The impersonal, cold atmosphere of the Ministry had always been a relief to Severus in the past, not that he had often been presented with a reason for visiting. It was the same now, as he moved swiftly along corridors populated by harried, preoccupied people. He couldn’t quite identify the prevailing atmosphere; anticipation was probably a step too far “ no, functioning would probably suffice. It was functioning, barely, driven by people too afraid not to function. Death was wandering through every office and every corridor; it stepped into the lifts with people and sat beside them in the restaurant. And they were all terribly afraid of it. As he approached his destination the volume of people thinned considerably. Here, only a few wizards and witches ventured, bidden reluctantly to serve a new master. Although, he noticed with some distaste, there were some cheerful faces belonging to people for whom the recent events were obviously welcome. These people were not Death Eaters, that much was apparent from bare arms and pallors untroubled by misdeeds; these people were ordinary people who happened to believe in the ideals that Voldemort treasured.
No one challenged him as he strode towards the door at the end of the corridor. No one seemed to be guarding the room or, indeed, the whole floor. He halted a foot away and regarded the inscription.
Minister for Magic
Without preamble, the door opened inwardly. He stepped over the threshold and inclined his head in acknowledgement to the figure sitting behind the desk. The new Minister was the embodiment of naked ambition, and he respected the ruthless nature required to achieve such a position.
“Severus, very good of you to drop in. I rather suspect the Ministry will have a good use for you now that it is being run in a proper manner.” The voice was clipped and businesslike, betraying no other motive than to serve Voldemort.
“I rather suspect the same,” he replied, scanning the room. Already the signs that malevolence had moved in were apparent. A large map of the country covered one wall, markers highlighting Death Eater victories and numbers reflecting the casualties inflicted. Rivers of lights ran across the map, marking progress and locations. He was naturally drawn to the area around Cambridge, relieved to see no activity there whatsoever. As long as his wife behaved herself and stuck to the plan outlined to Remus, there would be no reason for Death Eaters to be attracted to that area.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” The Minister rose from the chair and joined him. “A reminder of our purpose.”
“Is the Dark Lord here?”
“He is underground, preparing for government. The body of Harry Potter turned up late last night, brought by one of his faithful. He is rather pleased, mostly with you I think, for now he knows you are truly his greatest servant. Although I am surprised you chose to deliver the body using Malachy Meany; as I understand it he has a wish to see your wife dead. Rather a conflict of interest there, unless of course your marriage is a sham designed to deliver all the enemies of the Dark Lord into his lap.” She turned to him and a glacier of a smile spread across her face. “But I was there, do not forget, at the wedding. There was no sham, was there, Severus?”
“I have never pretended otherwise. My wife may choose her own friends, as I may choose mine. As for Meany, he employed someone to steal that body.”
“Did he indeed?” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “It is of no consequence. The Dark Lord has dispatched him to serve with the Knights of Walpurgis. I am sure he will find his deliverance there, or his doom. You, however, you are in need of a position within this new Ministry. The Dark Lord has instructed me to give you whatever you desire.”
“Well then, I desire the Death Eaters.”
“To use?”
“To command.”
“There is no precedent, no title. The Dark Lord alone commands the Death Eaters.”
It was his turn to smile. “All of them?”
The Minister broke her stride, but only for the briefest of moments. “All of them, Severus.”
“Then he will not mind handing the reins to his most trusted servant at this time of triumph, to better luxuriate in the fruits of his labours. I will require an office and a replica of that map.”
“Naturally. Will you require an assistant?”
“I will appoint one.”
“Very well. The assistant will need to be approved by myself. I could not, for instance, support your wife being brought into the Ministry.”
“I will find someone suitable.” He was almost beginning to enjoy the ease with which he was accomplishing the infiltration of the Ministry. “Shall we say an hour, for my office to be ready? And my title?”
“Minister for Peace,” she responded, irony embedded in her words.
“That will do very well, I think.” He nodded and made to leave the room.
“Severus.” She spoke softly, almost as if she did not wish for anyone to overhear her next sentence. “If you have an hour or two this evening, I should like to discuss next steps.”
He had a very good reason for reading more into this than just a plan of attack on the Muggle population. “Where?”
“I believe you have a house not too far from here.”
For a moment she almost succeeded in confusing him as his thoughts immediately took him to Grimmauld Place. The hungry look in her eyes was enough, however, to re-orientate him.
“Well, Miss Fitzwilliam, I believe we have an appointment. I will see you there at 7pm.”
“Indeed, Severus. It will be a pleasure to revisit Darkacre.”
With brief nods on both sides, the interview came swiftly to a conclusion.
Maeve peered into the moving world beyond the carriage window. A Muggle wandered past their seats in search of the buffet car and this caught Roderick’s attention.
“Coffee?” he asked, breaking through her reverie.
“No, thanks.” A sigh escaped from her lips, drawn out just long enough for Roderick to look faintly exasperated.
“Lovely, you wanted to do this, remember. Striking out for yourself, taking action, not skulking around and all of that.”
“We should have told Remus. He’ll be looking for us, endangering the rest of them. At the very least he will be worried.”
Draco shifted slightly in his seat, a low rumble of discontent spilling from his sleeping mouth. His dreams, even in such light sleep, seemed to cause him trouble and Maeve wondered if they had been wise to bring him.
“I sent Remus an owl from the station.”
“You did what? Roderick, that’s just irresponsible, and traceable.”
“Not really. I used a wild owl. There are ways of making them bend to your will if you need it. Dead mice usually do the trick. Remus will be secure in the happy knowledge that we are safe.”
“Safe is one thing we most certainly are not. I can’t understand what possessed you to choose a Muggle train when we could have Apparated.” She looked back out of the window, the green fields beyond fighting the approaching onslaught of a more urban landscape.
“Oh, don’t you love Muggle trains! I never pass up the opportunity to travel on one. And besides, who would look for us amidst the Muggles “ especially if the people doing the looking are Muggle-haters.” He stood up, swaying gently with the movement of the train. “Sure you don’t want a coffee?”
“Positive.”
He walked away, dragging curious stares from their fellow passengers. Maeve turned her attention to Draco and his plagued sleep. He was just a boy, a boy turning in to a man and destroyed in the process of others’ ambition. She had no idea what they planned to do when they reached London, but there had to be a way to restore something of what had once been. The Wizarding world could not have been so completely consumed by the evil within it that there was no hope, and yet things seemed so hopeless. There must be, she reflected sadly, something worth all of this hurt and heartache. There must be, in all of this, something that offered hope.
Reaching across, she touched Draco’s hand, as if to reassure herself that he was still a living creature. He flinched and withdrew from her, slipping further into his nightmare. She would have sat back and allowed the train to lull her into the city, but for the sudden commotion at the end of the train. There was a flurry of red and Roderick came pelting down the aisle. He was yelling at her, telling her to get Draco and move. She caught a mention of Aurors, and a Death Eater, but she was already shaking Draco into wakefulness. Panicked, he clawed himself back into the world, flailing his arms around and catching Maeve on the side of the face with a clenched fist. Several Muggles had started screaming and the train seemed to lurch disastrously, first to one side, and then the other. She fell against Draco and they were thrown to the side of the carriage as the train bucked against whatever force was causing it to de-rail.
A huge roar came from the carriage ahead of them and Maeve watched with horror as the side of the train began to lurch towards the ground. It wavered for a moment, suspended on one rail, before another huge bellow from ahead thrust the forward carriage back into their own. Screams and the agonised shriek of buckled metal rose in a crescendo, until it was at such a peak Maeve thought her ears and head and heart would burst form the heaviness of the sound.
With one final howl of noise, the train lost its grip on the tracks and collapsed, tearing up the ground with its twisting metal. The last thing Maeve was conscious of before blackness closed around her was the shattering of the train’s windows; tiny fragments imploded, showering her with a lethal snow of glass.
And then all was silence.
All things considered, Severus thought his new office was quite pleasant. It was high-ceilinged, spacious and free of other people. A desk occupied the main area, coupled with a comfortable and expensive-looking chair. In one corner a discreet fireplace connected him to the Floo network, while in another a smaller desk was huddled, its top filled with parchments and quills awaiting a new incumbent. The door bore the offensive legend Minister for Peace, and he managed to resist the urge to rip it off the aging oak. Replicated across one wall was the map he had seen in the Fitzwilliam woman’s office. How she had procured the position he could not tell, but procured it she had. Assuming she had not had a major re-conversion since their last meeting, then he could only see this as a positive thing. Despite Maeve’s opinions, he had to hold on to the belief that she was an answer to the problem posed by Voldemort.
Approaching the map, he could see activity spread across the whole island. A group of Death Eaters showed as being profoundly proficient in Peterlee, while a smaller group were accomplishing deathly deeds in Dunbar. Suppressing contempt for the map’s reliance on alliteration to drive home its point, he saw that a lone Death Eater had succeeded in challenging Aurors in Letchworth. The map had clearly given up on alliteration in this instance, possibly because the number of casualties was high for a simple duel between Aurors and a lone Death Eater. He made a small mental note to find out what had happened in this instance while wondering how he could successfully achieve a cessation of all attacks on Muggles without arousing suspicion.
His attempts to get around this problem were interrupted by Jenny Fitzwilliam, who stalked into his office without knocking.
“Settled in, I see,” she said, although there was very little evidence of settlement at all, certainly no personal effects to speak of. “The Muggle Prime Minister has tried to make contact, but we have managed to delay him. I thought perhaps that you could…”
“Speak with the Muggle PM? Surely that is your job, Minister.”
“Don’t get clever with me, Severus. I think we can allow them to believe you are the Minister. You are expected in his office at 3 o’clock. See that you have prepared for it adequately.”
Severus regarded her with grudging admiration. A few more teachers like this at Hogwarts and some of the pupils might not have left quite so unprepared for the real world. “And what exactly are we telling them?”
“We are telling them what they want to hear. There is a war in the wizarding world and we are fighting it, as they are fighting the war in their own world. Terrorism, I believe they call it. Tell them we are waging a war on terror and we are winning slowly.” She turned on her elegant, if extravagantly high, heels and left him to mull over the upcoming meeting. He was not remotely fazed by the thought of meeting the Muggle Prime Minister, a grey and uninteresting man. What interested him was that through the Muggle Minister he could reach the Muggles. A private meeting between two men would be delivered to the media with certain twists made. He could conceivably tell the Minister many things and deny them once Voldemort became aware of the fallout from the interview.
He spent the time until his allotted meeting watching the map, an uncomfortable yet compelling pastime. A Death Eater had been lost to a violent storm off the coast of North-West Scotland, whilst two others had succeeded in disabling a power station in the North of England. It was, without doubt, all out war and the Muggle Minister would be a fool to believe they were winning. Winning was entirely subjective, dependent on whose side you were on.
Jenny returned shortly before three o’clock to remind him of his obligation. He dismissed her with an impatient nod and approached the fireplace. An act was what was required here, an act for the Muggle Minister. It was almost unheard of for the Muggles to try to contact the Wizarding world, so things must be very bad indeed. As the mellow walls of a very different office took form in front of his eyes, he recognized immediately that this was not the man he knew as the Muggle Minister.
“Minister.” The voice was strong, challenging. Severus stepped from the fireplace and faced the dark-haired, fresh-faced man who had accepted him as the Minister for Magic.
“Prime Minister,” he responded, holding out a hand to be shaken. It was duly taken and the grip was firm.
“Thank you for responding to my request. I am sure that you are as aware as I am that something is very wrong in both our worlds. It appears that many of the recent incidents in our world are a direct result of the errors of judgement in yours. I would be interested in your comments on this situation.”
Severus took in the light in the man’s eyes, the fire there stoked by recent elevation to power. He wondered if that was reflected in his own eyes, but he rather suspected that it was not. Severus had nothing to be fired up about given the state of his own world.
“We have a struggle on our hands, Prime Minister,” he said, speaking slowly to better judge the effect his words were having on their subject. “A struggle that we are in the process of winning, but it is not easy.”
“I think that is an understatement given the destruction that is taking place in our world. I have come to the conclusion that this is not an accident; I have come to the conclusion that this is an attack on our world by the people who inhabit yours. I ask myself, what have we done to deserve this violence?”
Severus was impressed by the directness that this new leader displayed, a directness that he would have liked to meet with equal directness, but suddenly felt unable to. What had the Muggles done? Been a little ignorant of the wider world, perhaps? But Muggles, and Wizards, were equally guilty of introspection. He knew well enough that Muggles had tried to strike at Wizards in the past, but they had done so out of fear and ignorance, not malicious intent. Or had they… Severus felt the same sense of uncertainty that he did when Maeve was being particularly difficult, and it was giving him a headache.
“I see this is a difficult question for you to answer,” the Muggle Prime Minister said, filling in the gap in conversation that Severus had provided. “Perhaps I can show you.” He picked up a remote control and the flat screen that filled a large part of one wall sprang into life. The images that greeted Severus left little to the imagination. He would have been a fool to miss the comparison with his own magical wall, a map that gave facts and figures and played with language against this blow-by-blow account of the damage being perpetrated on people. Twisted metal and twisted bodies filled the screen; numbers a mere underscore to the real injury that the pictures provided. He saw the Peterlee disaster, a street had collapsed into disused mine workings, mine workings that had always been considered stable. The news flicked to a shot of a woman standing in a harbour wall looking out to sea for her husband, thought to be lost in a fishing accident, but Severus saw the name of Dunbar and knew that the weather was not to blame.
“We are used to accidents, Minister, but not on this scale and not on this frequency. There is “ and I hesitate to use the word evidence- let us say indications, that your people are involved. Memory modifications left undone, sightings unexplained, articles found.”
The Minister continued to speak, but Severus was no longer listening. His attention had been caught by the horrific sight of a train on its side, its metal twisted and deformed by contact with the solid ground. That in itself would have been sufficient grounds for remorse, but the fact that he could clearly see Roderick Rampton hovering on the edge of the cameras scope made his bowels twist with anxiety. The caption beneath the silent reporter gave a good explanation as to why one Death Eater had created so much damage. This was Letchworth, and whatever the Death Eater had done had caused this horror. And wherever Rampton was, Severus had a crippling fear that Maeve was also,