I branded Itachi with the Dark Mark in private, a small, silent ceremony in the back hall of Slytherin Manor. The mark bled no ink and left no scar — just a pulse of binding magic that slid beneath skin and bone and anchored his oath to me. He did not flinch. He bowed once, the motion precise and quiet.
"It is done," I said. My voice carried no warmth; there was no need for it. "France will be your domain. Build wisely. Infiltrate quietly. Recruit the ambitious, the talented, and the bitter. Avoid spectacle. Leave no loose ends."
Itachi's eyes were the same calm lake they had been since I summoned him. "I will cultivate order and loyalty. I will make the channel stable. You will not be disappointed."
I watched him go the next morning — apparation muffled by wards so our departure would not register on the ordinary world. He moved like a shadow into the continent, a faint ripple of calculation left behind that my Eye of Insight could still trace for a moment after he disappeared. France suited him. Cities like Paris and Lyon thrummed with the kind of subtle power he excels at harvesting: old-blood families, modern resentment, and enough arcane entropy to hide ambitious networks.
After he left, I did not idle. There was so much to do and every hour that passed without action was an opportunity lost. I arranged Mimsy's schedules, sealed wards around the manor, then set out myself — not out of necessity, but because I enjoy the efficiency of first-hand work.
I spent the next year in motion.
Germany first. I lodged in small, discreet houses in Berlin and Munich, reading the old grimoires and talking to the old families who still remembered pre-war runic practices. I listened more than I spoke. Their magic was methodical and layered; their runes were designs of discipline. I practiced their spellcraft until my fingers held the cadence of their language as readily as my own. German bent to my memory and then melded with it — I could feel the logic of their charms unspooling in my head like a ribbon.
There were evenings when I sat with a cup of strong coffee, the manuscript pages spread out, and Dumbledore's occasional absences drifted into the back of my thinking — the way power pulls men into its storms. I did not pity him. I simply recognized the variable he had become.
From Germany I traveled west. America was a revelation. Magic there was noisy and inventive, braided into technology and law and the endless appetite for novelty. I spent months in New York and New Orleans: apprenticeship-like stints with arcanists who traded in raw, improvisational wards, a few weeks with a private circle in Boston, a winter in a Louisiana compound where they made charms from sea-salt and old blues songs. I absorbed regional techniques — practical, unpredictable, and infinitely useful when combined with the careful discipline I had learned in Europe.
Greece was quieter, older. I walked its islands and read runes carved into stones that had seen centuries. Ancient Greek evolved in my mouth as easily as modern Greek; both languages sat in my mind like tools on a belt. I practiced incantations that bent to the rhythm of the language, collected old island folk charms and theorems, and translated fragments of lost ritual into forms that would be useful later — for wards, for bindings, for artifacts.
All the while, books and notes and the artifacts I'd gathered traveled with me in the manor's enchanted trunk. I found that learning a language was not merely vocabulary; it changed your magic. Spellcraft is, at root, pattern recognition; a language changes the patterns you see. My incantations tightened. My wordless magic grew more nuanced because the thought-forms I borrowed from German runes, American improv wards, and Greek metaphor folded into them.
I returned to France twice during that year. The first time was to meet Itachi and inspect the foundations he'd laid. He met me in the back room of a small café that belonged to a witch who pretended to be a vintner — the best kind of cover. Itachi seated himself across from me, and between sips of bitter coffee he outlined their progress.
"We have three houses ready to move," he said. "A banker in Marseille with an appetite for occult investment. Two promising Auror-dropouts in Paris who are disgruntled and hungry. One provincial academic with access to a restricted manuscript." He listed names with the clinical distance of a surgeon. "They're loyal. We train quickly. We test harder."
"Keep the banker close to finance, not power," I advised. "Money underpins infrastructure. Let him think he has autonomy — provide useful goals and the means to succeed. Send whispers of alliance to the Auror-dropouts; arrogance will carry them toward us if they feel undervalued by the system."
He inclined his head. "France will be stable."
We walked the Seine at dusk, discussing contingencies, trade routes for artifacts, and the small rituals to bind new recruits. Itachi demonstrated a few mind-clarifying exercises for a select recruit; the young man's eyes glinted with the first sense of true purpose. He was malleable — useful. We took the time to strengthen his occlumency and then softened his loyalties with careful favors and small victories; loyalty, I have always believed, is built on competence and the taste of success.
The second trip to France was for consolidation. We established storage nodes — innocuous antique shops and small cellars — where artifacts and communications could hide under layers of mundane charm. New recruits were given roles that flattered them: minor authority, power without responsibility. Those promotions cost nothing and bought allegiance. Itachi oversaw training in secret rooms while I focused on the higher-level administration: warding the supply chains, ensuring the vanishing cabinet links were tuned for safe insertion points, and binding a small magical ledger that tracked each operative's loyalty percentage.
Back at the manor between journeys, I translated the lessons from each place into practice. My alchemy gained new subtleties — American improvisation added speed to formulas, German rune discipline improved stability, Greek ritualism gave elegance to binding salts. I reworked enchantments, updated the Philosopher's Stone's containment protocols, and layered the Dark Mark network with fail-safes that would sever links if probes came too close.
Language learning happened in bursts between spells and designs. I read Dante in Italian simply to test a newly inscribed dialect charm; when the charm responded, I knew my methods worked. I practiced archaic Greek chants until the sound-patterns altered the runic engravings in my notebooks. Each tongue rewired the way my magic mapped intention.
The year was a study in scale. It was one thing to be powerful in a room alone; it was another to proliferate that power into living networks across borders. Itachi was my instrument for France; others would seed the rest of Europe and beyond in time. For now, the core was secure: a ring of influence in England, a foothold in France, a ledger of translated knowledge in Germany, American contacts for resource and tech, and Greek ritual knowledge for the rarer, older work that required patience.
On the last night of the cycle, Itachi sent me a short, tightly-worded report through an enchanted letter that folded itself into glass and returned to him after I read it. The closing line was simple: "We are stable. We wait for the signal."
I placed the letter on my desk and looked out over the grounds. The manor lay quiet beneath a moon that was thin as a scythe. My magic felt full, stretched across languages and borders like a net. For the first time in years I allowed myself a practical satisfaction: the scaffolding was built. The network had roots. The tools were in place.
"Soon," I told the quiet room, feeling the leather of my wand-case under my palm. "Soon the entire architecture will have a heartbeat that I can feel."
Mimsy tidied a stack of ledgers with the resigned efficiency of someone accustomed to chaos being organized into inevitability. "Master," she said softly, "you travel so much now."
"It is necessary," I said. "Every place has a grammar. I learn it so I can speak its power."
She bowed and left the room. I remained. The map of my influence stretched in my mind — cities like pieces on a board — and I began to plan the next moves: strengthening the vanishing cabinet network, timing shipments, and aligning a year's worth of summoning windows with my travels.
Itachi had done his work well. France would not be an island; it would be a foundation. And foundations, when laid with precision, carry monuments.