Chapter 1 – A Rebel at Heart
History of the World Volume II Chapter 1 The Rule of Turpin – Caste Roles
...In his infinite wisdom, our emperor defined society's true form, the pyramid. At the base exist the noble savages, the low humans who know no magic. Their deficiency, separates them from their superiors, those who wield magic, but implies no inherent evilness. Rather humans are simple creatures, whose lives are too short for true learning, whose minds are too dull for real brilliance.
The next layer of the pyramid contains the humans' shepherds, the wizards and witches. While blessed and honoured beyond mere humans the second tier of society requires its own shepherds.
The pinnacle of society is held by the God-wizards and witches, the third tier of society. Turpin's elite guards stand sentinel over all the human societies of Earth, making this imperfect world an Eden of peace and near-perfection...
Surrounded on all sides by a sea of sand, the Tower of Erudio rose above the land of Ortus. It persisted like a sturdy weed, sprouting as close to the heart of the empire as any branch of the second tier government was allowed to exist. At its apex, an old man with a long grey beard paced the smooth stone halls. He wore the yellow silk robes of an educator, the crimson hood of a master wizard, and a shiny pair of half-moon spectacles. Albus, Director of the Unified Wizarding School System, paced when he was thinking, worrying, or plotting sedition. Sometimes he thought there should be a furrow in the enchanted slick granite floor from his years of pacing, his legs marking a small percentage of the distance that his mind travelled everyday.
Sedition. Revolution. Treason. Most of the wizarding world would be surprised to discover a respected second tier Governor was not only participating in the world's long-standing rebellion, but had actually been leading the growing movement for nearly four decades. Growing but not succeeding, the rebellion had existed in one form or another almost as long as Turpin had ruled. They had plotted, undermined, attempted assassinations, outright uprisings, often populating their ranks with common humans and nonhuman magic beings only to be extinguished time and again. Despite all the failures, the ember of rebellion never quite died. In its newest incarnation under Dumbledore, the rebellion was a cautious nibbling entity, building foundations within the infrastructure of the empire and whittling away at resources with guerilla warfare.
Pausing at the archway of a rose tinted window, Albus stared at the stark desert and tried to remain patient. He wasn't a young man anymore, and unlike the immortal regime he was fighting, mortality loomed ominously on the horizon for the rebels' leader. Who would carry on with the rebellion when he was gone? Minerva, maybe? She wasn't a young woman anymore herself, and so many of the others had fallen in the course of their slow fight.
What if the next rebel leader didn't understand patience? What if his rebels ended up dead, sacrificed in a grand battle, uselessly murdered in a fight they had no chance to win? They had to wait and learn and listen. If they looked hard enough, fought long enough, built their strength, the rebellion might find a weakness, an answer to Turpin's stagnant rule. Turpin understood patience. He had ruled seamlessly for too many centuries to act rashly. He had extinguished too many rebellions to fear whichever uprising was simmering on the horizon. His enemies invariably grew old and impatient and tired. The emperor's enemies made their moves, their mistakes, and consequently were destroyed over and over again.
With an audible pop, one of Albus's rebel captains made a scheduled appearance, apparating into the center of the room. His long black hair was captured in a neat ponytail. His severe gray eyes still held a twinkle of mischief, leftover from a happy childhood, though he marshaled his face into a pseudo-solemn expression. "Sirius, I'm glad you could make it. Please have a seat." Albus gestured with his wand, conjuring a pair of comfortably cushioned chairs in the center of the room.
Sirius's utilitarian soldier's black robes only hinted at the athletic build they covered. "Sir, thank you. Are you sure it's safe? I mean, I know it's supposed to be, but it just feels exposed out here so close to his Excellency and the undying court. I'm a wanted man you know."
"I've seen the posters. The sheriffs aren't amused by all the mocking your portrait does. I believe the Western Regional Sheriff, your old friend Lucius, finds the poster particularly offensive. He blames your outlaw status on his inability to rise to the third tier. How could his cousin be a rebel?" Albus chuckled. "I would watch my back at the family reunion this year."
"There's no reason to pretend any longer. That's one good thing that came out of my identification, no more visiting the family and pretending to like certain of my cousins," Sirius said. "I know you'll miss the information I used to get out of them over eggnog, but I'm much happier on the front lines, getting my hands dirty."
"And your new command?" Albus asked. "I understand you've been doing very well with your small group. Alastor said you were deadly, precise, and practically invisible."
Sirius leaned forward, pride glimmering in his eyes. "Funny, the only thing Moody ever called me to my face was arrogant, loud-mouthed, and obnoxious."
"Unfortunately, your good work hasn't gone unnoticed by our friends in the regime. You're going to have more to worry about in your district than your cousin the sheriff very soon. They're dispatching an elite team to guard the shipments moving around and through the Misty Forest Region. Have you heard of the Reapers?"
Sirius paled, his joking manner dropped abruptly. The Rebellion wasn't a joke, but it was almost like a game for Sirius much of the time. He enjoyed bucking his family's standards, and he believed in the ideals of the revolution. Hearing that the boogeyman had been dispatched to your neighborhood to keep the peace took some of the fun out of the whole situation. "Who hasn't heard of them? I understood that they never left the capital. I actually thought they were made-up to scare the kids."
"Oh, they're real," Albus said. He wasn't conscious of the haunted look that settled onto his face. He was focusing on a memory, the memory of a Reaper. "They aren't really human, no souls, no heart." Albus traced a finger across the left side of his face. "You'll recognize them by their disfigured faces. A coal black river curls over the left half of their face, a living tattoo that shifts and grows and shrinks as they fight. Their left eye under the tattoo is empty-red. I know that you prefer bloodless missions, achieving your objectives without harming anyone in the process, and I approve. That won't work against these creatures. When you face the Reapers, and you will if they're coming to your forest, use deadly force. If you hesitate, if you give them any chance, they will annihilate you. They will not hesitate."
Walking through one of the Misty Forest's camps containing a regiment or so of rebel troops, Sirius rode the roller coaster of emotion his encounter with the commander in chief had elicited in him. He was proud of the job he and his troops were doing, and he was terrified of the attention they had attracted in only a few months. The emperor was dispatching his Reapers, legendary enforcers that hadn't left the capitol in at least twenty years. God forgive him, he was excited too, excited to face a new challenge, someone more dangerous than his annoying cousin Malfoy. Outside one of the tents, a group of Gold Dragons, infantry-grunts, were gathered together playing a game of cards, and Sirius waved at them. Those who spotted him started to scramble to their feet. "At ease, gentlemen, I'm looking for your commander. Is he on base?"
"Commander Potter is at the infirmary," one of the soldiers offered.
The soldiers didn't seem as concerned as men whose commander was in serious condition should, so Sirius wasn't overly worried. Winding up in the infirmary happened in their line of work. He was just glad his friend was in camp for a change when he wanted to talk. The infirmary wasn't far. The only white tent in camp, Sirius made a beeline for it. Like all the tents in camp, the infirmary only appeared large enough to comfortably contain a handful of men, but stepping through the door flap revealed a full-size field hospital capable of housing at least a hundred men. Sirius headed over to the nearest healer and smiled at her. "Could you point me in the direction of Commander James Potter's bed?"
The young woman looked up from the stack of parchments she'd been shuffling through, and her plump cheeks burned red at the sight of the handsome captain smiling at her. "Ah, Potter, Commander, I'll show you." She tucked curly blond strands of hair behind her ears and scrambled out from behind the desk. "This way."
Sirius couldn't help speculating on James' potential injuries. He had probably managed to break a couple of limbs with all the crazy flying he tended to engage in. When the nurse pulled aside the room flap, Sirius didn't see James splinted and immobilized. His friend seemed absolutely fine his lanky limbs folded onto a bed while he relaxed with his head leaned against the headboard. "You faker," Sirius said. "I thought nothing short of actual fractures was supposed to land James Potter in the infirmary? You're going soft in your old age."
James' eyes flew open and he sat forward, scooting to the edge of the bed. "Sirius, old dog, you know better than that. I'm here with Lily."
"She's okay?" Sirius dropped all pretence of joking and took a seat on the bed next to James. "Did something happen?"
"Hey, it's nothing bad. You can't mention this to her unless you really want me to end up in the infirmary, okay. You know I can't keep good news a secret from my best friend. Lily thinks it's bad luck to say anything in the first months." James met Sirius's worried gaze with a grin that managed to be hopeful, happy, and terrified all at once. "She thinks she's pregnant. And I think we're ready. Lily is going to retire from active duty and stay at home this time."
Never having been a father, Sirius didn't fool himself into thinking that he could understand what James was feeling, but he thought he might be able to guess. You couldn't watch a man lose two children, watch him grieve and mourn and die inside, without guessing at the panic this new development elicited. "You're ready. It's time. You and Lily are amazing parents. This little boy or girl is very lucky."
James didn't know why, but hearing Sirius say the things he'd been telling himself all day made them easier to accept. "Of course we're ready. Are you kidding?"
He'd come looking for James with his head full of Reapers and demons and strategy, but the work-talk could wait. "Look, I have to check on my men, and you have important baby-business to deal with," Sirius said. "Am I invited to dinner?"
James followed his friend as far as the hallway where they embraced. "Of course you're invited to dinner, but only if you think you can keep a secret."
"Who, me? Do you even need to ask?"
The leather covered table clung to Lily's skin like glue everywhere the examination gown left exposed, but she didn't care. She just wanted the healer, Grady, to finish his examination and tell her that she was well, and her baby was well. She wanted to hear those magic words, your baby is fine. It seemed to be going on forever. He had drawn four different spell circles on her abdomen. What could he be checking? Was something wrong? What was wrong?
"Mrs. Potter, why don't you get dressed, and then we can talk?" Grady said.
It was all Lily could do not to scream. Why didn't he just say the magic words and tell her that everything was okay? Didn't he know that the waiting was torture? Lily rolled onto her side, the leather releasing her skin with an audible protest. She snatched her robes up and stepped behind the privacy curtain. Pulling her robes on hastily, Lily tried not to think the worst, but with every second she became more convinced that something was wrong with the baby. Their baby was in danger, and it wasn't even born.
Already worked into a near frenzy of speculation, Lily came out from behind the privacy curtain ready to hear almost anything. "What did you find? Something's wrong with the baby, isn't it?"
"It isn't like that," Grady said. "You aren't pregnant, Lily. Why don't you have a seat? We'll talk about it. Do you ever remember coming in contact with a chimera?"
Since Sirius had made his exit, James hadn't been able to sit still. Sirius helped him get his perspectives straight, helped him get in touch with the excitement that wouldn't let him wait quietly. Lily was pregnant again. They were going to be parents again. It was time.
When Lily finally appeared at the door, James didn't let her speak. He caught her in his arms, kissed her, squeezed her. Why hadn't he kissed her when she first told him? Why hadn't he been able to get excited and be happy? Why had he been so scared?
"James, stop," Lily whispered. "Just stop. There isn't a baby. I was wrong."
Taking a step back, James felt the excitement drain out of him leaving him empty and unable to respond for a long moment. "It's okay though. We know we're ready to try again now, right? I'm ready to try again now." Tears were leaking out of Lily's eyes and she was shaking her head. "Don't cry. Please? This isn't the end of the world. Please don't cry."
The Dog Pack, an elite special-operations group, made their camp several yards from the main rebel encampment. A handful of wizards and witches, who had been recruited by Allastor Moody himself lounged around outside in the sun, awaiting their next assignment, awaiting their leader. Sirius didn't bother trying to sneak up on his troops. He was too excited for James and Lily to bother testing the kiddies today. There weren't any salutes for Sirius when he entered camp. His soldiers were in their other forms to the last man. Heading up a pack of animagi was an art form, and Sirius had insisted early on that they spend at least a couple of hours a day together in animal form. That way Shelia-cougar was used to banking back her instincts and not chasing Derek-bunny when they were on an important mission.
Spotting the soldier he wanted, Sirius took out his wand and tapped the squirrel who was busy warming his fuzzy fingers in front of the fire. With a warm orange glow, the rodent became a short, bucktoothed private. "Edgar, I need your help," Sirius said. "Can you go to the commissary and get some cigars, the nice ones, and a couple of bottles of champagne. I have the requisitions you'll need."
"You got something to celebrate, Captain?" Edgar asked. "A lady we don't know about?"
"You really think I've been out picking up women?" Sirius asked. From the look of quiet expectation on Edgar's face, he did. "Well I haven't, yet. Your captain wouldn't take leave without giving his troops their leave. I want those goods in my tent, pronto. Now go, fetch."
Edgar scampered off, and the other soldiers began transforming back into their human forms.
"Did you say leave, Captain? I could use some liberty" Shelia said. She rose out of her cat crouch and into a sinuous stretch.
"Are we free for a few days? Tell me we're free for a few days," Derek begged.
"Freedom? Let me show the bunny a good time, Captain," Shelia said. "You give him liberty and he's going to try to visit his mummy." She pounced on the blond young man who five seconds earlier had been a rabbit.
"The liberty is yours, ladies and gentlemen. What you do with it isn't any of my business. Five days, and then we're back in training." Sirius left Derek being wrestled to submission by Shelia. The kid's animagus form was a rabbit, and he acted like one a little too much. He needed to get a more aggressive mindset. Shelia, wildcat girl, might be good for him. "Spread the word to your comrades in the woods before you head out guys, and don't be late getting back either."
The chill night air tasted crisp and clean to Sirius on his walk to James and Lily's tent. An unlit cigar in mouth and champagne under his arm, Sirius paused at their closed tent flap. The cigars and alcohol weren't really overkill. Sure, technically, James asked him to keep quiet about their baby news, but he hadn't said anything about not bringing presents. "Hello, anyone home?" Sirius called. "Hello?"
James' greeting wasn't quite what he'd expected. He took one look at his friend and snatched the cigar out of his mouth. "I thought you understood the meaning of secret," James hissed.
Watching his hand-rolled tube of prime tobacco disappear into James' pocket, Sirius felt a swell of indignation rise in his chest. "What? You didn't say I couldn't bring presents."
"I did say to keep quiet about what we discussed. Lily's in the bedroom resting, and I don't want to get her going again," James said. "Hide the cigars, but keep the champagne. I could use a drink." He set a couple of earthenware glasses on the kitchen table and took a seat. The room was dim, only a pair of candles lighting the place.
Quietly, Sirius popped the cork off the champagne and poured the two glasses full. "What happened? Is Lily okay? Is the baby okay?"
James took a long drink from the glass and grimaced. "That stuff is horrible."
"You going to talk to me, or are you going to critique the stupid champagne?" Sirius snapped
James swigged the rest of his glass down and refilled from the bottle. "Couple of years ago, we went down on the Aegean to get that totem for the Jericho project. You remember that?"
"What does that have to do with anything? That was two years ago." Sirius sipped at his own champagne, anxious to find out what had rained on his friends' parade, hopeful that it was a professional complication and nothing to do with their family.
"Could you just listen for five minutes? Just listen. It's an unbelievable story." James downed his second glass of champagne, determined to become inebriated as quickly as possible. "We were at the temple where the totem was supposed to be. Lily took a couple of the troops and they scouted the high ground, while I took the rest into the low ground. Me and my men found the totem, dealt with the banshees that were guarding it, and we got out unscathed. No problems. Lily and her guys found a chimera on their scout and they dealt with it. Lily got a little scratch. She field dressed it, didn't even need the infirmary when we got back. It was nothing, a scratch."
"Then today she tells me that she's three weeks late, that she's pregnant, and we head straight to the infirmary, but she wasn't pregnant, Sirius." James dumped the last of the champagne into his glass and stared at it. "That damn chimera left this tiny sliver of claw in her, in my Lily. It's been migrating inside her for years now, scaring her, poisoning her. The healer inactivated it today, but he couldn't undo all the damage."
"Is she going to be okay?" Sirius asked. His friend James could handle a lot of things. He'd had to handle some terrible things, but Sirius didn't know if his friend could face losing his wife, not after everything that had already passed. "James?"
"The healers think so. She can't have any more children though, and Lily is really not taking that well right now. She doesn't want me to help. She just sealed herself up in the bedroom, shut me out." James downed the last of the champagne and rose in one motion. "You know, I think there's some firewhiskey in the top cabinet. Would you like something a little stronger?"
Sirius didn't bother tossing incredulities at James. It was crazy, unbelievable, and unfair, but there it was. James and Lily Potter had the worst luck of any ten people. They didn't deserve this, but there wasn't anything he could do to fix it. Sirius rose and grabbed James by the arm, determined to help in some small way. Lily needed to be alone, and James needed to dull the pain until his wife needed him. "If we're getting fall-down drunk, we're not doing it in camp. Come on, before you're too far gone to fly."
Two cool, perfect charms, one scarlet and the other rose pink, rested on Lily's hand. She made the charms for her children. They were designed to help her find them if the kids were lost. Now those charms were all that remained of little Harry and Isobel. The fire that killed them had burned so hot that nothing of her babies was left behind to find or bury, but the charms she placed around their necks had survived. Lily hadn't wanted the charms buried. She kept them, wore them. It was almost like a piece of her babies survived in those charms, ghosts of children that should have been breathing, playing, seven and eleven year olds.
Was the rebellion really worth everything she'd paid for it? If she had just been willing to live quietly with the status quo, her children wouldn't have been in a camp alone with a carer who didn't have the sense to escape from a fire. Her unborn children wouldn't have been doomed by a random injury in the line of duty. If she could just have accepted her role as second tier witch and left her Muggle family behind like so many others managed, her babies might still be alive. James and his family weren't involved in the rebellion when she met him. They only got involved after her encouragement, her sermonizing and preaching. They never would have bucked the system if it hadn't been for her.
It was her fault that her children were lost, her fault that James would never be a father, her fault that there would be no grandchildren for James' parents to spoil.
Lily curled her hand around the charms she'd fashioned for her children and drifted into a fitful sleep. She dreamed about her babies as they could never be, dreamed about an eleven year old boy with his father's wild brown hair and her own green eyes. She dreamed about a seven year old little girl with much straighter brown hair and serious brown eyes. Lily dreamed while two powerful charms glowed in her hand.
Author's Note:
Depressed yet? Next chapter is slightly less weepy.
Yet again, I must thank Maeve for all the helpful comments and Brit-picking. The lady is a wonder. :)