DPASW BOOK FOUR:The Gray's Secret

The Gray's Secret - Chapter 1

The barn owl flew. Below it, the river Danube gently curved through the Balkans - possibly through Magical Croatia, or Serbia, or Hungary. It was hard to tell. Borders tended to shift quite frequently.

The owl banked on the approach to Belgrade and turned east flying true towards Bucharest, a sealed parchment envelope clutched in its talons.

There were many reasons why wizarding kind still used birds as a primary means of communication when far faster methods could no doubt be contrived, but above them all was the simple truth that it worked, and no one seemed to care to receive news from far off places any faster than was necessary. The faster you received news, the more likely you might have to do something about it.

The barn owl banked again, only halfway towards the Paris of the East, this time heading straight into the heart of the country, right into the territory of Transylvania.

Night fell.

A howl pierced the silence, followed shortly by several more.

The owl spotted its target and began its decent.

- DPaSW:TGS -

Standing in the shadow of the mighty fortress, Castle Dragos, Albus Dumbledore felt a tendril of cold begin to creep in through the thin fabric of his robes, despite the fact that he'd had them re-enchanted only last month. He cast a warming charm of his own to ameliorate the issue for the time being and refocused back onto the matter at hand.

Beside him, a man who looked like he shaved with a blunt lawn mower about once a decade gesticulated at the gigantic stone complex before them. "Unacceptable! Castle Dragos is the most well-defended fortress in the whole country. If we allowed it autonomy now, our enemies would have a safe haven to strike at us from! Everything we have fought for for hundreds of years could be lost."

Dumbeldore sighed. Many months of laying siege to the castle, and to the refugees that had fled there, had not dampened the new FoolMoonia's spirit. If anything, it had hardened it. When this stalemate had started, the werewolves had only wanted the refugees handed back over to them - somewhat of a politically difficult demand, given the widespread reporting of forced biting of the local magical population. Now, the man standing with him wanted to reneg on the agreed upon deal that saw the founding of NewMoonia and bring Castle Dragos under his complete control.

He could see the reasoning. Castle Dragos was a formidable base of power projection. A strong force of wizards within could sally out, either with broomsticks or with apparition, strike fast at whatever they wished and then retreat back before a sufficiently powerful force could be mustered to bring them down. Fortresses like this represented a threat to any central authority's monopoly of violence-such as any monopoly could be enforced in the Wizarding World-which was why most Wizarding governments had been working hard for hundreds of years to bring any truly formidable castles under their influence. Really, what Marcus here wanted wouldn't have been a problem for most members of the ICW... if not for the dual inconveniences of the forced biting, which was considered a form of genocide, and the fact that many members had outsourced their obliviator training obligations to the ancient institution and weren't particularly keen to take that responsibility back.

"And yet, you are lining yourself up to lose much more, even more than Fullmoonia," Dumbledore replied. "International opinion is critical to your survival, not only of your new nation, but also of werewolves in general.

The werewolf beside him scowled. "We have fought for our survival for centuries. We have the absolute moral right to destroy anything that threatens us. What right does anyone else have to tell us how to run our nation?"

Dumbledore said nothing. There were plenty of things he could say. He could try to point out that other people had different views on what his moral rights were. He could try to point out that their immediate neighbours, who'd already been less than thrilled at the prospect of an ethnocentric werewolf state right on their doorsteps, would likely feel threatened by their actions just as much as the werewolves did by the continued defiance of Castle Dragos. He could even point out that the foundation of ICW was a shared understanding of the 'rules of the game' and that anyone violating those rules was liable to attract attention that absolutely no one in their right mind would want.