The Ministry tasted different once it belonged to me — not because the building had changed, but because the levers inside it were suddenly arranged to my hand. For the first time in my life I could touch a law and feel the current change direction like a tide. It was intoxicating and dangerous in equal measure.
I did not trust anyone. Not after the way loyalties bend in times of crisis. Dumbledore was dangerous not only because of his power but because of the people he could move: hearts, consciences, old debts. I needed the Ministry secure, and I needed time. Time to seal offices, reroute communications, and make sure no whisper could cross the walls from my servants to his.
Legilimency is a useful thing in a place like this — not because it tells you every secret, but because it reveals the shape of a person's commitments. I moved through the files, through the wings, through the important and the incidental. I met the eyes of clerks and councillors, of junior scribes and senior undersecretaries. I spoke to them, to their faces and their thoughts, but I never let the questions sound interrogation. Politeness is an excellent cloak.
Where doubt opened like a black seam, I acted. Those I could not persuade I removed from posts, delicately and legally; a sudden reassignment, a "temporary secondment," a late-night travel requisition that ended rather far from home. They were escorted, pacified, and sent to secure facilities under my control. I will not linger on the details of what happens within those walls — the thing I wanted was not spectacle but certainty. The message had to be plain: betrayals cannot be brokered from inside the Ministry.
I set watchposts on communications. I re-wired the channels so that scrying and owls and clandestine Patronuses had to pass through nodes I controlled. I appointed auditors, men with pleasant faces who liked order, and bound them with obligations that smelled of gratitude and fear. I let no one talk to Dumbledore without passing across a desk I owned.
For a week we worked like surgeons. My Death Eaters swept through departments, not like thieves but like a reorganization committee that had come to stay. Contracts were revised, budgets rerouted, and archival keys changed. I placed my people on committees that mattered, and I left the others with petty tasks and little sleep. In the corridors they murmured of stability; in the offices I had emptied their pockets of secrets.
All the while, the war must appear to have momentum. Dumbledore had been clever in mobilising the Order — he would not simply look away. I needed to occupy him and his friends long enough to finish the Ministry's consolidation. For that, I used the thing every general loves: diversion on a scale that forces attention.
Azkaban was always a thorn on the Ministry's side — a prison and a symbol, a place where law met the limits of compassion. I sent teams trained in infiltration, wards, and the particular subtleties of the island. They took it cleanly and decisively. No bells, no parades; simply the flag changed hands. In the weeks that followed, rumours spread like spilled ink. The Order had to respond. Aurors and members of the Order poured time and effort into finding out how and why. They were right to do so — Azkaban is a strike that pricks the conscience and forces the hand.
While they were busy, my men did what needed doing. A friend in the Department of Mysteries ensured certain doorways were closed to outside auditors; an ally in the Department of International Magical Cooperation quieted any foreign complaints with a courteous note and a small, binding preference. Communications to Dumbledore's network were slowed, redirected, and, where necessary, intercepted. By the time the Order realised the scope of what had changed in the Ministry, it was already a fait accompli.
There were costs. There are always costs. A few of my men returned with more than scratches — the sea and the wards of the island will bruise even the practiced. A couple of clerks I had thought unsuspicious turned out to carry grudges that took longer to unpick. Barty came back with a look that pleased him and unsettled me; Snape returned quieter, his eyes unreadable as ever. But the price of certainty is not a thing I begrudge.
By the end of the week the Ministry's skeleton had been rewired. Whisper-networks had new passwords. The Auror reporting lines folded under new oversight. The archives contained different keys. I did not celebrate with fireworks; fireworks attract attention. I signed a series of quiet decrees and left them for the committees I now chaired to rubber-stamp.
From the safety of Slytherin Manor I watched the Order react. They struck at Azkaban with everything they had, and for a time the whole country felt like a country at war: the fog of patrols, the hush of checkpoints, the tenseness of faces in the streets. Dumbledore moved as he always does — with a dignity that gathers people. It made him effective and, paradoxically, slow. He had to marshal proof and conscience before he could act; I simply had to control the moment.
It is a strange thing to win by removing the options of those around you. I am not proud of every measure I took, but I am proud of the clarity of my purpose. The Ministry was no longer a place that could be turned against me. It was an instrument tuned to my hands.
Sooner or later, every man finds a place where his gambit either pays off or collapses. Mine had, for now, paid off. Dumbledore had been slowed, distracted, and forced to commit his best men to a hundred urgent tasks. I had bought myself weeks — precious weeks — and a certainty that when he struck again, he would now be the kind of opponent who had to fight on my ground as well as his.
I sat back and let the weight of that thought settle. The war continued, and the world grew sharper and colder. But for the first time since I had set the plan in motion, I felt the axis of power tilt subtly toward me. And the tilt, once begun, tends to gather speed.