The map on Corvus' desk had turned into a set of borders written by wards.
Africa sat inside a ring of layered runes. Not a loose veil. Not the old polite sort of secrecy. A hard seal, keyed and watched. He traced the outer line with the tip of his quill. It was the second continent under his full control.
ICW was gone. The name had lost all of its weight months prior. The last shot was Akingbade taken like a wild animal and brought back to the Nest. His cell was next to Albus. Corvus was not cruel enough to separate two old friends after all.
He let the newest brief settle on top of the others. Three stacks, three blocs.
The new bloc, the largest, ran through Europe and into the stitched coastlines of the war. America had its confederation now, with MACUSA holding North and South in one fist and calling it diplomacy. The Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific were gathering around their own tables, pretending they were not a defence alliance.
Corvus did not bother to ask Arcturus why the reports still used the word "pretending." He already knew.
Conflict solves most arguments. It also cut out the need for long speeches.
A knock came.
"Enter."
Manard Sturmheart came in first. He carried a folder under one arm and looked like he had slept, finally, after weeks of staring at missile silhouettes like they were hymns.
Behind him walked a thin Frenchman with a careful posture.
Manard tilted his head toward the stranger. "Master Ouragan. He dislikes titles in the same way I dislike being bored."
The Frenchman's mouth twitched. "I dislike amateurs who try to butter me up."
Corvus leaned back, chair quiet, eyes on the man's wand hand. Not the wand itself. The way the fingers rested, the way the wrist refused to soften. Enchanters who lied with their hands were rare.
"Corvus Black," he said, and did not offer a hand. "You asked for the Azkaban branch."
Ouragan's gaze flicked to the wall where the miniature model of a submarine sat under a glass case. It was a stripped silhouette, a dead shell in steel, waiting to be turned into something else.
"I asked for a place where your work ends and mine begins," Ouragan replied. "Your priest told me you intend to live inside the weapons."
Manard made a soft sound that could have been a laugh if he were not so pleased with himself. He found a spirit like his own.
Corvus slid a roll of parchment across the desk. The wax seal held three marks. Rosier and Black. A third one was above the two, the Nest. The seal was depicting a Raven with its wings wide open.
"Not live," Corvus said. "Move, stay hidden, strike when necessary and continue our work. The Mundane world likes to count hulls. It calms them. We have removed the comfort."
Ouragan sat without being invited. He unrolled the parchment with two fingers. The diagram showed the carrier decks first, then the submarine interior, then the idea that made most reasonable wandmakers vomit.
Expansion anchors.
Not inside a room. Inside a machine designed to break under pressure.
He continued to read. Then he looked up. "You want expansion charms as your foundation. That is the first mistake most people make."
Manard bristled, then stopped himself, breathing once through his nose.
Corvus waited.
Ouragan tapped the page. "An expansion charm is a skin. You need bone. A lattice. A geometry that does not wobble when the steel complains. If you build with charmwork alone, the vessel becomes a stretched sack. It will sag. It will tear. It will betray you the first time it takes a hit."
Corvus lifted his quill again. "So you build bone."
Ouragan's eyes sharpened. "I build infrastructure."
Manard leaned forward and pointed at the submarine section. "Start with the pressure points. The keel. The ribs. Then you hang rooms off it. Not the other way around."
"Impress me, gentlemen," Corvus said, and watched Manard's face. The fake priest loved to work with Muggle weapons. Especially if it meant more metal could be made to obey.
He stood, moved to the case, and lifted the glass. The miniature submarine came out into his palm.
"I want the submarines become islands," Corvus said. "With habitats for different Magicals. Greenhouses. laboratories. A branch of the Nest per hull. Storage rooms and training cells. Wards that would make the Mundane sonars hear emptiness."
"This is what I managed to do till now."
He set the model down on the desk, beside the parchment.
Ouragan reached for his own wand, a long piece of dark wood with a core that felt oddly familiar. He did not cast. He only rested the wand tip on the drawn keel line.
"Impressive," he said while examining the model Corvus worked on. "We can make it better with more work. Island means stability," he continued. "You will not get it unless you accept you are no longer enchanting a vessel. You are enchanting a moving territory."
Manard's smile widened. "He understands."
Corvus turned and walked to the side door that led to his personal armoury. "Then we stop talking and start doing."
The array room was clean in the way a room becomes clean when people fear the consequences of dust. A circular glyph had been carved into the stone floor. Twenty smaller rings waited around it like obedient teeth.
Corvus stepped into the array. Manard and Ouragan followed; they stood to his left and right.
Outside the array, an unspeakable waited. He looked at Corvus for confirmation.
Corvus raised his wand and nodded to the hooded figure. "One to twenty."
The array answered.
Inside, the world slowed until it felt like the rest of reality had become lazy.
Four months passed while the Nest's corridors moved through seven days.
Corvus used those months with the same patience he used on people he did not like. He did not waste them.
They began with the carrier.
Manard laid the first anchors into the metal, not with brute force, but with a rhythm that matched the ship's own structure. Ouragan drew rune lattices that did not look like runes at all when he finished. They looked like the geometry of a bridge, translated into a language that could be fed mana.
Corvus watched, then copied, then improved.
The first expanded deck opened like a mouth.
The second held.
The third remained stable when Corvus forced a pressure test that would have folded an ordinary charm like damp paper.
Greenhouses came next, because food was leverage and leverage was peace.
Alchemy and Potion labs followed. Then came the parts most clerks did not understand.
The missile tubes were not redesigned. They were relocated.
In Corvus's hands, a long-range launcher became a warded spine. A ritual channel. A place where a Mundane system expected fuel and received runic stone.
"Ouragan," Manard said one day, voice rough from chanting. "Make the guidance blind."
"I am not making a missile blind," Ouragan replied. "I am making the Muggle systems blind to us."
Corvus was enjoying himself. More than he thought he would. Developing the future of the Magical World was oddly satisfying.
The submarines were harder.
Pressure, water, movement, and the simple truth that steel did not care about wizarding pride.
They turned the first submarine into an island with some difficulties. Corvus was merciless in his demands.
Rooms unfolded behind wards that held their shape. Storage expanded into vaults. Sleeping quarters became a small settlement. A training bay formed where there had been nothing but narrow passageways.
When the first greenhouse lit under enchanted lamps, Manard stood inside it for a full minute without speaking. It was the closest Corvus had ever seen him come to reverence.
Destroyers came last.
Corvus brought the plans down with him and watched Ouragan's eyes move as he read. Smaller hull. Faster. Less room. Less forgiveness for mistakes.
"We do not make them islands," Ouragan said. "We make them knives." His elegancy of his French accent contrasts with the purpose of the destroyers.
So they did.
The destroyers became mobile fortresses with expanded internal decks laid out for speed and violence. Warded magazines made sure they can turn any target to swiss cheese. A runic bay where healers and technicians could work without the ship shaking them apart. A command space that could be sealed and relocated within the hull if the bridge were hit.
The final touch was not a charm.
It was silent.
The completed vessels sat at Azkaban's shore like sleeping beasts, their true volume folded into their skins. From the outside, it did not exist. A Mundane satellite will see nothing. The Disillusionment charm was vowed to the hall and fed with the Philosopher's Stone.
A Magical eye, on the other hand, would see a territory.
-
Back in his office, the report stack waited.
Branches of the Nest were expanding. Clones of selected lines were maturing faster. The last of the Nest born were already built like war machines. The shortest among them was two meters tall with enhanced muscle density. Their magical potency at the highest recorded levels, their training sharpened by the methods Corvus had turned into routine. Not only were they perfect with their wandwork, but they were perfect soldiers as well.
He read the numbers, then the notes.
He smirked.
"Soon," he murmured, "I will have my own Primaris."
He decided to bring a couple of these elegant gentlemen to his next meeting with John Major.
He took a fresh parchment.
Naming mattered. Names drew people into lines they did not even notice.
He wrote slowly.
Mater Magica Aeterna.
The ink dried. The letters sat heavy and simple.
He considered Gaia again, then dismissed it. Too broad. Too easy for non-Magicals to claim.
Mother Magic belonged to them.
He made three copies. They went to Arcturus, Grigori and Sigibert.
The last went to Rita Skeeter with a short note.
Make our people embrace it.
When the Umbra took off with the parchment tube, Corvus returned to his chair. He did not look satisfied. He looked finished with one task and ready for the next.
--
The Daily Prophet's headline was screaming something new.
MATER MAGICA AETERNA, A NAME WORTH LEARNING TO SPELL
By Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent
The Wizarding World now delivers 'historic moments' by the minute, dear readers. Even this reporter is struggling to keep up. Alas, some developments are much heavier and more impactful than others.
This one is one of them. It will make the Wizarding world wake up, blink twice, and realise the room has been rearranged while it slept.
This is one of those days.
The International Confederation of Wizards, that charming littleclub whose favourite spell was 'Minutes of the Previous Meeting,' is finally gone. If you are grieving, do so quietly. Some of us have ears.
Now, in its place, we have multiple federations.
To our West, MACUSA has declared their own confederation with both parts of its continent. Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific's Conclaves and Governments came under Magical China and India.
The rest of the Wizarding World is led by the Ministers of Magical Britain, Russia, Germany, France and Spain. The last additions to this largest body were Magical Korea and Japan.
While we have the largest population, we lacked one simple thing, my dears.
A banner.
And it has been delivered by none other than our own Corvus Black.
Mater Magica Aeterna.
Yes, it is Latin. No, you do not get extra points for pretending you speak it. If you can pronounce it without biting your tongue, you are already ahead of the committee members who used to run the ICW.
The meaning is not subtle, which is why certain people will pretend not to understand it.
Mother Magic Eternal.
Not a Ministry slogan. Not a house motto. Not a smug little phrase meant to look pretty on a plaque.
This is a declaration. A reminder. A promise.
For those who missed the lesson in recent history, allow me to explain. We are no longer hiding in our own homes and apologising for existing. We are no longer "subjects" to be managed by non-Magical structures that only remember us when they want something.
We are Magicals. We belong here. Not as guests or tolerated inconveniences. We belong here as the children of Mother Magic.
And Mother Magic, this reporter hopes your family calls her with respect in their old stories, is the thread that ties every Witch, Wizard, and Magical being to the same spine.
Yes, Magical beings are what the failed governments called creatures.
House elves who keep our homes running while we congratulate ourselves for "leadership." Vampires who have spent centuries being treated like a problem to be tolerated rather than citizens of our proud nation(Countess Seraphine's new photos are on pages 4 and 5). Merfolk who have watched our surface politics with sensible contempt and do not understand a word. Goblins, who will read this and insist they do not care while caring enough to correct my punctuation with the passion of a duelist.
Mater Magica Aeterna does not belong to one house, one office, one country, or even one race.
It belongs to the Magical world.
It is also, and do try not to choke on this, a show of respect.
Not to bureaucrats, to committees, to the sort of men who used to sit behind confederation desks and write letters about "necessary restraint" while other people bled.
Respect for the source.
Mother Magic.
If that makes you uncomfortable, you may want to ask yourself what is wrong with me and inform the nearest Auror.
Because the rest of us are done pretending that gratitude is weakness.
We have a new name.
Mater Magica Aeterna.
Learn it.
Say it.
And if you insist on mourning the ICW, do it properly. Wear black, write a speech, file it in triplicate and then throw it in the fire like the rest of their legacy. You can confirm it with Mr Akingbade. Last time this reporter heard, he was accepting visitors.