Yaxley's son, Arcturus would be forced to meet with him and discuss terms, or else risk losing all the daughters of his house.

"Do not worry about this Peverell imposter," Voldemort said, musing over how best to work this to his advantage. Perhaps he would Imperius this man and compel him to assault the Black Manor, an inside attack that would shock them into action. "I am confident that whatever ring he produced was nothing but a pale imitation of the true Peverell ring. I will deal with this."

"Thank you, my Lord," Rodolphus said and wisely took his leave, bowing so low he nearly tripped. With great restraint, Voldemort did not roll his eyes. He picked up his espresso, took a sip, and frowned to find it was now cold.

The life of a leader of revolutionaries was full of sacrifices.