Chapter 15

“I knew it!”

Gregory was holding a cup of tea, poured by his own hands, while Minerva and Petunia sat across from him in the sitting room in his townhouse. He didn’t go in for servants, it seemed, despite his wealth. His grin was broad and his eyes were fierce.

“I take it you’ve had reason to suspect something odd was afoot?” Minerva asked, trying to stay quite casual as she sipped the tea. It was a good leaf, even if he hadn’t let it steep long enough.

“You could say that,” Gregory said, his brow furrowing as he leaned back. He was looking somewhere very distant. “You’d hear rumors, we heard a lot of them through the Frenchies especially. Rumors about people being sent out on hush hush trench raids that never actually went over the top - they just vanished in the night, didn’t come back. People seeing things moving out in No Man’s Land, things that shouldn’t have been there. And if you ever asked too much, you’d be taken off the line for a bit, then come back and...” He shook his head. “Well, I noticed enough to keep my own mouth shut about all that was going on. I was the best shotgunner and some days...”

“Shotgunner?” Minerva asked, while Petunia perked up. It seemed telling war stories wasn’t one of his favorite pastimes with Petunia. Gregory seemed to come back to himself. He shook his head, harrumphed, then sat up a bit.

“Most of us, see, we brought the shotguns from home. It turns out they suited trench-fighting so well that the brass let us keep them. I used mine to knock grenades out of the air before they got into the trench, you know?” Gregory said, chuckling. “The Huns hated us.”

“How?” Minerva asked.

“Oh, it was unsporting criminal behavior, toting a shotgun.”

Minerva’s nose furrowed and her brow scrunched up, while Petunia put what she was thinking in a shocked: “But ... but ... you were ... they were gassing people!”

“Seemed a bit funny at the time, but to be honest, looking back, I can’t quite see the humor anymore,” Gregory said, leaning back in his seat, his distant expression growing yet more distant. “Still ... I never really saw what everyone else was talking about except for one time.” He nodded slowly. “It was right after the Germans sent up a starflare, the kind that ... lights up the night for miles and miles. I was taking a peek over the trench with a periscope at that moment, and it damn near dazzled my eyes blind ... but ... I kept watching and through the tears I saw ... some ... thing. I swear it was a man, but no man ever walked like a spider. And no man ever wore three uniforms at once. It was as if ... the dead out there had decided to get up and start moving. I ... I was going to call out, to say something, but I blinked and it was gone...” Gregory lapsed into quiet, leaning back into his seat as he did so. The comfortable chair made a soft creak in the stillness of the room.

“Well, you were right. You did see something.” Minerva thought back on her reading. “It sounds like a multiform manservant, possibly conjured for some midnight operations - I something about anti-runic mines and...” Her face paled at Gregory’s look. “T-The bodies ... would return to normal after ... the ... spell...”

“Jesus Christ!” Gregory said. Petunia also looked horrified.

“I didn’t say it was a good thing!” Minerva exclaimed, defensively.

“I can see why you wizards have been keeping things hidden so long!” Petunia said.

“You’d think, but I’m afraid the reason is a bit more self serving than mere self defense,” Minerva said. “They’re just more aristocracy, it’s all greed.”

“I can believe that,” Gregory said, sighing. “I have a feeling I won’t much like American wizards any better.” His frown was intent. “Might like them even less.”

Minerva sighed.

“Considering there are wizards who want to find every Jew they can and ... well, yes, I am afraid there must be,” she said. “W-When I first learned that this world existed, this magical underground, it seemed so promising and frightening. But every step deeper is just into the same awful muck that the normal world is made of. They’re just better at it, in some ways. More efficient.” She made a face. “But there’s hope.”

“You mean the Reds?” Gregory asked.

“Us,” Minerva said, lifting her chin, her eyes fierce.

Gregory regarded her. His dark fingers drummed on his thigh. Then his smile flashed, startlingly bright considering his grim, reserved expression for most of this conversation.

“I’ve put my life on the line for thinner chances before. I’m in. Whatever you’re planning, you have my back.”

Minerva nodded. “For now, I just want to get Petunia somewhere safe, where she doesn’t have to starve and work herself to the bone.”

“I don’t-” Petunia said.

“Agreed,” Gregory said.

“Gregory!”

“In fact, I’ll go one step further,” Gregory said. “I say my main ask for signing up in this gig is that you bundle Petunia off.”

Petunia scowled. “I was already agreed to this, but now-” She started.

“Actually, I was thinking we could take you both,” Minerva said, smiling wryly. “I wouldn’t want to separate such passionate lovers.”

Petunia’s face went very red. Gregory harrumphed, then tugged at his collar. “I, uh ... I did not know Petunia had ... told you...” He said, quietly.

“I may have arrived at her apartment at a poor time,” Minerva said, a bit apologetically. “I’m not angry or anything.”

“Oh well, good for that,” Petunia muttered, her cheeks going even redder.

“You seem like a fine gentleman, and Petunia needs someone in her life!” Minerva flushed. “I’ve found out how focusing and ... and ... grounding it can be, to have someone you care for.” Her hand went to her chest, her mind drifting to Kat, to the swirling maelstrom that the world had become. Her stomach knotted at the thought of Kat alone against that. She nodded slowly.

“I can’t wait to meet the lucky man,” Gregory said.

Petunia, somehow, managed to choke on air.

“But that does lead to the question, how are we supposed to pass in this secret world?” Gregory asked. “I would stand out, at the very least.”

Minerva considered. Then she snapped her fingers. “Ah! Aha! I know! You can pretend to be an American wizard, visiting the school. Distant friends of the...” She thought. “Of ... yes! Of the Sidereal family! Selene Lunachild Sidereal was born to her father’s shade, who died in the war, you can pretend to be an American wizard who joined the army and fought along his side! That’s not even particularly impossible, and wizards love to pretend to be above mundane prejudices. And Selene would love to play along with it, I’m sure!”

Gregory frowned. “Won’t I need to cast magical spells?”

“Not if you’re on vacation!” Minerva said, warmly. “Spellcasting is tiring. Wizards often leave it to their servants. Like, say, the fae in Underfae Upon Brocéliande!” She beamed. “And even better, wizards are rich. You’re rich.”

“Don’t they use ust magical money?” Petunia asked.

“Of course not, that’d be absurd,” Minerva said. “They buy things in mundane shops all the time, imagine having to carry some ... some ... special coinage that you could never leave around or hand out.”

Petunia looked a little put out.

“What if they check? I’d like to be able to at least fake it,” Gregory said, standing up, stretching as he did so. “Maybe have a fake, uh, that’s that there?” He pointed at Minerva’s wand. She took hers out, unfolding it and showing it to him with a smile.

“One of my friends has one with knuckles,” she said, her voice soft. “But, very well, uh here.” She handed the wand to him. “You point it like thus and, well, most wizards cast with magical words. Of course, you won’t have anything happen but...” She frowned. “I suppose if you’re good at fast talking and a spot of prestidigitation?”

“Point at a chair and kick it,” Gregory said, his lips twitching upwards. “My uncle was a card shark, I know the basics.”

Minerva nodded. “Well, then, we’ll stick to Kemb Carrien Selda - that will change the motion of a chair. Bring it towards you, move it away. You ... no, no, you have to hold it thus.” She took hold of Gregroy’s hands, positioning him. “Then say the words forcefully. Now, this won’t do anything, as you’re a mundane ... so, be ready.”

He nodded, his face serious. “Kemb Carry-On Selda.” His wand flicked and he kicked the chair in a hurry. It was a bit of a muddle and ... he had kind of flubbed the middle word. Minerva shook her head.

“No, uh, you ended up making a gesture more like this, angle the wand more,” she said. “And it’s Carrien.”

“Got it. Carrien. Carrien. Carrien.” Gregory said it three times, focusing. He made the wand flick, the wand flick, then wand flick. Then, smiling, he took his stance.

“Kemb Carrien Selda.” He kicked.

And missed.

For the chair next to Petunia leaped off the ground and shattered against the wall behind her, breaking into pieces. The clinking bits of wood clattered to the ground and Minerva and Gregory gaped. Petunia slowly turned her head around, to look at the impact site. Then she looked back at Gregory, who was suddenly sweating and leaning heavily against the table.

“ ... was that me?” he asked.

“Wasn’t me,” Minerva said, her voice small.

“W-What does that mean?” Petunia asked.

“You said wizards were a bloodline thing, well...” Gregory trailed off. “I don’t exactly have a complete picture of my family tree, you understand.”

Petunia winced at that. She was clever enough to put together all the pieces. So could Minerva. Minerva felt as if the possibilities she was standing above were twofold. One was terrifying, a leap into the unknown and the impossible, something so staggering and stunning she couldn’t even quite put words to it. The other one was the same awful conclusion she’d had to come to, a supernatural extension of why her people had started tracking families matrilineally.

“Is there a way to find out?” Petunia asked, grasping for Minerva’s wand. “Do you have a ... I don’t know, is there a spell to tell?

Minerva frowned.

“There’s ... well, you can enchant a book to write out a family tree, but it’s an awful big ritual, very expensive, very delicate, I don’t know how. Tracking bloodlines is supposed to be...”

Bloodlines. Pure, clean bloodlines. Wizarding blood. Aryan blood. They were obsessed.

She was sick of it. She was morally sick of blood and every drop of it. Kosher meat was made pure by the removal of the life blood of an animal - to taste it, to drink of it, was forbidden by the Covenant that she was a part of - even here, even this far away from the Temple and the scattering of her People.

Enough.

Enough of blood.

Minerva turned, decisively, to Petunia.

“I recall you said you know your ancestors all the way back to the coming of the Normans, don’t you?” she said. Petunia flinched.

“W-Well, I couldn’t exactly name them all, but more or less, yes,” she said. “We’ve come on hard times, recently, but-”

Minerva snatched the wand from Gregory. She pressed it into her best friend’s hand. “Gesture, thus, say...” She mimed the gesture. “Say Kemb Awer Foda.”

Petunia looked at the wand if she was holding a loaded gun. Her features became grave and she gulped, pointed. Flicked.

“Kemb Awer Foda.”

The wand glowed and a bright green apple appeared from thin air, dropping onto the sitting room table. It hit, rolled, fell to the ground, and the three stood in complete silence. Minerva felt a ringing in her ears. It grew louder and louder and louder as she watched the apple roll.

Minerva broke the silence with a slow breath.

She let it out through her teeth.

“Those...” she weighted every words. She hunted for a word and arrived at one of her grandmother’s favourites: “Those Paskudnyak.”

“ ... what does that spell do?” Gregory asked.

Minerva struggled to control her features as she soared through the air above London, wind whipping through her hair. She had put both Petunia and Gregory - shrunk down, of course, after she had eaten a heart meal to recover from all the spells she had cast so far - into a small desk drawer within her desk. To add to their comfort, she had shrunken down some candles and some food and some drink and some furniture. It had left her almost as tired as she had been before the meal, but she had wanted them to have something to distract themselves.

She had more than enough on her mind.

The image of Petunia’s hand - her mundane hand, mundane back to the coming of the Normans, holding a wand and speaking the words - and the apple appearing from thin air played through her mind again and again.

It was the final straw.

The last thread.

The teeniest thing that the magical world had, and it was broken. Minerva saw it all very clearly now. She was not in a secret world that had access to mysteries and truths that the greater world was blind too. She was in an aristocracy. An aristocracy that had clung to power with secrets and knives and blood, and which could only survive if no one knew it existed - because if people knew, they would try. Everyone in the world would want to get a wand, and everyone who knew the right words, who had the calories to burn, they would all know the same thing that Minerva knew.

Anyone could be magic.

Everyone could be magic.

The Soviet Union’s announcement had been more right than they had known - this power could be used to serve the people of the world, not just the wizards. Not just the ... even that word, wizard! She had heard Gina explain it to her very self: Witches were people who didn’t cast magic white.

Emet had made her desk live.

How many other magical traditions were there?

How many possibilities were there?

The world could be anything. It could be anything and these people had made trenches and machine guns and pogroms and ... and ... and!

“You’re here,” Captain Cordwine’s voice, sharp and furious, cut across her own winding mind. She snapped her head up, unexpectedly chagrined. She felt shame boiling in her belly, since ... for all that she was mad, she rather liked Cordwine’s absurdity and didn’t want him to think poorly on her. He soared down and she saw that he didn’t just sound furious, he looked furious. “Come.”

“Sir?” she asked as she flew after him. “Are you ... all right?”

“Yes,” he said, through gritted teeth.

Minerva bit her lip more.