The Horcrux, properly prepared, shall be impervious to decay and all mundane means of damage. A Horcrux fashioned of wood or paper shall not burn. One of metal shall neither rust nor melt. Nay, it shall withstand even the hottest of Dragon flame. A blade of adamant shall not score it. The hammer strike of a giant shall not crush it. The jaws of a Lethifold shall not rend it. No potion brewed by witch or wizard shall dissolve it. Nor may it be Vanished or Transfigured. All previous Enchantments contained within shall continue but be bent to the enshrined soul. Verily, daring practitioners including the originator Herpo the Foul have weaponized the Artifact, which can ensnare and possess the unwary. This strategy is not without risk, for even the protections detailed above suffer select weaknesses. The Horcrux will be destroyed if it is submerged in or penetrated by the venom of the King of Serpents, the Basilisk. It shall also be destroyed if the container is immolated entire in Fiendfyre. Lastly, the soul fragment contained therein may be subjected to the attack of the Horror of Ekrizdis (Dementor), if the unholy spirit is empowered and controlled with the Ritual of the Feast of Innocents, as the horcrux of Loxias fell to Livius. This last is the most difficult to ward against, as the Horrors themselves are fully indestructible even in the face of Fiendfyre...
Sirius skimmed the rest of the page and cursed. As he had thought, Secrets of the Darkest Art did not actually go into details about the Ritual of the Feast of Innocents. He'd probably need to track down the Complete Works of Ekrizdis to figure out if the ritual, vile as it no doubt was, would be a better way of destroying horcruxes in the end. After all, dementors were semi-intelligent spirits that fed on memories and souls. If there was a (un)natural horcrux-hunter, they would have to be it. Maybe Ekrizdis had even created them in order to hunt down a rival's horcrux or something. Too bad the only copy of the book Sirius had ever heard of let alone seen had been destroyed along with the rest of Malfoy Manor. The Averys certainly did not own one. There might be one at Grimmauld Place or some other Black stronghold, but Sirius couldn't bring himself to go there, not for such a thin lead as this. Maybe if he already knew there was a horcrux there. He didn't think there was, though. He couldn't see Voldemort trusting Orion and Walburga or even Cygnus with something like that; they were more devoted to themselves and the Black Family than to the Dark Lord. No, if one of the Blacks was custodian of a horcrux, it was Bellatrix.
Honestly, Sirius thought it more likely that the Dark Lord had trusted none of the arrogant and unstable Black family members with something so important as his own soul and instead favored someone more dependable. Of the members of the Inner Circle who were still alive, British, and not in prison, Lord Nott, Lord Rosier, Sullivan Travers, and Rodolphus were probably the best candidates by that criterion.
Since it would be ludicrous for him to kill another Death Eater whilst muggle-baiting in the near future, Sirius swallowed his pride in order to visit Bella one day while Rodolphus was absent. By way of explanation for his abrupt about-face in his efforts to avoid her, he decried the Averys' collection of Dark books to her and claimed he needed more challenging reading material to hold off Winston. Bella enthusiastically agreed to show him all her various Dark and historical books without question. She added in a tour of all the Dark artifacts they passed and some of her cursed jewelry in an obvious ploy to prolong his visit, helpfully providing the detailed history, powers, and properties of each piece. Since that was precisely what he wanted, he made no effort to stop her.
The manor house was of course stuffed with potentially suspicious knickknacks and books that Sirius had largely ignored while he was actually living here. It was all just the expected window dressing of an old pureblood residence, nothing special because everything was valuable, rare, and/or antique. There was, unfortunately, no way for him to secretly test any potential horcruxes, because Bella was so excited he had finally accepted her frequent invitation to visit, she did not leave him alone for even a moment. He would have to move back in to do that, and he really didn't want to, no matter how much Bella nagged him to "come back to the family." He supposed he could discount the artifacts for which Bella was able to give very clear and easily verified acquisition pedigrees, but she didn't know the history of all the supposed Lestrange heirlooms. One of them could easily be a recently added horcrux hiding amidst a dozen other more impressive pieces just as the journal had been.
Or he could be entirely on the wrong track. Even if he accepted Dumbledore's logic that the cursed object was probably a prestige piece, for all they knew, only one horcrux was ever hidden in a Death Eater household. Every time Sirius thought about it long enough, he quickly concluded again the hunt was hopeless without either more information or better methods for magical detection. He stuck with it only because that was what the Order had asked of him. Sirius may be contrary by nature, but it felt too weird to deny the wishes of Albus Dumbledore outright.
Bella did not have anything by Ekrizdis, at least not that she showed him, so he ended up borrowing a book on ancient curses and curse-breaking instead, reasoning the detection spells described might at least be helpful. They weren't. That is, there were definitely approaches to curse-detection that were completely novel to Sirius, but not once did the authors mention horcruxes and whether said approaches worked on them. He finished the book anyway, because Winston really was being rather annoying with a bound compendium of the illustrated home and style sections of nineteenth century Witch Weekly Morgan had given him for Christmas. Why that publication even existed, Sirius could not say, but learning more Dark arts was infinitely preferable than looking at it.
Bella started inviting him to accompany her to visit Uncle Cygnus' house, not just her own, in another very obvious ploy to "trick" him into spending more time with her. He went along the second time she asked in order to see Narcissa, to peruse Cygnus' library, and on the off-chance he could stumble across a horcrux. No such luck, but the time felt oddly well-spent. Narcissa currently shared his general anger and frustration with a monumentally difficult task she did not want: she had been royally pissed at both Bella and her father when she was informed of her new position as the Dark Lord's chief propagandist, but she did not have the option to refuse. It was an odd, sometimes contradictory task she had, visiting both the Ministry and St. Mungo's almost every day and spending all her free time writing numerous anonymous pamphlets endorsing the Dark Lord's cause. These were directed towards all kinds of unlikely groups that should not be natural allies. The only pamphlets Sirius had ever encountered before now had targeted wealthy purebloods, but there were others she let him read with almost entirely different messages directed towards purebloods of lower classes, halfbloods, werewolves, hags, vampires, and other marginalized groups. These described a future with freedom from the Statute of Secrecy, return of magical traditions, and resumption of a "natural harmony" of a simpler world the bureaucratic Ministry was trying to erase. It was a dream world, obviously. Halfbloods like Audrey were kept out of sight of the more intolerant purebloods and largely scorned by the Inner Circle of Death Eaters. The only use he'd heard Voldemort's werewolf allies being put to was terrorizing mixed-blood communities on the full moon and as additional expendable foot soldiers in clashes with the aurors. There was no equality in the offing. Narcissa was quite careful in not explicitly promising there would be.
Narcissa even wrote pamphlets directed to muggleborns, surprisingly. Unlike the others, these did not aim to recruit their readers, but rather turn muggleborns and their allies against the Ministry and its current policies. After all, if the government was willing to legalize use of the Unforgivables against someone like Lord Yaxley who had every advantage in their society and to shrug off their use against the likes of Lucius and Abraxas Malfoy, surely the most vulnerable had no chance at all against Ministry abuses. The aurors did not even seem to be investigating all the tragic losses and disappearances of muggleborns and squibs anymore! Did they not care? Yes, Narcissa was good at political rhetoric and currently beloved by the Daily Prophet. In fact, her arguments against the barbarity of government-sanctioned Unforgivables and demands for Ministry accountability were more eloquent than Abraxas' had been, and better received judging by the Letters to the Editor page, which Narcissa both contributed to and read religiously as a measure of her own effectiveness.
That said, Bartemius Crouch was incredible at stalling and/or stomping out opposition to his legislation, pulling all the Ministry levers as ably as any Malfoy and with more legitimate authority, so Narcissa's primary assignment to reverse the Unforgivables policy was not going well. Her only saving grace was that Voldemort was bizarrely enchanted with the concept of the mother of the Malfoy heir, going so far as to suggest names for the baby boy. Voldemort had so far refrained from hurting her when she failed to report significant progress. He tortured whoever else was in the room instead, red eyes alarmingly fixed on her gravid belly. Narcissa had not informed him the fetus was actually female and already named Lyra.
Bella interrupted the griping session after several hours to complain about the fact that she had been forced to deal with three more Death Eaters Imperiused to attack her. Sirius had heard nothing of this and listened in conflicted silence as she described the encounters in excessive detail. She did not sound particularly upset about the attacks, excepting that the Dark Lord was miffed they kept happening and had told her to please stop killing the suborned Death Eaters outright. She, devoted follower, had of course complied. She piously detailed her efforts to try to break the Imperius controlling her most recent assailant, Narses Selwyn.
"Poor Narses - I always liked him, you know, cute child, great sense of humor when he grew up. He came to my house three nights ago. He even floo called ahead of time to check that I was in and ask if he might pop by to chat. Very polite, the Selwyns, don't you think, Cissy?"
"Yes, very polite," Narcissa said blandly.
"Anyway, he came through the floo, asked if Dolph was home, and when I said Dolph had already gone to bed, he chatted a bit about his sister's wedding plans to Lord Nott - poor thing. Imagine being married to Nott! Then as we're sitting down, he deliberately spilled his wine all over the settee Auntie had given us for our fifth anniversary, you know the one Cissy. I started to vanish the mess, and you know how bad I am at vanishing, Siri!"
Sirius nodded automatically.
"Sneaky bastard. So, while he thought I was distracted, he up and drew his wand on me and tried to get me with a killing curse!" She cackled. "I'll admit, his set up was better than the other four, but the thing with the wine tipped me off. Too obvious, you know? I had already used a sticking charm on one of the throw pillows and whipped it up between us as a shield at the first syllable. Pity, it was the nice one with the embroidery you gave me, Cissy. The curse destroyed it, can't be fixed."
"I'll make you another."
"You're sweet. Well, Narses isn't a good duelist, and he blew his only chance. I had him disarmed and tied up in a trice. I had to think what to do then. The Dark Lord told me not to kill any Imperiused allies again if I could help it, as I said. I thought about waking up Dolph to see what he thought, but the poor dear has been so tired lately, trying to do the work of three people now that the Ministry's got Yaxley, Dolohov is still in Estonia, and Greengrass got himself killed by an auror. I thought about just keeping Narses a prisoner in the cellar, but that didn't seem very practical either, so I decided to experiment a little instead. I started with the Cruciatus..." Why she thought that would work, Sirius did not know. "But then he tried to strangle me when I untied him again. So then I tried to figure out who had placed the Imperius in the first place with Legilimency. It's logical, no? The Dark Lord says I'm the only one they've targeted like this so far, so it's probably one person cursing them all who has an especial grudge towards me. I figured I could kill whoever it is and save Narses."
She paused a moment and poured herself another cup of tea, staring into it contemplatively. Growing a little nervous, Sirius cleared his throat, "So, did that work? Do you know who's behind it all?"
"Oh, no. Turns out, Narses has been going to young Felix Mulciber's Imperius training sessions, so that's all I found when I was looking for memories of the curse. Much good that so-called training did him. Some auror probably cursed him when he was out in public without him even knowing." Sirius noticed Narcissa's raised eyebrow at that. Probably because she had a more accurate understanding of what the current Unforgivables law actually said than Bella did. From what Moody had told him at Christmas, it was still against the law for an auror to prime unsuspecting Death Eaters to assassinate eachother or even the Dark Lord. A slight chill ran through him as he wondered what Narcissa actually thought of all this, then, and how she had advised the Dark Lord himself. Hopefully, they both just blamed the Imperiuses on the Order of the Phoenix and did not suspect a traitor in the ranks.
"How's Mulciber supposed to teach people to resist when he can't do it himself? It doesn't make sense. I offered to do the teaching, you know. It worked great for you, Siri. I don't know why the Dark Lord gave the job to Mulciber."
"Probably because he doesn't want to sacrifice all the recruits who don't have what it takes to resist just because you won't stop trying," Sirius said flippantly. "Rodolphus had me try to teach Mulciber, too, and so has the Dark Lord. Some people just can't learn. Unlike you or me, though, Mulciber can cast the curse with a light enough touch to figure that out. He can tell when it's time to stop."
"There is that... Shame about the boy, though," Bella mused.
"What boy?"
"Narses."
"Why? What did you end up doing with him?"
"Nothing. Only, my Legilimency probe might have been a tad too forceful for someone under the Imperius. He started gibbering like an idiot when I released him. Dolph had to call Evan to take him to St. Mungo's. Lord Nathaniel came over to yell at me the next day, said I'd ruined the family line and that I owed him for committing his son to the mind healing ward for the rest of his life." Sirius' heart fluttered a little. Narses was only eighteen months older than him. "I could see straight through him, of course. He doesn't really care, he just wants to claim a debt he can call in later. Even if Narses ends up like Lucius for the long term, all the Selwyns have to do is find him a smart, ambitious wife who won't mind bedding a simpleton if it means she gets to be the de facto head of a noble pureblood family. Just look at Lady Avery."
Bella sipped her tea primly. Narcissa discreetly covered her look of disgust with her napkin. Sirius decided it was time to change the subject. "Narcissa, how is Lucius getting along? Is he doing any better?"
"A bit," Narcissa said with a grateful smile. As he listened to her talk about Lucius' therapies, he couldn't help but think his impromptu Imperius strategy was proving startlingly effective, with five Death Eater casualties in less than two months. There may be some risks involved that he didn't exactly understand very well, but still, that was a better rate than the aurors, who had only made two arrests and one kill since Christmas.
Two agonizing weeks passed with absolutely nothing of importance happening other than Bella reporting three more Imperiused assassination attempts that all ended with trips to St. Mungo's. Rodolphus forbade her from answering floo calls. The Dark Lord now hesitated to contrive new confrontations with the aurors, because the "strategy" of cursing seemingly random Death Eaters to go after Bella, and only Bella, did not make sense to him. He thought there must be many more compromised Death Eaters whose actions were currently invisible, especially more cursed to turn on their fellows during battle. But how many more? For the first time in years, he was on the defensive against an enemy he could not fully anticipate, either a Ministry that had decided to flout its own regulations or an Order that had finally surrendered its sacred moral high ground. Maybe both. The ideal solution would of course have been what Bella suggested: figure out whoever was casting the curses and kill them. She doubted the moralistic Order and Ministry had more than one or two highly skilled imperators between them. It was sound reasoning, except of course, even Bella had to admit they had no idea who to target.
The Inner Circle debated the wisdom of forming a special unit of those with known ability to resist the curse to use on all major offensives, thus side-stepping the problem. Even though Sirius would obviously be on the team doing more horrible things, he seconded the proposal, secretly reasoning he might be able to set up another ambush like the one that brought down Lucius and the others back in August. The idea was discarded for several reasons. The strategy would be logistically difficult since "resisting the Imperius" was not a trait that correlated much with other talents, meaning the few candidates were scattered in different units. Half of them were on the Office of Obliation reserves list. Most of the ones Sirius had not already known were mediocre fighters at best (he memorized the new names in case Moody missed them). Finally, Rodolphus pointed out the very risk Sirius had hoped to capitalize upon: it could lose them the war if a mission went badly and they lost all those valuable assets at once, leaving the rest of the ranks to be gutted at will with mass Imperius attacks from an emboldened Ministry and/or Order. The possible dire commands Rodolphus came up with sent shivers down Sirius' spine: a Death Eater commanded to unleash Fiendfyre during a meeting at the headquarters, or to orchestrate an assault by their werewolf allies on the manors of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, or to raise up an Inferius army against them, or to carry the conflict to another country now while they were weakened and bring the International Confederation of Wizards down on their heads. Lord Voldemort had god-like magical power, but he was only one man. He could not conquer a country with zero trustworthy lieutenants.
Next, they debated the merits of an Imperius counter-offense. The curse was already very much in use infiltrating the Ministry and Daily Prophet, of course, but its primary purpose had always been inobtrusive information-gathering or one-off commands, not total usurpation of their targets. Now, masters like Mulciber and the Dark Lord himself could surely enthrall the minds of many Ministry employees if needed without losing control of the spells and permanently damaging the victims' minds. The problem Augustus Rookwood (their strategist inside the Ministry) faced was that there was only so far controlling low-level, accessible people could take them in the Ministry. Particularly since, as only Sirius knew, Moody was fully aware of both Rookwood's Death Eater status. The head auror controlled the movements of sensitive personnel and kept them as far removed from anyone in the Department of Mysteries as possible. Indeed, the vast majority of war-related information Rookwood referred to Voldemort at this point was heavily censored by Moody by the time it made it to him. Thus, getting Mulciber or Bella or Voldemort himself the access they needed to actually take over the Ministry was no easy task. Even though Mulciber's name remained clean legally (while Moody waited for evidence that couldn't be traced back to Sirius), his family had no political connections to speak of outside of the Death Eaters. His access to aurors and department heads was nonexistent until and unless official business could be contrived. No, in order to place an Imperius on the right target, they would most likely have to take the risk of forcing their way into the victim's private residence.
Where boldness might have served better, uncertainty and the many recent losses amongst the loyalists in the Sacred Twenty-Eight drove the Dark Lord to be cautious in the end. Operations would be strictly siloed to prevent information leaks. More efforts would go towards recruiting new, "clean" minds. More Death Eaters of all ranks were, ironically, shunted off to Mulciber's training sessions. Those who could not resist the Imperius were ordered never to go out alone. Those who could resist the Imperius were ordered to increase their battle training, and wait. The upshot was that the Order and the Ministry got some breathing space, and Sirius got increasingly bored despite nightly practice duels with Rodolphus. In light of the uncertainty, there would be no call for Sirius' larger anti-muggle operations until Voldemort settled on his new strategy. At least Sirius still had two outings per week to blow up muggle houses with Richard; Lord Voldemort had rescinded permission for anyone else to invite themselves along.
After reading every likely book he could find and turning up nothing new about horcruxes, Sirius used his suddenly abundant free time to practice casting more complex and lethal curses nonverbally. After two weeks, he did manage to cast a weak Cruciatus on the spider in his closet. He ran into a brick wall with the Avada, though he was resolved to keep at it. When he was too frustrated to practice, he tinkered on the cursed bracelets he had once flippantly promised to Dumbledore. He managed to make them fully unbalanced: Sirius' bracelet could kill whoever was wearing it very quickly once activated, while Dumbledore's was not only perfectly safe for the wearer but could only be used to activate Sirius' by someone named Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Inscribing the phonetic rune work for the headmaster's many names had been horrible.
Just when Sirius was weighing the risks of murdering a Death Eater without the cover of a legitimate mission, Bella came to Sirius for assistance with her own project, the assassination of some Order member named Elphias Doge. Of all duties of the Inner Circle, her mandate to kill Order members was the only one in this lull that had actually stepped up, in case she managed to slaughter the imperator by chance. Accordingly, she was acting immediately on fresh information regarding the safe house Doge was using. Her team for the evening was whoever was available and thus did not include either Dolohov, who was still out of the country, or even Rodolphus. There was no time, she said, to plan one of Sirius' muggle distractions; there was no time, Sirius thought, to get away and warn the Order to get this Doge to safety. He could only hope Moody was listening in his portrait, as he donned his Death Eater robes and mask, shook Winston off, and followed Bella out of the house. Hopefully, he would at least have a chance to hit someone with an Avada in the back if they ended up in a chaotic firefight. Maybe he'd get really lucky and learn Mulciber had cursed one of the others to attack Bella.
The safe house was in a muggle neighborhood in the outskirts of Kent. It was tiny. It should have been under a Fidelius, as there was frankly no security in geographic obscurity anymore. The small size of the property made it simple for Bella to order the team to fan out around the place and construct anti-apparition, anti-floo, and anti-portkey wards just as quickly as Albus Dumbledore himself had around Malfoy Manor. She had Sirius help her take down the protective wards on the house, putting his recently acquired curse-breaking knowledge to good use. The wards were a step up from the Bones' house, but still not good enough. And then they were inside, all six of them against one Doge. They had surprised the old man in his bath, it seemed. He got to his dressing gown and wand before they burst into the place, and he came at them dripping wet.
It was over before it even started. Doge slipped on the wet floor, and Bella hit him with a full body-bind as he went down. "Quick, layers!" The rest of the team dutifully disarmed Doge, silenced him, blinded him, and bound him in fiery ropes. Bella lowered her wand. "That was disappointing. Well. Who wants to play?" She took the first turn at the Cruciatus, then urged Sirius to go next. He complied, not seeing another option. Then came Lord Nott, who had joined them at the last minute already masked, but Sirius recognized his voice. Then Evan Rosier. Then Megaera and Sullivan Travers.
"Siri, can you show the others the transfiguration thing you did last time? It was so interesting. I want to see it again, without pesky interruptions."
Sirius bit back a curse and started locking down his emotions as best he could. "It will be my pleasure." He stepped forwards slowly, trying to figure out if there was any way to make this less horrible. Maybe... he did not cast an Imperious, nor did he cast Sectumsempra or any other Dark curse this time. Instead, he just started transfiguring. That was bad enough, of course. Sirius knew how painful it could be from personal experience. Bella laughed delightedly as old Doge's eyes rolled in silent agony. "Ooh, let him scream. Sonorus!"
Sirius ignored Doge's yells and whimpers and kept working. He had started by transfiguring first one foot and then the other into a cluster of potatoes and aubergines. Next came the legs. He turned small segments into the semblance of apples and cheeses. He was mimicking a bizarre muggle painting he had once seen on a book cover, the head and shoulders of a man made entirely of vegetables. When he had transfigured the legs all the way up to the hips, he moved to the hands, turning the left into a bundle of carrots and the right into sausages. He was basically just stalling for time, hoping against hope that the Order realized what was happening and came to Doge's rescue before Sirius got around to transfiguring any vital organs. This kind of segmental transfiguration would not have an easy fix, but Doge might at least survive if someone saved him quickly enough.
"I have never seen work like this before," Nott said while Sirius carefully changed Doge's thick white hair into artful clusters of green grapes. The older wizard had removed his mask and leaned over the body to see better. Sirius fantasized about decapitating him, if the situation were slightly different. His neck was right there.
"I know! I feel like I'm watching a master portraitist at work! And he's my cousin!" Bella purred.
"It is fascinating," Nott agreed. "I like how you have managed to preserve the contours and even some textures of the body with careful selection of your transfigured objects. It is as if he were always made of these foodstuffs, hidden beneath a deceptive skin wrapping that you are slowly peeling back for us. You could perform such displays in a theater, and many would pay for the pleasure of seeing it."
"And it looks so tasty, too," Bella added. "I almost forget it's human." Meg Travers looked away with dry heaves at that particular comment.
"It's taking forever, though," Sullivan muttered. "If he's not too fast, he's too slow."
"You can't rush great art," Nott said with a shrug.
Rosier pointed out the window. "The aurors can. Time to wrap up. I'm pretty sure that's Alastor Moody getting ready to take down our barrier."
Thank Merlin. Sirius lowered his wand.
Bella took one look out the window "Damnit! Avada Kedavra!" There was a flash of hideous green light, and Doge was dead. Sirius stared at the corpse. All that for nothing. He silently apologized to the dead wizard he had tortured and failed to save. Bella must have registered some disappointment in the set of his shoulders. "Aw, Siri, I'm sorry. I'll get you a mudblood to work on next time you visit me so you can actually finish uninterrupted for a change. Okay? Right, people, Madeye's not dumb. He likes to come with reinforcements, so get out of here as quick as possible. I'll distract him." She led the way out of the room.
Sirius hesitated just long enough to pull Dumbledore's cursed bracelet out of his pocket and hide it amidst the gourds that used to be Doge's arm before following the others. He cast the Dark Mark as he went to account for his delay. He pulled up short despite himself when he saw Moody. The auror had a new eyeball to replace the one he'd lost at Malfoy Manor. It was bright blue and looked too big for its socket, and it moved independently of the other one, with a more extensive range of motion as well. Moody took advantage of his surprise to send a stunner his way. Sirius dodged reflexively. He belatedly realized the spell never would have hit him anyways. Maybe Moody recognized him somehow, even through the mask. Regardless, he did not hang around to find out. He ran after the others, firing hexes in Moody's general direction as he went, though deliberately just missing. He helped Nott take down the anti-apparition ward Moody had hastily erected just outside theirs, and then he turned in place and was gone.
Author's note: the painting Sirius is thinking of is by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Bella had just a lovely day hanging out with her sister and favorite cousin, gossiping like a "real girl." She does try, poor thing. And I thought it would be funny to have Voldemort's Slytherins all getting migraines from the whole Imperius thing, paralyzed by their own conspiratorial thinking while forgetting that, actually, the Order isn't good at being sneaky and discounting Bella's first narcissistic but entirely correct thought of "this is a personal grudge."
There is a fantasy series called The Saga of Recluse which I rather enjoy even though the novels are very, very formulaic. In one of them, Colors of Chaos, the focus for the first half of the novel is a protracted military campaign led by the extremely arrogant and powerful High Wizard Jeslek, who's similar to Voldemort in terms of his leadership, even if he's a much more principled antagonist. At one point, a wizard on the other side who is also an engineer starts inventing magical land mines and other booby traps that entirely throw Jeslek off his game at first, because he's a Sneaky Slytherin who doesn't like being confronted with Something Clever/Unexpected that Isn't Mine. He eventually gets over the feeling and chooses a more Gryffindor tactic of ignoring risks and marching ahead so his opponent doesn't have the time to place more mines. I was thinking of that quandary while writing this, as well as the memorable lines:
"Damn this measured approach!" -Jeslek
"It was your idea." -subordinate
"So? I can be wrong."
"You can? I never would have guessed it..."
Jeslek wins the war, then dies because the guy who invented magical land mines also invents a magical gun and boldly shows up behind enemy lines to shoot him, because of a personal grudge.
Anyhow, thanks for the reviews, and continue looking for updates on Saturdays.
Edited: corrected minor continuity error