29: Blood of the Covenant

Barty

When Barty first joined the Death Eaters, he’d been little more than a kid. Green as spring grass. Eager, so eager, to prove himself. At sixteen he’d numbered among the many younger recruits, all zealous and ready and jostling for power, and though Barty had rapidly been taken on by his Lord as a personal protégé, he remembered those early days with a piercing clarity. Right now he specifically recalled his first impressions of Narcissa: more than ten years his senior, impeccable lineage, the best of what magical society could be. Poised. Brittle. Untouchable.

She still wore the same light floral eau de parfum. Still carried herself with the same perfect unbending grace. But their adult friendship gave Barty access that his youthful idolization never earned. In private, she removed her armor of formal manners and let him see the woman underneath. In the absence of makeup and cosmetic charms he could spot the faint lines time and stress had added to her face. Parchments strewn across the table in her private study spoke of frustration that sixteen-year-old Barty couldn’t have imagined her feeling. To outsiders Narcissa made her life look effortless. He valued the trust that let him see the truth of her, even if on days like today that truth provoked concern: Tired. Grim. Afraid.

Barty wasn’t sure he wanted to know what could make Narcissa Malfoy show her fear like this, but seeing as she’d sent him a very private message to come here and not tell anyone about it, Dark Lord included, he was probably about to learn anyway.

“Shut the door,” she said, without looking up.

Barty shoved it shut with his foot, and then quelled a flinch as wards flared to life, blanketing the room in power. The hair on his arms and neck stood up straight. Barty had suspected, but never been sure, that Narcissa had wards in here strong enough to make this little room nigh impregnable.

“Okay,” he said. “Not fucking around today, I see.”

“No.” Narcissa flicked ink from the tip of her quill, set it aside, capped her inkwell, and only then looked up. “You are aware that my son has been set a task this year at Hogwarts?”

Yes, but only because Barty knew lots of things he shouldn’t. “If I was aware of such a task, I couldn’t really talk about it,” he said, doing her the courtesy of not outright lying.

Narcissa’s nostrils flared slightly. “He has sought my assistance with the project. Now I am asking for yours.”

At first Barty’s brain refused to process the words. But he could not deny them. He opened his mouth: no words came out, so he closed it, focused, tried again. “Narcissa. That’s—you can’t just—”

A Death Eater assigned a task by the Dark Lord spoke of it to no one save those who had been told of it by their Lord as well, or to those their Lord gave explicit permission to tell. Even with a task that was common knowledge you didn’t ask for help. Equally absolute: you did not interfere with anyone else’s tasks unless ordered. Death Eaters jockeyed for power, position, favor, but to hamper someone else’s official task was to deprive the Dark Lord of the full extent of the service He was owed. Any incident of such received heavy punishment. It wasn’t done.

“You can’t,” said Barty again, hating how, even to himself, his protest sounded weak.

“For my son? I can and I will.”

Sitting, she should have been at a disadvantage, by the normal rules of body language. She was not: Narcissa didn’t need to stand or loom or gesture to dominate the room. Just to fix him with those steely grey eyes, the mad Black eyes, the same eyes that had once glittered in Regulus’s face when he and Barty swore themselves to the Dark Lord.

“It is not contrary to his aims,” said Narcissa, when Barty’s silence had gone on too long. “Would it not be better for Draco to succeed?”

Only if the Dark Lord meant for Draco to succeed, as opposed to intending this as a punishment for Lucius. Barty kept his mouth shut about that possibility: no doubt Narcissa had thought of it too, and discarded it for the same reasons Barty had, namely: wrecking the Malfoy family that thoroughly would deprive their Lord of several important assets. Barty would guess the fear was meant as a punishment but that their Lord did wish to see Malfoy junior’s plan work. Whatever that plan may be.

Also, Narcissa might well be denying that possibility because she needed to tell herself it would be okay. Barty kept his mouth shut about that too. “We all succeed—or fail—on our own merits. Always have.”

“I bear no Mark. I do not have to play by your rules.”

“But I do.”

Narcissa leaned forward. “We both know you enjoy leniency where others don’t—you can act with initiative with less fear. You’re doing a favor for a dear friend and an ally of our Lord, in the interest of furthering his plans. And that explanation need only be delivered if it is found out. My Draco is a gifted occlumens and the Malfoys are valuable to our Lord: if he succeeds the Dark Lord is unlikely to peruse too harshly through his mind.”

This would be the reassurance, meant to persuade. Damn if it wasn’t working. Barty wavered, saw Narcissa notice, grimly called himself ten kinds of fool for saying: “What is his plan?”

And he knew, even as Narcissa told him a tale of vanishing cabinets and convoluted plots, that he’d asked because he wanted to be persuaded; and by the end of said tale, they both knew that it had worked, he was persuaded, or at least most of the way there.

“Think about it,” Narcissa said softly. At some point he had absently sank into a chair across from hers: now she reached out, put a hand atop his.

Barty studied her fingers, skin a shade or two paler than his, which while typical English pale had more of a gold-tan undertone. “Will Draco take the Mark?”

“I don’t know,” Narcissa admitted. “He has not spoken of it. Lucius always assumed that Draco must, in time… As his mother I must say I would prefer my son at least be allowed to graduate before our Lord requires his sworn service, but—” Her mouth did something that in a lesser woman would be called a tremble. “The war has never cared for what any of us want, individually. He may not give our family a choice in the matter. Lucius remains… disfavored.”

Not without reason. Barty kept that to himself. Quite easily, too: he cared a great deal less about Lucius than about the idea of his Lord forcing Draco to take the Mark. “Has he told you that Draco may be required…?”

“Not in so many words. But it has been implied.” A hesitation. “Should Lucius be incapacitated, or indisposed… Draco would already be Marked upon his ascension to head of the Malfoy house.”

Any other time the minute flex of Barty’s hand would have gone unnoticed, but with her hand laid gently over his, Narcissa couldn’t possibly have missed it. “Do you disagree?” she said.

“I—cannot. It is reasoning I can believe of our Lord. I merely—” Barty fought with himself. Fear and rage and shame clawed at the inside of his throat. “The Mark is not—it is a privilege, not a punishment, not a, a chain. I wanted mine, I was honored to bear it, I earned it through service—and now to think that our Lord might coerce children to take it, for—for such crude and mercenary reasons…”

Into the silence came a small sound of enlightenment, sneaking out of the back of Narcissa’s throat. Barty’s eyes snapped up to hers and internally he grimaced; when Narcissa got that particular pointed expression you just knew she was about to—

“It was you that aided Miss Parkinson’s escape,” she said.

—bring up something you’d hoped no one would see. Fuck.

Barty hesitated, and then in an instant the chance to lie believably was gone, lost—Narcissa’s grip on his hand tightened and, triumphant, she smiled thinly. “And you spoke to me of treason.”

“Coerced service is no service at all.” Barty couldn’t look at her, spoke instead to the table between them. “If any of us bear this Mark with shame, then—it means nothing. Or at least means a great deal less than it should.”

Her silver eyes, Regulus’s eyes, blazed with the kind of conviction that came only from zealotry or madness. “Then help me protect my son from being pressured into his service.”

On his arm the Mark was hot and present: Barty could almost convince himself this was the pain of a summons or of his Lord’s rage, but no, it was just his own body, skin prickling and crawling under ink that he had never looked at with any sentiment less than pride.

He had betrayed his Lord once already, buying the Parkinson girl time to run,

In for a knut—

“Very well,” said Barty, at last turning his hand, palm up, so their fingers laced together, and though neither of them spoke the words of an oath, nor drew their wand, still a spark of magic snapped between them, skin to skin.

Not enough to truly bind.

Just enough to matter.

Harry

Six months ago Harry would have laughed at the idea of sitting down to study with Jules and some of his friends. But here he was anyway, Neville ambling along at his side, in a part of the castle Harry hadn’t visited since his insomniac wanderings years ago.

“Is there any reason they won’t just use the Room of Requirement for this?” Harry said, lip curling at an actual honest-to-Merlin cobweb that spanned the entirety of the narrow corridor. “And for that matter how are there cobwebs if their lot come here often?”

“I think,” Neville swatted the cobweb aside, “they came from another way. If you’re heading straight here from the Tower it’s easier to take a side stair. But I’ve never heard them talk about studying here, so you’d have to ask Jules. Bollocks.” This last was directed at his hand, to which a few stubborn strands of cobweb clung despite Neville’s attempts to brush them off.

Harry slipped his wand out into his palm. “Tergeo.” Magic scoured the cobwebs away from Neville’s skin, at which point the delicate filaments, drifting down towards the ground, adhered to Neville’s robes at the knee. “You did tell Daph where to meet us—?”

“Yes. Well, Hermione said she’d do it.” Neville didn’t seem to notice that on forward stride the patch of grey cobweb stood out against his uniform robe’s black wool.

“Mmm,” said Harry, occupied with an attempt to silently spell the cobweb away.

“She got Justin involved too—and I think she told Parvati to bring her sister—Harry, what are you doing?”

Harry sighed and spun his wand around his fingers. “Trying to charm your robes clean.”

“What—?”

“Cobweb.” Harry pointed.

“Huh—oh.” Neville batted at the dusty spot without effect, then raised both eyebrows at Harry. “Making sure we’re presentable to meet your brother? If I didn’t know better I’d think this was a date.”

“I don’t care whether your robes are smudged,” said Harry. Neville’s robes got smudges on them four days out of five: not Harry’s problem. “I just wanted to see if I could aim right. Besides, it’s Theo’s job to take you on dates, not mine.”

Neville stopped short. “It’s Theo—what—Harry—”

Harry aimed a beatific smile back over his shoulder and did not slow. “Come on, Nev, we’re going to be late.”

“You know about that?” Neville said, and then nearly tripped in his haste to catch up. “I thought—”

“Oh,” said Harry, “I’m so sorry, was that supposed to be a secret? Oops.”

“You arsehole. How did you—er.” Neville flushed a dull red in Harry’s peripheral vision: a door up ahead had cracked and a person poked their head out, looking for the source of the noise. “Parvati, hi.”

“What are you two doing out here?” Parvati Patil said, doling suspicion out equally between them. “You’re going to bring Filch if you keep spluttering that loud, Neville. And what even is the problem?”

“Oh, it’s… it’s nothing.” Neville batted at the cobweb again. Ha, thought Harry, who, in an admittedly petty spirit, found the consternation brought on by his offhand comment funny. Not to mention Neville’s terrible attempt at lying: certainly he didn’t want to tell any Gryffindors about his secret Slytherin boyfriend, and just as certainly Parvati Patil knew they hadn’t been talking about nothing.

She had tact, though, and let the lie stand. “Well, can you talk about your nothing in here with the door shut? You never know where Mrs. Norris is going to turn up—”

“Gladly.” Harry pretended not to notice the very pointed look Neville was giving him and swept through the door. Excellent timing: by the end of this study session it would be well towards curfew, a suitable excuse for Harry to depart directly for Slytherin with his house mates. Neville wouldn’t get a chance to ask how Harry knew about him and Theo.

As it happened, Harry only knew as much as Pansy did, which wasn’t much, just a hunch she’d developed in recent weeks. She would be livid that Harry got proof first. For a value of proof. Neville hadn’t admitted anything but that reaction had been fucking telling.

Luckily, Jules had done as promised, and kept his side of this little gathering small: Ron Weasley, Susan Bones, both Patil sisters, and Lavender Brown. Ron and Susan didn’t exactly look thrilled to see Harry come in but he detected no outright hostility either. Greetings were exchanged that varied from the genuine to the lukewarm. Harry picked one of the mismatched chairs and had only just sat down when Hermione showed up with Daphne, Pansy, and Justin in tow, at which point he had to get up again and shuffle down to make room, winding up between Hermione on his left and Ron Weasley on his right. He and Ron eyed each other and rapidly came to a silent accord along the lines of Don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.

“Right, er,” said Jules, over some last-minute shuffling of parchment coming from Hermione’s direction, “I thought we could start with Transfiguration—yeah, I know,” he added in Ron’s direction when the redhead let out a good-humored groan, “but before that, let’s just reassure each other—everyone knows we’re keeping it to ourselves who all is here, for safety.”

“Oh no,” said Padma Patil. “A secret. No one here knows anything about those.”

A ripple of laughter went around the table.

“Righto,” said Justin, and mimed locking his mouth shut.

Ron squinted at him. “What’s that mean? That thing you did.”

“Oh, this?” Justin did it again. “It’s a Muggle thing—”

At least, Harry thought, during the following explanation, Justin was being honest about the meaning of this particular Muggle gesture. It would only be Blaise running around spouting comically wrong Muggle idioms by next year instead of half the purebloods in their graduating class.

The explanation somehow turned into a much longer discussion about how Muggles kept their buildings safe when they didn’t have wards. At the first mention of electric alarm systems Hermione perked up to deliver an explanation that any secondary school science teacher would’ve been proud of. Personally Harry would’ve left them to it—he could get just as much History studying done while the conversation was going on as he could with the whole group working together—but Jules got things back on track before Hermione and Justin fully dragged everyone through half the Muggle Studies curriculum.

Harry turned his full attention to to their collective studying. He’d come here in good faith, and meant to honor that; also, if Jules wanted to reach out, Harry would be a bloody fool and a hypocrite to boot if he didn’t put in effort too. They both had to want this. It did no one any favors to keep their two friend groups as isolated as they had been in the past.

Caught in a lull in the conversation, Harry frowned down at the notebook, though his eyes didn’t see any of the reading notes he’d taken in advance of this week’s homework questions. Maybe they should’ve done this sooner. Maybe—but no, Ron had been as quick to dislike Harry as Harry had him in return, back in their first year. Back then this wouldn’t have been possible. They’d all been too sure of themselves—too sure that the way they saw the world was the only one that really mattered. Harry thought of how serious everything felt when he was twelve, and smiled internally. Things seemed so simple back then. Probably his younger self would be displeased to imagine today’s gathering, but if Daphne could get into an argument about chess endgames with Ron Weasley that ended amiably rather than in flames—if Susan Bones, whose aunt had died at the end of Death Eater wands, could civilly help Pansy through their practical transfiguration exercises—then Harry too could set aside childish grudges.

This was too important.

After transfiguration, they moved on to studying for charms, and then history, at which point Harry found an unexpected camaraderie with Bones: while they clashed with regard to how they thought the world should be, they disagreed very little about how the world actually was. By the end of forty minutes’ work she and Harry were on first-name terms and everyone present had at least an outline for that week’s History homework.

Three subjects turned out to be about the most the group could handle at once. Harry hadn’t expected the collective effort to last even that long, really. Too many people here didn’t learn well out of books—Jules, Ron, Lavender, and Justin—to sustain their concentration as long as Harry and Hermione could. The group broke apart: Pansy left to work on another project, which the Vipers present knew was the Soothsayer; Ron and Padma began a game of chess, with Daphne and Parvati’s commentary; Hermione occupied herself in what looked like some hideously complicated arithmancy; Susan, Lavender, and Justin amused each other by way of increasingly silly applications of this week’s practical charmswork; and Jules—

Jules slid around the table to Ron’s original spot, and, eyes darting nervously, pulled out what Harry could see at a glance was a rough draft of an essay for Slughorn. Emphasis on rough: the thing was covered with scribbles, crossings-out, arrows, and question marks drawn in the margins. “Would you mind… helping me with it?”

Harry eyed the scroll, then Jules. Made his voice light: “I’m not going to do your homework for you.”

Beneath the table, Hermione kicked him in the ankle, hard. In Harry’s peripheral vision her hand didn’t even pause its rapid scribbling of numbers across parchment. He held in a grin.

“No, I know, I—wouldn’t ask that. Or want that. I’ve been trying to study it, but it’s, er…. I know I’m not getting it, but I don’t know where to start looking for the right answers, if that makes sense.”

“It does.” Harry pushed the scroll open all the way. “Felt like that all the time for years. I still do now and then. You get used to it.”

“I’d rather not, thanks,” said Jules wryly.

Harry raised an eyebrow at him.

Jules shrugged. “It’s just not for me, you know? All the finicky little pieces, and the amount of random shite you have to memorize to understand it… I can’t just, you know, buckle down over a book for six hours, or a cauldron.”

“You’re an auditory and kinesthetic learner,” said Hermione from Harry’s other side.

“What?” said Jules.

Now it was Harry’s turn to kick Hermione under the table, though he showed as little visible sign of it as she had. “You learn better when something’s explained to you out loud, or by doing it yourself, physically—you’re better at the practical side of magic, where you work backwards to the concept by doing the magic itself. I’m the other way around—read about the thing, understand it that way, then try it. Potions is particularly ill-suited for your way of learning things.”

“Huh.” Jules was silent for a minute, watching Harry read the essay over. “It might’ve been nice for Snape to tell me that years ago.”

“Yeah, but then he’d have to be helpful, and that makes him break out in hives,” said Harry, not looking up.

Jules snorted.

Harry got to the end of the essay and tapped his quill on the table. “Right, okay. So you’re asking good questions here—you at least know what you don’t know—”

“Will wonders never cease,” said Jules in a bad but recognizable impression of Snape.

“—and that’s a place to start,” Harry finished with a crooked smile. “Let’s talk through it.”

Harry was pretty sure the rest of the group, Jules’s crowd included, deliberately left him and his sort-of-brother to talk alone. And he was glad of it: Jules paid attention, and Harry enjoyed sharing his favorite subject with Jules more than he wanted to admit. They fell into an easy cooperation. Jules would, when he expanded on their discussion later, have a better essay, and all the improvements would be his own, even if Harry had helped show him the way to them. But Harry cared less about Jules’s Potions mark than he did about another piece of proof that Jules wanted this to work.

And when they were packing up, and Jules asked, “Where were you and Neville, anyway? He was with you before this, right?” Harry even thought, for one half second, about telling the truth: that they’d been ironing out final arrangements for sneaking Sirius out of Britain with Alice and Frank.

Of course he couldn’t. Of course it was never a serious idea. “Just talking about some personal things,” said Harry. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

Jules took it in stride. Touched him lightly on the shoulder, instead of going for a hug or a shoulder-clap like Harry had seen him do with Ron before. “See you, then. Don’t stay up too late reading, yeah? You’ll strain your eyes.”

“Watch out for Hermione doing that, not me,” Harry retorted, and, walking away towards the dungeons with Daphne and Justin in tow, he let himself smile.

“They’re not bad,” said Daphne.

Justin nodded. “Susan’s all right, once you get to know her. Loads pricklier this year. Suppose she’s got cause. You seem to get on well with Parvati—?”

“We’ve talked now and then, since the Ministry, last year.” Daphne tucked a string of hair behind her ear. “She’s practical. Clever. It’s interesting seeing her with her sister in a smaller group like this—they’re very different.”

“Twins? Have different personalities?” Grinning, Justin elbowed Harry. “Shocking. Who could ever imagine such a thing.”

Harry made a face at him, and Daphne hid a snicker behind her palm.

“You’re terrible,” said Harry cheerfully.

“Birds of a feather and all that. Or as Blaise might say, birds of a species,” Justin said.

This time, Harry joined in the laughter.

Barty

Infiltration involved weeks on end pretending to be someone else, and as that was Barty’s specialty, he had managed to avoid, for much of this year, attending many Death Eater meetings. Even now that the mission to get into the Life Records Office had wrapped up he skipped the meetings where his Lord spoke to the rank and file: most Death Eaters outside the Dark Lord’s inner circle didn’t know about Barty.

But he couldn’t avoid every meeting forever, no matter how much he preferred to work alone, and so he found himself in Malfoy Manor yet again, this time for a much less pleasant errand than seeing one of his few real friends.

Even if on his last visit said friend had press-ganged him into committing borderline treason. Barty packed that back into the corner of his mind where he kept all the things he didn’t think about. There was absolutely no room to waver, considering who would be at the meeting today.

Large portions of Malfoy Manor had been given over exclusively to Death Eater use. Barty’s instructions sent him to what his dim pre-Azkaban memories informed him had once been Narcissa’s favorite sunroom. Back then it had been newly constructed, a gift from Lucius to his new wife, a bright and airy space. Barty stepped in now and hid a grimace. It was still bright and airy, on account of three walls and the roof being made entirely of glass, but put five Death Eaters in a room and you were guaranteed a certain pall cast over it, no matter how much sunlight it got.

As Death Eaters went, though, this group could be worse. Barty would be the first to admit many of his colleagues were among the duller knives in any given drawer: the Dark Lord had enough sense to put those dull knives to other tasks and leave the infiltration of the Ministry to his more intelligent vassals. Barty made for the table someone had dragged in here—a massive chunky thing that clashed awfully with Narcissa’s graceful white wrought-iron furniture, all of which had been shoved to the edges of the room—and exchanged a nod with Corban Yaxley as he sat.

Most of the rest of the group ignored him, save a grunt from Albert Runcorn that might qualify as a greeting, if you were feeling charitable, and would just be the barest acknowledgement if you weren’t.

“Are we waiting for anyone else?” Barty said, low, to Corban.

The older wizard glanced up from a scroll covered in formulaic DictaQuill script, looked around the table, and nodded. “Alicia should be here any moment, and I believe she is bringing another—she mentioned getting another perspective on her side of things.”

Barty ran through a list of who that could be. Alicia de Mille was the Director of the Muggle Liaison Office as of three months ago, after having fumed as the Assistant to the Director for eleven years, watching her former boss, a pureblood who knew absolutely nothing about Muggles and didn’t care to learn, grossly mismanage the place. When old Pickelthwaite “retired”—or more accurately, when several sternly worded threats persuaded the old man to take his family and an early retirement, and decamp for sunnier, less civilly unrestful climes—she’d been the obvious replacement. Certainly nothing out of their sources in the Minister’s Office indicated that Shacklebolt had thought twice about the appointment. Now that a whole slate of appointments had come up for reconsideration, Savage could leave Alicia, whose reputation remained free of any Death Eater spots, in place, as a neat little red herring in case anyone began to suspect his vigorous pruning of Shacklebolt’s personnel choices was some kind of Death Eater plot. Of course it was a Death Eater plot but that wasn’t the point. Not many Death Eaters knew enough about the Muggle world to have any insight Alicia might find useful and were also trusted enough to come to a meeting like this. Snape, maybe, but on account of being a double agent—or a triple agent, who the fuck even knew at this point—he’d never be invited. Alicia herself was one of few non-purebloods in the Dark Lord’s inner circle. So who—

Oh, shite.

“Ah,” said Barty, with a slight twist of his lips.

“Yes,” said Corban. “Quite.”

Barty let Corban go back to his reading and assessed his colleagues instead. Albert, like Corban, had brought his own work, and gave every appearance of total focus. Bryanne Carrow and Francis Jugson were having spirited, if quiet, debate about the Department of Magical Transportation’s expense accounts. Even Barty, who could plug away at mathematical minutiae better than most, didn’t know how either witch kept all those numbers straight without ever looking at a balance sheet.

Merlin, he should’ve brought something to do. Barty sighed and kicked off so his chair balanced on its back two legs, then lifted his own feet off the ground.

“You’re going to fall,” said Albert.

“Nah,” Barty said, and flashed an I dare you grin more for the sake of his reputation with their audience than for Albert, who hadn’t even looked up.

Corban raised an eyebrow at him. “You are such a child.”

“I’m seventeen years younger than the next oldest person in this room,” Barty said flippantly. “Also, excuse me for knowing how to entertain myself.”

Bryanne and Francis exchanged an exasperated look, but they both had kids of their own, and in Bryanne at least the exasperation was touched with vaguely parental fondness, as he'd expected. “You could have brought something to do,” said Bryanne, half-smiling.

About to throw a retort, Barty shut his mouth when the door snapped open behind him. He tipped his head back and saw Alicia de Mille walking in with the unassuming figure of Augustus Rookwood behind her.

Sometimes Barty hated being right.

“Oh good,” he said, giving them a thin upside-down smile. “The party can start now.”

“So kind of you to wait for us,” Alicia drawled. She paused and stepped aside so Bryanne and Francis, at the end of the table, could see Rookwood too. “Augustus has generously agreed to sit in on today’s meeting and offer whatever insights he might have. Unless anyone objects—?”

Nobody did, which could only have been Alicia’s expectation. You wanted to err on the side of politeness when it came to Rookwood.

Alicia waited a few seconds in case anyone wanted to put their foot in it, then nodded briskly and moved towards the empty chair to Barty’s left.

Corban cleared his throat. “Very well. Bryanne—”

They all heard the impact of shoe on wood. Only Barty felt Alicia’s kick in the split second before it got lost in the sick lurch of his stomach as his chair went over backwards. He leaned into it on reflex. Already had his legs coming up and over when the chair back hit the ground, head tucked so he wouldn’t crack his skull on Narcissa’s marble, turning the fall into a reverse somersault so forceful he rolled all the way over and back up to his feet.

Alicia snickered.

“Told you,” said Albert, dry as a bone.

Barty hooked a boot under the chair’s back and flipped it back upright. “And here I thought we were friends, Alicia.”

“No you didn’t.” Alicia folded herself down into her own chair and pointedly didn’t look at Barty.

“If you’re quite finished,” Corban said, folding his hands atop his paperwork. Albert pushed his own work aside; Bryanne and Francis shifted, body language opening from their two-person conversation to encompass the whole group; Rookwood, taking a seat next to Alicia, had brought nothing, and as usual gave nothing away in his face or posture. When Barty was a young Death Eater striving to earn his Mark, he’d wondered whether Rookwood could really do that perfect of a poker face or just genuinely didn’t give a shit. Going on two decades later, Barty was still wondering.

“Let’s begin, then,” said Bryanne briskly. “We here are primarily responsible for operations within the Ministry, and things have progressed such that we need to coordinate our efforts to take them further. On today’s agenda: personnel and infiltration, a cash flow problem related to unexpected proactivity within the Wizengamot, and Alicia notified me in advance that the Dark Lord wishes her to enlist such input as might be relevant for presenting a more coherent solution to the Muggleborn problem than we’ve previously formulated. Would anyone like to add anything?”

Silence and a few head shakes greeted this question. Bryanne nodded and moved on. “In that case—Barty, you had been tasked with getting us access to the Life Records Office in the Archives—?”

“Yes. That project continues apace—I successfully mapped the wards and identified key people with both official and unofficial access that we may be able to exploit. My role in it has concluded.” And thank fuck for that; Barty would happily never see any of those bureaucrats’ smug sunless faces again.

“Are you available then for other short-term operations in a similar vein?” said Corban. “I can think of several people I can best utilize if they are in our hands for a few days without alerting their families or coworkers.”

Barty considered. “I will need to make sure that our Lord does not have another task in mind that would conflict, but absent such a task, and assuming his permission, yes.” Impersonating someone well enough to fool their spouse, children, and friends was much more difficult than wearing the skin of another Merton Quigley, solitary and unliked. Depending on who Corban had in mind it could be an entertaining challenge.

“I am happy to assist with the legilimency required for such an operation, should you find it useful,” said Rookwood. His gaze remained disinterestedly pointed somewhere over Corban and Albert’s heads; to anyone watching it might appear that he wasn’t following the conversation at all.

There was a small pause.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Corban, “though I believe Barty has extensive training in that area already.”

“Depends if we need them to be unaware of it afterwards,” Barty said, masking his reluctance to go into this in such a setting. Speaking of one’s weaknesses in front of other Death Eaters was rarely a good idea but claiming to possess a skill you didn’t actually have tended to create failure and failure displeased his Lord. Besides which, a decade and change spent under constant Imperius was a pretty fucking ironclad excuse for his command of mind magic to remain less perfect than he’d like. “I can take what I need without permanently leaving them a gibbering wreck but it’ll take some patching up by a more subtle legilimens to reliably set them back to rights and not know anything was done.”

“It is likely at least the majority will need to be reinserted into their lives with no one the wiser—I will let you know if your assistance becomes necessary, Augustus.” Corban made a note.

Rookwood tipped his chin in the barest acknowledgment he’d been spoken to.

“It seems as though things are moving forward well, Corban—?” Bryanne prompted.

“Very well, yes. There will be legal challenges to the DMLE assuming the power to appoint people to retroactively empty Ministry posts.” Barty nodded; everyone here knew at least the vague outlines of the plan to get their own people into key bureaucratic positions. Corban had been the one to piece that plan together: his encyclopedic knowledge of Ministry policy and bylaws was second to none. “But those challenges take time to process; our allies in the Wizengamot can delay such cases, as can I from within the DMLE, and in the interim our replacements for Shacklebolt’s appointments have already begun working towards our aims.”

“And you’re sure you’ve got a hold on Savage?” said Francis. “Keeping up an Imperius for that long, on a strong-willed senior Auror…”

Corban’s voice took on the thinnest of razor edges. “Quite sure. Though I thank you for your concern.”

“Just making sure. You Sacred Twenty-eight types aren’t always as competent as you think you are,” said Francis, in the light tones of a joke, but wearing an expression that nullified any attempt at humor. Next to her, Bryanne grimaced faintly.

“An error of judgment to which many people are prone,” said Corban evenly. “I cannot hold so many Imperius curses as Lucius, perhaps, but I have been using that spell on our Lord’s behalf for going on three decades. I assure you, arrogance will not disrupt my service to Him.”

Now Francis couldn’t push the point without it getting much more serious than a snide comment about someone’s magical skill. She rolled her eyes and let it drop. Barty glanced between her and Bryanne, herself from a Sacred Twenty-eight family.

But Bryanne seemed more concerned with moving on than upset or surprised by the altercation. She rested a hand on Francis’s shoulder, and the other witch settled slightly. “Lucky we got Bones as early as we did,” said Bryanne. “No way even Lucius could’ve gotten her under control.”

“Old bat had a will of steel,” Albert agreed. “Not half these cases would’ve gotten past her, either. Which reminds me, Corban, I’ve a few more for you to review before we shunt these over to the DMLE prosecutors.”

“Owl or floo them to me tonight,” Corban said. “I’ll make sure they go through the Aurors on the anti-corruption task force.”

“Do we still not know who’s behind that Soothsayer publication?” Bryanne rolled a quill between her fingers, which still bore a tremor thanks to her brief stint in Azkaban for possession of “Dark” artifacts.

“Not with certainty. It is well shielded, though that itself is identifying—few people have the resources to cover their tracks this thoroughly,” said Corban. “The range, intelligence, and focus of the Soothsayer’s publications so far indicate authors with above-average Ministry access and an ideological opposition to the Muggle-loving Light. We know is not run by Death Eater with the Mark. Most likely our suspect is a family member of one of our number, or a splinter faction of the Order of the Phoenix that includes at least one Wizengamot member or high-ranking Ministry official. It is also possible that the culprit is someone outside either the Order’s camp or ours, in which case attempts to identify them will likely be stalled until we consolidate our grip on the Ministry.”

“We leave it for now, then,” said Bryanne. “Their positions aren’t so opposed to our aims as to cause real problems in the interim, and the appearance of open civic debate remains useful.”

“Not to mention the way they’re stirring up anti-corruption sentiment among the public,” said Alicia dryly.

“Not to worry.” Corban smiled. “The Auror Corps will be enforcing the full extent of the law upon those politicians and bureaucrats engaging in illegal activities.”

Grins were traded around the table, none of them nice.

“Valiant efforts of our dedicated law enforcement personnel aside,” Francis did a mocking little bow in Corban’s direction, “we have a bit of a financial issue that’s sprung up in the last few weeks.”

Bryanne took up the explanation: “Unfortunately, several members of the Wizengamot who had been benefiting from our largesse were identified lately, through a combination of financial audits and, we suspect, extralegal surveillance.”

“Blasted Order,” Runcorn said with contempt.

“Indeed. The audit, however, went through legal channels, and it turned up several accounts at Gringotts through which we were running funds. Per some goblin treaty or other the Minister has seized those accounts. And their content.”

Barty winced; Albert and Alicia did the same, and Corban’s mouth tightened with displeasure. The Ministry ran on bribes even without outside interference. Spreading massive amounts of gold drawn from ancient family vaults funding the Death Eater war chest had always been a powerful weapon.

“How much?” Barty asked.

Bryanne named a figure so high Albert swore out loud and Rookwood made a whole facial expression for the first time since he’d walked in the door.

“It won’t be recoverable until we take charge properly,” said Francis. “I checked.”

“And I double-checked,” Corban said in a tone so mild one could almost mistake it for watered-down milk.

Francis shot him a poisonous look, which honestly Barty couldn’t blame her for; she was a gifted mathematician with two masteries, one in financial law and one in arithmancy. “We still don’t have anyone in the Goblin Liaison Office,” she continued as if Corban hadn’t spoken, “just in the Beasts and Beings Office more generally, and Cresswell—he’s leading Goblin Liaison right now—has rebuffed our early attempts to sound him out.”

“Uppity mudblood,” Albert groused. “He’s always droning on at interdepartmental meetings about needing more funds. Everybody needs more funds. Including much more important offices than that.”

“Well, maybe if you’d given him money five years ago he’d be friendlier to us now, but you didn’t, so here we are,” Bryanne shot back. Get him, Barty thought, delighted: Albert complained nonstop but managed to also be generally competent, which made him both miserable to be around and impossible to ignore.

“And we can’t just get Cresswell out of the way because he’s the first liaison in two decades that the goblins haven’t either beheaded or driven into the St. Mungo’s psychiatric ward,” Corban concluded, surprising no one; Cresswell had grown infamous at the Ministry for exactly that reason, and stood out as well for being the highest-ranked Muggleborn in Ministry bureaucracy at the moment. Even Barty had heard about him in the bowels of the Minister’s financial affairs offices.

Well, actually, Barty had heard about him in the context of people complaining: first they’d laughed about a mudblood getting the job no one ever fucking wanted, and then they resented him for actually being good at it. Which figured.

“That’s about the size of it,” said Francis. “Money’s gone. Malfoy can get us more but it takes time to move assets around.”

“For now what actually worries me more is the appearance of this new faction,” Bryanne said.

“The red masks?” said Albert, rolling his eyes slightly, a sentiment Corban and Alicia clearly shared.

Barty on the other hand thought it was a pretty good statement: simple, recognizable, functional. Hid your identity but announced your allegiance all in one go. Lacking elegance, arguably, but then that might be the point; the Order weren’t entirely oblivious to public perception and this new group was clearly angling to be the renegade underdogs standing up to the sinister drama of the Death Eaters’ white skull masks and black robes. People tended to associate Death Eaters with elitist rich purebloods. Correctly. Barty should know; he was both a Death Eater and an elitist rich pureblood himself. If and when the red-masked faction became public knowledge their image would have a certain improvised everyman appeal.

“We had thought they were isolated,” said Bryanne, nodding, “but they specifically targeted several Wizengamot members who had been on our payroll—or who had been persuaded to vote our way—before that information ever became public knowledge. In particular, we can no longer count on the Peasegood vote.”

Why was that name—oh, right, the person they’d gotten to introduce the sedition and libel bill last autumn. Barty saw it dawn on several faces: likely everyone else here had known about that whole thing before it happened, unlike Barty, who figured it out on his own and only officially learned after the fact, seeing as he had been occupied with a completely unrelated project at the time.

Corban shifted his weight. “Do we have a leak?”

“The Dark Lord thinks not,” said Bryanne, which translated to the Dark Lord had used some violent legilimency to make sure none of his followers let their connection to Peasegood slip. “We knew some third party realized last fall that Peasegood had been turned. The connection to the red-masked faction, though, that’s new: they’ve now targeted both Peasegood and people identified in the financial audit this month.”

“So we know that they are connected both to someone in the Wizengamot with very good access and to the third party that noticed Peasegood’s intentions with our bill last autumn were suspect?” Albert asked.

Bryanne nodded. “It’s concerning. If this is the Order, it represents a marked departure from their previous tactics. If not—we don’t know who their benefactor or benefactors may be. All of you have unusual access in the Ministry and a great deal of experience within its power structure. I have a good sense of who it could be on the Wizengamot—” which made sense; Bryanne was the Lady Carrow and had been on the Wizengamot herself for two decades up until her sojourn to Azkaban this year— “but I want your opinions on who it could be within the Ministry’s power structure. Who has the kind of access to see that financial audit early and the acumen to notice Peasegood was behaving oddly? Who meets only one of those criteria but has a close connection to a person that fulfills the other?”

Suggestions began to volley around the table. Barty kept quiet, mostly, save for offering insight on names one of his fellow Death Eaters brought up, gained during his time learning the sentiments of the Ministry rank and file that the more senior Death Eaters didn’t have access to. It wouldn’t do for him to join the conversation too animatedly: Barty would bet his mother’s soul he knew exactly who tipped off the red-masked faction about Peasegood et al, which didn’t narrow down who was running the red masks but did offer a lead to hunt them down.

Holding his tongue was treason, by the Dark Lord’s definition. No two ways about it. But Barty had been the one to send Harry those documents. What Harry did with them after was none of Barty’s concern. If Harry passed that on, Barty would guess anonymously, to the Order, or to someone in that corner willing to be a little more proactive than the Order’s usual—

Finely-tuned senses tingled a warning. He was being watched. Barty didn’t look around or flinch or anything, he wasn’t an amateur, but underneath his robes the hair on his arms prickled. The next time Alicia jumped in, he turned towards her, as would be only natural in a group conversation, and confirmed his own suspicions: Rookwood’s gaze pinned Barty unerringly in place.

Shite.

Barty kept up a low level of occlumency more or less nonstop when awake and reinforced his shields every night before he slept. Now he reinforced them, wrapping his mind in layer after layer of obfuscation, focus, control, flattening out every ghost of a thought other than those which pertained to the conversation at hand, locking down as much of his brain as he could—he began to feel floaty and distant, hyperaware of every movement of his mouth and hands and shoulders—but Barty had trained for this since he was a child hiding books from his father. Had learned deception at the knee of the Dark Lord. Maybe his occlumency hadn’t fully recovered: in the end it didn’t matter. He buried everything suspect and kept up an unfaltering mask until Rookwood finally, blessedly, looked away.

The conversation had meanwhile moved on to general frustration with the slow pace of their legislative agenda. A much safer topic: Barty didn’t need to hide anything, and slowly, one iota at a time, let himself—if not relax, at least unravel from such an extreme degree of occlusion. On this subject no one doubted the Order’s involvement. Known Order members had been spotted on watch at the homes of key Wizengamot members the Death Eaters had attempted to turn, bribe, coerce, or kill. In the bureaucracy Corban’s plans moved steadily ahead but in the Wizengamot, especially with Lucius out of the picture, their efforts had stalled.

Francis finally cut things off. “This is a waste of time, all we’re doing is guessing and the Wizengamot is Malfoy’s game anyway. We’ve got to nail these red masks. If they’re the Muggle-loving Order type odds are good one of the bastards will turn up in my office’s case load, they’re always throwing spells around in Muggle areas like idiots.”

“I’ll make sure my investigative teams know to keep an eye out for the masks,” said Albert.

“That’s helpful, but…” Francis shook her head. “You’ll only turn things up if the masks aren’t conjured in the moment they’re needed and vanished otherwise.”

“They’ll almost certainly be enchanted,” said Barty. “For hiding identities and staying in place and so on. Whoever they are these people clearly aren’t unaware of tactics; if it was just a matter of blowing fabric off their faces with a well-placed breeze charm someone would’ve got one of them by now. So it’s decently likely they’ve got a mask lying around your team might notice, Albert.”

Albert nodded thanks. Even his gratitude, Barty thought uncharitably, managed to come across as grouchy and unpleasant. Maybe he just liked having things to complain about.

“I’ll put the word about with our strike teams,” said Barty. “Priority will be to take one of them alive. Or at least get a corpse to identify.”

“That’s enough on that topic, then, I think.” Bryanne folded her hands on the table and turned to Alicia. “Talk to us about the Muggleborn problem.”

Alicia sat up straighter. Barty’s eyes narrowed slightly: there in the twist of her hands, just barely visible, and in the too-deep breath she took, he saw anxiety. Real nerves. Not that odd, really; Alicia was the second-youngest person in the room, and a much more junior Death Eater than Rookwood, Corban, Bryanne, or even Barty, who were in their own ways notorious.

Everyone else’s body language changed too. Tightened shoulders from Francis, an aggressive jut of Albert’s jaw, Bryanne’s retreat into coolly guarded reserve. Corban cocked his head and his face took on a more intent look. Even Rookwood turned to watch Alicia, the first time he’d appeared to give more than a quarter of his attention to this meeting. Subtle changes but collectively they all showed a sharper focus. This was a thorny issue and a much broader one than the tactical and logistical minutiae of their takeover. This was a question not of how to take back power but of what to do with that power once they got it.

“As I understand it, there was no single coherent plan for dealing with Muggleborns formulated in the last war,” Alicia said, glancing at Bryanne and Corban, both of whom had personally been involved. They nodded. “Since our Lord’s return to us, we have focused on other things—the logistics of taking power back into the hands it belongs in. But recently, as I’m sure we’ve all heard, the Malfoy heir began publicly courting a Muggleborn.”

“Can’t imagine what they’re thinking, letting the boy get away with that,” said Albert. Francis nodded.

Alicia disregarded them both. “People began asking questions. The Dark Lord didn’t appear to punish the Malfoys for this, or to seek an end to the courtship. So I petitioned Him directly to reach a decision on the matter of what to do with Muggleborns.”

At this, several sets of eyebrows raised, Barty’s among them. That could have gone badly for Alicia: the line between insolent presumption and loyal initiative was a thin one, with their Lord, and prone to moving unexpectedly. Barty knew perfectly well that he enjoyed unusual leniency, and had seen firsthand how rare it was.

“Our Lord authorized me to get input from those of you who understand the Ministry and might have some insight into what policies would be of use, into Muggleborns and their relations with the wizarding world, or both.” Alicia looked challengingly around the table. “So. Tell me what you all think.”

“Personally I’ve never found the extermination of Muggleborns to be logistically viable, let alone tactically advisable,” said Corban. “Albert, I know we’ve discussed it before—”

“So bind their magic and dump them with their Muggles,” snapped Albert.

“Which seems even more of a logistical nightmare than just killing them all.” Barty kicked off the floor and balanced his chair on its back legs again, ignoring Alicia’s rolling eyes.

Albert scoffed. “It’s not like the Muggles notice a thing, they wouldn’t really see magic if you danced a German waltz on broomsticks in front of their stupid faces—”

“They’re not any less intelligent than us. Their use of technology has progressed a hundredfold this century alone, and there are billions of them,” said Corban.

“We couldn’t beat them in an outright war.” Everyone fell silent and turned warily towards Rookwood when he spoke. Rookwood himself waved an idle hand, as if discussing nothing of more import than the weather. “Not as we are. Not with our numbers, and with our magic as hamstrung as it has been.”

Albert scoffed, opened his mouth, shut it again without saying anything. Francis scowled and crossed her arms—with a little too much force, actually. Most longtime Death Eaters, or for that matter politicians, knew if you performed an emotional reaction, people often didn’t think to wonder what it covered up, in the same way they would wonder what hid beneath an implacable mask. Barty made a mental note of the atypical body language and kept half an eye on her.

“Well,” said Corban. “Yes. My point precisely. They are crude, volatile, prone to mob behavior; their understanding of the world lacks elegance, but it doesn’t lack accuracy. They have identified and decoded the biological basis of heritable physical traits—it is not outside the bounds of reason that they could isolate and study a physiological component separating them from us.”

Well, well, thought Barty. Someone’s done his own research.

“Preposterous,” said Francis, but her face betrayed uncertainty, her arms loosened… and what the fuck was that, hesitantly worrying her teeth? Another gesture he’d never seen her make before, a nervous tic that didn’t match at all with her normal taciturn mien. They all knew she was shaken. Barty didn’t think that was a lie, precisely. But it was a little too carefully performed. A little too self-conscious.

“You may say so, but I assure, you, it is true,” said Corban, pressing his advantage. Had he noticed anything off about Francis’s body language? Barty thought not. Corban was a logistician and a bureaucrat; his mastery lay in other realms than the interpersonal.

“They have called it deoxyribonucleic acid,” said Rookwood. “It’s actually quite fascinating, though I remain skeptical that this ‘DNA’ could explain the origins of magic among humans. I am still catching up on the advancements that I missed while indisposed.”

Indisposed. Right. Understatement of the fucking decade.

“We’re getting off track,” said Alicia, though Barty caught her tucking satisfaction away, as well as a considering glance at Corban: clearly she hadn’t expected someone from such a sheltered pureblood line to have known anything about DNA, let alone argue against the intellectual inferiority of Muggles. The satisfaction spoke volumes. Neutral as she had tried to be bringing the topic up, asking for input before stating her own opinions, Barty would bet a lot of money she hoped to push things towards moderation.

“Apologies.” Corban inclined his head in her direction. “My point remains that both binding their magic en masse and killing them are solutions that present enormous challenges. And both solutions strike me as wasteful. There’s no evidence that Muggleborns are stealing magic from those of us with wizarding ancestry; it is even possible that many Muggleborns are the descendants of squibs, in whom magic reappeared after some generations. Wherever they get it, they can use it, and one can’t argue there are a meaningful number of wizards and witches of Muggle or part-Muggle heritage who are as intelligent, powerful, and capable as anyone of pure magical descent.” This time he nodded to Rookwood. “There is no simple solution, no low-effort way to deal with the challenge they present—so I propose that, rather than destroy such a reservoir of potential talent, we simply… exert control over them and use the magical and intellectual capacity of the Muggleborns for the good of the wizarding world.”

“Enslave them, you mean,” said Francis.

“Essentially yes.” Corban spread his hands wide, palms up, a gesture of appeal. “This witch the Malfoy boy is courting—I have heard her described by Griselda Marchbanks, one of the most brilliant magical scholars living, as the brightest witch of her generation. Why in the name of Merlin would we destroy that rather than put it to use?”

“It has potential,” Francis said slowly. “We’d need a way to identify them young… and of course magical means of control and restriction but that’s not particularly difficult, at least in theory; the complication would be scaling any such mechanism.”

“And we would want to do something about the ones with utility,” said Bryanne. “Blood matters. Ability matters more. Corban is right, there’s no proof of magic theft, and forced servitude is always less effective than willing. Perhaps if we could identify the clever or powerful ones young, and adopt them to magical families—they would grow up believing themselves halfbloods, perhaps, or the child of a squib. Nothing to be proud of but certainly better than being a mudblood.”

Barty sneaked a look at Alicia: oh, she did not seem happy.

But on second thought, her unhappiness bore no edge of panic. She made no move to interfere in the conversation. Which, interestingly, implied confidence in this little discussion’s outcome, even if it looked bad for her agenda in this moment.

The idea itself was interesting too. Mass enslavement had never been an idea much bandied about by Death Eaters even during the first war, not that Barty had ever heard. The more outright bigoted of their numbers favored some stripe of extermination, while the rest just didn’t care enough to give it much thought; some mudbloods would be killed, surely, but one also needed serving staff and clerks at the shops, and besides, that much violence really just seemed unnecessary and distasteful. Far simpler to indoctrinate the mudbloods you wanted, generate propaganda to appeal to the magical political moderates, and leave the rest of the undesirables with so little social power they’d never challenge the new status quo. Or so went the logic.

Barty… really hadn’t thought about it, at the time, which now made him uncomfortable. So many people dying—whatever, people died by the thousands every day, who gave a shit, but the violence for its own sake, that rankled. Muggleborns were still magical. You couldn’t argue that.

His Lord sought the betterment of the magical world.

As a teenager Barty hadn’t stopped to think whether the casual murder of mudbloods served that goal or not.

As an adult he couldn’t avoid the question.

“I suppose specimens like that Granger girl have their uses,” Albert conceded, grudgingly. “Bit of an outcrossing wouldn’t hurt the Malfoys any. They all look too pointy. Though stooping to marry their heir to a mudblood seems a step too far.”

Despite his preoccupation, Barty snorted, and Francis and Corban both grinned.

“The Romans couldn’t maintain slavery at scale,” said Rookwood.

There was a pause. Francis caught Corban and then Albert’s uncertain glances with her own. Had she done so deliberately?

“And you think we couldn’t either?” said Bryanne.

“We have made no serious advancements in the area of magical controlling enchantments that work at that scale and are sufficiently reliable for the kind of mass enslavement that you’re discussing.”

“Then what would you propose?” This from Francis, delivered with a belligerent tone, aligned with previous observations of her behavior patterns. Snappish, curt, more polite overall than Albert… but her voice was just slightly too loud.

Oh, Barty thought. Oh, you clever shites, you planned this. Push and needle until someone directly confronted Rookwood and asked for an opinion without him offering one—with Francis and Albert and even himself in the room, eventually someone would tip into rashness; Francis didn’t back down, Albert would snipe at anyone up to and including Rookwood for the sake of pessimism, and Barty knew full well he had a reputation for taking risks others wouldn’t. Like for example the risk of pissing Rookwood off. Surprising that Rookwood worked with Alicia on this, he hadn’t known they were close enough allies for that, but then again Rookwood was an enigma on a good day. Point was, no wonder it didn’t matter to Alicia what fucked up other things people proposed, when she had Rookwood sitting there waiting to say his piece:

“Let them assimilate.”

Bryanne’s eyes narrowed.

Rookwood smiled, thin and ironic but inscrutable, too, barring any observer from his private joke. “People who know they are enslaved will fight to their dying breath. Slavery fails—it always has. The human spirit is not so easily bent. Muggles have refused, time and again over centuries, to tolerate slavery for long, either among the enslaved or among those of the free-walking class who develop moral opposition to the practice. Under the Romans, slaves both magical and Muggle resisted, gladly sacrificing their own lives so that others may have a chance to be free. But offer a path to advancement? It may be narrow, difficult, a long, steep road, but provided it’s real, people will work to the bone for that shred of hope. Take their hope away and sooner or later they will turn on you.” He tilted his head towards Bryanne. “Blood matters, but ability matters more, no? Give that ability room to grow of its own accord in the forms best suited to it. Then pluck the flowers that prove themselves.”

“As long as there is a clear separation,” said Bryanne. “As long as we can be sure that they know their place.”

Barty wanted to look away. His thoughts ground as if gravel had been poured into gears that normally turned smoothly together.

“Crouch?” said Rookwood. Heads turned. Barty did not let himself tense. “You seem to have reservations.”

Ah, well. In for a knut and all that. “Our cause is to stand against a corrupt and useless Ministry that would see us become shadows of our former strength. To celebrate the wizarding world, the magical world, and protect our traditions and our culture from being stamped out.” He shifted a foot, preserving his chair’s precarious balance. “Our cause is not to wipe out Muggleborns specifically. I’d hate to see us get so distracted by baseless prejudice that we lose sight of what we’re actually here for.”

“Baseless?” said Albert. “Muggles are little little better than animals, boy, grubbing in the dirt and squabbling over scraps, and you’d have us welcome their mudblood spawn with open arms?”

“I don’t think we should waste any of our resources, and I don’t think that creating a caste system that would require constant enforcement is a good use of our resources,” Barty said, keeping his voice even, disinterested. “As you said, Rookwood, the more explicit we are about it, the harder it’ll be to maintain.” Not exactly what Rookwood said but close enough, as long as the older wizard didn’t call Barty out on the creative paraphrasing, and Rookwood didn’t seem so inclined. “The Granger girl has been all but adopted by House Greengrass, fostered at their home in the summers and close friends with their daughters, and having actually interacted with Muggleborn students,” which he alone at this table could say, “I can assure you she is in every way, manners, skill, intelligence and so on, indistinguishable from her pureblood peers. Take Muggleborns out of their Muggle context early enough and they’ll become assets—but only if they want to. We have to give them a reason to prefer our world to their Muggles.”

“One outlier isn’t evidence. Even a pig might dig up a diamond now and then,” Francis countered. Her voice acquired a mocking lilt. “Really, it sounds like you’re a bit too enamored of the chit. Does the Malfoy boy have competition?”

Barty let his lips curl in a dismissive sneer. “She’s entirely too young for my taste, thank you, not to mention entirely too female.” Internally, though—what the fuck had he done to make Francis antagonize him so directly?

“Well if that’s the way your taste runs keep it to yourself.” Albert jabbed an emphasizing finger at the table. One of these days he was going to break a bone with his habit of making gestures like that. Maybe, thought Barty, with the distant clarity brought on only by rage, maybe he could do the breaking. “We’re here to talk about what to do with the mudbloods, not your inability to please a witch the way you should.”

Maybe Barty would break his fingers for him. “Happy to stay on topic provided you can keep your insults to yourself,” said Barty pleasantly.

For a moment Albert visibly considered pushing it. Barty smiled at him, all teeth. Given a bit more provocation, Barty could braid Albert’s nerves into ropes and hang him from them like a flesh puppet, and the Dark Lord would consider it justified. This wouldn’t be the first such feud Barty settled with a bait and trap. Go on, he said to Albert with his eyes. I dare you.

A pointed cough from Francis’s direction broke Albert’s resolve. He scoffed and waved a contemptuous hand. “Your business is your business.”

Disappointing, but probably for the best. Narcissa would raise the fucking roof if Barty got bloodstains on her patio furniture. He accepted the olive branch, grudging though it may have been; they did all have to work together, after all. “At any rate, Granger’s not the only Muggleborn who stands out, just the most obvious.”

“Bryanne, your daughters went to school with the girl, no?” Corban said. “Did they know her?”

Bryanne continued turning her quill over and over in her hands. When he first noticed that tic years ago, before their Lord’s fall, Barty thought it was a tell, at first, and a terribly amateur one at that. Then he’d realized—while feeling like quite the arrogant little shit—the cleverness behind it. If your hands were always busy fiddling, who could tell when the fiddling meant anxiety versus just being habit? Instead of having to suppress your own tells you made them part of your facade and therefore meaningless even when they were true. “As I understand,” Bryanne said, “they had some connections, though I don’t believe they were close. My girls are acquainted with Harry Black, and through him Granger; they’ve spoken of both as exemplary students, even before one accounts for the inferior breeding.”

“Lily Evans was exceptional as well,” Corban admitted. “I encountered her in battle a few times—never fought her personally but I did observe her skill.”

“The Unspeakables wanted to recruit her as well. I assure you she was not merely powerful,” said Rookwood.

“I’ll grant mudbloods have their uses. Some of them more than others,” said Albert. “I agree with Bryanne—we need reassurances that they won’t inundate us, and that we can properly control any that we allow to stay.”

“I’ve already begun working with a colleague in Child Welfare Services to legally separate Muggleborns from their Muggle families, thanks to Corban prioritizing the head of that office for replacement by one of my contacts,” Alicia said.

A thought niggled at the back of Barty’s mind. Child Welfare Services. Alicia had been in the Muggle Liaison Office for ages; it made sense that she’d know about people also working with Muggles—as the staff of CWS did. But technically those departments didn’t share any jurisdiction. Muggle Liaison dealt with Muggle law enforcement, government, and intelligence. CWS dealt with Muggles only incidentally and only as individuals, as a byproduct of having some concern with Muggleborns… Alicia could plausibly have found and recruited Doughton alone, but—

Corban nodded. “I’m pleased by Doughton’s efficiency.”

—but nothing, Barty told himself firmly. Whatever suspicion had his subconscious turning over would come to him or not and in the meantime he had a conversation to follow.

“But even that won’t catch any mudbloods before they’re of Hogwarts age,” Francis said, “unless they have an accidental magic blow-up big enough to draw the notice of the Obliviator squads—” She turned to Albert. “And not many of them do, right?”

“No, not many. A couple a year, if that,” Albert said. As head of the Improper Use of Magic Office he oversaw the investigators responsible for cleaning up Muggle memories after an incident of potential magical exposure.

“We can’t do anything about early identification until we take the school,” said Bryanne. “Others of our colleagues are working on that front.”

“We anticipate having more access in the next academic year at the very least.” Rookwood’s voice held a faintly audible note of satisfaction.

“As for adult Muggleborns…” Corban hummed thoughtfully. “It may be best to wait until we’ve consolidated our grip on the Ministry, but I’ll develop some preliminary policy recommendations for us to review, with the goal of incentivizing Muggleborns moving into the magical world fully and cutting off their Muggle roots, as well as establishing control over the population.”

Corban glanced at Rookwood then, and he wasn’t the only one: Francis, Albert, and Bryanne did so as well, with varying degrees of subtlety. Rookwood was a true halfblood, the son of a witch and a Muggle, raised by both parents in a magical household that maintained close ties to his father’s Muggle extended family too, an arrangement that had by all reports been a pretty happy and functioning one. Everyone had heard about it in the late seventies when Rookwood’s feud with one of the Selwyns resulted in most of his Muggle relatives getting wiped out. Not that Rookwood appeared to have been particularly bothered by the attack, but still, you had to wonder if he’d react to this, considering the policies Corban described would’ve affected Rookwood’s own childhood. But he didn’t bat an eye or even seem to register the attention on him, and after a moment, Bryanne picked up the conversational thread: “Corban and Alicia, can you have a coherent framework written up within two weeks? I’ve noticed a great deal of talk among our colleagues as well; it would be best to have the Dark Lord’s approval of a plan early if we can.”

“There’ll be opposition,” Albert said. “Plenty of us won’t like keeping mudbloods around and I can’t say I disagree. I’m not the only one who will want assurances.”

“We will not allow them to usurp the established magical families that hold up our community,” Corban said. He looked to Francis. “Whether or not they have a title to accompany such lineage.”

“Make sure of it,” she sniffed, but nodded back to Corban, clearly pleased.

“We’ll have it ready by then,” Alicia promised Bryanne.

“Good. Does anyone else have something to add—? No?” Bryanne tapped twice on the table, decisively. “Then I’ll not be imposing on Narcissa’s hospitality any longer. I’ve plenty of other things on my plate.”

Barty let his chair rock forward, softening the impact with his feet so its front legs made no more than a soft thunk against the marble. Around him the meeting broke up with the efficiency summoned by people who had lots to do and lots of practice multitasking. Albert hurried out first, followed closely by Rookwood, who apparently didn’t even plan to wait for Alicia though she’d accompanied him here; Bryanne exchanged a quiet word with Francis and then she too made her exit.

Before Barty could follow suit he caught a quiet sideways look from Francis. “A moment?” she said curtly.

“Don’t take too long, Barty, I’d like to speak with you about certain infiltration operations before I return to the Ministry for the afternoon,” said Corban over his shoulder, with only a fractional hesitation before using a diminutive rather than Barty’s full first name. Men of Corban’s generation almost never stooped to such informality in public with someone so much their junior but given they worked so closely together this year it would be weird to keep saying “Crouch” and Corban had not made the mistake of calling him “Bartemius” twice.

Barty waited for him to have gone. At the head of the table, Alicia busily flipped through parchments with no sign she gave a shit about Barty or Francis. Francis for her part didn’t seem to care about being overheard so Barty threw subtlety to the four winds. “What is it? I’ve other commitments this afternoon.”

Commitments to go help Narcissa commit technical treason on behalf of her son, which would be Barty’s second such betrayal of his Lord today, for fuck’s sake, not that he planned to explain any of that right now. Or even think about it too hard.

“I have concerns about the direction of that conversation,” said Francis. “Your vocal defense of a moderate solution to the mudblood problem surprised me.”

“Mm.” Barty angled his head and watched her.

Francis made an impatient noise, the sort of manners that would be trained out of a lady like Bryanne Carrow by age six. “You’ve the Dark Lord’s ear, a considerable reputation, and more direct exposure to mudblood children than anyone else at this meeting. As you yourself pointed out. Yet you’ve never taken much of a policy stance before today. I want an explanation.”

“I already explained myself.” Had she always used the word mudblood so readily? Along with indecorous scoffing and snorting, that was the sort of crass language the noble houses drilled out of their children, especially their female children, early. The Jugsons numbered among a class of non-noble pure- or mostly-pureblood magical families who made a point of refusing to fully mimic the (pretentious, according to some) manners of their titled peers. So he could believe a daughter of such a family would use words like “mudblood” more readily than, say, Narcissa. But this readily, this often? In a relatively formal setting?

Francis, he thought, was perhaps trying too hard.

“Then explain more.” Francis leaned forward, rested her elbows on the table, stared Barty down with fierce intensity.

Barty’s fingers drummed on the table; he didn’t give a shit if she noticed, didn’t even try to hide his impatience. “It’s not complicated. I did not join our Lord out of some petty desire to punish mudbloods for imagined slights. I serve His goals of bettering and strengthening the magical world. Rookwood’s right—enslavement of the type Corban suggested would just be a waste of resources.”

“You do understand how much resistance there’ll be to any of this?” Francis flapped a hand vaguely at the air. “We don’t all agree on what best serves our Lord’s goals.”

“I know full well where many of us stand on the matter.”

“And you’ll go against them—?”

Barty tilted his head. Felt a few things click-clicking into place. “I’ll speak my mind,” he said slowly, “and if that requires me to tell the likes of Lord Lestrange or Lady Flint that I think their preference for unhinged violence and legal Muggle-hunting is a short-sighted distraction from what our true purpose, so be it. Stop wasting my time. You're fishing. What are you really after here?"

Alicia, who up until now had appeared to ignore the conversation, coughed pointedly. "You might as well drop the show, Francis. He's half figured it out anyway."

"Ahhh," said Barty. "Both of you—?"

"We've been working together to push things in a—more palatable direction," Alicia told him, though half her attention lingered on Francis, while the older witch's jaw worked irritatedly.

"Why the secrecy? Ah," said Barty, knowing the answer to his own question as soon as he asked it. "Credibility."

"I'm known to be the farthest thing from a Muggle-lover," said Francis with a curl of her lip. "If I appear to be persuaded, it will sway some of the ones that haven't made up their cursed minds." Her gaze hardened into half a glare. "And unlike you, I don't have the Dark Lord's ear, or a fancy last name, to make Lestrange and Flint and that lot leave me be."

"It surprised you that I spoke out," Barty concluded, "so you decided to evaluate my reasons in private."

Francis nodded.

"And your reasons?" Barty raised his eyebrows. Waited.

Francis made an impatient noise. “Mass enslavement? I know they’re mudbloods but really, there’s a fucking line somewhere. I expected something of the sort to come up eventually. Too many of us are too free with the violence. Or too hung up on blood purity. I could give a damn for your pure blood.”

"Not, of course, that you'd let your child marry a Muggleborn," said Barty, pointedly.

A grimace.

It figured, but Barty would take what he could get. He had been raised with a different kind of casual prejudice. Muggleborns, in his father's house, weren't lesser, exactly, weren't to be treated poorly or bullied or shamed, but you still wouldn't promote one above a certain point, still wouldn't be thrilled for your child to court one. It was the education. The culture. The background. They simply weren't equipped to thrive in the wizarding world, "the poor things," as some of his father's friends liked to say. Barty had only recently begun to realize how unfair that was in its own way, as his mind slowly cleared and as long hours in other people's skin left him too much time to think. So he couldn't entirely blame Francis: she'd put more consideration into this than most Death Eaters with a background like either of theirs.

Alicia stepped in again: "We can't afford to ignore this problem if we want our Lord's vision to come to pass. While half of us focus on getting our pound of flesh back from the Ministry and the other half turn into petty children smashing sand castles, we could easily lose the big picture. I’ve run the numbers. We don’t have a large enough population without them. Francis knows it too, for all she doesn’t like it.”

“I don't disagree, but is there a question in here somewhere?” Barty said.

“Are you willing to put your hand on the scales?” Alicia shot back.

“I was only invited today because I’m useful for infiltration and have insight you department head types might not. I don’t make our policies.”

“But you're listened to. Respected. Your loyalty is unquestioned. I don’t want to see another twenty years of social fracture and festering resentment," said Francis. "My father joined the Death Eaters for several reasons. I followed him into our Lord's service for reasons of my own. Some of which involved disagreeing with his reasons."

As an attempt to build rapport, it wasn't subtle. Everyone and their pet kneazle knew the Crouches junior and senior had not gotten along. But maybe Francis didn't care about subtle. For every two Slytherins who tap-danced endless circles around the truth, there was one who wielded honesty with all the deliberate precision of a stiletto.

"And Rookwood?" he said.

Francis hesitated. Alicia grimaced slightly. "He has his own reasons," said Alicia. "I don't know to what extent he cares, exactly, but—"

"I've had to work with him for some financial and mathematical matters," Francis cut in. "He dislikes inefficiency and he doesn't give a toss about blood. He grew up half with his Muggle relatives and liked them well enough that Selwyn thought she could hurt him if she killed them all off. He'll say his opinion on the subject if asked, and that's enough to be helpful."

"But you need more from me than that." Barty looked between the two witches. "You need more active support from me."

"Yes." Alicia came around the table, lined up next to Francis. "We need to solve this. You know it as well as we do."

When the fuck had his life gotten this complicated?

Barty was going to regret this, but. "Very well. I'll… assist you as I can. Right now though you'll have to excuse me. Corban's waiting and I have other appointments after that."

And, he thought irritably, making his way out of the room to track Corban down, Narcissa was going to pick up on this gloomy mood within thirty fucking seconds, and then needle him until she teased out the why of it, and he wouldn't even have a good reason to hide it, seeing as they were already well beyond the point of mutually assured destruction. Giving her that little bit of extra leverage would not make a material difference. And now he had to deal with bloody Rookwood on top of everything else. Next thing you knew Merlin would come back from the grave with one testicle missing just to dance a jig and call Barty a dumb arse in Old Welsh, and Barty wouldn't even be able to disagree with him.

Draco

The letter shook slightly in his hands. Draco looked from it, to the cabinet, then back. His mother's curling script doubled on the parchment. No. Draco shut his eyes hard, counted backwards from four, opened them again: his vision was stable again.

Fucking up one of these runes was the last thing he wanted to do.

Especially this close to the end. Of this section at least. If Draco got this wrong he'd have to sand his bit of wood again until all traces of the runes already carved on it were gone and then re-insert the wood into the cabinet's side, which had been a nightmare in its own right, and then carve the rules all over again and yeah, no thank you. Absolutely not.

Steady, he told himself. Almost there.

A muttered charm lifted the paper and held it at eye level, magic keeping it perfectly still, unlike his cursed hands. Draco shook his fingers and rolled out his wrists before going back to the carving. Just a few more runes now. Straight lines—this project used mostly the Elder Futhark, and thank Merlin; these runes had been meant for cutting into stone or hardwood, all straight lines and sharp angles. No curves. Simpler to get right. Harder to use for specific workings, since, with runes, less nuance of form meant more nuance of meaning, and getting magic to do all and only what you wanted was paramount in rune spells. As much as Draco was glad of the easier carving right now, he had entertained a fantasy or three of finding the person who had decided to enchant something as finicky as a vanishing cabinet using Elder Futhark and explaining to them in excruciating detail why it would've been better to use Sanskrit or Sumerian or, fuck, probably cuneiform would work better than this.

Draco carved dagaz into the wood for the sixteenth time in this panel alone. Really, really excruciating detail. Get-Theo-to-help levels of excruciating. Merlin.

He was letting his thoughts run away with him again. Draco counted backwards from fifteen in his head and kept on. If he didn't think too hard he could pretend this was just another lesson from when he'd been a boy. It was quiet all around, like in the rooms where he did his lessons, though Malfoy Manor would never be this dusty. His mother's handwriting showed him the way now just as it had through basic arithmetic he puzzled over years and years ago. Draco remembered her telling him, when she began to teach him runes, about the restrictions of Futhark, the constraint of her script to the simplest of lines; she much preferred the fluidity and artistry inherent to runes from Sanskrit, Arabic, ancient Chinese. Not to say that she could not use Elder Futhark. The opposite, really: Mother had compiled in a week what might have taken Draco two months, given his more limited access to resources and his restricted spare time.

Draco knew without looking when the last rune had been carved exactly into place. The magic slipping coyly under his hands settled all at once into place with a feeling like a soft little sigh. All the tension drained out of him in a rush. He all but dropped his carving tools, left the letter floating in midair, and sank down onto the dusty floor on his back. Now he could let his hands shake and his eyes close and his lungs expand as much as they wanted to. At least for a few minutes. Dinner would start in… less than an hour, give or take; knowing exactly what time it was required getting out his watch or casting a tempus, both of which sounded like far too much work. The point being, he had to be present, in order to keep up appearances, but he had at least a little time to just lie here.

For the first time Draco allowed himself to think he might actually fix this bloody cabinet without getting blown up, translocated into the stratosphere, or dissolved down to his component molecules in the process.

Of course, it helped that he was getting closer to adequate sleep. This morning he hadn't needed glamour charms to hide any bags under his eyes; for once he'd given his homework in on time this week, although it was so badly done that in any previous year he would have cursed himself and gone to the infirmary to buy time to do a better job, rather than hand it in. But that was a solution for a one-off problem, a single bad week, nothing he could rely on with any regularity, nothing that would help him this year. Draco had just been staggering along in a fog, not knowing what to do except keep throwing himself headfirst at the problem, until Harry stepped in. Now when Draco lay in bed and his mind started spinning in panicked circles he could just remember that he and his mother had help.

Not much help, true. Harry wasn't a panacea for Draco's problems. But he had a foothold outside the Dark Lord's influence, tenuous as it was; he had resources and the will to help and, importantly, Draco's trust, however ironic that may be considering how much they used to hate each other. Draco imagined telling his first-year self Yes, hello, in a few years Harry Potter will be Harry Black and one of your best friends and also quite possibly your best hope of saving Mother's life, and smiled grimly at the dusty ceiling. That would not go over well.

Draco's stomach announced its displeasure at not getting anything to eat since breakfast with a gurgle that sounded way too loud in the small, tomb-silent room. "Ugh," said Draco. Nothing replied, naturally. The only object in here with enough magic to potentially talk to you was the cabinet, looming mockingly at Draco's feet, and even if its magic went so sideways as to figure out the powers of speech, Draco doubted it would deign to speak to him.

He clambered to his feet. Merlin and Morgana, he was filthy. Draco sneered halfheartedly down at his mucky robes. "Scourgify."

Magic swirled along the fabric. A puff of dust went up. "Ventius minor," Draco rushed out, and a small swirl of air scattered it before it could settle back onto his robes. Some smudges remained, though, stains where magic had mixed in with the dirt and sunk stubborn fingers down into the wool fibers of his robe. That was the downside of wool: it was a sturdy absorptive fabric that took enchantments happily and held them for years, but it took magic you might not want on there just as easy. Obviously Draco had defenses on his person at all times against unwanted enchantments cast on his fabric but drips of inchoate excess from a project like this cabinet had a bad habit of slithering past such protections. Maybe he should bring proper canvas work robes up here—waxed canvas rebuffed almost any magic you threw at it, especially if you embroidered runes into it with metal thread, holding the magic in the runes rather than the fabric. And you could line it on the inside with wool to hold other charms for cooling, managing the weight, and so on. But a student having such a thing would be incredibly suspicious; smuggling it in would be a pain; leaving it up here to avoid being caught with it in his schoolbag would be definitive proof of his involvement if anyone found the cabinet first; and unlike books and scrolls, Draco couldn't easily disguise protective enchanting gear as schoolwork and just carry it around.

He'd been having the same argument with himself off and on since October, and the result was always the same. Draco resigned himself to eventually ruining this set of robes along with the other eight already damaged beyond repair by this project. He cast another few Scourgifys and a Tergeo for good measure, mixed in with "Recumagien" for breaking up magical residue specifically, who cared if it might damage the charms already on his robe in the process, until he looked… presentable, at least. Presentable was fine. Presentable kept professors from sticking their noses in his business. Presentable was, embarrassingly, a step up from the state he had shown up to class in more than once since Yule break.

(Draco's mind shied away from thinking about Yule.)

Presentable also kept the worst gossip among other students at bay, which Draco, however little he might care for the opinions of the hoi polloi, needed. Hermione had it worse, he knew, but the snide little mutters of "Mud-fucker" and the deeper-cutting hisses of "blood traitor" that followed him around the common room grated. He'd never been quite this much at the mercy of the rumor mill, but like anyone, there had been moments of mockery, times when snubs by his classmates cut to the quick. Especially early on: Draco hadn't ever been exposed to a world where being a Malfoy wasn't universally respected. Hogwarts forced him to learn how to cope pretty quickly. He remembered a bout of frustrated tears from the summer after first year, humiliated by crying like a baby even as he kept complaining to Mother that it just wasn't fair and the Gryffindors kept laughing at him and how was he supposed to make anyone take him seriously? In hindsight Draco found the whole thing funny—he'd needed a bit of a kick in the arse, and who would have taken his whinging twelve-year-old self seriously—but at time it mattered to him and Mother had not laughed, just run her hand over his hair and told him coolly: "Be better than them. Be untouchable."

Draco hadn't been untouchable in a while. His armor of superiority had worn paper-thin and begun to shred completely. With each step towards the more populated parts of the school he breathed and focused and drew it back around himself. With adequate sleep and clean robes came clarity. With support from Harry came confidence. With real progress on the cabinet came pride. I can do this, Draco thought, and believed it for the first time in a while. His steps grew surer, shoulders stronger. Once he got to the Great Hall he would sweep in and take his usual place towards the upper years' end of the table, with the rest of the Vipers where he belonged, and if that jumped-up prat Rosier threw a contemptuous sneer his way Draco would give one back to match, and if part of Draco's mind whispered that Rosier was right, as was wont to happen lately, Draco knew he could tell that insipid insecure whine to kindly fuck right off.

He'd tell Rosier to fuck off, too, if the prick opened his mouth for verbal barbs as well as glares. Or, well, maybe not fuck off, at least explicitly. Mother raised him right—Draco might use profanity at the table in a casual conversation with his friends but with someone like Rosier he preferred a bit more panache. Hmm. It would depend on the nature of the taunt. If Rosier went after Hermione, Draco could say: "Alas, I'm courting the smartest witch in the school. Woe is me." Probably one of his friends would pick up the thread then, and make Rosier look a fool. Or if Rosier tried a different tack, snide comments about waning Malfoy influence—that'd be harder to counter; Draco could say that he could buy Rosier's entire family before lunch, but no one listening who mattered would take it seriously, given the real insult lay in Death Eater politics. Descending the last flight of stairs, Draco hummed under his breath. He couldn't respond to a jibe like that on Rosier's terms and nothing acceptable for public ears would effectively counter the point. Better to go on the offensive, then, "At least we Malfoys still have any—who bought the Rosier manor from your father, again? A manufacturing interest from Germany, right?" Or maybe…

A shape popped into view at the bottom of the staircase. "Malfoy!"

Draco made a highly unflattering squawking sound and almost fell down the last few stairs. His wand nearly sprang to his hand, but this was Hogwarts, not home, he stilled the urge at the last instant. "What?"

The student who'd called his name, a younger Hufflepuff who must have seen Draco on her way past the foot of the stair, cast a wary glance at Draco's twitching wand hand. "Er—the Headmaster wants to see you, I've been looking for ages—here."

Draco blinked several times in rapid succession. Headmaster. What—fuck. Did someone know? Had someone found the cabinet, or—or learned something outside the school, shite, Dumbledore had spies, what if he—

"You… okay…?" said the Hufflepuff slowly.

The scroll she was holding out wavered slightly. Draco controlled his accelerating breathing. It was fine. He'd just left. And even if Dumbledore's spies carried some actually damning secrets back to his ears it wasn't like those were legally admissible evidence. Even if Dumbledore got suspicious that no one could find Draco, well, Hogwarts was a big place. It was fine.

What if he knows about Yule?

Draco snatched the scroll from the Hufflepuff, whipped around, and went quickly back up the stairs so she wouldn't see him gulping for air. Fuck. Fuck. Calm, he had to calm down. He couldn't go to Dumbledore like this. What time even was it? Before dinner. Dumbledore could fucking wait, then, springing a message on Draco at the last bloody second. That was better. Draco grabbed onto his righteous anger. Served the Headmaster right if Draco made them both late for the meal.

Unless this was the Headmaster fucking with him and Draco would get up there and no one would answer the gargoyle and he'd be left to come in to dinner late on his own like a fool and ha, no, absolutely not. If that happened Draco would just—go wheedle a snack out of the house elves and skip dinner entirely. No way he'd give the bastard the satisfaction.

Merlin, that gargoyle. Draco came to a stop in front of it, realized he hadn't actually read the note yet, and snapped the seal off the scroll with an irritated jerk. Horrible way to guard the Headmaster's office. According to Justin and Hermione, in Muggle schools anyone could just walk into the administrative office and start talking, and if you wanted to make an official appointment with the headmaster you could do that too. Dumbledore didn't even have a functional fucking receptionist. They should get a statue for the door that took messages or made appointments or at a minimum didn't look like it was going to eat your face off for having the temerity to talk to it.

The note was short and to the point.

Mr. Malfoy,

Please see me in my office before dinner. The password is 'Anglo Bubbly.'

Headmaster A. P. W. B. Dumbledore

"Anglo Bubbly?" Draco read in disbelief. The gargoyle tipped its head so as to maintain its beady-eyed glare while also moving out of the way. Draco resisted making a crude gesture back at it as he stepped past and onto the moving spiral staircase. Muggles were so fucking weird. Who came up with a sweet and decided that would be a good name for it?

At the top of the stairs, Draco opened the door without knocking or waiting, and strode into the Headmaster's office. He gathered an impression of the place in an instant: crowded shelves, delicate magical artifacts, curios and oddities, vaulted ceiling, walls densely crowded with portraits. Beyond that Draco refused to look around or gape or be remotely impressed by a space no doubt meant to awe visitors. What a fascinating collection, people would say after leaving. How very many books he has, that Headmaster Dumbledore. Look how clever and eccentric he is.

The Headmaster himself beamed at Draco from behind his large and handsome desk. If he took issue with Draco rudely barging in, he gave no sign of it. "Mr. Malfoy, welcome. Have a seat. Delightful to see you—I was afraid my message had gone astray! Lemon drop?"

"No, thank you." Draco sat in the least squashy-looking chair on this side of the desk.

"More for me," said Dumbledore brightly, and popped a candy into his mouth from the bowl on the table. Did he leave those out all the time or only set them out for show when expecting visitors?

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Indeed I did." Those blue eyes twinkled madly through his half-moon spectacles. "A few professors have expressed concerns to me this year—particularly after our students returned from the winter holiday."

Cold bored into Draco's stomach. Did he know about Yule? And he had avoided referring to the Muggle winter holiday. He wanted something.

"Your classwork," Dumbledore went on, "has, reportedly, not been comparing to your usual exemplary standard, and Professors Vector and McGonagall in particular have noted you appear fatigued and inattentive in classes, or often absent from meals. NEWT level work is more difficult than the OWL level—and, of course, there are other circumstances—other pressures on many of our students."

Other pressures. Right. The bare skin of Draco's left forearm prickled. "Respectfully, sir, keeping up with my course work is my own affair." There, that qualified as diplomatic.

“Indeed it is, my boy, as the well-being of all of Hogwarts’s students is mine.” Dumbledore paused artfully. “To that end I fear I must intrude slightly on matters that derive from beyond our walls here… Mr. Malfoy, I will speak to you frankly, as befits the adult you are fast becoming: you are in a precarious position indeed.”

Draco’s spine grew ramrod straight. “Again, whatever position I may or may not be in is none of your concern.”

“Would that were true.” For a moment Dumbledore showed every one of his many decades of life in that lined face. “Would that I could trust the world with all my students, to let you grow up in peace. Unfortunately, you and I both know that the stakes you face become higher by the day.”

“Sir—”

“Please,” said Dumbledore, with a touch of gentle steel, “do not interrupt me.”

Draco fell silent, but in his lap his hands clenched into fists. How dare he.

“I have of necessity paid more attention to a select few students this year who I know to be facing uncommonly difficult challenges within Hogwarts and without.”

Yes, I recall your little tête-à-tête with Pansy.

“The concerns of your professors came as no surprise to me. And yet, in these most recent weeks, you show far fewer visible signs of stress—as if a burden has lifted from your shoulders.” Dumbledore fixed him with a gaze that pierced him to the core. "I wish that I could be pleased for you, but circumstances being as they are, I worry that you may have misplaced your loyalty."

Draco scoffed. "And, what, you'd rather I gave it to you instead?"

“Myself I can be sure of. Many others, however, would seek to take advantage of a person at their lowest." He must have seen Draco's face twist with disbelief; he held up a hand to forestall any response. "Whatever else you may think of me—I sincerely wish to save as many from the web of Lord Voldemort and his allies as I can. You need not yield to their coercive ways to be safe. You have other choices.”

Offense locked Draco's every muscle rigid. “Like you?” he said, hearing contempt drip off his voice and not caring, all pretense of civility gone. “Afraid you miscalculated, Headmaster? Let me alone too long? What, I wasn’t desperate enough for you yet, but oh dear, Merlin forbid anyone else might try to help—”

“I have no illusions, Mr. Malfoy, that you have now or had previously any reason to trust me.” Dumbledore’s voice didn’t rise but it hardened further, solidified, smothered the possibility of any other sound cutting through. “I do fear that I miscalculated, though it was not, as you allege, a wish to do as others might, and appear to you in your desperation with an open hand. Rather I hoped you might reach your own conclusions about which of those forces in the world are not as aligned with your interests as they may seem.”

Draco gave the old man a smile he had learned from his mother at her chilliest. “I’ve no interest in being a pawn, sir, with no choices beyond which side of the board I play for. Malfoys are not so easily trapped as you seem to imagine. I suggest you concern yourself with matters you understand well enough to correctly judge.”

“Many people make promises of neutrality. I will not and I urge you not to trust those who do. This game is of a binary nature.”

“I have had the chance to personally,” Draco spat the word, leaving no room for misinterpretation, “assess the non-neutral options here, and I assure you I have no need to cater to either one.”

Instantly Dumbledore’s twinkle sharpened to a diamond-edge gleam, his shoulders shifted, his busy eyebrows twitched together. Fuck. Draco scrabbled at the edges of his own composure.

“You are very certain of your independence,” said Dumbledore. “Let us assume that this contact of yours is truly as neutral as you claim it is. There are some such people or institutions. Their number grows fewer by the day. Are you as certain that it will be able to stay neutral?”

Silence settled heavy in the air. Draco breathed it in and out and could not fight past it to any real response. He believed in Harry. But—Voldemort might not let Harry stay neutral forever. Already the Dark Lord had begun to lean on his points of leverage over the last of the Blacks, and he had several.

“Everyone,” said Dumbledore, into the quiet, “can break. No matter how well intentioned.”

Draco grabbed at instinct, spoke without thought, said jeeringly: “Even you?”

But Dumbledore cuts the crutch of spite from under him neatly with a simple, “Yes, Mr. Malfoy. Even me.”

Theo, eyes shadowed, lashing out at Daphne then fleeing with fire licking at his hands. Hermione sleeping less every passing night. Pansy’s eyes full of tears she refused to let fall in front of House mates mocking her for a blood-traitor and a mud-fucker. Harry stone-faced and iron-hard, with the light of his father’s pyre playing on his face. Months now spent watching them all falling apart even as Draco fell himself. Harry had stretched himself dangerously thin trying to keep them all safe, and all the Vipers knew it.

How much longer could he keep it together?

Draco looked across the desk at his Headmaster and met those blue eyes, sorrowful, bright, alive. In death they’d lose their gleam. In death Dumbledore would be gone. If Draco killed him.

Between failure and Mother’s life, Draco had already started to crumple. It was do or die. Then the doing became possible and—Harry would help him succeed.

Did Harry think he should succeed?

Merlin. Success meant his mother’s safety. Success meant Draco would be a murderer. What could Harry do about that?

His stomach heaved. Draco summoned every scrap of pride he ever learned at Father’s knee and Mother’s hand. “If that will be all, sir, I don’t want to miss dinner.”

The lines by Dumbledore’s eyes deepened. “Yes… naturally.”

Well, that was as much of a dismissal as Draco needed. He shoved himself too his feet, too quickly; every second he stayed here he gave more away to this man, every breath he took thickened tarlike in his lungs. The walls loomed. The Headmaster watched him and those eyes saw far too much.

Just as Draco reached the door, Dumbledore spoke again, halting Draco in his tracks. “The offer will remain open, Mr. Malfoy. I can protect you and your mother, and I will, should you have need. Keep that in mind.”

All the Vipers knew he’d made an offer like that to Pansy, and that she turned him down flat, turned her back and walked away with pride intact.

But what did Pansy have left to lose? Not nothing—

“I will.”

Still much less than Draco.

He wrenched the door open, and all but fled the room.