No Substitute for Victory

No Substitute for Victory

"Sit down, Potter."

"Very kind, Weasley," Harry said curtly, dropping into a chair. If Percy wanted to be formal, he could play that game.

"'Minister', will do, thank you." Percy' pomposity was filling up the chair that he was obviously too small to fill. He looked at Harry and saw the warning flash in the eyes and rushed to fill the gap. "Look, I know we've never exactly been friends--"

"We could have been, Percy, but you were too busy trying to tell the world how important you were. Now, I guess you've finally got your chance. Minister of Magic, before you're even 24! Quite an honor, I imagine. Of course, five ministers in succession killed or disappeared due to Voldemort--" he smiled when he saw Percy flinch. "You'd better get used to hearing the name, because he's going to come after you next, unless of course you've got some secret plan--"

"That's why you're here!" Percy shouted. "No one else has been closer to Dumbledore than you, no one has engaged and escaped him as many times as you, no one has a better idea than you of what You-Know-Who is capable of." He paused to take a breath, and then began to speak slowly, grinding out the words as though the effort was actually causing him pain. "I'm giving you the number two spot here in the Ministry of Magic, and powers equivalent to the Muggle Minister of Defense. When Hogwarts was attacked, the Ministry was hit too: most of the senior staff is dead! People of our generation have to fill the gap, or we are all lost!" Percy gasped, and then continued. "I will handle the bureaucracy, and try to get the Ministry functioning again. You will appoint your own officers to the ranks, and detail how best to marshal our forces against You-Know-Who, the Death Eaters, and their allies. You are free to pick whomever you like to be in your cabinets, though you're going to need someone to show you how things get done around here."

"Your father," Harry said immediately. "He's familiar with all the departments, well-known, and will know whom to contact."

Percy actually smiled. "I thought you might say that. I've already assigned him to you; he's waiting in your office."

Harry ignored Percy's smugness. He had a stunning riposte waiting, but now was not quite the time for it. "First of all, that stupid handbill that Rufus Scrimgeour handed out has to be redone. It doesn't nearly go far enough. People need to know how to cast Patronus Charms to repel Dementors, and decent instructions have to be issued about defensive and counteroffensive spells."

Percy seemed troubled, but nodded. "All right. I'll see that the Department Ministerial Communications carries that out right away. It may start a panic, though."

"The panic is already here!" Harry bellowed, casting politeness to the winds and staring at Percy with hot eyes. "The problem with the Ministry of Magic is that you're still stuck in a thought-pattern of peacetime bureaucracy! You need to start thinking in terms of war: all-out, unflinching war! The kind where people get killed everyday." He glared at Percy, so young and so unworthy for the office he now held. "Do you know what your brother, Ron, says every time the Daily Prophet is unfolded by someone nearby?" When Percy shook his head, he said, "'Anyone we know been killed?'"

"Point taken, Harry. Now, what else?"

"I want fifty of the best instructors you can get me to start classes to train people in offensive and defensive spell work. Each class will be limited to 100 people per instructor. They're to train for six weeks on all major spells, including the Unforgivable Curses. I want you to issue a directive saying that the gloves are off!"

Percy had been doing the math. "That's five thousand people trained in everything, including the Unforgivable Curses!"

Harry nodded grimly. "Until Voldemort is dead and buried, we're going to need an army of our own to meet his on the field of battle. Every single wizard citizen must be trained to fight: no one is neutral or a simple civilian." His face was grim as death. "Right now the Death Eaters have the advantage because good citizens are jumping at every shadow. They think there's death or destruction lurking under every bush and around every corner. We outnumber the Death Eaters ten to one, so we've got to use that advantage! I want Voldemort's people hiding every time they see a shadow. Every time he orders them to break into a house to kill a wizarding family, I want them to think that ten wands will be waiting for them with hexes or jelly-leg charms!

"Sirius Black once told me that Barty Crouch fought violence with violence in the last war. Maybe that was harsh, but he helped turn the tide. Now, so many mistakes have been made we're going to have to resort to Crouch's methods, at least at first." Harry's face was set. "As for the Unforgivable Curses...the enemy is using them against us, so I think it's only fair to return the favor."

Percy was slowly nodding, "I knew you were the one for this job, Harry."

Harry hated to admit it, but Percy just might be right. Already his mind was boiling with ideas and plans. The two of them spent the next two hours outlining strategies and laying down the foundations for many offensives. Then, Harry dropped his bomb: "I have a couple conditions of my own before we go any further."

Percy leaned back in his chair, his fingers idly caressing his quill. "Conditions?" He nodded slowly, as though this sort of pronouncement was issued everyday. "What are they?"

"First of all, you need to reconcile with your family, especially with your mother."

Percy's face darkened. "That's a personal issue, Harry."

"I'm on very good terms with your family, Percy, and I can't do my job here if every time I see them the first thing they say to me is, 'How can you work for that prat?'" Percy flinched, and Harry bore on remorselessly, "That's not the worst thing they call you, you know? There's also 'git', 'traitor', 'pompous buffoon', and a lot of other inventive titles that Fred and George come up with every day. How often have you broken your mother's heart? How often do you pass by your father's office without saying hello?" Harry was out of his chair and leaning over Percy's desk like a vulture surveying a prospective meal. "You broke from your family because you wanted to ingratiate yourself with Mr. Crouch; when he died you took up with Cornelius Fudge despite his willingness to blind himself to reality, and you went along with him even though you must have known better!"

Percy said nothing.

"Fudge, Umbridge, Scrimgeour, whoever had the smallest amount of power you were their best friend, always trying to hurry your way up the ladder of authority to better your own lot." Harry was glaring at Percy as all the pieces started falling into place. "It must have rankled you that your father sat for years in the same office, working for the same salary and you never having quite as much as you wanted. You thought he wasn't playing the office game right because he never went as far as he could, so you decided to do better, no matter the cost.

"Within a year of getting into the ministry, you were the Minister's Fair-Haired boy, but when he died, you didn't get the position you thought you deserved. It went to Fudge, so you continued your brown-nosing, following his every directive no matter how paranoid. Even if it meant ostracizing your family." Percy's face was mottled with anger, but Harry didn't care. "You should hear what they say about you in the staff canteen, Percy! Half the people are convinced you'd be wearing a crown and an ermine cape if you could get away with it. Some of them are convinced that you're trying to figure out a way to marry into royalty; others are saying that if Voldemort offered you dominion over Ireland as a kingdom of your own, you'd take it just for the chance to boss people around from a position of authority!"

"That's not true!" Percy bellowed, but Harry stopped with a raised hand. "That's the image you've created for yourself--you have only yourself to blame.

"So after this meeting you're to go down and formally apologize to your father, and then show up your parent's home before the dinner hour, present your mother with a bouquet of flowers, and formally apologize for being such a pompous ass."

"YOU'RE GIVING ME ORDERS?"

Harry relished the chance to be unflinchingly cool. "If you want my cooperation in getting rid of Voldemort, you'll follow my instructions to the letter."

Percy looked like he would rather have swallowed Hungarian Horntail whole, but the only thing he said was, "You said a couple of conditions. What's the other one?"

"Right now, we need a victory. Something to show the people that Voldemort is not the Lord of Everything, and that winning this war is all you really care about! We need to make him look vulnerable!" He looked at Percy with hot eyes. "Let's take the war to him! If you have any information on where a Death Eater stronghold or hideout is, mobilize a dozen of the best wizards you have and let's hit it hard and fast. Prisoners if we can take them, if not, cut them all down let Rita Skeeter crow about it as a victory dance!"

The raid was in the Baskerville Hills in Wales, inside a sheltered cave where Fenrir Greyback, the younger Crabbe and the elder Goyle, and half a dozen other Death Eaters were planning a raid on a Muggle village.

Suddenly the room plunged into darkness, and several explosions sounded in the cavern, echoing and causing chaos. The Death Eaters milled about in confusion. Then a fanged Frisbee whirled out of the darkness and bit Crabbe in the neck. He screamed like a little girl and broke into a run, colliding with a stalactite and knocking himself out.

Fenrir Greyback roared and lashed out, and then stiffened as a voice growled, "Avada kedavra!" The werewolf screamed, and died on the spot in a flash of green light.

The fight became a rout, and when the black fog thinned away, Mad Eye Moody and his select crew of magical soldiers stood over the defeated Death Eaters. "Eight dead, one unconscious. Not bad for a three-minute brawl." He looked to his chief lieutenant, Charlie Weasley, "Your brother's Peruvian blackout powder worked wonders. I'm going to recommend to Potter that it be issued as standard equipment."

"You'll get my brothers killed doing that."

"Not if they're working inside the Ministry as Master Armorers." He grinned, the sight almost unfamiliar on his scarred face. "Who better?"

Charlie still looked worried, but he shrugged, and then dropped a plastic lightning bolt on the ground. At Moody's raised eyebrow he smiled. "Harry asked me to do it. It's his new calling card. When Voldemort sees this, he'll know who his nemesis is."

Moody laughed harshly. "Like waving a bloody flag at a dragon."

***

Harry was just finishing a memo when Lavender Brown, his secretary, poked her head in and said that he had a most unusual visitor, under heavy gueard. Harry nodded and waved the man in. The fellow was short, not much taller than Harry himself, but when the hood came off, Harry started, "Malfoy!"

Draco Malfoy, pale and frightened, stood before Harry Potter. Time had not been kind to Draco: there were lines under his eyes, and he appeared to have lost so much weight that it looked like his hands were just skin stretched over a skeletal frame. His eyes darted this way and that, and finally he blurted out, "I want to defect Potter!"

Harry blinked and then looked at his Slytherin rival with disbelief. "You want to defect?"

If Malfoy had suddenly put on a pink tutu and danced the Macarena, Harry could not have been more surprised. The gurds slammed Malfoy into a chair and trained their wands at him. A search revealed only his wand, which was immediately confiscated. Malfoy leaned forward with his eyes feverishly overbright, an expression of desperate paranoia on his face. "You've got to help me, Potter. He's mad! He'll kill me if he knows I'm here! He'll kill me anyway!"

"Caught on at last, have you?"

Malfoy tried to speak several times, but his tongue kept tripping over the words, so Harry conjured up a cup of hot tea, remembering that Mrs. Weasley always did that during difficult moments. Malfoy grabbed at the cup and drank it off in one gulp. Finally, he was able to speak rationally. "I thought he was the savior, Potter. I really did. Dad always talked about him like he was a Messiah of some kind--the one who recognized talent and would make the world the way it should be."

One of the guards snorted, but Harry motioned for the man to be silent, but not to drop his guard. "So what changed your mind?"

"I've got less freedom in the ranks of the Death Eaters than I did doing a Hogwarts detention! Everything has to be cleared through...You-Know-Who--" he stopped, and then laughed hysterically. "I can't even say his name! I cornered Dumbledore and set him up..." he broke off and looked at the hard faces arrayed around him and dropped that line of thought right away. "I'm supposed to be his favorite, and I'm more afraid of him than ever! I do his errands, bring him his breakfast tray, and he treats like I'm furniture! My family goes back ten centuries, and I'm nothing to him! Tosses me his dirty laundry like I'm a house-elf!" He dropped his eyes again, and then went on. "I thought it'd be nothing to kill a Mudblood, or hex a wizard, but it isn't...I can't sleep at night. I wake up sometimes screaming for my mother like a First Year at Hogwarts, but it's not the same! Even she's afraid: for me, for our family, my dad. If we don't obey, he'll kill us, even though we've done everything he's asked."

"Very touching," said Lavender Brown scathingly. "Harry, he should be interrogated right away."

Harry nodded. "Call Mad-Eye to do it!"

The guards picked up Malfoy by his arms and carried him bodily from the room. "If he's got anything interesting to tell us--" Harry said, making a show of going back to his paperwork, when Draco screamed out, "You've got to stop him, Potter! Stop him before he sacrifices us all!"

The interrogation cell was a shielded room that held only two chairs, a table with a Quck-Quotes quill to take notes, and a set of iron bands set into the wall. Draco Malfoy was held fast by the irons in the wall, while Harry and Mad Eye Moody sat in the chairs opposite their 'guest'. The quill was flying across the parchment, for Malfoy couldn't be shut up; words were escaping his lips almost faster than Harry could think. Veritaserum ensured the truth of what the prisoner was saying, but the story was almost beyond belief.

"...so it's true?" Harry asked Moody, disbelief on his face.

"No one's ever seen one, at least no one I've ever met, but that's the nature of legends." Moody grunted. "This is a huge step, even for Voldemort." He looked back at Draco. "So how did you hear about this, Malfoy? It's not something he'd tell a pitiful thing like you!"

"I listened," Draco said. "I knew I'd need something to give you to make you help me, so I listened to his secret conversations with his trusted lieutenants. When I knew enough, I volunteered for a scouting mission, then took off at the first chance I got. I'd heard Potter had been appointed to the Ministry, so I came here."

"What kind of help did you want from me?" Harry asked.

"Dumbledore once offered me a chance to come over to your side. He said he'd hide my mother, and me, and spread a rumor that we'd been killed. He said none of the other Death Eaters would doubt that it had been done--"

"Yes," said Harry immediately. "I remember that offer, I was there at the time, under my invisibility cloak."

"Damn it, Potter! No! Never give up information to the enemy!"

"Sorry, Professor." Harry said automatically, and then the two looked at each other and laughed. Harry, as Deputy Minister, outranked Moody, but he still deferred to him, as he would to any teacher. The tension in the room slackened slightly.

It didn't last, as they saw Malfoy's eyes tearing up. "What's wrong with you?" Moody barked.

"I miss the sound of laughter. He never laughs, except when something awful happens."

"The trouble with filth," Moody snarled, "is that it doesn't know it's dirty until the stink gets so bad it can't breathe!"

Harry signaled the guards at the door, and they locked Malfoy in chains. "Stick him in a cell while we check out the truth of what he's told us." He and Moody didn't speak until they were back in Harry's office. Moody took a slug from his silver flask while Harry accepted a cup of tea from Dobby, who had agreed to leave Hogwarts and come work for him. The two drank silently, and finally Moody broke the silence. "A hell of a tale!"

Harry nodded, "You believe him?"

"It's impossible to lie under Veritaserum and one thing is true enough--the one who brings them back is given absolute power, which is what Voldemort wants. Of course I wouldn't trust Malfoy to empty my chamberpot!" He took another hit from his flask. "Easiest thing to do would be to check and see if that Muggle ship he talked about really does exist. Is it coming from Brazil, and does it carry artifacts from that archaeological dig?"

Harry grinned, "I know just the person to ask." He called for Lavender to bring in an express owl, and then dashed off a fast note to Hermione.

***

"So far, everything matches up, Harry." Hermione was spreading out her paperwork on the deputy minister's desk, while Mad-Eye Moody, Tonks, Hagrid, and several others looked on with interest. "Professor Archibald Leech has been engaged in a two-year dig in the Amazon Basin on an obscure burial mound which has yielded tablets covered with runic characters which no Muggle has ever seen before. Thus far, this event has been overlooked by the Daily Prophet and all other wizard newspapers." Her brow furrowed. "Considering how pureblood-crazy the Death Eaters are, I can't see how You-Know-Who found out about it."

"What about you, Hermione?" Harry asked, as he bent his neck to look at the newspaper photograph of the tablets. "I know you took Ancient Runes at Hogwarts. Can you make any sense of this?"

She smiled. "Not with the poor-quality picture like this, so I cheated a bit. I had my Mum and Dad cruise the Internet and they found someone who'd posted a digital picture of one portion of one of the tablets and, voila!" She pulled glossy pictures out of her school bag and laid them down for everyone to see. Hagrid, who was looking over everyone's heads, gasped aloud. "What is it?" Mad Eye Moody asked, his blue eye spinning in all directions. "Do you know that writing?"

Hagrid nodded. "It's an old dialect of Giantish. Me Mum taught me, before she left me Dad." He swallowed, "It's not very nice stuff."

"I can read it, too." Hermione said, overriding Hagrid. "A bit, anyway. It speaks of a ritual, to be performed at a certain time of night, on a certain day. She shuddered, and then plunged onward, "They do what Malfoy said, Harry. But for the ritual to be complete, a sacrifice is required. A human sacrifice!"

Harry swallowed hard and then said, "And I bet Voldemort wants to use me." He looked around the room and then nodded. "Then we have to make sure he never gets his hands on these. Moody," he was getting the hang of talking to people directly. "Pick ten of the best wizards you know of and meet me in the Apparation Room in thirty minutes. They'll be joining the four of us. Lavender!" he called out, and she came running in. "Have the Emergency Location Committee come up with the precise location of this ship," he handed her a piece of paper with the information on the ship, but not its cargo. "I don't want to appear in the ocean, ten miles away from it. My team needs to be on the deck next to the wheelhouse."

"Yes, Mr. Potter," she said, and dashed away.

Hermione looked at Harry with a smile. "You're acting like a real general."

"I hope so," he said, checking his wand and tightening the laces on his trainers. "Because in this war, there's no substitute for victory!"

The fourteen wizards flashed into existence right next to the wheelhouse of the freighter, Nemo, just as Harry wanted. The only difference was that there was a pounding rainstorm in progress. In an instant, however, Hermione had her wand out and charmed them all, "Impervius". Their clothes automatically repelled the water, and they all looked at her with fondness.

"We'll modify the crew," Kingsley Shacklebolt said to Harry, nodding to the four wizards under his command, "so they'll see us, but ignore us, and forget that we were ever here."

"Brilliant," Harry said. "Let's see if we can find our way into the cargo hold."

After a few minutes, Nymphadora Tonks simply asked one of the crewmen, who directed the wizards to a stairway, which was unfortunately not built to accommodate Hagrid. He resolved that problem by forcing open one of the loading hatches and leaping down into the hold. He landed with a thump, but his tough giantish skin took the impact easily. While the rest of them were walking down, Hagrid began to search, whistling idly.

Harry located the light switch, and powerful arc lights flashed on.

"Amazing things that Muggles build," one of the wizards said, shielding her eyes.

At the bottom of the stairs, Hermione glanced about and spotted a clipboard hanging from a nail driven into a bulletin board. She snatched it up and scanned through several pages. After a moment she noticed people looking at her. "Cargo Manifest," she said, smiling. "Here we are! It's in container number 22, in the bow."

The party moved through the hold, marveling at the steel containers, counting off numbers. Finally Hagrid gave a bellow, "Found it!"

The container was light blue, and located at the top of a pile of them, about five stories up. Mad-Eye and Kingsley Shacklebolt directed their wands to levitate the container out of the pile and down in front of them. But when the access door was opened, they got a rude surprise. Four spears came whistling out and caught two of their party unawares, the shafts impaling them hearts before they could summon a protective charm.

"Skeletons!" Mad-Eye said, pointing his wand at one and incinerating it on the spot.

"Get behin' me, Harry!" Hagrid shouted, and lashed out with a fist, punching the creature into powder with a single blow. He caught another one of them and hurled the creature against the steel hull. Harry blinked, realizing he'd never seen Hagrid in battle before. He was quite good at it!

"Impedimentia!" Hermione shouted, freezing one of them.

"Finite incantatum!" Moody said, dissolving one of them into a pile of bones on the floor of the ship.

Once aroused, the Ministry wizards were formidable, and the defenders of the artifact were dispatched quickly. Mad-Eye Moody went into the container, and soon came out with the runic tablets in his arms.

The wounded were Apparated to St. Mungo's. As Hagrid was locking up the container, he stopped, dug into a pocket, and pulled out a lightning bolt, which tossed almost negligently inside. Then the container was sealed up with its jumble of bones and spears. "The Muggles will just think that they forgot to load the tablets," Harry said, "and eventually write them off as 'lost in transit'." He felt pleased with himself. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated, and after a disorienting jolt, found himself with the others in the Apparation chamber at the Ministry. "I wonder why those skeletons didn't kill the Muggle Archaeologists?"

"That's easy," said Kingsley Shacklebolt, clapping his people on the back. "No magic. Our own magic activated the alarm spell on the artifacts. Simple spell; used for centuries."

Harry thanked everyone who had come along, and then waved to his closest friends. "C'mon. We need to show this to Percy, then deal with it once and for all."

"Good, Potter," Mad-Eye growled, his natural eye alight, his hands still holding the ancient stones. "Nice to see you're developing some sense!"

Twenty minutes after the Ministry wizards left the Nemo, a score of wizards and witches with Dark Marks on their arms materialized on the ship. They went immediately to the hold, where a rude surprise was waiting for them.

"NO!" Voldemort screamed, as Nott started to hand another thunderbolt to his master! "Not again! Damn Potter! Two weeks he's been dogging our steps, slashing out at our forces, thwarting my every move. And now this!" The skull-like visage had never seemed closer to insanity than now. "I needed that shipment from Brazil! How can it have been intercepted? No one but us knew about it!"

No one spoke.

Voldemort snatched the lightning symbol from Nott and dissolved it in a ball of flame. "Those tablets would have enabled me to reach through the mystic barriers of time and space and commune with a race which hasn't walked the earth for millennia. They would have enabled me to triumph once and for all! Now, you say Potter has taken them from the ship I've been waiting for?"

Nott bowed his head in acknowledgment, but still said nothing.

"Find me Greyback! I want him to track Potter down and bite him. Let Potter try to run his war on the lunar cycle!" He cackled, and then saw Avery cringing before him. "What? What is it?"

The cringing supplicant handed a copy of the Quibbler to his lord. The bodies of Death Eaters were arranged in a line.

"Greyback was found dead this morning in Wales, my lord. Crabbe is missing, and the others of his party are also dead." He hesitantly offered up another thunderbolt.

"Greyback dead? How?"

"As far as we can tell, by Avada Kedavra."

Voldemort's slit-like eyes narrowed perceptibly. "Unconditional Warfare, eh, Potter? I didn't know you had it in you." He glanced about. "Leave me!"

Voldemort's followers bowed before him and withdrew.

***

Harry and Percy stood side-by-side in the basement of the Ministry of Magic, looking over the great stone tablets, the squiggly primordial writing burning a path into their brains. A paper translation of the writing sat beside them, and its contents chilled their souls. "Do you think he would have done it?" Percy asked his deputy.

Harry snorted, "He wants unlimited power and dominion over Britain and probably the entire world. Of course he would have done it!"

Percy reread the translation that Hermione had provided and shuddered. "But to consort with...them! They have the power to destroy the world."

"Or remake it," Harry said quietly. "Remake it in their image, whatever that is." He turned to face Percy, and laid one hand on the tablets. "Maybe now you realize just how far Voldemort is willing to go to gain power?" As the young Minister of Magic nodded, his face numb with horror, Harry went on, "With or without your permission, I'm going to have these destroyed. Historic they might be, but I can't think of a single reason why these charms should ever be invoked. Can you?"

Percy shook his head. "No. But I'm going to have the Daily Prophet do a story about this, and it won't matter if Rita Skeeter exaggerates this story. It's one that should wake up even Voldemort's most die-hard followers to how dangerous he is."

"Okay, Alastor," Harry said, watching Moody approach with an enchanted sledgehammer in front of him. "It's all yours!" Harry burned the translation even before the first hammer blow shattered the tablets into dust.

"HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED INTERCEPTED IN ATTEMPT TO CONSORT WITH EVIL GODS!" The red ink headline screamed at 48-point typeface and was the largest-selling issue in modern times. The breathless public read a wildly imaginative story about how a dying informant tipped off Harry Potter; of how he and several trusted lieutenants boarded the Muggle ship which was crewed by living skeletons and fought their way through ranks of guardian Inferi to grab the dreaded tablets. The only part that wasn't exaggerated was what might have happened if the tablets had fallen into Voldemort's hands.

The effect on the public was electric: hordes of volunteers lined up outside the Ministry to join the fight. Remus Lupin had been put in organizational command of the troops. Training them had been given over to Kingsley Shacklebolt, Mad-Eye Moody, and Nymphadora Tonks, and Harry was pleased at the results: he would have his standing army soon.

"It's begun," he said to Percy, as the two of them watched people standing in line beside the fountain outside the Ministry of Magic.

"And hopefully we'll see the end of it," Percy said quietly.

"Hopefully so," Harry agreed.