Lucky

Mishap at the Ministry

          Things had been easier since the duel. Lestrange seemed to have let his guard down, seemed to truly believe that Morgana was onside. And Rosier had been giving her a wide berth, averting his eyes every time she walked into a room and turning red if she so much as glanced at him. Some of the death eaters even seemed to respect her, and she wasn't sure how to feel about that. Shafiq and Avery were still vying for her blood, though, so at least some things hadn't changed.

         The meetings were becoming more frequent, she had noticed. Several evenings a week, the mark on her arm would burn, and she would be summoned to whatever secret location the New Death Eaters were using. After every meeting, she would meet with the Malfoys, either at Draco's house or her own, and they would collate their notes of the evening. At the end of the six months, this would all be reported to the Aurors.

         It was late March before they knew it, sun gleaming off the morning frost and crocuses springing up in hedgerows. Being this busy had made the time go faster for Morgana, and she couldn't complain. With work, the meetings, the meetings after the meetings - she barely had time to think about what she was missing. Well, until the nights. And then she would sit in her huge house and feel every inch of the empty space pressing in around her.

          The loneliness was almost unbearable, and on the very worst days she would carry it around with her no matter where she was. Proximity was worse than complete separation. Seeing Harry at work and not being able to throw her arms around him, to hurry along like a shadow at his elbow and help him carry his papers and feel the pride radiating off him. To sit next to Abraxas at the meetings and not think about Emma, about how agonisingly they both missed her. To walk past people she'd gone to school with in the street and ignore their cheerful greetings.

       Everything you're doing is to protect them, she reminded herself each and every day. Once all this is over you'll have a lifetime.

        It didn't make it easier.

       She stared at Narcissa's empty eyes as the older woman sat primly on her sofa. For a Black, she seemed distinctly uncomfortable in Grimmauld Place. Morgana took in the stiffness of her shoulders and the white grey of her hair and the lines around her mouth and wondered if Narcissa had always been this cold, or only since she'd been widowed. Because of Morgana, as she wasted no opportunity to point out.

         Astoria sat in the armchair nearest the fire, the golden glow making her pallid complexion seem even more sickly. She had a hopeless, grey sadness about her, Morgana thought, a sort of permanent sigh.

          And Draco was bent over a coffee table with Abraxas, both of them scrutinising the notes of the evening. Both cousins seemed smothered under anxiety, their identical steely eyes meeting as they grimaced at the contents of the papers.

        Some advertisement for Pureblood supremacy, Morgana scoffed, looking around at their little collection of broken people. Two Malfoys, two Blacks and a Greengrass, and the best they could do was blink back tears of frustration and scribble on scraps of parchment.

"They're planning to follow essentially the same trajectory as Voldemort in his time," Draco said, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "Attacks on both muggle settlements and wizarding institutions to cause disruption, deliberate murder of muggleborns and halfbloods, and eventually a takeover of the Ministry. What I don't understand is this - Lestrange intends to get further, faster, than Voldemort ever did. But he isn't recruiting. He's not reaching out to half-humans, he's limiting his ranks to a select few pureblood families. Why?"

"Halfbreeds are better treated these days," Narcissa said disdainfully, earning a glare from Morgana. "They're less desperate."

"He still genuinely believes in the pureblood cause," Draco supplied. "That's what makes him so dangerous. He believes purebloods have both the right, and the ability, to conquer wizardkind, subjugate muggles, and seize the position of leadership in the form of the Ministry."