The meeting with a Ministry Obliviator proved much more straightforward than Sirius was expecting. It turned out "Augustus" was an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries, Augustus Rookwood. Sirius did not actually see him at all. Instead, his direct contact was Mulciber who inadvertently let Rookwood's identity slip when he mentioned it was an Unspeakable who helped distract the other occupants of the Office of Obliviation when Mulciber showed up to register as a volunteer with his Exceeds Expectations in Charms. Moody figured it out after the fact and said he would be working on exposing Rookwood without implicating Sirius, as he did with most of the names Sirius uncovered.
Anyway, Mulciber used the cover to cast an Imperius on the hapless Wayne Entwhistle. Mulciber then met Sirius for lunch in Diagon Alley, and Entwhistle "just happened" to join them when he wandered in fifteen minutes later. Entwhistle was only five years older than the two of them and a pureblood, so it wasn't that unbelievable. It was an interesting meeting. Mulciber employed a charm Snape had apparently invented, the Muffliato, which was subtler than typical privacy charms. Entwhistle blandly and docilly answered every one of Sirius' questions about the structure of the department, the various emergency procedures currently under development, and the numbers of ad hoc conscripted obliviators the Ministry would be able to call on in future. He learned that while it took less than a minute to erase a memory and perhaps a quarter hour to construct a decent quality false one, the time factors exponentially increased when the memories were emotionally charged and when the implanted memories had to be uniform across a large number of people. That said, the underlying arithmancy of obliviation was extremely well described, since it was so foundational to government operation for the past few centuries. To Sirius' surprise and bemusement, Entwhistle was able to write out simple equations for manpower and time estimations for general scenarios. With those, all Sirius had to do was determine how many muggles would be disturbed and for how long, and he could detour vast Ministry resources for very exact amounts of time. In theory.
The addition of Audrey Bertram, a Ravenclaw halfblood, to the team was likewise fairly simple. She was extremely nervous at Sirius' first meeting with her and obviously reluctant to plan a muggle massacre, until Sirius clarified that actually, her bookish task was not to figure out how to kill as many muggles as possible but rather to figure out how to cause extreme mayhem whilst leaving as many muggles alive as possible. Audrey took to that directive as a fish to water, treating the whole scenario like she was the brain enabling Sirius' greatest prank (apparently, she had been a fan of the Marauders when she was still at Hogwarts). With Audrey's help, the research into muggle venues went much, much faster. In less than a week, they had multiple tentative stratagems formed for attacking ballgames, concerts, and dances; Audrey dismissed the idea of targeting street parades or other similar events as too difficult to contain, and too susceptible to muggle aerial attack. She was convinced there might be muggles with a weapon called a gun perched on a balcony or rooftop overseeing the event, ready to pick Sirius or Avery off without warning. She had seen it happened before in a movie.
All they needed was a date. And so they waited. Sirius and Avery continued to harass completely random locations a few times per week, causing generally less trouble and definitely fewer casualties than Lucius used to. Sirius continued to duel with Bella on a regular basis. She told him he was getting good enough he might garner more complex assignments soon. She also told him that Uncle Cygnus was thrilled to be an almost-grandfather and was enhancing all the wards at both his principle manor and summer cottage in preparation for Narcissa's labor.
As for Narcissa, well, no one would guess from looking she was planning to flee Malfoy Manor in five months. Sirius had few occasions to talk with her about her plans, unfortunately, because she was so very cautious and so very patient. She made it perfectly clear through few words and very precise expressions that she wanted to wait until they could be certain of not being overheard, or failing that until the matter was more urgent. She did not trust privacy charms, even the Muffliato when Sirius showed it to her. She preferred to wait for an empty house. The day that Abraxas went to visit Lucius in Azkaban did not work, because Lucretia was anxiously hovering around the house. The days Abraxas spent at the Ministry, working on bribes but also lobbying for legislation on behalf of the Dark Lord did not work, because Sirius was out burning down a village half the days and Lucretia had hired someone to renovate the old Malfoy nursery the other half. The day Abraxas had a big meeting with his accountants at Gringotts did not work because Lucretia happened to host a ladies' tea at the same time, to which Narcissa, Bella, Sirius' mother, and Avery's mother were all invited, amongst others. Sirius left the house as soon as he realized his mother would be there.
And so Sirius waited, getting frightfully bored and frustrated with his own uselessness. He spent increasing amounts of leisure time with Narcissa. She had him transfigure a figurine of a dragon for her, and later modify several of the garden sculptures, but after she discovered Avery's ancient runes notes carelessly stacked on Sirius' desk, almost all their time together was spent in the library. Sirius had not been initially enthused with the notes Avery had drunkenly foisted on him, but Narcissa had. This was because she, unlike Sirius, had only taken the subject to OWL, not NEWT, and also she, unlike Sirius, knew the contents of the Malfoy library. Abraxas had a collection of scrolls and tablets supposedly salvaged from the Library of Alexandria. These were not the common glyphic inscriptions that had survived with semi-regular use in the wizarding world, where the power was in the individual symbols used. Rather, they detailed incantations, whose correct pronunciation had been lost to wizardkind when the Arabic conquest consumed the last Coptic-speaking magical community.
Narcissa had conjured up her own copies of the notes, scolded Sirius to return the originals to Avery, and fallen to translating Abraxas' collection with gusto. She encouraged Sirius to join her at every opportunity. Sirius did because he knew Narcissa's interest was not in academics per se but rather in having an excuse to sit with him for hours on end without arousing suspicion. Sure enough, Abraxas had looked in only once and said he looked forward to seeing the finished translation before wandering off again. If they spent enough time in the library, eventually Lucretia would become bored enough to leave them alone too. The Malfoy matron was obsessed with the impending birth of her grandchild, but she was not academically inclined, and she was a Latinate snob. She scoffed at the simple household spells Narcissa discovered. She was extraordinarily prudish and delicate when Narcissa read out her translations describing Egyptian curses and their effects, some of which were admittedly rather gruesome, like the skeleton-mutating one or its head-growing variant. Of course, they weren't sure if the curse translations and transliterations were entirely correct. Narcissa had no interest in testing out potentially lethal dark magic whilst pregnant, and Sirius was still deciding if he was willing to sacrifice an unspecified number of wild mice and squirrels to the cause. It was tempting. Learning a few of these ancient spells had one very obvious advantage: they predated the invention of wands, and so were designed to be performed without one. That could be life-saving.
September slipped into October. Summer started transitioning into autumn, though the trees around Malfoy manor remained green for now. The day finally came that the Dark Lord called on Sirius' team.
Sirius glared at a snow white peacock strutting across his chosen path garden path and rustling its fanned tail at him, but he refrained from kicking or otherwise spooking it. That ordinarily would not have been a struggle for him, but he was in a foul mood. He, Avery, and Audrey had just concluded their final planning meeting for the operation tomorrow. It was anxiety and anticipation that made Sirius agitated. It was the first big job the three of them had arranged, and the Dark Lord had given them less than a week's notice. Sirius did not want it to go so badly wrong as the Craven Cottage attack had. He did not want even more blood on his hands. His muggle death toll stood at seventy-eight, and he wanted it to stay there.
The plan seemed solid.
Tomorrow, they would attack a cricket match, in a more refined version of Sirius' and Avery's previous escapade. The magical intimidation spectacle would remain largely the same. The big difference was that Audrey would prevent the subsequent stampede with a complicated array of rune stones that would prevent anyone in the cricket grounds from running at all. In fact, the faster anyone tried to move, the more they would slow down as the kinetic energy was sucked into the enchantment. The only way out for the muggles would be an unhurried walk. Audrey had spent two weeks in September working out the arithmancy while supervising Avery and Sirius in the rune carving. She was sure it would work and at a wide variety of venues. Sirius hoped she was right. The array seemed to operate as predicted when they tried it in the Malfoy statuary garden, but they had not been able to test it on location ahead of time since the cricket players would surely notice something wrong if they were unable to run around the field during their practice times; thus Audrey was deploying the stones tonight as well as disabling all the muggle broadcasting equipment she could find. They would of course have to produce a whole new set after this, as Sirius was sure the Ministry would uncover and confiscate the stones. Since it would be beyond suspicious if the array escaped notice, he did not even ask Moody to try to save it for him.
If all went according to plan, they would terrify and nigh-immobilize thirty thousand muggles tomorrow. It could even be more. Audrey said the average "test cricket" match was attended by around fifty thousand people. They were anticipating lower numbers only because this particular match had been rescheduled following Sirius' attack on the football field back in August. Not everyone who had previously bought tickets would still be able to attend, and some might still be too scared to attend. Audrey had reported low attendance at most sporting events for the past month.
Thirty thousand would be far too many without the runic containments. The Statute of Secrecy would surely fall if that many witnesses managed to scatter to the winds. As it was, they estimated it would take around four days to handle everyone at the cricket match, based on Sirius' interrogation of the mid-level obliviator Augustus Rookwood and Felix Mulciber had facilitated. In theory. It was the practical that Sirius was dreading.
He sighed. The light was growing dimmer. He took the next branch on the garden path and then the next. He came back through the sculpture garden. Eyeing one of the statues Narcissa had asked him to modify last week, he irritably transfigured it again from a graceful hippogriff to an especially dopey mooncalf. He smirked at the final result and set about transfiguring the rest of the garden as well. No more sleek, proud, or sophisticated creatures here. It was all mooncalves, murtlaps, nifflers, gnomes, trolls, house elves, mandrakes, and grindylowes. It made him feel marginally better. He could always change them again if and when one of the Malfoys complained.
Speaking of which, he should probably find Narcissa. They would be called for dinner soon, and tonight it would only be the two of them in the dining room. Abraxas and Lucretia were dining with someone in the Ministry, the latest of Abraxas' attempts to bribe Lucius out of Azkaban. They should have left by now. This was the best chance to talk to Narcissa alone he had had yet. Sirius carefully arranged his face into a cheerfully disaffected expression and re-entered the manor.
He found her in the cavernous library, naturally. "Cousin," he greeted her with an easy nod of the head. "Making progress?"
Narcissa leaned back and smiled at him. "Some. I determined the correct incantation for the servile clay animation spell I told you about yesterday: Ushabtis." She waved a hand over a lump of dirt on the desk as she said this. It reformed itself into something vaguely humanoid and started straightening her piles of papers.
"Cute."
"It's a fascinating spell, actually. If the clay is sculpted, fired, and painted with the incantation repeated multiple times throughout the process, the result is a permanently enchanted object with a specific purpose that can be used by anyone, regardless of their magical talent. A squib could use it."
Sirius grinned. "Or a muggle. Ancient Egypt did not have a statute of secrecy, afterall. The wizards could probably sell these things at extortionate fees."
Narcissa laughed delicately. "True. I think I've also worked out a kind of construction spell, Pera'akatum, to firm up foundations in sandy soil, but I've no way to test it. It's another interesting spell from a theoretical perspective, though. 'Atum' was the name for one of their gods, the one that brought the primordial hill out of the primordial sea, according to this. It makes sense his power would be invoked for this kind of spell."
"Are you turning religious on me, Cissy?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Obviously not. I'm not superstitious. Ancient gods are not beings to be worshipped but rather the names for elemental or magical forces. Atum is a force of creation, structure, and order. Ra is a force of heat and combustion. There's a fire spell invoking Ra you might like."
"I might at that," Sirius agreed. A fire spell sounded more useful in a duel than the skeleton-mutating curse or the purification spell Sekadua Narcissa had found a few weeks earlier. They were pretty sure that one would inconveniently only work to remove traces of dark magic of Egyptian origin, since linguistic resonance was an important feature of most counter-curses. So far, the only real gem she had discovered was a shield charm Neneha'i Modessen which translated charmingly to "I can never fall into their knives." The problem with that one was one had to chant it continuously, so it was far inferior to a simple Protego in that respect.
"I haven't tried that one yet, for obvious reasons. I put it on the list of curses too dangerous to experiment with in my condition. The list should be ballooning soon; the whole second half of this papyrus gives off a vague aura of darkness."
"If you write them out phonetically and go over the gestures with me, I'll figure out how to test them," he abruptly decided. "Outside, and far away from the house." There were bound to be a few more duel-appropriate spells, and he would be guaranteed the only person to know them. That was worth an innocent squirrel or two.
"Just don't test them on yourself. I sort of need you, dear cousin."
Sirius lounged in the chair across from her. "Are you sure about that? You appear to have everything serenely in hand. I feel purposeless," he teased.
"That is because I brought you here during the serenity, intentionally." She glanced around, checking for the house elf most likely, and lowered her voice. "You need not fret right now. Your current job is to continue your practice with Bella for breaking through wards, and otherwise merely to draw attention away from me while Bella and I work on later arrangements. You do not need to endear yourself to my in-laws. In fact, I prefer if it is you they focus their complaints upon. For now at least. I will be leaving at thirty-seven weeks, earlier if the babe is precocious and will most likely require your assistance at that time, but I have not yet decided on any one end plan. It rather depends on what happens with Lucius' trial."
The trial was in three weeks, two days before Samhain. Sirius raised an eyebrow. "You might return?"
Narcissa's expression was unreadable. "He is my husband," she said finally.
He took that to mean that so long as her baby survived, she was not necessarily determined to raise it if that would end her married life. Feeling distinctly uncertain in the arena of committed adult relationships, Sirius chose not to question her further about that. Instead, he leaned back in the chair. "Well, it's not hard to irritate your in-laws, even with my winning personality. Lucretia I'm sure will despise the sculpture garden tomorrow even more than you will."
Narcissa sniffed judgmentally. She liked his transfigurations when they were artistic. She hated them when he used them as pranks. The first pendant he had made for her was less than auspicious, a rose of travertine that morphed back into a smelly owl pellet during lunch.
Sirius grinned. "As for Abraxas, he's still miffed I moved in at all."
Narcissa nodded. "He is."
"I know he thinks I'm here to keep an eye on him for the Dark Lord, but do you have any idea why he leapt to that conclusion quite so quickly?"
"Timing, I suppose."
"Sure, that's what I thought when I first met him, but he doesn't seem nearly paranoid enough for it now that I know him better. He's not an idiot. If he thinks I'm watching him, he must believe he's worth watching."
Narcissa shook her head instantly. "He's loyal to the cause. He's known and worked closely with the Dark Lord longer than anyone else, and I've no reason to believe he's lying about that. Even the Dark Lord did not contest the claim when Abraxas was bragging about it in the presence of us both."
"There must be something, though," Sirius prodded. Maybe there wasn't, but Abraxas' behavior bothered him. And Sirius was a spy, for Dumbledore, so he definitely wanted to find out. "Maybe... it's the house that's worth watching? Abraxas can't be here all the time, after all."
Narcissa's eyebrows rose, and her lips pursed in thought. "You might be right about that," she said eventually.
"What do you know?"
She shook her head. "I shouldn't say. Forget it."
Sirius leaned forward. "Cissy, if you know something, you need to tell me, for our sakes. I can't act the way Abraxas expects me to if I don't know what he's thinking. It wouldn't matter so much if he just thought I was slumming here like we originally intended. But since he thinks I'm here for a purpose, we can't safely disabuse him of his erroneous conclusions."
Narcissa frowned but nodded reluctant agreement. "I'm not certain," she began slowly, "but I think Abraxas is keeping something here for the Dark Lord. I don't know what it is. I can only tell you that Abraxas is very protective of the secret chamber under the family drawing room. I'm not allowed in there. No one not of the family is supposed to know about it. And Abraxas specifically brought Lucius there to show him something special before he left on a trip to Uganda two years ago. I did not hear the whole conversation, though."
Sirius nodded thoughtfully. He would not ask Narcissa to show him the secret chamber. That would be too obvious. But he would nose about when the opportunity arose.
There was a distant crack as the house elf apparated to the hall outside the library, close enough they could hear him arrive, but not actually in the same room as to disturb them unnecessarily. Dobby was a much better elf than Kreacher that way; he actually stayed discreetly out of sight most of the time and kept any judgmental obscenities politely to himself. That said, he was still an ugly creature with an annoying voice, and even if his hands were meticulously clean, his tea-towel toga was grimy and looked like he had either cleaned out a disused cellar today or more likely hadn't changed clothes in days. Did house elves have to be ordered to attend to personal hygiene? "Dinner is ready, sir and miss," Dobby squeaked as he trotted into the room.
"We'll be there shortly," Narcissa answered without turning around.
"And get yourself a new tea towel," Sirius told him. Dobby looked at him with the oddest expression and bowed low before disappearing again.
Narcissa raised an elegant eyebrow. "Never thought I'd see you getting along with a house elf, Sirius. I distinctly remember you booby trapping Kreacher's cupboard multiple times."
"You didn't see him. That towel looked rank, and I do not want to smell ripe elf for the next hour."
He offered her his arm as they walked to the dining room. "You know, since you prank your friends just as much as your enemies, one could misconstrue those traps for Kreacher as heart-felt gifts," she mused. "Should I tell him next time I see him?"
"Kreacher is senile, and our loathing will always be mutual. He knows that."
"Right."
"I am not taking a liking to your elf, or pity or whatever."
"Of course not," she agreed condescendingly. "That's what Hufflepuffs are for, and you're not one of them."
"Exactly."
Author's note: 37 weeks 0 days pregnancy is considered "term," barely, and so would be the earliest safe point to induce labor.
I'm going to assume wizarding tests are graded on a negatively-skewed curve. O= the top 5%, E= the next 15%, A= the next 40%, P=the next 20%, D= the next 15%, and T= the lowest 5% (thus, 60% of the population should get a passing grade for a given subject). If we assume that everyone who gets an E or an O in charms (20% of the population) goes on to take the NEWT course because it's so gosh-darn useful, the people with an O in NEWT charms will equal 0.05*0.2*100=1% of the population. If we take the larger estimate of the wizarding population of about 20,000, that works out to 200 guaranteed memory charmers. After a month of reviewing previous test results, we can add in maybe half of the people who scored an E on their NEWT (.15*.2*.5*20,000=300), and we get 500 witches and wizards proficient in memory charming. If it took almost two days to safely and effectively obliviate 5000 muggles a few chapters ago, with 200 obliviators working on it, (X*5000/200+setup time=2; X=2*200/5000=0.08) then we can derive time Y=0.08*muggles/obliviators+setup time. It will therefore take over four days to finish obliviating 30,000 people with 500 obliviators.
The Egyptian spells described are very loosely adapted from passages out of The Book of the Dead. Ushabtis (Shabtis, Shawabtis) is just the word for the little figurines found in Egyptian graves that are indeed supposed to be servants in the afterlife. Inkhera is the fire spell and comes from the line "ink ra m xa.f SAa HqA.f ir.n.f" which translates to "I am Ra in his rising, first in ruling what he made." Like a lot of the ancient near-East languages, Ancient Egyptian did not spell out all the vowels, so I am filling those in as needed, as well as shortening the lines. "I am Ra" gets the point across, in Harry Potter magical style, if you're trying to summon the heat of the sun. Definitely do not take these things to be at all representative of real Ancient Egyptian words/spells though. Moving on, Perakatum comes from "qd wy pr.k itm," meaning "How well your house is built, Atum." Sekadua comes from "iww xsr sk Dww" meaning "Crimes are removed, evils destroyed". Nenehai-Modessen comes from "nn hA.i md sn" meaning "I can never fall into their knives."
Well, that was the longest and most-extra author's note I've written in awhile... Thanks as always for the lovely reviews. I will continue to aim for Saturday updates, but not gonna lie, there's a good chance I fall behind sometime in the next few weeks. Busy-ness, you know.
