You could have heard a pin drop across the entire vast assembly hall. Every eye remained fixed on Minister Adenauer, standing at the podium in the grip of emotion as he apologised to the assembled wizarding world and yet, throughout the whole performance, the attendees held themselves in an eerie, collective silence.
On the Council of Seven's dais, Vipor let his own eyelids lift just enough to sweep the faces of those seated at the round conference tables arranged across from and beside him, and felt a cold, private sneer rise somewhere inside his chest at what he found there.
Say nothing of the full half-century Dumbledore had presided over the International Confederation of Wizards—even in the years well before that tenure began, back when the Confederation as an institution still carried genuine, undisputed weight in international affairs, he had never once witnessed the chamber's many delegates hold to such a unified, deliberately calculated silence as this.
More often than not, once any motion was properly put forward before the assembly, those delegates with no direct stake in the outcome watched on with detached interest while the interested parties inevitably fell into some argument with no clear end in sight, dragging it out for hours.
The pleas of the Confederation's various officers, its vice-chairs, even its own sitting chairman—all too often fell entirely on deaf ears in ordinary circumstances.
After all, the International Confederation of Wizards now survived purely on continued transfusions of political blood and funding from the various national Ministries of Magic; it had, in practical terms, no real remaining power left to mediate disputes between sovereign nations.
Perhaps its only reliable remaining function was to provide, whenever a nation's international interests happened to be at stake, a formal room in which its delegates could productively quarrel with each other.
"Very well, Minister Adenauer. We are now apprised of the particulars—"
The oppressive, unnatural hush hanging over the entire hall set Vipor's own unease rippling further, and the sight, caught at the corner of his eye, of Bryan—his expression revealing neither pleasure nor anger pushed that private unease to its peak.
Having given careful, rapid thought to the odds of Bryan Watson committing wholesale slaughter right there in the chamber, Vipor decided he could wait no longer, and cut in decisively on Nicholas's unusually calculated, drawn-out apology before it could build any further momentum.
Once he had drawn every gaze in the room to himself with the interruption, Vipor turned to Dumbledore, and hesitated for a moment as if about to speak further.
"Why don't you put the questions yourself, Vipor."
Dumbledore said it gently, granting the floor without hesitation.
"Ahem—"
Vipor nodded once to Dumbledore in acknowledgment, then let his own gaze settle on the face of the German Minister for Magic still standing before the podium.
Adenauer's own eyes had gone venomous at the interruption. Vipor knew perfectly well that the man was furious at having his carefully constructed performance cut short mid-flow.
But Vipor knew he had no other choice available to him in the moment.
He had dealt with Bryan before, on more than one occasion, and had come to know something about the man's underlying temperament—this rapidly rising star of a councillor.
He had to get the entire situation properly under control before Nicholas managed to provoke Bryan past the point of return.
Vipor paused a moment longer to gather his own thoughts properly, and was on the verge of speaking when, from elsewhere on the Council of Seven's dais, the voice of Minister Nash of the French Ministry of Magic rang out first, cutting cleanly across the gathering silence.
"Before the individuals concerned are questioned by the Council of Seven, I propose that everyone present in this chamber rise, and observe three minutes of silence for the German Ministry officials who tragically lost their lives in this atrocity while working to prevent it, and for the Muggles killed and wounded in Berlin!"
Vipor's brows drew together sharply in unison at that, and the look he turned on the French Minister carried a barely-concealed, genuine fury underneath.
"Ah—my sincere thanks for your compassion, Minister Nash—"
At the podium, Minister Adenauer's own voice came dense and thick with fresh tears at the gesture. He drew a handkerchief from his sleeve with a motion and dabbed carefully at the corners of his eyes.
Among the Seven, Dumbledore's silvery-white brows and beard stirred faintly at the proposal, and behind his half-moon spectacles his deep blue eyes showed the barest, most fleeting trace of weariness.
There was, in itself, nothing wrong with the simple act of observing a moment of silence for the dead of the incident. But the French Minister's true, underlying purpose in proposing it precisely now was anything but pure and yet, having seized the moral high ground so thoroughly and publicly, even Dumbledore found he had no choice but to comply with the proposal.
A scattered scraping of chair legs against stone sounded through the grand hall as the first delegates began, uncertainly, to rise.
But most of those present remained seated where they were, casting wary, careful sidelong glances toward the young man occupying his position on the Council of Seven's dais, waiting to see what he would do.
Everyone gathered in that tense chamber understood perfectly well, whose face the French Minister's words was truly meant for tonight and to answer Minister Nash's summons now, standing in solidarity with his proposal, was nothing less than adding extra force behind that same blow.
Every wizarding nation represented from outside Europe, wanting no part of this mess, kept themselves well clear of it.
"Chairman Quahog—"
At a row of tables just behind the Council of Seven's dais, Marcelline White, who presided over the Magical Congress of the United States of America and its International Magical Cooperation Bureau, watched Bryan's back with visible worry from her seat.
After a moment's careful thought, she leaned in toward Chairman Samuel Quahog beside her, who sat with his eyes narrowed as though half-asleep already despite the tension in the room, and murmured in a whisper.
"I wonder—shouldn't we—"
Samuel Quahog, a man too thoroughly seasoned by age and long experience to be caught off guard by anything this chamber could produce, said absolutely nothing at all in response. He kept up his pretence of dozing without interruption, with not the slightest inclination to rise from his seat.
Among the Council of Seven itself, aside from Minister Nash, who had made the original proposal, the other six members remained exactly where they sat, entirely unmoving, waiting.
A faint furrow crossed Dumbledore's brow at the scene, his gaze was flickering as though the whole developing situation troubled him.
Vipor Dreghorn glared openly at Nash across the dais, making no attempt to hide his anger, while the other three permanent vice-chairs sat composed and still, as if nothing unusual were happening around them, their eyes were fixed on the parchment before them where the session's minutes were being formally recorded.
In the whole of that packed chamber, fewer than a tenth of those present were genuinely willing to leave their seats and stand and the underlying reason for that reluctance was simple enough to read.
Very few delegates present tonight genuinely wished to provoke the young man sitting so calmly on the Council of Seven's dais.
"Councillor Watson—"
Sweeping his own gaze across the silent, tension-filled hall, Minister Nash—his fellow councillor on the Seven wore an expression touched with carefully manufactured awkwardness. He put on a warm, seemingly reasonable smile for the benefit of the watching room.
"Surely you don't mean to suggest we shouldn't observe a moment of silence for those who died in this terrible incident?"
His eyelids drooping half-closed, Bryan turned his face slightly at the question, first glancing toward the French Minister, then toward Minister Adenauer, who was glaring at him openly from the podium ahead.
With a faint smile that carried something of a private sigh underneath it, he gave a slow shake of his head and rose to his feet at a leisurely, unbothered pace.
Before either Adenauer or Nash could allow their evident satisfaction to properly show on their faces, Bryan's own steady voice was already spreading through the tense chamber.
"I propose three minutes of silence—for all those righteous souls who, across this past half-century of struggle, gave their health, and in a great many cases their very lives, to halt the spread of evil; to stand firm against the rioters who sought to shatter our hard-won peaceful order; to bring the lawless properly to justice; to preserve the essential balance between the wizarding world and the Muggle world; and for the witches, wizards, and Muggles whose lives were taken by acts of evil!"
The tangled unease clouding Dumbledore's own deep eyes vanished at once, replaced instantly by something warmer. He pushed back his chair without hesitation and rose readily, immediately to his feet.
Casting a scornful glance at the French Minister, whose own expression had abruptly gone rigid and stiff at the reframing, Vipor Dreghorn rose to his feet with an easy, satisfied sway, and the other three permanent vice-chairs, no longer holding themselves back, rose one after another in succession behind him.
Chairman Samuel Quahog of the Magical Congress of the United States of America roused himself from his maintained doze right on cue, pressed one hand flat against the table for support, and got to his own feet in a dawdling, slow fashion that nonetheless made the point clearly.
And at the sight of Chairman Quahog finally rising, the assembled representatives of the various Ministries of Magic across North America, all falling broadly within the Magical Congress of the United States of America's sphere of influence, rose to follow his lead one after another in quick, orderly succession.
The wizard of mixed heritage in the distinctive purple robe, who had spoken up earlier with his own question about the scope of the breach, hesitated only briefly before pushing back his own chair as well, and rose and, just as before with the American delegation, the various smaller delegations under his own good terms and within his sphere of regional influence gathered to their feet in turn.
For one moment, the rising crowd surged up like a single, rolling wave breaking across the vast chamber.
At the podium, Minister Adenauer's own face had abruptly turned an ugly, mottled colour at the sight; the crowd rising on every side of him truly did seem to swell like an oncoming tide, bearing down on his position with an unbearable, swelling pressure, until he found it difficult to properly breathe against the weight of it!
Those three short minutes felt to Adenauer as though he had been slowly roasted over a slow fire for a hundred consecutive years.
"Now then, Minister Adenauer—"
When the observed silence had finally ended and the assembled crowd saw the young man on the Council of Seven's dais settle calmly back into his own seat, they followed his lead and sat back down themselves in a general, rustling wave.
Vipor observed the German Minister with a distinctly cold, assessing eye now.
"What further information has the German Ministry of Magic gathered regarding the rioters responsible for the terrorist attack in Berlin, and for breaching Erkstag's defences?"
"They were Death Eaters."
A vein bulged visibly at Adenauer's own temple as he answered, his earlier composure was fraying badly at the edges.
"A gang of blood-purity fanatics out of Britain, without a single shred of morality or decency to their name!"
"Thank you for that clarification—"
Vipor's follow-up question came without the slightest ripple of visible emotion attached to it.
"I don't imagine there is genuinely anyone in this entire room who doesn't already know what Death Eaters are, Minister, given recent events across the continent.
In your account earlier to this assembly, you stated you suspected these rioters' underlying objective was to attack each nation's most secure facilities for holding its imprisoned criminals, freeing those prisoners in order to strengthen their own ranks going forward. May I ask, what led you to that particular conclusion?"
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