The Gray's Secret: Scene 1 (Patreon)

The barn owl flew. Below it, the river Danube gently curved through the Balkans — possibly through 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.

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Standing in the shadow of the mighty fortress, Castle Dragos, Albus Dumbledore felt a tendril of cold begin the 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 safehaven to strike at us from! Everything we have fought for for hundreds of years could be lost.”

Dumbeldore sighed. Many months of laying seige 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 warewolves 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 duel inconveniences of the forced biting, which wad 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 Warewolves in general.

The warewolf 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.

Dumbledore said none of this.

Not because he didn’t believe in the immorality FullMoonia’s actions—it was clear to anyone with a functioning brain that forcibly converting your population to be carriers of a painful magical disease wasn’t exactly stellar moral behaviour—No, rather he didn’t push the matter further because the more he relied on ‘morality’ as a method of persuasion with any particular individual, the more they would hold him to those very same moral standards. At some point, you had to accept that doing the wrong thing was what was needed. Allow yourself to be trapped by a set of rules and you might as well hand yourself over to your enemies.

Suddenly, a scream ripped through the air. The pair turned around sharply to find a woman in robes being dragged towards them.

“Sir!” called out one of the dragging men, large muscled, and clad in head to toe in enchanted leathers. “We caught her trying to sneak out. Your orders?”

Marcus didn’t miss a beat. “Bite her.”

“No!” the woman screamed. “No, please!” Her scream became a wail as the second man transformed into his wolf form in front of them and snapped his jaws right around her arms, piercing cloth and staining it red.

Dumbledore set his jaw.

Very distasteful.

He was interrupted in his musing by the arrival of an owl. The majestic bird swooped down and perched on his outstretched arm.

Dumbledore broke the seal and read.

His eyes became more focused as he read.

Behind him, the still wailing woman fell, both silent and to the floor, as the other man backhanded her with a loud crack. “Quiet witch! You’re one of us now.”

Dumbledore steeled himself as he finished reading the final line. He produced a piece of parchment from his robes, scribbled a reply, and handed it back to the bird, along with a several knut for long distance delivery.

He watched the owl take off into the now dark sky of Transylvania with a hoot.

Waving once, Dumbledore started trudging up to the stairs of the castle where his next leg of this little diplomatic mission would take place.

“Troubles back home?” his guest asked, not having moved a muscle.

Dumbledore looked back over his shoulder. “Only to other people.”

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