The work of kingdoms is not made in a single night. It is made in thousands of small, deliberate actions: a ward carved here, a safehouse sealed there, a promise whispered into a ledger that will one day be called duty. I spent the next year building those small actions into structures that would hold the weight of what I intended to lift.
I began with the map. My finger traveled over England like a surveyor's compass, marking points that mattered — crossroads, ports, abandoned mines, quiet moors, and the old Roman forts that still hummed with ley energy. Each site gave birth to a plan: a safehouse, a depot, a ritual lattice, a jury-rigged stronghold disguised as a ruin. The Room of Requirement provided the first sketches; Salazar's runes and Flamel's tempering made them permanent.
"What do you want here?" Abraxas asked the first time I showed him the map, leaning over the table as if he'd been born reading cartography. He was practical, impatient in the best way.
"A network," I said simply. "Not a single lair but a living net. If one node is cut, the rest will hold. If a chamber is discovered, the others will outlast any inquiry. We will be invisible by design and untouchable by patience." I traced a line to a remote mountain range. "Here — the vault. Carved, warded, and sunk beneath the stone. It will swallow an army."
Itachi only needed three questions before he smiled. "Fidelius?" he guessed.
"Yes." The Fidelius charm is a terrible and lovely thing when placed correctly: secrecy sealed in a person's soul. I chose my Secret-Keepers carefully — people whose memories and loyalties were ironed with favors and fear. The secret of a sanctuary is not the wards around it but the heart that refuses to name it. I bound a family of devoted men to the mountain with gold and old promises; they took the charm and slept easily, their silence bought and woven into law.
We scattered smaller cells across the country — a fisher's cottage that hid a rune-encrusted cellar, a manor with one wing sealed and the rest cheerful, a caravan that moved like a rumor. Each was layered with protections: warded circles to redirect detection, rune-nets to break aura-scans, and simple yesterday's charms so the Ministry would register nothing more than a memory of a place and not the place itself.
The mountain became my jewel. Inside it we carved halls of shadow: an armory, a medical ward, training courtyards lit by bottled dusk, and vaults lined with goblin metal. The stronghold held room for troops and artefacts, kitchens and libraries, and a cavern large enough to host drills unseen by any watcher. Hagrid's giants helped with the heavy work — they moved stone like toys and left no tracks the Ministry could follow. Abraxas negotiated the contracts for supplies; the goblins happily sold us quality at a measured price.
I instructed Itachi to oversee the vanishing cabinet links into the mountain. "Small shipments at first," I said. "Crates labeled antiques. Letters sent in the open. Build the routings in plain sight and then disguise the traffic as ordinary commerce." He smiled that thin smile of his. "We will be ghosts that pay taxes."
That, of course, was only the physical side. The other side required something subtler: concealment that could survive legal scrutiny. I spent late nights at my desk, designing a charm — not a single spell, but a weave of sigils and ritual sequences — that would make the Dark Mark itself invisible at will. It had to be elegant: triggerable by thought, silent to Detect Magic, and tied cryptically into each bearer's bond with me so it could not be easily severed.
"You'll teach them this?" Abraxas asked when I demonstrated the basic principle on a curtained token. I concealed the glyph with an invisible pulse and then made it visible again with a breath.
"Yes," I replied. "But it will be a secret inside a secret. They will learn to hide it only when ordered. They will never speak of this property. If the Ministry configures a law to arrest anyone merely for wearing the Mark, they will have to produce proof — behaviour, deeds, witnesses. An invisible Mark forces them off the shortcut of panic and onto the slow, bureaucratic road of evidence."
He nodded slowly, the logic already pleasing him. "Trials cost time," Abraxas said. "Time is an advantage."
"Exactly." I folded my hands. "When they must gather proof, we will have time to move, to adapt, and to strike where they are weakest. A system that hunts symbols is crude; a system that hunts evidence is engaged in bureaucratic theatre. We will manufacture the stage and write the script."
I framed the spell into a set of rituals and coded commands, then trained my lieutenants in its use. Itachi taught concealment under pressure; Abraxas taught logistics so no mark sat idle without cover; Hagrid ensured that any beast-stronghold had hidden avenues of retreat. My lieutenants swore to secrecy on the Dark Mark itself — an oath layered with bind-runes that would bind them in ways the Ministry could not legally unpick.
There were dry runs. We made a small campaign of distractions: phantom protests here, a botched theft staged there. I gave the Ministry something loud and obvious to chase while the cabinets moved small caches into the mountain. Each success was a lesson. Each failure was a lesson corrected.
"You must understand," I told them on more than one evening when the candles burned low and the map lay spread between us, "we do not seek spectacle. We do not seek to be feared as rebels are feared. We build institutions. We seed loyalty. We prepare the world so that when the old orders crumble, people will prefer the structure we offer."
Itachi's response was quiet, his voice a knife. "And if they find the marks? If the Ministry compels a confession?"
"Then we will not present marks," I said. "We will present records, benefactors, and alibis. We will be surgical in our exposure. The Mark is a tool of binding and of terror when necessary, not the banner of our movement. Keep it secret, and let the world waste its forces on signs. Let them fight shadows and write tomes of panic while we establish the reality that will endure."
The year closed with the mountain's last seal. I walked its inner corridors and felt the hum of a place that could survive sieges and storms. The wards thrummed, the runes sparkled faintly, and the Fidelius charm slept like a secret within a man's heart. My forces had a place to breathe and to plan, a place from which a thousand small acts of influence could radiate.
On the final night before I shut the vault, I stood alone in its deepest chamber with Nagini curled at my feet and the Sword of Gryffindor — my anchor — secured behind layers of goblin locks. The Philosopher's Stone sat in a ring of containment runes on a pedestal, humming like a heart. I felt the map of my influence in my hands, the seams of my plan stitched tight.
"Five years," I murmured, thinking of the generation I would shape. "Enough time to make them forget to dream of a saviour. Enough time to teach them the architecture of obedience."
Mimsy's voice floated down the stair, soft and reliable. "Master, will you rest?"
"No," I said, and I meant it. "We reinforce tomorrow."
The mountain slept like a beast content with its prey — quiet, patient, and ready. The foundation was laid. The walls would follow.