Time has a curious way of accelerating the closer you get to a choice. I glance at the mantel clock, the ornate hands pointing to 1972, and for the first time in years I feel the pressure of a deadline. Forty‑eight years old. Five years — less — until the generation I shaped will be of an age to tip everything. The war will not wait for my indecision.
My presses print the headlines I want. The Prophet runs them with a surgeon's precision: articles about Muggle advancement, about satellites and atomic experiments inching ever closer to revelation. Letters to the editor cry out for protection. Opinion pieces—coached, paid, and polished—demand unity. Fear, once sown, breeds appetite for shelter.
But fear alone will not give me a pretext. I need the appearance of threat: something undeniable, immediate, and dramatized so that my cadres can step in as saviors. I do not want — and will not risk — the messy humanity of raw violence. By now I have better instruments: illusion, construct, and the sort of meticulous theater that convinces without blood.
So I stage the spark.
Over the better part of a month I arrange a dozen small incidents across England. I call them incidents because that is what they will be in the public mind: sudden flashes of danger that the Ministry is too slow to contain. A factory roof lights with unexplainable green flame that cannot be traced to mundane arson; a cargo train full of experimental engines grinds to a halt with strange, soulless echoes singing down the line; a coastal radar array shows phantom vessels where there are none. None of these things involve unprotected civilians. They are illusions, enchanted mechanisms, automatons designed to mimic a breach of security without costing innocents their lives. We can simulate disaster without the stain of murder — and the public will accept the fiction more readily when bodies are not piled in the streets.
My Death Eaters move in like a practiced rescue crew. They have been trained to read the headlines and act with a practiced benevolence; their uniforms bear medical sashes and relief markings, not the crude banners of rebellion. They arrive at each staged site and stabilize the situation with decisive action: a containment charm here, an evacuation ward there. Cameras and the right pressmen (my men) record their heroics. Photographs run the next morning: grim-faced men in elegant armor pulling frightened workers to safety; my signature on the rescue commendations. The Ministry, grateful and impressed, awards honors. The public applauds. Panic bends into gratitude.
And yes — the Ministry quietly gives some of my people resources and recognition. My ledger of influence fattens. A silver badge, a public commendation — small things, but currency for reputations.
They give me a medal that week: Merlin, Second Class. It sits heavy and beautiful at my throat. The award reads like an endorsement, a legal imprimatur of heroism; people nod and feel safer. My face begins to sit on a mantle in many homes as the man who "acts."
Of course, there is one person who does not mistake the theater for truth.
I run into Albus Dumbledore in the Ministry after the ceremony. He has that way of appearing where moral consequence collects, as if his shoes draw gravitas from the floorboards. His eyes measure me — not with hatred, but with the careful, persistent worry of a man who believes the world can be saved by argument and example. He does not approach the crowd or the cameras. He simply stands, and when we meet his face is a sharp question.
"You orchestrated these events," he says quietly, as if asking a simple fact. His voice is both weary and very, very young.
I let the medal's ribbon chime against my chest and smile with the small courtesy of a man who enjoys playing a role. "I offered assistance where I could," I say. "The Ministry needed it. We supplied it."
His jaw tightens. "You manufactured consent with smoke and mirrors. You play at rescue to build an army of admirers."
I step closer until the space between us is a private clock. "Albus," I whisper, leaning close enough for the words to warm his ear. "No one will ever believe you." The syllables are soft, a velvet blade. "You sound like a man jealous of public favor. You will have your Order. You will have your friends. People will cheer them because darkness has a face they can hate. But numbers win wars. Fear chooses shelters. Who looks like a savior when smoke clears?"
He does not answer at once. His expression is a battle of ethics and strategy — a map of a man who cannot bring himself to accept that ends can corrode the means. For a heartbeat the hall seems to hold its breath, both of us the center of different storms.
"No one will ever believe you," I repeat, this time not as a promise but as a test. I watch the sea of faces beyond the ministry windows — the citizens, the clerks, the reporters. The world is made of people who prefer narratives that fit their comfort. I have given them one.
Dumbledore's eyes burn with something like sorrow. "Then you have already won part of the battle," he says softly. "If men will not believe me, they will believe what gives them immediate shelter."
I smile without warmth. "Then shelter I shall provide."
Outside, the headlines the following morning sing of heroism and gratitude. A nation tightens its sense of safety around me, little by little, incident by incident. Meanwhile Albus and a handful of stubborn others begin to whisper in corridors I cannot see, gathering those who suspect — a quiet association of resistance.
It will take more than theatrics to stop them. It will take law, loyalty, and time.
I have all three.
Solara, my phoenix, watches from her perch and sheds a single ember that flares like a promise. I have lit the first sparks; the rest will be tinder. I will not spill the blood of the ordinary to make a point. I am not a butcher. I am an architect.
But architects build to last — and when a building catches fire it is often the planned exits that determine who survives.
I tuck the medal under my cloak and move on. The clock ticks toward a future I have already drawn in my head. The war has begun — not with cries in the streets, but with a war of perception and preparedness. Dumbledore sees it. He will try to stop it. He believes in truth; I believe in inevitability.
We will see which this world prefers.