It was nearly midnight when Big Ben's distant chimes echoed across the sleeping city.
The Prime Minister sat alone in his office, hunched over the antique desk that had served a number of his predecessors, staring with unfocused eyes at a lengthy memorandum he had been reading for some time now.
The words passed through his mind without leaving any impression at all. His mind simply refused to absorb the information, preoccupied as it was with other concerns.
He was waiting for a telephone call from the President of a distant country. Part of him seriously doubted whether the wretched man would ever ring at all. But in these small hours of the night, with the vast city quiet and dark around him, his thoughts kept drifting back over the past eight months.
Back to the bewildering string of crises that had marked his abbreviated, tumultuous time in office.
Only when he was entirely alone like this, without aides or advisors or security personnel watching his every expression, did the Prime Minister permit himself that brutal honesty about his situation.
The truth he couldn't speak aloud to anyone: becoming the Prime Minister of this country—this ancient, tradition-bound, complex nation had never featured anywhere in his planned career trajectory.
He had arrived at this position through a sequence of events so improbable, so utterly beyond anyone's anticipation or control, that it felt less like an appointment and more like being violently shoved onto a stage he'd never auditioned for, handed a script he'd never read, and told to perform before an audience of millions.
Whatever fleeting pleasure he had taken in grasping the reins of power had largely vanished by the end of his second week in office. He had realised very quickly, that being Prime Minister—like every other position he had held before it—meant that no matter how fiercely you stressed against them, the ironclad Rules and Traditions of this country refused to budge so much as an inch.
And on top of everything else, he was expected to spend considerable time and energy standing in front of the voracious press corps and defend the government against accusations that were, frankly, beneath the dignity of intelligent comment.
Take last week, for instance. The explosions and rumbling that had reverberated across the entire city—rattling windows in their frames from Westminster to Whitechapel, sending thousands of startled pigeons scattering from every rooftop had absolutely not been the government secretly testing nuclear weapons.
'Nuclear weapons. In central London?'
The very thought made the Prime Minister's already pale face take on a grey greenish cast. His lips pressed together into a thin line of suppressed fury.
If that particular journalist's brain were even marginally larger than a hummingbird's, he would never have posed such an astoundingly stupid question in the first place.
Still— The Prime Minister's eyes flicked toward the telephone on the grand antique desk. It showed no signs of ringing.
The silence mocked him.
He rose from his chair with a heavy sigh that came from somewhere deep in his chest and began to pace the length of his office. Back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal seeking escape.
He had to admit: the whole affair surrounding those explosions had been deeply, unsettlingly strange.
Without any warning at all, a tremendous roaring had filled the skies over London. And it had gone on for nearly two full hours.
His security team had burst through the door within seconds of the first sounds. A cluster of armed officers had hustled him through the corridors at near-running pace and down into the underground bunker where he'd sat in grinding, teeth-clenching suspense, waiting for more detailed intelligence to arrive.
Ten minutes later, the Defence Secretary had arrived through the secure tunnel that connected the bunker to the Ministry of Defence and the news he brought had left the Prime Minister thoroughly baffled, frustrated, and frankly questioning the competence of the entire intelligence apparatus.
The Russians had not, in some fit of madness, dropped bombs or missiles on London. No foreign military aircraft had violated the city's heavily monitored airspace—every radar station in southern England confirmed it.
It wasn't even a gas explosion in the underground, despite what the early rumours had suggested. Subsequent investigation involving hundreds of personnel had found nothing more alarming occurring anywhere in London during that two-hour period than a handful of traffic accidents, two domestic disputes, and one false fire alarm in Shoreditch.
But the press and the general public had refused to believe the government's official report.
Why would they?
The report basically said: "We don't know what happened. Nothing happened. Please stop asking."
Conspiracy theories had flooded every newspaper, every television broadcast, every corner of the internet within hours. Secret weapons testing. Alien visitation. Underground earthquakes deliberately covered up. Russian sonic weapons. American military experiments gone wrong.
On and on, each theory was more ludicrous than the last.
The Prime Minister stopped at the tall mullioned window that overlooked the darkened garden and stared with hollow, exhausted eyes at his own reflection in the glass.
The image that stared back was not encouraging. Deep circles under his eyes, the colour of old bruises. A face that seemed to sag under its own weight, jowls more distinct than they'd been eight months ago. The sheer exhaustion of a man who had been running on fumes and determination for far too long, with no rest in sight.
If the government couldn't produce a credible explanation for what had happened, the journalists would never, ever let this particular mystery go.
He would wager that even now, well past midnight, if he simply tried to leave the building, reporters would appear from every shadow like ghosts and descend on him in a pack before he'd even reached the waiting car.
They never slept, those vultures.
"Damn it all!" The Prime Minister snapped the words aloud, startling himself with the vehemence in his own voice. Fury was boiling through him like acid in his veins, burning away what little remained of his composure.
"Do they want to see Russian tanks rolling into the outskirts of London?! Is that what it will take to make them understand that some questions are better left—"
"Ahem—"
The sound was soft.
The Prime Minister spun around with the jerky, startled movement. The office behind him was empty. The telephone on the desk had not rung. The warm lamplight fell across undisturbed furniture.
Nothing had changed. Nothing had moved.
'A trick of the mind. I'm hearing things now.'
The Prime Minister's stiff shoulders gradually unknotted. He let out a long, shaky breath and acknowledged to himself with grim honesty that he badly, desperately needed sleep.
Perhaps he should call it a night. The foreign President clearly wasn't going to—
"Ahem! Ahem!"
The sound came again—louder this time with the particular slowness of someone who feared they hadn't been heard and was trying again with greater emphasis.
"Who's there?!"
The Prime Minister's voice cracked across the room. He rolled around and stumbled backwards, his hip crashed against the window frame with a sharp rattle of glass. His eyes swept the office in wild, desperate arcs and what filled them now was not mere surprise.
It was naked terror.
"To the Muggle Prime Minister—"
The voice seized his attention and dragged his gaze toward the far corner of the room—specifically to the portrait hanging on the wall there.
It was an old painting, dating back at least two hundred years if not more. It depicted a man wearing a long silver wig in the style of the early eighteenth century, with a face of such bulbous-eyed peculiarity that he might, if one were being extremely charitable, have been described as frog-like.
The Prime Minister had never paid the portrait much attention before. It was just one of dozens decorating these historic rooms, part of the furniture.
Now he blinked hard and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, pressing until spots danced in his vision. He was not at all certain he wasn't hallucinating—the stress alone could certainly account for it, combined with the lack of sleep and the increasing pressure of the past weeks.
But when he opened his eyes again, the evidence remained undeniable: the portrait's lips appeared to be moving.
This couldn't be happening. This was impossible. This was—
"Minister for Magic Amelia Bones and Deputy Chairman of the International Confederation of Wizards Bryan Amos Watson request an audience with the Muggle Prime Minister on a matter of urgent importance. Please respond immediately!"
'I've finally gone mad.'
The thought flickered through the Prime Minister's mind as the portrait turned its head with a faint rustling sound and focused its bulging eyes on him with a direct, expectant stare.
"Please respond immediately!" The portrait sounded faintly impatient now. Its voice had grown louder and more insistent.
"Oh—right—yes, I—"
The Prime Minister's hunched shoulders gave a small, bewildered tremor.
BANG!
The marble fireplace—which had not contained so much as a spark or an ember in its grate a moment before erupted suddenly in roaring, crackling flames that filled the entire opening with fire. In a violent spiral of fire, two figures appeared and stepped out through it: a man and a woman.
The Prime Minister stared at them numbly.
The woman who had stepped from the flames first showed signs of exhaustion on her face—the kind of deep weariness that he recognized instantly because he wore it on his own.
The Prime Minister recognized it instantly, the way you recognize a fellow traveler who has come from the same hard, brutal road you've been walking.
The young man who stepped out beside her was another matter entirely. The Prime Minister's first instinct was that this young man must be the woman's subordinate. But the thought had barely finished forming before he dismissed it as obviously incorrect.
The portrait had introduced this young man as the Deputy Chairman of the International Confederation of Wizards—whatever that was.
The title alone suggested significant, regardless of his youth. That had to mean something important, even if the Prime Minister couldn't immediately say what.
And there was something else about the young man—something in his bearing and presence that the Prime Minister couldn't quite name or categorize but that set off every political instinct he'd developed over years in government.
The young man appeared to be no older than the Prime Minister's own son, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six at most. And yet when he entered the room—or rather, when he stepped out of the fire—the warm lamplight itself seemed to gather around him preferentially.
"Good evening, Prime Minister—"
The woman seemed to be finding her feet after emerging from the fire—either she was genuinely unwell, or the journey through the flames had left her momentarily unsteady and disoriented.
She paused to catch her breath.
"We ought to have met much sooner—specifically, the night I was appointed Acting Minister for Magic. That was eighteen days ago. But—as you may well imagine, given the circumstances—these past weeks have allowed very little breathing room.
Tonight's meeting was not, in fact, planned. It was Bryan who suggested I come to you without further delay, because the failure of that last battle—and Voldemort and his army of Dark wizards who survived it—may well seek to retaliate.
For the moment, they can find few openings in the wizarding world. So, the most probable stage for their next move is the Muggle world—your world. Acts of terror, mass disruption, spreading fear and chaos. I believe that—"
Minister Bones broke off mid-sentence. She gave the Prime Minister a sharp, suddenly assessing look.
"I should ask, before I continue—you can follow what I'm saying?" The
Prime Minister had been slowly gathering himself during her speech. At her question, he gave a slow, careful nod.
In the next instant, the Prime Minister lunged.
His security briefing had been thorough and explicit on this point: the office was fitted with alarm buttons at intervals throughout the room. One press of any of them and the entire building would immediately hear the alert.
He spun toward the window and thrust his hand desperately toward a small, harmless-looking protrusion built into the window frame.
Crack!
His hand never reached the button. A streak of white light whipped past his shoulder with a sound like tearing cloth and struck the window frame first.
Frost bloomed instantly across the clean glass in crystalline patterns, spreading from the point of impact. And from the alarm button itself, there blossomed an exquisite, delicate flower of ice that completely encased it in frozen beauty.
The Prime Minister did not hesitate or stop to marvel at this impossible feat. He bolted for the door instead. "Help—there's an attack—terrorists—"
He got that far—one ragged, desperate shout torn from his throat and then he felt it: a breath of air against the back of his skull, gentle as a lover's touch.
"Ugh—" The sound escaped his lips as his entire body stopped mid-run. Not by choice. His body simply stopped moving, locked frozen in an absurd mid-run posture, one leg raised, completely unable to move so much as a finger.
Bang!
The young man with soft grey hair and startling violet eyes appeared directly in front of him with a sound like displaced air. He'd simply appeared, shouldering through space itself as though it were merely a crowd he had pushed aside to reach his destination.
The Prime Minister stared at him with eyes that had gone very wide indeed. It was the only part of him that could still move.
"So, it seems," Bryan said, studying the immobilized Prime Minister with an expression of slight bemusement, "that in your eight months as Prime Minister, you and Fudge never had so much as a single conversation. Not one meeting. He never briefed you on the mass breakout from Azkaban. And your predecessor in this office never said a word to you about any of us or our world."
The Prime Minister could not speak, could not nod or shake his head in agreement or denial. What remained of his composure was crumbling away like sand.
"This is outrageous," he heard the woman say sharply, her voice was crackling with fury. Though he wasn't entirely certain who exactly she was furious with. The previous Prime Minister? This Fudge person?
"Nothing to be done about it now, unfortunately." Bryan sighed with the air of someone accepting an inconvenient reality that cannot be changed. "It will simply take longer than it should to bring you up to speed on the situation. So—"
He looked at the Prime Minister with an expression of courtesy.
"I'm going to release you now and explain everything from the beginning. I ask only for your patience and your willingness to listen. If you continue shouting for security or trying to trigger alarms, it will make things rather difficult for everyone. Can we agree on that?"
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