Green fire folded back and left Arcturus Black on the hearthstone. Coal light ran over new walls. The office was not the old circle but a long rectangle that kept its secrets at the edges. To his right, portraits held a straight line of former heads. Phineas Nigellus Black watched from his frame with the pleased disdain of a man who still thinks he owns the school. To the left, shelves pressed with tomes that had outlived their binders. The desk stood clean and dark with a stair rising behind it into private rooms.
Three figures faced him. Headmistress Vinda Rosier is behind the desk. A hooded figure with the stillness of the Department in the nearer chair. Heir Potter, on the other hand.
"Minister." The hood dipped to him, then to Vinda, then to the boy. No time wasted on names. She turned, crossed to the hearth, and took the Floo in three steps. The green swallowed her and left a scent of ash.
Vinda shifted a look to Potter. "Back to lessons."
Potter rose at once. A small bow to the desk. A glance for Arcturus that tried not to be curious. The door closed without a sound.
Arcturus drew two parchments from his inner pocket and laid them on her desk. Confederation seal on one. Ministry seal on the other. Vinda read in a straight line, eyes calm, mouth still.
A single nod when she reached the end. "I will send word for the Acolytes and the Alliance. They will start to form with available teams. You need to raise the wards of the borders to war level. The Confederation will not sit still after this."
Arcturus watched Phineas pretend to sleep. "The order is already on the runners. I want Hogwarts to stay out of this conflict." Vinda's gaze locked with his. "Not you," he clarified. "The school should stay out of the conflict."
Vinda set the parchments square. "There is another matter. It has been a week since Gellert began the new potions and diet. If you are sure, we can take him out of Nurmengard."
Arcturus weighed the hour. The country was a board. The pieces had started to move. He did not like to open too many games at once. "We will ask the mind that started all of this."
Vinda called for a Hogwarts elf.
A house elf popped and bowed to the very grain of the floor. Vinda sent two words.
"Fetch Corvus."
The elf vanished with a crack.
He did not take long. Corvus Black came in after a minute. He greeted Vinda with a slight incline and handed Arcturus a respectful look that was not servile. The parchments moved to his hand. His eyes went down them, line by line.
"It is clean work," he judged at last. "It is not ideal to show our hand this soon." He set the papers down and drew a breath that belonged to planning. "If you want tension with the Confederation, arrest their people. That is sound. But do not do more than that. We do not have the numbers to swagger yet."
Once started, it will take months at best. A year or two, if we use all of our channels and positions we gained to postpone a solution or a vote.
"We use the time," Corvus went on. "All of central and eastern Europe must be shaped to match Norway's model and the northern conclaves. Ward stones, charter courts, clean ledgers, oaths that bite. No more funds from ICW. If a state wants our coin, it builds to our plan."
Vinda's fingers tapped once on the desk and were still. "And after all this setup?"
"We go where their eyes are slow," Corvus answered. "Muggle political and economic bodies will be taken over at the same time. Quietly, not with banners. Seats on boards. Quiet funds through old names. A vote here, a file there. We will choose three cities and build out. Berlin, Vienna and Moscow. If you want a fourth, take Istanbul. We place people who can speak the language and drink the water without choking."
Arcturus studied the map in his head and found the lines fit. "You say two years."
"A full turn for solidity," Corvus said. "We will have more Muggle criminal structures under our control. These structures will feed our plans. Within that time, our numbers will increase enough. We will have settlements fed and taught. We will have oaths that bind loyalty and efficiency. We will have teeth that the ICW cannot see until it is too late."
Vinda drew a small breath that might have been relief. "So we take the Confederation's staff where we can and hold the rest at arm's length."
"Exactly," Corvus said. "Every arrest buys us days. Ten here. Twenty there. Enough to finish the foundations. Enough to move on to Russia first. The land is wide, and the will is hard. They will build if you give them land and gold."
Vinda watched him a moment longer, then turned the page in front of her with a nail. "What about Gellert?"
Corvus' face did not change. "We keep him on the potions. He will regain his strength quickly if no one bothers him. You have healers within the Alliance. Let them work."
Vinda weighed the next step and let the weight show. "Can you perform the rejuvenation ritual for him as well?"
Silence settled in the room for a count of four. Phineas opened one eye and made a study of the ceiling.
Corvus set a palm on the desk and looked down into the wood. "Grandfather called him brother. You were his sharpest blade. I know that. I have read the records, and I have watched your face when his name walks through a room." He lifted his gaze and met hers without a blink. "I support his policies. I agree with his way of seeing what we are and what they are. More importantly, I agree with most of his policies about where we should be."
He let the space between the words stay clean.
"I am not a good follower, Aunt Vinda." No heat in it. A simple ledger line. "I do not know him as you do. I do not know the man under the title. And we are Black." A faint curl at the corner of his mouth that was not a smile. "We do not bow. I do not bow. Not to you, he motioned to Arcturus. Not to him, and definitely not to Gellert Grindelwald."
Vinda held his eyes for the space of a breath, then another.
Arcturus reached for the parchments and stacked them as if they had always belonged together. "Then we proceed on the plan we own. Vinda, raise your wards. Corvus, finish your classes and send for the lists I asked you to draw. We will have the country in hand before anyone thinks to map it."
Corvus inclined his head. Vinda's pen found the first order. Arcturus moved towards the heart.
--
Rita Skeeter had her cloak halfway on when a falcon struck the window with three neat taps. She unlatched the catch, and the bird slid in on silent wings. It landed on her desk and lifted a leg with a professional insult.
"Show me, darling." She slipped the ribbon free and set the packet on the blotter. A soft Engorgio brought it back to size. She cracked it after making sure it was safe and let the contents spill.
Dozens of moving photographs slid across the wood. Aurors of DMLE behind shield lines. Two grey blurs that resolved into men with the speed of vampires cutting through curse light. A wall marked with the ICW crest was clearly visible. Hit Wizards in confederation uniforms casting spells towards the Aurors. A clean set of parchments followed. One with the Confederation's crest and that banker tone they liked. One with the Ministry's answer in Arcturus Black's signature.
The Confederation had written its own noose. The ministry answered in their own. She reached for fresh parchment and her favourite quill.
Ink cooled as it spread. She wrote the headline large enough to walk on.
CONFEDERATION OR TERRORISTS? ICW WRITES THREATS, BRITAIN WRITES WARRANTS
by Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent
Dear readers, some grand bodies shy from the word terrorist. They prefer committee and sanction, and other soft clothes. Our valiant Aurors were targeted this morning. Here are your facts.
The International Confederation of Wizards has notified your Ministry, it will squeeze trade and travel. It demands the return of its own staff who forgot the first rule of a guest. It demands that a dark wizard named Albus Dumbledore be taken from lawful custody and carried to a friendly court abroad. They set it out in tidy script and expected a curtsey.
"Your Minister answered in the plain tongue of law. Minister Black placed the ICW on the list reserved for those who threaten the realm. Arrest orders went for the personnel of this terrorist organisation. He sent Aurors to arrest these unwanted people. DMLE sent Hit Wizards when they raised their wands at British Aurors."
She turned to a new parchment when the first was filled."The first photograph shows a pair of ICW Aurors raising their wands at our Aurors. Readers with sharp eyes will note who the aggressor is.
The second photograph shows Diagon Alley at noon. An ICW Hit Wizard casts spells towards our Aurors. The smoke is not for effect. One may count the scorch marks.
The third is the ICW's gate with our warrant on the lintel and their crest on its way down. Etiquette matters even when tempers do not.
The fourth will please the practical among you. Minister Black arranged Vampire Covens to help us. A DMLE vampire runner, under oath and on contract, pulls a child clear by the collar while an ICW Hitt Wizards starts to raise their wands. With the speed of their species, they saved lives today. Magicals of Britain serve and protect their own. The agreement with Vampire Covens arranged for them to receive blood from the Muggle side. They do not hunt anymore. They work under DMLE; they work for you, dear readers. The brave may call it public service.
As for sanctimony, the body that is corrupt enough to leave Dumbledore as their leader, now pleads for him as if for a misplaced hat. Dumbledore has confessed to many, many of his crimes, yet ICW, the terrorist organisation that sacrifices children for political causes, an organisation that steals from orphans, is still working to free him. Demanding that we, the proud people of this realm to hand him over. This Reporter says some unfriendly words towards such an outrageous demand. Readers may join me in these words.
This paper will not apologise for a Ministry that met threats with warrants, nor will it blush for printing the Confederation's letter in full. Consider them, dear readers and decide which reads like government and which reads like terrorists.
A brief lesson in difference. A lawful organisation respects borders and courts and yields to verdicts. A terrorist threatens to free one of their arrested members. What will they do when the answer is no? What will you do when these unlawful demands start to affect your daily life, my dear readers?
Rita laid the quill down. The piece looked back without apology. She chose five photographs and slid the rest into a folder. The night editor would have the package in five minutes.
At the very moment Rita broke the wax, identical packets winked out through international portkeys to bureau desks and newsrooms abroad. Sofia, Berlin, Moscow, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Istanbul, Baku, Astana, Ashgabat, Ulaanbaatar, Beijing, Delhi, Tokyo, and more. Editors opened the same neat bundle: the Confederation's letter, the Ministry's reply, and those useful moving frames.
The Prophet still ran its own owls. Bundles hit doorsteps on Diagon and the farther streets where news comes with bread.
In Sofia, a clerk read the headline twice and walked the proof to a Minister who had not slept. In Berlin, a runner pinned the notice to a board, and two ICW clerks watched it with faces that went grey. In Istanbul, a squad in the Ministry grey took three badges from a table without raising their voices. In Oslo, a vampire under contract lifted a shield in a port while an Auror cuffed a man in a Confederation uniform. The same notes went into ledgers in the same tidy hands.
By mid morning, warrants had hands behind them on five continents. ICW offices learned how a lock sounds when it turns on the outside. Clerks with soft shoes found that resistance cost more than a job.
Rita stood at her window and watched the last of the owls go.