There is Nothing to Fear [Harry Potter AU; Gryffindor!Voldemort]

[Omniext]

Holy shit, you magnificent bastard you-
I did not see that coming. Well played.

 

[JevvyPython]

Yet another fascinating turn! And still loving this Riddle, he's far more interesting than the 1 dimensional original.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

Tomorrow, the Flood
Part 2: Viktor Krum
​

They say politics is a contact sport, and I have to agree with that.
— Steve Largent​

My friend, Viktor wrote, as I write to you, I am below the waves and my words are lit by the glow of the tzohar, too far removed to know what has become of you since we last spoke. I suppose that I will owl this letter anyway when I am able, for all the good that it may do, but I know there is not much point in doing so.

Viktor continued to write in vague circumambulations, never using one word where three might do, so that he could write freely — write truthfully — without coming to trouble for it. Harry was lost somewhere in Europe, well away from Durmstrang, and might never receive this letter. Nevertheless, Viktor wrote for a long time, until his hand cramped and his eyes drooped. I hope that you are alright, he finished, and then he spelled the contents into gibberish and sealed the parchment with a second charm.

Sometime later, he was roused from sleep by a knocking at his door: Dudek and Hampus stood on the other side, faces cold and serious. "It is late, isn't it?" Dudek said, as if he hadn't noticed the time until he saw the hour on Viktor's face. "I am sorry, only, we were thinking all this time about Dmitry, and…"

"It isn't the case that Dmitry has been hiding in your trunk, is it?" asked Hampus, and her mouth briefly, weakly, twitched into half a smile.

For a moment Viktor wondered at what they might suspect, and then pressed his worries away. "Unfortunately it is not."

"Esfir wrote to Dmitry's family before we left Britain," Dudek said, "but we won't hear back from them until the next delivery to Durmstrang."

The Poliakoffs wouldn't know anything, of course, not that Viktor could say so. Dmitry was still at Durmstrang, and probably hadn't gotten a chance to send a letter to his parents or cousins even if he'd wanted to. Mail was only delivered to Durmstrang every couple of weeks, so even if Dmitry had heard that Harry was missing, any letters which he meant to write would still be waiting in Landsbyen to be picked up.

"I will be traveling extensively this summer. I'm sure that I can visit the Poliakoffs in person."

"Your team is going to play in Sweden this year?" asked Dudek.

"No, but it will be close enough for me to meet them anyway," Viktor said, and then Hampus raised the rumor that Dmitry had been arrested by British Aurors.

"Esfir has a cousin who works for the Forestry and Lakes Agency," Hampus mentioned. "It isn't much, but he's a secretary to the Great Officer there, and she could pass on a message to the Chancellery to agitate on Dmitry's behalf."

It didn't take any special effort for Viktor to look worried for Dmitry. His concern was genuine, and while he mostly held it for Harry, Viktor still worried for Dmitry himself, and the circumstances that his friend had unwittingly been thrust into. But all the schemes that the three of them discussed would come to nothing, because Dmitry was at Durmstrang and it was Harry who was missing, under circumstances unlike anything that they suspected.

When the ship arrived at Durmstrang, its crew and complement were greeted with the news that Magnus Undheim, the head of the Astronomy Department, had been selected as the school's new rector. The appointment was mildly surprising; less startling was the accompanying revelation that Undheim planned to tighten the school's admissions requirements and permit only Pure-bloods and — this was a grudging concession to some of the fence-sitters, or so Viktor gathered — the children of alumni, whatever their blood status.

The precise definition of "Pure-blood" would be decided later, over the summer.

Viktor did not have time to inquire further, because he and Dmitry spotted each other. They embraced as long-separated friends, and then separated themselves from the rest of the crowd and levitated Viktor's belongings to his room at Durmstrang. It was not a little unsettling to see Harry's face again, and Viktor had to consciously remind himself that Harry Prince is gone, location unknown. The boy's face was uneasy in turn, but hid it well until they passed into Viktor's room and the door was shut.

"What did you do!?" Dmitry hissed. His voice, filtered through Harry's body, twisted between anger and terror, would have knocked Viktor to the floor if it were any harsher, and Viktor was unable to reply immediately.

"Harry did not follow the plan."

"I think that I understood this, as he is not standing beside you, and the news is that Dmitry Poliakoff has mysteriously gone missing," Dmitry said, almost hissing by the end. "Was the rector a part of your plot as well? How much did I not know?"

"I can assure you that Rector Karkaroff had nothing to do with us. I know nothing more than you on that matter, except for what I saw."

"You can imagine how it might make me wonder, hearing that both of you apparently are trying to kill this Tom Riddle person. Let the Devil take me, and all this for a schoolteacher!"

"He is not just a schoolteacher."

"Well, not anymore, since everybody has decided to make his life so much more interesting this year!" Harry's face scrunched up. "I should have said 'no' as soon as I knew that you two were going to get involved in politics. 'Maybe he has retired,' I said! 'Maybe he does not want to go killing people anymore,' I said! But nobody listens to Dmitry, who is only a drunkard and a fool, and now you have roused a dragon!"

"If you had seen what I have seen, you would not be so sure that Riddle was happy to pass his life in retirement."

"But we will not know for sure, will we?" Dmitry huffed. "Still, Harry ought to have left well enough alone. The world is big, with shadows enough to hide in for a hundred years if he liked. Did I not say this as well?"

"You know that this wasn't about him."

"What about his father, then, since this God-forsaken plan was for his sake — What is he going to do when he knows that Harry is gone? What is my family going to think, and what is my story to be if I return?" Dmitry groaned. "There is a ray of hope in that I was going to graduate, so at least I do not need to worry about my attendance at Durmstrang next year."

"Some people believe that you fell in love with a wizard visiting from the Atlantic Commonwealth, and returned with him at its end."

Harry's face was slack as Dmitry considered this. "Very well, it is plausible. Neither is it so terrible an idea. Perhaps I will go to the New World after all. There are plenty enough in Alto Brasil who speak Norwegian, and Europe does not seem so safe a place anymore." Dmitry paid a withering glance to Viktor, as if he were personally responsible for the trouble.

(In fairness, Viktor might protest that Riddle had planned for politics to begin with, but he could not say that he and Harry had not affected circumstances at all)

"Whatever you need to accomplish it, I will secure this for you," Viktor promised.

"I have enough hairs for now. I think I will need to write some letters to my family at some point, but no one is looking for Harry Prince right now. I think I will get out of the country alright."

"Speaking of Harry, I know little more than anyone else about his whereabouts, only that he has not been arrested in Britain. I am worried for him."

"God is on high and I will be far away," Dmitry said. "I certainly hope that all will be with Harry, but do not be surprised that I want nothing to do with this. Frankly, he can go to Switzerland for all that I care." His hand tightened into a fist, and then relaxed as his shoulders slumped. "If you ever see Harry again, give him my best."

Viktor had little time or will to speak with friends after that. Everyone assumed that it had something to do with Dmitry — and it did, actually, to a certain extent — but it was not just the burden of worrying for Harry. Dmitry had little interest in sharing that burden, and that was understandable, because Viktor might have helped to ruin two lives, not just one. At least neither of them were dead. Presumably.

Upon returning to Bulgaria, Viktor had scarcely enough time for his mother and grandmother to greet him before he was summoned to Dryanovec for Quidditch. Bulgaria had won the Quidditch World Cup last year —by the skin of their teeth, plus a few bones — and the Sport and Culture Despot would have liked to see him at practice a month ago if he hadn't needed to finish his last year of school. The next cup was three years away, but its image was clear in the gazing crystal of the government, which was no less hungry for national prestige than any other country.

When he joined the team, only two of its members were familiar to Viktor: Krasimir Sedefchov, a Chaser, and Sashka Radoslavova, Beater and team captain. Serafimov had retired, but the sorry fact was that the rest of them had been replaced. Until the Sport and Culture Despot assembled a Bulgarian National Quidditch Team next year there would be three Bulgarian teams, playing against each other and in regional tournaments while the individual achievements of their players were measured and weighed. It was no wonder that some players were missing from Viktor's provisional team when they hadn't even been good enough for substitute positions the previous year.

They played against another of the Bulgarian teams to inaugurate the season, and Kaloyan Slanina, God rot his soul, was there to midwife it. "I watched your performance through the whole Triwizard Tournament, of course. It was a pity that you couldn't win it," Slanina said. He had spoken with everybody, a quick word and a handshake as he impressed upon them the importance of winning the Cup in three years' time. "But never mind that, you're going to be flying for Bulgaria again! With you flying as our Seeker, the World Cup is as good as ours."

Viktor would have liked to spit in his face. He would have liked to quit Quidditch forever, if that would dirty Slanina's name. But the Krums had been as poor as they were pure, and the Bulgarian government had helped to pay his way through Durmstrang. The tuition could be quite expensive for a family that lived outside its catchment area and had no alumni among their ancestors. He was free to quit before his contract was finished, but then they would be free to turn their prior assistance into a loan and demand that he pay it back in full and with interest.

"I'm looking forward to it," Viktor said, while he wondered whether Slanina's ash blond hair would keep that color if it were burnt to cinders.

They were due to play their first international match two weeks later in Rabarbar Rzewień, a wizarding hamlet in the south of Poland-Lithuania. Before the team departed, Sedefchov met with Viktor privately. "I want you to keep the Snitch uncaught for as long as possible," he said. "Fly for it, sure, but miss. At least for the first couple of hours."

Viktor almost asked why, but then he understood. His own position on the future Bulgarian National Quidditch Team was just as secure as their slot in the next Quidditch World Cup, but the victory which had guaranteed Bulgaria that slot had nearly slipped through their fingers like Peru had slipped so many Quaffles through their hoops. Bulgaria needed the best team possible, and that meant giving everybody a chance to play their roles.

Their performance that day was abysmal: 30 points to the 200 points scored by the Rabarbar Barbarians, whose Seeker caught the Snitch while Viktor dithered. But all bad things had their good side: rumor had it that Slanina was furious.

They played in Zelenarus, and in Transylvania, and in Ungrie. He dove for a golden glint beneath the waves of the coast of Kakan, and his broom swept the underbrush and dodged the branches of Białowieża, and he cut through the wind above the Polesie Marshes, and so much of it, so much of the time, might as well have been happening to someone else.

He was hardly a Seeker anyway, most of the time, just a wizard on a broom until the clock ran out and he could do his job. But that wasn't the problem. It stuck in his craw, but Sashka had a point, and he could live with it.

But what Viktor remembered best was not the flying, not the competing, not the thrill of whisking above the water or the peace of hovering beneath a gibbous moon while he tried to spy in its light the Golden Snitch, hurtling through clouds and spiraling into grass, winning by centimeters and a few tens of points or breaking his leg or nearly slipping from his broom in the fatigue of a days-long game…

What he remembered was not the games, but the news between the games, which was bad so often. It roared from the headlines, and it was muttered in the changing rooms, and it was argued in the coffeehouses. "Further Proof of Mudblood-Grindelwaldist Conspiracy!" proclaimed Vox Res Publica, while the wireless was abuzz with talk of night-time abductions by riders on black brooms and Pure-blood babies swapped with Muggle-borns.

Letters from Hermione were some of the only bright things that he read. She was doing as well as anyone could have hoped under the circumstances. It was clear that the British government was interfering with her correspondence, with redactions and the occasional interpolation by another hand, but Fleur had received letters from her as well, and Fleur assured him that the letters were authentic, regardless of the peculiar but blatant alteration to Hermione's signature.

But in the meanwhile, there was only news. "You cannot trust these people. Do you think that the Granger girl is the only Mudblood Briton to have infiltrated their society?" said the scratching, hoarse voice that played in a Serbian cafe one evening. They were talking about Death Eater spies in Western European governments, Viktor believed.

It was not enough to send him walking out, though Viktor hated to hear it. There was so little he could do; he felt compelled to at least gather information. But he couldn't bear to pay a single kjádka to the ghouls who published such drivel, so he kept his ears open and filched a newspaper where he found one unattended and discarded. Opinion: Jadvyga Sowa-Pelėda's Death Unlikely to be Suicide, blazoned its headline. Sowa-Pelėda is the fifth friend of the maligned Igor Karkaroff to die a purported suicide in the past three months. Can we doubt that any other's hand is in it but that of the British mongrel Thomas Riddle?

The article continued in this vein for some time, and the remainder of the Tradicionalne Novine was no more edifying. The details were everywhere different but the message was the same, no matter whether the enemy were Bogomils or an Egyptianist Conspiracy or simply "a civilization of death." When Viktor had finished his survey of the news, he used it to clean some spilt coffee, then vanished the rag, set out a few coins for the coffee and a nut roll, and left.

Outside, the temperature was pleasantly cool, a relief from the roasting heat of the day's sunlit hours. No doubt some of that had to do with Viktor's acclimation to Durmstrang, but still, he would have liked it better if the next game were going to be played somewhere northerly. Instead they were due to play outside Radan, and the week thereafter they would go further south, to Hellas.

It took several minutes for Viktor to realize that he was being followed. In his defense, his stalker was a hooded owl.

But as soon as his gaze fixed upon it, the owl dove with a Seeker's grace, falling almost to his hands and rising up again as if it had been pulled by an invisible puppeteer. Only after it disappeared did he realize that the owl had put a letter into his hands. He slid the tip of his wand across the seal to open it, then read by wand-light.

Viktor, he read, and his eyes flickered to the end. There was no signature, but the handwriting gave away Harry's identity.

Everything is well, the letter began. I am safe, or as safe as you could believe me to be, with my disposition. You may find it more assuring to know that I am under adult supervision again. My father sends his — here there were several attempts at a word, each scribbled out in turn — acknowledgements. I know that I've made a mess of things, and I'll try to make it up to you and Dmitry. I'm trying to do that now. But don't worry: adult supervision, remember, and one of them is my father. This can't go as badly as the last time that I tried to fix things.

He read the letter thrice to commit it to memory, then set fire to it on the spot.

 

[Keres Acheron]

Just binged this, and it is excellent. Thanks for writing.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

Tomorrow, the Flood
Part 3: Padfoot/Sirius Black​

You can usually tell that a man is good if he has a dog who loves him.
— W. Bruce Cameron​

The smell of blood is full in the air and on the grass. It raises Padfoot's hackles, for mixed in the thickness of it is his scent, but nowhere is Padfoot allowed to pursue him. "Move, mutt," people say, and "Stay back, old boy," and "No place for a dog," and they shoo Padfoot away from the search. Padfoot wanders into the forest, but his scent is absent there, and Padfoot returns to the castle, full of his scent and the odor of several hundred children. Everyone is worried, upset, anxious, and it makes Padfoot anxious, drives a tremble through Padfoot's steps and makes Padfoot pant.

Padfoot finds some comfort with a student, who finds comfort with Padfoot. She scratches Padfoot between the shoulderblades and holds Padfoot close and says that Padfoot is being very good. Then another person enters the hallway, the professor who smells like goblins and cherry syrup and comes up a little past Padfoot's shoulder.

"Riddle is alive," he says, looking Padfoot in the eye. "You can guess where to find him."

Padfoot bounds away, almost leaping, all the way up the stairs and down the halls to his office. Padfoot paces and barks a little to make it known that Padfoot is present, and then lays down, patient, until a passage opens and Padfoot ascends another flight of stairs. To him.

He has the look of distraction, the acrid and sulfurious scent of distress, fresh and strong and full in the air while he stares across his desk at an empty space in the chair on the other side. At Padfoot's approach he awkwardly twists a ring off his finger and slips it into one of the inner pockets of his voluminous, black-dark robes. He slips down to the seat of his chair, too slowly to call the movement a "collapse," too controlled to call it easy.

Padfoot sits beside his chair, and raises a paw to rest upon his knee, looks up to his face. Not far off, in a heap on the desk, is a silver-shimmering cloth. It smells familiar, in a way that gnaws painfully at Padfoot, like a rat that mistook deep sleep for death: sharp and sudden, and gone as soon as Padfoot stirs. The pain isn't important. The cloth isn't important. The scent isn't important (but it lingers anyway).

The more important thing is that he is still preoccupied. Padfoot can guess why: he is missing most of his arm, and the scent of fire is still present, albeit not so fresh that it makes Padfoot's tail tuck itself away or tremble. But the smoky, rancid smell of burnt flesh, and the bitter stench of adrenaline, and the dark blood on his face: Padfoot understands what these things point to, and Padfoot wonders whether someone — maybe someone that Padfoot can fetch — might have kept him safe.

Padfoot whines softly, the sympathetic whine, and softly noses the side of his leg. Pay attention to something else, Padfoot means. Pay attention to Padfoot.

It works, and he looks over and scratches Padfoot behind the ears. The sensation is pleasant all the way down to Padfoot's tail, and not just because he already looks calmer and relaxed. Padfoot makes to lay down when he stops scratching, maybe rest across his feet, but he stands and pats Padfoot on the head. Beneath his fingers, the silver-shimmer fabric is straighted and folded and slipped into the interminable darkness of his robes — but the scent lingers, its presence as plain to Padfoot as the light of the Sun. "Come along on a walk with me, Padfoot," he says, and Padfoot follows him out into the hall, tail wagging fiercely.

Padfoot doesn't look back except to glance briefly — oh, briefly — at the empty space where Padfoot remembers the passing presence of a strange moon-gleam fabric. Invisibility Cloak, Padfoot thinks. But that is wizard's work, no longer Padfoot's concern (but Padfoot feels concern anyway).

They avoid both staff and students, he and Padfoot together, and take secret passageways which only he and Padfoot know, but he still applies an unbroken mask as they walk. The masks make Padfoot's bristle, just a little. Everyone smells the same beneath those night-black robes, and then Padfoot doesn't know who anybody is, least of all him.

Outside, they pass almost like a shadow at night, below and beyond the notice of the wizards who remain at work here. "I should have suspected something when she came to us with the Portkey in her hands," he says, but Padfoot only listens a little. There is so much else in the world that demands attention, pulling Padfoot's nose here and there and everywhere: The heavy, dark syrup of freshly-wounded wood, the sharp musk of the deer and the scratchings of its antlers against the tree, the sweet clover scent of the bear whose claws mar that that same bark. The sour, rooty odor of humus-earth, full of the soft decay of worms and mushrooms, life blossoming in the black soil.

"...I am quite sure I know what their investigation will show, but suspicions exist to be tested," he says. But elsewhere: The promise of rain, and the mild breeze that conveys that promise, and the murmur of the good stream, only a short trot away. Ripe tan-yellow grass, and a trail of brown-black blood, metallic and fresh, betelling a hunt of deer and bear. On another day, another hour, Padfoot might follow that trail and chew on what remains from the bear's hunt, or even scare away the bear if the savor is strong on Padfoot's nose and the bear is full enough to be cautious. Padfoot is a great big dog, and fierce, and clever! and Padfoot's barks are a terror! The great lords of the forest can smash Padfoot with one swipe of their paws when they are hungry enough to stand their ground, but Padfoot is a mighty dog, enough to best a bear who is wise and full enough to know the better part of valor.

Padfoot doesn't know how long their journey lasts. Every moment is eternal while it lasts and effervescent when it passes. All that can be said is that there is a moment when they arrive at a glade. There is a little break in the forest canopy, where a beam of light might shine through at noon, but the hour is late and Padfoot can only see a few stars through the clearing of the branches, and the brightest thing in the dark is the light of his wand.

But that light is enough for Padfoot, whose eyes are keen and perfect. Padfoot knows that there are more numerous and more vibrant colors to his eye, but the thought of them seems overwhelming and in exchange for those colors he cannot see nearly so well as Padfoot in the half-light that embraces them now. Padfoot has it better.

He removes his mask, and Padfoot's tail wags to see his face again. "I buried Dumbledore here, or I thought I had," he says, and Padfoot growls softly, pleasant and satisfied. Padfoot understands burying. He is here with Padfoot at the site of a treasure, at a cache of something precious. But below the growl is something fierce as well. "Yes, Albus was our enemy," he says, speaking to himself or replying to the undercurrent in Padfoot's voice. "But for all that, he was worthy of my respect, and I felt concerned that some on our side might hate him, perhaps enough to desecrate his grave regardless of what I said on the subject." He smiles, and it does nothing to upset Padfoot's heart or twitch Padfoot's claws, because Padfoot knows that the smile of a man is not like the smile of a dog. "If there is a fault in our friends, then it is that they are too zealous for my sake."

He crouches low and plants his mask into the ground like a plank of wood, then reaches to the earth and scoops up a handful of soil. It falls between his fingers like the sand of an hourglass. "I like to visit him. I like to talk to him, or to what is left of him. No Death Eater and no specter, just Tom and Albus." He sighs. He turns to Padfoot, and scratches Padfoot beneath the chin, and his eye looks into Padfoot's eyes, their heads level with each other. "Fetch Sirius for me," he asks, and — the world twists around Padfoot, and it has twisted around Sirius, and time becomes and has become full of have-beens and what-weres. The world is present to a dog, and it was full of the past to a man.

Sirius stumbled. Quicker than Sirius could register the action, Riddle reached forward with his arm and caught Sirius by the collar as he straightened himself, and then they stood upright together, feet steady, heads high. Sirius breathed, and the air felt heavier than when it had filled Padfoot's lungs.

It wasn't pleasant to be Sirius. His body felt foreign, his senses dulled in some ways and too sharp in others. But far more than that, when Sirius was Padfoot the thoughts fell away, and when he was Sirius they returned, nipping sharply and unceasingly at his mind's heels. It was hard.

But even Padfoot knew what duty was. Padfoot maybe even knew better than Sirius did.

"I trust that you remember my conversation with Padfoot," Riddle said.

"Most of it. He is — was distracted on your way here."

"That's fine. There are bones that have been buried here. I want you to excavate them," Riddle said, and before Sirius could ask for it, he was handed his wand: fifteen inches and a third, Cornelian cherry, springy and dragon-cored.

Sirius smiled wanly. "Are you sure that this isn't a job for Padfoot?"

"Now, please."

The work was slow, because it was performed with care, and when Sirius reached the bones he touched them by hand and turned them over in the moonlight.

"What did you notice missing?"

Sirius looked back at the little ossuary that he had assembled, and thought back to what he had learned as an Auror and what he had experienced as more than an Auror. He had spent most of his time making bodies stop working, sometimes forever and sometimes temporarily, but in the process Sirius had learned a thing or two about how bodies were supposed to go, and he liked to think that he knew his way around a skeleton. Padfoot might have had trouble at this point. Padfoot didn't like thinking about those things, just like Padfoot didn't like thinking about…about Invisibility Cloaks. No, about that Invisibility Cloak. His nose was worse than Padfoot's, but he could still remember, and that smell… Sirius shook his head. He was getting off track.

It took a while for Sirius to pore over the bones, but that was alright. Riddle didn't give timed exams without saying so. But…sometimes he asked misleading questions. "I don't notice anything missing," Sirius said, and Riddle nodded his head. He was disappointed, but Sirius didn't have to be Padfoot to know that Riddle's disappointment lay with the situation and not with anything that Sirius had said.

"I did not notice anything missing either," Riddle said. "There are further tests that can be performed to verify that these are human bones and that they have not been magically altered since I laid them here, but I would be surprised if the results surprised me. I will send someone to check his father's grave as well, but I know what they will find, too." As Riddle spoke, Sirius realized that his disappointment didn't lay solely with the circumstances. Part of it lay with Riddle himself. "In some ways it would be better to learn that Dumbledore had…reached beyond his usual grasp, and clutched at me from beyond the Veil, but I think that I must admit it: Dumbledore did not meddle in the Dark Arts. He simply tricked me."

Sirius thought back to what Riddle had said to Padfoot, and looked upon the bones again. "Sir, Padfoot doesn't have the best sense of time, so I'm not really sure, but I think it's been at least a year since we last spoke."

"Almost two years," Riddle agreed. "And don't call me 'sir.' I'm not your professor." His tone was wistful.

"What I mean is, I think that I'm missing a part of the puzzle here."

"Most everyone is. Albus Dumbledore is alive," Riddle said. "Worse, he never died. There are methods — Darker Arts than I ever taught you — by which he might have returned from death," Riddle added before he could be asked. "Inferior methods, all of them, and part of me is pleased that he thought the same, and part of me is pleased that I am not facing a misshapen mind that might have been driven to madness, but part of me is also…embarrassed by the deception, by the fact that I could be taken in by him. Had he already divined the outlines of my strategy, or was he able to concoct that entire diversion in the mere minutes that were available to him…?" Riddle closed his eye, shook his head, smiled. "I digress."

"You thought that these were his bones, but they weren't," Sirius said, just to make sure that he understood.

"Polyjuice holds no power over a corpse. The bones are his, in a sense, but if I had not been goaded into killing him too quickly — which was why he taunted me, in retrospect — then those bones, that body, would probably have turned into someone else's. He might have had only minutes remaining. I would curse myself if I thought it would do any good, but it hardly matters now. The Death Eater is greater than that."

"Polyjuice," Sirius muttered, hardly paying attention to what Riddle said. Polyjuice. "I think that I smelled Polyjuice this year."

"I'm sure that you did. We gathered kindling three times this past year. Sadly, Jupiter Sinistra was lost to us before his immolation, though not entirely. I have a few drams of his Mneme. With time and with care, it may be possible to extrapolate the remainder of his virtue… But we are not here to discuss logistics. We were discussing Dumbledore."

"No, not like that," Sirius interrupted. "Not a Death Eater. Not…"

"The Death Eater," Riddle corrected. "There is only ever one." Riddle seemed to hold Sirius fast with his eye, as if it were hot and baleful, sharp as an arrow, firm like iron… His attention returned to the scattered bones. "Someday we won't need the kindling," Riddle said. "Someday, all that the Death Eater will need is their face, and then the immolation will come all at once, like lightning out of a clear sky. I might have devised a method already, if I had mastered the Deathstick as I thought…" His sole remaining hand stuck into the robe, fingers moving behind the fabric. "There are better wands in other respects, but that Wand knew the Stone, and for all that I have been able to improve upon Cadmus Peverell's work, there are subtleties which I am no closer to conquering today than I was ten or twenty years ago. Power and wisdom have not been sufficient to the day; arcane dexterity is required as well, and in this I have been failed by every wand that has been put to my hand."

Sirius couldn't smell the Invisibility Cloak, not like Padfoot, but the memory of that scent pulled at his thoughts in a way that would have left Padfoot undisturbed. Padfoot was a creature of the present moment. That was what endeared Sirius to him, and if he had been permitted to, Sirius would have fetched him straight away rather than stand in place and remember, wonder, think…

"There was someone else using Polyjuice this year, someone who wasn't wearing the Death Eater's robes," Sirius said, and his thoughts returned to what Padfoot had smelled. "Someone who was at Hogwarts for a long time, not just once or twice."

"What else does Padfoot remember?"

That sometimes there was only the smell, but Sirius didn't say so. That sometimes there was another smell, reminiscent of a fainter memory, almost a ghost, but Sirius remained silent. It ate at him, it curled in his stomach like a dragon of nausea, something around the corner that he couldn't bear to see but already knew. "I think that they were a student from Durmstrang," he said instead.

Sometimes there was only a smell in the air, because sometimes the boy wore an Invisibility Cloak.

James had an Invisibility Cloak, Sirius remembered, and it was irrelevant — or so it should have been, but he couldn't help but remember that other scent: moderately familiar, almost familial. Like James, and unlike him. Fleamont and Euphemia had been that way. Relatives often were.

Somebody who wanted to imitate James would have his smell, not this ersatz almost-James smell, which was strongest when the stink of Polyjuice was weakest… There were lots of things that Sirius doubted, but Padfoot's nose wasn't one of them. But how could James have a…a sibling? A close cousin, maybe? Someone who smelled that much like James, skulking around with Polyjuice and an Invisibility Cloak, with that Invisibility Cloak. Hiding.

His breath hitched in his throat. The Lestranges killed James. There was hardly anything left of him, nothing more than a few pieces, barely fit to be called a person's body. Riddle had confirmed his death, confirmed their guilt… If James was alive, or had been, somehow, then Riddle surely would have known. But Riddle couldn't have lied to him, wouldn't have lied to him.

But he had done so. The truth of that was staring him in the nose — or rather Padfoot's, and Padfoot's nose was as faithful as Padfoot. But then why would Riddle have lied to him? Why would he have needed Sirius to believe that James was dead, and why did Riddle have that Invisibility Cloak, James' cloak? The pain of that betrayal was worse than any physical wound he could imagine, as if an old scar across his soul had been ripped anew.

His wand was back in his hand before he realized it, and the incantation of a curse on his lips. Riddle moved a hair more slowly than Sirius remembered, more awkwardly, with only his off-hand to wield a wand, and Sirius moved like fire.

And it was not enough. Even if Riddle had only one arm, he was still in practice, and Sirius hadn't even been bipedal for the past couple of years. Sirius' wand moved as quick as a snap, but in a breath his wand was on the ground and his right arm hung useless at his side, rubbery and boneless.

With another slash and twist of Riddle's wand, Sirius went rigid, limbs locked to his side, and fell backward like a solid plank of wood. Riddle looked down at him, eye blazing, eye weighing down upon him, and Sirius closed his eyes. The zeroth rule of Occlumency was to know nothing, but failing that it was sufficient just to deny the battle.

The zeroth rule. Where had he heard that term? Something else from Padfoot, but Sirius kept the memory at bay while Riddle jinxed his eyelids open. Where had Padfoot heard that? The boy, of course, the child who drank so much — not alcohol, like the boy had said. The flask smelled of wine, but it smelled more strongly of Polyjuice.

His body felt cold, while Riddle pillaged his thoughts with such force that his stomach turned. There was a foul stench in the air and fire in his throat, and absently Sirius noticed that he had vomited. His limbs strained against the Body-Bind, knowing that they should clench and twist and claw the air but locked in place, while memories rose to his awareness, purposeful and disordered, like books that had been thrown to the floor to open at random.

Finally, Sirius returned to himself. Riddle stood above him, tall and terrible like an ancient fir, wand away and mask in hand. His gaze was fixed upon the mask, and Riddle followed his eyes to look on it as well. "Everything is much clearer when I wear this. Not like when you exchange with Padfoot, but…perhaps not entirely dissimilar. Alternate ends of a spectrum," Riddle suggested. "I am refined. Like an alchemical transmutation of lead to gold, I am ennobled into a different and higher element." Riddle closed his eye for a moment. "I become the Death Eater," he said.

"I would have liked to leave you in your retirement. I would have been willing to let you die, too, if you had asked for it. But you have talents that have lain fallow for these past few years, and the time is coming to beat plowshares into swords." Slowly, almost as if he were reluctant to do so, Riddle pressed the mask against his face, one face upon another, and when he exhaled, it was like a baleful wind had been let out, crackling like a locust swarm.

"Obliviate."

 

[JevvyPython]

And there's the gutpunch. Sirius learns the twist and forgets in the same scene. I hope he'll learn again later, after being responsible for whatever atrocities Tom tasks him with in his new war... still Tom is impressive as ever as the charismatic, smart, and consistent villain-protagonist of his own story. I can't be too sad.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

Tomorrow, the Flood
Part 4: Ginny Weasley
​

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.
— Jerry Seinfeld​

Wednesday, 16th August​

At home, Ginny woke earlier than she ever did at Hogwarts. There were chicken eggs to pull every morning, and pigs to slop and milk, and more work besides. The garden was colorful and bright, full of fruiting pomatoes and raspberries, and sappy stick-a-back to pluck, and slippery-root to pull, and further on was the field of Turkey wheat, where Fred and George followed the husking knife and levitated ears of wheat against the bang board. Plows plowed and scythes scythed beneath Animation Charms, but a degree of human supervision was still required. Every witch and wizard grew up knowing the legend of Eucrates and Pancrates, and the animated pestle that drew water till the whole house was flooded.

Ginny looked at them with a light flitter of envy. However unengaging the work might be, Fred and George had each other to talk to and it was less tiresome than dealing with the old sow. But on the rare occasion that some animated tool went awry, magic was often needed in response, and the Weasleys were not a family to flout the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, no matter how unlikely it was that they would be found out.

Ever since they turned seventeen this year, the Twins had been teasing Ron about it: Apparating up and down the house and levitating objects that could be picked up just as quickly. It was a lot of fun to watch most of the time, but seeing them at work now brought to mind the fact that she was the youngest of her siblings. Percy still lived at the Burrow, never mind that he was turning nineteen next week, but he would surely settle down somewhere once Mum realized he was just looking for an excuse to help with the chores, and her other brothers had shown no such inclination to stay behind. By the time that she would be permitted to use magic at home, Ginny would probably be the only one of them left.

Thursday, 17th August​

Breakfast that day was a Devonshire fry-up: mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread on toast, and eggs from the hencoop, plus some bubble and squeak that Mum had filled out with hog's pudding. It used all the meat that was left from last autumn.

Ginny would miss the meat. It wasn't legal to trap much more than hares and pigeons around here, close as they were to a Muggle settlement, but that was like eating gnomes — it wasn't fit for people. She ate slowly, wishing that the sausage could be hot enough to sear the flavor onto her tongue, and wishing she felt more gratitude for what was there than resentment for what would soon be gone. There would be more to eat than she could stomach at Hogwarts, but there'd be little to none at the Burrow until her family butchered this year's porkers after Halloween. It isn't as if her parents would use their limited galleons to buy a butcher's steak in one of the magical settlements.

"I think that I'm just about finished with Verity Templeton's carpet bag — it only bites now when it smells blood," Dad said, soaking the tomato juice on his plate into his last scrap of bread. "I was thinking of going down to Ottery later today to see if Beck Greybroom has any pieces worth looking at."

"Are you going to repair something for the Muggles again?" Ginny asked, and Percy frowned from across the table.

"For Mister Greybroom, yes. It's honest work." Dad aimed that remark at Percy. "Not just anyone can put together a snapped antique chair leg, even with magic, and if I leave a few flaws then the repair will look just like Muggle-work. It isn't as if there's a legal exchange for shillings these days, and a Muggle cupboard looks as nice as any Wizarding one, and I can do the enchantments myself.

"I don't think you should," Percy said. "It isn't my department, but I've heard that the Ministry is going to take a harder look at Muggle imports at the end of this year. If they audit you — and they surely will, since it's you — then they'll review everything until they find a mistake. It wouldn't have to be anything significant, just a repair that's a little too good."

Dad frowned till his face scrunched. "Won't be long till it's illegal to say 'How do you do?' on the street without a license," he said, feigning lightness in his tone.

"Not to a Muggle, anyway, but the Ministry has reduced Muggle-baiting almost to nothing," said Percy. "These laws are to prevent people from taking advantage of the Muggles, and if it weren't for the man who suggested them, I would expect you to support them."

"They don't need protection from me," Dad insisted. "It isn't as if I'm trying to pay the grocer with a handful of transfigured leaves."

"But the Muggles can't get on as well as us, Father. A Muggle carpenter can't possibly compete with you, and if a fix-up at the furniture store means minced beef on our plate, then to a Muggle it means bread on his."

Minced beef sounded pretty good to Ginny, and she had half a mind to say so, but — "No politics at the table," Mum reminded them.

"I'm just saying that you should be careful," Percy said, and his tone had nothing but care in it now.

"I know," Dad said. The statement was almost a sigh, as if he were letting out a ghost.

Friday, 18th August​

Luna's mud-and-thunder ice cream roiled in its magical suspension while strawberry rain and bits of cinder toffee hail fell into the ceramic bowl beneath it. A few stray drops of strawberry purée fell onto the floor, ruining its pristine, blank whiteness before it appeared to fade out of the world. "Father says that I wouldn't believe how many bodies he's disposed of in this room," Luna once said, but she was probably joking, or he was. Stains and liquids were gotten rid of in the Featureless White Room, and crumbs and flecks of things, but not whole people, or else Luna and Ginny couldn't be eating ice cream here.

"It's just Father and I right now," Luna said. She tapped the ice cream cloud with her spoon to make it stop raining, and mixed strawberry and toffee with the chocolate ice cream "mud" in her bowel. "Mother tries to keep the summer workload light, but the Ministry picked her up to work on the National Stopper, so she hardly has time to eat and wash up, and some nights she doesn't come back at all."

This was hardly the first summer break that Luna had lost her mum to work, but Ginny didn't say that. Pandora had always prioritized an interesting problem over everything else, and Luna didn't need that reminder. "Because of the war?" It was funny, that phrasing. The war. Six months ago that would have referred to something that was supposed to have been laid to rest long ago. Now it pointed to the future: Lifting the Interdict was supposed to be a good thing, but now there had been deaths at Hogwarts and the Wireless was abuzz with anxious speculation. It all felt so terribly similar to the stories Ginny had been told of the last war.

"Mother hasn't given us any particulars. Only what she says while she thinks aloud, and you know how that can be." Luna picked over her ice cream. "Someone tried to light a Floo connection to the Continent last week, but that could have just been a Tebo Team testing the department's vigilance."

"What's a Tebo Team?" Luna could say the oddest things sometimes, but at least they usually made sense after she explained them.

"Do you know what a Tebo is?" asked Luna, and Ginny nodded. They were a sort of magical boar, except they could turn invisible. "A Tebo Team is a group that tries to break what you're working on. Like criminals, except that someone in charge asked them to do it. If Mister Rookwood secretly asked the DMLE to try to sneak into the Department of Mysteries, or DMAC asked somebody to try to insert the wrong kind of story into Muggle newspapers and see if Detect would catch them, they'd be making Tebo Teams."

Ginny thought about that for a moment, spoon lingering in her mouth. She wasn't much for mud-and-thunder, but the Lovegoods still had plenty of normal flavors in their icebox, like buttered toast or the bowl of black licorice that she was eating now. "I'm sure that everything will be fine," she finally told Luna. That's what Charlie said, anyway, and even Ron didn't want to disagree. Riddle had spent the whole summer beating the drums of peace, meeting with ambassadors and even heads of state, and giving so many speeches on the wireless that one would wonder where he found the time for it all, if it weren't obvious that some of the time it had to be a substitute speaking in his place. The Department of International Magical Co-operation had nearly doubled in size since the start of the year, too, and Percy himself had been saddled with the duties of at least three wizards, simultaneously getting a team of new hires up to speed while writing a proposal to improve department efficiency and completing his original workload to boot.

"I hope so. It's all that Father talks about sometimes." Luna smiled thinly. "That, and moving to London. I don't know why that makes sense to him. Mother often works for the Ministry but they have her going about to all kinds of places. I think that he has some idea that she takes lunch at Diagon, but Ginny, you've met her. Tell me you don't think she eats lunch over a trough compass."

"No, that's your mum alright," Ginny agreed. "I hope you don't move, though. I've got nobody else but you and my brothers, and I know that there are other ways to see then, but you know, it's not been the same since Sadie's family moved away." For a while there, Ginny was sure the Fawcetts would never leave, at least not until Sadie had graduated from Hogwarts, but the wizarding quarter of Godric's Hollow had gotten so big, and, well, Dad wasn't half wrong about the Ministry's policy on Muggles. There wasn't as much of a point to living near a Muggle settlement when purchasing a ham sandwich required a customs permit. Much easier to live in one of the Designated Magical Districts, where there wasn't any extra parchmentwork to vote and there were few enough Muggles to almost make it a second Hogsmeade. "There's being friends and there's being neighbors, and I'm glad that we're both."

Saturday, 19th August​

Mum set Ginny and Fred to work in the garden together that weekend, while Ron and George brewed Snailicide and wove copper wool to keep away the Streelers that would unseal their shells when the rain picked up in October. Streelers didn't eat most of the crops that the her family cared about, but their slime killed vegetation indiscriminately, and the chickens and pigs might prick themselves on the poisonous spines.

It was not a chore that Ginny was sorry to see go to someone else. Snailicide burned her nose and weaving copper had a way of cutting the fingers no matter how careful they were, so she was pleased to be outside, even if she had to wear gloves for the creeping buttercup. She and Fred worked in easy tandem, pulling tulips and maleficent rotwort and other weeds, and putting down in their place good plants like wall rocket and dandelions. The late autumn harvest was the least of the year, but no less important for the variety that it could add: every flavor that her family grew in the garden was one less that had to be purchased, and even what didn't taste good would still nourish the body.

Fred seemed uncharacteristically subdued, though, as if somebody had popped his Puffskein. "Has Mum been getting on you about your futures again?" asked Ginny. This summer, she caught the edges of more than one conversation on that topic.

"She has, but… I could survive without getting another lecture, but that's not really what's bothered me. It's just got me thinking," Fred said. "You wouldn't believe how long George and I have spent awake on Dumbledore's portrait."

Ginny puzzled over that for a second. "Do you mean, how long you spent working?"

"No, awake at night," Fred clarified. "This can't just be good, Ginny. It has to be perfect. It has to leave everyone in awe, after we've left them in suspense for so long — there are people who have been waiting for us to finish this for two years. And we aren't even going to be able to parlay this into something really important." Fred paused in thought, hand patting down the dirt where he'd just stowed a Swedish turnip seed. "George could be a portraitor, actually, but I don't think that's the life for me."

"But you're good at it, aren't you?" Ginny wished that she was good at something. Really good, not just competent, but children's hexes and broomstick flying didn't make a long-term career.

"Some people say so," he replied. "I might even believe them a little, but still, when I've finished this, I'll mostly just be relieved that the job is done."

They worked in silence for a little after that, but it was obvious that Fred's brain was somewhere else. "Government ordnance wouldn't be too bad," he said while Ginny was untangling a length of happily, busily climbing goosegrass. "There would be good money in that, and always a challenge. We would be really valuable if we were brewing up… Logistical solutions, say. Unconventional approaches." He grinned, just for a moment. "But George isn't interested in it." His hands began to pull at weeds again, and he tossed another tulip bulb in the bin. "Maybe it's for the best. There might not be a war, and if there is, it won't last forever. I would still need to think about what I'd do after the war, just like I have to decide what I'll do after school."

"You'd need to figure out something else to tell Mum, anyway," Ginny said. "I don't think she would want to hear about your plan to profit off a war."

Fred snorts. "Not on my life."

The garden turned to silence once again. Ginny's attention returned to their work, or it tried to, but what Fred had said was tangled up in her thoughts like the goosegrass around her fingers. She wasn't sure whether she would be pleased with Fred's career plan either, but…there was always a good side in any war, wasn't there? Maybe people didn't always start a war for a good reason, but that just meant that the other side, the folks who had just been trying to live in peace, were the good ones.

And even the people who made really important potions for St. Mungo's had to charge somebody for those potions, so they could stay alive and healthy and brew more. Ginny knew that Fred might be thinking of making a bit more than Blood-replenishing Potion and Burn-healing Paste — he was good at explosions, and if he wasn't good enough at it for a war then Ginny was sure he could get better — but if there were good people on one side, then helping them in any way, even giving them sandwiches, would keep them going, and they'd end up killing people on the other side. And if a few people on the other side were blown up, then they wouldn't be around to kill any of the good ones. That felt like the sort of thing that Bill or Percy might say.

Or maybe all that was wrong, somehow. Ginny didn't really know. But if there was just one thing that she knew, it was that her parents and her brothers were good people. If there were a good side and a bad side, then her family would always be on the right side. Even Fred. The Twins could be a little mean to Ron and Percy sometimes, and even, on very rare occasions, to her, but there was meanness and there was badness, and she couldn't see how either of them could be considered bad.

"You know, Fred, there's always a war somewhere, isn't there?" And some side worth fighting for, went unsaid.

Fred didn't answer immediately. "There is," he finally said, and a curious look fell across his face as if the sun were setting upon it. "There is at that."

Very few things were ever completely useless, and weeds were no exception: almost everything had a place in one potion or another. What they had plucked and rooted was then stowed in a wicker basket, which Fred levitated.

"If there were a war with France, we'd be on the right side, wouldn't we?" Ginny asked as they returned to the Burrow.

"I think we'd be on the British side," Fred answered, and he bespelled the kitchen door to open before Ginny could twist the handle for him.

"You know what I mean," Ginny said. She paid more attention to Fred than where they were going, or who was around, and continued, "Would Britain be right to go to war? That is —"

"No politics at the table!" Mum interrupted.

"But Mother," replied Fred, "we're not at the table. Just near it."

Unfortunately, Fred's rational analysis fell upon deaf ears.

Sunday, 20th August​

Dad had taken a trip to Ballycastle that weekend to help a bloke named Shane Osraige sort through an inheritance from his great-aunt, who had been a great collector of Dark artifacts, and Mum had gone to Godric's Hollow to make a few last-minute purchases, and the Twins were probably at Grimmauld, and… Well, point was, when Bill arrived a little before noon, with souvenir Storm Globes for everyone, Ginny was the only one downstairs to greet him. Bill had just come back to Britain a couple of days earlier, after he'd spent most of the summer in Norway-Denmark. Gringotts business, of course, but Ginny didn't know what they would need a Curse-breaker to do up there.

So, Storm Globe in hand, she asked him.

"I was an escort, really," Bill began. "Gringotts and a few of the other guilds thought that they would run into less trouble with the Norges-Danish government if there were a few humans with them. They wanted to meet with the goblins in Myrkursmidja — something like that, anyway, they kept telling me that I was pronouncing it wrong. Ever since the Interdict came down, the goblins here in Britain have been reaching out to goblins abroad, and the Dwergs are closest. They're pretty much cousins — the Scandes are where our goblins come from, originally."

"Why did they leave?" asked Ginny. Unspoken: Why did they come here in particular? It was wrong that goblins weren't allowed to hold a wand in the old days — and wrong that they still couldn't, in the rest of the world — but where the other former outcastes that she knew at Hogwarts, the hags and vampires, the werewolves and Muggle-borns, all seemed to mix right in with everybody else for the most part, goblins felt more standoffish than anything else. Not to mention all the rebellions. All of it was enough to make Ginny feel like it would have been better if they had gone to Tibet or somewhere like that and saved both sides a lot of trouble. The temperature would probably have been closer to what they remembered, too.

But Bill wasn't a Legilimens, so he only heard what she had said. "That's a really interesting question, actually! Some of my coworkers — those of them that aren't goblins, anyway — think about it in economic terms, but it feels to me like a kind of religious dispute, honestly. What drove our goblins out of the Scandes was an argument about property."

"Like the noble estates?" She could understand that. Her own family had arguably gotten caught up in the suppression of the estates, if the loss of the apple orchard and some of their pasture counted, but by and large it was supposed to have been a good thing. Ginny was awfully fond of Draco, but even he had to admit that it just hadn't been right when such a small number of people had such a large proportion of the Wizengamot's seats, and the same thing had to be true about businesses and galleons and other things.

"Not exactly. Basically, goblins in Britain believe you can only own something that you've made. Well, okay, not really, there are some exceptions, like if you inherited something, and if you carved a passage through rock then that's sort of a thing that you made, but British goblins treat it like we treat common pasture, for example. Some of the rest, I don't really understand, like how there are times when a possession can't be inherited, and you have to throw it away when the crafter dies, but I don't think they expect us to be able to understand all the intricacies of goblin property laws — or property doctrines, maybe. Drumflux gets exasperated when he tries to explain it to me, but I think it's more about how I keep asking."

Ginny could understand that perfectly well. She was starting to hang on her wit's end just listening to Bill lay it out, dangling on a rope named Confused Annoyance.

"I think it's got something to do with goblin-magic. But anyway, the Dwergs have a totally different view," Bill continued, but Ginny stopped paying much attention at that point. Her eyes were drawn more to the Storm Globe sitting in her lap, smooth and warm beneath her fingers, full of crackling fog and rumbling clouds, and dotted with transient lightning bolts that twinkled like distant stars.

"Let's say that Mum had invented the word for 'apple,' and then we inherited ownership when she passed on, so each of us had a share. If someone else wanted to say 'apple' then they'd have to negotiate with each of us. That would take time, and worse, what if one of us was mad at one of the others? If I wanted, oh, let's say Percy, to not get paid, more than I wanted to get paid, then I might refuse out of pure mulishness. So, what the Dwergs did was they —"

She couldn't see Bill having such a big problem with anybody, let alone someone as inoffensive as Percy, but maybe that was the reason for his choice. Even without mention of them, Ginny couldn't help but think of other fissures in her family. There were a couple of cousins who simply didn't talk with Dad anymore, and of course there was Ron. She could easily imagine Ron being that mad at Charlie.

"— back in a couple of months, but first the guilds need to decide how to respond. Convincing the Dwergs to drop the issue would be tantamount to bringing them around to the British way of thinking, so it would be easier to just tell the Dwergs that if they want back payments for the use of patented vocabulary then they'll have to prove fact of use, but that would essentially mean conceding that the Dwergs were right in the first place, so — Oh, hey, Ron! It's great to see you, how have you been?" Bill said, and Ginny realized she'd been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn't even noticed Ron come downstairs.

"It's been okay. Oh, what's this?" Ron asked, and Bill explained the Storm Globes and handed one to Ron.

"Anyway," Bill said, "I was just regaling Ginny with my adventures in Norway-Denmark."

"Right. What did they need a Curse-breaker up there for, anyway?" Ron asked.

"I was an escort, really," Bill began…

Monday, 21st August​

There were only two bedrooms with a private fireplace, and Ginny's parents had one of them. If Percy hadn't remained home, she wasn't sure who would have gotten the other one, but he had been the most responsible and least adventurous of them all, so when Bill moved out a few summers ago, there'd been no question about who would get his room.

Thanks to the same reliable nature that had earned Percy that bedroom in the first place, Ginny could be well-assured that she wouldn't run into him on a weekday afternoon. The only trouble was that she had to guess when the Twins or Ron might want to use the fireplace for their own reasons, but that was hardly ever a real issue. They didn't have as many reasons to make a surreptitious fire-call.

Her chat with Draco hadn't exactly been pleasant, concerned as it was with topics like Hermione and the seemingly interminable crises that his mother was fielding in the Wizengamot, but her conversation partner was enjoyable enough that she still let the time get away from her. Sticking her head in a fireplace rather obscured Ginny's view of the clocks in Percy's room, and it wasn't until Draco said that he had to check the wand-grove before dinner that Ginny realized that it was past five o'clock and Percy would be getting back from work any time now. With hasty apologies, Ginny pulled away sharply enough that she banged her head against the edge of the fireplace, but that would be fine so long as she got out in time. There was Bruise-removal Paste in the medicine chest downstairs.

The noise must have caught Ron's attention, because he came out of his room just as Ginny started down the stairs. "Who're you talking to?" he asked. Before Ginny could do much more than stammer out Luna's name, Ron added, "You're lucky that Percy decided to work downstairs."

It was enough to reroute all of Ginny's thoughts about her headache. "He's home already? What do you mean he's working?"

"He thought there wasn't enough room to expand his desk, I think," Ron said, and Ginny resumed her descent.

The table was almost twice its usual size, and sheets and stacks of parchment were spread across every square inch of it, like a miniature landscape from a world of officework. Off on the table's left side was an open book of calendars, and beside it were a slide rule and a pair of knucklebones. Percy, still dressed in his work robes, was writing neatly but furiously on gilded parchment while his note replicated itself on three other sheets.

"What's all this?" she asked as soon as she reached the kitchen. "I thought it was your birthday tomorrow. They won't let you take the night off?"

"They sent me home, but I can't possibly take time off, not right now," Percy said. Ginny groaned, but he ignored her. "The department wants to hold a tribute for Cornelius on Thursday. That means filling out forms: material requisitions, reserving the conference room on Level 1, —"

"Thursday is awfully quick, isn't it?" Ginny cut him off before he could build up steam. Hardly anybody had known about the Minister's death till it had been announced on the wireless that morning. Ginny was young enough to feel like Fudge was old, but he was — he had been hardly seventy, and objectively speaking that wasn't too old. But his wife had gotten the Black Cat Flu the winter before, and he'd been alone all that time, and stressed to boot. Cardial Cordials only helped if a person ate them.

"All of the departments want to do something, and it's true that Cornelius was everyone's Minister, but we feel personally involved. Minister for Magic is never a relaxing position, but he had been working so much on behalf of International Co-operation, to ensure that we could keep the peace. I feel personally involved," Percy added, and he turned back to his quill and the sheet of parchment in front of him. "I was in his office two weeks ago. He had almost a complete set of Cardial Cordials in his cabinet when he drew some parchment. I thought that he had just recently refilled the box, but I didn't ask."

Ginny shivered. The Heart-thumping Charm was just as essential for any responsible person to learn as the Anti-choking Spell, but magic like that was hard to perform on oneself. Magic had a generally vitalizing effect on the wizarding body, but all it took was a couple of minutes at the wrong time and even a competent person could die like a Muggle. "Any normal person might have assumed the same thing," she tried, but Percy evidently wasn't going to have that.

"I'm supposed to be diligent," he protested.

"Look at you now," Ginny said. "Isn't this diligence?"

"This is patching a leak on a boat that's sunk. If I were actually diligent then Cornelius would be alive."

"Don't be ridiculous, Percy. You weren't his nurse," Ginny said. "Besides, if he was that bad at taking care of himself then he probably wouldn't have listened to you."

"Who wouldn't listen about what," Ron asked, coming down the stairs.

"Percy insists on taking responsibility for the whole world. If we went to war with France tomorrow then I'm sure he would feel guilty for that too," Ginny said.

"I'm Senior Undersecretary to the Head of International Co-operation," Percy retorted. Quill in hand Percy had resumed the checking of boxes and filling of lines as if he could do it in his sleep (which he probably could, Ginny decided). "You're right that it would be partly my fault if something were to happen."

"Then we should blame you for the Triwizard Tournament, right?" Ginny didn't wait for Percy to respond before she turned to Ron. "He's going to be just as mopey tomorrow, and on his own birthday."

Ron grunted noncommittally.

"Well, then I'm going to be twice as cheerful to make up for the both of you," Ginny decided. "It's going to be nice to see Uncle Fabian again. He doesn't get out enough, you know."

"Sure. I'm just…not looking forward to seeing Charlie tomorrow," Ron said.

"You're taking classes with Headmaster Riddle," Ginny reminded him.

"I know that things aren't different to how they are, and the way things are is that there's all sorts of people working most everywhere," Ron said. "I'm sure Percy works with people who were on both sides of the war. But there's being coworkers and there's getting chummy. It's the principle of the thing."

"We're all making do," Percy said, without looking up from his parchment.

"There's a difference between 'making do' and… He's literally sleeping with the enemy, Percy," Ron said.

"Tonks isn't that bad," Ginny insisted.

"She's a Death Eater," Ron replied.

"There are no Death Eaters anymore," Percy said. "The law is very clear about this."

"Come off it, Percy, you know as well as I do —"

"What I know is that if the Amnesty doesn't cover Tonks, then maybe it doesn't cover…" Percy dropped off, and for a moment Ginny thought that he might use the Malfoys as his example. "Maybe it doesn't cover Greg's family. Wasn't his mother going to be sent to Azkaban at first?"

"I wouldn't be very sorry if she did."

"Ron!" Ginny exclaimed, but Ron held his ground.

"Greg's alright, but I know his mum still cares about blood purity."

"You're only mad because Tonks works with Headmaster Riddle, and you think that Riddle was responsible for how Dad was treated," Percy said.

"Because he was!"

Percy shook his head. "You should read Zeno. Then you would know that Riddle is a symptom of political transformation, not its cause. If he had never been born then it would have been someone else. It's like a volcano. Just because you didn't notice anything was wrong until the eruption, that doesn't mean there wasn't lava building up beneath the whole time. If you want to blame someone," Percy added, "then blame everyone who ever passed on a Muggle-born or a werewolf who came to them for a job."

Ron looked like he had something to say in response to that, but Mum had just come in from the garden. "No politics at the table!" Mum snapped. "And no work, either!" she added. "Clear the table, if you've time to politicize then you've time to help prepare for dinner."

Tuesday, 22nd August​

Great-uncle Ignatius was there, of course — Percy's middle name was his. Sehilda Goshawk, Percy's girlfriend (or Ginny thought so, anyway, but Percy claimed they were just two good "fellow public servants"). Uncle Leo, who'd gone to work at St. Mungo's like Grandad — Great-Grandad to Ginny, really, but the name had never been updated for the next generation, and Dad's dad had somehow ended up as "Captain." Uncle Fabian too, and Cousin Genius, and so on.

Even so, there were people missing. Great-aunt Muriel was no great loss, but she actually got on well with Percy — it was some of Ginny's other siblings that she couldn't stand — and had sent a parcel in her absence. Grandad had sent something as well, because he didn't trust the Artifacts Accidents ward to get on without him (Percy had clearly been cut from the same cloth they'd used to make Grandad). Mum's cousin Richelot was absent too, but he was a Squib, and probably wouldn't have been present even if the Ministry hadn't Obliviated him and put him in the Muggle world (it had been the height of surprise when he turned out to have fathered a witch, but Mafalda's new family certainly weren't going to bring her over to a Weasley gathering). Closer in relation was Uncle Bilius, who'd been a flush-faced rabble rouser and a superstitious rumpot, and had died of fright a few years ago after he (supposedly) saw the Grim; and Uncle Gideon, who, well… That was how things went, sometimes.

While everyone waited for dinner, there was lighter fare available. En route to grab a pickle sandwich, Ginny spied Ron glaring at one of the ground floor fireplaces as if he were five instead of fifteen and might be able to set it alight with a hard look. "He still hasn't shown up," Ron said, and Ginny didn't need to guess who he was talking about.

"First you're grumbling about how Charlie was going to show up," she said, "and now you're upset that he hasn't. Charlie just can't win with you."

"I know a way that he could," Ron said.

Ginny rolled her eyes, got the pickle sandwich she had come for, and headed back outside, where most everyone else could be found. The weather was clear and nice enough to need only a few charms for comfort, and it was easier than expanding the Burrow to accommodate all the extra people.

The person that she most wanted to meet with was Uncle Fabian, who'd been too ill to attend her birthday a couple of weeks ago. She found him in a conjured armchair, idly flipping through a leatherbound book half-full of past conversations and occasionally making edits, a few words crossed out here and a note in the margins there.

He acknowledged her presence with a nod and offered his notebook to her. Do you remember that deaf girl that I met at Hogwarts? Ginny had already mentioned Samara to him in a letter last year, but it hadn't been until April or May that Ginny had worked up the courage to speak with her about it. It isn't a curse-injury at all like I thought it was, she wrote. Deafness can run in families, just like red hair or being a — Ginny was about to write Parselmouth, but thought better of that and wrote Seer instead. I know that you get on alright anyway, but she said there are primers on silent casting without mastering the verbal component first, and even spells that don't have incantations at all, that you might like if they were translated to English.

"I get on," Uncle Fabian said, and Ginny couldn't tell whether his voice was rough from disuse or frustration. Translatg too cstly anywy.

"Well, learn to read Lusitanian then," Ginny replied, maybe a little more sharply than she had intended. She didn't write it out, but that didn't matter, he got the idea. Not like that mattered either. He and Uncle Gideon had fought against Riddle in the last war, and Gideon had been murdered so thoroughly that he almost endured as an absence, marked out by what they didn't say and how they talked their way around his former presence in their lives: a circumlocution of words, a pause before the conversation changed direction, a sentence that trailed off the edge of a cliff.

It almost didn't matter that Dark magic had taken Uncle Fabian's hearing. He practically treated it as a penance for being alive when his brother had died, and Ginny wasn't sure he'd have tried to heal the condition if even if that were possible.

They wrote about Quidditch after that, but somehow they got away from the Tutshill Tornadoes to Britain's bid to host the Quidditch World Cup in 2006, and that led to politics. It was with no small relief that Ginny heard that dinner was nearly ready. While Dad and Uncle Leo transfigured the table to stretch out from the kitchen to the garden, Ginny put the plates in order.

It was still a pleasant novelty that everyone could sit down without any fuss. Percy was too old to be given the Kicks before his birthday dinner, and the Twins, thankfully, were finally old enough to accept that. They still gave each other the Kicks on their birthday, but they would probably keep doing so until they were both dead.

Mum and Dad had prepared spinach pie for dinner, with a hazelnut crust and baked trout in the filling. Fish wasn't as good as real meat, of course, but it was a far sight better than hare, and anyway Percy actually preferred trout to pork. On the small serving plates across the table were sweet things like citrus tarts and candied strawberries, and there was cucumber or lemon squash to drink.

There was an empty seat on Percy's left, which was obviously Charlie's, but there was another empty seat beside that. Ginny wasn't sure what that was about until the fireplace flared partway through dinner and out tumbled Charlie, and then out tumbled…Tonks, her hair long and the color of bright cinnabar. "Wotcher, friends," she announced cheerily from the floor. Her face was caked with soot, but most robes were enchanted to repel that sort of thing, and when she wiped it clean with her sleeve, both were left unsoiled.

"Sorry we're late," Charlie said as he helped to pull Tonks up to her feet. "Silvanus asked me to, um, attend to the thestrals, and we had some trouble along the way."

"Never mind that, you're here now. Let me summon some plates for you," Mum said, getting up from the table. "Professor Kettleburn hasn't been making you eat enough, has he? Look how thin you are.... And Nymphadora, I'm so glad you could come," Mum continued, giving Tonks a hug.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ginny caught Ron looking like his pie had gone moldy.

"What were you saying about the thestrals?" Percy asked as soon as Charlie and Tonks had made all necessary introductions and been able to sit down.

"I think I should spare you the details at dinner, but one of the thestrals, Blanco… Well, he's not that old, and I guess this is the first time he's seen a phantom mount. He got spooked and flew away, basically." Charlie paused a moment in order to get a bite of pie. "It's hard enough to handle them when they're happy and grounded, but it isn't like I can see them."

"So I helped," Tonks said. "I was already there, since I was already coming here."

It was pretty clear to Ginny that Mum and Percy had expected Tonks to be here, and probably Dad as well, and as far as Ginny was concerned the guest list for Percy's birthday was nobody's business but Percy's (and Mum and Dad's, of course, since it was their house). Ron paid Tonks a withering look anyway, so while most everyone's attention was on Tonks, who was busy explaining how two people caught a flying horse that only trusted one of them and could only be seen by the other, Ginny elbowed Ron in the ribs.

Mum and Bill had baked a savory sponge cake: black apple and pomato fruit, cobnuts and walnuts. Atop the icing — a little sugar and a greater amount of cinnamon — stood nineteen sparklers, silver-dipped and blue-flamed, smelling of pumpkin and buttered popcorn. The sparklers danced and ducked as Percy tried to blow them out, and hid behind one another as they hopped like monopods across the surface of the cake, so Percy had to grab them one by one and blow them out like that. Even so, they twisted between his fingers and dashed their fiery heads against his hand, but they were alive with nothing but the cool light of a Blue-bell Flame, and then they had been blown out and they were unalive with nothing at all, just a stack of limp waxen pillars on the side of the table.

"I can't trust you two to pour candles without making a prank of them…" Mum started, but Percy waved it off even as he was seizing wayward sparklers. No doubt he was thinking, as Ginny was, that evasive candles were a sight better than the Kicks.

Ginny ate her slice with care, because little niff-naffs were always mixed into the batter. She didn't find anything, but Ron pulled a pewter thimble out of his mouth. That was supposed to mean that he would never get married, but it was fine. Everybody had gotten the Coin of Wealth at one point and the Spinster's Thimble at another, and nobody had gotten rich and… Well, none of her siblings had married, that was true, but even Bill was only twenty-four. The point was that there were a lot of Weasleys and a lot of birthdays, so the Prophet's Trifle was just a fun tradition, not proper divination.

After dessert, the table was rolled up and everyone moved back outside for Percy to open his gifts: new shoes from Aunt Muriel, charmed to remain shiny for years to come; a desk organizer from Uncle Leo, with seven Wizardspace chambers; a green and silver porcelain teacup from Mum and Dad, that only poured out when someone's lips touched the rim (Dad assured Percy that it could still be cleaned by spell or sponge); a Toad-eating Toadstool from Ginny herself, to add some color to the office and keep it free from pests. It was all very functional and pleasing (to Percy). Sehilda and Bill had both gotten him a set of quills, because it was hard to go wrong with quills around Percy, but they were blown out of the water a little by the Tonks' gift, a brilliant red Dictation Quill and a vial of black-and-silver ink, both set in a pewter case. The quills had sold out almost as soon as they were released at the beginning of summer and the supply had yet to be restored, but Tonks said that she'd managed to snag one.

It was a little expensive — alright, it was a lot expensive — but Tonks mentioned nothing about the price. Ron frowned anyway, saying to Ginny that it was just another way of showing off, acting as if the cost didn't even register, but if Charlie couldn't win with Ron then Tonks surely couldn't. "Tell me you wouldn't be upset if she made a big deal of the price," Ginny said. "You're just mad that she's Tonks."

"I'm mad because —"

"It's Percy's birthday, not yours," Ginny said, keeping her voice low. They stood at the periphery of the party, while Percy posed for a photo with Mum and Dad, but they still couldn't get too loud. "The least you can do is be quiet about it till tomorrow morning."

"I am being quiet about it," Ron insisted. "You're the one who keeps asking me."

"Making a face is basically the same thing as saying something!"

"It is not, and anyway, I can't help it if I was surprised. They could have mentioned it at any time but they kept it secret."

"Just shut up," Ginny hissed. "Charlie's com—"

"Hey, is everything alright with you two?" asked Charlie. "You're hissing more than a Runespoor."

"Nothing's wrong," said Ron, while Ginny said, "Everything's fine."

Neither claim seemed to convince Charlie. "I really am sorry about being late," he said quietly.

"It's not that," Ron quickly replied.

Charlie's eyebrows lifted. "Then it is something."

George might have made up a story about a prank that he'd pulled on Ron. Fred would have sat back and let Ron try to escape the ditch that he'd dug for himself. Ginny wasn't exactly eager to see the mid-air collision unfolding in front of her, but couldn't quite turn away from it, either. She'd already tried her best to stop it, and she was short on backup ideas.

Ron finally spoke. "Why did you even bring her here?"

"Because she's been busy this whole summer, and she's finally got a chance to relax, and we thought this would be nice," Charlie said. "Because I love her, and I want the family to get to know her better."

"She's a Metamorphmagus," Ron said. "You couldn't at least have asked her to look different? This whole time, you could have pretended that you were dating somebody else."

"I'm not going to ask my girlfriend to make an entire life on the side just so that you could feel comfortable."

"Why not? It won't be the first time she's worn a mask!"

"Ron!" exclaimed Ginny, but he ignored her.

"Did you forget how little we had when Dad was sacked?" Ron asked. "Tonks doesn't care. I'm sure she ate just fine in her home!"

"She's a month older than me," Charlie said. "Nothing that happened to our family is her fault."

"She said it was okay when she decided to put on that mask!"

"You don't understand what you're talking about," Mum said, and Ginny realized that she wasn't the only person watching their argument. Uncle Leo, Grandma Prewett, the rest of her brothers… Tonks, too, who looked to have been talking with Cousin Genius when the row started, and looked fixedly dispassionate until Ginny noticed how little she was blinking, and how her hair seemed to be curling ever more tightly. Uncle Fabian, thank goodness, was still reading his notebook, totally oblivious to the scene.

Mum looked at Ron and Charlie both, as if daring either of them to speak up. "The only thing that matters is that all of you are alive — alive and well! Maybe you take that for granted, Ron, but once you know enough to know different, it'll be too late for you. All of you are alive," she continued, and her gaze fell on Ginny and Charlie as well. "Every one of you. And it shouldn't matter whether one of you was a Death Eater, or one of Dumbledore's men, or a Swedish spy! You'd be family before that, and you'll still be family after it."

Ron didn't say a single word to anyone else after that, and though everyone made a good show of enjoying the rest of the party, Ginny couldn't help but feel that something important had slipped through her fingers.

 

[JevvyPython]

That was a great portrayal of a young woman living in a propagandized and dangerous society. The outsider's perspective Hermione has had is fascinating but someone who had to grow up in Riddle's World is darkly fun. We Are At War With Wizarding Europe, We Have Always Been At War With Wizarding Europe.

 

[Brainarius]

Tbh this Riddle reminds me a bit of Lee Kuan Yew

 

[Callmesalticidae]

Tomorrow, the Flood
Part 5: Caroline Rappaport​

I am a monarch of God's creation, and you reptiles of the earth dare not oppose me. I render an account of my government to none save God and Jesus Christ.
— Napoleon Bonaparte​

Caroline Rappaport maintained a stately, elegant office: expensive but not extravagant, imperious without being imperial. Two cushioned chairs, grown from living birchwood, were positioned before the marble fireplace, upon whose mantle were a couple of potted tobacco plants and a painted marble bust of Proserpine Rappaport, her mother and her predecessor as Consul for the Popular Unitarian party that Caroline now served.

It was her home ground, and she had never felt vexed within it. Till now. The tomato pie she'd eaten earlier wasn't sitting right in her stomach, but Caroline thought that her unease had more to do with the guest she was entertaining: Tom Riddle, charged by the Wizengamot as their temporary envoy to the Atlantean Commonwealth. He sat straight at his chair as if his spine had been locked in place, and his dark robes gathered at his feet without form or texture, like depthless darkness. His mask was a flat surface of bone porcelain, without eyes or nose or any other feature, and his breath was the buzzing of a thousand insects.

But she couldn't and she wouldn't let it get to her. Caroline had spent spent most of the past few days discussing trade: Through their isolation, the British had been able to acquire various potions ingredients, alchemical reactants, and magical crafting supplies through Muggle channels, but had needed to ration materials that were restricted by the Statute of Secrecy. That had to end, and the Atlantic Commonwealth was set to help — by selling Devil's Breath and Hidebehind hides, and board-feet of sweetgum wand-wood by the gross, maybe even micropotamuses, and at tariff-free rates to boot. The beauty of the deal was that it hardly mattered whether her fellow Consul vetoed the legislation: if he did then it was more fodder for the campaign trail, and if he didn't then the industry chiefs would still remember who it was that had remembered them.

But all of that was a pipe dream if Riddle didn't still feel agreeable when he returned to Britain. He didn't have the authority to sign a deal all on his own, but he could tip the balance in whichever direction that he liked.

"Consul Rappaport, I place great value on my relationship with you, but I am disturbed," said Riddle, "by your unwillingness to pressure your party more strongly on the issue of Non-human Rights."

"Mister Riddle, the Popular Unitarians have supported work and residential rights for hags and vampires for longer than I've been alive, and werewolves too," Caroline said, wrapping her fingers around each other in her lap. "You will find that we are ahead of the Unitarian Populists in that regard on almost every facet of the issue."

"But not Pukwudgies or Sasquatches," Riddle said. "Perhaps the Unitarian Populists will prove easier to coax away from their own shortcomings than your party is from theirs. Perhaps they could be persuaded to extend the franchise to vampires, for example." Riddle paused for a moment. "What do you support, Consul? As I recall, your mother only joined the Popular Unitarians after she failed to secure a second term as Consul for the other party."

"My mother experienced a political enlightenment," Caroline replied, "and I share her wiser convictions."

"Your family has a history of conveniently-timed, how did you put it, political enlightenments," Riddle replied. "Does the Rappaport family have many Seers to its name?"

Her eyes darted to the north wall, where she had hung portraits of nine previous Rappaports, all presently bare of their usual inhabitants. Each of them, including her own mother, had served as Consul at one time or another. Five had served multiple terms, and all but one had switched parties at some point to do so. "I was taught from an early age to admit when I am wrong. Unfortunately, many other members of the party do not share my family's commitment to…" Caroline paused to consider her words, thankful that her relatives were absent from their frames (dear Pluto Rappaport had not exactly removed himself from the room entirely, but he had disappeared deep into a landscape painting to hunt pictured buffalo and that was good enough).

"Shameless opportunism," Riddle suggested.

Caroline allowed the comment to pass over her like water, with hardly a blink in response. Her relationship with Riddle was too important to sacrifice it for a little pride. "I would rather say 'continuous self-improvement,' " she decided. "This is a very sensitive time for the party right now, when every vote will count. We have to make sure that the general population doesn't think that we're too radical, and even some Popular Unitarians are unhappy about some of your statements to, um, disaffected elements."

"You mean when I agreed to meet with Tanoo Jifficker."

Yes, that. It was bad enough that Riddle was talking about privileges for Pukwudgies in the abstract, but to actually break bread with them… "The Jiffickers are all bushwackers," Caroline said. "Terrorists," she tried, when Riddle said nothing.

"I understood you the first time," Riddle said. "They called me a terrorist as well, less than two decades ago. Now I govern their school, and my supporters sit in their hall of power."

Caroline was quite aware of that already, just as both of them were aware that the comparison could only unsettle her. She did not need to think about the possibility of Pukwudgie bushwackers having a voice in educational policy — or any other policy — in twenty years. "That makes your meeting with Jifficker all the more concerning for some members of the Commonwealth. Citizens," Caroline emphasized, "who will vote during the Intercalary at the end of this year."

Riddle's shoulders shifted slightly, but he said nothing. Was that tiny shift an expression of sympathy, or defiance? Resignation? Anger? For the umpteenth time this night Caroline found herself cursing Riddle's inexpressive mask. It was like talking to a wall that could make or break her political fortunes. "I don't have a problem with how you've chosen to handle the goblins in your country, but you must understand that you are dealing with an entirely different breed than the goblins that we have here. British goblins are civilized. They are a nation," Caroline said, and she fought the urge to reach for a Calming Draught to soothe her nerves. "But Pukwudgies are savages, with none of the economic or political sophistication that you are used to. They blew up a bridge just a week ago, and killed an Auror the week before that. They boiled him alive, for Jackson's sake."

Riddle said nothing, until the silence grew painful and Caroline was compelled to speak again. "Yes, well, perhaps it would be more fruitful to focus on the policies where we are alike? The Muggle-born Adoption and Guardianship Initiative is brilliant, and I think that there is a great amount of support for replicating it in our own country. Maybe we could even do something similar for the Pukwudgies, since their problem is primarily a lack of civilization," Caroline said, and as she considered the idea further, it became more attractive. Few families would stand to welcome a Pukwudgie into their own home, but the Pecuniary Colleges might sponsor group boarding houses, and it would only be reasonable to ask the Pukwudgies to perform some labor on their behalf, to develop a work ethic, to learn a trade, to compensate their benefactors, as any apprentice labored for their master. Indeed, the economic benefit alone would ensure support from her most valuable donors…

"Pukwudgies have magical parents," Riddle said, interrupting Caroline's thoughts.

"Yes?" she said. "So do hags, and you place them in foster homes anyway."

"It is not the same. Hags give their daughters voluntarily, and their daughters are typically returned just as soon as they no longer look so appetizing. But I can't help but think that the Pukwudgies would not consent to your plan."

"Maybe they won't at first," Caroline allowed, "but —"

"Design the program however you like, Consul, but if the Pukwudgies do not agree to participate in it then that will be the end of the matter."

"Why do you care? Most goblins are hardly able to put a few sparks through a wand," Caroline countered.

"The Treaty of Chipping Clodbury stipulates that every goblin is a magical being and has the right to a wand and a place in magical society," Riddle said. "It explicitly bars the British government from requiring a wand proficiency test as proof of a goblin's magical nature, and Pukwudgies, regardless of their cultural differences, are goblins."

"The Atlantic Commonwealth is not a party to Chipping Clodbury," Caroline pointed out. "That agreement isn't even legal. You might have adjusted your own laws but the I.C.W. has its own Wand Ban."

"Have the august personages of the I.C.W. come to Britain in order to administer this law where we do not?"

"No, but —"

"The only real thing in this world is power," Riddle said. "If we will not enforce a Wand Ban and the I.C.W. will not enforce it against us then there is no Wand Ban, only some ink on a sheet of parchment or engravings on a plate of brass."

"Would you enforce your own decree against fostering Pukwudgies?"

"Not as such," Riddle said, but before Caroline could so much as smile, he continued. "Nevertheless, I counsel you to proceed carefully. My government desires to have the friendship of your own, but the goblins are their own nation, as you say, and they keep their own counsel. I have stayed their hand so far but if you worsen the plight of their cousins then I can only predict what they can do. Wand-smuggling may well be the least of it," he suggested, and Caroline suppressed a shudder.

"You couldn't possibly permit that," she exclaimed. "The I.C.W. has only tolerated this so far because the crime is limited to your own nation, but if you —"

"I am sure that my government would never officially endorse an action like that, but every goblin has the right to own a wand, even if only a few have purchased one, so there would be no reason for official concern over a mass purchase. It would be a boon to our economy as well, so there would be a great amount of support for the sale if the question were ever openly addressed."

"You don't think that we would stand for that, do you? We can find other markets."

"But none with as much gold as ours. Between an emboldened insurgency on one side and the promise of lucrative trade on the other, I suspect that the displeasure of your country would last no longer than three years — that is, no longer than it will take you to lose your own election," Riddle said. "However, I have come to encourage and not to intimidate. I have heard that the goblins do in fact plan to skirt the Wand Ban, but there are so many places where they might deliver a crate of wands: Norway-Denmark, Japan, the Andes… I imagine that the Pukwudgies might be overlooked so long as some other group of goblins were thought to have a more dire need."

"I take your point," Caroline said, and she paused to remind herself of the situation. Riddle was too intelligent to give heed to the insipid morals that bound lesser wizards, but his own constituents were certainly no more reasonable than her own, and even great men were less powerful than the masses en masse: they could only be controlled to the degree that they were persuaded, and though the plebiate was easy to outwit and quick to forget, one sometimes had only reason in one's hand, and that was a blade which rarely slipped their armor. "I think that I can convince my party to hold the line, if nothing else. We owe you at least that much for making it possible again to openly talk about restoring Rappaport's Law." Emily Rappaport's Law, that was, but Caroline didn't mind sharing her name with such a visionary. One needed only to look west to the Alleghenies to see the consequences of intermarriage with Muggles — or, dishearteningly, to Caroline's own generation. Just as it was necessary to separate rarified elements from the dross in order to transmute lead to gold, so too did a people need to be pure for their ennoblement. "Even I had thought that it was a lost cause," Caroline admitted, "and that at least the marriages which already existed would have to be grandfathered under new laws and we would have to content ourselves with banning new unions, but Britain has become our North Star. If you could terminate mixed marriages so efficiently, then we surely can do the same."

"If you truly admire our achievements," Riddle said, "then I counsel you to recognize the whole recipe of our accomplishments: Separation from Muggles is only one part of it. Recognizing the common cause of all magical Beings is the other."

Right. Give a wizard a fish, and he would eat for a day; give a werewolf a fish, and he would never cease to vote for the right party. The principle would hold just as well for hags, if only they could vote. "I understand you completely."

"Then see that the rest of your party does as well. I have heard many things about your party's candidate for the other Consul's chair: that Julian Canembelli is temperamental, that he is prone to flights of vengeful fancy, that he killed a fellow Senator —"

"It was a sanctioned duel," Caroline interrupted. She wasn't particularly happy about it either, it had been so messy and some people didn't like duels anyway and every vote counted, but the fact of the matter was that it had been one-hundred percent legal. Everything was legal in New Sweden. And if she never had to explain this to another soul again, it would be too soon.

"Be that as it may, are you sure that you can control him?"

"Canembelli will be one hundred and seven per centum under my control," Caroline assured Riddle. "He has the enthusiasm of a dog, and all the wits as well. That's why my people supported him through the nomination process. I know that Canembelli talks a big game about the Sasquatches, but I have the photographs to prove that he's a secret Sassophile." He was also — Caroline was pretty certain about this — an honest-to-Jackson closet Grindelwaldist. Sure, he might stop short of advocating that wizards break the Statute of Secrecy, at least in public, but he still wanted to withdraw from the Peking Convention in order to legalize using the Imperius Curse on Muggles. "He's going to bark and lunge, but my hand is on his leash and I can pull his fangs out if I have the need."

Riddle said nothing.

"In… In the meantime," Caroline resumed, "I'm limited in what I can do while I'm Second Consul and my opposite number belongs to the other party, but I can bring a few vampires onto my staff as another sign of good faith. I'll have to be circumspect about it until the election is over, obviously," Caroline added. "Most of my party respect a vampire's right to work at any profession that they choose, but the Consulate is the highest office in the country. That will be just a little too far for some of my supporters." Not for her, though. Caroline could trust vampires. She knew where she stood with them: on the other side of the room, preferably, and with a nice sunlit window between her and them, sure, but they were reliable, civilized Beings.

Besides, who else was going to represent her in court? Only a vampire could live long enough to master every clause of the Commonwealth's winding legal code. British goblins might have the rudiments of civilization, but some vampires had the real deal.

"I will pass your assurances on to the Wizengamot, but do not be surprised if further…signs of good faith are called for." Riddle rose from his seat, and Caroline stood with him. "My first Portkey homeward will depart tomorrow afternoon. You can reach me at my room in St. Christopher's if you have need of me before then."

Caroline hoped that she did not look as surprised as she felt. St. Christopher's, really? She knew for a fact that somebody had arranged for better lodgings. But Caroline only nodded and shook his hand in farewell. "If this is the last we meet for some time, please convey my condolences to Minister Fudge's family."

"I will."

"Might I inquire who the new Minister will be?"

"Unfortunately, we will both have to wait until the Wizengamot has voted on the matter."

Caroline held back a befuddled laugh, but some of her astonishment bled through. "But, surely you know!"

"Madam, you mistake me for a puppeteer. Notwithstanding that I have a seat on the Wizengamot as the Headmaster of our humble school, I am hardly a politician anymore."

He had to be joking. "You're here, aren't you?"

Had his body shifted? Had his shoulders shrugged? "Perhaps I am assigned to special tasks, it is true."

"Surely you must have a hint, at least," Caroline said, and she winced at the sound of her words, which were so close to begging.

The black shape moved in place, and the eyeless mask seemed to regard her. "It is my hope — and not my prophecy — that the Wizengamot will elect Dolores Umbridge."

"Umbridge…" Caroline said, testing the name. It rang awfully familiar to her ears. "I met her at some point when I came to the Tournament, didn't I?" Right, that toad woman. "Not a very pleasant witch," Caroline remarked.

"I'm surprised that you didn't get along better. She shares your, how did you put it, commitment to continuous self-improvement."

"I…only mean that she didn't seem to be particularly charismatic," Caroline said.

"We don't need a Minister who inspires her country," Riddle said as he fetched a pinch of Floo powder from atop the mantle. "We need a Minister who supports her country — and who support its laws."

"A Minister who will listen to you," Caroline suggested.

His mask tilted — or was that a nod? "Good day, Consul," he said, and he flung his pinch of powder into the fire and stepped through.

"Fornication," she cussed, just as soon as he was gone. Before the ashes had even settled in her fireplace, Caroline opened the upper-left drawer of her desk and poured out a shot of Peterluke's Patented Ashwinder Oil. There was a knock on the door as she gagged it down, and then Caroline's aide-de-camp, Poppy Droelblossom, stumbled into the office. "How did the meeting with, um, him go?" Poppy stammered.

"It went well. He wants us to do more, and I'll satisfy him with less," Caroline said, but Poppy didn't seem any happier. "What are you worried about, Poppy?"

"I just, um, don't think that it's trim to tie ourselves to his mast," Poppy said. "Some of his recent comments to the I.C.W. were very hostile."

"I know Riddle's type, Poppy. I know it, because I'm forged from the same steel. He's going to bark and swash, but he knows where the line lies and he won't cross it."

"But what if he does, Caroline? The British government just entered Argentina into the Treaty of Dresden, and I heard that the North Venetians are conducting talks with the British too."

"Good for them. I've always thought that East Venice was full of swine. Maybe they'll think twice about threatening an embargo."

"You aren't worried about being pulled into a conflict in the Adriatic Sea?"

"Who would we be fighting? It would be over before we even organized a fighting force. Why do you think the British are bringing all these little statelets into the Treaty of Dresden, Poppy? It looks impressive on paper, and that shores up public support, but none of them have a grievance with anyone that matters."

"What about the Wizarding Roman Republic?"

"Just a lot of little statelets that feel jumped-up because they have a name in common," Caroline said. "You're missing the point, which is that we need to secure our future, and this is the way to do it. You can't build peace on hope, but you can darn well build one on fear. The more of us there are, the more we can throw our weight around in the I.C.W. without worrying about all of the little things that seem to be keeping you up at night."

"But what if he makes a mistake?"

Caroline resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It was such a plebeian gesture. "People like us don't make mistakes, Poppy. We plot our approach, we read our fornicating arithmantic formulae, and then we do the masterful thing. When my great-aunt Sylvia had been Consul for two terms and the Popular Unitarians began to sink, she'd already smelled blood in the water and joined the Unitarian Populists, and they kept her as Consul for another six years. Even Emily Rappaport had to spend half a term as just another fornicating Senator again before she got another chance at the Consulate. Do you think that Sylvia Rappaport got to be Consul for eighteen consecutive years by making mistakes?"

"My uncle is a Senator," Poppy said, completely missing the point as usual. "A darned good one, too."

Caroline couldn't see the pout that she heard in Poppy's voice, because she had tipped her head back to squeeze a couple of drops of clarified euphrasy into each eye. One, two on the left. "Yes, Poppy, everybody loves your uncle." One, two on the right. "But he's still just another Senator, and he's never going to be Consul."

"I'm worried about what our own people might do, too," Poppy admitted. "Maybe Riddle won't, ehm, cross the line, but what if Canembelli pushes him over it?"

"Shut uppp," Caroline groaned, and she reached for the half-empty bottle of spicy tobacco liqueur under her desk. She normally didn't drink until eight o'clock, but talking about her party's nominee for the other Consulate always exhausted her. Just the other day somebody had sent over a memo from his office that calculated how many Muggles the government could enthrall without noticeably inflating the normal disappearance rate. That was going too far, in Caroline's opinion. It was bad enough that she had to see a Muggle every now and then when she crossed the street — she didn't want one in her house! At least she didn't need to talk with him until he returned from New Mexico next week. "We've got him handled. I'm going to be First Consul. I'll be able to keep him in line." And for as long as Caroline remained the senior partner of their duumvirate, she would stay First Consul. "I'll put him in charge of renegotiating the trade deal with Antarctica. That'll keep him busy for a few months."

Caroline didn't understand Poppy's worries about Canembelli, except insofar as she understood that Poppy was an incessant worrier. Everything that Caroline had to know about Julian Canembelli, she knew from his name. His last name — his "cognomen," he liked to call it, but really — used to be Kampfhund, which had the pleasant-sounding connotation of a "camp hound," nicely loyal and reliable and trusting, but he belonged to a more radical wing of the party and gone and Latinized it. Badly Latinized it, if Caroline knew anything at all. Caroline was pretty sure that Julian should have named himself "Canemcastra" or something like that. Castracanis? It didn't matter, the point was that Canembelli was a reliable fool.

But then, weren't most dogs? And the public loved them anyway, or tolerated them or something. Dumb, mangy beasts (to say nothing of dogs).

"Honestly, what is Canembelli even thinking, talking about Muggle servants? If he pressed a button and a Muggle came… Poppy, how long would it take for a Muggle to get me a drink?"

Poppy might not know the first thing about chances, but she could do sums and time things out. "Our provisions were stored in the general larder, which is three floors below us, and we're four hundred feet from the lift, so… Five minutes?"

"Caesar's ghost, that long? And a Muggle would have to touch it, wouldn't they… Canembelli knows how filthy they are, doesn't he?" Caroline asked. "They have to rub at their filth with water and congealed fats and, and the skeletons of sessile animal-vegetables, did you know that? Some of them wipe at their filth with little sheets of parchment, too — or worse, cloths, which they 'wash' with more water and fats." She shuddered and resisted the urge to tap her hands with a Scouring Charm. If she did that every time she thought about, about things, then it wouldn't be long before her hands were red and raw. But really, what was wrong with Canembelli?

"Just give me today's newspaper," Caroline said. Poppy did so, then sat in a chair opposite the desk and fussed with her hands while Caroline read and drank. The first few pages were pleasant: a couple of her old schoolfriends successfully expanding into another industry, an embarrassing scandal about a Senator and a botched whiskey enema that Caroline would have found amusing even if he hadn't been a member of the other party… Nevertheless, a feeling of unease began to form in her gut and grew as she turned each page. It finally justified itself when she reached the section that she'd been anticipating and dreading in equal measure:

7⅛ Daily Political Arithmancy
Measured by Prognosticus Dragot​

"Fornication!" Caroline snarled and shoved the article across the desk to Poppy. She slapped it for emphasis (and maybe because she just wanted to slap something). "Did you see this, Poppy?"

"I thought you would be pleased," Poppy said.

"Did you actually read this feculent turd? We're just an iota ahead in Dragot's projection."

"But we're still ahead," Poppy replied.

"Look at the outcome matrix, Poppy! Fifty-one percent doesn't mean that we're going to get fifty-one percent of the vote! It means that we have a coin flip's chance to win. Would you stake your life on the flip of a coin?" Caroline turned back to the article, gritting her teeth and staring at the figures as if she could change them by force of will. "My kingdom for an adviser who understands the doctrine of chances," she muttered.

"Y-Your kingdom, ma'am?" asked Poppy, sounding more concerned than she'd been even while discussing Riddle and Canembelli.

Caroline sighed. "It's just an expression, Poppy. Some British theaterwizard, who… Oh, forget it. Hail to the Commonwealth."

"Hail to the Commonwealth!" Poppy replied, seemingly satisfied, and then all of her attention returned to the matter that actually mattered. "Perhaps Dragot is wrong," she suggested.

"Arithmantic uncertainty is just as likely to work against us as it is to work in our favor." Maybe even more likely, if it were possible. All of the cornerstones of an electoral projection were against them. It would be only the fifth time in the Commonwealth's history that a single party held both Consulates; people liked it when the Consulates were divided, because then the Consuls were forced to "negotiate" and "compromise" with each other, never mind that the process mostly just produced sawdust for the mill. Her party was running uphill this year, darn it!

Fornicating citizenry. The more she thought about it, the less she wondered why the Romans decided to appoint an emperor. It was the best idea that they'd ever had.

Once Poppy had left, Caroline drew out a book of parchment slips to write an exchange note. Best to get it over with before she forgot. Quill in hand, Caroline frowned as she forced herself through another of the countless indignities to which she had condescended. As another show of good faith for Riddle, she had started paying Barbaro, her personal House-elf. That had bothered both Caroline and Barbaro, but Poppy had spent a couple of days explaining the situation — it was one of those little exercises that his master had to perform in order to prove her sincerity to the strange man across the ocean, and Barbaro would really do her a disservice if this didn't work out — and now he only cried a little when payday came. She looked forward to putting an end to that after the election, but until then she had this miserable exercise to look forward to every week.

Or perhaps, Caroline thought, she would maintain the compromise for a little longer. She would be up for reelection in another three years, and if Riddle's support was good enough to secure a first term for Canembelli then it would probably be good enough to secure a second term for a political maven like Caroline Rappaport. And from there, who knew?

Emily Rappaport had gotten a month named after her, before those fornicating optimates in the Unitarian Populist Party repealed Rappaport's Law and renamed her month "Tredecimber." Well, Caroline would return Emily's month to her, that was certain — maybe two months, for the trouble — and Caroline would convince the Senate to give her a month of her own, too. "Carol" had a nice ring to it. Maybe she could fit it between April and Josy.

Caroline fingered an ivory button on her collar, and immediately there appeared Barbaro, with a cold glass bottle of Coca-Fizzle Plus (half the sugar, twice the cocaine!) hovering beside him. She took the bottle and leaned it toward Barbaro, who popped it open with a snap of his fingers, then held the uncapped rim beneath her nose to inhale its sweet, alchemical odor. Just smelling it made her feel better. "You can get, Barbaro," she said. He was gone as soon as his name passed her lips, and she tore open a little mesh baggie of fairy dust and crushed citrine, and poured the contents into her Coca-Fizzle.

It sparkled, it shimmered, and it sibilated, and then the mixture softened to gentle yellow tones and a slow crackle that was almost too faint to hear. Caroline took a long sip, and then she was on top of the world again.

"Hail Rappaport," Caroline whispered to the empty room, and she smiled.

 

[Yla]

When Tom Fornicating Riddle Wearing An Expressionless Mask is the more amiable person in the room.

There is a lot about a Rappaport, and I think that's from the new movies' canon? I'm not familiar with that, but it wasn't necessary to understand, it just were seemingly pointless diversions in the narrative.

 

[Brainarius]

Huh this xenophobic git is leader of some chunk of magical North America (won't say USA since it appears to be divided into multiple countries)

 

[JevvyPython]

While Riddle's crimes are never shied away from I do enjoy seeing the far pettier cruelties of regular Magical society for comparison. It's so easy to see why people support him, even if they see hints of what he really is and don't just deny them.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

A/N The formatting on the AO3 version looks much nicer.

Tomorrow, the Flood
Part 6: Fleur Delacour​

You know someone is very special to you when days just don't seem right without them.
— John Cena​

Fleur wrote her first letter of the summer before she even left Britain, but she waited until she reached Beauxbatons to attach it to an owl. By the time she returned home to Quelbœuf-sur-Seine the following evening, the reply was waiting for her.

Fleur, my grand-protege,

Perhaps you will be pleased to know that my eardrums will be healed tomorrow. I should in any case thank you for sending nothing more violent than an exceptional Howler.

You must believe that I knew nothing of M. Keeper Octobre's intentions for Hermione. I always regarded her as a bright witch, and as I explained in my previous letter to the both of you, I was informed that all of my interviews regarding Hermione were in advance of an invitation for her to work with the Secretariat.

I remain, if you will allow it, your grand-mentor,

Baptiste Le Strange​

Fleur did not allow it, and all his subsequent letters to her were burnt to ash and mixed with the water-horses' swill. But that did not mean that Fleur had nothing else to write: There were letters to address to Madame Maxime and even to Laurent Octobre, and letters to Hermione, of course, written without any thought about whether or not they would reach their recipient, much less secure a reply. But to her astonished relief, Hermione's first letter arrived within a couple of days.

Dear Fleur,

Worry less for me. They have done nothing to me so far except restrict my travel, and even then, I can go most places with a minder. It is frustrating and ████████████, but I have no concerns about my safety so far.

Even my living conditions offer little to complain about. I have been moved into an empty room at Hogwarts, which is drafty, and cold in the mornings, but not so bad that magic cannot address it. I am spending a fair amount of time talking with █████████ (you will be pleased to know █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ ██) and I continue to have access to the Hogwarts library, which, being the second-largest library in Britain, receives occasional outside visits over the summer break. Notwithstanding her intimidating reputation among the students, I have found that Madam Pince can be a perfectly reasonable witch when there are no students at Hogwarts. She has helped me to navigate the library, which, even after a year to familiarize myself with it, continues to display little eccentricities that make obscurer subjects more difficult to find.

My only real trouble concerns my family, but that is trouble of my own making, after a fashion. I could say █████████ █████████ ████████ and that, when I chose to stay in Britain, I made the only choice that a good and rational person might make, but it remains the case that I chose to come here at all, and I chose to remain until █████████ █████████ █████████ ████, and that I lied to my parents about the whole affair.

There are times when I wonder whether my parents would be better off forgetting about me. I don't mean to say █████████ █████████ █████████ ████████ but they have a normal daughter, don't they, a perfectly regular little girl who never forced them to move to another country, and who will never █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████. I am almost tempted to ask Riddle under what circumstances he would let them return, but that would put them under his power ██████████ ██████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ ████████.

But I know what they would think of being made to forget me. What right would I have to make them forget, if they would rather remember and grieve? Obliviation █████████ ████████.​

There were myriad ways to remove ink from parchment: lightly-cast Scouring Charms and careful applications of Spirit of Saturn, glasspaper and muriatic acid, and Revealing Charms if all else failed. Fleur tried them all, and owl-ordered new supplies in case her family's stock had spoiled. None of it worked, but Fleur had hardly expected it to. The blot marks had been too regular to be accidental, and the Ministry were not so incompetent that they would apply an easily-undone redaction.

But all that analysis didn't make the redactions less disconcerting.

Duke Clemens, the family's long-eared owl, usually took three days to return from Britain, between travel time, rest, and however long it took for him to get past customs in both directions. It was fortunate that there was an Owl Exchange not far beyond the Sleeve between England and France, so that Duke Clemens could give his burden to another owl, or it might have taken him a week just to reach Scotland. Still, between his other duties and the desire to give him some time off, Fleur only sent him out once weekly, and when she felt the need to send letters more frequently than that (which was not uncommon), she borrowed an owl from Nicolas-Marie Bonpigeon, who lived fifty or sixty perches down Canard Canal.

Fleur most commonly dictated her letters astride Perchel, her water-horse, as they patrolled the wetland of the Marais-Vernier. She was a creature of these marshes, and came to her affinity honestly, from both sides of her family: her grandmother's people, the veelas of the English Sleeve, had fins more than wings; and her father's ancestors had lived here for uncounted generations, watching over the amphibious, five-horned Bull-head Cattlefish that swam through the marsh today much as they had done in earliest times.

There was neither barn nor stable for the Cattlefish, who mostly took care of themselves, fending off most of the predators that the Marais Vernier could offer, browsing the vegetation on their own, and breeding and calving as they saw fit. Nevertheless, it paid to monitor the herds so that small problems did not become disasters. There were diseases to be wary of, Spring Tetany and Fin Rot and Flussviehpest, which were best treated before there was an epidemic, and just the day before, Fleur had applied salve to a calf whose wounded leg might otherwise have turned pestilent.

The water-horses were permitted to roam as well. Fleur's father said that the water-horses of the Marais Vernier, sable and proud, had been a gift of Poseidon, who asked only that they permitted to swim free and smell the sea from which they had been born, never mind that Poseidon was a god of the Greeks and that the Delacours were avowedly Christian; and her grandmother said that this oath had been extracted by her kin. Regardless, Perchel knew his duties like all the rest of his herd, and in the summer mornings he was always in earshot and prepared to answer when Fleur whistled for him.

The Delacours were connected to every other wizarding household in Quelbœuf-sur-Seine by a collection of waterways that had been carefully elided from the Seine and its tributaries in the late 17th century, and water-beds were used for travel at least as often as brooms (for one thing, they could carry a broader load). For those who knew where and how to look, there were countless places where one might transfer over from the Seine's main body to the Secret Seine.

Her family principally dealt in Cattlefish and silk, and had only a couple gardens: long strips of land that were delimited on either side by large ditches, dug into peat and soil to fence and irrigate the crops and bordered by alders, willows, and other marsh trees. The Delacours primarily grew salsify and Swamp Chocolate, and in the surrounding canals they planted water arrows, reed maces, and Mud Whips. Elsewhere were nets for catching birds, and each garden was required to grow a certain amount of other, less directly useful plants for the Cattlefish and Water-horses and other beasts to graze and herb themselves.

To the south lay steeper, upraised areas, topped with woods to mark out the border between the Marais-Vernier and the predominantly-Muggle region of Roumois. Fleur had heard dogs bark on the other side of those slopes, but she had never crossed to see them.

Hermione's next letter arrived on Saint Landry's Day.

My dear Fleur,

It was a surprise at first, but you are not the only person to tell me that the Ministry of Magic is █████████ my letters. I can see the reason for it in some cases, at least if I try to see it from their point of view and imagine that I am a potential spy rather than █████████ █████████ ███████, but in other cases I think that the censors have had no better reason to block out a message than to tweak your nose (or perhaps both our noses) about the fact of it. If it is any consolation to you, █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ ███.

It seems ██likely that my status will be sorted out by the end of the summer, but we knew that from the beginning, didn't we? At least, it won't be sorted out in a manner that is to our liking.

For the time being, I have been put up at the Goodtrow Farms with Draco and his family, and my accommodations are nothing that I can complain about. Whatever image might be conjured by the word "farm," it probably holds only a bare resemblance to the truth.

The primary facility here is a former manor house that dates, in its original form, to the Norman conquest of England, and was granted to William the Conqueror's master cook and chief poisoner, Armand Millefeuille. It is technically the property of the Ministry of Magic now, but Draco's mother, Narcissa Malfoy, was appointed custodian of the estate (as a Historically Important Structure) as well as steward of the farms, so they are still permitted to live here.

Draco hasn't said so in as many words, but my understanding is that this kind of arrangement is not uncommon, as a method to reward the landed families who most quickly defected to or recognized the new government. There are no more hereditary seats on the Wizengamot, either, but Mrs. Malfoy was given a seat for the same reason, so the Malfoys will continue to have a strong voice in government until she dies █████████ ████████ if the Malfoys continue to be good public servants, or perhaps they will have to be content with the custodial position and stand in election like everybody else).

Many of the House-elves who work here were formerly — What can I say here, Fleur, that condones neither their prior treatment nor █████████ █████████ █████████ ███? They were not employed, they were bound to the Malfoys like serfs, like worse than serfs, they were slaves, and yet █████████ █████████ █████. What I mean to say is that many of them worked for the Malfoys before the new laws, though they get a wage now and are technically hired through the Office for Elvish Welfare and Labor.​

Hermione continued in this vein for some time until she apologized for the digression — although Fleur would have happily read the longest and driest lecture if it had been written by Hermione's quill — and turned to other topics.

I miss you dearly, and the reason is a mystery to me. It isn't as if we formerly visited over the summer, so you would expect me to be quite used to your absence. Perhaps it is simply easier to think about █████████ ██████████ █████████ ████, and perhaps there is some part of me that, already looking ahead to the beginning of the school year, anticipates your continued absence and feels the pain of it already.

It hardly matters. Continue to write, if it is not too much trouble. I treasure all the letters that you have sent already, and will certainly cherish the next and all the rest that are to come.​

There was no need to send off a note to assure Hermione that the letters would not cease, even if some time was needed to plan their writing, because Fleur planned each one in bed and on water-horseback from the moment that she sent the last. It was only a matter of revising her drafts (and permitting Duke Clemens to rest).

But a curious alteration to Hermione's signature — so blatantly performed by her censor and not herself — stuck in Fleur's craw, as her grandmother might have said. Fleur wrote a set of letters at once, never mind that she had just gone to bed, lest she forget by the morning, and the next day she took the water-bed down to Bonpigeon's place to send them.

The first person to reply was Professor McGonagall, which was little surprise. Fleur hardly knew the woman, but she knew enough to know that McGonagall and Hermione were fairly close, and her duties were significantly lighter than those that belonged to the Headmistress.

Ms. Delacour,

I will say at the outset that I can say little, and do less. You are correct that I have some contacts in government, but present circumstances dictate that I restrain myself now, lest I be restrained by others later, and for longer.

It should be sufficient to say that I am currently under investigation: some members of His Most Christian Majesty's silver service are concerned that I might harbor sympathies for the regime in Britain. I can hardly imagine why, and it might not be safe for me to speculate if I could.

This letter has surely been read before you receive it. I have, at least, written it as if that would be the case.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

P.S. I have been advised to keep my distance from Hermione's family, and cannot comment on her legal status.​

Fleur puzzled over that for a few days before she sent out another letter to Maxime. The reply was breviloquent — stating only that she had directed one of her assistants to communicate with the Grangers — but it was enough to give Fleur another direction to work in. By the end of the next week, Fleur's epistolary assault on various Beauxbatons staff bore fruit, and she learned that Hermione's family had been issued a perfunctory form letter.

Dear [X] parent or [ ] non-parent guardian of Hermione Granger

Your child had a misfortunate experience during (choose all applicable) [X] end-of-term exams, [X] a school trip, [ ] the Grimacing Beet Festival, and/or [X] other (elaborate): friendly interscholastic competition in a foreign country.

We currently have good reason to believe that she [ ] is [X] is not deceased.

More specifically, your child is (choose all applicable)

(a) (if deceased) [ ] otherwise alright, [ ] mostly presentable, [ ] best unviewed, [ ] bereft of remains, and [ ] has [ ] has not left a ghost.

(b) (if not deceased) [ ] contagious, [ ] mad, [ ] maimed, [ ] physically hurt, [X] stressed, and/or [ ] transfigured [ ], a condition or conditions that is/are probably [X] repairable [ ] permanent, and will return home in (write number) [ ] days [ ] weeks [ ] months [ ] years. unsure

Without intending to imply any culpability for the events in question, we offer our condolences.

Further information [X] is [ ] is not available upon request.​

No reply had been received. Because they were Muggles, supposed her harried and reluctant correspondent in the office, but Fleur thought it probably had less to do with "mundane indolence" than with a lack of owls.

It was clear that if anyone was going to reach out to Hermione's family and really explain anything then it was going to have to be Fleur. That didn't make it any easier to write a letter, and she spent at least an hour fighting the terror of a blank page. The Grangers were fine people — they had to be, in order to raise a girl like Hermione — but only now did Fleur have to come to terms with the fact that they were alien to her. Everything that Hermione had told her about the Grangers was half of what she knew about Muggles.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Granger — You might have heard that your daughter is an international prisoner.

No, that was awful. There had to be a way to broach the topic gently.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Granger — How did you like your last visit to the Moon? On the subject of trips abroad, I have some news regarding Hermione.

No, that was ridiculous. It was only American Muggles who traveled to the Moon. English Muggles went to France, as Hermione clearly demonstrated. And French Muggles went to… Did they still rule in Algiers? Fleur dimly recalled that it had come up in conversation once.

Talking about vacations was useless anyway.

After she had finally drafted a letter, Fleur sent it by way of one of Bonpigeon's owls, and paid extra for the owl to remain until a return letter had been given. Hermione's parents had, as Fleur assumed, received no further outreach beyond the form letter, which they had no means of replying to.

Miss Fleur,

Thank you for writing. We have been told very little, and getting in touch with anyone has been impossible. Lending your owl to us is very much appreciated. It is not legal to purchase an owl in the normal part of France, and our attempts to get the attention of a wild owl have only gotten attention from birdwatchers. We did send a letter to one of Hermione's teachers, Minerva McGonagall, who has a normal address as well, but she hasn't responded to us.

Is Hermione safe? Can you tell her that we are thinking of her? We don't know how we might send a package by owl but we could at least send her some kroner if she has need of money. Would she be able to exchange it for Wizarding currency? Would paper currency be easier for an owl to transport? We could send more that way. Do you know what fees the exchange bureau would charge?​

It continued like this for some time. Not about owls or exchange rates so much as the anxious desperation and desire to do anything so long as it was something.

Communicating with the Grangers not only put Fleur in the expected but uncomfortable position of being their sole source of information about their daughter but specifically meant that Fleur had to decide whether to inform them that Hermione had not, in fact, spent the year in Scandinavia. In the end, she decided to dodge some of the details entirely, and give an abridged account that was heavy on reassurances and light on international kidnappings. Fleur was reluctant to lie to them outright, but they were Muggles and didn't know much about Hogwarts, so Fleur was able to say a good deal about what Hermione had gotten up to without specifically giving away that she had gotten up to it in Scotland.

"It's complicated," Fleur summarized in one letter, "but these things happen in our world." Which was true. They had happened to Hermione.

Not long after she began her correspondence with the Grangers, Fleur received a letter from an unexpected source.

Miss Delacour,

I will be brief: My friend, who you knew as Dmitry, is alive and probably well. I know that you do not care much about him, but your country seems uninterested in Hermione's safety and my own is interested in her safety only so much as they would like her to have none, and he may be of some help to her. I know little of the details, but it is clear to me that he is in the company of the persons who tried to kill Riddle not too long ago. If nothing else, Dmitry's new friends made an effort to send her away from the scene. If we were to make their acquaintance, perhaps we could convince them to try again.

I do not know anything about these people, but I know where to start looking. Unfortunately, it is a different matter to say how I will start. Dmitry and his father lived among Muggles, and at Durmstrang I made few friends who are acquainted with the Muggle world, and none whom I would trust with a message such as this. If you know of any way to find a person living in the Muggle world, please write to me with instructions.

Your friend,

Viktor Krum​

Fleur was not exceptionally interested in doing Viktor's petty work for him. Not at first. Never mind that they had a common interest, Fleur couldn't help but feel that Viktor's friend, whatever his real name was, had done more than his part to endanger Hermione.

When she was not corresponding with Hermione, Fleur kept herself busy at home or, much more to her preference, riding across the flooded meadows and reedbeds of the Marais Vernier. It wasn't that life at home was distasteful, but Fleur felt most alive when she was out of doors and on the ride: amid the holly hedges and swamp fireweed, where the storks stalked loadstone toads and there were owls of every kind: little and tawny, barn and long-eared.

Even where decay itself had died and the rot of vegetation had been arrested into peat, the Marais Vernier was full of transformation. Buried beneath the soil or submerged in sour water, leather could be cured, wood seasoned, and butter transformed, and all this to say nothing of the landscape's magical properties: cleansing old, broken enchantments, and preserving those that remained viable, and detoxifying soured potions that could not be safely disposed elsewhere.

Hermione's next letter sharply changed Fleur's priorities.

Fleur,

Please do not write to my family again. If they contact you, then do not reply to them. I am sorry that I mentioned them, if that inspired you to reach out to them. I never should have done so.

I don't know why Riddle insists on this. He doesn't want me to have anything to do with a bunch of Muggles, even indirectly, and even if they're my family. That's surely why.

But Fleur, the reason doesn't matter. Riddle must have someone working for him who can intercept the post, because he knows that you're writing to them.

Fleur, he says that if anyone contacts my parents again then he's going to kill Professor Malfoy. █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ ████████ and █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████ we █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ will █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████ make █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ █████████ ██████ her. ████ forget █████████ █████████ ███ you █████████​

She felt terror. And then she felt fury.

Notwithstanding how little Fleur cared for "Dmitry," and for all that she had put Viktor's letter aside without any intention to reply, she had never forgotten where that letter lay, or what it said. Without any need to refer to Viktor's question, Fleur immediately wrote to Lino.

Viktor was right. She wasn't particularly concerned about what had happened to Dmitry, not for his sake, but if there was somebody out there who had planned all this time to assassinate Riddle — someone who had nearly succeeded, for that matter — then she wanted to know them. She wanted to help them.

Lino, bless him, knew what she (what Viktor) was looking for, and replied with little delay.

Fleur,

Have you heard of a «telefone» directory? This is a kind of book that collects information useful for contacting a person, which commonly includes their residential address.

There are also tax records and similar documents that might be found at a city hall. I would like to offer more assistance but the differences between Muggle countries can be as vast as the differences between magical countries. I can only really speak of Portugal.

Idalia sends her love and asks that you keep her current on any desperate rescue plans that call for someone to stay behind and die gallantly while the rest of you escape.

Until later,

Lino​

Fleur forwarded the information to Viktor.

By August she had become a clearinghouse for letters, not just between her friends but for acquaintances of acquaintances, and her fingers gripped a quill longer and more often than they did her wand. Renting a good Bonpigeon owl, or even several, was hardly sufficient for her needs, and anyway Nicolas-Marie drew the line at sending owls halfway across Europe. So Fleur went to Nouville-d'Ys, the low city of the Celtic Sea.

The wizard's quarters of other French cities were enclosed places: The Immurale of Lyon was a winding network of covered passageways and sequestered chambers, interwoven with the semi-hidden Muggle traboules that linked together the oldest part of city. In Paris, more than one hundred miles of the subterrene quarry tunnels saw traffic during business hours, and many lived there.

But Nouville-d'Ys was a city in its own right — or urban, anyway, and a city by the standards of European wizardry — and wholly magical. Gleaming stars in a bright black night, really there and not just an enchanted ceiling. White sand, and buildings made of colored glass, and the runic rhymes of silver bells.

It was also a place that made Fleur unable to forget that she lived in Wizarding France. Not "Magical France," and not "Non-Muggle France." There were goblins in France, but they were permitted only to live in a single Parisian district — the Cave of the Goblins — and allowed only to dye and weave. Modern history was replete with attempts to expurgate werewolves: deportations to New France in the 17th century, mob hunts in the next, and royal wolf-hunters soon thereafter, as much to keep the mobs from stringing up ordinary wizards (and Muggles) as to hunt werewolves proper.

The country that Fleur inhabited was a country for humans, and her good standing here depended in part upon a national entrancement with veelas and in (much greater) part upon her willingness to be French first, last, and only. That was the deal: come in a Breton or Parisian wizard, an Occitan or East Pyrenean witch, and go out French: speaking French, dressing French, eating French, and paying respect, if not honor, to King Louis, whatever his regnal number might be.

On her way back from a bookshop, where Fleur had detoured to select a gift for Hermione, she walked by two witches and a wizard leaning, half-collapsed, against an alley wall while they leaned against each other and passed a bottle of blue wine among themselves. The wizard flipped through a ratty copy of The Moon — Canaries No Longer Criminals' Haven; BOYS' CHOIR TO TOUR CHINA; Catacombs, Lower Standard of Living — and the witches half-sang, half-slurred in an uncoordinated duet. "When Paris is engulfed," they belted out, "then Ys will emerge."

The meaning that they gave to that old song was unclear, but it was unwelcome no matter what. In the imagination of French Wizardry, Paris was the seat of the Muggle Kings, never mind that King Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles more than three hundred years ago. That had happened just before the Statute came into effect, and even Fleur wouldn't have known it if Hermione hadn't once mentioned that trivium. Which might mean that the singers had a particular opinion about Muggles. But there had been a day when Ville d'Ys — the original city, long-since drowned — was proud and unchallenged, like a European Uagadou. So the singers might have even less love for the King than they did for Muggles.

It troubled Fleur all the way back home: the worry that things were already unraveling, even in her own country. When she reached Quelbœuf-sur-Seine, there was a letter waiting for her from Viktor. His news did little to soothe her worries.

Fleur,

I fear the worst. I learned their address of residence, but found only a ruin there. After speaking with the Muggles who lived nearby, I learned that their house burned down. There were two bodies, burnt beyond recognition.

After, I learned where the Muggles in this city put their dead. I entered their mortuary, where they kept many good records (all in Danish, but that is not so far from Norwegian). Because no one claimed the bodies, they were cremated. The record-keeper assumed that the bodies belonged to [Viktor had written something here, then scribbled it out, and Fleur did not care to recover the message] my friend and his father. I am unsure.

It does not matter whether my friend's father had his wand, because my friend surely had his own. They would not have died to an ordinary fire, and if the fire was magical then none of my tests discerned this. I am certain that they were attacked, but this opens questions of its own.

The bodies may belong to my friend and his father, but they also could belong to the people responsible for the attack. No attempt was made to identify the bodies for sure. My friend was in touch with at least one other person, so if there were not three bodies then there must surely be at least one survivor (even if they survived by mere luck of being elsewhere).

You can surely understand my present worry and confusion.

I have subjected the ash to every test which I can imagine in order to determine its provenance. Some has been enclosed for you in case you have ideas or resources that I do not.

Your friend,

Viktor Krum​

There was little that Fleur could do on her own, though she tried what she could, and Vicente supplied her with a few names to whom she forwarded a couple of pinches of the ash. Nothing was conclusive, and Fleur kept the rest in reserve for when she could speak more freely with Professor McGonagall. If there was anyone she could trust with the sum of her knowledge, it was a British expat who had a personal connection to Hermione.

When she was not writing letters and forwarding information, Fleur busied herself with work. With Perchel at her call she could nearly outswim the tide. She lived for the colors and the smells of the marsh, the soundscape of birds and Cattlefish and hooves and tails beating the water. Fleur didn't crave danger, not like Idalia did, but her blood ran hot and fast, and she needed work that matched that tempo.

Fleur preferred her father's occupation. But it would be foolish, not to mention ungrateful, to ignore her mother's silk trade.

There had been silkworms in France since the 15th century, but these were not the beasts which Fleur's mother cared for. The top floor of the Delacour household was full of St. Catherine's Spiders, which faithfully spun their webs across rectangular frames that wouldn't be out of place in a beehive. Like a few spiders that even Muggles knew about, a St. Catherine's Spider was perfectly tolerant of neighbors so long as the food supply remained sufficient, and they could learn to tolerate some jostling and the regular loss of their webbing when it came time for the silk drawer to take her due.

Fleur had learned the art from one end to the other: the care and feeding of the spiders, every aspect of arachnoculture; drawing a silken web from its frame, then twisting the silk so that it could be wound, winding the silk so that it might be spun, and twisting and spinning and weaving, and piecing together broken threads, and picking out impurities, and dying what passed muster. Silk was easily enchanted, but that acquiescent quality was indiscriminate and a spool of silk could easily be warped by spellwork, so the highest-quality silk was worked by hand.

There was something to be said for a steady process that could be performed by rote and leave Fleur the space to think while her hands worked on their own. There was also something to be said about any activity that she could perform alongside her grandmother, even if her grandmother had stopped twisting silk at some point in favor of braiding Fleur's hair.

"I've been thinking," Fleur began, "about leaving Beauxbatons early."

"You're worrying about your friend, what was the name, Hermione Delacour." Her grandmother's voice was melodious, each word like the note of a clarinet, and only very faintly tinged with the tones that, if she expressed more strongly, could fascinate and enchant.

"Granger," Fleur said, blushing.

"For now," her grandmother said, and Fleur breathed deeply.

"Grandmother, don't be a beast!" It took no effort to imagine her grandmother's smile: bright and mischievous, etched upon a face that looked far younger than the years that had borne it. Her grandmother's wrinkles were soft, barely-visible, and her plumose hair, though white-gold, had always been so. Her mother and grandmother could almost pass as sisters — and at their differing rates of aging, in forty or fifty years that comparison might well be drawn between her grandmother and Fleur herself.

"You were saying, about your… I'm sorry, French is not my native language, what is the word, your paramour?"

"Please be serious with me." Her grandmother, too, felt warm, but that had nothing to do with embarrassment. Her grandmother was always warm, even in the depth of winter. A fire lived inside her, or just about.

"So you want to strike out now? Will you rescue her from Tower Britain like a damsel?"

"She would not want me to rescue her."

"Good girls, both of you."

"I could not accomplish it anyway," Fleur admitted.

"Smart, too."

"But there may be people who could help. People who I could help," Fleur added.

Her grandmother was silent for a little while. "I can't speak for the benefits of a formal education. I sent Apolline to that school of yours, but I couldn't have cared less if your grandfather had wanted her to be homeschooled instead."

"Wizards don't homeschool," Fleur pointed out. Not French wizards, anyway.

"Right," her grandmother said, as if she had forgotten (which she might have done). "What I mean to say is that it makes sense for mortals to compress their education, because you have only so many years in which to make use of it, but my heart says nothing on this subject. Not like your parents might."

"What does your heart say?" Fleur asked. "What's the right thing to do?"

Her grandmother was silent once more. "Fleur, my cabbage, I am one of the least authorities on moral matters. When my aunts and mother learned of the love that I held for your grandfather, they called me depraved, thought me mad, argued with me and then threatened to murder him if I would not put my intentions out of mind." She made a pensive noise, a whistle almost too high to hear, like a note of birdsong. "You know the stories of animal maidens, changing-women, whose skins are stolen from them in order to put them under human power. Without the caul that my mother wove for me, I had no place among my people. Can you imagine what I did?"

"I know that you don't have your caul anymore." Fleur paused, and her grandmother gave her the space to think as they worked, she with the silk and her grandmother with her hair. "And I know that Grandpapa and Mama don't have it either." Fleur had asked when she was younger, and gotten few and bare answers in return. The topic had a strange aura, like a name too sacred to utter.

"That is because I burned my caul, with the most terrible fire that was at my command. Burning it hurt me," her grandmother admitted. "I know that my aunts and mother loved me — and they love me still — because, when there was no hope that I might return to them, killing your grandfather would only have satisfied their spite, and under that condition they let him live. But when I burned my caul, I burned with it. I miss my first family, and not just those that I knew in the flesh but also those that I merely dreamed, who surely live now, or will live in a time to come… I prefer to think of it as another life."

"I'm sorry," Fleur said. Not just for the loss of that other life, but for the loss of lifespan: Her grandmother aged because she chose to live among wizards, or that was how Fleur had learned it, and that was not untrue, but… It was not simply a choice, the incantation of "yes" or "no." With the burning caul held up to her mind's eye, it looked to Fleur like an act of self-wounding, and the soft lines in her grandmother's face now seemed no less like scars than if a knife had carved them there.

But despite all that, Fleur could feel her grandmother shrug. "Be happy instead. Children are always born out of pain, but you would not apologize to your mother for her labors in producing you. It is even truer among my people: when we unweave a little of our caul, in order to begin work on our child's caul, it is as though we are unweaving a little of our own soul, and it is painful beyond imagination or even memory. Yet we persist. I chose this, and I do not regret it." She paused as she pinned a ribbon into Fleur's hair. "But so far I have miscast myself as someone who could be lauded, as one who passed through fire and deep water for love."

"Then what is the truth?" The rest of her family told the story much as her grandmother just had. Whatever her grandmother meant to say next, it clearly wasn't a part of the family saga that Fleur had grown up with.

"The other side is this: I had a husband before your grandfather. I had three children, and a grandchild, and nieces and cousins. You, who were taught to expect that everyone you love will die and pass out of your life unless you first pass out of theirs, cannot fully comprehend the betrayal that I committed when I left them forever." She swallowed. "I cannot call my actions a youthful indiscretion, you understand. In the beginning it was a dalliance, and even when I thought to leave, I merely thought to abide with him for a season — as I saw it — and then return. It was my aunts and mother who drove me to make the decision permanent, for this immortal to put on mortality, and this incorruptible to put on corruption. But even so," she said, "the decision was mine. I abandoned them all, and though I regret losing them, I do not regret my choice."

Fleur felt cold, like someone had slipped a very thin icicle, fine as a needle, deep inside her heart, and it ached. It was clear why she hadn't heard this part of the story before. She wondered how much her mother knew of it, or even her grandfather. Did he know the full extent of what his wife had given up? "Thank you," Fleur said, "for telling me."

"It is only a bit of wisdom. Your parents would disapprove if you ended your education early, to say nothing of going off to fight dragons and rescue maidens," her grandmother said. "I, too, would prefer that you be safe and happy. But it is not always possible to be both, and I, who forsook eternal life, know something that your parents do not: that, whether you live for two centuries or two years, you, Fleur, are doomed to die. When your granddaughters are dust, my own grandmother may yet still be alive. You cannot be saved, because no human life can be saved. So, do as you will, whatever it is that you can best live with, so that when you die, as you will, you die without regrets," her grandmother said. "Only, remember that your grandmother is selfish, and her counsel is wise, but not good."

One final letter arrived from Hermione before the close of summer.

My dearest Fleur,

Have you gone mad? I must insist that you put out of your mind all thoughts of stalling your education. I am quite fine, and I will be made no better by learning that you have turned into some kind of aimless renegade without a diploma or professional references. I might have expected that from Idalia but not from you (and God help you both if I learn that Idalia has similar plans, but I expect that Lino will make sure that she finishes her studies without me having to interfere).

Hermione's admonishment filled her with warmth for as long as it continued (which was quite a while, which came as no surprise). Eventually the letter turned to Hermione's own academic pursuits, and a grudging admission that, though she intended to keep up her correspondence work, she was also going to attend Hogwarts. I would be a fool not to, Hermione wrote, and lose access to the library while I am stuck in Britain anyway. ​

Like so many letters that Hermione had sent before, it ended with a most peculiar signature. With warmth, one letter said, and Your devoted friend, said another, or Sending my dearest thoughts to you, but for many weeks the signature had been…not just redacted, but altered. It read:

With fondness,

Hermione ███████ Malfoy.​

 

[Yla]

and we will make her forget you

Click to shrink...

Chills.
Content, and medium.

Minor formatting error: the second-last paragraph of narration is formatted like a letter.

 

[JevvyPython]

That was a lovely look into Veela culture. At the risk of sounding like a Riddleite the nonhuman magical species were painfully unexplored in canon and it is nice to see a version of them fleshed out so painfully personally.