I move like the tide — inevitable, calculated, impossible to divert.
The Ministry building folds under our approach: wards scream and collapse like brittle glass, alarm wards blink out as my Death Eaters cut their throats with silenced hexes and shadowed ropes. The air tastes of ozone and old paper; the atrium's chandeliers sway as if the whole building is testing my will. Outside, the streets are a chaos of summoned beasts and collapsing transport spells; inside, the defenders are all that remain between me and a continent.
They meet me with everything they have. Fifty witches and wizards — more, if I count the ones who surge from side corridors — converged into a single wall of intent. I admire the choreography of their defense for a heartbeat: practiced formations, coordinated shield-rings, a flurry of counter-hexes meant to break an assault. Then I smile, and the world remembers why it learned to fear me.
Fire bends to me like a tame thing. I fold flame into blades and into roaring serpents; I fashion heat into ribbons that slice through barriers and leave nothing but smoke in their wake. Transfiguration answers as if anticipating my thought — stone into thorn, curtain into claw, desk into a hail of knives that impale a would-be duelist mid-chant. Shields bloom around me like black flowers; when spells strike them they shatter into showers of harmless ash. I am calm, precise, and enormous in my control.
The killing curses fly. I do not waste them on the lesser men; I use cold, efficient maledictions where theater is necessary, and I let lesser hexes and transfigurations do the rest. My Death Eaters move through the halls like ghosts whose footsteps are scripted; they take the offices, the records, the channels of command. I do not hunt for spectacle. I take what matters.
By the time I reach the Minister's suite the altar of power is already mine. The door gives beneath my touch because everything in this country has been given a new habit: to part for me. He is there — a small man in a larger chair, the lines of civility still pinned to his face even as terror blooms in his eyes.
The room smells of old leather, official ink, the faint tang of a charm that kept dossiers safe for decades. He rises with trembling dignity and draws a wand like a man reaching for an old loyalty. Around him his aides are already slumped or screaming — choices made for them by spells that do not linger as cruelty but as utility.
"Minister," I say, and the room narrows to the taste of his fear. "This is unnecessary."
He answers with a spell, a sharp line of light meant for my chest. I raise a shield as if I am closing a book. The bolt slides across the warding like rain across polished stone and dies.
"You should not have forced my hand," I tell him.
He makes one last, violent attempt — a desperate ritual, ornate and clumsy, a plea to the old protections. I see how quickly hope evaporates when genius meets will. I finish the moment for him.
"Avada—" he whispers, and I finish the word for him. The killing charm is an economy; sometimes it is a sentence, sometimes it is a punctuation. It is swift, and when it lands the sound of a life collapsing is like the soft closing of a book.
He collapses. For a second his eyes search mine, not for mercy but for meaning, for the reason a nation has been culled to this point. I give him none but the answer all my enemies have learned: order.
The room stutters. The aides quiet, the guards who remain see past the blood and the laws and begin to kneel. The Ministry is a building of paper and statutes; it yields when the animating force behind it is removed. That is governance.
I turn and walk out through corridors that still smell of smoke and victory, the elder wand warm in my hand. Outside, my flag goes up — no banners of tyranny, only symbols of structure and of what I offer: stability, security, unity under a single will. The news will be written by people who owe me favors; the public will be placated with staged statements and images of rescue. In the dark places, our operatives close the last doors.
Fifty wizards fell today. Fifty small tragedies, catalogued and folded into a ledger that reads: consolidation complete. America has a gap in its heart now; it will bleed and it will rebuild. I do not revel in the tally. I catalog. I move on.
My subordinates find me at the grand steps minutes later, faces alight with the peculiar satisfaction of soldiers returning home. Regulus nods with precise approval. Lucius draws breath as one might before a toast. Bellatrix grins with a madness that makes my teeth ache. Hagrid simply looks relieved that the work is done.
"Secure the Minister's office," I say. "Broadcast a statement. Offer a public reconciliation. Reassure the Muggles that only stability now reigns."
They move like well-trained cogs, and the building begins to function again under new hands and new seals. Within hours the nation's exposed seams will be mended with legal paper and chartered committees. Within days the ICW will issue statements and the pundits will argue and the public will tire. Within a year, most will accept what they cannot see.
I walk away and let America's Ministry become a symbol: a lesson in the cost of defiance. My hand tightens around the wand, not in triumph but in readiness. The world is a map I redraw as often as necessary, and today another line is cleanly drawn. Tomorrow, there will be ceremonies, speeches, bargains.
Tonight, there is only the quiet thrill of power that does not need to shout.