Russia joined the Alliance openly. Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia followed. NATO stopped looking like a shield and started looking like a museum exhibit.
The papers called it pragmatism. The generals called it a collapse. The pundits called it the end of an era.
On the telly, a flag lowered outside a grey building in Brussels. Someone cried. Someone clapped until the camera cut away.
Arcturus's hand stayed flat on the table.
"Major is watching his world slide into a ditch and pretending it is a lane change."
Corvus allowed himself a sliver of dry humour.
"He is a politician, grandfather. Pretending is a job requirement."
He pushed a memo across the polished wood. Mundane paper. Mundane ink. A big CONFIDENTIAL stamp, as if a stamp ever stopped a mind reader.
The Squib network had fed a web of live forwarding reports through half the United Kingdom. The memo's last lines were the only ones worth keeping.
Do not provoke them; intelligence suggests the Alliance may be their construct. Records indicate knowledge of certain spells, Legilimency among them, raising the possibility that they can read thoughts. It is to be confirmed with the new network. We might also have false information on their population.
Gellert leaned in, fingertips together.
"I cannot believe they worked out that we might have mind magic." He made it sound like a tragedy.
Arcturus did not take the bait.
"You are enjoying this, Gellert."
"They learned it, then forgot it," Gellert replied. "That is the trouble with Muggles. Their memory lasts as long as their appetite."
Arcturus's gaze sharpened.
"Do not confuse them with the ICW."
Corvus met his grandfather's eyes.
"I do not. I separate my enemies by competence."
The rune board shifted. A black crest formed over the Atlantic, old and smug, the mark of the International Confederation of Wizards.
Gellert's amusement died.
Corvus's fingers flicked. The crest dimmed.
"MACUSA's patience with the Confederation is thinning. Their answer will come."
--
The telly in the corner kept talking even when nobody listened. This time, it was running footage of boats stalled at sea.
A map of Europe filled the screen. A red ribbon slashed across the Mediterranean like a wound.
"The first warning came over loudspeakers," the anchorwoman said. "The second was a shot across the bow. The third drove the vessels onto the reefs. Alliance channels frame the incident as self-preservation and border security. Foreign studios condemn it as disproportionate."
Corvus watched long enough to take the shape of the narrative, then long enough to be sure it had teeth.
Major appeared on screen next, all careful jaw and measured eyes. He praised the operation as proof of collective defence. He warned North African states to desist. He vowed the Alliance would not retreat.
Corvus muted the telly.
Within hours, Libya denounced the incident as barbaric and hostile. The Organisation of African Unity followed with a declaration of war. The world began to churn, not like a storm, but like a potion that had been stirred the wrong way.
In the Nest, Corvus's study held a different map. Runes bit into oak; pins moved by themselves, each marked with a sigil instead of a flag. A lion for Britain. A polar bear for Russia. A rose with a thorn for France. Each crest appeared the moment a treaty ink dried.
Gellert lounged as if this was a salon. His mismatched eyes stayed on the board like it was a stage. McDuff waited behind him. Carrow and Abernathy sat silent and ready. Nagel stood by the window, hand on the curtain cord. Vinda's gaze travelled across the Two-Way Mirror on Corvus's desk.
Arcturus arrived last.
Corvus tapped the rune board. A cold flare travelled from Libya to Italy.
"Gaddafi chose to dress this as a defence of the desperate. He promised escorts. He drafted the language the OAU wanted to stamp."
A second tap lit points across Africa. Morocco remained dark. It had walked away from the organisation years ago over Western Sahara. Egypt stayed dark as well, a polite neutrality that had cost it friends.
Arcturus watched without blinking.
"Wars declared by committees," he said. "Why not?"
"Wars sold by the talking box," Gellert corrected, eyes flicking to the muted screen.
The mirror brightened. Vinda's reflection sharpened.
"They will call it a moral crusade before they call it a war."
Corvus slid a transcript across the table. Gaddafi's speech was blunt and theatrical, built for crowds and cameras. It promised escorts in the name of dignity and painted Europe as a butcher with clean hands.
Grigori's bear sigil shifted west over the Baltic. His voice carried through another mirror, sharp with satisfaction.
"He thinks he is starting a holy war. Let him. The mundane side will panic and push fleets. I will make sure they shove enough metal into the Baltic and the Black Sea to choke their own lanes."
Corvus lifted his eyes. He had expected Russia. He had not expected this much eagerness from the others.
"The next dominoes are already moving. Iran and Afghanistan have declared war as well. Not for boats. For temples."
Nobody asked which temples. Everyone at the table understood how quickly a symbol became a banner.
Nagel's fingers tightened on the cord.
"Magical China will not appreciate a crusade," he said.
"They will be relieved when the Taliban is broken," Corvus replied.
The vacant stares around him forced an exhale.
"They are extremists. They destroy what they cannot understand, then call it purity."
"And Persia?" Arcturus asked.
Corvus did not soften the answer.
"An old civilisation that let a dictatorship rot its roots. We will break the main forces. The rest is a matter for Magical Iran and its mundane population. It is not our concern."
He turned the board with a gesture. Pins became pieces. Borders dissolved into units. Mundane forces marked by squares and triangles. Magical units layered above them, runes etched into metal shapes.
His air force was no longer just dragons.
Dragons were intimidating. Planes were reach. Vessels were the message. Tanks and self-propelled artillery were the part nobody wanted to say aloud.
McDuff leaned in, eyes on the western coast.
"North Africa will encourage movement from the south. More boats will come. They will keep the tension high."
Corvus nodded once.
"And they will broadcast it. They will make the death toll speak for them. This is a war of pictures."
The telly switched to a studio panel without being asked. CNN's logo sat in a corner like a smug stamp.
A retired admiral stabbed a finger at a chart.
"No alliance of fringe states disbands NATO. That is not how the world works. Someone is behind it."
A second man smiled too widely.
"I am not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens."
Laughter followed, nervous and practised.
A woman with a sharp bob leaned toward the camera.
"Let's be serious. These disappearances match no known capability. Not Russia. Not the United States. Not anyone."
Corvus shut the telly off.
"Let them circle their paranoia. It keeps them busy."
Arcturus shifted in his chair, not quite rising, not quite settling. It drew attention in the way old authority always did.
"They are not only circling," he said. "They are choosing targets."
Corvus held his gaze.
"Let them. They will choose the wrong ones."
The mirror rippled.
"China's mundane side is already accusing the Americans," Vinda said. "They enjoy the idea. Their magical side is quieter. They do not enjoy what they cannot predict."
Corvus remembered the Beijing report. A closed meeting in a grey room. Tea untouched. Voices kept low. One question repeated by three different officials.
If NATO can lose carriers, what else can be lost?
In the same city, behind a different wall, the Chinese magical council had sent a single owl to London.
What does the Alliance want?
India had done the same, with more pride and more caution. Their mundane side called it a Western plot. Their magical side called it a warning and asked for terms.
Carrow cleared her throat, the only warning he ever gave.
"Libya, the OAU, Iran, Afghanistan. They all want the same theatre."
Corvus's eyes stayed on the board.
"They want a moral war. They will get devastation."
Gellert's mouth pulled into a flat line.
"And when they lose, they will claim martyrdom. Their clergy will sing. Their papers will print saints."
Corvus leaned back.
"Let them print whatever they like. I want their war machines broken and their leadership shattered."
His gaze cut across the table.
"I will lead the Afghanistan front personally."
He pointed, one by one.
"Uncle Gellert, you take Algeria. Aunt Vinda, organise the French forces for Libya. Grandfather, you take Iran with Uncle Grigori. Speak with Voss. Draft the public line."
He paused, just long enough to make it land.
"The Alliance advises civilians to leave. Their governments wanted war. War is coming."
Plans followed. Deployments followed the plans. The ugly hardware began to move.
The next morning, they met again, and Corvus drew a folder from a drawer and pushed it toward the centre.
Rita Skeeter's byline sat on the first page in that sweeping hand that always looked like it had been written with a knife.
"It has been some time since I read the Prophet," Arcturus noted.
"It is a tool," Corvus replied. "When it is not needed, I do not waste time on it."
He tapped the folder.
"I told her to prepare Wizarding Britain. This is what she sent."
Arcturus read the first page, then the next. He put the folder down with a soft, decisive motion.
"Bite the throat she is pointed at," he said. "Then preen as if she found it herself."
Gellert's laugh was quiet.
"Be careful. Her type bites the hand that feeds them."
Corvus's eyes sharpened.
"We respect freedom of choice, Uncle Gellert. That is why she still has hers."
The Daily Prophet header stared up at them.
Rita's article began.
THE ICW BLEEDS EUROPE, AND CALLS IT TRIAGE
By Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent
If you are exhausted by the International Confederation of Wizards' habit of announcing "concern" while sharpening knives behind your back, do take comfort. They have finally overplayed their hand.
Let us start with the part they will deny until the ink runs out.
The raid attempts.
Yes, dear reader, the ones whispered about in corridors and politely omitted from certain diplomatic letters. The clumsy, dangerous attempt to force entry into protected magical locations by using non-magical explosives to "disturb the wards." The sort of plan one expects from people who could not cast a proper Shield Charm in their lives, and yet were confident enough to order the rest of us around.
Who placed those raid maps into mundane hands, nodded solemnly, and called it "security"? The ICW. Their representatives. Their advisers. Their little network of informants who skulked around our world while claiming they were safeguarding it.
And who stood at the centre of that network, smiling through half-truths and moral lectures?
Albus Dumbledore.
The same man whose supporters spent decades polishing his image until it squeaked. The same man who treated the Wizengamot like a personal salon. The same man who spoke of protection while feeding information into an organisation that behaves less like a confederation and more like a congregation.
Now the curtain has been pulled back. Dumbledore is in Azkaban, and the ICW is scrambling. Their allies are hissing about "overreach" and "misunderstanding," as if those words can sew souls back into bodies.
The Alliance, meanwhile, has done what the ICW never managed in a century of committees.
It has ended open season on magical families.
It has stripped spies from our streets.
It has rebuilt education at Hogwarts so thoroughly that even the portraits look less tired.
And yes, it has brought back a name the ICW tried to bury under fifty years of convenient imprisonment.
Gellert Grindelwald.
Do not choke on your tea. I am not asking you to invite him for biscuits. I am pointing out an uncomfortable fact: the ICW kept him locked away while it played kingmaker across the continent, then called that justice. Now he walks free because the people who actually take responsibility decided to act.
You may also notice how quickly the ICW's tone changed once it realised it could not dictate terms with a letterhead.
That is what happens when bullies meet a spine.
To the nervous pureblood salons clutching their pearls, and to the timid reformers wringing their hands: this new order did not appear overnight. It is the result of years of negligence, arrogance, and cowardice colliding with competence.
If you want someone to blame for the escalation, look at the ICW. If you want someone to blame for the raid attempts, look at Dumbledore and the people who stood behind him.
If you want a future where witches and wizards are not treated like convenient resources by foreign committees, then stop pretending neutrality is a virtue when the knife is already at your throat.
Corvus closed the folder.
"I told her to print that," he said. "Let the wizarding public chew on it."
Gellert's gaze stayed on the Prophet header.
"Then we proceed."
Corvus nodded, eyes already back on the board.