Chapter 133. Television.
A nervous young man in robes stood before a grim, green-haired man with a dagger at his belt.
"You're telling me we've lost contact with the surveillance group?"
"Yes. They didn't send their morning report and missed their check-in. When we tried to track them through the seal, nothing came back. We can't say whether they're alive or dead. Something may be blocking the connection, so we..."
"I see." Vitold cut him off, folding his hands as he sank into thought. Spencer. One of my best in espionage and intelligence. But how could anyone have noticed him, let alone caught him, when even I can't keep up with the man? He let out a weary sigh. Now I understand Nestor. With someone that powerful standing behind the boy, of course he switched sides. I was naive. Overconfident. In the space of a week, he had lost two powerful mages and sixty subordinates, all because of one young man. He couldn't afford losses like these. If the whole plan fell apart, the leader wouldn't be patting him on the head. He'd be lucky to keep his post as director. First, I report this and wait for a decision. He raised his eyes to his subordinate. "I'm ordering you to stop digging into Severus for now. Concentrate on crushing the gangs. What's the status of our Ministry spies?"
"All clear. None have been exposed. No suspicious activity directed at them." A note of relief crept into the man's voice.
"Good. You are dismissed."
"Yes."
When the door closed, Vitold stood and walked to the wall. He pressed several bricks in a precise sequence. The wall shuddered and slid open, revealing a narrow passage.
The room beyond was almost bare except for a large mirror fixed to the wall, a red magic circle drawn around its frame.
He stepped up to it and pressed his palm to a blank space within the circle. It flared. A ripple passed across his reflection, and after a few seconds the image shifted to reveal a face behind a white mask worked with gold, blond hair spilling from beneath it. Vitold dropped to one knee immediately.
"This better be worth interrupting." The voice was calm, faintly amused.
"An unforeseen factor. We've lost two Magisters and another sixty men."
"Oh?" The voice grew sharper with interest. "That does sound intriguing. Tell me everything. What sort of person has managed to cost you this much?"
"Yes."
For the next ten minutes he recounted everything that had happened since the mission began, holding nothing back. Deceiving the leader was never wise. The man had ears everywhere and might already know of these losses.
"...and that is everything we have been able to gather on him." Vitold fell silent and waited. When no immediate reaction came, a weight lifted from his chest. Years of service had taught him to read his leader. That stillness, the finger pressed thoughtfully to the mask, meant he was thinking. It meant his position was safe. A small knot of unease remained all the same.
"Take no further action against him for now. I'll send you the third group as reinforcement. The Gold division."
"Yes." Vitold could not quite keep the relief from his voice. After losing Spencer's group, men of that caliber were exactly what he needed. The Gold division specialized in espionage. "Thank you."
"I'll contact you shortly with my decision on this matter. Don't disappoint me again." The words were spoken in a perfectly ordinary tone, and Vitold shuddered all the same. A moment later, the mirror returned to showing his own reflection.
"That was close." He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and headed for the exit. With the Gold squad behind him, finishing the mission would be considerably easier. He didn't much like the idea of sharing the reward, but he had no choice.
The following week passed in the same strange quiet, to the surprise of everyone in magical Britain. Many began to wonder whether the war had simply ended, whether peace had finally arrived. Nothing appeared in the papers, and the bolder sort started venturing out again, though mostly in daylight. Evenings still left the streets empty. No official announcement had come, and everyone understood that the silence was only the calm before the storm. Nobody relaxed.
The same could not be said for the darker corners of the magical world, where a genuine war raged between gangs. Every day, their numbers shrank.
Two stood out from the rest: the Ink Union, backed by The Black Star, and the Dark Serpents, loyal to the Death Eaters. Slowly but steadily, the former were pushing the latter back, claiming more and more territory.
The Ministry was aware of the conflict, of course, but chose not to interfere. They were busy building their own strength, preparing to deal with all their enemies at once. They fed their enemies' spies a steady diet of disinformation laced with just enough truth to be believed. For appearances, they even caught one spy red-handed in the act of transmitting information and ran a full sweep afterward, finding 'no one,' naturally. The idea was to make the organization complacent. If too long passed without an arrest, it would have looked suspicious. And it worked. The Black Star's people, who had been digging in places they had no business digging, went a little quieter.
Neither side was ready for open confrontation. Both feared a knife in the back from the third. So it remained a cold war. Everyone gathered strength and intelligence, hunting for weaknesses.
Voldemort himself knew, courtesy of Fudge's loose tongue, that the Ministry was aware of the organization and its spies. He wasn't about to broadcast that, though. They might be sworn enemies, but they were still residents of the same country. He had no intention of handing Britain over to some foreign intruders. That said, he wouldn't mind watching them tear each other to pieces.
There was one other organization that knew the situation just as well as the Ministry did: the Order of the Phoenix. It didn't formally support the Ministry, but it shared their goal of defeating the Dark Lord. The Order was led by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Like Tom, he had people among the Aurors, not least Alastor Moody.
Moody was no traitor or spy. He simply supported both sides, and Harold knew it. He turned a blind eye, because they needed all the help they could get, especially from one of the most powerful wizards in the country. For the time being, Moody served as a liaison between the two organizations.
In their correspondence, they had already reached an understanding: if full war broke out, the Headmaster would side with the Ministry and occupy Voldemort while they dealt with Black Star.
Meanwhile, Severus was not having the most peaceful of times.
"HIGHER!" he shouted, clinging to a large antenna twenty meters above the house.
Just a little more! Nagini's voice rang through his head, bright with excitement. She was inside, eyes fixed on a small black box where a dancing couple flickered through hissing static.
"Why did I ever open my mouth about this blasted television?" he muttered, hauling himself higher. "AND NOW?"
Just a tiny bit more!
Damn.
What he was doing now was nothing compared to what he had already been through. Because of the barrier and the sheer concentration of magic saturating the place, no Muggle electrical device would function. He had been forced to rework almost everything from scratch, building a dome around the equipment that kept magic at bay. Even that hadn't been the end of it. The television signal couldn't penetrate the barrier either, and he'd had to find a way around that problem separately. He couldn't simply punch a hole in it.
After all that, a fresh problem had appeared: the antenna. It couldn't pick up a signal because the house was too far from anything resembling civilization. He had worked through roughly ten different designs before settling on a three-meter white dish.
Finally, after a few more minutes, the picture cleared and the hissing stopped. He conjured a wooden pole from the ground, fixed the dish to it, and climbed down. A smile spread across his face. The ordeal was over.
"Well? How is it?" he asked, stepping inside and watching Nagini with satisfaction as she stared at the screen. "Now you won't be bored while I work."
"Mm-hmm! Thank you!" She nodded eagerly and leaned against his chest as he settled beside her. He began to stroke her hair, his own gaze drifting to the screen.
"Muggles really are something, inventing a thing like this."
"I agree. By the way." She looked up at him, puzzled. "What's a VCR? There was an ad for one."
"You connect it to the television. You can record programs onto special cassettes, or buy cassettes in shops that already have films on them." The moment he caught the gleam in her eyes, he let out a tired sigh. "We'll figure it out tomorrow."
"All right." She took pity on him, though her delight was boundless. He had spent nearly an entire day on this television, all for her sake. It was remarkable. When I have a human body again, I'm going to learn to drive a car. It looks so wonderful. She watched a beautiful woman in a black dress slide behind the wheel and drive off into the sunset, a bright smile fixed on her face.
Had Severus heard those thoughts, he would have wept. Who exactly did she think was going to teach her? He had been thinking about buying a car himself and enchanting it.
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