Chapter 334: 1974, A New Year Begins [bonus]
Chapter 334: Chapter 334: 1974, A New Year Begins [bonus]
Today was January 1st, 1974. Just like that, 1973 was gone.
The British didn’t make much of New Year’s Day. Muggle or wizard, the first of January wasn’t any kind of occasion.
Wizarding holidays followed the magical calendar. New Year’s was just a tick mark on the Muggle one, and most Pure-blood wizards couldn’t be bothered to remember the date.
Regulus remembered, but not because of the holiday. There was a clock running in his head.
Next year. 1975. Voldemort and his Death Eaters would step out of the shadows and into the open.
The Daily Prophet’s front page would start printing the name "Death Eaters" instead of vague references to "certain extremists" or "unidentified dark wizards."
Disappearances would go from scattered to systematic. The Auror Office would shift from routine patrols to a wartime footing.
After that came war. The covert infiltration of the present would become the past, replaced by open wizarding conflict spanning all of Britain. Public. Escalating.
Roughly a year from now. A little more. And then the magical world would change.
But if he was being honest, the timeline didn’t feel urgent.
Yesterday he’d sunk an island. His mind held the complete blueprint: Chain Conduction, conversion points, the magic-to-mass exchange framework. The Disintegration Curse’s ultimate form waited further down the road.
Every piece needed time to build. And time was exactly what he had.
War was coming. He knew that, and he knew he’d have a role in it.
But that was a year away.
He couldn’t control when Voldemort made his move, and he had no interest in trying.
What he could control was the year ahead, and his schedule was full.
Both forms of the Disintegration Curse were stable. Baruk’s remodeling was queued up. Saiph hadn’t fully ignited. His soul hadn’t grown enough. Spatial Transfiguration was barely within reach.
Light Source Magic still needed development. Flamel’s entire Alchemy track sat untouched.
Too much to do. Enough time to do it, but none to waste on anything else.
The war could wait for him.
Baruk lay curled beside the pillow, all eight legs tucked in, still asleep. Spell kept him palm-sized, and he looked like a fuzzy black spider no bigger than a tarantula.
Because that was exactly what he was. A fuzzy black spider.
Regulus pulled his gaze away and looked out the window.
In the clearing of the plantation, two Whomping Willows stood in the sunlight, the contrast between them stark.
The one on the right was healthy. Its branches swayed lazily in the morning breeze, tips twitching now and then.
The one on the left was dying.
Branches drooped, tips dragging on the ground as though they couldn’t hold their own weight. The knots along the trunk had cracked and gone grey. Bark peeled outward, exposing dull brown wood beneath.
The thickest main branch had developed a wound. Its edges had blackened, and something that couldn’t quite be called sap wept from the split.
It was dying slowly.
A day and a half of having its magic drained had shut down the circulation almost entirely. The cycle couldn’t restart, and with it gone, the tree had lost the ability to absorb ambient magic from its surroundings.
A magical plant without magic circulation wouldn’t drop dead on the spot, but it wasn’t far off.
He watched it for a while, then got up and pulled on his robes.
Mandrakes ran about three hundred Galleons a plant. Not exactly cheap, but not the kind of loss that stung either.
Whomping Willows were different.
Before these two, only two existed in all of Britain, both at Hogwarts, and only one of those was fully mature.
Wild populations were confined to protected reserves in Bulgaria and Romania. Exports of mature specimens fell under the Department of International Magical Cooperation’s oversight.
He’d never asked Orion how many favors and resources it had taken to acquire two of them, but the answer was certainly not trivial.
His father had procured them fully expecting total loss. That was how magical research worked. Materials got consumed.
But consumed and dead were two different things. These trees were rare, difficult to obtain, expensive, and tightly regulated. Letting one die felt like waste.
Save what you can.
The corner of his mouth moved.
That was the practical justification, anyway. The real reason was simpler: he wanted to see if Verdant Magic could revive a Whomping Willow drained of all its magic.
This was new territory.
Every previous use of Verdant Magic had involved healthy plants. Establishing a connection, sensing the circulation, guiding magical flow.
Whether Verdant Magic could reignite the cycle in a plant on the edge of death, coaxing it back into self-sustaining Magic Circulation... that question was worth answering.
Good a time as any.
He’d just finished pulling on his boots when Baruk woke. Eight legs pushed up, and the spider launched from the pillow to his shoulder in a blur, front legs hooking onto his collar.
The top pair of eyes locked onto the bright sunlight beyond the window. His pedipalps opened and closed twice.
"You’re up," Regulus said, offhand.
Baruk clicked once. "...Up."
He was reaching for the door when a shadow swept past the window.
An owl. Big one. Grey-brown feathers ruffled into a mess by the sea wind, wingspan nearly half a door’s width, talons clutching a rolled newspaper. It thudded against the windowpane.
A newspaper.
Regulus glanced at it and guessed the sender. Orion.
Nothing urgent. If it were, his father would have used Floo Powder or Apparated in person. Sending a paper just meant he thought his son should catch up on the news.
He pushed the window open. The owl flapped inside, dropped the newspaper on the table, then perched on the edge, round eyes swiveling once before locking onto Baruk on his shoulder.
The owl’s pupils contracted, focusing. Its feathers puffed out further. Neck stretched forward, beak parted, and a low, throaty hoot rumbled out.
Baruk, still perched on Regulus’s shoulder, fixed all eight eyes on the owl’s round ones. Then, unhurried, he circled behind Regulus’s neck and tucked himself into the shadow of the hood.
Not entirely hidden. Two front legs poked out from the hood’s edge, resting on the back of the collar. A pair of primary eyes peered out through a gap in the fabric.
An Acromantula didn’t fear owls. A full-grown Acromantula could eat several hundred of them in a single sitting.
But Baruk had apparently learned a rule: birds that delivered things or came looking for people were not food.
The owl hooted a few more times, then swiveled its head toward Regulus and waited on the table’s edge, expecting a treat.
He had nothing to offer. The cottage held half a loaf of bread left over from yesterday, hard enough to hammer nails with.
If anything in the room qualified as food, it was probably Baruk, but no owl’s beak was getting through an Acromantula’s carapace.
He waved a hand. The owl hesitated, ruffled its feathers in displeasure, then flapped out through the window.
He sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the paper.
Baruk crawled out of the hood and returned to his shoulder. Eight eyes settled on the newsprint alongside his own.
Daily Prophet, January 1st, 1974. New Year Special Edition.
The front page was split into upper and lower halves. The top section was, surprisingly, about Muggles.
He scanned it. The headline was enormous: MUGGLES PLUNGED INTO DARKNESS!
A row of photographs ran beneath it.
On the left, central London at night. Pitch black, save for a handful of lit windows scattered across the skyline.
In the center, a Muggle family huddled around a dining table. A few candles flickered on the surface, casting dim light over bundled coats and hunched shoulders.
On the right, a daytime shot. A queue stretched from a shop’s entrance around the corner, every person wrapped in heavy coats, necks drawn in against the cold. They were lining up to buy candles.
The subheadline read: Muggles’ Lights Go Out: Oil Crisis Sweeps the Non-Magical World, Britain Under Three-Day Work Week.
The article was written with evident relish.
"Since last October, Arab oil-producing nations have imposed an embargo on Western countries, severing the oil supply upon which the Muggle world depends.
Coal miners have gone on strike. The global economy shudders. The British Muggle government has been forced to declare a national state of emergency and impose what they call a three-day work week.
Factories are permitted to operate only three days per week. Shops and offices face electricity restrictions. Schools rely on candles and kerosene lamps."
"Barnabas Cuffe commented: ’This proves once again the superiority of magical civilization. Our lighting runs on enchanted lamps and Lumos charms. Our heating comes from hearths and warming charms. Our travel relies on Floo Powder and Apparition. None of it has anything to do with that dark, sticky liquid.
The Muggles built their civilization on a flammable substance buried underground, and now that the supply has been cut, their cities have become caves darker than anything in the Middle Ages.’"
"A spokesperson for the Department of International Magical Cooperation stated that the Ministry of Magic will be monitoring whether the chaos in the Muggle world poses any risk to enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy.
During power restrictions, Muggle foot traffic increases. The likelihood of accidental encounters near the entrance to Diagon Alley or Platform Nine and Three-Quarters has risen accordingly. All witches and wizards are advised to exercise caution."
"Editor’s note, Opinion Section:
Several readers have written in to ask whether Muggles, deprived of electricity, might rediscover the virtues of candlelight, and from there rediscover the mystical nature of flame, and from there brush up against the edges of magic.
The editorial board considers such concerns entirely unfounded. A species that cannot even locate a substitute for oil is unlikely to stumble back onto civilization’s proper path of its own accord."
A companion opinion piece carried an even sharper headline: "The Muggle Energy Crisis: Have They Finally Realized Fire Isn’t Made by Banging Rocks Together?"
Beneath it ran a cartoon. A cluster of Muggles swarmed around a stalled automobile in a panic. In the background, a wizard sat under a tree sipping tea, his cup resting on a glowing stone.
One of Baruk’s front legs extended from Regulus’s shoulder and tapped the photograph of blacked-out London.
"...Dark."
"Power rationing," Regulus explained. "Muggles use electricity for light. Not enough electricity, no light."
Baruk’s pedipalps opened and closed once, apparently chewing on the concept of electricity. He gave up, and the leg retracted.
Regulus read on.
The bottom half of the same page switched to a proper typeface. Wizarding news.
Ministry of Magic Leadership Change: Harold Minchum Succeeds Eugenia Jenkins, Pledges Stability and Order.
The article quoted from Minchum’s inaugural address.
"The Ministry of Magic exists to safeguard peace and order in the wizarding world. In the current climate, the Ministry will not favor any faction, will not suppress any lawful political position, and will not permit any individual or organization to place itself above the Ministry."
"Minister Jenkins served the wizarding community during her tenure, but a new era demands new leadership. I will make stability my highest principle, ensuring that every witch and wizard can live, work, and practice magic in an environment of peace."
A sidebar covered Jenkins’s departure. The wording was polite, but the meaning was plain.
"Minister Jenkins has chosen to step down before the conclusion of her term for personal reasons."