A week before the election in May 1997, the corridors outside the Prime Minister's office sounded like a building preparing for a funeral. Shoes on a polished floor. Staff voices kept low, as if volume itself could move a percentage point.
John Major shut the door behind him and let the latch click with more force than he intended. The latest polling papers sat in his hand like a weight. The numbers looked worse each time he stared at them, as if they took offence at his optimism and corrected it.
He crossed to the desk, tossed the folder down, and stared at the room for a moment. Familiar, it had carried him through crises, through headlines, through party wounds that never quite closed.
Now it felt like borrowed space.
He dropped into the chair and rubbed his temples until the skin warmed. His tie sat wrong. His stomach sat wrong. Everything sat wrong.
He kept thinking of unfinished work. Files waiting for signatures. Foreign calls he had delayed. A stack of domestic problems that never respected the calendar. The idea of handing the office to Labour felt like a betrayal, even though the betrayal, if it existed, had started earlier, somewhere in the slow rot of party discipline.
The world outside Westminster was changing as well. Right and centre-right policies were strengthening across Europe and in the United States. In Britain, he was fighting the Reds with one hand tied behind his back.
Blair's line on health and education was landing with the public. It always did. People liked promises when they came with a clean smile and a simple sentence. On top of that, Blair looked ready to reach an agreement with the IRA, as if you could bargain your way out of a graveyard.
Major's jaw tightened. He had seen enough funerals. He had seen enough mothers stand at the edge of a coffin and hold themselves upright out of stubborn dignity. Turning your back on that agony was betrayal of the highest order.
'Controlled immigration' sat in Blair's mouth like another slogan. Major could not shake the sense that Blair was not thinking straight.
"It must be tiring."
The voice came from across the desk.
Major's spine locked. His head snapped up.
A young man sat in the chair opposite as if the room had been arranged for him. Calm posture. Turquoise silver eyes were the only thing visible of him. The rest of his body was shrouded. A teacup balanced in one hand. The steam rose in a thin line and made the air smell of bergamot.
Major's throat went dry.
A harsh curse tore out of him before he could stop it. His chair skidded back. He lunged for the drawer, yanked it open, and wrapped his hand around the grip of his pistol.
The metal felt familiar. Heavy and more honest compared to half of the House of Lords.
He levelled it at the intruder with a shaking arm he fought to steady.
The intruder watched him like a man watching someone search for their glasses while they were already wearing them. His gaze flicked to the weapon, then back to Major's face.
"Browning, I assume."
Major's finger tightened on the trigger. The pistol did not comfort him anymore. It felt childish, like pointing a knife at a tank.
"Other than being useless against me personally, I dislike guns aimed at my person, Prime Minister."
The shroud dismantled as a sheet of silk pulled away. Corvus Black did not move. He did not reach for his wand. He did not even shift in the chair. He took another sip of tea.
Something changed in Major's hands.
The pistol vibrated once, so slightly it could have been his pulse. Then the slide eased back without the sound of force. The recoil spring unwound as if it had been told it was no longer needed. Pins slipped loose like they had forgotten why they were holding. The barrel rotated out of alignment, detached, and settled into Major's palm with a soft clink.
Major froze.
The weapon dismantled itself in a controlled cascade. Slide, spring, guide rod, barrel and frame. Even the grip panels loosened, the screws turning by themselves with slow, insulting patience. Parts fell from his hands onto the desk, some onto the carpet.
It was the quiet that made it obscene.
Major's breath came shallow. He stared at the pile of dismantled metal as if it might reassemble itself out of embarrassment.
Corvus held his cup steady and watched Major's face. "Sit, please."
Major did not sit at first. His legs refused, then remembered they were meant to obey him. He lowered himself back into the chair in stiff increments.
Corvus placed the teacup down on its saucer with exact care. "I came bearing gifts."
Major forced air into his lungs and tried to arrange his thoughts into a line. None of them would stand still.
He kept his voice low, measured, and as polite as a man could manage with his gun in pieces on the floor. "Lord Rosier."
The title tasted strange, but he used it anyway. He had learned that etiquette mattered to Magicals, even when it was inconvenient.
"To what do I owe this unexpected arrival?"
Corvus's gaze rested on the polling papers. He did not touch them. "To the inefficiency of your political career, Prime Minister."
Major's jaw clenched. The insult landed clean because there was no enthusiasm behind it. It was not a taunt. It was a diagnosis.
Corvus leaned back slightly. "Did you ever imagine the long-term outcome of letting the Reds take over?"
Major inhaled slowly. He was aware. Painfully so. He had spent enough nights staring at ceiling moulding and calculating what might come next.
There was not much to do.
Corvus's eyes held a faint amusement, the kind that belonged to a man who had never needed an election to change the world. "As I mentioned. I came bearing gifts."
Major held his hands flat on the desk, palms down. He did not want to look at the broken pistol again. "Go on."
Corvus's tone stayed mild. "I can make sure you are elected again."
Major's stomach turned. "That is not how our system works."
Corvus's eyes flicked up. A brief look that made Major feel as if he had just explained gravity to a man who had been flying since childhood.
"I am aware how your system claims to work."
Major swallowed. "And Belfast."
Corvus gave a small nod. "I can make the problems in Belfast solve themselves. Silently."
Major felt Rimington's notebook in his mind like a phantom. He could almost hear the scratch of her pen, but she was not in the room now. This was private, and that made it worse.
"Over three thousand lives have perished." Corvus's voice did not change. "There cannot be a political solution to terrorism. Not one you will like."
Major's knuckles whitened against the desk edge. "If you mean assassination."
Corvus's gaze stayed steady. "I mean removal of the people who insist on continuing it."
Major's mouth opened, then closed again. His mind offered a dozen objections, and not one of them came with a workable alternative.
Corvus continued without waiting for permission. "In the meantime, you will stop the activities of the UVF and the UDA. If you want this to end, you do not keep one hand clean while the other holds a club behind your back."
Major's eyes narrowed. "You are asking me to dismantle them."
Corvus's expression remained polite. "I am asking you to act as the Prime Minister, not merely a party manager. The people of Ireland are as much a part of this nation as those of Scotland, England, Wales, or any other region. If they believe otherwise, it reflects a failure of the central government."
Silence settled.
Major's breathing slowed. It did not calm him, but it stopped him from sounding like prey.
"What do you want in return?"
Corvus's posture did not shift, but the room felt like it tightened around the words. "Simple."
He ticked off points with his gaze rather than his fingers. "You will arrange the school curriculum to align with the historical culture of Britain."
Major kept his face neutral. Education policy in a week. That was not impossible, but it was not clean.
"You will reduce religious elements from daily life."
Major's eyes flicked to the closed door. "That will not be popular."
Corvus's lips curved, barely. "Then you will learn what leadership costs."
Corvus's gaze stayed on him. "I do not want to send the Unit to deal with fanatics."
Major's stomach tightened. The Unit. The public term. He had heard it used now, casually, as if it had always existed.
Corvus continued. "You will enforce harsher policies against immigration."
Major's mouth tightened. He had seen the pressure on housing, on wages, on schools. He also knew what the newspapers did with it, how quickly it turned ugly.
Corvus did not look away. "You will support people of the realm and make sure the Government supports families."
Major's mind latched onto the one part that sounded like a speech he could give without being torn apart. "That is already our line."
Corvus's eyes held him in place. "Not enough. If you want to make this country better, start by showing sincerity."
Major's throat tightened. "Sincerity does not pay for it."
Corvus's gaze moved to the polling folder again. "You spent two point one billion pounds last year on foreign aid."
Major felt the heat rise in his face. "Foreign aid is part of diplomacy."
Corvus's eyes did not soften. "While your people calculate again and again what to buy and what to postpone."
The words hit like a slap because they were true. Major had walked past pensioners in council estates. He had read letters that smelled of damp and desperation.
Corvus leaned forward slightly. The movement was small, but it made Major's body tense as if he had stepped closer.
"Serve the country, Prime Minister."
Corvus's voice stayed calm. It did not need volume. "Serve the people."
Major stared at him. He tried to find the trick, the angle, the part where he could refuse without getting crushed.
There was no trick.
Corvus shifted his attention to the teacup as if the conversation had moved into the ordinary. He finished the last sip.
The cup vanished.
No pop or flash. It was simply gone. The saucer remained, then vanished as well, leaving a clean patch on the table where nothing had ever been placed.
Corvus rose.
Major had seen him at Stonehenge. He remembered the size, the presence, the calm that made armed men look small.
Now he was taller and broader. The shoulders sat wider in the robes, the fabric pulled tighter across his chest. It was an incremental change that made Major's mind scream the obvious question.
How.
Corvus stepped back from the chair and straightened his cuffs with a neat motion. "Do we have an accord, Prime Minister?"
Major's eyes flicked to the dismantled pistol. Metal pieces were scattered like evidence.
His throat worked once. There was no negative answer. This much he was sure of.
All he managed was a tired nod.
Corvus's gaze held him for a heartbeat longer, as if weighing whether Major would break his word the moment the door opened.
"A small note."
Major forced himself to meet the gaze.
"If you attempt to warn anyone about this meeting, I will know."
That was his last sentence before he disappeared. Major sat very still. He was not sure if he was alone in the office or not. He questioned the reality of the impromptu meeting.
The office air felt the same. The desk remained. The polls remained. The world remained.
Only the pieces of the pistol on the floor proved that any of it had happened.