June 3, 1996

"Do not go poking around there! I'll handle it!"

"But Lucinda-!"

"No buts! I know these people. You don't. I would trust you to handle an American politician for the same reason you need to trust me to handle these purebloods." Lucinda paced around her office, walking faster, the small heels of her shoes clicking and clacking like some kind of wooden machine from MACUSA. "Every little word they say, every bit of scandalous history, I can manage them in a way you can't. If Alex has been gone this long he may be with a younger group. If we handle this the wrong way, Alex won't get help if he needs it because we'll be dead ourselves!"

Lucinda returned to her desk and slumped down into her chair before slamming her fist on the desk with a bang. "That thrice damned fool!"

"Who are you going to talk to?"

"I'll start with the Averys, maybe Narcissa Malfoy, though you made her quite angry with your house elf comment I don't think she'll be helpful. Avery Junior is a bit scared of me, I can use that, but we can't bluntly ask, it would screw up anything Alex may be doing behind the scenes. You need to find the girlfriend!"

I nodded.

"I think it would be more useful to find the girl than pry anything out of those blood purists. It sounds like Alex really liked that girl if he mentioned her publicly, even if he didn't intend too. They may still be in touch."

"I was thinking the same thing."

Girls I knew from school would not tolerate a boyfriend disappearing for months at a time. Though, if she was seriously dating my brother, she may have been more independent in a lot of ways.

Which, through that thought process, told me a lot about Thalia.

Independent. Self-sufficient. Probably liked her alone time as much as Alex liked his. What if she was not even on the registries Valencia checked because she was in the country illegally? It was a theory, but I would have to confirm it first.

Miju could get me into the big records office if I said it was for the Minister. If Thalia was not in any of those I would have to try other ways of finding her. I needed her last name at the very least to try and send her a letter.

"Sounds good to me."

"Audrey," Lucinda's voice cut through the air like a knife. "Don't get caught. If what Potter said was true, then the Ministry was corrupted by rich Death Eaters a long time ago. Money speaks louder than words in a lot of ways."

I paused for a moment, "I thought you wanted me to marry rich?"

"Never going to let that go are you?"

I shrugged and laughed a bit.

"I want you to be secure, not depraved." Lucinda took off her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. "I thought that Malfoy was Imperioused, I thought a lot of them were. It made sense. They never seemed… Well, they didn't like muggles, but that's not unusual."

I was not a fan of the nonmagical, but I would never set out to hurt them. No-Majs are dangerous in their own right, they're nosy and believe everything they see or think they do and are inclined to be aggressive about finding answers. MACUSA is so militant about erasing the memories of exposed No-Majs that some are becoming… slightly resistant to memory charms, which are only incentivising Scourers to look even harder.

Scourers were the monsters who hid under the bed of every young wix after they did their first bit of magic. Many young children were never let out of their parents' sight for fear of the Scourers taking them away.

No, I did not like the No-Majs. We were different subspecies of human, it was safer to be apart for everyone involved. I knew my attitudes were not uncommon in America and it seemed reasonable in other parts of the magical world as well, but extremism against No-Majs such as the World Cup was uncommon and disturbing.

"We'll find him, Lucinda. It'll be alright."

I was uncertain if I was reassuring Lucinda or myself.

Oo0Oo0

June 13, 1996

"Any leads on that newspaper, Audrey?" Fudge's voice brought me to attention quickly, pulling me out of my thoughts of that radio show Lucinda and I were listening too about historic castles.

I kept my face carefully neutral. I liked Elizabeth. I liked Cornelius when I started this job, now he was a half crazed tyrant of sorts, seeing enemies in every shadow on the wall. His relentless pursuit of Dumbledore was ruling every aspect of

"I'm afraid not, Minister. It may just be a penname."

You're not getting any hand on Valencia. Not if I can help it.

Fudge nodded and told me to carry on before retreating to his office after exchanging a few words with Percy whose gaze drifted over me with an edge of suspicion that left me concerned that he could read minds for a horrifying moment. Eddie followed the Minister into his office to discuss some notations and requests from other departments, the door closing behind him with a click, leaving Percy and I to stare at each other from opposite sides of the room.

He got to his feet, holding a manilla file and walked towards my desk.

"I took a trip down to the records office." Percy put the file on the desk in front of me. "Look what I found."

Valencia Talbot's name stood out in a bold print.

Hell's bells!

"Oh… How silly of me!"

Percy raised an eyebrow.

Think fast, Audrey!

"I never learned how to read, the state of American education really is abysmal. I'm surprised I even got this far in life."

I'm a moron.

"Somehow I doubt that." He tapped Valencia's name with a long finger. "She was in the immigration section. You've been looking in the London listings."

I had been looking for Thalia or Alex, but I was not going to say that.

"I didn't think she was American, I mean, Valencia is a pretty fancy name, too fancy for an American wix. We're simple people."

He adjusted his glasses, looking increasingly smug. "See, I read the file. She's from the same town you are according to her visa application."

"Hm, I wasn't aware I knew everyone in Albany. We must be smaller then the census says."

Percy looked down at me, refusing to take any of the bait I was laying down for him before he opened the file for me to make his point to reveal Valencia's picture and visa application. "You're welcome."

He turned and returned to his desk, his expression tightlipped and set in an apparent victory.

The joke was on him though, Valencia no longer lived at that listed address. I could keep this going a little longer, even if I was backed into a corner to tell the Minister and give Percy the credit. Which I did before I left for the day, the taste of it in my mouth was like ash and I sent Valencia a letter to her correct address to let her know what was going on immediately after I left work.

Oo0Oo0

June 21, 1996

The floor call that arrived in Auntie Lucinda's fireplace that morning called me to the Ministry at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Barry pulling me out of bed by my ankles to get me to the floo was not how my mornings usually started. I staggered to the room with the fireplace floo across the hall from my bedroom while tying my bathrobe closed to find the Head of Secretarial Affairs, Susanna Waldrope, in my fireplace, she appeared to be wearing a bathrobe as well judging by the neckline I could see in the fireplace.

Highly unusual. Let alone before sunrise.

She told me to put some clothes on. I was needed at the Minister's office in fifteen minutes before disappearing in a flash as suddenly as she had arrived.

I was still half asleep when I ambled back to my room to throw on the clothes I had laid out the night before and felt slightly more awake after I brushed my teeth and went downstairs to the big fireplace that I could stand in to use the floo, I didn't think I could apparate without my morning cup of coffee to grant me the gifts of life and coherence.

Barry pressed a large, warm mug in my hands, the top of the mug was covered by a saucer and a sticking charm to keep the ash and soot out of my coffee.

"Thank you, Barry."

Barry nodded and held up the floo powder pot for me. I stepped into the fireplace and was quickly sucked away in a flash of green fire.

The usual rush and roaring echoes of the Ministry atrium was simultaneously louder and softer then I had ever heard it before. The heat from the coffee mug in my hands was a dramatic, grounding contrast to the cold of the large, empty room. I opened my eyes and wiped the soot remnants from my face with a quick tap of my wand to the top of my head.

"What the hell?"

The Fountain of Magical Brethren was in shambles, pieces of it laid about on the floor and there were a series of large cracks in the floor. All hallmarks of duel of some sort. I took note of the divots in the walls next to my head from spell damage and recoil.

"They say he's back-"

"It can't be-"

"Dumbledore!"

It was five in the morning. My tired mind was piecing together a story where Dumbledore had broken into the Ministry to do… something that was being construed as malicious.

Maybe he wanted tea?

We had an abundance of it.

I took the saucer off the coffee mug and put it in my bag to return to Lucinda and took a few sips of coffee as I walked away from the fireplace to try and get to the elevator. I saw people from the other Ministry offices that I ran errands to in varying states of professional attire and nightclothes with more rushed whispering. A few women were crying in the corners.

Was someone dead?

I felt myself beginning to wake up and a sick anxiety began to brew in my guts. I managed to get onto the elevator, making eye contact with Millie Thorpe from the Law Enforcement Office who motioned me over.

"I thought you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago?"

"I did my best, we were short of floo powder," I shifted while she looked knowingly at my coffee.

"Sure. I can't fault you for the…?"

"Coffee, Millie."

"Yeah. That stuff." She paused as the doors opened to reveal more chaos from the offices. "I don't know what's going on."

"Susanna called you too?"

"Yep. Scared the hell out of my boyfriend. I'll have to apologize for that, she saw… Well, he was naked."

I struggled not to laugh. I was not going to laugh at that. I was not a child.

I did Millie the courtesy of laughing after she got off the elevator to her own screaming department where papers were flying everywhere and high pitched shouts defaced the usual Auror stoicism.

The elevator doors closed again and I was left alone as it rose to sip my coffee while I thought and wondered what had happened as the elevator rose up to the Minister's floor. I tried not to think about the reason, anything I could come up with at the moment was heavily influenced by my own half conscious state as I stepped onto my floor, my guts swimming in uncertainty.

It was unusually quiet up here.

I could not hear even a sound from the Minister's Support Staff Office, Eddie was very loud, normally I could hear him annoying Percy, but it was too early and the circumstances too strange for that kind of tomfoolery. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

I stepped into an office in the kind of flaming chaos politicians only dream about while holding a large mug of coffee.

Percy had the appearance of a shambling corpse, if I got close enough I could count all of his freckles that were popping off the paper white color of his skin with no issue except for the dull five o'clock shadow that lined his jaw. His hair was flying in several different directions, like he had just rolled out of bed at the suddenness of the Ministry's distress call and forgot to comb his hair. He must know something I don't.

Eddie was drinking something out of a flask and by the rough look of him, I sincerely hoped it was just tea. Unlike Percy, Eddie was wearing a nightshirt, some No-Maj pants and a bathrobe that he may have grabbed instead of his work robes in his rush to come to work. He looked a bit like a Florida retiree with a beachfront condo.

The door to the Minister's Office was closed tight, but I could see a light under the door where shadows were moving erratically under the gap between the door and the floor and the muffled, panicked voice of Minister Fudge.

"What's going on?"

Eddie spoke first. "Potter was right… He's back."

"What!"

I almost dropped my coffee. I moved quickly to my desk to set down my mug before I spilled it all over the carpet.

Percy gripped the corner of his desk with wide, frightened eyes. His world had just come apart.

Eddie had the better grip on the situation, despite his bedroom attire, and told began to tell me everything. That You-Know-Who and his followers had broken into the Ministry of Magic and had been stopped by none other then Harry Potter and a group of school children. Now Dumbledore was now in the Minister's office discussing this now open insurgency after arriving to fight .

By the twelve.

"We'll be here a while. There's a lot to do."

I nodded, doing my best to hide my shaking.

Fudge was going to lose his position over this. That much was clear. Though, for some reason, I felt bad for the man and not the Minister, if that made any sense at all.

Oo0Oo0

When I returned to Thornell late that evening, I found Tavish and Lucinda waiting for me in the dining room. Barry escorted me there once I had crossed the threshold after a long day at work. After working for over twelve hours in a crisis situation I just wanted to go to bed, but Lucinda and Tavish knew something big was happening and I would rather they both heard about it from me then the Daily Prophet. Tavish slid a shot glass of whiskey to me with the finesse of a barman and I drank it quickly, the burn of it going down my throat was revitalizing.

"Voldemort-" Tavish and Lucinda tensed, "-has returned." Lucinda's hand flew over her mouth while the other gripped the table in a white knuckle grip. "He broke into the Ministry, Potter and some school kids fought his Death Eaters and Fudge is on his way out of office."

Tavish's shoulders tensed and he leapt from his chair, a stream of Scottish Gaelic flying from his mouth like a coming storm as he began to pace around the room like a caged lion, a feral creature trapped in a cage of finery while he snapped and snarled.

"Those bastards!"

He said a bunch of other words I would not repeat.

"A year. They've let him run loose for a year…" Lucinda's voice was quiet as she sat like a statue in her chair. "We've been at war for a year and nobody knew."

My mind went to Alex. I believed the Death Eaters were active, I believed they were a splinter cell that Alex was investigating. I did not think he had gone into the belly of the beast, that he was in the vicinity of one of the greatest dark wizards of all time. I believed aspects of Potter's story, but a dark wizard coming back from the dead was not something I truly believed until a few hours ago.

Finding Alex was growing more complicated by the hour.

"I thought this was done long ago," Lucinda looked ready to leap out of the chair and follow Tavish's path around the room, but she kept to her seat and looked over at Barry, who was standing in the doorway with wide eyes. "Barry, go find the ward stones for me please. We'll have to redo the spells, and find some more whiskey for Tavish, the McDuff collection should suffice."

"Yes, Mistress." Barry disappeared with a pop while Tavish continued to pace around the room. He had stopped speaking and was now settling into a quiet shock while his anxious energy continued to propel him forward.

"Tavish, sit down!"

Tavish did as he was bid, not knowing what else to do.

"We will stay calm. Tavish, we've gotten through one war, we can get through another if we can hold it together."

"Righ', sorry Lucy." Tavish mumbled and put his head in his hands. "I jus' keep thinkin' about Alistair."

The silence at the table was deafening and heavy like a being encased in a box that was slowly being crushed. I remembered Tavish talking about Alistair being murdered before Voldemort became public. A year of a shadow war was sure to bring up a lot of memories that would be difficult to reconcile.

I knew so little about Voldemort's original rise in public consciousness. I would have to remedy that in the coming days.

"How? How did this stay so quiet? Why were we fed lies?" Lucinda was not even hiding her whispery rage as the last rays of sunlight disappeared into darkness. "How dare they!"

Barry popped into the room holding a collection of small stones with runes engraved upon them and placed them on the table with a clatter before disappearing again only to reappear holding a large bottle of whiskey to replace the empty one on the table.

"The McDuff, Mistress."

Thank you, Barry. I barely remembered where I put the whiskey or the stones."

Barry smiled and nodded. Lucinda summoned a pack of butterbeer from a storage closet near the kitchen. She brought the pack of glass bottles to rest on the dining room table and heaved a sigh.

"Have a seat, Barry. We need to talk as a family."

She poured a shot of butterbeer for Barry as he climbed into the chair next to Tavish who was examining the stones he had brought in with interest and he sipped his whiskey, his brow furrowed as he slipped deeper into thought.

Lucinda poured me a glass of butterbeer and another for herself. It was not as good as the kind I got at the pubs, but after the day I had, I did not care. I slipped it quietly, the drink was warm and sweet on my tongue.

What a day.

Lucinda's voice broke through the blank space of my thoughtless mind.

"We need to fix the spell work on the ward stones, I'll find the spell tonight and we'll do that over the next few days."

"What's a ward stone?" The term was unfamiliar to me, we had spoken of alternative forms of magic at Ilvermorny, but never in much detail, we covered the magical practices of different American ethnic groups or societies, such as the unique practices of the New Orleans wix who had inspiration from France and various African traditions. New Orleans had a school that strictly taught that style of magic in creole to try and preserve their traditional practices. Aunt Araminta was a graduate, but Quincy went to Ilvermorny at our grandfather's insistence, though Quincy studied with his mother over the summer so she could look her old school friends in the face.

"Ward stones are an old tradition here, we enchant them to help keep out influences of dark magic. It's not something that can be done with a few waves of a wand, but it will last longer and it's easier to do on a large property like this." Lucinda's voice was tinged with pride. She really loved her house and it's history. "We've used them at Thornell for centuries. All of you clear your evening schedules so I can teach you the spell and we can start putting the stones back."

The three of us nodded in agreement. That seemed reasonable.

"Audrey, lass, are ya sure ya wanna move ou'?" Tavish's voice was unusually quiet. "Ya can stay 'ere wit' us, I can 'ave words wit' da landlord if ya want?"

Lucinda and Barry nodded in agreement, Lucinda's grip on her glass was firm to steady what appeared to be a shaking hand.

"Thank you, but I'll move out as planned, besides, it would give you all a place to retreat too if you needed it."

"That offer goes two ways," Lucinda added firmly. "My doors will always be open to you, no questions asked."

My lips pulled back in a smile, perhaps the only one I had managed on this horrible day.

The rest of the evening was spent on what kind of safeguards and enchantments were going to be put on the house and where they would be the most effective. The war council came to an end after several drinks and I hit my head on the table when sleep became too heavy a burden. Lucinda shook my shoulder and made sure I got to bed.

I knew tomorrow was going to continue the chaos of emerging conflict and bring to light far more of the smaller details of the Ministry's incompetence. Putting my head down and getting through the days ahead was going to be an all or nothing task.

Oo0OO0

June 24, 1996

Elihu caught me in the hallway outside of the break room after a meeting with soon to be former Minister Fudge and his replacement Scrimgeour. He stared hard at the backs of the other diplomats and representatives who were following Percy and Scrimgeour to the elevator with a hard expression before he turned to look at me. Elihu's curly dark hair flew in several different directions as if he had spent the last hour gripping it in stress. It made him look a bit like a mountain man. His glasses were resting on the top of his head and threatening to fall back onto his face, his usually calm demeanor was replaced with the energy of a newly caged lion at the zoo.

He pointed down the hall with a jerk of his thumb and I followed him to a secluded area next to a janitorial closet and a particularly green fern far away from the elevator where we would not be overheard. An irritated Elihu was a creature of venting and angry gestures that needed space to be fully expressed to an audience or just himself. I knew the man had paced around his senate office talking to himself about everything from flowers for his wife to whatever stupid thing had been said on the floor that day.

"You need to leave. Leave the country. Go back to the States, head to Europe, I don't care, you just don't need to be here."

"What brought this on?"

"Scrimgeour might be successful, he was a Head Auror two weeks ago, but he clearly made no effort to really investigate Voldemort. I'm not confident that this will end well or quickly."

I nodded, Elihu was always very good about reading people.

"If your father wins this election, and it looks more likely by the day, your life is going to change dramatically. Once the agents realize where you are, they are going to come find you and any life you have built for yourself here will be finished. If you stay here with protection, you will become a political pawn, real or imagined, by whoever is in charge both here and within the walls of MACUSA." He reached up to fix his glasses which had fallen down onto his face during his speech. "And I won't be able to protect you from any of that."

"I can't hide from everything. I can't run from my father or his influence should he even get elected."

"No, but you can preserve a shred of what you've built by running. When I saw you after I took this post, I thought that it was the happiest I had ever seen you." He smiled quietly. "It was like the pieces of your life were starting to fall into place and you knew what you wanted from your life. You always looked lost and sad when you were working for me. Leaving your family has been good for you, but when your father wins that is going to end until he leaves office and you need to assume he'll at least get a second term."

"I'm not running away, Elihu. I still haven't found Alex."

His brow knit together in confusion before he settled on a scowl. I suddenly understood what made him such a fierce attorney before his Senate career. Elihu Weathers was a man who was very smart and enjoyed using his brain like a well polished weapon, his disposition of politeness and courtesy hid a lion in sheep costume.

"I won't help you with this fool's errand Audrey. If he can't be reached, then he doesn't want to be found." He paused, seemingly collecting himself as he realized his voice was rising. He took a deep breath. "Alex is a grown man, he's been in dangerous places to report for over five years. He's smart enough to lay low until the war is over."

"I know. I've learned a lot from you Elihu, I'll be alright."

Silence settled between us, cold and dangerous. Elihu's disapproval was like the bone numbing chill of winter while one could look at him and know that his anger kept him perfectly warm despite it. There was something to admire in the ability to be so annoyed with others and unable to suppress it, but it made for bad optics and Elihu was too smart to allow his position to be besmirched by his own personal flaws. I imagined some of his anger towards me was actually from the meeting, which allowed me to stay firm the way I could not with my father.

"I'm ordering all expats to begin considering a return to the States within the next few days. As is Canada. We will hold an embassy position to continue doing business and trade with the Ministry and continue to offer support, but our citizens will be told it is in their best interest to leave."

"I'm a dual national."

"When Voldemort was in power twenty years ago, it was a nightmare. A lot of people were killed in their own homes like the Bones woman. America has had its struggle with Dark Wizards but they were never as dangerous as this one man." Elihu sighed, "Figures I get sent here when everything starts going to shit."

"That just means Cunningham thinks you can handle it."

"And your father is too practical to move me and send in someone who would have to get up to speed on wartime politics. Cunningham had suspicions for close to a year. I wouldn't call her a Potter supporter, but she was in the London Embassy office during the first war and told me all about it before I took the job."

"Really?"

"If you're serious about riding this out, please be careful. If you need to leave, come to the embassy and ask for me and I'll do my best to keep everything quiet and get you into one of the commonwealth states."

I nodded solemnly, hoping that this offer would never be needed.

"I mean it, Aud." He put a hand on my shoulder and shook it to enunciate his point. "War's get worse before they get better and in the end we all must pay the fiddler for our arrogance."

Oo0Oo0

Author's Note: Here we go folks!

Note on the chapter title, I actually took it from a book that has been sitting on my parents bookshelf for 30 years about a nuclear war. Reportedly it's a sci-fi classic.