October 2012 — Hogwarts
The castle had not changed in a thousand years, and it was certainly not about to start now.
The ancient stone still held its comforting warmth. The portraits still gossiped at a volume no living person would dare. The staircases still moved where they pleased, on the old principle that a student who could not keep up did not deserve to arrive on time.
The children walking the halls, however, were an entirely different matter.
Arthur passed through the third floor corridor under the Hallows' flawless invisibility, unhurried. A tight knot of fourth years stood pressed to a courtyard window, and for the first time in centuries, they were not arguing about Quidditch or Hogsmeade trips. They were passing around a smuggled Muggle magazine, glossy and bright, the cover a sharp photograph of Iron Man banking hard over a New York skyline with a Chitauri chariot falling smoking behind him.
The Muggle-born students looked at the picture with undisguised pride.
The pureblood children looked at it with something quieter, and colder, and a great deal more like fear.
The outside world had shifted on its axis, and the tremor of it had reached even here, into the oldest and safest stone in all of Scotland.
Arthur slipped into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom and put his back to the rear wall to watch.
Harry stood at the front in dark, practical robes, his ash-wood staff resting easy in one hand. The large classroom was packed with seventh-years, and they were silent, which for a room full of seventh-years was its own small miracle.
"The Shield Charm," Harry said, his voice carrying without effort. "Protego. The foundation of every defence you will ever learn. It stops hexes. It stops jinxes. It stops most curses." He let it sit. "But what happens when the threat is not magical?"
A Ravenclaw girl in the front row raised a careful hand. "Professor. The textbook says a strong Protego can deflect most physical objects."
"It can," Harry agreed. "Throw a rock at me and a good shield will bounce it wide. But the world outside these walls has stopped throwing rocks."
He nodded at a heavy iron training dummy standing in the centre of the room.
"Mr Thorne. A Blasting Curse, if you please. Full strength, no holding back."
Cassius Thorne rose from his desk. He was a tall, sharp featured seventh year with the unhurried confidence of an old family, and he drew his wand with the ease of a boy who was good at this and knew it.
He fired.
The curse struck the dummy square in the chest, the bang rolling around the stone, and the heavy iron figure rocked back on its base, dented and smoking.
"Clean cast. Five points to Slytherin." Harry stepped casually in front of the ruined dummy and raised his staff. "Now I will show you what happens when magic meets weight."
He tapped the staff to the floor. A blue shield bloomed around him, far thicker and brighter than any Protego the class had managed to cast all term.
"Same curse, Mr Thorne. My shield, this time."
Thorne hesitated half a breath, then fired. The Blasting Curse hit the barrier and came apart into harmless sparks. The dome did not so much as ripple.
"Magic stopping magic," Harry said. "The shield drinks the spell and scatters it. Simple."
He raised his free hand, and in the corner of the room a slab of stone the size of a small carriage tore loose and hung in the air with a low and dreadful patience.
"Now watch closely what happens when I ask this same magical shield about something that is not magic at all."
He dropped the heavy stone on himself.
It fell fast and hit the top of the shield with a crash that shook dust from the rafters. The dome held. But the weight of it drove the whole thing down, and Harry's boots began to slide back across the flagstones as he strained against two tons of falling rock that did not care in the slightest how it was stopped.
He angled the staff. The dome sloped hard, and the block slid off the side and came down on the floor, cracking three flagstones clean across.
The classroom was absolutely silent.
"A magical shield is only ever as strong as the wizard holding it up," Harry told them, his green eyes moving over the frightened young faces. "A Muggle artillery shell will hand your shield more force in one second than your whole body can survive. Your magic might catch the fire. The shockwave will go straight through it and break every bone you own, because a human body was simply never built to stand in front of that."
He let the harsh reality settle over the room.
"The world outside is changing fast," he said, his voice quieter now. "You are stepping out into a society where Muggles keep weapons that flatten cities in the time it takes to blink. You cannot afford to stand on a thousand years of arrogance and assume you are better. You have to learn to move."
"Sir." Thorne had not sat down. "My father says it does not matter."
Harry turned. "Go on."
"He says Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, the Ministry, they are all behind wards no Muggle has ever crossed." There was no rudeness in it, only the flat certainty of a boy repeating something he had never once heard doubted. "He says they could search for a hundred years and walk past the front gate every single day and never see it. You cannot fight what you cannot find."
The room leaned into the question. It was the thing all of them wanted to hear confirmed.
Harry did not give it to them.
"Your father might be right," he said slowly. "The old wards are very good. They have held it for a long time." A pause. "But they were built to fool a farmer with a plough. Not a satellite in the sky watching over everything. Not a machine that reads heat straight through a mountain. Not a room full of clever people who watch the same empty field for ten years and finally sit up and ask why nothing living has crossed it in a decade."
Thorne said nothing.
"I do not know whether they can find us," Harry admitted. "Neither does your father. Neither does anyone in this castle. That's the truth of it. We tell ourselves the wards will hold because the alternative frightens us. And maybe they will." He set the staff down on the desk. "Or maybe they've known exactly where we are for years, and they're only being polite about it while they decide what we are to them."
A Muggle-born girl near the back stood up. "Professor. You're talking like there's going to be a war."
Harry looked at her for a long moment.
"There doesn't have to be. But the whole world knows we exist now. It's known for a month. All those reports, all that footage. The only thing holding the peace together is that most people would still rather not believe their own eyes." He shook his head. "That kind of quiet doesn't last. Sooner or later they stop pretending. And then it comes down to the men at the very top. Theirs and ours. And whether the ones in those rooms are wise enough, on the worst day, to choose talking over fighting."
He let that heavy thought sit.
"I have met some of the men in those rooms," Harry said. "So I want you sharp. Not because I am sure the war is coming. Because I am not sure it is not, and I have buried enough people who assumed the worst would be kind enough to warn them first."
The bell tolled through the corridors, and half the room flinched at it.
"Chapter four," Harry said briskly. "Evasive Apparition under fire. Read it like your life depends on it, because one day it might." A few tired smiles. "Class dismissed. Out."
The students filed past, casting reverent looks at the staff. Arthur waited for the heavy door to click shut, then let his invisibility fall away.
"A rather sobering little lesson, Professor Potter."
Harry's hand snapped halfway to his staff before his brain placed the familiar voice. He sagged slightly against the desk and laughed, running a hand through his hair.
"One of these days I am going to hex you on pure reflex, and it will be entirely your own fault."
"You could try." Arthur pulled a chair around and sat on it backward, arms folded across the top. "It was a good lesson, Harry. Honest. They desperately need honest more than they need comfort right now."
"The Board of Governors disagreed. At length." Harry rubbed his eyes. "Terrifying the children. Fostering pro-Muggle hysteria. Two of the old families are threatening to pull their sons and ship them to Durmstrang, where the curriculum still pretends the last hundred years never happened."
"Let them," Arthur said dismissively. "Ignorance is a choice. You're teaching their children to survive. If the parents would rather they die comfortable, that's the parents' sin, not yours."
Quiet settled over the empty classroom.
"So," Harry said, leaning back against his desk. "You're here because of the report?"
"Partly. I wanted to see whether the wizarding world plans to do anything about it."
"Then you'll be disappointed. Or relieved. I can never tell with you." Harry's mouth twisted. "The answer is that it means to do nothing at all. The Ministries have read it and decided it is a Muggle problem. Theirs, out there. Nothing to do with us."
"They think there is no danger."
"They think the Muggles will never come." Harry shook his head. "They have not put down one ounce of the old arrogance. They believe Muggles are too soft, too frightened, too fond of their comfortable little lives to ever raise a hand against people who could turn them into teacups." A dry breath. "And the maddening thing is they might be right. A Muggle government has more to lose than a Ministry does. Their wars cost cities. Ours never did."
"That's a clear-eyed read for a schoolteacher."
"I had a good and terrifying mentor." Harry almost smiled. "He taught me to look for the thing under the obvious thing."
Arthur smiled faintly. "You're not talking about Dumbledore, are you?"
"You know exactly who I am talking about."