Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Harry Potter and the Dark Lady
Chapter 14
Sequel to Harry Potter and the Witches' Secret. Harry thought it was all over. His desire to settle in with his wives will not get fulfilled. Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Rotaryfile
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Harry Potter and the Dark Lady
Chapter 14
Potter Castle
Roof Garden
Sunday
6 Oct 1996
20:02
Harry smiled as he watched the kids worming around on the blankets they had laid out. It had been an overcast, blustery day and the low temperature had made the wind biting. The complicated weather protection spell protecting the sports ground, excluding the pitches, had worked and while the crowd was warm and dry the players and officials had suffered for their art, badly. Demelza was still shivering in Harry’s lap despite a warming spell. Harry was concerned.
Nym laughed. “She’s not shivering because she’s cold, Harry.”
“Realmmmmph.”
“Just because you won doesn’t mean you can jump the list, Demelza.”
“But Nym, I have him right here.”
Harry winced. “Demelza, don’t wriggle so much.”
Demelza spun around, facing away from Harry, and put her folded legs under her and leaned back against his chest. “Mmmm.”
Harry relaxed. They still had an hour before the planning meeting.
He dropped into his thinking again. It had been a good week; he could get to like normal. The mates had turned over their teaching positions. Roxanne and Rowena let the Heads of House and Headmistresses watch over their students easily.
The orphans were settling in and Hestia was working on a training schedule for the mates, and then the Division.
Court today had been a little funny: one lone thief, Mundungus Fletcher. Harry had let the Wizengamot hand down a verdict on him and then grudgingly bound him to the House of Black, from which he’d stolen. Sirius had a wicked gleam in his eye the whole time. A little worrying, really—no telling what Sirius would get up to with a known thief, and Harry would hate to bond Sirius to somebody’s House.
Ron had provided endless entertainment this week, for some reason. Nym had finally spoken to the sore-handed Lavender and she had given him a little more lead. Ron had settled again Saturday, and by Sunday he and Lavender were again the perfect couple, turning third form females’ dreams to that golden sunset kind of dream, the Quidditch star and the Beauty Queen.
Harry’s eye was attracted to a tiny little black and white cow standing in the neatly trimmed two-inch lawn up to her belly. Hey, wait a minute, that was Frieda’s cow. How had it gotten here? Susan knee-walked over and picked up the cow. “Irma, don’t run off, honey.”
Harry blinked as Irma the shrunken cow squeaked out a high-pitched moo. Susan looked at Irma critically. “Don’t be that way. I already picked you plenty of grass.” Susan knee-walked back over to the blanket and put the tiny cow down on the blanket next to a pile of grass.
“Harry, you may need to work with Susan on the pregnancy thing some more. Harry? Harry!”
“Uh, yeah, Nym, you may be right.”
Harry went back to thinking.
Xi Shi had gone silent; still recovering, was Harry’s guess. Na Wen seemed to be okay. Nym could just barely feel her if she concentrated hard and she seemed okay. They were fairly certain that meant she was more compatible than Xi Shi. That was a little bit of a dark spot for Harry until Hestia reminded him of the emergency Portkey function of the stone, which should be charged by now, and if Xi Shi abused her it would transport Na Wen away.
Nym had had a water birthing room added to the master suite when the third birth in the bath had gone as well as the first two. Krystal had been delivered of Kathleen and Michael on the fourth of October after an hour and a half in the bath with Harry the squid. The mates had decided the water birthing with Harry the squid was the way to go and with the cascade of births, the bath in the bathroom would be constantly busy. So they had designed a new one, more intimate, easier to clean, warmer, and with both a technomancer modified Mundane water filtration and sterilization system and a runestone set that turned the water purple-blue with ultraviolet light from behind its screens. There were cabinets for every medical device, potion, or medicine that three hard-working mediwitch medical doctors could think of and some the technomancers cobbled together for them from the ideas of what the device should do. The bath took Harry two days to build or conjure. It was warded like Hedwig’s nest.
Frieda had started piling shiny things in another room that she had created with Nym and the mates. It could only be accessed by a maze from the master bedroom or by elf-popping. The mates were constantly tittering and running off to the vaults for another bauble for Frieda’s nest like it was some gigantic free-form work of art. Apparently to make the pile the object had to be precious stone or metal or highly magical. Harry was starting to wonder if anything was left in the vaults other than trunks and memories.
Speaking of trunks, Harry had finally gone through his dad’s and mum’s—well, started to. He did a little more each day as he was better able to bear the pain. They were just normal Hogwarts trunks, full of memories and the junk that was childhood treasures. To Harry it was a treasure beyond measure, and Frieda had been overjoyed when Harry brought them to a corner of her nest. She always lay with her tail over or wrapped around the two trunks, her master’s heart.
Harry had thought all the way through last Sunday’s decisions with the mates and they all agreed. No one wanted to spend their lives fighting and they really didn’t want to engage Xi Shi with potentially millions of wizards on her side. They would ring her with ever-decreasing circles of mines and wait her out while they dealt with Russia.
Harry thought they would not have to wait long. It irritated him, but what else could he do? He lacked the combat power to fight a war on the Asian land mass against a 399 million strong Mundane army backed up by up to a million wizards and nuclear weapons.
Besides the fact that he was already up against the Russians, they were like kids really; they had to be told every little thing. Willful disobedience was what it was. Anastasia told them to stop trafficking girls so they started trafficking boys. A gangster member of their Parliament was turned into a column of ash by an enraged Anastasia later and now they were trafficking who knew what. Pitior Romanovskaya was in constant contact with Anastasia and his circle of influence was widening. Amazingly, some of the old Ancient and Noble Russian Houses still had living heirs. The magical births registry was a great help. The numbers were skewed, though; the west had more living magical beings per capita than the east. Of course the population of Siberia was miniscule, but even in the heavily populated areas magical births ran an order of magnitude lower than the west. The ’Claws and medically inclined mates were looking into it.
Amanda despaired of the American Mundane government. President Clinton, a Mundane, was apparently a serial philanderer and it was blowing up in his face. The oaths were holding but he was becoming difficult, going so far as trying to have the U.S. DMLE Obliviators erase the memories of a few people. They refused. The Magical Supreme Court had declined to take the administration’s case attempting to force compliance from the US DMLE, but Amanda wondered how many clandestine Obliviations were happening. Quarterly questioning under Veritaserum was being bandied about to protect the secrecy that remained. Possibly worse was the continuing rise of the religious right in America and Western Europe. Nothing wrong with religion per se, but these maniacs were banning and burning books—fiction books, text books, reference books, it just didn’t matter. They were truly the great unwashed in both places, hiding nationalism and prejudice behind a thin screen of religion or ‘protecting the rights of citizens’.
Then there were the Muslims—great folks, like Christians, Jews, or any other religion, ninety percent okay but ten percent zealots or maniacs. These Taliban, who were close to taking over Afghanistan, for example. Something would have to be done about them. Couple of flights around the major cities should sew them up, or maybe not as they did not see themselves as evil, like the other zealots. Well, just have to put down the stones and see what happened.
“Up, Harry, we have to go.”
Harry came back to reality and looked around. Demelza had stood up and held out her hand. Harry took it and rose. He offered his arm to Nym and faded them to the theater.
HPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDL
Potter Castle
Briefing Theater
Sunday
6 Oct 1996
20:00
“Sirius, be serious. There, was that enough, or are we going to have to suffer all night?”
“No need to be mean, Your Highness,” Sirius pouted.
Andrew rolled his eyes, and Remus chuckled. The new Intelligence group had gathered for one last look. Hu Chang, Chang Li, Sir John Foley, Leslie Sherman, Prince Andrew, Prince Phillip, Remus, and Sirius formed the group.
Leslie looked around. “If we could continue, gentlemen. First slide.”
The screen displayed.
Russia
Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy, was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities. In the early 17th century, a new Romanov Dynasty continued this policy of expansion across Siberia to the Pacific. Under PETER I (ruled 1682-1725), hegemony was extended to the Baltic Sea and the country was renamed the Russian Empire. During the 19th century, more territorial acquisitions were made in Europe and Asia. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 contributed to the Revolution of 1905, which resulted in the formation of a parliament and other reforms. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the imperial household. The Communists under Vladimir LENIN seized power soon after and formed the USSR. The brutal rule of Iosif STALIN (1928-53) strengthened Communist rule and Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize Communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into Russia and 14 other independent republics. Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period.
Land Area
16,995,800 sq km spread across 11 time zone’s from GMT +2 to GMT+12
4,658,371 sq km magically hidden from mundanes.
Population
142,893,540 (est.)
1,418,935 (magical beings)
Russia is constrained by a lack of terrain suitable for agriculture. As several other western countries Russia currently has a negative population growth rate.
China
For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. After World War II, the Communists under MAO Zedong established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China's sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people. After 1978, his successor DENG Xiaoping and other leaders focused on market-oriented economic development.
Population: 1,313,973,713 (July 1996 est.)
Magical 13,139,737 (July 1996 est.)
Age structure: 0-14 years: 20.8% (male 145,461,833/female 128,445,739)
15-64 years: 71.4% (male 482,439,115/female 455,960,489)
65 years and over: 7.7% (male 48,562,635/female 53,103,902) (1996 est.)
Median age: total: 32.7 years
male: 32.3 years
female: 33.2 years (1996 est.)
Population growth rate: 0.59% (1996 est.)
Birth rate: 13.25 births/1,000 population (1996 est.)
Death rate: 6.97 deaths/1,000 population (1996 est.)
Net migration rate: -0.39 migrant(s)/1,000 population (1996 est.)
Sex ratio: at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.13 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.91 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (1996 est.)
Infant mortality rate: total: 23.12 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 20.6 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 25.94 deaths/1,000 live births (1996 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: total population: 72.58 years
male: 70.89 years
female: 74.46 years (1996 est.)
Total fertility rate: 1.73 children born/woman (1996 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: 0.1% (1993 est.)
Andrew frowned at the 13 pages of slides after the first 3. “Leslie, why have we gone so much more detailed on China?”
“The full report on Russia is in the handout along with the maps and locations for the mines and schools we’ve templated. We have developed a template of China also, but we’re using mostly public—errrh—chokepoints, I believe Harry calls them. We have much less humint on China so we fell back on the CIA fact book for now. We can do much more detailed briefings and planning as we go along, but until we’re ready to do whatever we’re going to do there I think we should leave it alone. Well, that’s not exactly correct—I believe we should passively gain intelligence, Your Highness.”
“Andrew, Leslie. It looks like we’ll be working together for a while.” Andrew looked at the very thick handout he had picked up from his seat as he sat down. “Leslie, I hope this thing is more interesting than the slides. It’s as thick as the London directory.”
“The Joint Staff planners will be very amused to hear that, Andrew.”
“No insult intended, but really this is an awful lot of data.” Andrew shook his head ruefully.
“Yes, Andrew, Amanda informs me that His Grace and the fully bonded read tedious material by dividing it up and then the whole Clan brain assembles the pieces. Apparently Harry gets a better gestalt that way.”
Phillip smiled. “And they get to put in their opinions.”
“Dad!” Andrew was scandalized.
Phillip and Dan laughed. Phillip threw in, “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking Harry is not dependent on them. If even one of them has a significant issue they’ll go back to square one. They do it at the speed of thought, however, so be ready, gentlemen.”
Dan added, “Also bear in mind that they are consummate scholars and accomplished politicians. They will very shortly know more than we ever will about Russia and China.”
Phillip picked up. “Leslie, I expect your plan for Russia will stand but you need to refocus your center of gravity onto Chita. Harry has already taken it and Anastasia’s representative is there.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Now Dan responded. “Also expect Xi Shi’s next move to be political. By my count she’s been badly mauled by Harry three times now. I don’t expect she got to be a Dark Lady by being completely stupid, so she’ll change tactics.” Dan and Phillip were approaching the twinspeak method and the rest of the room watched like it was a tennis match.
Leslie looked at Dan. “Three?”
Phillip counted them off. “The werewolves of Asia getting together and ambushing the Clan probably would not have occurred had events been left to take their natural course. The wizards taken by the snatch stones bearing her Mark were very powerful. The witches taken are also, and they report their mission was intelligence gathering but that they were to take any opportunity to take out a mate. And those Dragons at Chita were being directed.”
“The mates believe she was enraged by Harry and the mates’ destruction of the werewolves after their attack on Nym and Sarah, injured by Harry lighting her minions on fire, and severely injured by Harry’s attack on the Alpha male fireball, so injured that Harry had to heal her,” Dan explained.
“WHAT? HE HEALED HER? Why didn’t he just let her die?” Sirius was amazed Harry had missed this opportunity.
Dan shook his head. “Sirius, do you not know your ward? He found her injured and unconscious. What would he have done?”
“Too bad it wasn’t Nym who found her, Dan,” Remus grinned viciously.
“Well, she did and she didn’t. Lilith, the purported mother-consciousness, used Nym’s body to talk to Harry while he healed Xi Shi. Nym says Lilith pointed out the opportunity for Harry to kill Xi Shi and he told her he wouldn’t kill her in cold blood, Remus.”
Leslie Smith frowned. “Who is this Lilith again?”
“A consciousness, she claims, like Rowena and Roxanne; a sentient stone, Leslie.”
“A consciousness? Not a demon? Not the mother of incubi and succubae? Not the first wife of Adam who was created his equal and fled the garden, shat upon by God and his heavenly chorus of ass-lickers for failing to kowtow to his little girly-man, Remus?”
Remus was slightly aghast at Leslie’s outburst. “Wicca then, Leslie?”
“Druid, western Druid.”
The room stilled. Druids were almost legendary; hell, they were legendary in Europe now. It was part of the legend that they had gone into the west like the elves. Apparently “west” was a relative term.
Leslie Sherman continued. “Lilith is both and neither of the things most assume. An elder goddess, we think. One of the few that remain in contact with man. Her acts are great and terrible in kind; could she be a consciousness embodied in a stone?” He shrugged. “She can be whatever she wants, so why not?”
Remus closed his eyes. “We have a larger problem than we knew, then. Lilith intimated that she would join Harry.”
Leslie laughed and the others goggled. “if she hasn’t already, you mean.”
“How do you mean, Leslie?”
“What is the Realm, Phillip? It’s not Rowena, it’s not Roxanne, but it has consciousness and power, so much power. That it loves Harry is a given. He uses its power much as he uses his own. At some point we should speak to the Goblin King. The last of the five races besides us and the only ones available to us, the elves have gone to another plane, the dwarfs delved out of memory, Halflings—phssst, who knows where they’ve gone, if they ever really existed? The Goblins may have maintained the records. Now I believe it’s time for the briefing.”
“You missed out Dragons, Leslie, the eldest of the elder races.”
“No, Phillip, I didn’t miss them. I just hope to live and I’m not chosen of them as Harry and apparently Xi Shi are.”
Sirius smiled viciously now. “I wonder how chosen Xi Shi is now that she’s gotten the fireball’s mates killed.”
“She won’t be obeyed by the Alpha female. The female fireballs will establish territories and begin searching for mates. Their depredations will be extreme.”
“Frieda! Good evening, dear.”
Frieda beamed at Phillip. “Evening, Da!” Frieda leaned down on the way by and pecked Phillip on the cheek. “Hehehe.”
Phillip’s cycling colors entertained everyone for a moment as the theater filled.
Harry seated Nym after handing her the tome from her seat. Amelia Fastida took it and began skimming it. Bellatrix took Harry’s and started about fifty pages in. As the mates sat they all went fifty pages further and started reading. By the time they were all seated and the courtiers and vassals had filed in and taken seats the massive book was read and being digested in the bond.
Leslie watched, amazed, as Harry processed. “So do we even need to brief Harry?”
“No, not for us; the book was very thorough. We’ll investigate the locations for the schools. I like the idea of one per time zone and we can scale them for the population the time zone carries. Maybe put them on the line between time zones if the population is too small in one zone and not too large in the other. We’ll change the center of gravity to Chita, however.”
“Roxanne, Anastasia and I will travel there next week and put an area there under the Fidelus. The Goblins have already agreed to start construction inside one of the mountains there for an Imperial Palace and a School.
“There’s a valley behind the mountain—well, a hill really—that we’ll use for a sports ground and crop lands. It’s the size of the Hollow. Narcissa and Hannah will start working on a planting plan and gaining more crop land in more arable climates for provisioning the schools. The bound men and their families that we gain through the stones will work the land and what technomancer industry we need to run a magical empire in Russia centered on Chita and moving out from there.
“Your identified chokepoints are fine—public house entrances, transport hubs, public venue entrances—same plan we used here, really. I like the inclusion of the Dragon overflights. They have to be conducted anyway just to remind the Russians who’s really in charge; might as well get some use out of them.
“We’ll continue to develop intelligence on the China situation and any pockets of resistance we encounter in Russia and reduce or destroy them as necessary.”
Leslie blinked. The Clan Brain did process very rapidly. “Harry, about the stones. There’s some concern that the enemy could duplicate them or change them, given an example to reverse-engineer.”
Hestia nodded. “Yes, I considered that and if the stone is destroyed or the string disturbed after Harry activates them they explode, releasing all their gathered magic in one undirected blast. Depending on how long they’ve been charging, up to a 20 terawatt-second energy pulse.”
“Merlin, Duchess Hestia—that’s in the range of nuclear devices!”
Hestia shrugged. “They’re clearly marked as the Duke’s property and nothing short of an long immersion in lava will destroy them anyway . One little energy release in an active volcano will hardly be noticed, Leslie.”
Leslie shuddered at her little shrug and smile. They had very deliberately created a device that killed when tampered with.
Harry smirked. “So telling you what an illegal Portkey does when it’s used is not the thing to do, I guess. All right, folks, it’s late, so—pending questions? None? All right, then we’ll bid you a good evening.”
The bonded faded away and Elizabeth looked at the still wide-eyed Leslie Sherman. “He was kidding, I think. Phillip, be a dear and take me to our quarters.”
Phillip raised Elizabeth with a stone-straight face and escorted her away under the owl-like gaze of the American chief of intelligence (magical).
Sirius and Remus started an old argument again. “Smoky.”
“Sirius, what kind of name would Mr. Smokey be?”
“Better than Red Eye. He doesn’t have red eyes in any form.”
Andrew said out of the corner of his mouth while watching the two Marauders attempt to come up with a name for Harry, “It’s almost a surety he was kidding. Tell you what, though—we can try it out on a condemned prisoner. Oops, got to go. Better half calling, old man.”
Finally it was just Leslie and Sir John. “He was kidding, right?”
“Don’t know, old man, no way to tell really unless you do want to do that prisoner thing. He could probably rig that. You might want to warn your agents to be scrupulous in their accounting.”
Chapter 14
Potter Castle
Roof Garden
Sunday
6 Oct 1996
20:02
Harry smiled as he watched the kids worming around on the blankets they had laid out. It had been an overcast, blustery day and the low temperature had made the wind biting. The complicated weather protection spell protecting the sports ground, excluding the pitches, had worked and while the crowd was warm and dry the players and officials had suffered for their art, badly. Demelza was still shivering in Harry’s lap despite a warming spell. Harry was concerned.
Nym laughed. “She’s not shivering because she’s cold, Harry.”
“Realmmmmph.”
“Just because you won doesn’t mean you can jump the list, Demelza.”
“But Nym, I have him right here.”
Harry winced. “Demelza, don’t wriggle so much.”
Demelza spun around, facing away from Harry, and put her folded legs under her and leaned back against his chest. “Mmmm.”
Harry relaxed. They still had an hour before the planning meeting.
He dropped into his thinking again. It had been a good week; he could get to like normal. The mates had turned over their teaching positions. Roxanne and Rowena let the Heads of House and Headmistresses watch over their students easily.
The orphans were settling in and Hestia was working on a training schedule for the mates, and then the Division.
Court today had been a little funny: one lone thief, Mundungus Fletcher. Harry had let the Wizengamot hand down a verdict on him and then grudgingly bound him to the House of Black, from which he’d stolen. Sirius had a wicked gleam in his eye the whole time. A little worrying, really—no telling what Sirius would get up to with a known thief, and Harry would hate to bond Sirius to somebody’s House.
Ron had provided endless entertainment this week, for some reason. Nym had finally spoken to the sore-handed Lavender and she had given him a little more lead. Ron had settled again Saturday, and by Sunday he and Lavender were again the perfect couple, turning third form females’ dreams to that golden sunset kind of dream, the Quidditch star and the Beauty Queen.
Harry’s eye was attracted to a tiny little black and white cow standing in the neatly trimmed two-inch lawn up to her belly. Hey, wait a minute, that was Frieda’s cow. How had it gotten here? Susan knee-walked over and picked up the cow. “Irma, don’t run off, honey.”
Harry blinked as Irma the shrunken cow squeaked out a high-pitched moo. Susan looked at Irma critically. “Don’t be that way. I already picked you plenty of grass.” Susan knee-walked back over to the blanket and put the tiny cow down on the blanket next to a pile of grass.
“Harry, you may need to work with Susan on the pregnancy thing some more. Harry? Harry!”
“Uh, yeah, Nym, you may be right.”
Harry went back to thinking.
Xi Shi had gone silent; still recovering, was Harry’s guess. Na Wen seemed to be okay. Nym could just barely feel her if she concentrated hard and she seemed okay. They were fairly certain that meant she was more compatible than Xi Shi. That was a little bit of a dark spot for Harry until Hestia reminded him of the emergency Portkey function of the stone, which should be charged by now, and if Xi Shi abused her it would transport Na Wen away.
Nym had had a water birthing room added to the master suite when the third birth in the bath had gone as well as the first two. Krystal had been delivered of Kathleen and Michael on the fourth of October after an hour and a half in the bath with Harry the squid. The mates had decided the water birthing with Harry the squid was the way to go and with the cascade of births, the bath in the bathroom would be constantly busy. So they had designed a new one, more intimate, easier to clean, warmer, and with both a technomancer modified Mundane water filtration and sterilization system and a runestone set that turned the water purple-blue with ultraviolet light from behind its screens. There were cabinets for every medical device, potion, or medicine that three hard-working mediwitch medical doctors could think of and some the technomancers cobbled together for them from the ideas of what the device should do. The bath took Harry two days to build or conjure. It was warded like Hedwig’s nest.
Frieda had started piling shiny things in another room that she had created with Nym and the mates. It could only be accessed by a maze from the master bedroom or by elf-popping. The mates were constantly tittering and running off to the vaults for another bauble for Frieda’s nest like it was some gigantic free-form work of art. Apparently to make the pile the object had to be precious stone or metal or highly magical. Harry was starting to wonder if anything was left in the vaults other than trunks and memories.
Speaking of trunks, Harry had finally gone through his dad’s and mum’s—well, started to. He did a little more each day as he was better able to bear the pain. They were just normal Hogwarts trunks, full of memories and the junk that was childhood treasures. To Harry it was a treasure beyond measure, and Frieda had been overjoyed when Harry brought them to a corner of her nest. She always lay with her tail over or wrapped around the two trunks, her master’s heart.
Harry had thought all the way through last Sunday’s decisions with the mates and they all agreed. No one wanted to spend their lives fighting and they really didn’t want to engage Xi Shi with potentially millions of wizards on her side. They would ring her with ever-decreasing circles of mines and wait her out while they dealt with Russia.
Harry thought they would not have to wait long. It irritated him, but what else could he do? He lacked the combat power to fight a war on the Asian land mass against a 399 million strong Mundane army backed up by up to a million wizards and nuclear weapons.
Besides the fact that he was already up against the Russians, they were like kids really; they had to be told every little thing. Willful disobedience was what it was. Anastasia told them to stop trafficking girls so they started trafficking boys. A gangster member of their Parliament was turned into a column of ash by an enraged Anastasia later and now they were trafficking who knew what. Pitior Romanovskaya was in constant contact with Anastasia and his circle of influence was widening. Amazingly, some of the old Ancient and Noble Russian Houses still had living heirs. The magical births registry was a great help. The numbers were skewed, though; the west had more living magical beings per capita than the east. Of course the population of Siberia was miniscule, but even in the heavily populated areas magical births ran an order of magnitude lower than the west. The ’Claws and medically inclined mates were looking into it.
Amanda despaired of the American Mundane government. President Clinton, a Mundane, was apparently a serial philanderer and it was blowing up in his face. The oaths were holding but he was becoming difficult, going so far as trying to have the U.S. DMLE Obliviators erase the memories of a few people. They refused. The Magical Supreme Court had declined to take the administration’s case attempting to force compliance from the US DMLE, but Amanda wondered how many clandestine Obliviations were happening. Quarterly questioning under Veritaserum was being bandied about to protect the secrecy that remained. Possibly worse was the continuing rise of the religious right in America and Western Europe. Nothing wrong with religion per se, but these maniacs were banning and burning books—fiction books, text books, reference books, it just didn’t matter. They were truly the great unwashed in both places, hiding nationalism and prejudice behind a thin screen of religion or ‘protecting the rights of citizens’.
Then there were the Muslims—great folks, like Christians, Jews, or any other religion, ninety percent okay but ten percent zealots or maniacs. These Taliban, who were close to taking over Afghanistan, for example. Something would have to be done about them. Couple of flights around the major cities should sew them up, or maybe not as they did not see themselves as evil, like the other zealots. Well, just have to put down the stones and see what happened.
“Up, Harry, we have to go.”
Harry came back to reality and looked around. Demelza had stood up and held out her hand. Harry took it and rose. He offered his arm to Nym and faded them to the theater.
HPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDLHPATDL
Potter Castle
Briefing Theater
Sunday
6 Oct 1996
20:00
“Sirius, be serious. There, was that enough, or are we going to have to suffer all night?”
“No need to be mean, Your Highness,” Sirius pouted.
Andrew rolled his eyes, and Remus chuckled. The new Intelligence group had gathered for one last look. Hu Chang, Chang Li, Sir John Foley, Leslie Sherman, Prince Andrew, Prince Phillip, Remus, and Sirius formed the group.
Leslie looked around. “If we could continue, gentlemen. First slide.”
The screen displayed.
Russia
Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy, was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities. In the early 17th century, a new Romanov Dynasty continued this policy of expansion across Siberia to the Pacific. Under PETER I (ruled 1682-1725), hegemony was extended to the Baltic Sea and the country was renamed the Russian Empire. During the 19th century, more territorial acquisitions were made in Europe and Asia. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 contributed to the Revolution of 1905, which resulted in the formation of a parliament and other reforms. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the imperial household. The Communists under Vladimir LENIN seized power soon after and formed the USSR. The brutal rule of Iosif STALIN (1928-53) strengthened Communist rule and Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize Communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 splintered the USSR into Russia and 14 other independent republics. Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period.
Land Area
16,995,800 sq km spread across 11 time zone’s from GMT +2 to GMT+12
4,658,371 sq km magically hidden from mundanes.
Population
142,893,540 (est.)
1,418,935 (magical beings)
Russia is constrained by a lack of terrain suitable for agriculture. As several other western countries Russia currently has a negative population growth rate.
China
For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. After World War II, the Communists under MAO Zedong established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China's sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people. After 1978, his successor DENG Xiaoping and other leaders focused on market-oriented economic development.
Population: 1,313,973,713 (July 1996 est.)
Magical 13,139,737 (July 1996 est.)
Age structure: 0-14 years: 20.8% (male 145,461,833/female 128,445,739)
15-64 years: 71.4% (male 482,439,115/female 455,960,489)
65 years and over: 7.7% (male 48,562,635/female 53,103,902) (1996 est.)
Median age: total: 32.7 years
male: 32.3 years
female: 33.2 years (1996 est.)
Population growth rate: 0.59% (1996 est.)
Birth rate: 13.25 births/1,000 population (1996 est.)
Death rate: 6.97 deaths/1,000 population (1996 est.)
Net migration rate: -0.39 migrant(s)/1,000 population (1996 est.)
Sex ratio: at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.13 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.91 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (1996 est.)
Infant mortality rate: total: 23.12 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 20.6 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 25.94 deaths/1,000 live births (1996 est.)
Life expectancy at birth: total population: 72.58 years
male: 70.89 years
female: 74.46 years (1996 est.)
Total fertility rate: 1.73 children born/woman (1996 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: 0.1% (1993 est.)
Andrew frowned at the 13 pages of slides after the first 3. “Leslie, why have we gone so much more detailed on China?”
“The full report on Russia is in the handout along with the maps and locations for the mines and schools we’ve templated. We have developed a template of China also, but we’re using mostly public—errrh—chokepoints, I believe Harry calls them. We have much less humint on China so we fell back on the CIA fact book for now. We can do much more detailed briefings and planning as we go along, but until we’re ready to do whatever we’re going to do there I think we should leave it alone. Well, that’s not exactly correct—I believe we should passively gain intelligence, Your Highness.”
“Andrew, Leslie. It looks like we’ll be working together for a while.” Andrew looked at the very thick handout he had picked up from his seat as he sat down. “Leslie, I hope this thing is more interesting than the slides. It’s as thick as the London directory.”
“The Joint Staff planners will be very amused to hear that, Andrew.”
“No insult intended, but really this is an awful lot of data.” Andrew shook his head ruefully.
“Yes, Andrew, Amanda informs me that His Grace and the fully bonded read tedious material by dividing it up and then the whole Clan brain assembles the pieces. Apparently Harry gets a better gestalt that way.”
Phillip smiled. “And they get to put in their opinions.”
“Dad!” Andrew was scandalized.
Phillip and Dan laughed. Phillip threw in, “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking Harry is not dependent on them. If even one of them has a significant issue they’ll go back to square one. They do it at the speed of thought, however, so be ready, gentlemen.”
Dan added, “Also bear in mind that they are consummate scholars and accomplished politicians. They will very shortly know more than we ever will about Russia and China.”
Phillip picked up. “Leslie, I expect your plan for Russia will stand but you need to refocus your center of gravity onto Chita. Harry has already taken it and Anastasia’s representative is there.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Now Dan responded. “Also expect Xi Shi’s next move to be political. By my count she’s been badly mauled by Harry three times now. I don’t expect she got to be a Dark Lady by being completely stupid, so she’ll change tactics.” Dan and Phillip were approaching the twinspeak method and the rest of the room watched like it was a tennis match.
Leslie looked at Dan. “Three?”
Phillip counted them off. “The werewolves of Asia getting together and ambushing the Clan probably would not have occurred had events been left to take their natural course. The wizards taken by the snatch stones bearing her Mark were very powerful. The witches taken are also, and they report their mission was intelligence gathering but that they were to take any opportunity to take out a mate. And those Dragons at Chita were being directed.”
“The mates believe she was enraged by Harry and the mates’ destruction of the werewolves after their attack on Nym and Sarah, injured by Harry lighting her minions on fire, and severely injured by Harry’s attack on the Alpha male fireball, so injured that Harry had to heal her,” Dan explained.
“WHAT? HE HEALED HER? Why didn’t he just let her die?” Sirius was amazed Harry had missed this opportunity.
Dan shook his head. “Sirius, do you not know your ward? He found her injured and unconscious. What would he have done?”
“Too bad it wasn’t Nym who found her, Dan,” Remus grinned viciously.
“Well, she did and she didn’t. Lilith, the purported mother-consciousness, used Nym’s body to talk to Harry while he healed Xi Shi. Nym says Lilith pointed out the opportunity for Harry to kill Xi Shi and he told her he wouldn’t kill her in cold blood, Remus.”
Leslie Smith frowned. “Who is this Lilith again?”
“A consciousness, she claims, like Rowena and Roxanne; a sentient stone, Leslie.”
“A consciousness? Not a demon? Not the mother of incubi and succubae? Not the first wife of Adam who was created his equal and fled the garden, shat upon by God and his heavenly chorus of ass-lickers for failing to kowtow to his little girly-man, Remus?”
Remus was slightly aghast at Leslie’s outburst. “Wicca then, Leslie?”
“Druid, western Druid.”
The room stilled. Druids were almost legendary; hell, they were legendary in Europe now. It was part of the legend that they had gone into the west like the elves. Apparently “west” was a relative term.
Leslie Sherman continued. “Lilith is both and neither of the things most assume. An elder goddess, we think. One of the few that remain in contact with man. Her acts are great and terrible in kind; could she be a consciousness embodied in a stone?” He shrugged. “She can be whatever she wants, so why not?”
Remus closed his eyes. “We have a larger problem than we knew, then. Lilith intimated that she would join Harry.”
Leslie laughed and the others goggled. “if she hasn’t already, you mean.”
“How do you mean, Leslie?”
“What is the Realm, Phillip? It’s not Rowena, it’s not Roxanne, but it has consciousness and power, so much power. That it loves Harry is a given. He uses its power much as he uses his own. At some point we should speak to the Goblin King. The last of the five races besides us and the only ones available to us, the elves have gone to another plane, the dwarfs delved out of memory, Halflings—phssst, who knows where they’ve gone, if they ever really existed? The Goblins may have maintained the records. Now I believe it’s time for the briefing.”
“You missed out Dragons, Leslie, the eldest of the elder races.”
“No, Phillip, I didn’t miss them. I just hope to live and I’m not chosen of them as Harry and apparently Xi Shi are.”
Sirius smiled viciously now. “I wonder how chosen Xi Shi is now that she’s gotten the fireball’s mates killed.”
“She won’t be obeyed by the Alpha female. The female fireballs will establish territories and begin searching for mates. Their depredations will be extreme.”
“Frieda! Good evening, dear.”
Frieda beamed at Phillip. “Evening, Da!” Frieda leaned down on the way by and pecked Phillip on the cheek. “Hehehe.”
Phillip’s cycling colors entertained everyone for a moment as the theater filled.
Harry seated Nym after handing her the tome from her seat. Amelia Fastida took it and began skimming it. Bellatrix took Harry’s and started about fifty pages in. As the mates sat they all went fifty pages further and started reading. By the time they were all seated and the courtiers and vassals had filed in and taken seats the massive book was read and being digested in the bond.
Leslie watched, amazed, as Harry processed. “So do we even need to brief Harry?”
“No, not for us; the book was very thorough. We’ll investigate the locations for the schools. I like the idea of one per time zone and we can scale them for the population the time zone carries. Maybe put them on the line between time zones if the population is too small in one zone and not too large in the other. We’ll change the center of gravity to Chita, however.”
“Roxanne, Anastasia and I will travel there next week and put an area there under the Fidelus. The Goblins have already agreed to start construction inside one of the mountains there for an Imperial Palace and a School.
“There’s a valley behind the mountain—well, a hill really—that we’ll use for a sports ground and crop lands. It’s the size of the Hollow. Narcissa and Hannah will start working on a planting plan and gaining more crop land in more arable climates for provisioning the schools. The bound men and their families that we gain through the stones will work the land and what technomancer industry we need to run a magical empire in Russia centered on Chita and moving out from there.
“Your identified chokepoints are fine—public house entrances, transport hubs, public venue entrances—same plan we used here, really. I like the inclusion of the Dragon overflights. They have to be conducted anyway just to remind the Russians who’s really in charge; might as well get some use out of them.
“We’ll continue to develop intelligence on the China situation and any pockets of resistance we encounter in Russia and reduce or destroy them as necessary.”
Leslie blinked. The Clan Brain did process very rapidly. “Harry, about the stones. There’s some concern that the enemy could duplicate them or change them, given an example to reverse-engineer.”
Hestia nodded. “Yes, I considered that and if the stone is destroyed or the string disturbed after Harry activates them they explode, releasing all their gathered magic in one undirected blast. Depending on how long they’ve been charging, up to a 20 terawatt-second energy pulse.”
“Merlin, Duchess Hestia—that’s in the range of nuclear devices!”
Hestia shrugged. “They’re clearly marked as the Duke’s property and nothing short of an long immersion in lava will destroy them anyway . One little energy release in an active volcano will hardly be noticed, Leslie.”
Leslie shuddered at her little shrug and smile. They had very deliberately created a device that killed when tampered with.
Harry smirked. “So telling you what an illegal Portkey does when it’s used is not the thing to do, I guess. All right, folks, it’s late, so—pending questions? None? All right, then we’ll bid you a good evening.”
The bonded faded away and Elizabeth looked at the still wide-eyed Leslie Sherman. “He was kidding, I think. Phillip, be a dear and take me to our quarters.”
Phillip raised Elizabeth with a stone-straight face and escorted her away under the owl-like gaze of the American chief of intelligence (magical).
Sirius and Remus started an old argument again. “Smoky.”
“Sirius, what kind of name would Mr. Smokey be?”
“Better than Red Eye. He doesn’t have red eyes in any form.”
Andrew said out of the corner of his mouth while watching the two Marauders attempt to come up with a name for Harry, “It’s almost a surety he was kidding. Tell you what, though—we can try it out on a condemned prisoner. Oops, got to go. Better half calling, old man.”
Finally it was just Leslie and Sir John. “He was kidding, right?”
“Don’t know, old man, no way to tell really unless you do want to do that prisoner thing. He could probably rig that. You might want to warn your agents to be scrupulous in their accounting.”
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