Arcturus watched Grindelwald provoking the Muggle Prime Minister for a moment. John Major kept his chin up, but the two beside him had stopped pretending they were relaxed. McColl held the posture of a man who wanted to reach for a pistol and knew it would change nothing.
Corvus cleared his throat. The sound cut through the quiet better than any shout.
Major shifted his focus to him. Rimington followed the movement; she was on edge. Being this close to Grindelwald was affecting her judgment.
"You speak of treason, Prime Minister," Corvus began. His hands stayed visible. His voice stayed even. "I have always found it convenient. We are called subjects when it suits you, and criminals when it frightens you."
McColl's jaw tightened.
Corvus angled his head toward the stones around them, then toward the dark line of the horizon. "Before you call us disloyal, you should understand the order of arrival. In the ninth century, this island was not one country. It was a patchwork of kings who could not stop stabbing each other long enough to build roads. Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria. Danish settlement in the east. Saxon courts in the south. It was a land where a border was whatever a man could hold for a season."
Major's mouth tightened. "I did not come here for a lecture."
Corvus let the line pass. "King Æthelstan united Anglo Saxon and Viking territories and established England in 927. Our records in House Black and House Rosier do not call that an accident. It happened because Magicals backed the man who could finish what Alfred started. We put healers in camps who saved thousands; some of them could be your ancestors who would have died of winter fever. We raised wards around storehouses so famine did not win. We shaped an end to the raiding cycle that kept this land poor and desperate."
McColl gave a short, humourless sound. "And we are meant to thank you for the privilege."
Corvus's gaze shifted to him with measured cold in it. "You are meant to stop pretending the realm began when your paperwork begins."
He turned a fraction, letting Arcturus sit behind the words like a stamp on a document. "In 1692, the Magical and Mundane worlds were segregated because your side chose fire and vandalism over reason. Until then, we were the healers of the realm. We treated you, your fevers, your wounds. We did it openly until the mobs decided a woman with a salve was proof of a pact with the devil."
Rimington's lips pressed into a line. She had the expression of someone hearing something she did not want on the record.
"You can still find runes etched into castles built by us," Corvus continued. "Berkhamsted, Windsor, Norwich, Saltford, Luddesdown, not folk tales, Prime Minister. Stone marks that were cut to hold and bind. Some of those castles are still standing because they were built on ley lines. Many others fell because we stopped caring when you stopped deserving it."
Major's shoulders rose and fell once, controlled. "You are claiming ownership of England."
"I am claiming presence," Corvus replied. "Your institutions rise and collapse. Your crowns change names. Your parliaments change rules. We remain. Calling us traitors is the language of a man who arrived late and wants the house keys anyway."
Grindelwald gave a quiet laugh, then let it fade. The sound was almost polite.
Corvus kept going. "In 1707, the Acts of Union joined England and Scotland into Great Britain. Mundane memory still carried Magicals then. That is why your legends stayed vivid. King Arthur did not come from empty air. Merlin was not a theatre trick. The man you call Merlin was a Druid, and Druids are ours."
Major's voice turned harder. "Merlin is a myth."
"Merlin was a Wizard," Corvus corrected.
Corvus's tone stayed calm, almost instructional. "In 1801, the union with Ireland formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, after Irish independence, the modern United Kingdom emerged. Through every change, we were here. We did not cross borders. The borders crawled over us."
McColl leaned forward a fraction. "And that justifies you sending monsters after civil servants?"
Corvus's gaze sharpened. "It explains why your word treason is an insult. It does not justify your raid. Your raid was the justification.
"The treason, Prime Minister, is what you agreed to under pressure from someone with nothing to do with England. You let the International Confederation of Wizards hand you targets. You let them hand you instructions. You chose explosives as an opening line. You did it while knowing you did not understand what you were striking."
Major's face tightened. Rimington looked straight ahead, as if staring at the stones would spare her the implication.
Corvus's voice cooled further. "You betrayed the land you claim to lead. You betrayed the people of the realm, Magical and Mundane alike. Those who participated in that raid had betrayed the soul of the realm. We delivered it by taking their souls, as they do not deserve it in our judgment."
McColl's mouth opened, then closed.
"I left the three of you out," Corvus added, and the word left carried weight. "I assumed you would see the error of your ways and did not want to disturb the natural order of your governmental structure. Now I am less certain."
Major took a breath, then stepped forward. Not bravado. Choice. "We do not want a war with the Magicals of this realm.
"I want de-escalation. If you want segregation, consider it approved. If you want land, we can provide it. This is not desperation. It is recognition. A war brings disaster to both sides. You are constrained by your population. Our numbers are a different kind of weapon. A war between us unites the Mundane world against you, and you know it."
He let the last line hang, then looked to Arcturus, not Corvus. "Make amends with me. Make a channel. Let us contain what the Confederation started."
Arcturus answered without raising his voice. "You can start by choosing your words properly. We are people of the realm, Prime Minister, not subjects of a throne. We have silenced two organisations that spied on us. One served your government. The other served your Crown. If you want peace, you will acknowledge what you have tried to erase." His gaze held. "We were here before your modern England learned to spell its own name."
Major's mouth twitched. It was not a smile. It was a politician swallowing a reaction.
Grindelwald slid into the gap like a knife into a seam. "A question, Prime Minister. The information you think you have about us. The population, the locations, the capabilities. I assume you received it through spies."
Major did not answer.
Grindelwald's tone stayed light. "Then I suggest you treat it as fiction. We never let your people near anything that mattered. If you are planning around their reports, you are planning around a decoy."
Rimington's eyes narrowed. A calculation started behind them.
Arcturus stepped back a half pace, and it signalled an ending without saying so. "The owl will return to your office tonight. You will find our terms and boundaries. If you breach them again, you will not receive another letter, Prime Minister."
McColl stepped forward, palms open, voice cautious. "About the vanished vessels."
Corvus cut in, almost gentle. "Is it not strange that not one British vessel vanished?"
The question landed like a stone.
McColl's eyes flicked to Major. Major held his stare on Corvus.
Corvus's mouth curved in a small tease, the kind that warned rather than invited. "Let us hope it stays that way. I am quite sure whoever took them understood their value. I suspect they will use them better than the men who lost them."
Silence stretched. An SAS operator shifted his footing. Another tightened his grip on a rifle and then forced himself to loosen it again.
Corvus raised his wand. The movement was slow, deliberate.
A flare shot into the sky. It is split into red, white, and blue. It was owning the flag and the realm. Questioning the loyalty of the Magicals to Wizarding Britain was a mistake they will not repeat.
The air above Stonehenge broke.
Shapes snapped into view, not one or two, but a wall of them. Dragons, hundreds upon hundreds, spread in a wide arc that blotted out the stars. Different breeds, different silhouettes. Long necks. Wide heads. Spiked tails. Heavy wings cutting the air in steady beats.
Roars rolled across the field, layered, timed, as if a conductor had raised a hand.
The SAS line reacted immeidatly shwoing the quality of their training. Rifles came up. Lasers flickered in red dots that jittered against scales and then vanished under the sheer movement.
Major froze where he stood. Rimington's mouth parted, the first loss of control she had shown. McColl barked a sharp order that died in his throat when a shadow passed over him, and the ground seemed to dim.
A dragon banked low, then held position. Another crossed behind it. Riders sat in pairs on almost every back, one forward with control, one behind with a wand ready. Their posture was not decorative. It was doctrine.
Only three dragons carried a single rider.
Those three dropped fast.
Wind hammered the stones. The first dragon hit the ground with a thud that shook gravel loose from between ancient rocks. The second landed a heartbeat later. The third came down last, larger than the others in the immediate circle, its wings folding with the quiet certainty of something that had never feared a spear.
The three lone riders slid off in practised motion. Cloaks snapped back, then settled. Each rider moved to one of the three lords.
Corvus stepped toward the nearest. The rider crouched, offered a forearm, and Corvus used it like a handrail. He climbed onto the dragon's back without haste.
Arcturus followed, slower, but with the ease of a man who refused to look awkward in front of an enemy.
Grindelwald mounted last. He looked down at Major as if offering a courtesy farewell.
Major found his voice. "This is a threat."
Grindelwald's smile returned, thin and cold. "No, Prime Minister. This is a demonstration of restraint. Not even your imaginations can comprehend the power we wield; consider this a small gesture of pure restraint. We can rain seven colours of hellfire upon your cities and armies from invisible dragons. We can take the souls of your people, city by city. Your numbers are not a weapon. It is your weakness."
The dragons launched.
They rose as one, a coordinated lift that made the air snap. The SAS operators tracked them, but the barrels of their rifles lowered as the futility became obvious.
Corvus did not look back until they cleared the stones. Then he did, and his gaze pinned the three Muggles for a final moment.
The dragons and their riders vanished mid ascent. One second, the sky was crowded with scales and wings. The next, it was empty, leaving only the flare's fading colours and the echo of roars trapped between standing stones.
Major stood in the centre of the circle, face turned up, as if waiting for the sky to admit it had been joking.
Rimington spoke first, voice tight. "That was Grindelwald."
McColl swallowed once. His eyes stayed on the empty air. "That was Grindelwald," he repeated, and this time it sounded like a verdict. A Dark Lord with a Warmonger.
"Do you think they have understood the weapon systems of the vessels they captured?"
This was one of the largest issues Major has as of now. He refused to think about rows of dragons sweeping cities with their fire.
"What do we know of these Dragons?" Was his next question.
Rimington cleared her throat while also rubbing her temple. "They are immune to all conventional weapons we have. In previous incidents, even some missiles were proven not affect them."
McColl continued. "As for modern weaponry and artillery systems, we have no information, as they were never tested.