Paris had learned to live with the new normal, the way people learned to live beside a river that sometimes flooded.
Hospitals announced visits. The streets got cleared. Cameras caught neat lines of grey coats and clean boots. Healers would walk through wards, put a hand on a child's head, and a mother would sob into her sleeve. That was the part the public wanted.
The parts nobody wanted were the ones that followed.
A handful of men and women still refused the new order. Some despised it as politics. Some despised it for religious reasons. Some were simply addicted to being angry and terrified at the same time. Mundane groups that wanted their old world back. They were not alone. Remnants that had survived the fall of the Confederation and still believed they could pry open a seam were in a similar state.
It did not take long for those pockets to find each other. They tried to trade what they had. The magical side had been bound. Contracts and oaths sat around their throats like iron collars. They could not sell maps, names or even a simple description of a spell. They could not name schedules. They could not provide the kind of intelligence that mattered.
So they did the only thing the bindings still allowed.
They enchanted objects. That was what they could contribute to the silent insurrection. They provided them to the angry mundanes who were desperate to believe they still had reach.
-
In France, reach was the only thing that mattered.
Two years of deportations had not calmed the country. Ile de France stayed restless; in other words, Paris and its surrounding suburbs carried tension like a constant electrical buzz. Police sirens did not mean much anymore. Everyone had learned that the real force arrived in silence.
Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny had become a regular stop for GAIA healers. A Unit team came with them, not because the healers needed protection, but because the public needed to see protection.
That morning, as any other, the hospital smelled of antiseptic, stale coffee, and damp coats. Fluorescent lights made skin look tired. A father slept in a chair with his head tipped back, mouth open, hands still clasped as if prayer could be held in place by force.
The Unit team entered through the side corridor, boots quiet, spacing perfect. Grey coats. No insignia on the outside. Their faces stayed blank the way professionals kept them blank.
A nurse at the desk watched them approach and straightened instinctively.
The man in the front stopped at the correct distance. He offered a small nod that carried respect without softness.
The healers came behind them. Two women and one man. They moved toward the lifts.
On the ground floor, a volunteer table sat near the entrance. Flyers about blood and charity drives were pinned in neat rows. A young woman in a red jacket smiled at passersby and handed out pamphlets.
Her smile stayed fixed as the Unit passed. Her eyes did not.
They tracked the heel-to-toe rhythm of the boots. They tracked the healers.
The lift doors opened.
The Unit formed around the healers, a quiet wedge.
The young woman in the red jacket adjusted her grip on a paper cup, then tipped the cup into the bin as she walked away.
No one noticed the coin that dropped into the bin after it.
The coin landed on a layer of wet tissue and began to vibrate.
A coin dropped after it.
It landed on wet tissue and began to vibrate.
On the third floor, a paediatric room held five beds. One child sat upright, paper crown slipping toward one ear, eyes too large for his face. Another lay still with a tube taped to his cheek. A mother stood by the window and kept her fists clenched as if she could crush fate by force.
The lead healer set his satchel on the bedside cabinet. His hands moved with calm precision. He was not there to perform.
A Unit member stood at the door. Another took the corridor line. A third remained visible to staff, visible to cameras, and invisible in intent.
The healer's fingers touched the child's forehead. Mana rippled in a thin sheet. The child's breathing shifted, then steadied. The mother made a sound that was half sob and half laugh.
Downstairs, the bin shook once. and the coin discharged. The curse did not explode like a mundane bomb. It punched outward in a tight cone. The bin bent inward, then snapped. A harsh smell hit the foyer.
A security guard near the entrance staggered and grabbed his throat.
His skin greyed, his eyes rolled, and he collapsed without a scream.
The foyer erupted. Someone shouted for a doctor another screamed.
A Unit member on the ground floor moved first. He cast Bublehead charms starting with himself and everyone he could see. Another member cast a Veruscut shield. It snapped into place between the foyer and the children's wing. The barrier did not shimmer. It sat like solid air.
Another Unit member lunged toward the bin and pinned it with a boot, eyes narrowing as he felt the residue crawling out.
A second coin in the same bin started to vibrate. He vanished the bin and everything inside it in one clean motion, then scooped the crawling residue into a tight sphere of containment.
The sphere fought to expand.
He held it with clenched jaw and steady hands.
Cameras caught the movement. Later, it would look like a man trapping the poisonous residue of the terrorist attack in his palm.
Upstairs, the Unit member at the window felt the shift in Mana. He moved to the corridor line. A nurse sprinted toward him with hands raised. The words came out breathless. "What is happening?"
The Unit member stepped into her path and guided her back with one firm hand to the shoulder. Gentle enough not to bruise. Hard enough to stop her.
"This hospital is under lockdown."
Her mouth opened again.
His gaze held, and the next words landed colder. "Do not move toward the foyer. Get everyone behind doors."
She backed away.
A second shock hit the building a moment later. This was a pressure wave tied to an object, an attempt to kill as many as possible.
A scream echoed from the stairwell. Two mundanes in maintenance jackets burst through a door on the second floor, pushing a cart with oxygen tanks.
Charmwork wrapped the metal. The runes were ugly, rushed, and obvious to anyone who could feel Mana.
The Unit member vanished the cart with the tanks and raised his rifle.
One of the maintenance men grabbed a pistol from his pocket and was lifting it.
The Unit member fired.
The men went down with holes through their shoulders, wrists and knees and a scream that finally carried real surprise. They were put under coma curses,
Another mundane got to the corridor and started to run with a knife.
The moment he reached the Unit member, his wrist caught and twisted with a satisfying crunch that cracked his bones.
The Unit member slammed the man's head into the wall once, hard enough to end the fight and keep him breathing and let him join the other two in a coma.
He reached under his sleeve and crushed a small black token between his fingers.
The signal had been sent. Two minutes later, the building felt the consequence.
Dozens of Bastion guards and more Unit members apparated, shields and rifles steady. The hospital's own security stared at them, then stepped back. The police arrived and found themselves treated like bystanders with badges.
A Unit member in the foyer held up one hand, and the hospital staff obeyed without argument, because they had already seen one man die with grey skin and empty eyes.
A mother with a stroller tried to push forward. A Bastion guard shifted one step into her path. The stroller stopped. The mother swallowed and backed away. The guard leaned and conjured a small toy for the kid and nodded to the mother.
Upstairs, the healers did not stop. The lead healer finished with the child and moved to the next bed as if the chaos below did not exist. The mother pressed both hands to her mouth and cried into her palms.
That was the point.
The camera would show healers working while terrorists tried to murder people in the foyer. The new order would keep the moral ground.
After the hospital was locked down and every corridor was checked, a group of Unspeakables apparated into a cleared room near the foyer. The lead figure pulled an hourglass from his coat and turned it.
This was not only mundane anger. This had traitors behind it.
A nurse watched from the doorway with her face pale. "They tried to kill you." She could not comprehend why anyone would attempt to harm the Mana users who were helping them.
-
Outside, the police cars and news vans were still arriving.
Footage spread. People thought they were watching a tragedy. They were watching permission being granted.
By nightfall, Paris would have checkpoints. More Unit presence around hospitals and schools. The mundane public would complain, then remember the dead guard on the floor and quiet down.
The instigators would be hunted. The mundane side would pay for it in restrictions. The magical traitors would pay for it in ways that will never reach cameras.
--
Back at Black Manor, Tibby stood with his chin high, eyes bright with pride.
The elf had just declared Corvus a supreme chicken and seemed convinced it was the highest compliment in any language.
Corvus watched him with calm approval.
A small part of his mind noted, without urgency, that teaching Tibby about genders might reduce future chaos by a measurable percentage.
Narcissa handled it the way she handled everything else, with quiet control that did not demand applause. She was aware of how ...unusual the elves who were not beaten into fear could behave. She had decided that loyalty was better than trembling obedience.
Draco had been coached into the same.
Sirius sat with a look that belonged on a man who had been robbed in broad daylight and still insisted he was fine.
Thirty-five thousand galleons from Harry.
Sirius's annoyance simmered behind his eyes, but he kept it leashed. He had lost more than that, much more. He knew what Corvus could do when he decided a lesson needed to sting.
The curiosity that had truly been chewing at him was something else. Corvus has multiple Animagus forms. 'Must be some kind of ritual,' he thought.
The smug bastard was a genius with rituals. Arcturus never missed a chance to praise it.
Sirius cleared his throat with deliberate drama.
"Corvus."
Sirius leaned forward. "While you are at it, why not teach Harry as well. I promised I would teach him to become an animagus."
Tibby bounced in place and tilted his head at Harry. The elf's large eyes went rounder, as if he was judging a fruit.
Tibby's gaze snapped to Corvus. "Yes. Master can make this one a chicken too."
Harry froze.
Neville's mouth twitched.
Corvus nodded with solemn gravity that belonged in a funeral service. "As long as Tibby approves, who am I to disagree. Tibby is a connoisseur of human nature."
Arcturus nodded as if Sirius had just proposed a wise policy reform. "Do not forget Viridith. He is a good judge of character as well. If needed, we can have his opinion too."
Alice and Frank exchanged a glance.
Neville stared at the carpet.
Harry stared at his shoes.
None of them could tell where seriousness ended and sarcasm began. Deciding children's futures based on an elf's opinion did not fit any law Frank had ever enforced.
Viridith also did not sound like a person.
Arcturus turned his head toward Corvus. "Where is my daughter-in-law?"
Corvus did not even blink. "In Moscow. I will have personal business abroad. She wanted to see her relatives."
His gaze flicked toward Arcturus for half a second. "The frigate is at Novorossiyk. She moved to Moscow with a team of Bastion guards."
Arcturus accepted the answer like a normal grandfather accepting a normal update.
Frank decided he could nudge Harry towards his goals.
He leaned toward Harry, voice low, the tone he used when giving a young Auror advice before a raid. "If you want the Auror Corps, Corvus is the right person to ask."
Harry's eyes lit. His mouth opened, then closed again as etiquette fought eagerness.
He nodded once.
He was still riding the high of one fact. Heir Black would spend a month teaching him how to become an animagi.
Corvus stood; he clasped his hands once. "Let us get over with the Animagus training. There is no time like the present."
Sirius made a sharp sound and leaned forward. "Animagus training takes a month. You cannot simply get over it." His fingers snapped once for effect. "Just like that."
Bellatrix watched Corvus's face, suddenly uncertain.
Arcturus and Narcissa stayed calm. They looked almost pleased, the way people looked when they knew a trick was coming.
Harry and Draco stood without being told.
Neville stayed seated and watched them with he was not sure if he wanted to have a chicken as his animagus form.
Corvus turned toward Tibby. "Serve them some desserts, please."
Tibby vanished.
Corvus motioned. "You two. Follow."
Harry obeyed instantly.
Draco followed with a straight spine and a pride he could not quite hide.
This was not Draco's first visit. It was his first invitation lower levels. He walked beside Corvus through a door that opened onto stairs going down. The air cooled as they descended. Wards hummed in the stone.
Draco swallowed and forced himself not to glance around like a child.
Corvus stopped at a door carved with runic lines. He turned toward the two teenagers.
"I would like your oaths as usual about not sharing anything."