Rain combed down the glass in thin lines, the kind that made London look like it had been washed too many times and was still dirty.
The office was three rooms above a shuttered travel agency. A brass plaque at the door claimed The St. Brigid Family Foundation, as if a saint had ever paid a council rent.
Inside, the air smelled of cheap toner and damp coats. A young clerk checked a stack of forms, lips moving without sound. On the wall, a framed slogan: Families First. Our Roots Matter.
A woman sat on the plastic chair opposite the desk, hands folded so tight her knuckles had gone pale. She kept glancing at the pram beside her as it might drift away. The baby slept through everything, face soft, mouth open.
The clerk flicked another page, paused at the proof of residency, then looked up.
"Three generations," he said. It was the rule.
The woman nodded fast. "My gran was born in Leeds. My mum too. I was born here. I brought the certificates."
He took the folder, ran a practised eye over the seals, and stamped the top page with a heavy thud. The stamp sounded like a gavel.
"Good," he said. "That covers eligibility. Rent assistance is direct to the landlord. Child support is monthly. Your first payment clears in five business days."
Her shoulders dropped so hard she nearly slumped off the chair.
"Thank you," she managed.
"It's not a charity," the clerk replied. His tone stayed flat, but his hand moved to a leaflet and slid it across. "It's an investment. Keep receipts. Keep attendance. No missed appointments at the clinic. You matter; we need to take care of our own. Keep that in mind, please."
"I do." She swallowed. "I do. I'll do it all."
The clerk nodded once, already reaching for the next file.
A second woman stepped up, younger, hair pulled back too tightly. Her accent was not local. She held her documents like a shield.
The clerk took one look at the birth registrations and handed the folder back.
"Madame, you do not qualify."
"My husband works here," she started.
"Three generations," he repeated. The stamp stayed on the desk. Untouched.
"My children were born here."
"Country," he corrected. "Not the city. Not the borough. The country. You've been told."
Her cheeks flushed. "We pay tax."
"That is between you and Her Majesty's Revenue. This is a private foundation." The clerk kept his eyes on the next applicant, already done with her.
The woman stood there for a heartbeat too long. The office did not soften. No one rushed to comfort her. In a city that lived on queues, even anger had to take a number.
She left with her folder pressed to her chest.
Outside, on the stairs, a man in a grey suit listened without looking like he listened. He had the polite face of someone who belonged anywhere, and the forgettable eyes of someone who wanted to.
When the second woman passed, he did not glance at her. He checked his watch, tapped a note into a pocket sized notebook, and walked down into the street.
A few blocks away, in a rented office that pretended to be a consultancy, the same man set his notebook on a table beside a disposable coffee cup and a stack of local papers.
He wrote figures.
Approved: 1,284.
Declined: 402.
Birth certificates verified: 100%.
Noise: moderate.
He turned a page and wrote the next line.
Media entry points.
The phone on the table rang once, twice.
He picked up.
"Yes," he said.
A voice, low and impatient, pressed through the line. It carried that particular confidence of someone who had never had to explain himself to a court.
"The candidate in Haringey wants the endorsement in writing," the voice said.
"He will get it," the man replied. "Not from us. From a mother's group. From a tenants' association. From a pastor."
A brief pause.
"And the condition?"
The man glanced at the figures again. He did not smile, but something in his eyes warmed.
"Three generations," he said. "We hold the line. The message is simple. Help goes to those who live here. Everyone else waits."
"That is going to get loud."
"Let it." He slid a newspaper across the table and tapped a headline about rent hikes. "They are already angry. We just give them a direction that is not the nearest window."
The voice on the line exhaled, almost amused.
"You are getting good at this."
"I'm getting paid for it," the man answered.
He hung up and opened a folder marked GLA.
Inside were names, committee seats, advisers, assistants, and staffers who liked a free lunch, staffers who liked cash, and staffers who liked being told they mattered.
He ran his finger down one line and stopped.
A squib, though the document did not say it. His name was Elliot Crane, and he sat in the Greater London Authority building with a visitor badge and a quiet grin.
Elliot's report was short.
Council leaders are receptive.
Local radio wants interviews.
The foundations are being framed as "community renewal."
Elliot had added one final line.
The opposition is calling it discriminatory. They sound frightened. The man read that line twice. Frightened people made mistakes. He slid Elliot's report into a second folder and locked it.
In a different world, far from the damp stairwell and the toner stink, a wizard sat with a cup of tea that did not cool, because he did not let it.
He read the similar numbers from other boroughs.
A squib messenger had brought the report through a chain of hands that never touched a Muggle post.
A second report lay beneath the first, this one about a local election in a coastal town. A candidate had won by a margin that would have been called absurd if anyone wanted to admit how much a rent payment mattered.
The new mayor's first act was not a speech. It was a directive.
The document was dry, polite, and sharp.
Housing priority to long term residents.
Suspension of new placements.
Review of benefits fraud.
Immediate audit.
He traced the ink with a thumb, then set the parchment down.
He pictured the town hall room. The cameras. The tight smiles. The councillors who would clap because they had to.
He pictured the protests two days later, the placards, the shouting, the parasites of the system who would suddenly discover politics when their comfort was threatened.
He pictured the other side, the ones who would keep quiet because someone at last noticed them, and their quiet finally paid off.
The work was not complicated. It was slow. It needed patience, and it needed the sort of money that could endure being wasted.
Russia had provided that.
These foundations were not built to win arguments. They had been built to win behaviour.
A child cried in the flat above the St. Brigid office, the thin wail of a baby who did not care about policy or slogans. The mother tried to hush it, voice tired, foot rocking the cot.
Down on the street, a man in a grey suit walked past the travel agency and did not look up.
The wizard looked at the next report, this one from one of the clinics in London.
Pregnancies up.
Local clinics are reporting increased attendance.
Charities are complaining about "exclusion."
The words were predictable. The rhythm was predictable.
What mattered was the direction. He set the parchment aside and leaned back.
"This is not hostility," he murmured to an empty room. The words he would never say aloud in front of a Muggle. "This is triage."
Triage did not care about feelings. It cared about survival. Survival of the people, survival of the realm.
Heir Black was clear with his instructions. If we want our people to live, we will help them. If the corrupted officials like to pour the taxpayers' money into feeding and sheltering foreigners, we will help the people of the realm.
He reached for the last parchment in the stack, the one that mattered more than mayors.
London.
A note in a clean hand, written by someone who knew how power moved.
GLA infiltration on track. Committee access secured. Media contacts established.
Next step: national level.
He tapped the parchment once with his fingertip.
"Soon," he said. Not to a crowd, nor to a supporter.
The foundations were doing what they were built to do.
They were moving the ground under the country, one rent payment at a time.
--
The stone mouth yawned open. Corvus did not move.
He kept his coils tight, head lifted, eyes fixed on the gap. The air tasted old. Damp stone, stale blood, and the faint trace of shed skin.
Something moved within the statue.
The Basilisk slid out like a river finding its bed. Scales scraped stone. Each movement was controlled, practised, unhurried. Its tongue flicked once, then again, testing the air, tasting him.
It stopped when it saw him.
Corvus held the pose.
The Basilisk lowered its head a fraction. Not in submission, but recognition. The size difference was immense.
"Greetings," it hissed.
Corvus answered in the same tongue. "Greetings."
The Basilisk's tongue tasted again, slower this time. "What brings you to this one's nest?"
He shifted aside and revealed the offering.
A bubble hung over a small herd, clear as glass, thick with containment. Inside it, goats stood frozen in stunned silence. Sheep pressed close together. The bubble held the smell back. The air around Corvus stayed clean.
"Eat," Corvus hissed. "You have woken hungry."
The Basilisk's head tilted. A pause, measured, almost polite.
Then the snout touched the bubble.
The containment failed like it had been made of paper.
Heat rolled out. The stink of warm animal, sweat, and fear hit the chamber all at once. The Basilisk struck and swallowed without tearing. One gulp, a ripple down its throat. Another, and another.
It did not rush. It savoured the act of being full.
Corvus watched it work. He listened to the wet slide of meat and bone. He counted, out of habit, and stopped himself because it did not matter.
Between gulps, the Basilisk hissed, pleased. "Fresh. This one has missed fresh."
Corvus waited until the last goat vanished. The last sheep. The bubble space emptied, and the air cooled.
"Now," Corvus hissed.
The Basilisk settled, coils tightening, head raised again. Its eyes stayed on him, steady, bright with that ancient, unbothered certainty.
"Tell me about the human named Tom Riddle," Corvus continued. "The one who claimed Slytherin's blood. What did he do to you?"
The Basilisk's tongue flicked once. Its head angled toward the corner where shed skin lay like a pale cloak.
"He tried magic," it hissed. Disdain leaked through the sound. "It slid off. He tried again. He tried words. He tried fear."
Its tail gave a small, irritated twitch.
"Then he brought knives and symbols. He tried to carve control into this one."
The Basilisk's gaze went to the shed skin again. "The carvings went with the skin."
Corvus held still. He did not let his satisfaction show. That meant the creature had not been bound. Neither properly nor permanently.
"He failed," Corvus hissed.
"He failed," the Basilisk agreed, like it was stating the sky was above them.
Corvus dipped his head. "If the school is attacked by magicless humans, what will you do?"
The Basilisk's body tightened in a slow wave. "This one will kill. This one will protect the nest. Gift bringer."
Corvus let the title sit there. It wasn't bad.
"Do you have a name?" he asked.
The Basilisk paused. Another moment of strange courtesy.
"Old master called this one Medusa," it hissed.
Corvus blinked in his reptile way, a slow narrowing. Slytherin was really 'creative,' he thought.
He shifted his gaze down the length of her body. The base of the tail told the truth. Female. He adjusted the shape of his thoughts with it.
"Medusa," Corvus repeated. "The school is secure now. I need you elsewhere. A warm place. Food brought to you. Things to hunt, if you want to hunt. You will not rot in stone."
Medusa's eyes stayed on him. A long silence.
"Why?" she hissed.
Corvus did not dress it up.
"I am closing circles," he hissed. "I need a keeper for a secret. I need a guardian where my enemies cannot reach. And I prefer to use a creature that cannot be bribed with promises and lies."
Medusa's tongue flicked. Amusement, sharp and cold.
"Humans betray," she hissed.
Corvus let the sarcasm bleed through his reply. "Some more than others."
Medusa's coils loosened. Not trust. Consent.
"Show this one the warm place," she hissed.
Getting a Basilisk out of a buried chamber would not be an easy task if he did not have Flame Travel.
The Nest received them like a held breath finally released.
Corvus came out beside the pond first. Medusa was next to him, thicker than the pond had any right to accept.
The water trembled under her weight.
Poor Viridith was not ready to witness two Basilisks at the same time.
A house elf shrieked somewhere distant. Another cut the sound off with a sharp hand over its mouth.
Corvus asked Medusa to close the transparent lid over her eyes and shifted back. He walked the pond's edge and carved heating runes into the stone with the Elder Wand. The lines sank into the rock and warmed, slow and steady. The damp chill eased.
Medusa slid into the pond and did not look back.
Satisfaction rolled off her like heat.
Corvus turned on his heel.
"Tibby," he called.
The elf cracked in, eyes flicking from Corvus to the pond and back like it wanted to pretend it had not seen anything.
"Master?"
"Game," Corvus said. "Big and small. Drop it near the pond twice a week. Do not let her see you."
Tibby swallowed. "Yes, Master."
Corvus waited until Tibby vanished.
He turned back to Medusa.
"I need you to keep a secret," he hissed.
Medusa's head rose above the water. "Speak."
"You will know it. You will not share it. Not to human, not to elf, not to beast, not to spell that tries to pull it from you."
Medusa's eyes narrowed.
"This one keeps what it takes," she hissed.
"Good," Corvus answered.
The Fidelius did not happen in the Nest.
Corvus did not bring outsiders here. He did not make a habit of it. Even Arcturus did not have the Secret.
He took Medusa to Grimmauld Place instead.
The ritual room in the townhouse was the only room large enough to house Medusa. He instructed her to tell him the secret when the charm settles around them. The lovely serpent nodded her understanding.
The wards of Grimmauld Place shuddered, then settled. The house felt smaller, like it had pulled its curtains.
When it was done, Medusa's tongue flicked once.
"This place hides," she hissed.
"Tell," Corvus replied. And she hissed back. "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place is in London."
Kreacher was moved to Nest as Corvus has no way to let the old elf learn Parselounge.
When everything was done, he flame travelled to his chambers back at Hogwarts.
The castle tried to lock him in the moment his boots touched his chamber floor.
The wards snapped shut with the sound of a door chain thrown hard.
Corvus stood in the middle of the room and stared at the walls.
Once, he had let it pass.
Twice was a message.
He did not raise his voice.
He flared his magic.
It filled the room like pressure behind the eyes.
A thin ring of black Fiendfyre formed around him, neat as a compass line. It did not leap. It did not spread. It ate.
The castle screamed as some parts of it were being devoured. The fire stayed a finger width from his boots.
When the last binding snapped, the ring collapsed. A hiss. A smell like burned tar. The air cleared.
The castle alarms went off anyway.
Vinda felt it before the bells.
He walked.
By the time he reached her office floor, the corridor was already clearing. Paintings whispered behind frames. Suits of armour clicked to attention and then froze as his aura rolled over them.
Her door did not survive.
The black fire took it in a single breath and left a gap.
Vinda stood behind her desk. Her hand was on her wand. Her face did not move.
Corvus stepped through the smoke. He wore a serene smile. His eyes did not match it.
The last sparks died.
"Aunt Vinda," he began, voice calm.
Silence held.
Corvus took a seat without asking. Polite, in its own way.
"The strangest thing happened," he continued. "I returned to my chamber. The castle tried to lock me in again."
He let the last word sharpen.
Vinda's gaze flicked once to the ruined stone where her door had been.
Corvus kept going.
"It was a decent joke the first time. The second time is not a joke. It is an intrusion."
He tapped the arm of the chair once, controlled.
"You will need to renew whatever you carved into the third floor corridor and whatever you carved into this office."
Vinda did not blink. "You could have asked."
Corvus's smile tightened. "I did not think I needed permission to enter my own room."
A beat.
"Do not repair my chamber," Corvus added. "As of this moment, I resign from Hogwarts."
Vinda's expression shifted.
"Corvus," she started.
He cut in, not loud. Just final.
"This is the limit."
Vinda's voice stayed level, but her eyes sharpened. "You are easy to vanish and hard to find. That ward was meant to slow you. Not cage you."
Corvus watched her, then finally let the honest edge show.
"Slow me," he replied. "You could call for Tibby whenever you wanted, Aunt Vinda."
Vinda leaned back a fraction, recalibrating.
"I do not accept your resignation," she said. "You will come when you have time. Not as staff. As my heir. In addition, I asked for your time before leaving that damned chamber."
Corvus held her stare. This was going to be a long evening.