Magic and Canada (reference file & story)

This particular series of reference stories contain background information concerning how magical society in Canada actually exists in the mixed worlds of my stories such as The End of the Circus: A Tale of the Yizibajohei. This is posted here for reference purposes only. Please feel free to make use of this information if you desire; proper credit is requested.

Enjoy!

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Magicals of all stripes from Europe and Asia had long known of the existence of the Americas well before "official" European contact with the New World was made in the fall of 1492 thanks to Christopher Columbus, then in service of the king and queen of recently-united Spain. Like their non-magical countrymen, magicals residing in the Americas were content to live in harmony with Nature, not advancing discoveries in local technology that might have given them an advantage when the white people began to migrate across the Atlantic in the wake of the landing on what Columbus called "San Salvador". Even more, while there had been contact between magicals of the Old World and the New World since before the time of Christ, it didn't result in any sort of large information exchange between peoples on either sides of the Atlantic or the Pacific; thanks to the existence of Nerio (the Mundus Magicus) and interplanetary trade between there and Earth, the fact that there was a rather large landmass lying to both Eurasia's west and east had been known to magicals of the Old World for ages.

This paucity of contact between cultures had both its good and bad effects on magical native Americans, especially when the desire to locate an easy way to access the treasures of the Far East drove European explorers to penetrate the Americas in increasing numbers after the landing in the Bahamas by Columbus in 1492. Magicals gladly came with the early explorers to the New World, helping their non-magical companions better understand what they were getting into. It wasn't without its hiccups, of course. To his death, Columbus refused to believe his magical advisers when it came to his staunch belief that he had not landed on outlying islands near "Cathay" but a whole new territory hence unknown to normal people to that date...never mind the belief that the Haudenosaunee term kanada ("village") that Jacques Cartier expressed in his 1535-36 voyage into the valley of the Saint Lawrence River represented the name of the territory he was then exploring.

Given the emphasis of this is meant to look on the magicals of the modern-day Dominion of Canada and how they developed over the years to become one of the most liberal magical societies on Earth, events in what later became the United States of America and elsewhere will only be briefly reflected on; detailed histories of those nations are chronicled elsewhere...

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MAGIC AND CANADA
by Fred Herriot

Major Deannette Antonia "Dean" Raeburn, Admiral Francis William Harlan, the First Canadian Battleship Squadron, the War Hawks (First Canadian Specialized Warfare Unit), the Niphentaxians, the Avalonians/Sagussans and all related characters and situations were created by myself.

Including characters and situations from Mahō Sensei Negima, created by Akamatsu Ken; Dial "H" For Hero, published by DC Comics; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, written by Seth Grahame-Smith; Kantai Collection, created by Kadokawa Games; Kōtetsu Tenshi Kurumi, created by Kaishaku (Ōta Hitoshi and Shichinohe Terumasa); Harry Potter, created by Joanna K. Rowling; The Guns of the South, written by Harry Turtledove; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon.

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NOUVEAU-FRANCE AND THE NATIVE MAGICALS OF CANADA

The early Seventeenth Century CE was an interesting time in the eyes of many on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. After two failed attempts at establishing a permanent settlement on the Atlantic coast in what today are Île-Saint-Croix in modern-day Maine near the border with New Brunswick and Port-Royal in Nova Scotia's Annapolis valley, French explorers under Samuel de Champlain were able to establish a permanent habitation at the site of the village of Stadacona (which had been visited decades earlier by Jacques Cartier on his second voyage), which would become Ville de Québec, Canada's oldest city. After the initial troubles of building a new town were fully surpassed and new trade structures for things like beaver pelts were properly established by rulers of what came to be called "New France", a small, steady stream of colonists seeking out their fortunes and a new life for themselves braved the Atlantic to reside in the valley of the Saint Lawrence River.

Among them were many magicals, both wand-welders and more ancient mystics who still practised their traditional forms of magecraft which had endured the increasing influence of l'Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons as France's premier national magical school. Like their non-magical countrymen who came across from the Old World, magicals made the journey to New France for many reasons. However, the vast majority of French magicals seeking to settle to New France were what were known back in the home country as née moldues; "muggleborn" as their British counterparts settling on the Atlantic coast to the south of Québec were always called both by themselves and their pureblood countrymen. Like many such people in Europe born of normal parents who had been invited when they came of age to learn how to use their gifts at places such as Beauxbâtons, née moldues often found themselves getting the proverbial short end of the stick from both sides: Manipulated by normal friends to create "miracles"...while constantly loathed by the "pureblood" gentry for their "unclean" birth. This was not a pleasant time for not only normal-borns but other magicals in Europe; one has to remember that during the time New France was beginning to flower, the Dark Times of Magic had descended on Europe as rhabdophobes moved to either enslave magicals wholesale or burn them at the stake for their "evil" ways...killing many normal people along the way.

Ironically, the née moldues in New France soon discovered that they had gained spiritual allies among mystics of the various native nations the French were interacting with as they sought to expand the fur trade and convert normal natives to Roman Catholicism in a response of the Reformation which helped provoke the Dark Times of Magic. That unofficial social alliance came to form the unshakable foundation of modern Canadian magical society as a whole; rejected by their "pureblood" peers in France and accepted almost wholesale by tribes such as the Haudenosaunee as worthy friends and allies in facing a world becoming more complex by the day as people from the Continent came over, née moldues of New France soon became a political power within their own right. And they had the ear of colonial governors from Samuel de Champlain on down.

That made the acceptance of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy all the more easier for magicals of New France and neighbouring native nations when news of the treaty came across the Atlantic, followed by commands from various royal houses to have the treaty fully enforced in law. Prompted in part because of the tragedy of the Salem witch trials which would rock the British colony in Massachusetts in 1692-93, the real reason the alliance of née moldues and native mystics accepted the Statute wholesale was that it would protect normals and magicals from multiple threats. Like Australia was later discovered to be when the British began settling that continent in the Eighteenth Century, what later became Canada was a remote, foreboding land demanding much of those who braved its harsh terrain to seek out treasure there. While there would always been much in the way of sympathy when it came to normal peoples and how they fared in such a land, the strain on magicals to perform "miracles" had just got to far too many, especially among the descendants of the née moldues.

Within the borders of New France, the Statute was made royal law, enforced with the eternal magic of the land with the issuing of le Grande Ordonnance de Séparation Magique ("the Grand Ordnance of Magical Separation") in 1692 by the Sun King Louis XIV, just as the Salem witch trials reached their height and King William IV and Queen Mary II of Great Britain were moving to approve the establishment of the Wizengamot of British North America to administer the magicals living in their colonies south of New France. In the Grand Ordnance, a separate-but-equal government in the eyes of the Crown to le Ministère Royal de la Magie ("the Royal Ministry of Magic") designed to administer the magicals then living in France was established with headquarters in Québec City. Le Ministère des Affaires Magiques de la Nouvelle-France ("the Ministry of Magical Affairs of New France") would be led by a Ministre des Affaires Magiques ("Minister of Magical Affairs") elected every ten years by adult magical natives of New France and who was required by the Grand Ordnance to directly report to the Royal Governor on issues affecting magicals and normals alike. The Minister was supported by les États-Généraux Magique de la Nouvelle-France ("Magical Estates-General of New France"), an assembly whose members were all elected every five years; unlike the old country and elsewhere in Europe, seats wouldn't become the domain of family dynasties in Québec.

The pluralization of "Estates-General" in the title of the New French magical governing body had been deliberate from the start. The first Minister of Magical Affairs — who is seen somewhat erroneously today as the traditional founder of the modern Canadian Wizengamot — was a second-generation native of Trois-Rivières named Jean Dupré Harlan. Descent of Norman warriors from Cherbourg who had relatives in France and in England on both sides of the security divide now separating magical from normal, Harlan had always been disgusted by rising pureblood attitudes on everything from the née moldues like himself to sentient magical creatures such as the Kobaloi; to his dying day, he adamantly refused to call such beings "lutins" as was always done back in France. Determined to ensure such "backwards" attitudes would never haunt New France, Harlan won the support of the King in ensuring that the Grand Ordnance would keep New French magicals totally clear of any interference from the Royal Ministry of Magic in Paris; the sheer thought of French purebloods reaching across the Atlantic to ruin lives wholesale to assuage their offended "sensibilities" made Harlan's blood boil.

With the Grand Ordnance in place and enforced by a sublime loyalty clause to the French Crown that remains in effect (in modified form given the modern Republic's current presidential mode of government) to this day among natives of France, the structure of New French magical society developed in such a way that would ensure that not only did the descendants of née moldues residing in places like Québec and Montréal would have equal representation in the face of the Crown...but so would native magicals from allied nations that interacted with New France such as the Haudenosaunee; the various tribal elders agreed with New French Governor General Louis de Buade, the Comte de Frontenac, to allow Minister Harlan to help administer magicals among those tribes within the territory of the royal colony. That — much to the shock and horror of the pureblood gentry then busy establishing their Royal Ministry of Magic in Paris — effectively opened the door for members of non-humanoid and part-human magical beings such as the Kobaloi, the Veela and the Dweorg to be represented in the New French magical government. That not only caused a mass migration of such beings across the Atlantic to la Terre de Liberté Égale ("the Land of Equal Freedom") — as New France came to be seen by all — it also ensured native magical creatures would be cared for in a more humane manner that was seen as "proper" in Europe, much less British North America or New Spain. Lunar therianthropes such as werewolves found themselves quite at home in New France; Minister Harlan spearheaded the establishment of special safe zones for such begins to pass the full moons without threat of harming an innocent bystander. Even more so, native American creatures such as the infamous Wendigo were expertly controlled by local authorities in a manner that would have left hundreds of slain magicals had it happened in Europe.

For all his efforts in creating such a loyal society of magicals across the Atlantic, the Sun King bestowed the title Comté-Duc de Tadoussac ("Ducal Count of Tadoussac") to Harlan before Louis XIV himself died in 1715. Doing this elevated the patriarch/matriarch of the Harlan family of Trois-Rivières — who moved to a new magical estate at the point where the Saguenay River flowed into the Saint Lawrence, near an ancient native trading outpost — to a level that was above the highest magical lord back in metropolitan France; they were only rated as counts among the nobility of the Ancien Régime.

Harlan would finally step down as Minister of Magical Affairs on the twentieth anniversary of the Grand Ordnance of Separation. He would be succeeded by Françoise Trianon of Sorel near Montréal, who would become one of the first female post-Statue of Secrecy national magical leaders in the world.

But was New France "national"...?

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THE INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF WIZARDS AND RELATIONS WITH NEW FRANCE

Thanks to both the French Grand Ordnance of Separation and the British Separation Act of 1692, magicals in territories ruled by Great Britain or France were allowed to effectively govern themselves with little or no interaction from normal governing bodies such as Parliament in Westminster or the Estates-General in Versailles. This development brought forth a sigh of relief not only among magicals, but among normals who were let in on the secret in government and among close relatives of normal-borns who no longer had to fear peers manipulating them to force children to do things against their will. But in Britain and France, something happened with the passing of the Grand Ordnance and the Separation Act that caused a lot of confusion within the halls of the International Confederation of Wizards in Geneva: There were now legally multiple equal governmental bodies representing British and French magicals across the planet, especially from North America!

Within the halls of the Confederation erected on the shores of le Rhône near Geneva, the Royal Ministry of Magic in France attempted to act as the sole governing body for all magicals across the planet ruled by King Louis XIV, doing their best to demote the Ministry of Magical Affairs in Québec to a "subordinate" department. However, on noting the British Ministry of Magic wasn't doing anything to subordinate the British North American Ministry to its operational control, people from Geneva travelled to Québec to see what was going on. Much to the furor of leaders in Paris, Dupré Harlan directed the ICW visitors to read the Grand Ordnance of Separation and see for themselves. With that revelation, the issue was settled in the eyes of the ICW and New France was invited to send a representative to Geneva with equal voting rights to the other kingdoms and empires across the world in 1695. While snubbed by representatives from Paris — who verbally put down their counterparts from Québec on every occasion possible — the first New French ambassador, Madame Thérèse de Montmagny of Montréal (a née moldue descendant of a former governor of the colony), won fans from all over the world with her charming wit and common sense. To her eternal embarrassment, both the Kāngxī Emperor of Qīng China and the Heavenly Sovereign Nakamikado of Tokugawa Japan awarded her honorary fiefdoms in their lands after glowing reports of her supporting the protection of traditional Oriental practices in the face of European desires to "update" teachings to enforce the Statute's regulations were presented to Their Imperial Majesties by their ambassadors to the ICW in 1720.

Still, no matter what people such as Madame de Montmagny did, the damage had been done by their many rivals in Paris. Even if Québec had an equal seat at the table in Geneva and did all to honour its obligations under the Statute, the verbal abuse unleashed by French purebloods on the reputation of the parvenus des née moldues ("muggle-born upstarts") had been considerable. It wasn't helped when the egalitarianism of how things were run in Québec sank into the minds of magical leaders in Europe. That effectively saw New France held as an example of what not to do when it came to establishing magical colonies around the world as European expansionism began to encroach on Asia and Africa.

That, experts today in many countries agree, helped plant the seeds of Tsukuyomi's War of Liberation and Grindelwald's War in the 1940s...

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THE RISE OF THE CANADIAN FORESTERS

Despite the frequent wars that rocked relations between normals in the British American colonies and New France throughout the first half of the Eighteenth Century, relations between magicals on both sides of the Appalachian Mountains were always quite peaceful. Thanks to considerable interference from Paris when it came to sending magicals to the mother country to attend Beauxbâtons when came their time to learn how to use their powers, the new schools at the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (for both genders) and the Salem Witches Institute (for girls) in Massachusetts and the Seven Hills Wizarding Academy (for boys) in Virginia gladly opened their doors to eager students from New France who didn't want to risk an ocean journey to learn how to properly use their gifts, much less interference thanks to French pureblood prejudices. Yearly conferences between people such as Dupré Harlan and Josiah Jackson (the first Minister for Magic of British North America) became a tradition, even during the dark times such as Queen Anne's War (the War of the Spanish Succession) in the first two decades of the Eighteenth Century or King George's War (the War of the Austrian Succession) during the 1740s. Even if there were some normal-borns who lost relatives in the fighting, the prompt action of American aurors and New French magical constables ensured no Statute breaches occurred.

This peaceful period between British North America and New France was also the time that the ancestors of Canada's modern elite magical militia came into being. Thanks very much to the Scourers — wizarding mercenaries then active in the British colonies before the Statute of Secrecy was established who had served as vigilantes and volunteer law enforcement before corruption set in at a scale which still staggers magical historians to this very day — normal and magical natives of New France and allied nations were often delivered to Puritan rhabdophobes in places such as Massachusetts in exchange for gold; such often cost the victims their lives at the stake if local magicals didn't save them. Disgusted at such behaviour, Dupré Harlan obtained Royal Assent to create a volunteer Société des Forestiers Magiques ("Company of Magical Foresters") to hunt the Scourers down and clear them from New France...and from British North America if the American Wizengamot (then based at Ilvermorny on the slopes of Mount Greylock in northwest Massachusetts near the border with New York) so desired. Trained in both European and native forms of magic as well as non-magical weapons, the Foresters became a nightmare to the Scourers, who had been outlawed and were forced to hide themselves from British authorities. What later was called the "First Foresters War" from 1695-1715 — in truth, a series of localized actions that saw Scourers run down and stripped of their magic, then obliviated to ensure they would never threaten others again — effectively wiped the latter group in New France and drove them underground in British North America for decades to come.

While the Foresters were hailed as heroes on both sides of the Appalachians for putting the Scourers down and protecting all, ICW leaders who were monitoring this situation from Geneva were horrified. It was with reason; one of the clauses in the Statute of Secrecy was a flat-out prohibition when it came to the creation of magical military combat forces as such as seen as a guarantee to prevent the unleashing of wars that could easily spill into the normal world. When made to answer to this, Thérèse de Montmagny reminded fellow delegates that such a prohibition was meant to prevent standing armies from being established and maintained; such a clause never referenced anything about part-time militias which were only mobilized at the order of the Crown to ensure the magical peace both in New France and among her neighbours. As prohibiting such could also be used to hamstrung local law enforcement if that clause was interpreted the wrong way, the Foresters were left alone once they were demobilized on the death of the Sun King, their mission against the Scourers a success.

And so it went until 1763...

To Be Continued...

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WRITER'S NOTES

This narrative is meant to serve as a background information file concerning how magic would have developed in Canada in the mixed worlds of my stories. If anyone wishes to make use of what is contained here, please feel free to do so, but do allow proper credit to be bestowed. Naturally, it draws primarily on the world of Harry Potter as created by Joanna Rowling, but also includes my own creations as well as the creations of other authors as noted in the title blurb, especially the world of Mahō Sensei Negima as created by Akamatsu Ken and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as created by Josh Whedon.

Please note that HP elements of this story heavily draw on what was recently promoted in Pottermore concerning worldwide magical development, though it is modified to acknowledge the true history of North America and other nations. As serious historians know, the very concept of the United States of America didn't enter public discourse until the 1770s, thus it would be IMPOSSIBLE for something called the "Magical Congress of the United States of America" (MACUSA) to exist as far back as 1692! Given the very strong British influence on American life at the end of the Seventeenth Century CE, giving the name of the local British magical ministry as I've indicated here makes more sense.

Specific notes for this part:

Unlike what Akamatsu-sensei promoted in Mahō Sensei Negima, I don't see the Mundus Magicus as being Mars under magical disguise, but a separate planet of about the same general size as the red world in a hidden Trojan orbit between Earth and Mars. I coined the term "Nerio" in my stories for this planet; the name is that of an ancient Roman war goddess who personified valour on the field of honour and was Mars' partner in being the patron of soldiers.

The Haudenosaunee is the proper name of the group of native Americans known more commonly as the "Iroquois".

Née moldues is taken from the phrase for muggleborns used in the French translation of the Harry Potter novels. The term "moldu" was invented for such by the people who rendered the books into French, but I can't find the origin of the term. According to the Urban Dictionary, the term is "A word that can be substituted for pretty much any other noun in the English language; usually used in an insulting manner, but sometimes used to show the superior quality of an object and/or concept."

Rhabdophobe is my term for people who are afraid of magicals; the name of the fear is rhabdophobia and the adjective is rhabdophobic. The base term comes from the Greek term for a wand, though it is meant to serve as a catch-all fear for all magicals. The opposite fear is mugalophobia with a person expressing such being a mugalophobe and the adjective is mugalophobic. The base term here comes from the Greek term for "muggle" used in the local translation of the novels.

The term Kobaloi is the plural of "kobalos", who were mythological tricksters in Greek mythologies fond of deceiving and frightening mortal men. This term evolved into the Latin "cobalus", from which the English word "goblin" possibly evolved. The term Dweorg is the old English term for a dwarf. It is derived from the proto-Germanic term "dwergaz".

The Wendigo is a cannibal monster from Algonquian folklore. Fans of Marvel Comics will be familiar with this creature; the Hulk, Wolverine and other superheroes have often encountered such a being. In the universe of my stories, it is a dark curse that strikes magically sensitive beings that drives them to consume the flesh of their fellow men.

As fans of Goblet of Fire will recall, the Salem Witches Institute was the first American magical school introduced in the series, long before the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was mentioned in Pottermore. I first mentioned the boy's only counterpart of Salem, the Seven Hills Wizarding Academy, in The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone.​

 

UNION AND DISUNION

The 1763 Treaty of Paris changed everything.

In the agreement that brought the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War) to a final close, the whole political landscape of North America was radically transformed. Save for a small pair of islands off Newfoundland, the territory of New France now formed a colony under the control of the British Crown, effectively united with the English-speaking colonies to her south. Because of the loyalty clauses contained in the Great Ordnance and the Separation Act of 1692, magicals of New France found themselves a foreign society on British sovereign territory. Noting that, King Louis XV of France and King George III of the United Kingdom — both of whom shared a profound concern for magicals and a desire to keep the Statute of Secrecy intact as it solved many more problems than it caused — negotiated a magical addendum to the treaty, thus unifying the New French magical government with the magical government of British North America under the British Crown. An updated version of the Separation Act of 1692 was issued by King George which brought the two ministries and legislatures together as one: The Ministry of Magic for British North America and the North American Wizengamot.

In the last years of his life, Dupré Harlan helped the King draft the new rules that brought Québécois and American together. Before the first New French minister of magical affairs finally passed away in 1764 after a long life, the King elevated Harlan to the nobility of the United Kingdom, declaring him Marquess of Tadoussac; this made him the spiritual equal of any Noble and Most Ancient Magical House (such as the Blacks of Grimmauld) in the British Wizengamot.

Problems instantly started. Even if relations between magical residents of what was now called the "Province of Québec" had always been cordial with the magicals of the Thirteen Colonies, the cultures on both sides of the Appalachians couldn't be more different. While the majority of American magicals were also muggle-born in descent — the terms "no-maj" and "no-maj-born" were becoming quite popular among English speakers in North America to differentiate them from their cousins in the home country — they were still strongly influenced by British and European attitudes as people migrated into the Thirteen Colonies, especially when it came to relations with non-human magicals. Québécois magicals were more accepting of beings such as the Kobaloi and the Dweorg, to say anything of near-humans like Veela and various lunar therianthrope groups. Leaders of the old American Wizengamot weren't willing to share power with such beings; even if democracy had been the rule of the day for a half-century, American magicals didn't want to extend it to non-humans or "half-breeds".

Such a state of affairs ultimately provoked the Goblin Rebellion of 1765 (known later as "Ganthar's Revolution" in Canada), which proved hard for American aurors to put down given sympathies given to the Kobaloi from Québécois and native American magicals concerning traditional freedoms to practice business and magic without interference from humans that had been the law of the land in New France. That would eventually make many magical leaders on both sides of the Appalachians such as Emily Rappaport of Baltimore and Jean-Paul d'Orléans of Lévis press King George III for a renewed separation of the governments given such incompatibility between the two cultures and all they administered.

The American Revolutionary War made such a request ultimately moot.

Thanks again to loyalty clauses imposed on magicals in the Thirteen Colonies — this time where it concerned the Separation Act of 1692 and the Magical Royal Proclamation of 1763 that united the peoples of New France with Britain's other colonies — the British North American Wizengamot found itself a loyal magical government partially inhabiting soil claimed by the newly-formed United States of America. As negotiations for the 1783 version of the Treaty of Paris were made, King George III issued a Magical Royal Proclamation which freed those who saw themselves "magical Americans" from loyalty to the Crown, thus allowing the work to establish the Department of Magic and the Magical Congress of the United States of America to begin in earnest with support of rhabdophiles among American leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The headquarters of the loyal elements of the Wizengamot of British North America shifted north to Québec City, with Jean-Paul d'Orléans made the new Minister for Magic of British North America. Much to the delight of many on both sides of the Appalachian Mountains, Emily Rappaport became the first Secretary of Magic once the American Magical Constitution became law in 1787 and elections were held a year later.

Once again, American and Québécois were friendly neighbours...

Then Rappaport's Law was passed.

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RAPPAPORT'S LAW AND BRITISH NORTH AMERICA

It ultimately started because of a simple love affair.

A low-powered wand-magical named Dorcus Twelvetrees, daughter of the first Keeper of Treasure and Dragots (the director of finance) in the Department of Magic, had fallen in love with a handsome "no-maj" named Bartholomew Barebone.

Said witch never realized until it was much too late that Barebone was himself descent from magicals. Even worse, he was of the blood of the infamous Scourers that were still seen as the bogeymen in the eyes of many magical white Americans, even many years after the First Foresters War.

The reaction of Emily Rappaport's government to what Barebone tried to do in hopes of destroying the Statute of Secrecy seek ultimate revenge for his ancestor's sufferings was understandable...

...even if in the eyes of many Québécois magicals, it was a little over-handed.

In and of itself, Rappaport's Law was meant ultimately to cut down potential interactions between normals and magicals to the bare minimum permitted by the Constitution to ensure no further secrecy breeches such as what Twelvetrees accidentally unleashed. Fine and fair enough. In passing that law, the Magical Congress and Secretary Rappaport had the full support of President George Washington and his secret council of advisors when it came to magical/normal relations such as Benjamin Franklin; all had been protected with the help of Minister Jean-Paul d'Orléans and a handy Fidelius Charm. In fact, on hearing what his friend had to unleash to ensure the ICW didn't violently condemn the new American magical government so soon after it had won legislative independence from Britain, the native of Lévis offered to help ensure the normal Congress and Cabinet of the new republic were let into the secret...but prevented from revealing same with the use of the same charm.

Such a kind offer was turned down flatly by the Magical Congress.

While bothered by that, Minister d'Orléans accepted the refusal from Secretary Rappaport and things continued as normal...

...until aspects of Rappaport's Law began to affect not only those Québécois and native magicals who entreated with the new Department of Magic...but many "no-maj-borns" among white Americans!

This became especially apparent when the staff of Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills were instructed by leaders in the Department of Magic to always confiscate the wands of students while they were dispatched home for vacations; no one was to have a wand until they were certified as having passed the Graduates Class (OWL year at Hogwarts).

While the British North American Ministry had no power nor wished to exercise any power concerning Americans underage magicals and how they were treated by their own government...

...that Rappaport's Law was also enforced on Québécois magicals as well caused a furor in the Ministry of Magical Affairs!

That didn't mention how leaders of native communities still living within the territory of the Province of Québec reacted when those taking instruction in America were so treated, to say anything of other British North American provinces such as Nova Scotia, the recently established New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland...not to mention the Northwest Territories of the United States; relations between those nations and the American government were still being figured out.

The very concept of deliberately disarming a magical — even if someone was seen as being legally underage — in a foreboding land such as North America was viewed by many as totally insane!

Much to the regret of Rappaport and her successor as Secretary of Magic, Elijah Peachtree of Savannah in Georgia — he was voted into the post in the 1799 magical elections — the social backlash against Rappaport's Law from magicals then living in the frontier of America past the Appalachians was considerable. Even if many people understood the need for the Statute of Secrecy for the protection of magicals and normals alike, there were many threats, both magical and non-magical, lurking in the wilderness that could kill someone if they didn't have their primary means of defence at hand.

Such had been recognized since the days of New France and was finally codified into law to ensure American attitudes didn't influence things too much in Québec. The Decree for Underage Sorcery in Emergency Situations was issued with Wizengamot approval by Minister d'Orléans in 1794 in the wake of a vicious Wendigo attack on farmers settling the upper Saguenay valley near Lac Saint-Jean, that stopped by a former fourth-year Seven Hills student, Harold Scott of Chicoutimi.

As many Québécois families began to withdraw children from American magical schools in protest over Rappaport's Law — with Hogwarts and a more liberalized Beauxbâtons becoming the school of choice; the latter became more open to née moldues thanks to the upheavals of the French Revolution — the backlash in America saw disenfranchised no-maj-borns and their families gladly join the United Empire Loyalists on the trek to inhabit lands in what later came to be Upper Canada (modern-day southern Ontario) and the Atlantic provinces. Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills took large hits in enrolment, which nearly closed the two same-gender schools due to their popularity with Québécois students.

While many magical Americans leaders were relieved to see the dissenters go north and no longer bother them, there was a small group of "pure" Scourer descendants — the first signs of a pureblood elite forming in that nation — who had remained hidden among their fellow magicals all this time who saw an opportunity to gain power not only over their fellow Americans but over the monsters from old New France who hunted their forefathers into near extinction decades before. Liaising with normal relatives had been difficult given their "no-maj" Scourer relatives now viewed magicals of all stripes as evil...but there were sympathetic ears among normal Americans who wanted to complete the work of the Revolutionary War and unleash what would later be termed "Manifest Destiny".

The stage for the magical side of the War of 1812 had been set.

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THE SECOND FORESTERS WAR

The causes for the War of 1812 between the United Kingdom and the United States were many. Britain was then locked in a struggle against Emperor Napoleon of France for the future of Europe. Because of that, a blockade of the Continent had been unleashed by the Royal Navy to ensure no war materials could get to France. That hurt American businesses who had been trading with the French since the Revolutionary War. Added to that were issues about impressing American sailors to serve on British warships, never mind continued British support of native Americans moving to fight to protect and preserve their territories and keep the white men on the east side of the Appalachian Mountains!

To many in the American government, conquering the British territories in North America was a way of ensuring the then-world's greatest power would never threaten the still-young republic without understanding all the consequences.

For "pure" Scourers wanting to wreck the magical government of British North America, it was a perfect situation to exploit. In an ironic twist, the Statute of Secrecy was on their side. Clauses that established the treaty in 1689 always demanded that all signatory governments had to submit to ultimately the will of their hereditary (or elected in the case of places like Switzerland and America) head-of-state to ensure the overall magic embedded in the land of a particular nation could be used to help enforce the Statute among magicals subconsciously; this was a guarantee insisted on by sympathetic monarchs to ensure no magical rebellion against them could be unleashed. If the former territory of New France was conquered by the United States and the future King George IV (now ruling the nation as Prince Regent in the place of his ailing father) submitted to the wishes of President James Madison for the "few acres of snow", the many social threats from the north — the egalitarian thought of Québécois magicals towards other magical beings, the free magical sentient colonies allowed to practice their own spellcraft without any sense of control from Québec City itself, the "traitor" no-maj-borns and their families who were a "clear and present danger" to the preservation of the Statute of Secrecy — would be all eliminated. North America would be theirs.

At the declaration of war was made in Washington, a Scourer who had inserted himself among the "War Hawks" (members of the normal Congress who wanted to see British North America conquered and brought in as new territories of the Union) managed to persuade President Madison to use his only real authority over the Department of Magic — a Magical Executive Order — to launch a war on the magical side. With that done (much to the dismay of many in the Magical Congress, who still had friends in the North American Wizengamot and among those who moved north), a magical army was mustered.

Naturally, such a declaration didn't go over well.

While disappointed that his counterpart in America had been blindsided in such a way, Minister of Magical Affairs Carl Eastey of Bedford near Halifax quickly acted to protect his people from the coming invasion. Copying the strategy normal British leaders elected to prosecute to keep territory free of the Americans until Napoleon was dealt with, Eastey got the Prince Regent to issue a Magical Royal Proclamation that would allow a volunteer magical militia to be mustered to defend the colonies from potential invasion from the south. That saw descendants of the Foresters who fought the Scourers years before rapidly learn their ancestors' skills; hearing of those warriors, the Prince Regent ordered the formation of the "Canadian Forester Fencibles", a home guard regiment that would hold the line until someone made Madison see reason. Because of the knowledge of the Foresters and the desire among all to see their homes and families protected, the British stood their ground, causing the Americans to wreck themselves at places such as Bayham on Lake Erie in Upper Canada, Potton on Lac Memphrémagog in Lower Canada, Gagetown in New Brunswick and Port-Royal in Nova Scotia.

During these battles, magical interrogators got to work investigating what had caused American magicals to lash out against their neighbours after over a century of peace. With officials from the ICW on their side, the Foresters soon discovered that an old enemy had risen to cause havoc. Once the Crown was informed, the Prince Regent granted permission for the Fencibles to become the "Regiment of Canadian Foresters" for offensive duties in America. Simultaneously, the ICW moved to contact President Madison and warn him of what was being done to manipulate his government against its better wishes. The timing couldn't have been worse; the British had burned parts of Washington down on 24 August 1814 and Madison wasn't in a very receptive mood even if he was a secret rhabdophile and was good friends with Secretary Elijah Peachtree. Atop that, the magical Scourers secretly allied with the War Hawks who had been monitoring things in Washington moved to block such a meeting...which is when a company of Foresters appeared to save the delegation from Geneva.

Not to mention save the President and Secretary Peachtree from Killing Curses!

Once it was all over with, Madison gladly rescinded his Magical Executive Order. Atop his own personal gratitude for such gallant behaviour by the Foresters, support for the war on the normal side of the security divide was dying, running the conflict was ruining the country's finances and people simply wanted things to go back to normal. Atop that, Napoleon had been deposed and Britain was able to go on the offensive in North America. Peace was negotiated between the Department of Magic and the Ministry of Magical Affairs some months before the Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve Day in 1814. While Rappaport's Law was kept in place in America, amendments were made to allow "foreign" magicals studying at Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills to keep their wands when they returned home for vacation as long as they followed the letter of the law while in American territory; underage Québécois magicals were always made to hand their wands to their parents when they went south of the border. To better maintain relations with the White House, a group of federal marshals who swore their magic to the service of both the normal and magical versions of the Constitution was established, forming an independent watchdog organization free of Department of Magic influence and operationally answerable to the President; this would ensure that the Statute was maintained for both sides without influence by troublemakers in the Department or the Magical Congress. Atop that, migration into British North America by American magicals — especially a growing number of no-maj-borns who had become very disenfranchised with the new republic — was permitted as long as those people didn't use the territory of old New France as a base to cause trouble on either side of the border. In return, the Prince Regent allowed the Foresters to remain mobilized for two years to help American aurors and the new Magical Federal Marshal Service go forth and locate those Scourers who had provoked such a useless and senseless conflict in the first place.

Among those who were rounded up for a complete obliviation of all knowledge of magic was Dorcus Twelvetrees' old "lover" Bartholomew Barebone. Once he was effectively rendered a mental vegetable, he was dumped in the wilderness. Regretfully, as wouldn't be learned for years to come, relatives of Barebone kept the knowledge of magic alive and allowed new secret societies of "no-maj" Scourers to remain intact and work for the day the Statute of Secrecy could be overturned.

Twelvetrees herself would eventually settle in Bayham in Upper Canada, living the rest of her life in relative quiet, passing away in 1842. Her descendants would eventually be ennobled in 1867 as the Clan Twelvetrees of Elginmoor.

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

I created the phrase "lunar therianthrope" as a sort of "politically correct" term for all were-beasts in Harry Potter and the Icemaidens. "Therianthrope" is derived from "therianthropy", the mythological ability of humans to metamorphose into other animals via shape-shifting. In effect, the word "therianthrope" would be the "scientific" name for an animagus.

As one could easily conclude, a "rhabdophile" is the complete opposite of a rhabdophobe.

As "NEWT" and "OWL" seem to be more befitting for use in Hogwarts, I coined more generic terms for magicals reaching the fifth and seventh years of magical studies for foreign schools. The Graduates Class, as noted above, is the equivalent of the OWL year of study in Hogwarts. The Masters Class (for boys) or Mistresses Class (for girls) are NEWT year equivalents; gender bias is used according to the actual person one is thinking of as an alumnus of such a group.

A regiment of Fencibles is an infantry militia unit tasked for defensive purposes against invasion by a foreign power; it is not meant to be deployed overseas. The term was derived from "defensible". It came into vogue in the mid-Eighteenth Century and were ready to stand in defence of Britain against Napoleon around the turn of the century. Members of the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles were involved in the defence of Canada during the War of 1812; their predecessors were some of the original Fencibles who were involved in the defence of the mother country from Scotland.​

 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MAGICAL CANADIAN IDENTITY

With peace once more reigning over the English-speaking and French-speaking parts of North America, the British North American Wizengamot and the Ministry of Magical Affairs began to capitalize on the good mood felt by many in the wake of the Second Foresters War. Celebrating the assistance rendered to the Foresters by various magical species in putting down the Scourers, the Statute of the Noble Tribes was made law in 1815 in answer to the passing of the Magical Beings, Beasts and Spirits Act in Britain four years earlier. Unlike the British legislation, the North American law recognized many more magical species as "beings" with full rights to practice their own spellcraft without restrictions save for adherence to the Statute of Secrecy. This law convinced members of dozens of sentient species from centaurs to merpeople to hags and "civil" vampires to migrate to the British North American colonies, establishing their own enclaves within magical and normal villages across the land. There were incidents of friction as such beings made new homes, but they drew inspiration from the Kobaloi and the Dweorg — whose cousins in Europe were quite antagonistic — to cast aside the old animosities and create a "magical multiculturalism" that predated such a concept in the normal world by over a century.

While the ICW and the major European powers who maintained relations with Québec wondered what was going through the heads of Canadian magical leaders by allowing such freedoms, powers such as Qīng China, Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan were watching developments in North America with keen interest. On both the normal and magical fronts, China was being encroached on both from the sea and from Russia by the European powers; while trade was the name of the game in the normal world, forcing Chinese magicals to adhere to more "civilized" forms of spellcraft and obey a strict adherence to the Statute of Secrecy (which the Qīng court had reluctantly signed in 1694) caused much friction with British and Portuguese colonialists at Hong Kong and Macao, sparking potential threats of intervention by magical forces of the European powers. While spared from direct confrontations thanks to harsh policies of no contact enforced against Westerners, both Korea and Japan were finding it more difficult to have their voices heard in Geneva. The strong adherence to more traditional forms of spellcraft by magicals of both nations and the lack of any ruling "pureblood" gentry in either country made it "more difficult" for the Statute to be enforced in the eyes of European leaders; the sooner such "heretic" ways were done away with, the better. Fortunately, enforcement of even major violations of the Statute was seen as a national affair; for all its influence, the ICW didn't have much in the way of law enforcement personnel at its call to sweep in when trouble started and many of the governments represented in Geneva — especially those governments in Europe whose leaders complained the loudest about such "magical deviancy" — didn't wish to give the international body that sort of power.

Other cultures seen as magical "backwaters" in Geneva such as the aboriginal nations of Oceania, the "separate-but-equal" Ministries of Magic for British colonies of Australia and New Zealand and remote areas of Russia also watched events in North America with great curiosity. While officers of the Ministérstvo Volshébnykh Del ("Ministry of Magical Affairs") in Sankt-Peterbúrg was trying to enforce the accepted European-style magical teachings on the Tsar's citizens, the living example of what Québec was doing was becoming more well known thanks to Russian magical traders making contact with British North American magicals through Alaska. And while those directing magical colonization from Europe was moving to not make the "mistakes" France made in the 1690s with New France when it came to how magic was practised in Africa and Asia — the degree of which wouldn't be understood for years — Danish leaders surprised the ICW by going totally against the trend!

In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark had been severed from Norway as the map of Europe was redrawn, with the old Viking colony of Iceland remaining under Copenhagen's control. Hearing of things happening in North America under British rule, the Huldufólk on that island in the Arctic pressed King Frederick VI for the same legal freedoms Québec enjoyed from London. Smarting from the loss of Norway and being forced to submit to the whims of allied powers — and with his own magical leaders angry because of the loss of Norway, which spelled the loss of the Durmstrang Institutt for Magiske Studier as the old joint kingdom's "national" magical academy — the King issued the Magiske Kongelig Anordning af Islandsk Selvstyre ("Magical Royal Decree of Icelandic Self-Government") in 1817, which sent shockwaves through the ICW. Naturally, leaders in Québec as well as Běijīng, Hansŏng and Edo extended hands of friendship with counterparts in Reykjavík, promoting trade and exchange between North America, Asia (while respecting Japanese and Korean isolationist feelings) and Iceland that enhanced wealth of all sides and allowed Britain, Denmark and even America to benefit.

Sadly, Britain and the other major European powers moving to create worldwide empires failed to follow such a positive example when it came to their new colonies in Africa and elsewhere...though, as said above, the true horrible extent of what the Europeans did to enforce their will on their new colonies wouldn't become well known for many years to come.

As the local and international magical economy developed, the use of "Canada" to describe the British North American colonies as a whole in magical realms became popular worldwide. While there was no Province of Canada until 1841 (when Upper and Lower Canada were united under one government in answer to the Rebellions of 1837) and the term wouldn't apply to the Atlantic colonies (to say anything of the British settlements on the Pacific coast and in the Red River valley near Lake Winnipeg), the terms "Canada" and "Canadian" began to replace "Québec"/"British North America" and "Québécois"/"British North American" when it came to describing magical natives of the lands north of the United States. By the time the Civil War broke out, the accepted unofficial name of the magical government controlling the territory of British North America from Saint John's to Victoria was the "Canadian Ministry of Magical Affairs" and the "Canadian Wizengamot".

The War Between the States would make that unofficial change reality...

...and also herald the coming of things beyond even magic.

****

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND THE SEPARATION ACT OF CANADA, 1867

The history of Canada in both the normal and magical realms has often been heavily tied into the fate of its more populous southern neighbour. From the Seven Years' War to the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812, whatever happened in America would spill over into what would become Canada one way or another. The Civil War was no different.

Driven by the fundamental questions of slavery, how its existence affected states rights in relation to the federal government and how such a "peculiar institution" would be allowed to either evolve or die, the Civil War began in earnest after a home-taught lawyer from Kentucky and later resident of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president in 1861. As had been done since the passing of Rappaport's Law in 1790 when it came to the election of a new president, Secretary of Magic Allison Goldstein of Albany in New York went to the White House to introduce herself to the new chief executive and brief him in on America's hidden magical society; this was done as a show of respect to the highest office in the land as dictated by both the magical and normal sides of the Constitution.

To Goldstein's shock, the President revealed he knew more than what would be expected of a "no-maj".

Far much more...

As the stunned Salem alumnus listened in growing horror — this whole situation was something her department simply had NO idea about whatsoever — Lincoln briefed her in on the hidden side of his life, starting from the murder of his mother Nancy in 1818 thanks to something many American magicals had no concrete proof really existed despite the many rumours to the contrary: A daywalker vampire. These were immortal, undead beings immune to the Sun who lived normal lives during daylight hours only to allow his/her hunger to overcome them at night; unlike the normal run of demon-possessed vampires, there was no interdimensional taint in the magic of daywalkers. Thanks to the teachings of a daywalker named Henry Sturges (who had been turned in the early Seventeenth Century when he came to the New World), Lincoln had dedicated himself to culling the undead whenever they stepped out of line and murdered innocent people. What was worse, under the leadership of a multi-millennia old being calling himself "Adam Sewell", a group of daywalkers were moving to help push the southern states to create the Confederacy. Such would be ultimately fed on the blood of African slaves.

Lincoln's question at the end: "Madame Secretary, I know your people wish to live your lives in peace and away from normal influence...but I must ask you this: Will you be patriots...or support vampires?"

To Secretary Goldstein, there was only one possible answer to her new chief executive.

In the wake of that meeting, the Department of Magic was mobilized to ferret out the threat from Sewell and his allies while also keeping the existence of magic secret from the general population; given the passions between the states, it was a recipe for a disaster that made what Bartholomew Barebone tried to unleash years earlier seem like a summer lark in comparison. Fortunately for American magicals, the lack of state magical departments made sure potential dissent against Washington could be avoided save for the odd no-maj-born whose relatives were fighting under people like Robert E. Lee.

The 1860s were a heady time to be in North America. Sensing the potential danger once she was alerted by her advisors, Queen Victoria ordered the mobilization of a new incarnation of the Canadian Foresters — there were veterans from the Second Foresters War still around to teach the new generation some tricks — to assume guard positions on the frontier with the Union and ensure escaping slaves would not be dragged back into the charnel house of the would-be Confederacy, plus stop allies of Sewell from attacking northern states through Canada. The ICW and the Watcher's Council who supported the legendary Slayer gave their full support to President Lincoln and his hidden moves to destroy Sewell and his allies while allowing more peacefully-minded daywalkers like Henry Sturges and non-demon possessed "normal" vampires the right to exist unmolested. Lincoln himself soon became an object of profound admiration even among European purebloods; when an Unspeakable from Prussia saw the Great Emancipator in action around the time of the Battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863 — when Lincoln destroyed Sewell with a silver pocket watch punched into the vampire's gut — he reported to friends in Geneva that while the lawyer from Springfield may be a normal, he had the strength to take down a giant!

During this time, Lincoln communicated with Queen Victoria concerning the colonies north of the United States and their relationships with London and Washington. Noting there was a movement to create a form of self-government while staying within the British Empire under the leadership of John A. MacDonald and George-Étienne Cartier and noting the magical Canadian government was independent of oversight from the Ministry of Magic, the Great Emancipator urged her to allow Canada to be as independent as possible on the normal side to ensure the peace for ages to come.

Even if she had once been angry at Lincoln for allowing the Trent Affair to nearly drag Britain and America to war back in 1861 (which was around the time the Queen's husband, Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, died thanks to the poor sanitary conditions of Windsor Castle), Her Majesty responded. Starting with the provinces of Canada (soon to be split into Ontario [old Upper Canada] and Québec [old Lower Canada]), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia two years after the Civil War finally ended in America (later joined by Prince Edward Island in 1873), the new Dominion of Canada would eventually come to span from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean up to the Arctic Ocean within a decade and more, incorporating British settlements on the Pacific coast (later to become the heart of British Columbia) and the Red River settlements (to later morph into the province of Manitoba). Newfoundland would eventually hold out and try to exist as an independent dominion until 1949.

On the magical side, the government of British North America officially renamed itself the "Ministry of Magical Affairs of the Dominion of Canada" on Dominion Day (1 July 1867), with its legislative organ taking the formal name "the Right Honourable the Elders Magical of the Dominion of Canada in Wizengamot assembled" (the "Wizengamot of the Dominion" for short). For tradition's sake, the headquarters of the Ministry remained in Québec City even if the normal capital of the Dominion was located in Ottawa. To ensure that there was local oversight over the Ministry of Magical Affairs, the Queen issued Magical Letters Patent to coincide with the Separation Act of Canada of 1867 that gave her Governor General the magical legal right to act on behalf of the Crown when the ultimate executive power of the Dominion was required in times of emergencies.

Unlike most older European-descent magical realms, the Separation Act of Canada incorporated a basic civil rights code for all magicals and normals alike within its clauses, plus the words of the Statute of the Noble Tribes in its main articles, a first for any such magical government worldwide. The inherent right to self-defence in case of either external attack or internal rebellion was also enshrined in the Separation Act, a "proper magical militia and naval militia" to be on reserve standby for full mobilization only when permitted by the Crown through the Governor General; with that done, the Canadian Foresters were legalized in a way that could not be taken from them unless the magicals of the land chose to do same. What had been in practice for centuries was now enshrined in magical law; when put to a national vote, it was unanimously accepted.

"If only Mister Lincoln had lived to see that," the Queen commented when a report of of how her magical subjects in Canada had accepted the new way of things finally reached her.

She couldn't have been more mistaken about the Great Emancipator...

****

THE PRAETORIAN GUARDIAN AND THE UNDYING LORD: POWERS GREATER THAN MAGIC

To properly understand events in the magical realms of Canada after the American Civil War, we must look beyond the realms of magic on Earth to explore things that are truly beyond magic.

Throughout the history of magicals on Earth and Nerio, there were the odd and obscure reports of beings who possessed power often mistaken as magic at first. However, as understanding grew concerning what magic was and how it affected living things thanks to the rise of schools like Hogwarts, some people quickly learned there were beings on Earth that literally were BEYOND even the most powerful magicals throughout history such as Merlin Ambrosius and Koschéj Bújanov.

One such being was the so-called "Praetorian Guardian". Born as Résav'l in a Paleolithic village twenty-five millennia ago in what today is the Crimea, this farmer was contacted by alien powers said to be as old as the Universe itself. Subjected to a strange "Test" by these powers, Résav'l was allowed to literally evolve in a being of omnipotent cosmic power to defend all of Earth from interdimensional threats of any type, especially from those celestial beings who sought to enhance their own powers by making humans (normal and magical alike) submit to them via manipulation of one's very faith in the existence of greater powers such as "gods" or "demons". Because of Résav'l's considerable interference — his ability to warp reality was enough to seal dimensional breaches and he could literally devastate a continent were he to lose control over himself — said beings found themselves harshly curtailed from overtly influencing the evolution of mankind from Nature's intended path.

By the time this nigh-immortal Crimean had effectively adopted the modern alias "Vladímir Rússalovich Taychéshko" during the reign of Tsar Pjotr I of Russia shortly after the passing of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692, he had taken up residence in a stone tower located near the ancient city of Rjazán' to the southeast of Moskvá; in marking this, he was awarded the honorific "Lord Rjazán'" by the Tsar for his actions which benefited Russia. Over time, the Praetorian Guardian's existence and unpredictable interference in the affairs of magicals worldwide brought comfort to many even if those magical lords in power (especially those who were dependent on interdimensional powers) found that quite annoying.

It didn't come close to what a contemporary of Taychéshko's from the island of Rügen off the Baltic Sea coast of Germany unleashed over the years.

Unlike Résav'l, Tash Ri would gain both his quasi-immortality and his cosmic-level reality-warping powers thanks to intensive exposure to an alien meteorite that crashed into the island which was composed totally of ebony-form mesonium, particles of which became infused right into every cell of his body. A heavy transuranic element many now theorize was created at the birth of the Universe in the Big Bang, this material would eventually earn the nickname "atom of mind and soul" by magical researchers worldwide, thanks most of all to Tash Ri and what he himself did with samples of mesonium from his blood. Able to effectively shield his very soul from the mind-warping side effects of ebony meson poisoning, Tash Ri would join his contemporary from the Crimea in fighting demonic beings such as the "Old Ones", freeing Earth from a full takeover from other dimensions and allowing all sentient beings on the planet to develop their own magic and other metahuman powers.

However, while Résav'l was forever committed to his mission in shielding Earth from interdimensional threats of all sorts (thus would not serve as any sort of "mystery man" in the North American sense as shown in the 1930s), Tash Ri found himself effectively totally alone among his fellow humans. Unable to age or die, unable to father children with his many wives over the centuries, the immortal future Pomeranian began to use the mesonium born of his own blood to see if others like him could gain such powers. While many who were given such power went insane because they couldn't handle the influence of ebony mesonium, Tash Ri gained a "son" in a Tibetan named Hosan in the Third Millennium BCE. Emboldened by Hosan's ability to master the powers given to him by the black crystals in his blood without going insane, Tash Ri continued his quest.

Since that age before the dawn of modern history, the "Undying Lord" — as normals and magicals came to call the immortal Pomeranian on realizing what he really was — continued to take interest in people he believed could master the power of ebony mesonium. Due to his interaction with normal societies over the ages, the Undying Lord became a valued agent of government as the Kingdom of Prussia evolved; by the time of the rule of King Friedrich Wilhelm I in the Eighteenth Century CE, Tash Ri had assumed the name "Josef Wilhelm Freiherr von Taserich" and had been awarded Rügen as his barony. Due to his ability to defeat any known form of magic, Taserich became an ace card for the Prussian monarchs (and later the emperors of Germany) to use against local magicals, always available to force leaders of the Zauberrat to stay in line and remember their loyalty to the Throne; much that the guarantees of loyalty to the head-of-state of the nations of the world as promoted in the Statute of Secrecy always worked, it was wise to have someone around in case things got out of control.

To the normal-borns of the German Empire, "Onkel Josef" was the one being who kept the arrogant pureblood traditionalists always in check and allowed common magical people to live relatively free within the bounds of the Statute. To pureblood lords who saw themselves as masters of magical societies on the Continent, this "freak muggle fraudster" was someone whose very existence was seen as a constant threat to their hold on power. Sadly, this was one threat they couldn't eliminate; the few times German leaders tried to force Taserich to bow to their authority saw aurors ruthlessly stripped of their magic and send back to their leaders with a dark threat from the Undying Lord to repeat same to all magical nobles of the Empire. Eventually, the magical lords of Germany admitted defeat even if they constantly worked to ensure normal-borns stayed away from Taserich.

Then came the year 1865...

...when the immortal Pomeranian took interest in one Abraham Lincoln.

****

THE SCORE AND FOUR

It all ultimately started in the First Dynasty of ancient Egypt.

During the reign of Pharaoh Djer at the start of the Third Millennium BCE, a powerful sorcerer in service to the pharaoh was attacked by a demon-powered vampire and transformed into one of the undead.

Thanks to his meeting a mysterious immortal from a land far beyond the north shores of the Mediterranean and having been irradiated by ebony mesonium, said sorcerer was able to use his power to shield himself from the Sun and live as the first "daywalker" vampire, a being who still required blood to survive yet could interact better with normal beings. Even more, because he wasn't effectively "possessed" by demonic magic, those such as he would never fall victim to the demon-powered Slayer used by the successors to the Shadow Men to seek out the undead and render them permanently dead.

Turning his sister Vadoma into someone like him, the sorcerer would later take on the Hebrew name "Adam" and would strive over the ages to create a nation of beings such as himself so they could drive away the "savages" of the night.

Unfortunately, a later incident between Adam and Tash Ri made the first daywalker a potential enemy of the Undying Lord, though the immortal Pomeranian chose not to destroy his old student in the end, believing that Adam would eventually be destroyed by future rivals or would learn his "mistakes" (whatever they were) and evolve into a better being.

Such didn't happen.

By the time the American Civil War was threatening to tear the United States apart, the daywalker now calling himself "Adam Sewell" was moving to unleash a basic transformation on humankind that would upset far too much. In desperation after researching the history of the being who turned him centuries before, Abraham Lincoln's teacher Henry Sturges went to Rügen to obtain the Undying Lord's help in destroying Sewell. While not interested in helping settling a "provincial" dispute even if he had aided in the creation of daywalkers in the first place millennia before, Josef von Taserich did take interest in Lincoln when they first met after Sewell had been effectively destroyed before the Battle of Gettysburg. Sensing Lincoln had been touched by a less-dense version of mesonium from a source unknown to the Undying Lord — it would be traces of ruby mesonium that had got into the biosphere of Illinois from neighbouring Wisconsin — Taserich offered the American president a chance to "remain eternally strong" against the creatures who had killed his mother many years before. Realizing that the threat wouldn't go away even if Sewell himself was gone, Lincoln agreed to be "gifted" by Taserich.

Said gift went into full effect after Lincoln was "killed" by John Wilkes Booth on 15 April 1865; the president's soul remained anchored to his body thanks to the mesonium now in his blood as it worked to heal his wounds and restore him to full life and health. Rising from his tomb in Springfield after his "funeral" in Springfield, the "dead" president found himself transformed into something beyond either normal or magical. Possessing limited reality-warping powers and a high level of telekinesis, empathic senses and boosted strength, Lincoln went forth to seek Sewell's surviving followers, then teaming with Confederate veterans forming the Ku Klux Klan to maintain "white" power throughout the South.

As he said when he crashed a meeting in Tennessee in 1865, speaking with the power of what seemed to be God Himself in the eyes of the Southern bandits, "My friends, are you patriots or vampires?"

Soon, all the hidden worlds in America were reeling with the news that echoed from the halls of the Department of Magic to the halls of the International Confederation of Wizards in Geneva...!

The Rail-Splitter had come.

Throughout the rest of the 1860s and almost all the following two decades, the man in funeral black became a living nightmare to the undead. Lincoln proved to be too strong for even the infamous "Scourge of Europe" when the man born Liam O'Connor tried to seek fresh targets in the New World alongside his sire Darla (née Julia Kramer); some claim the Rail-Splitter's epic duel with Angelus during the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871 laid the effective foundation for the Irish vampire's falling to the wrath of Clan Kalderash in 1898. Much to the horror of the successors to the Shadow Men, the-then living Heiress of Sineya, Belle Malone of Columbus in Ohio, could not slow the former president down; the Slayer and the Rail-Splitter crossed paths in 1875 in Cleveland...though thanks to Malone being "on the side of the angels", Lincoln helped her paint the town green with spilled ichor that sent vampires — even Henry Sturges himself! — fleeing for their existences. As the ICW and the Department of Magic watched in awed disbelief at what had been unleashed by the Undying Lord, "dark" magical creatures throughout the Union fled for safety in Canada in hopes of not attracting this tragic monster's wrath.

Soon dispatched to try to calm the former lawyer down and prevent him from unleashing a massive Statute breach due to his destructive actions against the undead in 1871 was Margaret "Mollie" Bean, an alumnus of Salem (Mistresses Class of 1854) who had briefly "served" as an infantry soldier in Henry Heth's Division of III Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia (disguised as a man called "Melvin Bean") while seeking to destroy the vampires infiltrating General Robert E. Lee's command before Gettysburg. Meeting with the Rail-Splitter in Detroit, Bean volunteered to become his companion and liaison with the Department of Magic; it was hoped by both Secretary of Magic Donald Sevenheels and President Ulysses S. Grant that Bean could help guide Lincoln into more positive pursuits and prevent a relaunch of the Civil War on the magical side of things. Fondly remembering the plucky North Carolinian no-maj-born from Tarboro who had won the Medal of Honour for her fighting bravely while wounded at Gettysburg (Bean was the first woman to have won America's highest award for valour), Lincoln began to study self-control even if he continued to cut a murderous swath through the ranks of the undead.

During this time — as some leaders in both the Department of Magic and the Magical Congress would later come to curse the man for — Lincoln began to preach to magical beings of many stripes to seek better relations with human magicals, pointing to what had been developing north of the Union over the previous two centuries as an example of how all magical beings could live in freedom and equality. Making speeches that inspired many, the Rail-Splitter won admirers across the board, especially among magical native American leaders who longed for the return of traditional forms of spellcraft that had been nearly lost over the decades due to the harsh imposition of Rappaport's Law throughout the Union (with the ultimate desire to have all magicals armed with wands that could be traced by legal authorities even when one was seen as an adult). Forming a deep friendship with famed Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta tribal leader Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotȟake, Lincoln set up a new home in the Greasy Grass Settlement on the shores of Lake Traverse (on the border between Minnesota and the Dakota Territory [later South Dakota]), though he still remained active in his sweep of America of remaining allies of Adam Sewell.

Then in the latter part of the 1880s, the Rail-Splitter came to Canada...

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

Huldufólk ("hidden folk") are elves in Icelandic and Faroese folklore. In the universe of my stories, this term is used to describe magical sentient beings (human, part-human and non-human) living on Iceland and the Faeroe Islands as a group.

Hansŏng is the Chosŏn era name for the city known today as Sŏul (Seoul); please note that I make use of the McCune-Reischauer Romanization system for even Korean place names and personal names. Edo is the pre-Meiji name for Tōkyō.

Adam Sewell is the full name I gave to the main antagonist character in the Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter movie. I doubt that the man would have been able to live in Nineteenth Century America with just a single name; it would have attracted too much attention to him. His family name is taken from the actor who portrayed him in the movie.

Koschéj Bújanov is my name for the Russian equivalent of Merlin. He is named after the archetypal male antagonist in Slavic folklore. He is called "Koschéj the Deathless" because of his use of a type of horcrux to remain alive; according to one tale, "his soul is hidden separate from his body inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buján in the ocean." "Buján" is a mythological island which appears and disappears and is often related to the tales of the Afterworld. The tales of Buján may be physically based on Rügen in the Baltic Sea at the northeast corner of Germany.

And no, Koschéj is NOT Josef Wilhelm Freiherr von Taserich in disguise. Taserich first appeared in Wizards and Avalonians III: The Black Maidens and the Rail-Splitter. I've always designed him to be Major Raeburn's main antagonist. As an aside, Freiherr means "free lord"; this is the German equivalent of a British baron. And Onkel is German for "uncle".

The word Zauberrat is the common name of the legislatures that ruled magicals of the various magical states of the Holy Roman Empire throughout the centuries it existed. The name was retained in the post-1870 united German magical legislature and remained as such until the Nazis assumed power in 1933. The word itself translates as "magical council".

Vladímir Rússalovich Taychéshko (Lord Rjazán') first appeared in my fanfic Wanderers.

The concept of mesonium was introduced in The Senior Year; the Crystal Palace that Nicole McTavish (who appeared in the story "Together The Outland") was bound to is forged of that material.

The real names of Angel and Darla used here are my choice.

Mollie "Melvin" Bean was a real woman. While her history remains much of a mystery, she joined many women in disguising herself as a man and serving as an infantry soldier in the Confederate Army during the War Between the States; she would serve as part of the 47th North Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment for the latter years of the war. I fell in love with the character as Harry Turtledove introduced her in The Guns of the South, my favourite alternate history novel. My interpretation of Ms. Bean in my stories is my own creation and is not mean to detract from her deeds as a person.

Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotȟake is the real name of the man known more commonly in American history as Sitting Bull. I base this interpretation on him from Itsme66's wonderful fanfic story The Mandatory Marriage Contract Fic; this interpretation of the famous Lakȟóta chief is used with permission. That story is marked as one of my favourites at Fanfiction.net.​

 

CANADA AFTER THE SEPARATION ACT OF 1867

While many elements of magical societies in America were being rocked hard by the Rail-Splitter's ongoing rampage against the undead, inhabitants under the administration of the newly "independent" magical government of the Dominion of Canada were looking at an undiscovered country that loomed before them full of promise the likes of which no magical could imagine.

Now effectively free of any constraints save for the commands of Queen Victoria's chosen governor general, Charles Monck, the 4th Viscount Monck — the native of Templemore in Ireland's County Tipperary was very supportive of whatever was done to enhance the lives of all Her Majesty's Magical Subjects of the Dominion and all allied magicals, human and non-human alike — and the logical suggestions of leaders of the International Confederation of Wizards at Geneva, the Canadian Ministry of Magical Affairs and the Canadian Wizengamot got to work in creating an open-minded society that would not only allow magicals of all stripes to prosper within the understandable constraints of the Statute of Secrecy, but also welcome foreign magicals who might want to seek a new destiny from whatever oppression they endured in their old homelands in Europe and elsewhere.

While the obvious problems of the non-"Canadian" territories of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Rupert's Land and British Columbia meant the Ministry's geographical influence was initially limited just to the four original provinces in the summer of 1867, such changed rapidly as the normal side of the British Empire moved to divest all territory north of America to Ottawa's overall legal control. Temporary magical ministries in those colonies who had yet to join the Dominion were set up, though those personnel were folded into the central Ministry in Québec City as those colonies became new provinces of Confederation or were merged into the newly-created Northwest Territories to manage the old trade territory of the Hudson's Bay Company. Like America, Canada did not possess subordinate provincial or territorial ministries of magic; it was seen as an unnecessary extra layer of government between the leaders in Québec City and magical citizens of the Dominion, even with a much greater overall proportional number of magicals within Canada in comparison to other nations.

By 1870, the administrative organs of government had been restructured to see to the needs of all magicals across the land. The Ministry formed the Dominion Magical Police to serve as the law enforcement arm, which paralleled the creation of the Dominion Police two years earlier on the normal side of things. Inter-species relations and relations between migrant-descent human magicals and native-descent magicals was managed by a single Department of Magical Unity whose only real responsibility was to ensure that any disruptive issues between various groups didn't flare up into rebellion and risk Statute violations. To ensure the common defence against foreign threats and better aide the common order, the Department of Magical National Defence was formed to manage a new part-time "Regiment of Canadian Foresters" that would organize battalion-sized mixed combat groups in each of the provinces and the Northwest Territories, plus help form a naval militia once a special location to build ships was running smoothly. To the shock of observers from Europe, there were no special governmental teams created to suppress the various lunar therianthropes living in the Dominion, to say anything of other "violent" magical sentient beings. Safe houses that had been in existence since the days of New France were there for those people afflicted with lycanthropy and its affiliated illnesses to seek safety against spreading those afflictions to friends and loved ones. Atop that, the inherent rights of beings such as the Kobaloi or the Veela to practice their own forms of magic without undue restriction was enshrined in the basic law of the land. And while the Department of Magical Education was happy to coordinate with American magical schools as well as Hogwarts and other foreign schools as magical children came of age, the drive to create an indigenous Canadian academy that would teach Canadian values to local magicals began.

Right away, trouble began thanks to the furor in America. Vampires had always been seen as equal to other magical beings since the days of New France even if "demon-possessed" vampires were normally culled by law enforcement authorities when they were found if a Slayer wasn't available to deal with them. Daywalker vampires were especially seen as welcome among magical Canadians because of their obvious versatility in law enforcement and combat. Much to the shock of many foreign observers watching over the evolution of the Canadian ministry, the first Director of the Dominion Magical Police was a five-century old daywalker from Castile who settled in Kingston named José Ramón Fernando y Sebastian; he had fought to liberate his homeland during the Reconquista before he was turned by one of Adam Sewell's old allies. Because of that, Sewell's poisonous philosophy didn't gain any traction in the Dominion; those that fought with the five millennia-old daywalker to create the Confederacy that fled to Canada were captured by DMP officers and teleported into the Rail-Splitter's path.

However, when Abraham Lincoln began preaching for greater magical equality in the Union during times he rested, people of magical species on both sides of the border began to agitate for greater freedoms within America. That caused a storm of headaches among leaders in both the Department of Magic in Washington and the Ministry of Magical Affairs in Québec City. They didn't dare get on Lincoln's bad side even to ask him to stop making those speeches; the melancholy that had haunted the Rail-Splitter before his "death" at Ford's Theatre in 1865 had finally found expression in the ebony meson flowing in his veins and anything that upset the man could cause an explosion which could kill all around him. Neither the Department nor the Ministry felt it right or proper to interfere in the other government's affairs; people on both sides of the Great Lakes knew it was the friction between American conservatism and Canadian liberalism that helped unleash the Second Foresters War decades before. While there were many in America who were sympathetic to the cause of magical equality among the species, years of harsh enforcement of Rappaport's Law had ultimately created a culture of inflexibility in the halls of the Department and the Magical Congress, a school of thought that instantly balked at the idea of allowing any sort of greater freedom for any non-human magical out of the understandable fear that doing such threatened the very fabric of the Statute of Secrecy. What was worse in Canadian eyes, there was a growing "pureblood" movement in America who were clearly striving to remove long-entrenched democratic rights for no-maj-borns in the Union, disguising itself with the excuse of "proper" enforcement of Rappaport's Law in the face of "growing agitation" among non-humans. Worst of all, rumours of new generations of Scourers whose ancestors managed to evade the Foresters' brutal sweep of America after 1814 were starting to percolate, causing a growing sense of panic in Washington as various groups began to agitate for even more restrictions on both humans and non-humans alike to ensure no Statute breach, not to mention find a way to suppress the "idiot radicalism" seen as "haunting" the Dominion, which saw some of the pureblood leadership in America move to influence the normal Congress to see if "manifest destiny" could be pressed north of the 49th Parallel.

"There is a new Foresters War coming soon," the first post-1867 Minister of Magical Affairs, Dalton Saint-Pierre of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, advised the first commander of the Foresters, Colonel Oscar Kingsbridge of Edmunston, in 1876. "I suspect it'll start because of some foolish thing the Yankees will provoke. Prepare the Regiment. I want us to be ready."

Such an observation, Kingsbridge would later comment, was quite prophetic.

Then came the "Miracle of 1889"...

****

THE RISE OF THE PROTECTOR OF ALL LIFE

No one among the Niitsitapi of what is Alberta and northeast British Columbia had ANY idea what the Tear of the Stars was.

For as long as the lore elders could recall, the strange cave located near where modern day Fort Saint John on the Alaska Highway in British Columbia now stands had always held the curious metal necklace with the strange crystal on it that pulsed with a power that seemed as old as the very Earth itself.

Try as warriors of the Niitsitapi could to remove the Tear of the Stars from its stone perch in its cave, none succeeded; whenever anyone touched the thing, they were instantly vaporized by a power greater than anything imaginable.

Why was it there?

Who had created such a thing?

Why was it in the lands of the Niitsitapi of all places?

Fortunately, as exchange of knowledge between North America and other lands grew in the wake of first normal contact between the Old World and the New World, information was passed on to the Niitsitapi that revealed the existence of the strange dense crystalline material known as "mesonium" in Europe, whose main sources were in the blood of the Undying Lord Josef von Taserich and his "son", the Immortal Master Hosan Hirosuke, now living in Japan and serving the Heavenly Sovereign Meiji as the Restoration forced that island nation to modernize in the wake of threats from Europe. Thanks to that, it was discovered that the core of the crystal of the Tear of the Stars was ebony mesonium, with a middle shell of a ruby-red crystal, that in turn was encased with an opaque diamond-silver layer.

Still, it didn't explain what the Tear of the Stars was.

And then came that cloudy Wednesday morning in the early summer of 1889...

The area around the Cave of Tears (as the Niitsitapi called the place where the Tear of the Stars had been found) had been recently inhabited by daywalker vampire refugees of the Rail-Splitter's hunt, who formed a small village on the shores of the Peace River near where the Beatton drained into it, some distance from the site of an old Northwest Company trading post. All supporters of Adam Sewell's dream of a "nation of vampires" from the American South and knowing the Dominion Magical Police (not to mention the magical wing of the North-West Mounted Police, founded in 1875) and the Canadian Foresters' "V" Company would send them right into Abraham Lincoln's path, they stayed to themselves, not doing anything to draw the wrath of Niitsitapi bands, thus bring magical warriors and a certain undying lawyer from Illinois down on their collective necks.

Unfortunately, someone was about to expose them.

An orphaned woman named Dean Raeburn.

The woman born sixteen days after Confederation became law in Canada in 1867 — her proper name was "Deannette Antonia Raeburn"; the first name was a contraction of her grandmothers' names "Deanna" and "Annette", which she had come to despise with all her being — was a native of Queenston near Niagara Falls. Descent of Scottish traders who fled to Upper Canada after the Revolutionary War from New Jersey, Dean's father Daniel had been an investor in railroad and shipping companies on both sides of the border and had created quite a tidy pile to become one of the financial elite in the new Dominion. That attracted the jealousy of Dean's paternal uncle Edward, who arranged for the deaths of Dean's parents and twin sister in a fire in 1879. Able to flee thanks to sympathetic friends, Dean headed to the Territories, hoping to avoid her uncle until she found a place of safety. Eventually falling in among the navvies who built the Canadian Pacific Railway across the Prairies during the 1880s, she made her way to Fort William (now part of Thunder Bay), then moved on to Kenora, then Winnipeg and on to Regina, Calgary and finally Edmonton. There, in the old Hudson's Bay Company trading fort, she met a Niitsitapi precognitive who called himself "Long Dream", who sensed a great future about this orphaned girl who had endured many harsh winters in the unforgiving Canadian plains. With that, he escorted her west towards the Peace River valley...

...and a date with destiny.

On Dean's twenty-second birthday (17 July 1889) while riding for fresh food to her hosts who were camped on the Pouce Coupe River near where modern day Dawson Creek stands, she found herself encountering a shanty tavern full of what appeared to be American prospectors from the old Confederacy seeking their fortunes on the shore of the Peace. After greeting them, the native of Ontario felt something call out to her from a nearby cave. Noting her presence, one of the daywalkers decided to have a little "snack". It was then that a man in funeral black appeared on a running horse, swinging a woodsman's axe coated in silver. Hearing the scream of "Rail-Splitter!" from the just-exposed vampires made Dean flee into the cave...where she found a beautiful necklace with a glowing crystal. Hypnotized, she touched the Tear of the Stars...

The explosion of power that followed instantly transformed a hungry orphaned woman who endured over a decade of harsh cold and the constant threat of violation from horny railroad workers into something that matched Lord Rjazán' and Josef von Taserich themselves!

As magical seers around the world all declared on sensing that...

...the Protector of All Life had risen at last.

Now armed with power that seemed to equal the Sun, Dean charged out of the cave to intercept gunshots against a wand-welding woman watching the back of Abraham Lincoln. Stunned to see a local "no-maj" do something like that, Mollie Bean then stood there gaping as the strange girl with the near-Yankee flat accent draw out a chisel-pointed straight sword made of dark grey stone-like metal to physically RIP apart the vampires with brutal cuts at waist-level. Within a minute, the last of the vampires had been destroyed...which is when a cavalry troop of Foresters charged onto the scene riding beautiful pegasii. Before the leader of the troop, Captain Joseph Harlan (a descendant of New France's first minister of magical affairs) could ask what was going on, the strange woman with power that blinded the mage-senses of all the magicals there projected a beam of energy into the Rail-Splitter...which de-crystallized the ebony mesonium in Lincoln's blood to a more mentally-stable "ruby mesonium" state, thus draining the blood lust from the former lawyer and lifting the grief and melancholy that had haunted the man for years. Since he had established strong relations with the Niitsitapi magicals over the previous couple of years, Harlan turned to ask a smiling (and just-arrived) Long Dream this, "Is that the Tear of the Stars, Elder?"

"It's called a Power Jewel, Captain."

That was Dean Raeburn...

...who was about to become something quite unique in Canadian history.

****

THE MIRACLE OF 1889

Steven O'Brien of Galt (now part of modern day Cambridge) in Ontario, who had been elected the third Minister of Magical Affairs in 1887 after serving as Director of Magical Unity for two terms, would have preferred NOT to deal with this particular headache.

There were the positives of what came to be called the "Peace River Incident".

A famous vampire hunter had been rendered sane after being subjected to nearly thirty years of ebony meson poisoning.

A coven of daywalkers who supported the philosophy that nearly saw the United States ripped apart had been destroyed.

Then came the negatives...

Seers were flocking in droves to Canada to seek out this mysterious "Protector of All Life" who had just woken to her power...

Never mind the woman was an orphaned heiress of a large family fortune...

Never mind that said woman's uncle wanted to see her dead...

And given that said woman was a normal of all things...!

The battle lines were instantly drawn up.

On the one side stood all native Canadian magicals shoulder to shoulder — and who were glad to help other human magicals in the Dominion understand what was really going on — all the non-human magicals of Canada, sentient magical creatures like dragons, all the Foresters regardless of their ancestry and the Rail-Splitter himself.

On the other side was the International Confederation of Wizards, egged on by pureblood gentry in Europe, not to mention their slowly-rising American allies who were moving to seize the throttles of power within the Department of Magic.

In the middle was Dean Raeburn.

It was the perfect recipe for a magical war.

The Statute of Secrecy was clear on this matter:

Raeburn was a normal without magical relations, thus she had to be obliviated of knowledge when it came to existence of magic and the magical enclaves hidden around the world.

Everyone soon learned that her bond to the Power Jewel made that impossible!

Try as Canadian authorities might — even when the native of Queenston was receptive of the idea at the start after understanding the concept of mugalophobia — NO MAGIC OF ANY TYPE worked on her!

When ICW agents came to Québec City to force the "muggle" to submit and surrender her strange device, it quickly turned bloody.

To the Europeans, it was like facing the Undying Lord himself!

After confirming with Minister O'Brien that the ICW had no right to override Canadian magical law concerning the fate of any inhabitant within the territory of the Dominion, Raeburn used her Jewel to teleport them back to Europe!

This was after she had been forced to kill two with her "cat's claw" sword, which was forged of an impossibly dense material known to sentient beings on other planets by the term neutronium; it had been forged by the Jewel's omnipotent creators three billion years before — and wasn't THAT a mind-blowing concept! — from the heart of a collapsed star of all things!

"Please don't tell me people in this country are that boorish!" the native of Queenston pleaded to the Chief Witch of the Wizengamot, Jeanne Druvais of Moncton, after another group tried again within days of the original encounter in Québec City...and this time, they came ready to use the "Unforgivable Curses" to make the "muggle freak" submit to them.

Fortunately for Raeburn's personal sense of loyalty to the Dominion — to say anything of the safety of members of the Canadian Wizengamot, not to mention the maintenance of the Statute! — Madame Druvais immediately assured the native of Queenston that local magicals were quite open-minded in comparison to European purebloods.

After getting an immediate crash course on European magical blood politics, Raeburn scowled as she revealed her late father had bred horses for a hobby and had long learned to disallow close relations a chance to mate to avoid weak foals. As members of the Wizengamot and others showed Raeburn how Canadians loathed the European (and now American) attitudes towards "mudbloods" (to borrow the common British vulgarity for normal-borns), the banker's daughter proposed such people should be called "stalebloods" if they chose to "breed themselves into becoming 'squibs'". That endeared her to descendants of the née moldues from Québec and old Acadia, not to mention the descendants of no-maj-born migrants who joined the United Empire Loyalists after the Revolutionary War.

Thus, when the THIRD group from Geneva portkeyed in a week later to force her to submit to her "betters", Raeburn declared that Canada was a "civilized nation" that did not tolerate "staleblood fools", then sent them for a swim in Lac Léman outside Geneva!

The purebloods of Europe didn't appreciate being called "stalebloods".

Especially when muggleborns got hold of the insult and began using it against their "betters".

By the end of August of 1889, news of the "strange woman with the power of the Praetorian Guardian and the Undying Lord" and how she came to be the way she was made its way to normal-born advisors of various monarchs and other rulers of Europe thanks to friends in local magical ministries who were getting constant updates from Geneva. Enraged that someone who saved the sanity of a friend was being threatened for things she had no control over, Queen Victoria immediately issued a Magical Royal Proclamation declaring that if the Ministry of Magic did not withdraw support to the "mad assault the Protector of All Life", all who conspired against the Canadians would be guilty of Treason Against the Crown and sentenced to the most feared jail of all, Her Majesty's Prison Gonebren in the moors of Cornwall. Vladímir Taychéshko got Tsar Aleksándr III to use a Magical Imperial Decree to withdraw Russia's support on this issue, which was copied by Josef von Taserich — who was personally quite unnerved by the idea of a mere child getting her hands on something like the Power Jewel; until it had bonded with Dean, the Undying Lord hadn't sensed the ancient crystal whatsoever even when he had travelled to North America — persuading Kaiser Wilhelm II to pull Germany's support. That was followed by Kaiser Franz Joseph I pulling Austria-Hungary's support to the ICW while Hosan Hirosuke made the Heavenly Sovereign Meiji withdraw Japan's support (who in turn was followed by the Guāngxù Emperor of China and King Kojong of Korea) and Abraham Lincoln advising President Benjamin Harrison to use a Magical Executive Order to make the Department of Magic back off.

To the horror of the "wise elders" within those halls who thought themselves the greatest single power on all of Earth, the very sense of invincibility that had filled the halls of the International Confederation of Wizards for years was GONE!

No thanks to a MUGGLE of all things!

Even worse, when ICW leaders tried to impose sanctions on Canada for their "appalling lack of respect for enforcing the Statute of Secrecy" — and began plans to build an independent enforcement division that could sweep in and deal with "rebel" governments that defied the Confederation — the lack of support from many key players made it all fall flat.

Within a year of the "Miracle of 1889" (as Canadian magical historians later came to call it), dark lords all across Europe who smelled blood in the water concerning the "traitorous weakness" as showed by leaders of ministries moved to launch bloody rebellions that lasted well over two decades in some cases, critically bleeding out certain groups and leaving magicals unable to support their normal counterparts when the War to End All Wars was launched in the summer of 1914...

Not to mention a certain rebellion in America three years after Dean Raeburn helped Abraham Lincoln regain his sanity...

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

The Reconquista ("reconquest") is the Spanish/Portuguese name for the period between 710-1492 when the Christians of the Iberian peninsula strove to recover the land from the Muslims that had invaded the peninsula from northwest Africa.

The Niitsitapi is the proper name of the confederation of native Americans known as the "Blackfoot".

Major Deannette Antonia "Dean" Raeburn is one of my first fictional creations; I began to devise the first version of her when I was in elementary school. I based her on Captain Marvel (AKA Shazam) (Billy Batson) as I saw him in the pre-Crisis of Infinite Worlds universe that existed in DC Comics, though I moved away from making her magical to making her a rough equivalent of a Green Lantern whose power source, the Power Jewel, projects energy into the body to enhance it to Superman-like levels. She has always been mentioned in many of my stories and made her first appearance at this website in The Thunderbird's Tears. The concept of Jewel Warriors, as noted before, first appeared in Wanderers.

Neutronium as used here is the densest known material in the Universe. I was inspired by the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" and the coating of the Planet Killer which was destroyed thanks to the detonation of the impulse drive reactors of the USS Constellation at Jim Kirk's command. In effect, this is a collapsed atom composed of energy-neutral neutrons. Given what the standard size of a neutron star is (with an average diameter of 10 kilometres and a probable mass of four octillion [4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000] tonnes), the density of neutronium in such a case would be around 954,930,465.15 tonnes per cubic centimetre. With that, one could guess the potential overall mass of a straight-blade, chisel-pointed, single-edged sword about the size of a nodatchi such as the Cat's Claw sword Dean Raeburn uses. Of course, to prevent the Cat's Claw from punching through the Earth itself, ruby mesonium is wrapped around the hilt, reducing the gravitational pull on the blade to something more easily used in battle. Dean herself made the scabbard of ironwood infused with ruby mesonium taken from the Canadian Shield to prevent it from being wrecked by the sword.

Her Majesty's Prison Gonebren was first mentioned in The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone. It was the main prison facility used by the government of British magicals until it was replaced by Azkaban in the early Eighteenth Century. In the universe of my stories, Gonebren (known to most British magicals as "You Know Where" or the "Unspeakable Place") is held in reserve; the magical keys that could open the place up being in the custody of the Sovereign, only loaned out to anyone whenever the Crown elects to directly intervene in magical affairs as shown in Wizards and Avalonians III. Gonebren is inhabited by the Hollows, the transformed spirits of dead normal people who had been wronged by magicals while they were still alive. And no, there's no correlation between the Hollows of Gonebren and the Hollows that appear in Bleach!​

 

THE THIRD FORESTERS WAR

The mood in Canada in the wake of the Miracle of 1889 was intoxicating to foreign magicals who visited the Dominion in that time period. As a steady stream of immigrants came to escape suppression in Europe and Asia (mostly thanks to European pressure), the joie de vie expressed by Canadian magicals of all stripes overwhelmed them. With the opening of the Institute of Sorcery and Magic (in French, l'Institut de Sorcellerie et de Magie) on the tip of the Sibley Peninsula jutting into Lake Superior in Ontario in 1883, the core values that made Canadian magicals what they were became reinforced in the generation maturing to their powers. While American magical schools and Britain's and France's wand wizarding academies which served as the institutions that taught eager Canadian students until that year did suffer somewhat due to dropped enrolment, leaders of Hogwarts, Beauxbâtons, Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills could only wish the Institute the best as it strove to make a name for itself in the face of a growing conservatism among leaders of the ICW in Geneva, where fears concerning Canadian magical liberalism had grown to near-panic with the arrival of Dean Raeburn on the scene.

Much to the relief of magicals at home, the Protector of All Life was more than willing to be a functioning part of Canadian magical society even if she herself didn't have magic. Her issues with her uncle were resolved by the Dominion Magical Police, who found evidence and seeded same to Ontario provincial constables, seeing Edward Raeburn tried for three counts of murder in 1891 and hanged a year later; doing that allowed his niece to gain her family wealth, which she trusted to Gringotts' Canadian branch to help her fortune grow to unprecedented levels. Still wondering what she really was and how she could positively contribute to a society she had no idea existed until her becoming a Power Jewel's Host in the summer of 1889 put her into the path of the Canadian Foresters, Dean Raeburn accepted an invitation to the Institute to serve as a lecturer in "Studies of Normal People", a mandatory course for all grades in the Institute, especially for those magically-raised children who had been forced to remain isolated from normal peers due to the requirements of the Statute of Secrecy.

Because of the stern yet liberal and respective instruction in dealing with the outside world, ICW inspectors had no choice but to conclude the Institute's offerings were balanced and promoted the maintenance of the Statute. Even more so, the Ministry of Magical Affairs got top marks for guarding against the rise of Obscurials as had been noted in other countries that were rocked with outbreaks of mass rhabdophobia among normals; for example, despite claims that such people had not been detected in America in over a century, magical researchers working for the ICW and various ministries knew such beings were far more frequent than what got out in mainstream media. Still, despite that stamp of approval, long-buried prejudices against Canada as a whole pretty much saw the Dominion's magical society viewed as a "boorish backwater" in Geneva.

"Don't be annoyed about it, Steven," the Australian Minister for Magic, Professor Christopher Shanks of Melbourne, later commented to his Canadian counterpart, Steven O'Brien, when they attended a meeting in Geneva in 1892, shortly after Chaucer's Revolt began in Britain. "We can help it if we're much smarter than the bloody stalebloods in the 'old country'.”

Yes, even Australians had adopted the term "staleblood" when it came to referring to some purebloods.

Unfortunately, as had happened in other instances over the years, events south of Canada came to affect people within the Dominion. Egged on by Abraham Lincoln's many speeches about equality between all magical beings, the Sasquatches native to the northwest of the Union (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming) pressed the Magical Congress to allow an expansion of their range territories to the levels they had possessed before the Oregon Country was absorbed into the Union in the late 1840s. Naturally, leaders of the Department of Magic balked. Such a request was viewed as "above their station" in the minds of many of the "pureblood" movement and the law enforcement authorities were made to continue pushing the hapless beings in small reserves. When one tribe was forced to relocate from Yellowstone National Park due to increasing encroachment of no-majs into the northwest counties of Wyoming, it ultimately proved too much.

On Lincoln's birthday (12 February 1892), a platoon's worth of Sasquatches apparated into the halls of the Department of Magic, then began maiming everyone in sight, making use of goblin-forged arms smuggled in from Canada to put nearly half the representatives of the Magical Congress to death. Fighting between the sentient hominoids and human magicals soon burst into the streets of the capital city, forcing the Magical Federal Marshals to sweep in to mask what was happening from the no-majs. Alerted to what was happening right away, President Benjamin Harrison sent Mollie Bean under flag of truce to hear the Sasquatches' grievances; "No one launches something like this without a damned good reason," the veteran of the Army of the Cumberland in the Civil War explained to his co-veteran.

Once a cease-fire was established — easy to do since people at the Department of Magic were then busy dealing with a mass of casualties — the leader of the Sasquatches, Cecéclex, requested the Rail-Splitter come serve as intermediary between themselves and the Department of Magic for negotiations towards reversing all the restrictions that had been forced on them and other magical creatures over the previous century. "We have no real hatred of our hairless cousins, Miss Bean," the Sasquatch declared to Bean. "What we do hate is being forced off our traditional lands. We want to live free like others live free now in the Protector's range." Before Lincoln could arrive from the Greasy Grass Settlement to keep things calm and forge a new peace with the human magicals, a large company's worth of hit wizards portkeyed in from New York City. The counterattack not only killed Cecéclex and several companions, but slew a half-dozen of Bean's fellow marshals and a good number of no-majs; it would be later coached as a disastrous fire that burned through several blocks of the capital city. The surviving Sasquatches were told to get to Canada and safety by Lincoln while the former president moved to disarm the hit wizards. Much to the private horror of many purebloods who had hoped that the ex-lawyer would finally mind his own business — on hearing of Cecéclex's attack, the pureblood leaders moved right away to seize advantage of this incident to force the Magical Congress to finally adopt some of their long-sought policies for all magicals in the Union — the Rail-Splitter was immune to everything magicals could throw at him right up to and including the Killing Curse itself!

Realizing that their revolt had horribly miscarried, the Sasquatches evacuated their traditional forests for territory in northwest British Columbia near the Alaskan Panhandle; gaining such a "safe zone" had been secretly negotiated with Tlingit and Tahltan elders by Cecéclex before the attack on Washington. On learning the monsters that had killed so many humans had fled to Canada, Deputy Secretary of Magic Colm O'Flaherty of Brooklyn — acting now in his secondary role as President pro tempore of the Magical Congress; he was also the spiritual leader of the pureblood movement in America — declared a state of armed insurrection and became Acting Secretary of Magic (Secretary Katharine Devire of Providence was killed in the attack). Hit wizards were sent to Alaska to find the Sasquatches and kill them. Unfortunately for them, they were ambushed by "V" Company of the Canadian Foresters under Joseph Harlan's command at the Battle of Telegraph Creek. Stripped of their magic, they were returned to Washington with a letter strongly advising the Americans to not do that again.

Outraged that the Canadians were denying them justice, O'Flaherty — now calling himself the "Acting Magical President of the Union" in media releases to ensure no one, especially members of the now-badly reduced ranks of the Magical Federal Marshal Service, got it into their heads to appeal to President Harrison and make him use his executive power to stop this madness before it got out of control; finding a way to eliminate Mollie Bean and her co-workers had been a goal of the pureblood movement in America for decades — called for a declaration of war against the Canadians for their giving sanctuary to the "murderous" Sasquatches. Before he could get a vote of the surviving quorum within the Magical Congress, someone stormed into the chambers and beheaded him with a sword.

"You want a war?" Dean Raeburn asked as she used her Jewel's power to seal the chamber. "It begins now."

Smartly, the remaining congressmen laid down their wands.

In the wake of that, President Harrison advised O'Flaherty's successor, Louis Wolfe, to "keep your house in order" and "not let this happen again". While the native of New Orleans was a "pureblood" in the ancestral sense, he was quite loyal to the way the government he served had been structured after the Revolutionary War; he would never make use of a false title as "magical president" during his seventeen years as Secretary of Magic. However, Wolfe had been raised in the culture of isolationism Rappaport's Law forced on American magicals as a whole. Understanding Harrison's desire to keep the peace between magical and no-maj, Wolfe allowed the passage of amendments to Rappaport's Law that amounted to the effective kidnapping of no-maj-born children from their parents when they came of age to begin schooling — parents of such children were obliviated of all knowledge of magic and the children themselves were forced to never contact their relatives again — plus made it mandatory for wand magicals in the country to require permits, even for those who had graduated from school.

On hearing what happened and what resulted from it, Lincoln could only shake his head. "Those poor people are killing themselves," the former president mused to his friends at the Greasy Grass Settlement...who weren't affected by such changes as they always practised what Europeans tended to term "wandless magic".

Hearing of the Foresters' swift defence of the Dominion at Telegraph Creek, Queen Victoria was quite happy to approve a name change to Canada's magical militia service, bestowing the "royal" title long coveted by all military units. On Dominion Day in 1895, the whole regiment was re-designated the "Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters" (in French, le Régiment Royal des Forestiers Canadiens); the "Royal Canadian Foresters" or "les Forestiers Royaux du Canada" in short.

Despite cries for the Sasquatches to be "repatriated" for trial and execution to the United States, the Canadians allowed them to settle peacefully in British Columbia. To assuage American sensibilities, a healing circle trial was arranged at the Tahltan village on Telegraph Creek by order of the Dominion Magical Police. The findings were published both locally and sent to the ICW in Geneva; the necessary fines against Kobaloi armourers were levied and Gringotts Canada moved to carry out some necessary internal housecleaning. That report was suppressed in the United States, however; to ensure no one would question what really had happened in the "Great Sasquatch Rebellion of 1892", the pureblood faction convinced Colm O'Flaherty's grieving younger brother Ortiz to write a "factual" account called Big Foot's Last Stand that was popular among American magicals for decades to come. Of course, that "factual" account never mentioned the Foresters' wiping out the magic of the hit wizards who invaded Canada, much less what the Canadians discovered concerning the Sasquatches' many understandable grievances against human magicals. Mollie Bean later confessed to Abraham Lincoln that she took her complimentary copy of Last Stand and used it to fuel her fireplace at her home in Tarboro.

Also, in the years after that incident, the purebloods moved to influence teachers at Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills to remove all possible references to the Magical Federal Marshals within school libraries in hopes of denying the White House any influence over the Department of Magic and the Magical Congress. This would eventually see the ranks of the service dropped to not even platoon strength by the time Theodore Roosevelt became the President after the turn of the century.

One unforeseen outcome of the Third Foresters War was what happened to the hit wizards who lost their magic at Telegraph Creek. Forced to live among the no-majs without any support from families or the government they sacrificed so much to serve, they joined the ranks of Scourer descendants, who had formed new groups to find some way to publicly out magicals. Of course, knowing of the "blessed one" who now allied herself with Canadian magicals, these groups — among them was the New Salem Philanthropic Society of New York City, founded by descendants of Bartholomew Barebone who evaded the Foresters' sweep of America in 1814 — elected to concentrate their "holy work" in the States.

"Sooner or later, Miss Raeburn will wake up to the truth of these devils and side with us, just as Rittmeister von Taserich and Master Hosan did," Samuel Barebone later explained to friends at the founding meeting of the Second Salemers in 1895.

****

DAWN OF A NEW CENTURY: MESONIUM IS "DISCOVERED"

"It is denser than diamond, virtually unbreakable by any known type of force employed and able to absorb incalculable levels of energy before it seems to morph into an even more dense format, visually revealed by a significant reddening of the crystals. In experiments with what I've discovered, I have learned that this material seems to respond perfectly to my very own will. If this is God's gift to mankind to allow magic and more to exist among us all, it is a remarkable one."

So wrote Professor Serge Thompkins of Beauport near Québec City on his curious discovery to the Geological Survey of Canada. A chemist by training, the amateur frontiersman had been exploring in the Laurentian Mountains near his home in 1896 when he discovered what he thought was a vein of high quality diamonds on the slopes of Mont Raoul Blanchard. However, he actually discovered something that would baffle and fascinate scientists of many disciplines for years to come...and give the Ministry of Magical Affairs in Québec City a tonne of unnecessary headaches along the way.

Not to mention profoundly influence the destiny of Serge's future daughter Heather.

On learning of the discovery of what was initially called "sergium" by the GSC, Canada's Governor General, the Earl of Aberdeen, used his private executive power to make sure the chemist's discovery was treated with the highest form of national secrecy, even from Britain. As he was the Dominion's de facto head of state, His Excellency was briefed on magic and was friends with Minister of Magical Affairs Steven O'Brien; he also knew of Dean Raeburn and what the Ontarian had stumbled onto seven years before in British Columbia. While the Department of Magical Research in Québec City was wary concerning normals discovering the existence of the Atom of the Mind and Soul, the Chief Researcher eventually gave his nod to the idea of letting the Geological Survey look into this situation. "For the vast scale of our knowledge, Your Excellency, there are things we don't know about that our friends in the Survey know. Together, we can learn it all," Professor Jules Mason of North Bay wrote to His Excellency concerning what to do with Thompkins' find.

During the years after the "discovery" of what eventually came to be properly called "mesonium" (following what magicals had long called the Atom of the Mind and the Soul), the GSC came to learn the whole of the Canadian Shield — the exposed element of the Laurentian crayon which served as the core bedrock of the North American tectonic plate — was infused with mesonium veins wedged deep in the ancient granite. What didn't surprise elements of the Department of Magical Research was that the most rich deposits of the material would be eventually found in the western parts of the Shield, nearest to the Cave of Tears where Dean Raeburn found the Power Jewel. Even more, private expeditions to other parts of the world revealed there were deposits of the material in far-flung locations like islands in the Pacific, the steppes of Russia, the plains of Africa, the rain forests of that continent as well as South America, the deserts of Australia and the mountains of Tibet, Afghanistan, India and Japan. This, atop the lack of real understanding of mesonium's capabilities, prevented any sort of "rush" to discover the material as what struck the Klondike region of the Yukon when gold was discovered there in 1896.

However, as time went on and more young Canadian magicals got the chance to meet the Protector of All Life when they attended the Institute of Sorcery and Magic and participated in her classes, a fad began among the younger generations to see people's wands and other magical foci augmented with mesonium. Doing that allowed one's magic to be boosted to what some claimed were near-Merlin levels. While some in Québec City were worried about how such could be regulated given how much leaders of the International Confederation of Wizards seemed to want to find any sort of excuse to meddle in Canadian internal affairs, intensive social training students at Sibley were subjected to created a sense of self-discipline which worked often much better than the "decrees from above" process that haunted their peers in Europe and America.

Ironically, because of this, German-Canadian magicals relayed this discovery to cousins in the old country, which made many seek the Undying Lord at Rügen to get their wands augmented. That caused a backlash from the Zauberrat, then embroiled in preserving the magical peace of Germany from the Magischen Freikorps, a band of warrior mages who had risen in Bavaria and who wanted to wreck Prussia's overwhelming influence on German magical society. Despite his idiosyncrasies, Josef von Taserich didn't care to have outsiders try to put down people he had given mesonium "gifts" to for reasons that were (in his eyes) to the left of totally stupid. In complete defiance of Kaiser Wilhelm II's decree concerning the Undying Lord, the Mastapo tried to arrest the man after an entire class from the Nurmengard Academy of Magic visited him in 1897 after their fifth year. It turned into a rout; he ripped all their magic away and sent them back to their superiors with a warning to leave him alone or he would support the MFK's drive to bring a greater sense of equality among magicals in the Empire.

That caused a rift to open inside magical politics in Germany and across a lot of Central Europe. One that would be exploited decades later by a charismatic German-Hungarian pureblood from Budapest named Gellert Grindelwald.

****

DAWN OF A NEW CENTURY: CANADA'S MEMBER OF THE "BIG FIVE"

Magical historians around the world tend to view the period of the 1890s and the following decade as the time the great magical leaders of the mid-Twentieth Century matured out of childhood and began practising what they preached to such incredible effect that ultimately transformed societies worldwide after 1945.

For a lot of historians, this group is normally seen as the Big Four:

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore of Mould-on-the-Wold within County Somerset in Britain.

Gellert Mihály Grindelwald of Budapest, then in Austria-Hungary.

Yomigawa Tsukiko of Higashiyoka on Kyūshū in Japan.

And Svetlána Il'ínichna Múrometsa of Chaadávo in the European part of Russia.

However, in America and Canada, the term is often rendered as "Big Five".

In the Union, the fifth person mentioned in the same group as Dumbledore and his contemporaries is Margaret Miranda "Mollie" Bean of Tarboro in North Carolina, who came to maturity before the Civil War, helped watch over the Rail-Splitter during the Score and Four and returned to help American magicals in their darkest hour after being rejuvenated to make her a physical peer of the Dark Lord of Europe and his contemporaries, putting on a military uniform as leader of the Seventh Cavalry Division (Magical) after nearly three decades of self-exile in protest over the results of the Panic of 1914 and the complete severing of communications between the Department of Magic and the White House.

In Canada, the "fifth" person is Francis William Harlan of Bayham in Ontario.

Descent of one of Canada's oldest immigrant clans — his five times great-grandfather was New France's first Minister of Magical Affairs — and related to several American families — his maternal grandmother was Dorcas Twelvetrees of Second Foresters War fame — Bill Harlan was a curious child who, while raised in a magical family, was comfortable dealing with normals. Never lacking for friends, he learned self-discipline at the knees of his father Joseph (a captain in the Foresters) and mother Elaine (whose family had been haunted by the pain Rappaport's Law unleashed on so many) to not allow incidents of accidental magic to overcome him and get him in trouble with the Magical Police.

One of the first generation of Canadian magicals to attend school at the Institute of Sorcery and Magic — the Bayham branch of the Clan Harlan had sent their children to Salem and Seven Hills while their cousins in Tadoussac attended Ilvermorny, Hogwarts and Beauxbâtons — the young Harlan excelled in his studies and passed his Masters Class in 1890 with fifteen credits, earning Credits with Distinction in conjuration, transfiguration and magical defence. He elected to spend a couple years living among the normals to acquaint himself with people who had to live without magic; the lectures Dean Raeburn gave about normal Canadian society always fascinated him and he still fondly remembered many of his normal childhood friends. Falling in love with sailing and marine engineering, he joined the crew of a Canada Steamship Lines freighter, sailing up and down all five of the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River for three years. After one trip to Halifax, he became enamoured by the sight of Royal Navy cruisers staging out of the great port to help protect the young Dominion and the British Empire. Remembering the Separation Act of 1867 effectively guaranteed the creation of a "naval magical militia" to parallel the Royal Canadian Foresters and knowing the normal government was slowly moving to establish a naval service, Harlan decided to take a chance and went to Britain to study engineering at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth.

His year of studies in Britain during 1894-95 were exciting. The country was being rocked at the time by Chaucer's Revolt, one of several rebellions tearing through Europe that erupted as a result of the rise of the Protector of All Life. Greeted with respect by the local pureblood aristocracy whenever he was invited to attend Ministry of Magic balls — "I hated the fact that my family name seemed to welcome me among staleblood circles when back in Canada, I wouldn't be caught dead around any of these ignorant and selfish creatures," he would later confess to his mother in a letter — Harlan made several friends across the spectrum; he even was invited by Minister for Magic Faris Spavin to become the Dominion's Magical High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, an hour the Ontarian "regretfully" had to turn down; he was too much in love with the sea. After leaving Dartmouth, Harlan reported aboard cruiser HMS Saint George, getting the chance to participate in the brief Anglo-Zanzibar War in the summer of 1896. During the years he spent in the Royal Navy, Harlan befriended many non-magical magic-borns ("squibs" in British parlance), showing them levels of respect they never got from even the most sympathetic of their countrymen; many would follow their "colonial magical" friend to Canada over a decade later. Harlan remained aboard Saint George until 1901, when he got the chance to meet the future King George V and his wife Queen Mary on their tour of the Empire; he temporarily transferred to the rented passenger liner RMS Ophir for that period. Much to Harlan's delight, the-then Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York had been properly briefed on magic by advisors to King Edward VII and they got a chance to tour the magical quarter of Tadoussac and the Institute of Sorcery and Magic while visiting Canada, with the young engineer from Elgin County in Ontario serving as their aide de camp.

Promoted to lieutenant in 1902, Harlan would serve as junior engineering officer on the cruiser HMS Niobe for four years until he was promoted to lieutenant commander and transferred to HMS Dreadnought. Overwhelmed by the power of the first all-big gun battleship, Harlan began to draft a Canadian answer, one that would have many considerable advances over the original concept. In 1908, he go a chance to visit Japan, where he met Yomigawa Tsukiko, then-student to the Immortal Master Hosan Hirosuke. Through her, he got a chance to meet Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, victor of the epic Battle of Tsu-shima in 1905. After getting the chance to review the data of that fight, Harlan finished what he called the "Mark I Canadian" battleship design. On viewing it in the presence of Master Hosan, the victor of Tsu-shima declared it the "perfect battleship". "It is a pity that you are trapped by that secrecy statute to not properly display such a beautiful ship in public, Harlan-dono," Tōgō confessed to Harlan; as leader of the Imperial Japanese Navy, he was briefed on magic. "It would be quite the triumph for your young Dominion to construct such a gorgeous warship and show her off to the world."

In 1910, Harlan was sent to Canada to join the just-formed Naval Service of Canada, becoming one of the senior engineering advisors to fellow Ontarians Rear Admiral Charles Kingsmill of Guelph and Commander Walter Hose of Windsor.

The Royal Canadian Navy had been born...

...and the Royal Canadian Navy Magical Service would soon rise.

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

The Magischen Freikorps ("Magical Free Corps") are inspired by volunteer units that fought for Germany and its member states from the Eighteenth to the early Twentieth Century, usually as mercenaries. After World War One, Freikorps units were right-wing paramilitary forces who fought to restore the German Empire in the face of the rise of the Weimar Republic.

The Mastapo is Germany's version of the Aurors in my stories before the end of Grindelwald's War. The term itself is short for Magische Staatspolizei ("Magical State Police"); the term was inspired by the Gestapo that served Nazi Germany.

A Credit with Distinction in either the Graduates or Masters/Mistresses Class at the Institute of Sorcery and Magic would be the equal of a Hogwarts OWL or NEWT student getting a credit with a high (at least 95%) Outstanding grade.​

 

NOTE: War stories mentioned here are not meant to insult the memories of those sailors lost in World War One.

****

THE BIRTH OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN NAVY MAGICAL SERVICE

"They are nearly twice the length of Noah's Ark, with a width that makes them the most stable watercraft afloat, even in a storm. Their armour is impervious to not just the largest muggle naval cannon and underwater missile, but the greatest of storm dragons. They are meant to dominate the sea wherever they sail. The Canadians have a sense of practicality that is missing in Europe and even America when it comes to the defence of their land from threats, muggle and magical alike. I must compliment Captain Harlan and his goblin and dwarf artisans for seeing these two ships built. But why build them?"

So wrote the future Dark Lord of Europe, Gellert Grindelwald, in his diary in the spring of 1912 when he visited Tadoussac and beheld a sight no magical from outside the town on the shores of the Saint Lawrence near the confluence of the Saguenay could imagine: Two warships, each seemingly as large as Durmstrang itself, being constructed in rapid time by an army of Kobaloi and Dweorg artisans with help from non-magical magic-born naval specialists brought in from both Great Britain and the United States who had been forced to live isolated from their pure-magical cousins. The mobile bases of the newly-founded Royal Canadian Navy Magical Service, under the command of now-Captain William Harlan, they were the ultimate expression of the original dreadnought concept before the increase in cannon size and tonnage saw the "super-dreadnoughts" introduced a year before His Majesty's Canadian Ships Sunbeam and Sundown were complete.

The concept of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron was born at the inaugural yearly meeting of the Wizengamot in the summer of 1910; the administrative year is anchored on Dominion Day. As was custom in Québec City on such days, native Canadian shamans and centaur elders were asked to perform acts of divination to determine if there were possible threats to the Dominion; this policy had been instituted after the Third Foresters War to ensure the Ministry of Magical Affairs wouldn't be caught flat-footed the next time some threat rose against the peace of the land. One Innu shaman slipped into a trance...then his magic exploded to create a hologram showing the images of creatures consuming ships of every type imaginable amid the background of a ghastly slaughterhouse of men fighting a war beyond the American Civil War in terms of savagery. Seeing that, Minister of Magical Affairs Simon Riel of Selkirk ordered Harlan to construct his "Mark I" battleships at a shipyard that had just been completed at Tadoussac, owned and operated by the captain's paternal second cousin, Marquess Elder Jean Claude Harlan, the current patriarch of the overall Clan Harlan of Tadoussac.

In the wake of the fracturing of his relationship with Albus Dumbledore after the death of the former's sister Ariana, Grindelwald had come to Canada after noting the furor of magical rebellions rocking societies in Europe, electing to get clear of such madness before it killed him while also satisfying his curiosity concerning how a society that inherited the ways of the "land of equal freedom" which was old New France turned out. To the native of Budapest, it was breathtaking. "Muggle technology has been accepted and even advanced among Canadian magicals; they've even coined the term 'technomancy' when it comes to doing such conversions. Even more, the more adventurous muggleborns gladly 'seed' the advancements to muggle friends for their use...with proper precautions, of course," he wrote in his diaries, recovered after the Battle of Nurmengard in the summer of 1945. "Canadian magicals do not fear muggles whatsoever, nor do they pity them because of their lack of magic. There is a sense of respect towards muggles instilled in even purebloods who had been raised in complete isolation from what is locally called 'normal' society...if such a concept had ever really taken off in the Dominion, especially given the fact that Canadian magicals gladly use the term 'staleblood' to describe conservative purebloods from Europe. This happens at their remarkable school on the north shore of Lake Superior. Of course, being one of the four nations possessing open contact with a being blessed with command over mesonium like Lady Raeburn does help progress this attitude, but the evolution of such acceptance between the species and between magical and muggle is deeply instilled. Anyone who wants to think they can make Canada conform to European or American standards is insane."

Of course, it wasn't always a bed of roses in the Dominion. Due to still-strong links between magical and normal sides of families — the Statute of Secrecy was protected thanks to the judicious use of Fidelius Charms; any unauthorized use of obliviation charms unless in issues of a dire emergency or the complete lack of competent law enforcement was a serious crime in Canada — the growing issue of residency schools imposed on native Canadian children by the various religious orders of the nation who were determined to force assimilation of the peoples of the First Nations became a constant irritant among constables of the Dominion Magical Police and the magical wing of the recently-renamed Royal North-West Mounted Police. The solution — getting normal children away from abusive priests once abuse was detected, then obliviating the memories of their existence from people's minds and destroying all the relevant records — did much to keep things calm among magical native Canadians, but the residency school issue would remain a serious problem for decades to come.

During this time, the Ministry finally enacted the creation of the country's magical prison facility. This came thanks to the Protector of All Life, who discovered a derelict alien fortress hidden in the northern mountains of Ellesmere Island. As magical researchers in Québec City went insane to understand the history of the Karollans — who lived in a stellar cluster outside the Milky Way millions of years ago until their home sun went nova, wiping out their home planet and wrecking their society; the humans of that race had mastered mesonium and made it an important energy source of their technology — the authorities of the DMP and the RNWMP created Quttinirpaaq Magical Penitentiary at the fortress site, which was granted its official charter in 1912. With the help of reverse-engineered Karollan technology, golem-like creatures similar in capabilities to the dread Hollows of Gonebren were used as prison guards at Quttinirpaaq, making Canada's magical jail as feared as "You Know Where" among magicals worldwide. The prison's first inmates, much to the amusement of many Canadians when the news broke out, were a band of magical Scourer descendants from Utah who had been trying to foster rebellion among the Nēhiyaw in hopes of causing an all-revealing war that would wreck the Canadian ministry. Of course, attempts by American authorities to have those fellows extradited died once their affiliation to the Scourers were revealed; much that the purebloods were in effective charge in the Union, the Scourers were still seen as the most evil beings of all.

The primary development of the period before the Great War was the creation of the Royal Canadian Navy Magical Service (RCN[M]) (in French, le Service Magique de la Marine Royale Canadienne or MMRC). With two "stone frigates" named NCSM Gravé (at Tadoussac) and HMCS Whidbey (on the shores of Smith Inlet on the central coast of British Columbia) to serve as training and administration bases, the RCN(M) would make use of the new battleships built at Tadoussac to patrol the Pacific and the Atlantic (and the Arctic once the seas ahead of the warships was cleared of ice) for the creatures prophecized to come at the Wizengamot meeting back in 1910. Their names were chosen by native Canadian shamans and both ships were blessed by shamans to keep them safe. After they had been commissioned, Sundown was sent over the top of the world to its new base at Whidbey, a voyage that took several months due to the ice issues and avoiding American and Russian observers at the Bering Strait and the Aleutian Islands. Sunbeam would be based at Tadoussac. Courses at the Institute of Sorcery and Magic were introduced for fifth-year students to help master the technomancy driving the Sunbeam-class ships, seeing many eager sailors flock to join the RCN(M) after they graduated.

Such was noted by the International Confederation of Wizards right away. While impressed by the battleships' meson-powered "stealth" features that permitted them to project an all-encompassing Obliviate charm on any normal sailor who spotted Sunbeam or Sundown, naval warships clearly required a lot more man-hours to keep active than infantry platoons and cavalry troops; because of that, experts in Geneva began to wonder if the RCN(M) was legal under the prohibitions in the Statute of Secrecy concerning full-time military formations. Understanding the fear of starting a magical version of the "dreadnought race" that was driving Britain and Germany onward towards war, Bill Harlan proposed a solution: The people needed to man the guns of the Sunbeam-class ships would be artillery-trained Foresters, who couldn't be called to full-time service unless ordered by the Crown. In peacetime, the ships could still sail, but could not realistically fight; to ensure emergencies wouldn't see them lost, international portkeys would teleport gun crews in once a threat alert went out.

Hearing that, Supreme Mugwump Faris Spavin agreed; he had accepted the post after his record-breaking term as British Minister for Magic, mostly to get his warped thinking away from London. "So this is why I couldn't get you to be Canada's Magical High Commissioner!" the potions master chided the younger man after getting the chance to sail on Sunbeam.

Very soon, the Sunbeam-class battleships would be tested in battle...

****

THE PANIC OF 1914: AMERICA GOES TOTALLY "DARK"

"Even if we are supposed to be subordinate to the President in issues that concern magicals and no-majs alike, you'd hope no-majs would elect a man who would move things forward between blacks and whites! The Yankees still have the numbers over the old rebel states when it comes to voting people into the White House! This 'good old boy' that became the governor of a Northern state has done more to guarantee the stalebloods trying to take over the Department of Magic will go on wrecking people's lives in the country for years to come! Why couldn't Mr. Taft just let Mr. Roosevelt get his third term?!"

That was an angry Mollie Bean's ultimate reaction sometime after Woodrow Wilson was elected the twenty-eighth President of the United States in the fall of 1912. Ever since Zachary Taylor served as chief executive in the 1840s, no native of any of the Southern states had achieved the Presidency. While Wilson was a social progressive in many ways in the same vein as his predecessors William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, there was one large failing the native of Virginia had that helped unleash a panic in American magical government: His support of "Jim Crow" segregationist laws throughout all organs of government...including the Department of Magic and the Magical Congress!

The issue of African-Americans hadn't concerned the Department of Magic in the early years of the Union. It was later discovered that budding African-American magicals had been deliberately culled by Adam Sewell's supporters to prevent any backlash to the creation of a "nation of vampires". There were scant few magicals of African blood living in America before the Civil War; fortunately, none who were invited to Ilvermorny, Salem or Seven Hills were seen as slaves and were granted the same basic civil rights as white and native Americans. However, thanks to Africans from other nations who flocked to fight for the Union during that conflict to exterminate the daywalkers — the all-black brigade-sized 7th Regiment of Cavalry (Magical) of the United States Coloured Troops during the Civil War wiped out rebel vampire troops by the end of 1864 — the numbers of African-American magicals began to climb until their percentage of the magical human population paralleled that of normal society by the start of the second decade of the Twentieth Century. That was also supported by the continued birth of no-maj-borns among African Americans who were being welcomed to Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills.

In the 1909 magical elections, Seraphina Picquery of Savannah in Georgia, granddaughter of a company commander in the 7th Cavalry of the USCT, was elected as Deputy Secretary of Magic and President pro tempore of the Magical Congress under Secretary of Magic Josiah Steward of Worcester in Massachusetts, who had replaced Louis Wolfe; by then, the headquarters of the Department of Magic was based in New York City, moving into hidden levels of the just-completed Woolworth Building at the lower end of Manhattan. Like Wolfe, Steward and Picquery were moderates on issues being championed by the pureblood faction within the Department and the Magical Congress, but they had been raised in the culture of Rappaport's Law and vividly remembered the Great Sasquatch Rebellion of 1892; Picquery also could recall her grandfather's tales about troopers of the 7th Cavalry hunting daywalkers infiltrating Confederate army forces to keep slaves around for their blood. Though well-received by William Taft when they met the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after they were sworn in, they didn't get such a nice reception from Woodrow Wilson after his election in 1912.

During his two terms in office, Wilson allowed many people who supported segregation to come into his administration. Before long, the policy of "separate but equal" was imposed everywhere in government. While it was often coached as a show of "respect" for African-Americans by forcing them to not intermingle with whites, the rise of a new Ku Klux Klan was a sign to many in the Department of Magic of that it was now national policy to keep blacks from succeeding anywhere; they knew that would ultimately reflect on many African-American no-maj-borns as they were brought into Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills. Normal Scourers — smelling another opportunity to succeed in their goals to overturn the Statute of Secrecy and have magicals wiped out all over the world — formed secret connections with the new generation of Klan leaders to find a way to make Wilson use his executive power to drive out blacks from the Department of Magic; they believed this would disrupt the Department's operations at a critical juncture and cause a reaction that would expose magicals to the normals.

"Their 'international confederation' is weak," Samuel Barebone advised one Klan delegation in late 1913. "The Orientals won't help them because the Europeans have tried for years to impose their 'advanced' magic on them; seeing that cabal of monsters done away with won't cause anyone to weep in the Far East. The Canadians won't care unless they're attacked. Try as the Europeans might, they're being torn apart by dark lords; they can't react as they believe they can until it's too late to stop it. You can restore the proper way of things on both sides of the security divide and avenge the South."

On President's Day (22 February 1914), Wilson summoned Secretary Steward to the White House. "While I have no right to dictate the way people behave in your society, there are standards of government I do expect the Department to adhere to. And they will be adhered to, Mister Secretary," the President warned before he declared segregation must be enforced in all parts of the Department of Magic...and he was prepared to use a Magical Executive Order to get his way. Attempts at trying to make the former governor of New Jersey acquiesce failed. Instantly smelling Scourer involvement in this move to impose Jim Crow on their magical government, Picquery achieved a unanimous vote in the Magical Congress to do something that had never before been contemplated: Use obliviate spells to erase all knowledge of magic from Wilson and those of his government who were in on the secret and close off all remaining communications between magical and no-maj!

By the of spring in 1914 — to the horror of almost every magical constitutionalist in America like Mollie Bean — it was done.

"The Department of Magic is now forever safe from no-maj interference," Steward announced to the Magical Congress on Independence Day in 1914. "Maybe in time when reason and respect for human dignity returns to the White House, connections will be reopened. But until that time, we will be ghosts to the government in Washington."

The pureblood faction in the Magical Congress then passed two binding resolutions. The first disbanded the Magical Federal Marshal Service and absolved all still-serving members — of which there were now only about a dozen — to any loyalty to the White House as such would defy the new interpretation of Rappaport's Law. The second resolution declared that the Secretary of Magic was the "Magical President of the United States of America" and no longer answerable to the "no-maj President" under any circumstances. While reluctant to accept such a change of title, Steward eventually accepted same.

"That will not stand the test of time," Abraham Lincoln dryly predicted when he got wind of what had happened. "Something will happen and whoever my successor is in the White House at the time will be forced to intercede."

There would be no communication of any sort between the Department of Magic and the White House for the next twenty-eight years.

To the horror of normal Scourers — who now used mesonium crystals that had been recently discovered in the parts of the Canadian Shield in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan to protect them from detection by aurors — their allies in the Klan had been obliviated of all knowledge of magic...though the aurors would later report to the Magical Congress that attempts at finding the Scourers who let them in on that secret had failed. People like Samuel Barebone were quick to note that several Klan leaders soon suffered creative, fatal "accidents" that crippled efforts to continue to harass black Americans across the old Confederacy. Realizing that any attempts to reforge those links would just attract unwanted attention when they were in no position to press their goals, the Scourers elected to keep quiet and bide their time.

Horrified someone had done that to a president — even if he was a "KKK-loving fool who spoke a whole ton of moonshine" — the recently-retired Mollie Bean and many veterans of the Civil War all left America for Canada. The now-former native of Tarboro was invited to reside with Dean Raeburn at her new home in Clayhurst, a tiny hamlet not so far from Fort Saint John in British Columbia; the potions mistress from Salem later became a guest-lecturer at the Institute of Sorcery and Magic.

The former member of the 47th North Carolina Volunteer Infantry would not return home for nearly two decades.

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MAGICAL CANADA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR: CORONEL AND THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

The launch of the "war to end all wars" caught the world by surprise in the summer of 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. Magical societies, especially in Europe, were also caught by surprise...yet were unable to join forces with their normal counterparts to defend their home territories. Over two decades of running rebellions against various magical governments had exhausted law enforcement officers across the Continent. Because of that, many magical ministers had to report to their normal heads-of-state and heads-of-government that save for the standard practices of keeping magical incidents from normal notice, all would be silent.

"I thought it treason myself," British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith confessed to his French counterpart René Viviani in the late summer of 1914 when talk switched over to how things were going within European magical societies. "But when I saw the numbers killed by that dark lord of theirs, I couldn't help but weep at how much Minister Evermonde had to deal with!"

It was just as bad among the nations of the Central Powers. "That poor woman wanted to use a killing curse on herself because she couldn't hope to muster enough fighters to help the Fatherland in its time of need, Your Majesty," German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg confessed to Kaiser Wilhelm II around the same time as Asquith's meeting with Viviani, speaking of Reich Minister of Magical Affairs Eleonore von Puttkamer. "I doubt that they could even muster one regiment of fighters in case the enemy tries to strike at us magically. They need help to guarantee the peace."

Indeed, the estimated total number of casualties in the various post-Miracle of 1889 dark lord rebellions across Europe were proportionally greater than the military losses from the four years of warfare to follow the assassination in Sarajevo. Because of that, all the monarchs and presidents engaged in that war (save for President Woodrow Wilson) issued the necessary decrees to ensure all magicals would stay out of it and that all would be done to ensure that normal-borns who might have relatives engaged in fighting didn't make an already bad situation worse. For many magical leaders, it was a relief.

Not so in Canada.

At the moment the Dominion was at war with the Central Powers due to it still being a legal colony of Britain despite its high level of internal self-government, the Governor General, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, issued a Magical Royal Proclamation declaring that the Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters and the Royal Canadian Navy Magical Service were fully mobilized for the duration of the "current emergency". In a letter sent to Supreme Mugwump Faris Spavin in Geneva, His Excellency warned of the prophetic visions that had spurned the building of Sunbeam and Sundown in the first place. However, recognizing the need to maintain the magical peace while "we stupid normals sort our own bloody mess out", the ICW was invited to send observers from all belligerent parties aboard the two Canadian magical battleships while they carried out missions to seek out the "mystical leviathans" who might soon threaten all humans alike.

To the delight of now-Commodore William Harlan, both sides readily agreed.

"It was the most incredible adventure of my life!" Yomigawa Tsukiko reported of her time aboard Sundown to the Heavenly Sovereign Taishō in the late fall of 1915. "Despite the racism that normal white Canadians felt towards our people living in the Dominion, to say anything of other non-whites, our magical hosts were the most gracious people alive."

Gellert Grindelwald got the chance to sail on Sunbeam for the first couple years of the war, helping represent Austria-Hungary. "When I saw the creatures that these ships were made to destroy, I had to admit that the foresight our hosts showed towards their creation was quite prophetic," he declared in a letter he wrote to Emperor Franz Joseph in the summer of 1915. "Hopefully, when this madness is finally over with, we will no longer have need of these warships."

Whatever disbelief some leaders in Geneva possessed towards the creation of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron vanished after the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914. In that fight, the German Ostasiengeschwader of two armoured cruisers and three light cruisers vanquished a task force from the British West Indies Station, sinking HM Ships Good Hope and Monmouth with all hands...as the normals believed. What really happened was that Sundown lurked off Isla Santa María near the Chilean city of Coronel as it watched events, scanning the waters with levels of sensory that wouldn't be common among normal navies for two decades to come. As soon as Good Hope exploded and sank sometime after dusk, a "gorilla-like creature" appeared out of nowhere to swarm the sinking remains, probing the shattered cruiser to get at the drowning sailors. Without hesitation, sailors on Sundown teleported portkeys to Good Hope to get out half of her 919 crew. After Monmouth sank, the process was repeated, getting nearly two-thirds of her 735 crew clear before the creature attacked.

Aboard German cruiser SMS Nürnburg, which had been close to Monmouth when she sank, a non-magical magic-born gun crew commander, Hauptbootsmann Ludwig Becker of Köln, watched what happened next. "Lookouts spotted an unknown battleship close to Santa María. Even in the dark, it was obvious she flew the White Ensign of Britain...as well as the Blue Ensign of Canada and a black ensign with what I recognized was the insignia of the Canadian Ministry of Magical Affairs under the Dominion ensign. Before the captain could demand what was going on — naturally, the existence of these ships were totally unknown — something akin to the Kraken of Greek myths rose from the stormy waters to attack it, right from the place Monmouth sank! As we watched, the Canadian turned all her main guns on it — she was armed like a Tegetthoff-class our Austrian cousins use, but was bigger than any of the British 'splendid cats' — and began blasting away, firing four rounds a minute into the thing. Before it exploded from what I thought was a strike at its magical core, I realized with horror that this whatever-it-was had actual wreckage of both British cruisers we just sank fused to it. As I prayed to God for the souls of the crews on those ships — we couldn't rescue them because of the damn seas! — every squib aboard Nürnburg got a message through some projectile form of Legilimency, warning us that an obliviation field would be used to make the muggles forget what happened. Given the scale of what that ship destroyed, I couldn't blame the Canadians for being cautious."

After the Germans broke off the action, commander Vizeadmiral Maximilian Reichsgraf von Spee took his squadron to the Drake Passage to break into the Atlantic after a quick stopover at nearby Valparaiso to effect repairs. There, German aurors secretly met with people like Ludwig Becker to confirm that Sundown's obliviation fields worked. "None of us were bothered, but none of the muggles remember, mein Herr," the native of Köln later reported before he gaped at the name the Canadian chose for their battleship. "Who thought up THAT name?! Couldn't it be a provincial name or something?!"

Within a month of the Battle of Coronel, Sundown had met up with Sunbeam quite close to the Falkland Islands; the former had shadowed Spee's squadron as it rounded South America for an eventual voyage home. On noting the British were shifting battlecruisers HM Ships Invincible and Inflexible to intercept, Bill Harlan aboard Sunbeam could only shake his head. "If Max Spee's squadron had battleships, those tin boats Dove Sturdee commands now wouldn't last five minutes," he told the senior of Monmouth's survivors, Lieutenant Kevin O'Reilly. "You don't send a battlecruiser to do a battleship's job."

The Battle of the Falklands Islands on 8 December was the reverse of Coronel; SM Schiffe Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nürnburg and Leipzig were sunk by the British force after a running eight-hour fight well into the mid-evening. Of the 1,871 believed lost aboard the four cruisers, Sunbeam and Sundown rescued about two-thirds; sadly, von Spee and his two sons weren't among them. Two creatures similar to the one that attacked Sundown at Coronel appeared in the twilight, which alarmed Inflexible's crew enough to have them fire on the one close to where Gneisenau sank. Before the battlecruiser could have been wrecked by the beast, Sunbeam sailed in between them and fired point-blank into the monster's heart, causing it to explode after five broadsides. "Best shooting I ever saw!" the British captain exclaimed before the Canadian battleship disappeared into the night and the obliviation spells went to work. Like their counterparts at Coronel, only "squibs" aboard Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee's ships were the only ones who remembered what happened; fortunately, British aurors augmented by Foresters of "C" Company got aboard Inflexible at Port Stanley and did the necessary modifications to ensure no one could question where two whole salvos of 12 inch shells had disappeared to.

Once both battleships were heading to Tadoussac, people began to consider what to do with the sailors rescued by the Canadians. After the survivors were briefed on the Statute of Secrecy — and learning of what magical oaths Canadian sailors had to take to serve — the former enemies realized there was only one course of action to take. "You obeyed the law of the sea when you not only saved all of us, but our friends, from those things, Herr Konteradmiral," senior German survivor Korvettenkapitän Stefan von Arenburg from Scharnhorst told Bill Harlan. "Honour and duty demand we do no less for you."

"It seems we have to create a new policy for these poor folks, sir," the senior Forester aboard Sunbeam, Major Lance McMillan of "D" Company from Saint John, then advised the commander of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron.

It was just the beginning...

To Be Continued...

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WRITER'S NOTES

The Innu are members of the tribe from northeast Québec and Labrador more known commonly as the "Montagnais". The Nēhiyaw is the native name of the group of tribes known as the "Cree" as a whole.

Translation list: Quttinirpaaq — Top of the world; NCSM — Navire Canadien de Sa Majesté, French for "His/Her Majesty's Canadian Ship" (HMCS); Ostasiengeschwader — East Asia Squadron; SMS — Seiner Majestät Schiff, German for "His Majesty's Ship"; Hauptbootsmann — Principal Boatswain, the German Navy rank title equivalent to a Royal Canadian Navy petty officer 1st class (NATO rank code OR-7); Vizeadmiral — Vice admiral, which in the Imperial Navy, was actually the equivalent of a Royal Navy rear admiral (NATO rank code OF-7) but today is the equal of a Royal Navy vice admiral (NATO rank code OF-8); Reichsgraf — Imperial Count, a German noble title for those who were the lords of a county in the Holy Roman Empire which was bestowed to them by the Emperor himself; Schiffe — Plural of "Schiff" (ship); Konteradmiral — Counter Admiral, German Navy rank title equivalent to a Royal Navy commodore (NATO rank code OF-6) during World War One (it now is the equivalent of a rear admiral [NATO rank code OF-7]); Korvettenkapitän — Corvette Captain, German Navy rank title equivalent to a Royal Navy lieutenant commander (NATO rank code OF-3).

The "Splendid Cats" were the nickname given to the two Lion-class battlecruisers of the Royal Navy, which were armed with 13.5 inch guns (the equal armament used on the classes of super-dreadnoughts appearing at that time). The members of the class were HM Ships Lion and Princess Royal. HM Ships Queen Mary and Tiger, which followed the Lion-class, could also be rated as such given the many similarities in armament and construction style between the four ships.
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NOTE: War stories mentioned here are not meant to insult the memories of those sailors lost in World War One.

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MAGICAL CANADA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR: WHEN TWO BECAME SIX

Fortunately for the "dead" of the Battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands, obliviating their memories and give them new lives would ultimately have to wait until war's end. "It's a distasteful thing to do even when it's necessary to fight off bad bouts of rhabdophobia, gentlemen," William Harlan explained to Korvettenkapitän Stefan von Arenburg and the senior British officer who became "based" at NCSM Gravé in Tadoussac, Lieutenant Commander Vance Drake of HMS Good Hope. "In my belief, there would be no Statute of Secrecy separating us, especially in times like this. We would all fight together against these strange leviathans and save as many lives as possible. Then you can all go home to your family and sweethearts and bring a new generation into this world, hopefully in peace and harmony, with the horrors of war forever forgotten."

Fortunately for "squibs" of the Royal Navy and the Kaiserliche Marine who had been saved by Sunbeam and Sundown, it was an easy choice to make: They joined the Royal Canadian Navy Magical Service to work on the ships that saved their lives. While saddened they had done that, von Arenburg and Drake understood. "Here in Canada, squibs are respected and live nice lives with their birth families even if they can't do magic," one British squib from Loewstoft, Able Rate Jules Lestrange from HMS Monmouth, explained to a reporter from the Winnipeg Wizarding Free Press when the news of such "defections" became known; by then, "nimmib" (a pronunciation of the initials NMMB ["non-magical magic-born"]) had become popular in Canada to serve as a nickname for those type of people, though it was not seen as derogatory to those so addressed. "Back in Britain or Germany, we're dead weight in our families' eyes. They normally throw us out onto the streets as soon as we're confirmed to have no magic...if not kill us, especially if we come from traditional families. In America, chances would be good that we'd have no memories of being magically descent if we went there after we were discovered to have no magic that could get us into Ilvermorny...and if we later father magical children, we'd have our brains blanked out of knowing the secret by the aurors to keep that stupid Rappaport's Law in place."

In a post-action review of both battles, lessons were learned and operational directives changed. The gunnery of the Canadian battleships was splendid, but the engagement range had to be extended to prevent any damage in case the creatures got close enough to physically attack the ships. Because of that, the gun crews of both battleships trained to fire one gun in each turret at a time, using complex mathematical equations to land shots of the "part-broadside" upon the magical core of their targets at the same moment; this would be called a "time on target" barrage by British artillerymen when they developed the same technique. A proposal to modify the Sunbeam-class ships to carry the BL 13.5-inch Mark V naval gun in two-gun turrets (the ships were fitted with locally-built BL 12 inch Mark X naval guns in three-gun turrets) was set aside for a better idea: Build magical super-dreadnoughts.

Two designs were immediately submitted, one by the Kobaloi work team who built Sunbeam and the other by the Dweorg team that built Sundown. The former "Mark II-K" design was a vessel a hundred feet longer than the Sunbeam-class, bearing four two-gun turrets holding the largest design then on the boards, the BL 18 inch Mark I being prepared by the Elswick Ordnance Company in Newcastle upon Tyne for fitting on battlecruiser HMS Furious (which would eventually be rebuilt as an aircraft carrier). The latter "Mark II-D" design was fifty feet longer than the Mark II-K, normal-looking with three funnels in lieu of one for the Mark II-K or the twin funnels of the Sunbeam-class, bearing the same model of guns in the same number; the foundry that forged such rifles was retooled to have the ships operational by mid-1916. Given increasing naval operations around Europe, especially with the Dardanelles campaign underway to force a front open against the Ottoman Empire at that time, Harlan consulted with the Wizengamot. With the number of volunteers streaming from the Institute to flood the ranks of the ships added to the nimmib and even normal sailors from Coronel and the Falklands joining the RCN(M), crewing two new battleships by mid-1916 and two more by later that year was possible.

"Build them all," Harlan ordered.

To the Kobaloi and the Dweorg artisans, that was a challenge they wouldn't refuse.

As Sunbeam and Sundown went to the Mediterranean and the North Sea respectively to watch over events there, the Canadian Wizengamot and the ICW conspired to keep the full truth of what happened at Coronel and the Falklands from getting to King George V and Kaiser Wilhelm II, thus risking both monarchs demanding the "dead" crews be repatriated. The only thing that would be explained to Their Majesties was that the creatures the Canadians built their battleships to fight were destroyed, saving lives. "Much that we understand they wish to press this damned madness, we don't want all the efforts William and his crews made to save those lads' lives to be wasted," Supreme Mugwump Faris Spavin explained to British Minister for Magic Archer Evermonde and German Reich Minister of Magical Affairs Eleonore von Puttkamer. Both agreed; while it had been the humane thing to do, inserting them into their home societies risked meeting relatives, who could expose the mess to the world. Other European ministers as well as American Secretary of Magic Josiah Steward and Japanese Mahō-Shōgun Takemitsu Kyōsuke agreed. And while some normal-borns who had relatives being churned up in the slaughterhouse of the trenches ached to get into the fight, the magical law enforcement authorities were able to keep it under control and prevent issues that might have launched a magical war.

"The new battleships are leviathans equal to Imperator in size, both dimensions and tonnage," Stefan von Arenburg would later write in his diary in mid-1915, after three hundred "dead" of HM Ships Irresistible and Ocean and the French pre-dreadnought Bouvet were transported by Sunbeam to safety in Tadoussac from the Dardanelles, who had been joined from over six hundred sailors from the armoured cruiser SMS Blücher, which was sunk at Dogger Bank in January of 1915. "The engineers of our old ships have pitched in to help get the new ships' workings operational quickly. It's quite the celebratory atmosphere here in Tadoussac, almost like Christmas was between ourselves and the British in 1914 on the Western Front, when the boys in the trenches did their best to just forget the damned war had ever happened for a day. Even our new friends from Bouvet have got into it...most likely because they can speak the language of most of the people living in Tadoussac and found it easy to feel at home here in Québec. While there are some locals who look down on us because of our lack of magic, the majority here are accepting; the troublemakers are shamed by their peers or end up warned by the Dominion Magical Police to be quiet or face time at that prison of theirs. Having heard tales of 'You Know Where' from some of the British nimmibs and hearing that the prison on Ellesmere is just as bad, I can see why there is little issue concerning crime of any sort in this country."

By the time the winter of 1915-16 came, it was fast approaching time to launch the first ships of the Mark II-D and II-K designs; the second ships would come two weeks after name ships. Immediately, questions about their names were raised in the magical press. Using names that could be chosen for normal warships even in the future were dismissed right away; even if the Magical Service was pretty much its own fighting arm, it was still ceremonially seen as part of the Royal Canadian Navy and the traditions of the combined navies of the British Empire required that there not be two warships of the same name in commission at any one time. Here, Kevin O'Reilly — late of HMS Monmouth — came to the rescue. At a meeting at Erin's Villa, a tavern on the Tadoussac waterfront that was the town meeting place for locals and the most well-known Canadian magical tavern worldwide, the native of Belfast suggested the Mark II-D ships be given "Lady" names in honour of elders in the Wizengamot due to their stately looks in comparison to the "racehorses" of the Mark II-Ks. Lieutenant de Vaisseau Jean-Baptiste Durand — late of the Bouvet — then proposed that the name ship be HMCS Lady Elgin in honour of Bill Harlan's mother Elaine, who held the Bayham seat in the Wizengamot. "It will also serve as a mystical salute our American friends, who may soon be forced to join us," the native of Lyon then noted, earning him a lot of agreeing nods from the Germans; everyone knew of the U-Boat campaign against Allied shipping given the frustrations the Canadian crews had concerning rescuing crews of those craft sunk in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. With that, the second Mark II-D was to become HMCS Lady Jane, in honour of the Chief Witch of the Wizengamot, Professor Jane Smith from Rockcliffe near Ottawa. After a show of hands from magical and normal alike voted the names in place, then came the Mark II-Ks. Eyes then locked on the Irish-Canadian owner of the bar, Erin Fingal. Given the support from the matronly woman to the normals who had been effectively imprisoned in Tadoussac, a suggestion was made by Stefan von Arenburg: HMCS Erinsville as the name ship and HMCS Carolina as her sistership. The former would salute not just Erin's Villa — the "Crossroads of Magical Canada" as fans called it worldwide — but all the magicals of the Dominion regardless of ancestry who gladly took up arms to defend their land. The latter saluted Professor Caroline Gervais of Rouyn in northwest Québec, the Headmistress of the Institute of Sorcery and Magic, whose graduates were now flocking in droves to put on uniforms to defend all of humanity.

"Sailors have always been superstitious, Madame Fingal," Durand explained after the owner of Erin's Villa tried to wave off the suggestion of naming something like a battleship of all things in honour of both her and her tavern. "Ship names are often chosen to bring luck to the ship and her crew. You magicals have your own superstitions. To defeat those monsters our hosts are fighting now, we need to get all the luck God and all the angels of the world can give us."

HMCS Erinsville was launched on Imbolc morning (1 February 1916). HMCS Carolina entered the water on Valentine's Day. HMCS Lady Elgin was launched on the first of March, with HMCS Lady Jane following on the Ides of March.

Then the Scourers attacked...

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MAGICAL CANADA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR: THE BATTLE OF TADOUSSAC

"The Scourer movement is a sham, both on the magical side and on the normal side. They are nothing more than a pack of bloodthirsty hypocrites who only wish to see the world burn because their ancestors were shown to be the selfish and murderous thieves they were. Justify their actions as they might, there is no justification of killing innocent children because they were born with the gift of magic...much less try to avenge the legal actions taken against their ancestors at the legal request of this Congress' ancestral organization. I say let's find their children, wipe out their memories of their parents and have them adopted by more agreeable caregivers far away, ensuring they can never be found again by their true sires and dams. It's the surefire way, ladies and gentlemen, to ensure their movement would never live on to the next generation."

That was an upset Minister of Magical Affairs Steven O'Brien in a speech to the Magical Congress of the United States in New York after the Battle of Tadoussac launched by rogue magical and normal Scourers on Beltane in 1916 at the magical village in hopes of seizing or sinking the nearly-complete super-dreadnoughts of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron. The person who led this attack was Wayne Webster, one of the more prominent pureblood leaders in America from Baltimore whose family had effectively kept its affiliation to the cause of the magical mercenaries that had been the bogeymen to scare misbehaving children in the Union secret from other people for many decades. Fervently anti-Canadian due to his support of the more repressive policies which were enforced against non-human magicals living within the boundaries of the Union and the eroding of even basic democratic rights of no-maj-borns and even those "pureblood" human magicals who didn't support him, Webster knew the incredible successes those "freak ships" built under William Harlan would earn admiration from across the world, launching a liberal wave that would — if such reflected in America — destroy the pureblood movement in the Union, threaten the bedrock of Rappaport's Law and create a replay of the Panic of 1914 if someone managed to get Woodrow Wilson to use a Magical Executive Order to enforce the will of the White House over the Department of Magic.

Getting help in assaulting the town that was well beyond the "world's longest undefended border" had been difficult, but it was easy to hire mercenaries from other nations who fought under various European dark lords that had run rampant over the Continent in the two decades and more after the Miracle of 1889; Webster and his allies preyed on European fears of Canadian liberalism to win their assistance. Doing it in such a way that wouldn't attract a certain Jewel Warrior's attention made executing the attack a delicate affair; even now, no one understood the full extent of Dean Raeburn's abilities and didn't want to try their luck. The attack was therefore timed to when Raeburn herself would be busy at her new home in British Columbia; surely, this no-maj woman would not be able to get herself across Canada to help defend Harlan's crews when the time came. Webster also had to keep in mind that given how free magical creatures were in the Dominion, there wouldn't just be magical human defenders reacting to such an attack; one had to prepare for a storm of Kobaloi warriors to assist. Thus, the mission had to be done with overwhelming force, which required the use of tamed battle dragons and American quetzalcohuātl sky serpents who were just as large as the largest legged magical reptiles and near-cousins of basilisks; there were nests of same in the Rocky Mountains who were supervised by many of Webster's political allies.

Getting help on the normal side of things was tricky. While most normal Scourers wanted to have nothing to do with magic save for exposing it and allow the Salem Witch Trials to be restarted on a global scale, there were "patriotic" members of the overall group willing to listen to what Webster had in mind. One of those people was Samuel Barebone, whom Webster had been quick to sense was an opportunist of the worst sort, which made him perfect cannon fodder in case the Foresters appeared. For those who answered Barebone's call to arms, the idea that a mere British colony had SIX of the latest warships ever built under its control — with four possessing guns greater in calibre size than anything serving in the United States Navy at the time — was something that could not be tolerated. If ships like Erinsville could be sunk, the Union would gain the military high ground in the New World. That was more than enough in Barebone's eyes; having a strong military would eventually become necessary to help destroy magicals...which Webster suspected he planned. Of course, the pureblood Marylander privately planned to have Barebone and his normal allies eliminated when it was all over.

Unfortunately for the Scourers, the sea creatures the ships of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron had been constructed to combat — now called "sea leviathans" worldwide — were moving to trace the origins of those metal ships that had slain several of their number to date at Coronel, the Falkland Islands, the Dardanelles and Dogger Bank in the North Sea.

It all came together on Beltane morning in 1916.

It was a rainy day in Tadoussac when the just-completed Erinsville's alert wards — an early version of modern radar, in effect — were triggered on sensing a flock of dragons and sky serpents sweeping in over the Saint Lawrence from the south towards the dockyard at NCSM Gravé. Knowing the area of eastern Québec was NOT a migration route for dragons and knowing that sky serpents were native to Central America and the southwest American states, Harlan ordered the ship to action stations. Before the reptiles could swoop on the grey monster at anchor some distance from the fitting out docks where her sisterships were moored, something surged up from the waters of the Saint Lawrence to swat away a flight of sea serpents, sending their riders falling several hundred feet to very painful deaths.

Instantly, Erinsville's secondary armament of sixty QF 12 pounder 18 hundredweight guns fired, sending meson-augmented "grapeshot" fragmentary rounds into the approaching flying formation while her BL 18 inch Mark I main armament slewed over to fire on the creature she had been built to destroy. One "half-broadside" of four two-tonne shells ripped into the being's magical core, causing a massive detonation that could be heard all the way in both Rivière du Loup and Rimouski on the other side of the Saint Lawrence River; fortunately, the Dominion Magical Police were moving to keep the truth of what was happening hidden from the normals. The blast of the explosion knocked several sea serpents and dragons out of the sky, sending them into the waters of the Saint Lawrence while a surviving group of dragons landed and began burning the jetty where Carolina and Lady Jane were docked. By then, a company-sized phalanx of Kobaloi warriors plus volunteers among the normals and nimmibs from other nations were charging down the dock to intercept the attack, augmented by Foresters on the ships themselves. While Erinsville's 12 pounders brutally shot apart the dragons, the resultant gun-sword-and-wand fight on the dock left behind eighty-two American dead. The defenders counted fourteen Kobaloi warriors dead atop eight Foresters from "E" Company, eleven human and Dweorg dock workers and seven normal British, French and German sailors. Twelve enemy survivors were captured, among them Wayne Webster and Samuel Barebone.

To say members of the Wizengamot and magicals all across the Dominion were infuriated at such a blatant attack on their country was putting it lightly. Since there was a "declared emergency" in Canada on the magical side, surviving attackers were immediately subjected to quite intensive interrogation, including the judicious use of Legilimency to probe their minds and get what they wanted; the rights of haebus corpus were immediately waved by the Wizengamot in this case. Knowing that Webster's still-active allies among American purebloods would move to suppress the news of the attack to prevent the no-maj-borns from throwing them out of the Magical Congress in the 1919 elections, Mollie Bean — who had been made an honorary captain in "V" Company of the Foresters when the war began; she was helping train fresh recruits at the Institute of Sorcery and Magic — got the veterans of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Coloured Troops from the Civil War still living in America to distribute information about all of Webster's supporters to every magical household in the Union. When non-Scourer purebloods tried to force Josiah Steward to allow sanctions to be imposed on Canada for letting that "no-maj-born traitor Bean" and her "darkie allies" to "manipulate" the minds of innocent people, the resulting public outcry was furious; several of those "learned wise men" whose true affiliations were revealed by the Canadians were lynched.

Fortunately, Steven O'Brien and the leaders of the Wizengamot in Québec City weren't interested in prosecuting a war against "stalebloods" while they was busy supporting Canada's war against the sea leviathans Erinsville and her sisterships had been built to destroy. To calm things down, he released a statement absolving the Department of Magic and the Magical Congress of any guilt concerning the attack, attributing the affair to the Scourers on both sides of the security divide who still refused to accept reality and live like "decent human beings". O'Brien was happy to have information about Barebone's allies among normal Scourers revealed so American aurors could sweep in to clear them out. And he welcomed observers from the Department of Magic to come aboard Harlan's warships to witness what was happening on the high seas; Deputy Secretary of Magic Seraphina Picquery gladly spent several months aboard Lady Elgin, especially in the desperate battle soon to come in the North Sea. The people who had been captured at Tadoussac were imprisoned for life in Quttinirpaaq Penitentiary. While magical relatives were informed of their fates, normal relatives such as Barebone's daughter Mary Lou — who eventually assumed the leadership of the Second Salemers — never learned a thing...even if several of Barebone's allies among normal Scourers across the Union were tracked down by vigilantes composed of 7th Cavalry veterans and lynched; this was disguised as acts of the Ku Klux Klan seeking to put down whites who wanted to support the betterment of African-Americans. Much to the annoyance of the Canadians, American aurors seemed to refuse to deal with the issue themselves. "Damned stalebloods still see normal Scourers as useful," Mollie Bean commented to Major-General David St. Baptiste of Sherbrooke, the wartime commander of the Royal Canadian Foresters, on hearing what happened.

In a private meeting, O'Brien warned Steward this: "We can't keep coming down here to help you keep your house in order, Mister Secretary. The next time this happens, Miss Raeburn goes to the White House, undoes the obliviations on the President and his cabinet and ensures your people won't be able to get in there to reapply them before it's too late. By the time she informs the President about what you've done, you can guarantee a Magical Executive Order will be released to eliminate Rappaport's Law once and for all. Pray nothing happens until that bigoted idiot Wilson is finally out of that place. You can't keep running from your obligations under your own Constitution for much longer, Josiah."

Much to the minister's surprise, the "magical president" kept information of that warning from others save his successor...

****

MAGICAL CANADA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR: THE SECOND BATTLE OF DOGGER BANK

To the British in the know of what happened at the end of May in 1916 to the west of Denmark, the magical side of the greatest naval battle in history to that point was simply referred to as part of the "Battle of Jutland".

To the Germans in the know of what happened during that day, that battle was also seen as a magical adjunct to the "Skagerrakschlacht"; the natives of that country refer to that fight by the name of the wide bay and strait separating Denmark from Norway as the battle area was close to the west end of the Skagerrak.

To the Canadians involved in that fight that late spring day on the North Sea, due to the battle lasting into the night and the early morning of the first of June and slewing from the normal battle area towards the Dogger Bank, the fight gained the name "Second Battle of Dogger Bank" ("Deuxième Bataille de Dogger Bank" in French).

It started in mid-May. By then, Lady Elgin was in commission and both she and Erinsville had joined Sunbeam and Sundown in performing manoeuvres in the Labrador Sea to finish necessary equipment and crew workups and do gunnery exercises at the northern end of Labrador itself with the permission of the Newfoundland Ministry of Magical Affairs. Now-Rear Admiral William Harlan, with his flag flying on Erinsville, received a message from the British Minister of Magic, Archer Evermonde. Squibs who had been working the Royal Navy just reported that the leadership of the Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe were preparing for a massive clash of warships against their opposite numbers, the German Hochseeflotte under Admiral Reinhard Scheer. Knowing such a concentration of high-crewed warships would attract the sea leviathans in droves — ultimately, thirty-seven battleships and battlecruisers with 114 cruisers, destroyers and support ships would be sortied on the British side; the Germans would sortie twenty-seven battleships and battlecruisers, plus 72 light cruisers and torpedo boat destroyers — Minister Evermonde arranged with his Danish counterpart to allow the Canadian warships a safe port at the kingdom's national magical school, the Læsø Søfort School of Magecraft on the island of Læsø in the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden. The First Canadian Battleship Squadron deployed east, reaching Læsø on the last Sunday in May.

In the early afternoon of the following Wednesday, the four battleships were heading in a southerly direction towards the German fleet, to the northeast of Vice-Admiral David Beatty's Battlecruiser Force. Underwater detection wards — the magical version of sonar — picked up a large number of leviathans shadowing Beatty's formation and that of his opposite number, Vizeadmiral Franz Hipper's Aufklärungsstreitkräfte; other such beasts were trailing both Jellicoe's and Scheer's main forces that were then closing in on the scene. Once the two sides were engaged around mid-afternoon, Harlan had his battleships shadow Beatty's force to starboard aft. Within an hour, the powder magazines of HM Ships Indefatigable and Queen Mary had been struck by Hipper's gunners, sending both battlecruisers to the bottom of the North Sea. Crews on Erinsville and Lady Elgin were quick to rescue 806 from the former ship and 738 from the latter.

The Canadians magical sailors were soon involved in their own action. As squibs and the odd normal-born magical serving on both sides watched in awe and horror, a dozen sea leviathans surfaced to charge the four battleships trying to deny them their kills. To the horror of all witnesses who remembered what happened in that battle, all four of the creatures had somehow mated elements of sunken ships of many types to their bodies, which infuriated the Canadians at such desecration of the graves of many brave sailors. "The gunnery of Erinsville was just stunning to watch," Oberleutnant zur See Horst Schallinger, a squib serving as junior signals officer aboard battlecruiser SMS Derfflinger, later told a reporter of the German magical daily newspaper Zauberweld. "While Sunbeam and Sundown both took considerable damage because they got too close to have parts of those sunken ships flung at them — thank Merlin that none of those beasts had live weapons to shoot! — Elgin was able to use her larger hull to herd them right into Erinsville's guns. It turned into quite the culling of these things before the big fight started; even muggles among us admitted what the Canadians were doing was first rate before the obliviation spells made them forget what they saw and allowed them to concentrate more on dealing with the British."

To the later surprise of magical leaders on both sides of the North Sea, the two main commanders of both opposing forces had been let in on the secret of magic at the direct order of their monarchs some days prior to the engagement. With squibs on both sides helping secretly advise them while the fighting carried on, John Jellicoe, Reinhard Scheer, David Beatty and Franz Hipper were happy to keep weather eyes on what Bill Harlan was doing with those "beasts" trying to kill them all. The mood among the commanders was heightened considerably when Erinsville signalled HM Ships Iron Duke and Lion and SM Schiffe Friedrich der Grosse and Lützow with the news of survivors pulled out of the two lost battlecruisers at the early stages of the game, followed by the recovery of survivors of ships like HMS Invincible when the main fleets clashed after suppertime. "At least there's nothing bloody wrong with your ships, old man!" Beatty signalled back to the Canadian flagship. He got an amused reply from Harlan, warning his crews to NOT store ammunition bags outside the proper powder magazines in the future. "Speed is one thing, but safety is more relevant! Wouldn't you think, old boy?" he advised.

By the time night had come, the number of leviathans in the area had increased to three dozen and they were swarming in an area spanning from the edge of the Dogger Bank to the far eastern end of the battle zone. That guaranteed several hours of brutal shooting in darkness ahead for Harlan and his crews, especially with over a hundred ships nearby whose crews were still trying to press a massive fleet action in the very same area. While Sunbeam got three-quarters of the crew of the pre-dreadnought SMS Pommern out of her hull before she sank in the mid-morning of 1 June, Harlan signalled both Jellicoe and Scheer to get their forces clear of the area. At the fleet commanders' requests, Canadian sailors were portkeyed aboard ships to use hypnosis spells to get them to manoeuvre away while the battleships went to work. "It was the ghastliest thing I ever thought could happen on the high seas," Petty Officer Saul Potter, a squib serving as gunner aboard destroyer HMS Attack, confessed when he was interviewed by the British magical newspaper The Daily Prophet after the battle. "The noise was unbelievable. The screeches of those things when they were hit by the Canadians reminded me of my mother's tales about how Dementors reacted after being hit by Patronus Charms. What the hell allowed such things to exist?"

It was later observed by experts in the British and German magical ministries that many veterans of that battle experienced nightmares about "banshee-like things" screaming at them from the oceans for months; fortunately, sympathetic healers on both sides of the North Sea were quick to secretly sweep in and use special potions to make those nightmares fade away.

Once it was finally over in the late morning of the first of June, the First Canadian Battleship Squadron steered for the Skagerrak and a chance to make repairs at Læsø before returning to Canada, their decks crowded by nearly four thousand "dead" from both sides. Like what had happened before, the officers and men pulled from the sea gladly accepted what would happen to them; "It beats being damned hell dead!" Commander Scott McTavish of HMS Invincible confessed to Bill Harlan when he was told that. The losses among their hosts also saddened and sobered the sailors who had been saved that day after they had spent hours trying to kill each other and sink the other side's ships. Erinsville lost twenty-six of a crew of 2,180, with 104 wounded. Lady Elgin suffered eleven dead and 67 wounded from a crew of 2,215. Sundown suffered seventy-one dead and 214 wounded of a crew of 1,550. Sunbeam came out the worst of all, with a wrecked "A" turret thanks to a lucky strike of a large hull fragment that caused a cordite explosion inside the turret; she emerged from the battle with 207 dead and 411 wounded of a crew of 1,550. "We were pleased to help our hosts get their ship to Læsø for temporary repairs before she would head back to her builders here for more comprehensive repairs," Fregattenkapitän Otto von Staubach of SMS Pommern — who would become the senior German naval officer "imprisoned" in Canada for the rest of the war — told a reporter from the Montréal Magical Herald after he made landfall at Tadoussac aboard Sunbeam. "It seemed wrong to us at first to see the Canadian dead all cremated in lieu of being buried at sea, but after seeing those monsters your people built those ships to destroy, it was quite understandable...and quite sobering as well." Scott McTavish — who became the senior British naval officer in Tadoussac for the remainder of the war — also chimed in on that observation. "It appears King Neptune is quite vexed with us all if he's sending these kraken out to kill us when we're busy killing each other."

While upset that the Canadians kept the news of those who had said to have "died" actually surviving such battles from them, King George V and Kaiser Wilhelm II were pleased to convey their thanks to Harlan and his crews for their actions. Harlan was knighted as Sir Francis William Harlan; he refused being granted a barony given the Canadian attitudes of just simply addressing their leaders as "elder" in lieu of "lord" or any of the normal noble titles available in Britain...though female elders were always termed "lady" in the Wizengamot as note how Professor Jane Smith was addressed. All crews, Navy and Forester alike, were inducted into the Order of Merlin of Canada and the Orden Pour le Mérite Magique of Germany by direct orders of both monarchs, with grades ranging depending on circumstances. Three Victoria Crosses were awarded for great bravery in action to Captain Stuart Keel of Sunbeam (wounded in action, staying on the bridge to direct his ship), Healer Surgeon Lieutenant Dorothy St. Germain of Lady Elgin (wounded helping recovered sailors) and Company Sergeant-Major Louis Lafontaine of "D" Company of the Foresters aboard Sunbeam (killed within "A" turret when he died preventing a magazine explosion); naturally, the three were never listed among awardees of the Commonwealth's highest medal of valour.

Another potential casualty of Second Dogger Bank was a German-Hungarian observer who had been aboard Sunbeam during the fight. "It was madness! Pure and simple madness! The muggles were happy to slaughter each other in droves while still behaving like 'gentlemen' to each other," an anguished Gellert Grindelwald would later write in his diaries, his words revealing to historians his final shift in personal attitude that would propel the launch of the magical war named after him two decades in the future. "I once thought it was possible for wizards and muggles to live as equals, but now I see it's totally impossible. Muggles have to be brought under control. The Statute must come down and wizardkind must assume a place of governance and guidance over muggles, just as I've long believed deep down and I once hoped I could convince Albus to see. There's no other way for humanity to survive, especially with the unstoppable march of muggle technology."

Yomigawa Tsukiko, who had been aboard Sundown, had another opinion. "Western honour among normals has shown that it can stand equal to Bushidō when it comes to respecting one's enemies," she later wrote to the Heavenly Sovereign Taishō. "Yes, this 'great war' is a ghastly thing given how much technology has made killing people so efficient. Still, even as they sought to sink each other at Jutland, Jellicoe-dono and Scheer-dono were pleased to maintain civility between each other when they communicated to Harlan-dono about what had to happen on the magical side. I just hope that Western magicals can take heart over what happened, especially with the coming generation of normal-borns to soon rise from the veterans of such a fight. It should do much to finally help our European friends overcome their arrogance towards all other living beings."

And while the battle was the last major clash of warships in World War One, the work of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron and the Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters was not finished...

...as events starting in the following year in Russia soon proved.

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

Translation list: Kaiserliche Marine — Imperial Navy; BL — Breech Loading, the standard designation of all Navy rifles after the 1870s, when muzzle-loading cannons were abandoned; Lieutenant de Vaisseau — Ship Lieutenant, the French rank title for a navy lieutenant (NATO rank code OF-2); QF — Quick Firing, term for fast-firing naval rifles of small calibre; Skagerrakschlacht — Battle of the Skagerrak; Hochseeflotte — High Seas Fleet, main battle formation of the Imperial Navy; Aufklärungsstreitkräfte — Scouting Force, main reconnaissance element of the Hochseeflotte; Oberleutnant zur See — Senior Lieutenant at Sea, German rank title for a Royal Navy sub-lieutenant (NATO rank code OF-1); Zauberweld — Wizarding World; Fregattenkapitän — Frigate Captain, German Navy title for a navy commander (NATO rank code OF-4).

Imbolc is the Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring, always held on 1 February. Beltane is the Gaelic May Day festival marking the traditional start of summer. The other two celebratory festival days from the Celts are Lughnasadh (the start of harvest season on 1 August) and Samhain (the end of harvest season and the onset of winter on 1 November).

The word quetzalcohuātl is the classical Nahuatl (or Aztec) term for "feather serpent", a deity worshipped among the former masters of central Mexico. The name itself is rendered these days in English as "Quetzalcoatl"; he was the god of wind and wisdom. The magical feathered serpent is pretty much a basilisk in general looks without the deadly eyesight, capable of flight using magic and could use their bodies to whip up wind storms of considerable power. Like dragons, they are a type of magical being that is kept under the tightest of controls to prevent normals from learning they exist. Also like dragons, quetzalcohuātl are seen as sentient though not classified as "beings" by international magical law.

Action Stations is the British Commonwealth term to what is called "General Quarters" in the United States Navy. When action stations is called, a warship's crew go immediately to battle alert.

first mentioned the Læsø Søfort School of Magecraft (in Danish, Læsø Søfort Magiske Håndværkskole) in Wizards and Avalonians III. "Læsø Søfort" means "Sea Fortress of Læsø"; it would be located on the eastern end of the island.

In the Royal Canadian Navy before 1968, the term "surgeon" before a rank title was used to indicate a properly-trained medical doctor in uniform. Given that magical doctors are called "healers", both titles are used in the RCN(M), even now.

A Company Sergeant-Major (CSM) in the Canadian Army around World War One would be called a Master Warrant Officer (MWO) today (NATO rank code OR-8). "Company sergeant-major" is a position title in Army units of that size today; it is the name given to the senior non-commissioned officer of such units.
​

 

MAGICAL CANADA AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

"She is the rage and frustrations of all muggleborns who have lived in Europe since the days of Merlin, Morganna and Koschéj brought together in one person. Her magic is as wild as the country she calls her 'motherland'. A better friend, none could ask for. A more deadly opponent, none would ever want to face. Even with the Elder Wand, I would be hard pressed to defeat her; she gains experience by the day leading the Magical Red Guards against all those who support the recently-deposed Tsar or the democrats until Kérenskij...and the 'wise elders' in Geneva are simply helpless to stop her given how quickly her friends were to seal the borders of Russia to all save Forester 'peacekeepers' who are sympathetic to her cause. She cares not for the Statute of Secrecy, which is a point to her. Sadly, she is blind to the simple fact that wizards must guide muggles to allow all humanity to advance together. While her political beliefs could create true equality between all, human nature will disappoint her. No matter what, she will be my greatest opponent when the time finally comes."

That was an observation of Gellert Grindelwald in mid-1918 — the future Dark Lord of Europe having recently resigned from his post in the Kaiserlich und Königlich Ministerium der Magie before the collapse of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary unleashed chaos all across the magical elements of central Europe in the wake of the Armistice of 11 November that year — when it came to the rise of the youngest of the "Big Four" magical leaders of the Twentieth Century...and the first to make a name for herself: Svetlána Múrometsa. A farmer's child descent of serfs from a village outside Múrom to the east of the ancient capital of Russia, she was invited to attend the "lesser" of the two magical schools for the world's largest country, Akadémija Volshebsvá "Gamájun" on the shores of the Kárskoe Móre, in 1908. Gamájun was a place where half-bloods and normal-borns — "serednjakí" and "bednjakí" to borrow the Russian terms — were exiled to while Russia's "kulakí" elites attended the Impérskaja Akadémija Volshebsvá "Koldovstvórets" to the east of Sankt-Peterbúrg; this model had been directly copied from what the Scandinavians had developed concerning Grindelwald's own alma mater, Durmstrang, and the several "lesser" schools for normal-borns across the region like Læsø Søfort.

Because of that segregation — which had been policy in Russia since the Statute of Secrecy was passed — and Gamájun's geographic isolation from mainstream Russian magical society, the school became a hotbed of revolutionary thought as the power of the House of Románov fully collapsed in the face of a widespread agitation among normals for political evolution from the autocratic monarchy that had ruled the land for centuries. Like many of her peers attending Gamájun, Múrometsa gladly threw her support behind those who had been enticed for years by the theories of German political philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that saw the rise of a radical form of leftist socialism emerge in Europe...and would coalesce around a small band of revolutionaries under the ultimate leadership of Vladímir Il'ích Lénin, the Bol'shevikí.

Thanks very much to mandatory classes in Russian literature at Gamájun to help the illiterate students master writing and reading — Múrometsa herself barely understood how to read and write when she first went to the school — books of all sorts were prized among students there, regardless if such came from magical or normal sources. Prominent in those reading materials that people got their hands on were translations of all the volumes of Das Kapital by Marx and the writings of Lénin and his allies. Consumed by eager students, those books gave them a new dream that seemed much better than what they could hope to expect in the reality weighing in over magical Russians as a whole. A dream where purebloods, half-bloods, normal-borns and those with the blood of non-humans in them would live together as equals to forge a unified future. With that, the seeds that would grow into the Gamájunskij Sovét Volshébnykh Rabóchikh i Krest'jánskikh Deputátov — the heart of what would later become the Volshébnye Krásnye Okhránniki, the "mudblood" army that would take a nation by storm — were laid.

What happened next was something that caught the magical world by surprise. When Tsar Nikoláj II abdicated, he caused a massive social earthquake to be unleashed on Russian magicals, far worse than what the destruction of the French royal family in the revolutions of the 1790s unleashed. Without the Imperial Throne to serve as the bonding power, the magical foundations of the empire's acceptance of the Statute of Secrecy was destroyed. As local magical leaders tried to maintain some semblance of order due to the freeing of law enforcement officers from binding oaths they had taken in the service of the Tsar and the Ministry of Magical Affairs, rebels that had been tearing the countryside to overthrow the ruling powers cut loose. While some groups were quite humane to those they found themselves protecting, others unleashed levels of barbarism that hadn't been seen since the Dark Times of Magic.

Horrified that things had just flown out of control so fast, the International Confederation of Wizards quickly debated over what to do. Noting that the end of the normal side of the First World War seemed to be approaching, many struck on the idea of sending a magical "peacekeeping" force to Russia to keep things calm and await the end of the revolt on the normal side, thus help magicals of the world's largest nation reforge a new ministry. Knowing that none of the "large" nations of Europe or America really had any force that could go there on short notice, Supreme Mugwump Faris Spavin turned to the Canadians. "Thanks to what is now happening on the high seas, there is a large regiment of well-trained magical hit wizards that have been ready for action for three years," he announced to a hall of shocked representatives when the motion was passed to have the Royal Canadian Foresters head into Russia to restore some sense of order. "Like them or hate them, we need the Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters to protect the Statute of Secrecy." The last two super-dreadnoughts of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron to be commissioned, HMC Ships Carolina and Lady Jane, were also sent.

"We just guaranteed that the mudbloods will overthrow us all!" one German pureblood warned allies in the wake of that decision that saw Spavin replaced as Supreme Mugwump by 1920. "Sending Canadians to bring peace to Russia of all places, especially with these communists now rising among the muggles there?! We all just cast Fiendfyre on the Statute!"

Many Russian magicals didn't see it that way, even among moderate purebloods of the land who had agitated for years for political reforms in hopes of cutting off all the rebels who had risen up en masse after the Miracle of 1889 to overthrow the old ministry. "Our Canadian friends have been kind to everyone, not caring at all about influencing what was happening to us in any way save for keeping magic secret, which was the most important thing in the end; who ruled the nation in the future would definitely be a marked improvement over the Tsar and his court if friends knowledgeable in these matters spoke the truth," one pureblood who was then a fourth year at Koldovstvórets, Sergéj Ígorich Kárkarov, reported in the late summer of 1917 after seeing members of "S" Company provide a massive level of food relief to many villages near Sankt-Peterbúrg straight from the magical farms of Saskatchewan. "Many are recent immigrants from the Ródina to the Dominion, hailing from many provinces and who could still speak their native tongues; communications issues were minimized when the Canadians came. They were happy to show us how to augment our wands and other foci with mesonium to help improve our magic and help grow food. The mineral is plentiful here in Russia; we have the largest deposits of that material on the planet outside Canada itself. We didn't know what was happening at Gamájun at the time...but given what soon happened when Soviet Russia was born, we couldn't blame them. Fortunately, the Foresters were prepared for them as well."

Thanks to relatives of many normal-born Gamájun students who could communicate with members of the Petrográd Sovét under Lénin's leadership in the old imperial capital city, knowledge of Russia's magical societies was quickly relayed to the future rulers of the land. "We have the firebird by the tail now, Comrade Lénin," Svetlána Múrometsa's own father Il'já Aleksándrovich Múromets, himself a Marxist who helped form a local committee of Bol'shevikí in Múrom, advised in a secret letter in the early fall of 1917 which introduced his leader to all of Russia's magical communities and the growing civil war that threatened to bring in external powers if no central authority to replace the Tsar wasn't forged as soon as possible. "It will either lead us to great fortune or total ruin on both sides of the magical security divide. I want my daughter to grow up where she is respected for her magic and her skills, not because her parents were farmers. The corruption among magicals of the Ródina is hideously worse in many places than it is in normal society. Act quickly, for the sake of all humanity!"

Lénin did...but in a way that caught everyone off guard in Russia and beyond. "I have heard there are terrible threats to all within Russia from those who can't respect our desire to make our choices for our motherland," he declared in a gathering of supporters near the stone tower in Rjazán' where Earth's Praetorian Guardian lived, that gathering held sometime before the day that changed the world came in late October (on the old calendar). "We have no right to demand Comrade Taychéshko help us in our desire to free the proletariat from the misery they were forced into by men who couldn't understand the great suffering they brought to others by bad decisions. He has fought things beyond imagination, beyond our capacity to understand. What we will do is support our comrade in his quest by making this land the land of freedom from all foreign influence, from all quarters. We will do our best to support all those living in Russia who help us make this land the land of freedom from all foreign influence, from all quarters! The committees stand with Comrade Taychéshko!"

Of course, Lénin knew that Lord Rjazán' would never come out to support any normal government ruling over Russia; the Praetorian Guardian's steadfast neutrality in the politics of his adopted homeland was as solid as neutronium. Lénin had actually aimed his speech to the young magicals of Gamájun and sympathetic allies from Koldovstvórets; getting their support would make sure that magical rebels who had killed so many in Russia over the last two decades would be knocked off balance until they were liquidated or driven out. With that, he launched the final revolution against Aleksándr Fjódorovich Kérenskij's Provisional Government in Petrográd (old Sankt-Peterbúrg) on 7 November 1917 and had the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic — the core of the future Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — established by the following July.

With a new constitution soon bracing a still-shaky central government that was trying to bring a vast nation under its control with many border provinces now seeking full independence and the demands of the peace treaty with Imperial Germany signed in March of 1918 hitting the central government hard, Russia's new head-of-state Jákov Mikhájlovich Sverdlóv summoned surviving department heads of the Ministry of Magical Affairs to announce the new working relationship between magical and normal. To protect all in case rebels attacked, Canadian Foresters from "A" Company were present.

To the surviving magical lords of old Russia, it was a social holocaust like nothing they could ever have imagined. There would be no segregation by blood-status among magical Russians and laws would be changed to parallel the Canadian example when it came to relations with other sentient magical beings within the Motherland. No nobility would dominate the lives of Russian magicals; socialism and merit would decide who got jobs in government. All traditional privileges for magical nobles were gone. Wealth would be redistributed to ensure all could provide for themselves and help build a new tomorrow, united in the dictatorship of the proletariat normal Russians now sought for themselves. No attempts would be tolerated by anyone to bring foreign fighters to destabilize the nation and try to affect normal or magical peoples. "You'll find there are many young people in this land who are tired of the corruption you've buried yourself in," Sverdlóv said before declaring that leaders of the Gamájun Committee would take charge of the Naródnyj Komissariát Mágicheskie Del until a Vse-Rússkij S"jezd Magícheskikh Sovétov was established to replace the old Volshébnyj Gosudárstvennyj Sovét.

While many of the bureaucratic elements of the International Confederation of Wizards were simply relieved there was now a proper Russian magical government who could ensure no Statute violations happened while the normals in the country went at each other while Lénin's people moved to solidify control, the purebloods of Europe and America were terrified of the reaction of "lesser" magicals and other magical beings to the true meaning of the Russian Revolution. Conservative Russian pureblood magical leaders were deliberately targeted for extermination or forced expulsion from their homeland. To the shock of sympathetic friends elsewhere, many families that did escape during this time (usually to the territories of Russia that had become independent after World War One like Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland) found their magical holdings — including ancient tomes containing knowledge of family magic — stripped from them for the use of normal magicals remaining behind. While protests were made to the NKMD about respecting property rights, Svetlána Múrometsa coldly observed to a reporter from the Saskatchewan Sorcerer Times who was then accompanying "S" Company of the Foresters, "Now the kulakí know how it feels like to have their whole worldview ripped from them, just like they did to us when they forced us to come to their schools and tear us from our homes and families, enslaving us to laws that desperately need to be changed for the benefit of all the workers and the farmers of the world, magical and normal alike."

While a half-blood Gamájun charms teacher from Arkhángel'sk, Snegúrka Davídovna Morozóva, became Naródnyj Komissár Mágicheskie Del after the establishment of the NKMD, it was the farmer's daughter from Múrom who became the darling of the magical news media, the lightning rod for feelings magicals across Earth and even on Nerio expressed concerning the events in Russia. To the conservative purebloods in Europe and America, Svetlána Múrometsa was their ultimate nightmare made flesh; in response to her campaigns to wipe out contemporaries in Russia, they sent mercenaries to kill her in hopes of demoralizing the magical communists. Múrometsa proved too much for them; in response to that, she forged a special "wet works" team of the Volshébnye Krásnye Okhránniki trained by nimmib agents of Féliks Èdmúndovich Dzerzhínskij's Vserossíjskaja Chrezvychájnaja Komíssija to not only deal with such assassins but build a detailed knowledge base (via invasive Legilimency probes) of their supporters throughout Europe and America for later elimination.

To normal-borns, magical beings of all types and even purebloods who were quite sympathetic to them, Svetlána Múrometsa was the champion of equality, the one who didn't care about one's birth status or race. Her actions at the magical Battle of Petrográd on 22 October 1919 demonstrated that perfectly when the Volshébnye Krásnye Okhránniki teamed with a light battalion of Foresters ("A", "L", "N" and "R" Companies) to rescue inhabitants of the Kobaloi village under Gringotts' local headquarters, slaughtering the largest contingent of the Impérskie Volshébnye Belogvardéjtsy active. As Albus Dumbledore later reported to the British Ministry of Magic — the Hogwarts transfiguration teacher and then-apprentice to the long-lived alchemist master Nicolas Flamel had been sent to ascertain how relations between the magical side of the United Kingdom and the future Soviet Union would evolve — Múrometsa was a true "grey" sorceress like Morganna le Fay. "She used the Unforgivables liberally in fighting the Imperial Whites...but this came after she and her comrades discovered the ghastly slaughter of hundreds of defenceless goblin children in the bowels of their village under Gringotts Petrográd," Dumbledore wrote in his report. "After crying her heart out at such a horrid sight, she told me about the many times she and her friends learned of the slaughter of helpless muggleborns that the more radical conservative purebloods of Russia are unleashing in hopes of turning people away from supporting the NKMD. She vowed that if she had to burn every conservative pureblood alive to put an end to such senseless slaughter, she would do it. 'They reap what they sow, both now and in the future,' she emphasized. I fear that if another dark lord rises and threatens Russia in any way, Svetlána will gladly wreck not just them, but the society that allows such beings to rise. The Ministry must take heed whenever it considers laws that deprives muggleborns of their inherent rights; they now have a living inspiration to unleash revolution at a colossal scale anywhere."

After the bloody deaths of several conservative purebloods during the 1920s, various European ministries and the American Department of Magic finally got the hint. By then, they had something worse to deal with. Noting how much attention was focused on Russia as the magical side of the Soviet Union forged a "mudblood dictatorship" (as conservative European purebloods openly called it), Gellert Grindelwald decided to begin his move to overturn the Statute of Secrecy and enforce a "wizarding dictatorship" over all mankind. Joining with the magical wing of the anarchist Revoljutsiónnaja Povstántseskaja Ármija Ukraíniy as they moved to create a stateless society in the breadbasket of old Imperial Russia, the Dark Lord of Europe soon became known as he took on all comers; he was, by then, armed with the Elder Wand after stealing it from wandmaker Mykew Gregorovitch in 1917. Sure enough, the Volshébnye Krásnye Okhránniki came to eliminate the group and capture the native of Budapest; in this, they were accompanied by a full tactical battalion (seven companies) of Foresters.

In a duel during the Battle of Sevastópol' on 8 November 1921, Grindelwald and Múrometsa went at each other for two hours, both being heavily wounded along the way. "It was the most unbelievable thing I ever witnessed," Major General David St. Baptiste later reported to the Canadian Wizengamot. "Commander Múrometsa didn't have Herr Grindelwald's finesse or vast grimoire of spells, but she made up for it in terms of sheer power. Not even his possessing the Deathstick helped him at times...though I commend him for fighting a successful rearguard action, which allowed the anarchists to flee capture." Much to the later regret of all of Europe, the magical elements of the Black Army would morph over the years into becoming the core of Grindelwald's Magische Reichsarmee when he launched the magical side of World War Two in 1939.

By 1922, it was over. Peace had finally descended on Russia and it was time for the Canadians to return home. Commissar Snegúrka Morozóva was happy to make many Foresters and Navy Magical Service personnel members of Russia's Órden Koschéja, with six of Canada's magical infantry elevated to the rank of Grand Warrior Sorcerer. Also, all the companies of the Foresters as well as HMC Ships Carolina and Lady Jane were awarded the Órden Krásnogo Známeni for heroic actions in not only helping the Gamájun Committee and allies restore the magical peace after three decades of civil war and agitation, but saving the lives of thousands of magicals and normals across the future Soviet Union.

"We have forged a bond in blood between the Soviet Republic and the Dominion that will be forever etched in history," Morozóva declared in a speech to the Canadian Wizengamot when the Arctic Treaty went into effect on the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution; said treaty normalized relations between the two governments and between Soviet Russia and the ICW. "Let the naysayers scream all they want, both those who sought to suppress us because they think themselves worthy descendants of great masters like Koschéj when they certainly are not...and those misguided fools who try to enforce their will on those who deserve to live their lives in peace. We see reality. They do not. We will win the final war if or when it is forced on us both. They will lose because we have history on our side. In this, Russia and Canada stand as one!"

And while many leaders in Geneva and elsewhere were simply glad that peace had come and that the new Soviet leadership would now concentrate more on keeping the magical peace inside their borders, they soon realized that trying to isolate the two liberal magical governments would leave them all wide open to Grindelwald's forces as he moved to unleash revolts all over Europe and even America. As Svetlána Múrometsa later told Albus Dumbledore when she learned of his old friendship with the new Dark Lord of Europe, "Ál'bus Pérsival'ovich, the theories you and Gellért Mikhájlovich about the 'greater good' can work...but they must reject all divisions between magical and normal and they must submit to the dictatorship of the common people in the long term. Bednjakí like me and serednjakí like you understand. Kulakí like Gellért like enslaving people too much; if they can't enslave other magicals, they turn to enslaving normals. More people like Déannetta Danilovna Réjborn will come, normals with powers that are not magic but beyond normal. We must prepare magicals to accept such and forge a bond of unity between all. I know that we will ultimately succeed. History demands no less."

Her words proved very prophetic...

...as the normals of the world were introduced to the first group of living artificial sentient humanoid beings, the Steel Angels.

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

As I do with other languages, I make use of a scientific form of Romanization when it comes to Russian with place names and personal names (and yes, that includes Russian spellings of foreign names), though modified to avoid use of the odd letter choices or carons over various consonants.

Now, ye old (very big!) translation list: Kaiserlich und Königlich Ministerium der Magie — Imperial and Royal Ministry of Magic; Akadémija Volshebsvá "Gamájun" — Gamájun Academy of Magic; Kárskoe Móre — Kara Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean east of the northern end of the Ural Mountains; Serednjakí — Mid-level peasants, though not owners of farms; Bednjakí — Literally "pauper", these were the poorest peasants; Kulakí — Literally "tightfisted", these were peasant-descent affluent landlords (and in Soviet times, this was applied to farmers who refused to support the government by withholding grain shipments and resisting the moves to collectivize farmland); Impérskaja Akadémija Volshebsvá "Koldovstvórets" — Koldovstvórets Imperial Academy of Magic; Bol'shevikí — Those of the majority; Gamájunskij Sovét Volshébnykh Rabóchikh i Krest'jánskikh Deputátov — Gamájun Committee of Magical Workers' and Farmers' Deputies; Volshébnye Krásnye Okhránniki — Magical Red Guards; Ródina — Motherland; Naródnyj Komissariát Mágicheskie Del — People's Commissariat of Magical Affairs; Vse-Rússkij S"jezd Magícheskikh Sovétov — All-Russian Congress of Magical Committees; Volshébnyj Gosudárstvennyj Sovét — Magical State Council; Naródnyj Komissár Mágicheskie Del — People's Commissar of Magical Affairs; Vserossíjskaja Chrezvychájnaja Komíssija — Literally "All-Russian Emergency Commission" and known in short as the "Cheká", this is the first version of the Soviet Union's internal state police agency; Impérskie Volshébnye Belogvardéjtsy — Imperial Magical White Guards; Revoljutsiónnaja Povstántseskaja Ármija Ukraíniy — Literally "Revolutionary Insurrectionist Army of Ukraine" and nicknamed the "Black Army", this was a movement that tried to create an anarchist society during the Russian Civil War from 1918-21; Magische Reichsarmee — Magical Army of the Reich.

Since the map of the main magical schools in Pottermore did not show the location of Koldovstvórets (which is probably based on the combined words "wizard palace"), I elected to located it near Sankt-Peterbúrg (known as "Petrográd" after World War One began and renamed "Leningrád" after the death of the founder of the Soviet Union in 1924).

The Órden Koschéja ("Order of Koschéj") is my interpretation of Russia's version of the Order of Merlin. While awarded for the same reasons British and Commonwealth magicals get the Order of Merlin (for both achievement in society and bravery), the inspiration of the Order of Koschéj (established to honour Slavic magicals who fought back Genghis Khan during the Mongol invasions of Russia in the Thirteenth Century CE) influenced the titles of its three levels as noted below:

MO1 — Velíkij Vóin Volshébnik/Volshébnica Órdena Koschéja v Pérvoj Stépeni ("Grand Warrior Sorcerer/Sorceress of the Order of Koschéj in the First Degree")
MO2 — Vóin Volshébnik/Volshébnica Órdena Koschéja vo Vtorój Stépeni ("Warrior Sorcerer/Sorceress of the Order of Koschéj in the Second Degree")
MO3 — Volshébnik/Volshébnica Órdena Koschéja v Trét'jej Stépeni ("Sorcerer/Sorceress of the Order of Koschéj in the Third Degree")

By the way, I chose "MO" as the post-nominal letters for the Order of Merlin as "OM" represents the Order of Merit, which is the highest award below top-level valour decorations like the Victoria Cross that the Crown can bestow.

5) The Órden Krásnogo Známeni ("Order of the Red Banner") was the Soviet Union's first and highest decoration of military valour until the introduction of the Órden Lénina ("Order of Lénin") in 1930. Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner (both individuals and whole units) were always recognized for extraordinary heroism, dedication and courage on the battlefield. In later years, with the introduction of the Order of Lénin and other higher bravery decorations, the criteria of the Order of the Red Banner was changed to also encompass marking long service in the Soviet armed forces.​

 

WHEN NORMALS DISCOVERED "MAGIC": THE DAWN OF THE AGE OF THE STEEL ANGELS

"This being defies all known theories about life! She — I won't even begin to think of Diana as a simple 'it'; you just CAN'T think that when you meet her! — can dream and think like any flesh-and-blood human! Her power, while nowhere close to that of the Undying Lord or his 'son' here in Japan, outmatches the most well-trained magical warrior, even someone like Grindelwald! How in the name of all the gods of Existence did that Ayanokōji fellow DO THIS?!"

That was Polish investigator Andrzej Walski when he made a report to the International Confederation of Wizards in 1922 when the news of something that made magical researchers worldwide gape in disbelief broke out of Japan and began making the rounds among magical leaders worldwide, over two years after it had done so among normal leaders. Assigned to the ICW's liaison staff to the office of Mahō-Shōgun Tokugawa Keiko in Tōkyō two years before, the native of Tarnobrzeg learned from friends that normal Japanese scientists were engaged in research concerning the proper applications of mesonium; deposits of that material could be found in Hokkaidō and northern Honshū and the existence of the Immortal Master Hosan Hirosuke was known to many Japanese citizens. But when a quite humble scientist from Tōkyō named Ayanokōji Tetsuo finally got his hands on the material...!

World War One was a very traumatic event for humankind regardless if one was magical or normal. While not engaged in a magical war paralleling the normal conflict as many magical leaders feared could happen, the aftermath of the "war to the end of all wars" was as devastating to them as it was to normals. Outside the radical change in Russia that had made European and American purebloods cower in terror as they began to fear the unleashing of "communist mudblood" revolts all across the world, there was the breakup of the long-lived Dual Monarchy that dominated central Europe before the rise of Germany in the Nineteenth Century; from the remnants of Austria-Hungary came three independent states and border territories being turned over to the control of four neighbouring states. Along with the freedom of most of Ireland from the United Kingdom and the creation of five countries from the western territories of Russia, the Ottoman Empire was cut down to mere Turkey as Britain and France created "trusteeships" in Syria and Iraq, plus allowed the rising princes of the Arabian peninsula to establish new kingdoms there. And out in the Far East, China was caught up in the rise of warlords running rampant over the nation as it struggled to evolve from the darkness of the Qīng era.

With all that, the basic order of things in the halls of the International Confederation of Wizards was transformed. As new nations threw off any form of domination from their old leaders, magical leaders from more established nations struggled to try to maintain set standards to ensure no large incident that could threaten the Statute would arise, especially now that Gellert Grindelwald was striving to overturn worldwide magical society with his growing rebellion against the ICW. Watching this from one side was Japan's representative to the ICW, Yomigawa Tsukiko. Her eyes forever blackened by an accident with ebony mesonium when she apprenticed with the Immortal Master around the turn of the century, the woman who would become a "dark lady" at the same scale as Gellert Grindelwald realized after watching the many heated debates among the leaders of the ICW that the time was just right to remind the "wiser" elders of Europe that they didn't have the corner on magical knowledge.

The Kōtetsu Tenshi would do just that.

Propelled by fears among senior military leaders that another war on the scale of the Western Front would gut their nations' military age youth in times of great danger, the Steel Angels were viewed as the perfect "future weapons of peace". In effect, they were magical gynoids with human-like sentience, eons ahead of even the most advanced golem magic used by Jewish mages in classical times to protect their villages. Brought to life via ancient mystic knowledge "rediscovered" by researchers from archives of Shintō temples — later discovered in some places to have been seeded by normal-born mages at the orders of the Heavenly Sovereign Taishō himself — their souls were anchored to mesonium "angel hearts" constructed in the same triple-layered pattern (core of ebony mesonium, inner casing of ruby mesonium and outer sheath of diamond mesonium) as the Power Jewel. Much to the surprise of many, their bodies were forged from advanced, lifelike silicon that was moulded in the forms of twenty-something women with perfect proportions; the angel hearts were able to make them so lifelike, no one could tell the difference even when one engaged in sexual intercourse with them. Working with a team of "admittedly insane" scientists, onmyōji mystics, Shintō priests, Buddhist monks and nuns, soldiers and a support cast of hundreds, Ayanokōji Tetsuo — who took on the alias "Doctor X" when he was declared leader of the Sentan Kagaku Akademii via Imperial Rescript issued by the Heavenly Sovereign in 1920, said academy located in a secret base near the ancient capital of Nara — ended up proving it was possible that true artificial sentient beings could be created...yet, to the surprise of many, wound up not creating Frankenstein monsters but "kami" who reflected the best of all humankind.

Once the first Steel Angels, Ōta Diana and Shichinohe Kaga, were "born" in mid-1920, the Imperial Army and Navy, other government departments and all of Japan's prefecture governments jumped on the bandwagon to have their own steel angels created. This was noted by military observers from other countries...yet, in a surprise move that completely stunned everyone, Ayanokōji allowed knowledge of the process to leak to as many people as possible. Groups in Europe, Russia and North America began the process in creating their own "national" steel angels. Canada was one of the first participants in the "Angel Race" that led to the farcical "Steel Angel War of 1924"; within a year of the Dominion Special Research Agency being formed in Winnipeg in early 1921, Vesperia Georgina French was born.

Two years after Ōta Diana's birth, only then did the ICW catch onto things!

In a repeat of the reaction among the world's magical ministries and the International Confederation of Wizards to Dean Raeburn in 1889, magical ministries were made to back off and leave the development of steel angels alone; even if there was obvious magical influences on their creation, the science used to see people like Ōta Diana born was enough to mask it from even inquisitive would-be rhabdophobes. Over in America, the country's new "magical president" Seraphina Picquery instantly blocked her people from sweeping in to stop this "illegal technomancy" — as the American magical press instantly branded the concept — from being done; she knew right away from friends in Geneva that allied governments had been purposefully blocked by their various heads-of-state from interfering and she didn't want to risk doing something that could focus renewed White House attention her way. However, much to the relief of the native of Savannah, steel angels such as Liberty "Red" Pfatz were willing to leave enough alone even if it was as apparent as a lump of coal on a ballroom floor that hidden magical societies were out there. Thanks to their part-meson construction, experts in New York City knew using any sort of spell on them would be an exercise in futility; even more, thanks to the deliberately designed need to bond a steel angel to a human "master" (usually via kissing on the lips), any attack on those who created people like Red Pfatz would provoke a response leaders of the Magical Congress didn't desire. "It's like dealing with the potential threat of hundreds of people like Dean Raeburn, each one more than capable of exposing us to the no-majs wholesale. We don't do anything to provoke people like Ms. Pfatz and they won't hurt us," American investigative auror Porpentina Goldstein told a reporter of the New York Ghost when news of the Magical Congress' decision to hide from the Steel Angels got out.

Soon enough, the wise prudence shown by people such as King George V when it came to blocking interference from magical leaders worldwide when it came to the steel angels was justified. As observers from Geneva reported to elders in the ICW, the steel angels most often appeared to assist in times of natural disasters or some civil disturbance that required a more stronger response than what normal military or law enforcement forces could bring to bear. Save for Ayanokōji's three gynoid "daughters" Kurumi, Saki and Karinka and those like Ōta Diana and Shichinohe Kaga working at the Academy, most steel angels were commissioned officers in military services or sworn law enforcement officers; for example, Vesperia French was an inspector in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while Red Pfatz was a captain in the United States Marine Corps. Thanks to the loosening morals of the "Roaring Twenties", people like Red Pfatz and Vesperia French were often used as "visual cheesecake" to offset whatever serious issue they were dealing with. And there was simply no way to hide how many Japanese steel angels reacted to the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923. "If they hadn't been there, the number of casualties could have doubled!" Home Minister Gotō Shinpei reported to the Imperial Diet in the wake of that horrid disaster. Much to the delight of Canadians — even Canadian magicals — all the steel angels of the Dominion got Dean Raeburn to take them to their "ancestral" home to help out; that earned them the thanks of the Heavenly Sovereign.

And brought the Protector of All Life to the attention of the Immortal Master.

****

A NEW RISE OF "SCIENTIFIC RHABDOPHOBIA"

The Steel Angels' arrival on the scene seemed to visibly demonstrate a swing to a joyous age for many across the planet. As noted above, the memories of the trenches in the Western Front drove many leaders into unleashing policies meant to restore a common faith in humanity in the wake of the deaths of seventeen million people during four years of fighting...which was almost immediately encompassed by up to a hundred million deaths in the two-year "Spanish flu" pandemic that followed.

The Canadian Ministry of Magical Affairs, as the only magical government who had been intensely involved in the conflict on the high seas and in Russia, followed the trend of its normal counterpart in Ottawa and moved to push to create a positive outlook on life for all magicals in the Dominion. One outcome of this was the fate of the thousands of sailors rescued by warships of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron during the war from Coronel to Second Dogger Bank. While many had been prepared from the start to accept obliviation and having new identities made for them before their repatriation, spending four years under the effective "command" of Rear-Admiral William Harlan saw a vast majority of them express a desire to remain in Canada and find a way to help their gracious hosts even from beyond the veil of the Statute of Secrecy while creating lives for themselves in the Dominion.

Taking advantage of the growing number of deaths in the flu pandemic and with a Magical Royal Proclamation issued by Governor General Victor Cavendish to stop any objections from the ICW, the usual "keeping it closed" approach taken by the Ministry in these matters was done: Employing Fidelius Charms anchored to a country-wide grid to compel normal people to never reveal the secret of magic in casual conversation to those not in the know. Among those who chose to be "reborn" in Canada were the more prominent officers among the "dead" sailors who stayed in Tadoussac in the war. For example, Stefan von Arenburg (saved at the Battle of the Falkland Islands when SMS Scharnhorst was sunk) moved to Kitchener in Ontario and later became a teacher at the Ontario Training School for Girls in nearby Galt; this would allow him to take note of one particular female officer cadet who spent time there when HMCS Conestoga was in commission.

Only ninety-six British, French, German and Austrian-Hungarian sailors accepted obliviation and repatriation...though it would be noted that all of them would become the fathers of magical children later invited to Hogwarts, Beauxbâtons and several German magical academies.

Some administrative changes were unleashed in government. In reflection of what was happening in the normal world, the Dominion Magical Police and the magical wing of the Royal North-West Mounted Police were united as a single force under the overall banner of the newly-renamed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (which had been created when the normal RNWMP had been united with the Dominion Police in 1920). The magical service of the Force would be designated "W" Division (as "M" Division was already established in the Yukon). One change insisted on by Commissioner Aylesworth Bowen Perry when he met the first commander of "W" Division, Assistant Commissioner Nicholas DuCharme of Lévis near Québec City, was that future recruits to the magical element of the Force HAD to be trained at "Depot" Division at Regina before wearing the Red Serge. "Some of your responsibilities for your Minister is keeping this whole magical thing secret from normal folk, right?" Perry mused. "Well, what better way to act like members of the Force than to experience everything a Forceman does." Being ex-Forester from "D" Company, DuCharme was more than happy to agree.

To this very day — much to the constant amusement of normal members of the Force made aware of the secret of magic — legal experts in Geneva continue to try to determine some way to prevent further recruits to "W" Division from training alongside "muggles".

Among these changes was a considerable warming of relations between Québec City and New York City, which included creating new avenues of trade with the world's "newest" magical government once the Arctic Treaty solidified bonds between magical Canada and the magicals of the future Soviet Union. As the granddaughter of a Civil War veteran who would have been "segregated" from her own office because of her skin colour by Woodrow Wilson, Seraphina Picquery was viewed with great sympathy by Canadian magicals after her election to the "magical presidency" in the fall of 1919. Her sailing on HMCS Lady Elgin during Second Dogger Bank while serving as Deputy Secretary of Magic earned her even more respect. Of course, given the new Minister of Magical Affairs was once her host on the world's largest battleship helped manners. "Given Madame Picquery is forced to serve a culture that is now so afraid of their own shadows that any talk of doing anything to let normals in on the secret of magic — even with Mister Wilson out of the White House! — or fully stopping the practice of effectively kidnapping magical children from normal parents can't be done, it is a miracle that she is still able to progress things in America," retired Captain Carl Andrews of Cornwall (elected in 1917) explained in an interview after the initial meeting between himself and Picquery after the latter's election.

This warming did much to help not just make sure that the relationship between the Union and the Dominion on the normal side didn't affect the magical world — with the imposition of Prohibition on the former country, which made the latter a major source of illegal alcohol over the following decade thanks to people such as Al Capone — but also helped keep the magical peace and good order on both sides of the world's longest border between two nations. American aurors and Canadian magical Mounties worked together on several cases that spanned the frontier, especially when it came to dealing with a renewed rise of rhabdophobia in the Union from confirmed and suspected Scourer sources. While pureblood members of the Magical Congress were later discovered to have tried their best to trip up such investigations — as Mollie Bean darkly predicted years before, normal Scourers were simply too useful to purebloods to allow them to be totally eliminated — aurors of the Union were quick to take advantage of new working relations with Forcemen of "W" Division to see organizations like the New Salem Preservation Society stripped of members after being tricked into going to Canada to spread their "message" and have magicals in Canada eliminate them. It was during this time that the Scourers' use of mesonium shielding crystals to keep the aurors away from them was discovered. A request to Dean Raeburn saw to it that law enforcement officers on both sides of the border would have wands augmented with special mesonium crystals to track their targets successfully. Once they learned that they were no longer safe, people like Mary Lou Barebone were forced to go deeper underground.

The magical purebloods who had "shielded" Scourers in the past never learned what turned up the heat against those people until their own hold of power on the Magical Congress and the Department of Magic was forever shattered one bloody afternoon in early 1942.

During this time, authorities on the Canadian side of the border noted a new form of rhabdophobia was starting to rise in sectors of the Dominion, one that wasn't concerned about killing magicals but was determined to expose them and force them to submit to all normal authority as had been done in centuries past. Driven by religious officials who had started to note the disappearance of native Canadian children from residential schools they were using to try to make these "savages" reject their ways, it was soon discovered by Legilimency masters now working to support "W" Division that these priests were supported by church leaders who got their information direct from the Vatican and other church organizational headquarters worldwide. While many leaders in the world's smallest state (as it had become in 1925 after the Locarno Treaty) were rhabdophobic due to their misinterpretations of Holy Scripture, others were pragmatic; the introduction of the Steel Angels forced many to re-examine their most cherished beliefs and made them realize magic was a living part of Creation and that those gifted to manipulate it might not be the "devils" predecessors gladly burned at the stake years before.

Fortunately, the expansion of Canada's steel angel project to allow the various First Nations to participate in the creation of such beings put a massive crimp in efforts to force any "incident" to reveal magic on a grand scale. People such as Matisa Hurit of the Nēhiyaw, acting on behalf of their home nations, busied themselves over the following decade in inspecting various schools while serving as reserve constables of the normal RCMP, which forced people who abused children to either retire from their jobs or face exposure and public scandal. It didn't save everyone, but every bit did help...

****

NEWT SCAMANDER COMES TO CANADA

"Given the presence of the 'Tear of the Stars' in your beautiful country, I want to know what the effects of mesonium on magical creatures really are."

That was Newton Artemis Fido "Newt" Scamander, a Hogwarts alumnus of the Class of 1908 from Ottery Saint Catchpole in County Devon, when he applied in the spring of 1922 to travel to Canada to research creatures for a book that would become a bestseller, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (published in early 1927). A worker in the British Ministry of Magic who had been able to write his OWL examinations even after expulsion because of his "threatening" a classmate with a magical creature — later proven to have been provoked by that "victim" by Albus Dumbledore, which allowed Scamander to regain wand privileges and do his graduates level tests to move on in society — the magizoologist from Devonshire was a quiet and quirky person, very introverted, who found it hard to work with humans as a whole; he was more comfortable dealing with animals.

His trip to Canada would wet his appetite for much more...

...and help turn him into a very unlikely hero of the age between the world wars.

Reaching Halifax at the start of summer that year, Scamander was met by agents of "W" Division and portkeyed to Tadoussac so he could get right to work. There, he went aboard HMCS Sunbeam, which was going to perform manoeuvres in the Arctic to aid elements of the Ministry of Magical Affairs survey the lands of the Inuit as well as research the pack ice to find usable shipping routes between Canada and the now-Soviet Union; ships of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron did "unarmed" summer cruises to keep their machinery in shape and allowed the sailors of NCSM Gravé and HMCS Whidbey to maintain their skills. Stunned to see artifacts of the squadron's campaign against the sea leviathans, Scamander tried to theorize what happened that caused those things to try to seek out normal vessels to consume their crews as had been noted during sweeps of the oceans when sunken vessels were examined by the battleship crews. His insights into that conflict after scanning the remains of several of the creatures during the trip into the Labrador Sea were considerable.

"These things were directed by human-like intelligence," he would report to a packed meeting of the Canadian Wizengamot before returning to London at the end of the year. "They're like Dementors in a way, but much more physical than ethereal; hence their attraction to consuming the lives of sailors they capture when their ships were sunk. Their ability to bond with sunken ship fragments indicates a possible metamorphic capability might be developing among them. Merlin forbid that if another world war comes on anytime in the future, they'll have the ability to disguise themselves as normal ships to prey on vessels for whatever drives them to do such. As to what made them lash out like they did when the war was on, I simply can't say. It's a pity a ship couldn't have been built to capture one of them. Much that I can understand what motivated this assembly to have your battleships built — as I'm sure the many sailors your people saved during that time certainly appreciate — my sympathies to magical creatures makes me want to understand their side of the story, too."

During his voyage to the Arctic, Scamander helped discover nests of ice dragons on islands like Baffin and Devon; the Tatlurutit Dragon Reserve (in French, la Réserve de Dragons à Tatlurutit) on Devon Island would ultimately be created within a year to give them a safe place to reside away from normal eyes. He also helped the Canadians and the Danish make contact with unknown ice giant tribes residing in villages within the great glaciers of Greenland and several of the Canadian Arctic islands; fortunately for Scamander's peace of mind, magical governments in both Québec City and Copenhagen were happy to leave the giants live in peace as they were quite far from normal people. He was able to theorize the positive effects of mesonium on the biosphere; while magical creatures tended to react more to the crystals than their normal counterparts, its ability to help augment the abilities of healing potions would make the magical trade in mesonium increase in the following years.

In that expedition, other researchers got the chance to examine sea ice, where they that noted changes in temperature were starting to melt the mass due to increasing levels of pollution in the air, it would still force Canadian and Soviet ships to sail the "long" way around the polar cap for years to come. "Hopefully, the muggles won't let it go that far," Scamander mused on hearing that, forgetting yet again that using such a term in the presence of Canadian magicals made him seem a "bumpkin" to many. Fortunately, his polite behaviour endeared him to many and people didn't really harass him on that.

Much to Scamander's later disbelief, entries on indigenous Canadian magical creatures never made editions of Fantastic Beasts purchased in Europe...though the Canadian, American, Soviet and Japanese editions corrected that oversight. When publisher Augustus Worme was approached about this by the magizoologist after the final version of Fantastic Beasts was proofread, Scamander learned it was "unofficial yet very official" policy of the Ministry of Magic to downplay anything about Canada in any textbook to be purchased by Hogwarts students; even if the school was legally separate from the Ministry of Magic, it was still under their influence thanks to the school's Board of Governors, all of whom were serving members of the British Wizengamot. "I agree with warning people about what's in that country if they visit there. But idiot purebloods here are still too upset about Canadians looking down on them all the time like they do because they've always hated purebloods. They don't want the muggleborns to get any ideas 'above their station'. It's a shame, but what can you do about it?"

Not wanting to immerse himself in those sorts of issues and knowing local copies of Fantastic Beasts would have the necessary correct information for readers, Scamander would surprise people by spending the summer of 1928 in the Soviet Union exploring Siberia with the help of personnel from the NKMD. This came after his nearly-catastrophic visit to New York City two years earlier, when he had been forced to deal with an Obscurial named Clarence Barebone (adopted son of Mary Lou Barebone of the New Salem Philanthropic Society, who was killed when Clarence's powers went out of control), who was being manipulated at the time by a disguised Gellert Grindelwald...which was soon followed by an attempt by Scamander (with the prodding of Albus Dumbledore) and his allies to trace down a still-alive Barebone after Grindelwald escaped the custody of the American magical authorities in 1927. His discovery of firebird nests near the Gamájun Academy saw him declared a Sorcerer in the Order of Koschéj in the Third Degree; he received that from Svetlána Múrometsa herself in Leningrád.

He wasn't surprised when entries on Soviet creatures didn't make the final print of the second edition Fantastic Beasts in Europe in 1932; fortunately, post-World War Two editions corrected that worldwide.

Unknown to his friends until years later, Scamander was involved in saving several Obscurial children trapped in remote Siberian villages before their powers got the better of them during his trip to the Soviet Union. That also saw him awarded the Order of Lénin and eventually got his Order of Koschéj upgraded to Warrior Sorcerer in the Second Degree by order of Iósef Stálin in 1944 after Múrometsa informed the Soviet dictator of what happened in 1928; the children in question would be adopted by normal-born families after their rescue, brought into Gamájun to study their magic and they would eventually become some of the most fierce fighters she possessed to use against Grindelwald's forces.

To Scamander's relief on hearing no more magical children in Siberia would be forced to endure episodes of rhabdophobia from normals — he would be haunted for a long time by what happened to that boy in New York City as well as a girl in Africa he encountered during his trip — the abusers were all executed by the NKMD at Múrometsa's direct order.

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

Translation list: Kōtetsu Tenshi — Steel angel; Onmyōji — Literally "Way of Yin and Yang", this is an ancient Japanese mystical art which mixes natural science and occultism to create an esoteric form of cosmology (and in the universe of this story, forms the basis of a powerful school of magic); Sentan Kagaku Akademii — Academy of Advanced Sciences.

In stories where I involve the steel angels of Kōtetsu Tenshi Kurumi, I gave each of them family names to make them seem more human. With the three main stars of the story, I gave them the family name of their creator, Ayanokōji Tetsuo. For both Diana and Kaga, I often based family names on the people who created them for the series as noted in the KTK manga; most likely, Professor Ayanokōji's main assistant and the Angel of Destruction were created by the people who formed the Kaishaku team that eventually published the series in the first place. Also, I sometimes give these girls proper given names (as look at Liberty "Red" Pfatz) to make them seem even more human.

Vesperia French is named after one of the names proposed for the new dominion that was being formed of the British North American colonies in the 1860s. The given name means "land of the evening star". The family name comes from the second Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police (today the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), George French.

Information about HMCS Conestoga will be revealed in a future chapter.

"Depot" Division — also known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy — is the basic training facility of the Force. It is located just to the west of the urban part of the capital city of Saskatchewan. The division was first established in 1885. It is here that all recruit members of the Force attends the 24-week Cadet Training Program to become constables.​

 

THE FOUNDATION OF 77 MAGICAL WING, ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE

"With the development of air forces among normal military services worldwide, it's only logical that we do the same. Much that riding a broom or a carpet is comfortable, they don't have the altitude, speed and range to cover our country. Trusting to things like portkeys and apparition in such remote areas of the Dominion without a proper survey of the land is foolhardy."

That was the then-senior serving member of the Royal Canadian Foresters — the position title for the highest ranking officer in Canada's magical militia was changed to "Master General of the Foresters" (in French, "Maître Général des Forestiers") in 1922 — Brigadier Lance McMillan (late of "D" Company and service aboard HMCS Sunbeam) when he gave his report to Director of Magical National Defence David St. Baptiste in 1926 about the possible formation of a magical wing to the Dominion's newest armed service, the Royal Canadian Air Force (which had been properly founded at Camp Borden near Toronto in 1920 and granted the "royal" title in 1924). Given the vast territory that was supposed to be watched over by the Ministry of Magical Affairs, finding a fast, safe and efficient way of patrolling said territory was prudent. The discovery of dragons and giants in the high Canadian Arctic during Newt Scamander's visit to the country proved that despite all the work the Ministry had done in monitoring the territory of the Dominion as they had been tasked to do in the Separation Act of 1867, there was still far too much unknown about the country to ensure the safety of all who lived there.

Once the then-Director of the RCAF, Group Captain James Scott, was brought into the secret of magic at the insistence of Minister of Magical Affairs Carl Andrews, the Governor General, the Viscount Byng of Vimy, authorized the formation of "77 Magical Wing" (in French, "77e Escadre Magique") of the Royal Canadian Air Force on 1 April 1926. Composed of nine flying squadrons (numbered 771 to 779) to represent each of the provinces of the Dominion and a headquarters and support element to be based near the Institute of Science and Magic, the wing was tasked to create a formation that would help protect the Dominion in times of peace and war as well as help better expand His Majesty's Government's understanding of what lay under Ottawa's legal control. A hidden mission of the wing would be to help develop the advancement of aerospace technology for eventual seeding to normal companies to expand Canadian industry. Like the Foresters and the Navy Magical Service, 77 Magical Wing was a part-time reserve force, only to be mobilized to active duty if ordered by the Crown.

When confronted by then-current levels of aerospace technology, the artisans who gathered at Sibley to form No. 770 (Headquarters and Support) Squadron (Magical) RCAF were forced to admit that helping build BETTER airplanes wouldn't do much. Despite the 1920s being the "barnstorming" era in the world of aviation, even the most advanced aircraft still lacked the range to fly from the Great Lakes to the high Arctic without making frequent stops for refuelling or risk crashing in unforgiving terrain. With that, it was decided by the first commander of 77 Wing, Wing Commander (ex-Lieutenant Colonel RCF) Thomas Faulkner of Portage la Prairie, that the wing would learn how to build and fly airships.

Fortunately, there were dozens of experts in Germany who could help in such an effort.

In the wake of World War One and the crippling restrictions forced on the country because of the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, there were many former workers of companies like Luftschiffbau Zeppelin who were available and whose children were then attending Germany's several magical schools. Atop that, there were veterans of both the Marine-Fliegerabteilung and the Luftstreitkräfte who also had children attending those schools who wanted to get back into the air again. Once enticed by considerable monetary awards, they gladly made the journey to Canada to help get 7 Wing flying.

"Remarkable hosts," former Imperial Army officer Hauptmann Georg Flade of Trier commented in a letter to his daughter Erika — who would be invited to attend the Nibelungen Akademie der Magie near Worms in 1933 — in 1929 after he was granted the honorary rank of Flight Lieutenant in the RCAF and was asked to help train students. "I've met 'slain' sailors saved by the battleships who hunted sea leviathans during the late war and I can't get over the fact that I'm not treated any differently because I do not possess magic. I hope that when it comes time for you to go to Nibelung, you'll have the same experience; people in Canada have warned me about certain social beliefs back in the old country."

Thanks to the artisans of both the Kobaloi and the Dweorg who were enticed by the chance to create flying craft much larger and more capable than the usual run of flying carpet from India or the Middle East, a airship construction facility was erected on Porphyry Island near the Institute. The first Canadian airship, a zeppelin christened HMCA Aurora, was launched in the spring of 1927. Like the battleships of the Navy Magical Service, the airships of 77 Wing RCAF were deliberately built with the ability to project an obliviation field to prevent normals from remembering what they had seen if they encountered such an aircraft. Assigned to No. 771 Squadron (Magical) RCAF based out of Haileybury near the Québec border of Timiskaming District — the squadron would be tasked to patrol Ontario and the Hudson Bay basin up to Baffin Island — Aurora was filled with non-flammable helium. Said gas had been obtained thanks to experts from Gringotts Canada out of the products of natural gas extraction in the Prairie provinces after copying what the Americans discovered in 1903 which eventually allowed the Union to become the sole producer of helium for normal use until after World War Two.

By the time William Lyon Mackenzie King was elected to his third term as Prime Minister of Canada in 1935, all nine flying squadrons of 77 Wing were equipped with six airships as well as a small flight of heavier-than-air aircraft, all locally-produced versions of the Hawker Audax two-seat bomber then serving in the normal Air Force. As Canada was then in the throes of the Great Depression that began in the fall of 1929, the magical militia, air militia and naval militia had been tasked by the new Governor General, the Marquess of Willingdon, to help in aide relief to families who had been driven to near-starvation because of the stock market crash in New York City that caused Canadian exports of raw materials to drop. To disguise the magical involvement, the country's Steel Angels — including the Royal Canadian Air Force's own magical gynoid, Flight Lieutenant Laurentia Vanier, who had been born in 1924 — were used to help present a public face to such relief.

The introduction of airships like Aurora unleashed a new appreciation towards normal technology among magicals in Europe; the sight of Canada's first magical airship transporting Minister of Magical Affairs Carl Andrews and American Secretary of Magic Seraphina Picquery to a meeting of the ICW in Geneva in 1927 to discuss the ongoing campaign by Gellert Grindelwald to overturn the Statute of Secrecy made many who would have derided the obsession with technomancy that overcame Canadians concerning the great flying ships elect to visit Canada to get a chance to board them.

"It was the most smooth flight I've ever taken on any device anywhere," British Minister of Magic Hector Fawley boasted to friends in the Wizengamot after his visit to Canada in 1928 to celebrate the election of William Harlan to replace Carl Andrews as Minister of Magical Affairs the previous summer; it was in that visit that the British Wizengamot was able to award the former commander of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron the first class Order of Merlin for his work during the Great War. In lieu of sailing on a ship, Fawley was invited to fly on ACSM Acheron of No. 772e Escadron (Magique) ARC out of Saint-Benoît (now part of Mirabel) near Montréal to attend Harlan's investiture. "The muggles invited from Germany to help our Canadian cousins master the concept of airships were quite smart to steer us around large storms and all that. As always, Canadian magicals treated their muggle 'teachers' with great respect...but given how utterly comfortable I was during the flight to Québec, I won't complain. It would be much better than using a flying carpet imported from India."

While there were the naysayers in the ICW and various ministries in Europe who didn't care for Canada continuing to maintain part-time military forces to aid in the defence of their homeland — which could be used to attack other nations in case someone in Québec City went crazy — the sheer novelty of airships like Aurora was too enticing. This allowed Canada's growing league of professional quidditch players to take advantage of such to boost interest in their teams from foreign fans who saw them in action; managers of teams like the Hammers of Haileybury, the Meteorites of Moose Jaw and the Stormers of Stonewall gladly allowed their players to serve as part-time crews on airships of 77 Wing.

"Taught us a whole new aspect of flying," Stormers keeper John Lundey of Flin Flon explained to reporters from The Daily Prophet when the ship brought his team over to Holyhead in 1930 to play an exhibition game against the world-famous Harpies; he was also a flight sergeant in the RCAF and served as engineer aboard HMCA Ardent, lead ship of No. 775 Squadron (Magical) RCAF based in Gimli. "Given the way normal technology is expanding — especially since people are shifting to single-wing monoplanes — our team might buy Ardent after she's decommissioned to serve as our mobile home for future international games. Beats apparition and portkeys fifty ways from Sunday if you ask me."

Much to the annoyance of many young fans of airships as well as quidditch fanatics, leaders of European ministries put a stop to attempts to purchase airships for local use. While the fact that such ships could mask themselves well from normal view was a point in their favour, conservative purebloods realized the introduction of such machines would embolden normal-borns into becoming a greater economic force across the Continent. This was substantiated not just by Grindelwald's revolts across Europe during the 1920s but what was happening in the Soviet Union during that time. After the ascension of Iósef Vissariónovich Stálin to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922 — especially in the wake of Vladímir Lénin's death two years later — he convinced magical leaders like Svetlána Múrometsa to launch a brutal campaign to liquidate all opposition to him from the magical side of the security divide. This saw hundreds of magicals across the former territory of Imperial Russia killed or forced to flee the nation — including a fair number of moderate purebloods who had once supported the Gamájun Sovét when they joined forces with Lénin's people to seize power in 1917 — and their children made to forget their upbringings and endure harsh "re-education" at the Gamájun Academy to ensure that no new class of purebloods could ever rise there.

It didn't help matters in the long term that leaders of the NKMD had taken interest in airships after seeing the vessels of 77 Wing in action, especially when it came to detailed surveys of the Canadian Arctic, which often included flights over the North Pole and visits to magical villages in Siberia. With assistance from 77 Wing personnel as permitted in the Arctic Treaty, squadrons of the Magícheskie Voénno-Vozdúshnye Síly were up and running by 1934. Atop this allowing the NKMD to maintain the magical peace and public order across the vast territory of the Soviet Union, the MVVS aided in the continued expansion of knowledge concerning the world's largest country and what lay within it.

Of course, the considerable amount of assistance normal personnel gave in the creation of 77 Wing and the MVVS ended up adding a lot of fuel to Gellert Grindelwald's argument that it was time for the Statute of Secrecy to be done away with and the normal governments of the world overthrown, thus allowing magicals to assume a place of domination over humanity as a whole. Given that purebloods in Europe and elsewhere were doing all to keep their political and economic dominance over their societies, this convinced hundreds of normal-borns, half-bloods, half-breeds and even disenfranchised purebloods to flock to his growing army, who were now virtually attacking magical towns in Europe at will. Of course, no magical from neither Canada nor the Soviet Union joined such madness. Those former citizens of the world's two largest countries who did come to serve the Dark Lord of Europe would be declared as enemies of the state by the NKMD and the Ministry of Magical Affairs; if found guilty, they were sentenced to Quttinirpaaq Penitentiary or its Soviet counterpart, the Spetsiál'nye Mágicheskie Trudovój Láger' (known in short as the "Spemát") near Nízhnij Nóvgorod east of Moskvá.

Even more, attempts by Grindelwald and his growing number of followers to force some confrontation in Canada in hopes of weakening the Ministry of Magical Affairs were dead aborning. While many in the Dominion did think the time might come when the Statute of Secrecy would no longer be needed, the idea of creating a "magical dictatorship" over normal people didn't chime with people who got a chance to study at the Institute of Sorcery and Magic. Even if Dean Raeburn was then in Japan learning how to expand her understanding of what the Power Jewel could let her do under the tutelage of her new "Papa-sensei" Hosan Hirosuke, Studies of Normal Peoples was a mandatory course at the ISM and was always taught by a normal or a nimmib; former Royal Navy Commander Scott McTavish (saved from dying aboard HMS Invincible at the Battle of Jutland/Second Battle of Dogger Bank in 1916) helped revamp the course during the 1920s and 1930s. Because of that, Canadian magicals — and even a good amount of American magicals who came to attend summer lectures at the Institute to help them better do their jobs as well as revamp Studies of No-Majs at Ilvermorny, Salem and Seven Hills — found it easy to interact with normals even if they had been raised in a pure-magical household.

****

THE SAGA OF REGINA MITCHELL: THE BIRTH OF THE BLACK MAIDENS

"My ancestors came to America on the Mayflower in 1620. Their descendants fought the British from Bunker Hill to Yorktown in the Revolution. My great-grandfather formed a regiment of coloured troops in the Civil War to put down the rebels and their daywalker vampire friends. Yet because you people are so scared of letting normal folk learn about magic — with the Steel Angels out there! — you obliviated my parents of all memories of me when you 'invited' me to go to Salem?! To hell with you all! Master Gellert was right! Rappaport's Law is coming down even if I have to kill every staleblood in America! They're all Scourer descendants anyway, so no one who really matters will miss them!"

That was the statement delivered to the New York Ghost and other magical newspapers in the spring of 1934 after the Massachusetts office of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in Salem was destroyed by a meson-boosted dynamite bomb made by a graduate of the local magical academy, Regina Mitchell of Plymouth; the attack saw almost a hundred aurors and other workers slaughtered with terrifying ease. While rated as a "no-maj-born" by American law, the descendant of one of the original Pilgrims who came to the New World in 1620 was proud of her normal roots and was badly hurt when she had been effectively separated from her parents on being invited to attend Salem in 1926.

As had been done in hundreds of occasions over the previous three decades since the last amendments to Rappaport's Law were passed, lawyer Allan Mitchell and his wife Julia were made to forget they ever had a daughter in the first place and all records of Regina's existence had been wiped out from state records; the only way of escaping such a fate was if one was a native American raised in traditional enclaves west of the Mississippi as people there tended to shy from using wands and kept to themselves. To ensure she couldn't reveal her existence to anyone that might have been missed in the sweep by aurors and obliviators, Mitchell was forced to attend a summer camp at Salem, isolated from friends whom she missed terribly. Because of that, she began to take inspiration from both Gellert Grindelwald and normal bandits such as the team of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow to eventually launch a revolution against the "stalebloods" who were ruining lives across the Union. While she was doing that, Mitchell also deliberately targeted Scourer groups on the normal side of the security divide, which encourage other magical vigilantes to sweep in and start removing that particular stain once and for all. She would personally kill off the last members of the New Salem Philanthropic Society, including those children adopted by the group's leaders to spread their rhabdophobic message, in a bloody attack on their base in Manhattan in late 1935 disguised as a tragic fire; the group had never recovered from the death of Mary Lou Barebone in 1926. This time, purebloods who had quietly protected the normal Scourers from the wrath of the Department of Magic simply couldn't move to shield any of them given the direct threat on them by Mitchell and her contemporaries.

Despite such actions, there were still groups of Scourer descendants who hid themselves while awaiting their next chance to strike against magicals as a whole.

"She is quite powerful magically but is not the least bit afraid of using muggle tools and weapons to press her goals," Christine Schultze of Braunschweig reported in 1935 to the Dark Lord of Europe after seeing the Bay Stater in action against aurors when they traced her to the mountains of New Hampshire, leading rebels who had been attacking offices of the Department of Magic across the northeast of the Union...not to mention killing off pureblood families who had dominated local politics for decades. The graduate of the Trischen Akademie der Magie near Hamburg had been sent by Grindelwald to observe events in North America, which had become quite hot even by his standards. "Her hatred of purebloods would make her welcome as a member of the NKMD's liquidation squads, but she doesn't bother muggleborns or half-bloods who are feeling an ever-growing anger towards Rappaport's Law and its enforcement. If given the chance, she could easily undo all the damage the Department of Magic unleashed on the White House in 1914 and force them to submit to Roosevelt."

That, Grindelwald knew, couldn't happen just yet.

Ever since he began work in forming what would eventually evolve into the Magische Reichsarmee in the last years of the Russian Civil War, the Dark Lord of Europe knew that his revolution didn't stand a chance of success if it didn't get widespread support from the most disenfranchised of magicals. In Europe and many parts of America, normal-borns and half-breeds were constantly denied the chance to advance both in government and in business, consigned to either the lowest-paying jobs or completely ostracized and forced back into normal society because they were lunar therianthropes. Having never really felt any prejudice against such people given that his former best friend Albus Dumbledore was a half-blood himself who had turned away from the blood politics that had condemned the transfiguration teacher's father Percival, Grindelwald began a concerted recruiting campaign across two continents to draw in such people either to directly fight for him or give silent support by choking off those who supported the status quo, usually by boycotting pureblood businesses.

That launched the "silent phase" of Grindelwald's War (also known as the "Magical Phony War") as historians later called it. As the Great Depression began to affect magicals who traded with normals in things like foodstuffs, illicit businesses were set up all across Europe well beyond the oversight of local magical governments, creating a black market in everything from wands to potions to clothing. Attempts by local law enforcement groups to try to shut these businesses down saw raiders attack both them and their pureblood patrons targeted in a clear warning that times were changing and that the "old guard" needed to either submit or perish. While that was happening, the Dark Lord of Europe managed to befriend a fellow former citizen of Austria-Hungary on the normal side who was then the leader of a radical right-wing party in Germany then seeking to restore the nation to a place of primacy over its neighbours and avenge the humiliation of Versailles.

That man was Adolf Hitler.

As this was going on back on the Continent, Christine Schultze was moving to help protect Regina Mitchell from being overwhelmed by the aurors of the Department of Magic and made an example to force others to submit to the purebloods in control of the Magical Congress. That led to the Battle at Mount Desert on 2 July 1936, fought on an island off the coast of Maine. Having gathered an army of a thousand fighters armed with magical and normal weapons, Mitchell planned to attack the Department of Magic's local offices in Portland. Unknown to her until it was nearly too late, one of the people who had joined her was an auror in disguise, moving to coordinate his co-workers into attacking and wiping out the rebels once and for all. Schultze was able to catch the man just as the first wave of hit-wizards apparated in, killing him before he could hit Mitchell with a portkey spell to have her taken to New York City for trial and execution. At that moment, portkeys provided by one of Grindelwald's closer advisors teleported all of Mitchell's people off Mount Desert onto a German freighter for a comfortable voyage to Europe. At the same time, meson-augmented explosives went off, killing 263 personnel in the bloodiest single-day loss of life suffered by the American magical government to date.

By the time the Department of Magic could ask for help from the Canadian Ministry of Magical Affairs to dispatch either an airship or a battleship to intercept the freighter and bring in the rebels, it was already two-thirds of the way to Europe. Once in safe range, international portkeys were able to transport Mitchell and her people off the ship to Germany via Wales, allowing them to finally come to rest in the Alpine mountains of southern Bavaria, where Grindelwald had spend a decade and more erecting training camps to prepare for when his war would go officially "open".

On their first meeting, Mitchell learned Grindelwald was moving to create a special battalion of magical hit-witches who would answer to him directly as a personal strike force; such a battalion would expand into a four-battalion light brigade by the start of World War Two. The basic qualification for entry into what would evolve into the dreaded Schwartze Mädchen was that one had to be a normal-born witch who was willing to fight and die for the full establishment of the Greater Good on humanity...which required the complete overturn of all magical governments worldwide who opposed such.

"You want me to help you kill the staleblood morons that have been ruining the lives of people worldwide, magical and no-maj alike?!" Mitchell was reported to have asked her new leader when the offer was made. "Let's burn it all down!"

She ignored the Đ10,000 reward put on her head by the Department of Magic for her capture. Much to Mitchell's mirth, the congressman who made such an offer, Theodore Roche of Salem — who lost two sisters in the attack launched on the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in 1934 in that city — would himself be killed by the Übermenschen in early 1942.

Until both of them died at the other woman's side at Nurmengard in 1945, rumours of a very deep relationship between Regina Mitchell and Christina Schultze always had tongues wagging...

****

THE RISE OF "MYSTERY MEN"

"She can manipulate matter by her mind alone, changing it virtually at whim with the élan of an experienced transfiguration master...yet there's not an ounce of magic in her! She has no magical ancestry anywhere, so she's no nimmib...and her abilities would rate her the equal of Grindelwald himself! How in Merlin's name can Ms. Parkin DO THIS?!"

That was the Director of Magical Research for the Newfoundland Ministry of Magical Affairs, Professor Thomas Smallwood of Windsor, in a report given to the Wizengamot in Saint John's in the summer of 1936 when it came to the existence of something that had tongues wagging on both sides of the security divide across a continent since the start of the year: The appearance of a beautiful woman in her twenties, possessing the ability to move herself through the air and manipulate matter with the power of her mind. Having donned a very eye-catching red-and-gold costume to wear whenever she performed her "volunteer deeds of public service", she became the Rock's guardian of the peace during the uncertain years before the start of the Second World War, when the Dominion of Newfoundland had defaulted on government debts and submitted back to the direct control of London in 1934.

Using the moniker "Cardinal" when she was forced to confront a reporter from Saint John's daily The Evening Telegram after she rescued the crew of a sunken trawler in her first "public" debut in the early spring of 1934, this woman was born Jessica Parkin in Harbour Grace on the Avalon Peninsula. She was the daughter of a seventh-generation fisherman from the area who had gained work as a secretary before the Depression had struck, forcing her to return home to live with her parents. With little in the way of magical ancestry that could be traced down by the Dominion Ministry of Magical Affairs, she began demonstrating her telekinetic abilities when she helped save the lives of several of her father's crew mates in a horrid storm in the summer of 1933. Fortunately for her, Jessica's parents Elijah and Mary saw her telekinetic powers as a literal gift from God; like Canada, Newfoundland had its own Steel Angels and such abilities didn't seem so beyond the pale among normals.

Jessica Parkin wasn't the only one to demonstrate such abilities that appeared across North America in the years of the Great Depression leading up to World War Two. In two dozen other instances across Canada and in over a hundred cases in the United States, normal people with no magical ancestry as could be traced by the Ministry of Magical Affairs or the Department of Magic began demonstrating profound abilities well beyond the scope of normal people. From enhanced physical abilities to the ability to fly to mental and energy manipulation powers to even what was first mistaken as chaos magic, these people were the first wave of something that had been percolating in very isolated instances over the centuries and millennia ever since the nature of Josef von Taserich's abilities became commonly known. Soon enough, the term "metahuman" was coined for such people by governments worldwide, ranging from banker Bryce "Starflare" Carruthers of Chicago (he had superhuman strength, the ability to fly and could use his life energy to charge his "star sword", a claymore that had followed his ancestors to the New World from Scotland, to make it invulnerable to damage) to Texas Ranger David "Wrangler" Collins of San Antonio (who could manipulate primal forms of energy in the form of a lasso; he also had enhanced physical powers and styled himself the "cosmic cowboy") to Deanna "Midnight Wisp" Evans of Oshawa who later came to work as a secretary for the RCMP at "Depot" Division in Regina (she was literally the fastest woman alive, able to run and move at many times the speed of sound without harm to herself) to Valerie "Ultra Girl" Cesare of Atlantic City (who was virtually the equal of the comic book hero Superman himself as first created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in her abilities).

Both the normal and magical governments in Canada, Newfoundland and America began an intensive investigation of what was happening and why. Soon enough, the cause of what was going on became apparent. With the arrival of the Steel Angels on the scene a decade before, particles of mesonium were getting out in massive quantities to enter the food chain and start to manipulate the genes of people both normal and magical alike. Given the universal feelings of hopelessness many felt because of what the Great Depression was doing to people across the continent, several began to key into the power mesonium gave them to develop abilities well beyond normal or even baseline magical levels. For many of those affected like this like David Collins or Deanna Evans, their innate sense of right and wrong made them become vigilante protectors of normal people. Others elected to use their abilities for more personal gain, becoming the first generation of "supervillans" to borrow the modern popular term. As a whole, since they disguised themselves to protect friends and family from retaliation by proxy, the term "mystery men" became common when it came to addressing them as a whole.

This was a minute reflection of what had happened on a planet over 270 light-years away from Earth — the same world that was the source-point of mesonium as it would later be discovered by Dean Raeburn — well over two millennia before.

The ultimate response of governments in Ottawa and Washington to the appearance of mystery men reflected the difference between the Dominion and the Union when it came to their base social values. Driven by the watchword "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, American authorities often ignored what people like Collins and Carruthers were doing as their actions helped people under their protection more than hurt. In Canada, the presence of mystery men had to be regulated by governments to preserve the "peace, order and good government" of the country (as demanded in the British North America Act of 1867 which helped establish the modern Dominion); while the vast majority of Canadians didn't know who people like Deanna Evans were, there were people in authority who did forge working relationships with Canadian mystery men to help preserve the peace. As she was the only mystery man known to live on the Rock, Jessica Parkin was pretty much left alone as the government in Saint John's decided to follow the American example.

On the magical side, the reactions were often the total opposite of how the normal governments elected to respond to the arrival of mystery men. In Québec City and in Saint John's, the Wizengamot of both dominions elected to forge close working ties with mystery men now moving to help keep the peace and good order among normal people, but effectively leave them alone; "It's like dealing with a small group of people powered like Dean Raeburn," William Harlan explained to the International Confederation of Wizards in late 1936 when he was made to explain to pureblood lords from western Europe as to why Canada wasn't moving to properly restrain these "strange muggle freaks". One of the more prominent of this group beyond Jessica Parkin was a native of Sainte-Foy near Québec City named Jeanne Maria Anna Delacroix, who called herself "Rainbeaux" when she dawned her white jumpsuit with its beautiful rainbow striping to go forth and protect people with her various energy powers. After helping a squad from "W" Division put down a rabid Wendigo in the woods near Chibougamau in early 1938 alongside her fellow Québécois mystery man from that northern forestry town, Jean Luc Marcel Robitelle (also known as "Teleman", who could teleport himself and others to anywhere with a precision no master at apparition could equal), the doctor and amateur psychologist from outside the capital city of la belle province became the first normal to be made a member of Canada's Order of Merlin!

South of the border, the reaction was quite different at the start5. While many in the Department of Magic strongly advised Secretary of Magic John London of San Francisco to follow the same policy towards mystery men as they had done with the Steel Angels when they first began to appear in the early 1920s, the pureblood faction in the Magical Congress — still reeling from Mitchell's Rebellion, not to mention a growing movement among magicals in the Union to boycott their businesses, which was hitting them in the pocketbooks — moved to have them rated as a type of magical creature to be controlled by agents working for the Body for Protection of Magical Species, a pureblood-controlled group in the Department of Magic whose senior personnel didn't care for no-majs as a whole.

Unfortunately, the few times that members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement moved to try to arrest these "no-maj fraudsters" to bring them in and find some way to render them normal again always ended badly. As had been proven in the case of Dean Raeburn in the Miracle of 1889, vast amounts of mesonium particles in a person's blood stream always made a human invulnerable to most magic thanks to a telekinetic protective field that could be subconsciously formed around someone's body. One such mystery man, William Costilow of Salem — who called himself "Mister Mystical" even if his abilities were true psychokinesis and not magic per se — would cause more damage to the Department of Magic before the Übermenschen Gruppe would sweep in to nearly wreck everything in 1942 than any person before him. Thanks to some Scourer descendants who looked on the mystery men as God's sign of approval for their cause, the one sure-fire way America's magical government could be brought to heel would become known to people like Costilow by the time President Franklin Delano Roosevelt summoned the Liberty Legion to form in late 1941 in preparation for World War Two.

Given that many aurors were too busy trying to deal with the times Gellert Grindelwald's people tried to stir up trouble on both sides of the Atlantic in preparation for his campaign to destroy the Statute of Secrecy, there were few in the Department of Magic that wanted to have anything to do with mystery men...never mind that the vast majority of American magicals found themselves as inspired by such people as Bryce Carruthers as their counterparts in Canada and Newfoundland were.

London — who won re-election as "magical president" in the 1939 elections — decided to do nothing.

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

Translation list: Luftschiffbau Zeppelin — Literally "Zeppelin's Building of Airships", this is the official name of the company that was formed to construct vessels like the Hindenburg; Marine-Fliegerabteilung — Literally "Naval Air Force Division", this was the Imperial Navy's fleet air arm in World War One; Luftstreitkräfte — Literally "Air Forces", this was the Imperial Army's air service in World War One; Hauptmann — Literally "head man", this is the Germany army rank title for a captain (NATO rank code OF-2); HMCA — His/Her Majesty's Canadian Airship (in French, rendered as ACSM or "Aéronef Canadien de Sa Majesté"); ARC — Aviation Royale Canadienne, French for "Royal Canadian Air Force"; Magícheskie Voénno-Vozdúshnye Síly — Literally "Magical Military Air Forces"; Übermenschen — Literally "overmen" or "supermen".

The Nibelungen Akademie der Magie (Nibelung Academy of Magic) and the Trischen Akademie der Magie (Trischen Academy of Magic) were two of the several German schools of magic which were first mentioned in Wizards and Avalonians III. The reason why Germany has so many schools is that all of them were once the "national" magical academies of the various kingdoms, duchies and other component states of the Holy Roman Empire, none of which were closed on the unification of the Reich in 1870. Also introduced in W&A III mentioned here are members of the Schwartze Mädchen (Black Maidens) Brigade such as Regina Mitchell, her would-be lover Christina Schultze and Erika Flade.

Also mentioned there was Russia's version of Azkaban, the Spetsiál'nye Mágicheskie Trudovój Láger' ("Special Magical Labour Camp"). The name was inspired by the name given to Stálin's labour camps, the Gulág (which is short for "Glávnoe Upravlénie Ispravítel'no-Trudovýkh Lageréj i Kolónij" ["Chief Administration of Correctional Labour Camps and Colonies"]).

I decided to make use of the "Đ" symbol to signify the dragot, the American magical version of a galleon. In real life, the symbol would have a double slash across the spine of the letter, like one would see in the euro sign "€".

Characters such as Cardinal, Starflare, the Wrangler, Midnight Wisp, Ultra Girl, Rainbeaux, Teleman and Mister Mystic are inspired by the characters created by fans for the Dial "H" For Hero comic series published by DC Comics in the 1980s. A nod as always to the people who created these characters. Of course, their real identities are my own creation as their superhero selves were the temporary alter egos of two Maine teenagers, Christopher King and Victoria Grant.​

 

1937: THE MAGICAL WORLD'S ANNUS HORRIBLUS

"I remember a smiling girl who always loved to make friends with people she met. Even if she lost her parents and sister thanks to that bastard uncle of hers when she was still a child and she had to live on her own all those years on the Prairies when she followed the navvies building the Canadian Pacific in the 1880s, Dean never let it really get her down even if all her suffering helped her get the Tear of the Stars back on her birthday in '89. But when I met her after she got back from Japan, I was staring into the eyes of someone who had literally seen the Apocalypse."

That was Mollie Bean in a report she made to the Wizengamot in Québec City — attended by representatives from magical governments of the other nations in the Americas as well as observers from the major European powers who had possessions in the New World — in the mid-summer of 1937 when it came to the return of the Protector of All Life to Canada. A changed Protector of All Life as close friends like Bean and Abraham Lincoln were quick to note...and this wasn't because of her decade and more of training thanks to the Immortal Master in his own school of martial arts, the Tensei-ryū.

For Dean Raeburn had born horrid witness to something no one thought possible.

The death of Hosan Hirosuke!

On Raeburn's seventieth birthday in 1937, while living with her "Papa-sensei" and his students on Watari-shima, an islet off the southern coast of Hokkaidō, the Immortal Master was attacked by warriors of the Kokuryū-kai, a paramilitary ultra-nationalist group who supported the expansion of the empire to the point where it would become the superpower of the Pacific basin, forever driving out the Europeans and Americans from the region. Many had been augmented with ebony mesonium, helped by people who had learned how to do such "safely" thanks to friends from Europe who gained that knowledge from the Undying Lord himself; as he still did even after learning what happened to Lincoln in 1889, Josef von Taserich still sought out people to bestow mesonium "gifts" to see if they could learn how to master the most dense form of the Atom of True Life. In that attack, Hosan was wounded, then beheaded by a relative of the Kokuryū-kai's founder. It was then that the group's aim became known: To steal the secrets of the Tensei-ryū to create a squad of invincible warriors to that would make the conquest of the Pacific a cakewalk, even with the arrival of mystery men on the scene in North America.

But the five thousand year-old Tibetan had one last surprise to play.

With what was left of his energy, he funnelled all his memories and knowledge into Raeburn's Power Jewel, using its ability to control all mesonium on Earth to ensure his last student would become the new grandmaster of the Tensei.

To Raeburn, it was like losing her family a second time.

Never mind what inheriting five millennia of martial arts knowledge did to her!

"It is a pity Dean-san didn't go forth to wipe out the animals of that group," Yomigawa Tsukiko would muse later to several close friends; the sorceress from Kyūshū who had once apprenticed under the Immortal Master years before had been elevated to the rank of Mahō-Shōgun in 1931 by the Heavenly Sovereign Shōwa. "Some of the insanity that rocked the world in the Greater East Asia War could have been prevented. To say anything of the loss of the Steel Angels."

Indeed, the senseless death of the Immortal Master was the final sign to the magical gynoids across the world that humanity was plunging again down the road to total war. Thanks to the actions of Japanese militarists and Italian fascists in places like Manchuria and Ethiopia in 1931 and 1936 respectively — to say anything of the moves being made by the Nazis in Germany to restore their nation to its "rightful" place at the expense of its neighbours, not to mention the rise of right-wing forces elsewhere — the gynoids who had been created as the "future weapons of peace" during the bright and hopeful years of the Roaring Twenties knew immediately that humanity was sliding once more towards a bloodbath...and this one would be far much worse than the "war to end all wars". Since none of them could kill a human being — that ability had been deliberately blocked by scientists working under Ayanokōji Tetsuo to help them be better accepted among normal people — and none of them could imagine being forced to do such, they all elected to deactivate themselves and have their bodies hidden away until such time as peace had returned to ensure their power could never harm helpless people.

They all turned to Dean Raeburn to ensure it happened.

"It shouldn't have surprised us," Kagura Nakahito later lamented to friends; he was the onmyōji who had been the master of the Ayanokōji sisters Kurumi, Saki and Karinka ever since he stumbled onto the elder of the sisters in an abandoned laboratory when he was a child. "While they were willing to protect us and love us, they knew when to stop before someone was permanently hurt. I'm glad Raeburn-sensei was able to hide them away from those who might use them to hurt others."

While many people who had been bonded to the Steel Angels could agree with Kagura's statement, the leaders of the world's military forces didn't appreciate losing such a resource as the Steel Angels.

Coupling that with the rise of metahuman "mystery men", the concept that would be called "specialized warfare" in Canada was soon born and would become an interesting ace card in the war to come.

And given what else was happening across the world...

As the Second Sino-Japanese War began in the early summer of 1937, Yomigawa Tsukiko founded the Daitōa Hozon-kyōkai, a brigade-sized group of magical scholars and traditionally-trained warriors who were sent into China to keep the magical peace thanks to the ongoing civil war there atop the invasion from Japan; among them were Tensei-ryū fighters who had been granted leave to assist by their new grandmaster (who was acknowledged as such by the Heavenly Sovereign two weeks after Hosan Hirosuke's death). When observers from the International Confederation of Wizards went in to see what was going on, they were shocked and horrified to learn that Yomigawa's people were deliberately moving to eradicate all European influences on local magical teaching, seeing traditional forms of magecraft which had been seen as "too threatening" to the preservation of the Statute of Secrecy restored to prominence in the country's several ancient schools of magic. Using the dormant powers of the Xuāntǒng Emperor of Qīng with the help of advisors to both the nationalist Guómín-dǎng under Jiǎng Jièshí and the Gòngchǎn-dǎng under Máo Zédōng — the man born Àixīnjuéluó Pǔyí who had been the last emperor of all China had been established as the Kāngdé Emperor of Mǎnzhōu-guó in northeast China after that part of the country fell under Japanese occupation in 1931 — Yomigawa pressed for the reform of local legislation concerning the enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy.

Such eliminated any sort of influence European magical theory had on the world's most populous nation, causing a panic in Geneva as they realized that in their concentrating efforts on dealing with Gellert Grindelwald and his allies, they left themselves wide open to an effective flanking attack that now threatened European hold on very populous and prosperous colonies across southern and eastern Eurasia, including India and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Before they could try to force Japan to back off from China and restore things to normal, something far closer to home caused leaders in the ICW to gaze worriedly upon Spain. In the civil war that had begun in that nation the previous summer, the Falange Española under Francisco Franco had risen up to overthrow the Second Spanish Republic and restore the monarchy which had been overthrown in 1931. During this time, magical fighters on both sides of the conflict duelled it out in the back streets of Spanish cities while normal soldiers — including warriors from other nations such as those who joined the various International Brigades on the republican side and the Corpo Truppe Volontarie and the Legion Condor on the side of the Falange — flooded the country in what is often seen this day as the first stage of the European side of World War Two. Thanks to many advisors who were sympathetic to Grindelwald's worldview — including several members of his Black Maidens who were making their presence well-known across the Continent — Franco learned of a secret that would become the main focus of both Grindelwald's and Yomigawa's efforts to destroy the International Confederation of Wizards.

As the future Caudillo of Spain would later explain in secret communiques to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, "It turns out that because of the radical liberalism the French allowed to exist in what later became Canada thanks to their normal-born citizens who wanted to have nothing to do with their magical gentry and who weren't afraid of dealing equally with magical creatures, leaders from Spain — and I suspect this is true in other nations who created empires across the world since then — made use of some hideous dark magic to enslave the magicals of those lands to European control over the last couple centuries. It's a sublime thing that ended up destroying so much traditional magic over the years due to it being simply and deliberately forgotten by lore masters over the generations, my advisors doubt it could ever be recovered. Because so many magicals working for me are determined to see those idiots in Geneva rendered impotent and this statute of theirs done away with, it will be definitely to our advantage that we do everything in our power to wipe out our future enemies' hold on Africa and Asia. I'm sure Capitán-General Yomigawa would be happy to ensure those magicals within reach of her people — especially the damned Gurkhas the British can use — will not threaten us."

Once he fully understood what was going on and having gained the secret support of both il Duce and der Führer, Franco asked two members of the Black Maidens, Enid Geraint of Caernarfon in Wales (an alumnus of Hufflepuff who had been a favourite student of Albus Dumbledore) and Clara Goldschmitt of Znaim in what was once Lower Austria (today, the town of Znojmo in the Czech Republic), to wreck the headquarters of the Ministerio de Magia in Madrid on 15 December 1937. This attack caught hundreds of tired and exhausted magicals off guard. During that assault, a magically-enchanted stone was located somewhere deep in the Cámara de Misterios by Geraint and Goldschmitt. After a quick analysis of records, it was discovered this was the base ward-stone of an energy field that was tied into a transmitter grid spread across all of Spain's current colonies that enforced loyalty to the magical government in Madrid; the only way people could have been freed of it was for the King of Spain to use his power to issue a Proclamación Real Mágica to cut the magical links with its subordinate stones in places such as Mexico and most of South America. Horrified such had been used in a way that went against the wishes of local magicals — which was a violation of many of the general principles of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, which specifically declared that indigenous magical forms were to be protected as long as such didn't risk exposure to normals — Geraint used a portable grenade launcher firing an ebony mesonium warhead to destroy the stone. The backlash nearly killed her...but it effectively wrecked the hold that local magical governments in the Spanish Sahara (today the Western Sahara), Spanish Morocco (the northern part of modern-day Morocco itself) and Spanish Guinea (today Equatorial Guinea) had over their native populations, especially those NOT of Spanish descent!

It wasn't much...but it was the spark of a worldwide revolution.

"The mudbloods just discovered how to destroy us," one British lord, Hercules Malfoy of Avebury, commented to friends in the Wizengamot when the news came of the Black Maidens' success. "If we don't do something to fully stop Grindelwald, I guarantee the muggles will destroy us all in a decade!"

He was almost right.

****

PREQUEL TO THE SECOND WORLD WAR: THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN

"The magical government of the Dominion of Canada cannot and will not support the suppression of innocent magicals in the manner that has just been discovered in the Spanish colonies in Africa. If you stalebloods think we'd go along with that, you deserve to have Mister Grindelwald destroy you!"

That was Canada's representative to the International Confederation of Wizards, Tabitha Svenson of Red Deer, when she announced the decision made by the Ministry of Magical Affairs to extend official recognition to the new magical governments that had been formed in the former Spanish colonies in Africa in the wake of the magical Battle of Madrid that saw thousands of innocent people freed from a sublime dark magical field that had been stitched almost into the very ground of the territory claimed by Spain over the previous two centuries. It was soon confirmed that similar fields had been employed in Spain's old American colonies; such had been deactivated when the various monarchs of that land had released the necessary Proclamaciones Reales Mágicas to free the magicals of those territories from any loyalty to Madrid during the Nineteenth Century. Canadian observers who visited the future Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea — basing themselves on HMC Ships Erinsville and Lady Elgin for this mission — were quick to detect many cases of magical depression that ultimately drove dozens of natives to suicide over the following decade. In those countries, the period after the Battle of Madrid was called "the Lonely Times" as healers from Canada, Japan, the Soviet Union and America — not to mention former Spanish colonies in Latin America such as Mexico — rushed in to help native magicals recover from having something so forcefully imposed on them all. Fortunately for future relations between Spain and her then-colonies, there were many sympathetic Spanish colonists who gladly assisted; as the Falange Española finally won the civil war in the homeland in the summer of 1939, such assistance became mandatory at the order of Caudillo Francisco Franco.

Lurid details of what had been discovered was enough to cause a worldwide outcry against such policies, even among magical societies which were nominally democratic. "This is a crime against Magic Itself," Master Healer Dale Jorgen of Gary in Indiana stated to a reporter from the Chicago Coven in 1938 after he and an international team of healers helped save magicals from a village near al-'Uyūn, capital of the Spanish Sahara from going berserk and killing themselves in an orgy of spells; that was reprinted in newspapers worldwide. "If this is something the Magical Congress and the Department of Magic supports, the idiots should be impeached and thrown out of office! This is not what America was founded on, either among magicals or among no-majs! And I know this is NOT what the Statute of Secrecy allows to ensure we stay hidden from the no-majs!" Given how much purebloods in America had been reeling thanks to people like Regina Mitchell, the revelations of what happened in the Spanish colonies in Africa couldn't have come at a worse time...especially given how African-American magicals, including former Secretary of Magic Seraphina Picquery (then serving as the Magical Ambassador of the United States to the ICW), would sympathize with their cousins in the old country.

While news of what had been discovered was suppressed in the mainstream magical press throughout western Europe — especially in Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands — the discovery of what had been unleashed by Spanish magical leaders made Benito Mussolini petition King Vittorio Emanuele III to issue a Magica Decreto Reale to shut down a similar system that had dominated the lives of magicals in Libya, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland (today part of Somalia); such came into effect on 1 April 1938. It was in time; researchers of the Ministero Degli Magia had been moving to extend the reach of the Italian "loyalty field" into recently-captured Ethiopia, whose leaders had resisted European attempts at trying to make local magicals adopt "advanced and civilized" spellcraft since the Statute of Secrecy was accepted at the order of Nəgusä Nägäst Iyasu I in 1691. Even if he had been effectively exiled from his homeland thanks to the conquest of Ethiopia in the fall of 1935, Iyasu I's successor Haile Selassie I was more than grateful for Mussolini for doing that; he was then quick to speak to Britain's King George VI to ensure that if there was a similar British system, it would be shut down.

Realizing what was happening thanks to communiques from il Duce and the future Caudillo of Spain, Portuguese President Óscar Carmona issued a Decreto Presidencial Mágico on 15 April 1938 that shut down a like system that covered that country's colonies in Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea (today Guinea-Bissau), the Cape Verde Islands, São Tomé et Príncipe and East Timor. That was followed by a statement from King Christian X of Denmark that no such system had ever been put into use when it came to colonies of that peninsular kingdom like Greenland, Iceland or the Faeroe Islands.

Once those systems were gone and the full scale of the harm those systems had unleashed on others was known, sympathetic leaders in the Portuguese and Italian magical ministries contacted Canadian Minister of Magical Affairs Salome Dubois of Sherbrooke to have ships of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron deployed to serve as bases for relief efforts to local magicals. HMCS Sundown was sent to East Timor, HMCS Lady Jane deployed to Somalia, HMCS Carolina moved to anchor off Eritrea while HMCS Sunbeam went to Libya; with them came companies of Foresters supported by airships of 77 Wing, all of whom were placed at full alert with the permission of Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir.

Despite steady howls of denial from London, Paris, Brussels and the Hague as the pressure began to build towards the eradication of such loyalty systems across the planet by the direct order of their heads-of-state — denials that didn't chime right in the ears of many magicals in Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, even those who had economic interests abroad — spies from Yomigawa Tsukiko's Daitōa Hozon-kyōkai secretly entered British, French and Dutch colonies in southeast and southern Asia to see if the magicals of those nations had done something similar to native magicals as had been discovered in the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese colonies. Sure enough, magical readings of how oppressive the "loyalty fields" were in places like India, Indochina and the Dutch East Indies were collected, then gathered in a mesonium crystal forged from Yomigawa's own blood, creating a basketball-sized device she called the Tsūshō. When it was presented to the Heavenly Sovereign by his Mahō-Shōgun, the feelings of oppression and subservience that radiated from it even when someone did NOT touch it was enough to make the amateur marine biologist sick to his stomach.

That soon saw the Mahō-chokugo no Dokuritsu issued by the Son of Heaven on 1 May 1938, which rocked the ICW to its very foundations. Its main statement was as follows: "In learning of evil things that have shown the systematic employment of a repressive form of magical control on innocents worldwide by certain governments for reasons that go well beyond the maintenance of a veil of secrecy to protect all magicals from instances of rhabdophobia, We no longer support Our Empire's membership in the International Confederation of Wizards. By its very name, it restricts respectful membership to a select group of magicals to the detriment of others. While honouring the letter of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy as it was originally composed in Genroku-ninen, Our Empire will no longer support such a prejudiced organization and will strive to assist in creating a more inclusive alliance across the species and schools of magic to ensure more equal relationships between different societies worldwide can be forged. Any attempt at forcing Us to submit to the wishes of the International Confederation will be seen as an act of war against Our Empire and Our Allies."

In a postscript attached to the declaration sent to Geneva, the Heavenly Sovereign ominously added, "Magic is NOT the supreme power on Earth as you've long believed. Look to North America to see what I mean."

Once the news of that got out, new magical governments forming in the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese colonies all declared they would not join the ICW as members. "You kept us in mental chains just as your normal counterparts forced normals from Africa into chains to send them to America as slaves to feed to the damned daywalker vampires," the first independent East Timorese magical leader, José de Araújo, declared when a sympathetic group of ICW officials came to Díli to discuss the government's joining the alliance as an independent member; the Magical Presidential Decree issued by President Carmona allowed the Portuguese colonies the right to create their own independent ministries of magic. "Until such time as those colonial powers like the Dutch finally free our neighbours from their dark magical control, we will go our own way. Be assured, the Japanese have promised support if the Dutch decide to be stupid." "They won't let you get away with it, Minister," the leader of the delegation from Geneva, Renée Salome of Lyon, warned. "Then they will come to their deaths, Madame Salome," de Araújo declared. "Do you believe Madame Yomigawa's 'research society' is just a group of scholars? No, Madame. The Protector of All Life has granted leave for the warriors of Heaven's Star to support her people in case they're attacked. Do warn people in Geneva about this, will you?"

By summer, the "Mudblood Revolt" as many conservative purebloods from Europe began calling it had begun to spread across the world. Hearing there were actually hit-wizard warriors that were serving as part of the Daitōa Hozon-kyōkai, the ICW immediately declared Yomigawa's group illegal and ordered their withdrawal from China. That declaration fell flat when that country's ministry of magical affairs, Chóng Jiērǎng of Luòyáng, followed Japan's move and withdrew her country from the Confederation; the conjuration mistress had the full moral support of the leaders of all three sides in the Sino-Japanese War on the normal side, especially the Kāngdé Emperor! That was followed by threats from the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America — especially Mexico and Brazil — to do the same after they discovered physical evidence that showed such fields had been active in their territories since after the passing of the Statute of Secrecy in the last years of the Seventeenth Century! Even more, the NKMD in the Soviet Union had dispatched observers to all the troubled territories to ascertain what was going on alongside the healers that had gone to help the victims. Their investigators — veterans of the Volshébnye Krásnye Okhránniki with years of combat in the Russian Civil War under their belts — were so sickened by what they discovered that they supported the withdrawal of their country from the Confederation. And much to the horror of purebloods in that nation and the despair of Secretary of Magic John London, many Americans who lived in the Philippines (another former Spanish colony) were quick to voice opinions against the ICW; traces of the Spanish system over that chain of islands near southeast Asia were easy to locate even if the central ward stone had been destroyed at the order of King Alfonso XIII after the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898.

To Gellert Grindelwald and his supporters, this was a literal gift from Heaven.

With the ICW scrambling to find ways to keep control over things with member states leaving or threatening to leave it and the old order of things in Europe now being assaulted from all sides, the time was approaching for him to make his move to overturn the ministries of Europe, then find a way to expose magicals to the world in hopes of creating his long-sought "Greater Good".

Fortunately, Adolf Hitler agreed with him...to an extent.

As the native of Budapest had been a citizen of Cisleithania when Austria-Hungary had been one nation despite being born in the heart of Transleithania, Grindelwald was now seen as a citizen of the Großdeutsches Reich thanks to the Anschluss between Austria (the spiritual and legal successor of Cisleithania) and Germany on 12 March 1938. Thus, the Dark Lord of Europe was now legally a citizen of a nation under the control of der Führer und Reichskanzler des Deutschen Volkes.

Hearing of what was happening to the ICW and how that made the Japanese literally turn their back on the pan-national magical organization — courtesy of his Reich Minister of Magical Affairs, Hans Grüler of Köingsburg — Hitler was more than happy to give Grindelwald the chance of a lifetime.

Invited to his mountain retreat on the slopes of the Obersalzberg close to where Grindelwald's base camp was located, the Führer gave the Dark Lord of Europe an offer: He would be legally exonerated of crimes committed against German citizens via a Magischen Erlass des Reiches as only Hitler could issue...and allowed to become Deputy Reich Minister of Magical Affairs! Even more, Grindelwald would be allowed to form a magical "defensive" army of his fighters to protect the Reich from outside attack as the nation moved to leave the ICW and join Japan in the creation of a new "international conference of magical communities" that would reject all forms of "enslavement" on native magicals; in doing this, he could forge an alliance with Yomigawa Tsukiko's forces to wreck European control of Asia and Africa from two directions. There would be no more pureblood privileges allowed in the Reich anymore as all would be made to adopt the National Socialist way; this was now more than necessary as recent normal-borns then going to schools across the Reich had been members of the Hitlerjugend and its several affiliate organizations before entering formal magical training. And when the time finally came to deal decisively with the Soviets and the threat of communism, Grindelwald would be allowed to free the magicals of Russia and her sister republics from the suppression of the NKMD.

At first wary of Hitler's insane audacity even if he saw all the advantages of what was being offered — especially since he would be legally exonerated of what he had done in his adopted homeland; no matter how much the idiots in Geneva screamed for his head, they could not fight that! — Grindelwald was then stunned to see the other guest in the Führer's reception room: Josef von Taserich. "The Rittmeister will make very sure that those metahumans in North America and elsewhere — especially Fräulein Raeburn — stay clear of Europe while we settle matters here," Hitler added.

"I believe we can do it, mein Führer," Grindelwald affirmed...

To Be Continued...

****

WRITER'S NOTES

Translation list: Tensei-ryū — School of the Star of Heaven; Kokuryū-kai — Black Dragon Society; Daitōa Hozon-kyōkai — Greater East Asia Preservation Association; Guómín-dǎng — Literally "National Party", this word is normally Romanized as Kuomintang; Gòngchǎn-dǎng — Communist Party; Falange Española — Spanish Phalanx; Corpo Truppe Volontarie — Corps of Volunteer Troops; Legion Condor — Condor Legion; Caudillo — From the Latin capitellum, this is the Spanish word for "leader" or "chief", which is rendered in Italian as Duce and in German as Führer; Capitán-General — Captain General, the Spanish army rank title of a field marshal (NATO rank code OF-10); Ministerio de Magia — Literally "Ministry of Magic" in Spanish, which is rendered in Italian as Ministero Degli Magia; Cámara de Misterios — Chamber of Mysteries; Proclamación Real Mágica — Magical Royal Proclamation, pluralized in Spanish as Proclamaciones Reales Mágicas; Magica Decreto Reale — Magical Royal Decree; Nəgusä Nägäst — Literally "king of kings", this is normally rendered as "emperor" in English and other European languages; Decreto Presidencial Mágico — Magical Presidential Decree; Tsūshō — Crystal of Suffering; Mahō-chokugo no Dokuritsu — Magical Imperial Rescript of Independence; Großdeutsches Reich — Greater German Empire; Anschluss — Literally "connection" or "joining"; der Führer und Reichskanzler des Deutschen Volkes — Literally "the Leader and Imperial Chancellor of the German Peoples"; Magischen Erlass des Reiches — Magical Decree of the Empire; Hitlerjugend — Hitler Youth.

As there are multiple ways of reading Chinese characters within China, I've elected to simplify everything and follow the Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Romanization of Mandarin as a sort of standard system. However, certain names have been pronounced in a near-Cantonese style when it has been rendered in the Latin alphabet. Jiǎng Jièshí is the Mandarin way of reading the characters normally transcribed in English as "Chiang Kaishek" (1887-1975); he was the Nationalist leader of China during the Second World War. It would be quite easy to recognize his opposite number as leader of the Communist Party of China: Máo Zédōng (1893-1976). And Àixīnjuéluó Pǔyí is normally rendered as "Aisin Gioro Puyi" (1906-67), who was the last emperor of China and briefly emperor of the breakaway state of Mǎnzhōu-guó, which is known more commonly as "Manchukuo" and was established in northeast China from 1931-45 with Japanese patronage.

Austria-Hungary between 1867 and 1918 was administratively and culturally split into two broad districts in which individual kingdoms, duchies and other subdivisions were aligned to. The dividing line was set traditionally on the Leitha River, a southern tributary of the Danube located just east of the modern frontier between Austria and Hungary. Cisleithania ("Nearer Leithania") was the territories that were administered by the Austrian imperial crown; the formal name for this part of the Dual Monarchy was the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council ("Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder" in German). Transleithania ("Farther Leithania") was the territory administered traditionally by the Hungarian royal crown; the formal name there was the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen ("A Magyar Szent Korona Országai Zemlje krune svetog Stjepana" in Hungarian). The united official title of the Dual Monarchy was the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen ("Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder und die Länder der Heiligen Ungarischen Stephanskrone" in German, "A Birodalmi Tanácsban képviselt királyságok és országok és a Magyar Szent Korona országai" in Hungarian).

In the universe of my stories, any magical of German descent from Austria-Hungary regardless of place of birth would be seen as legally Austrian once the Dual Monarchy was done away with in 1918. Anyone of Hungarian descent would go to Hungary while other nationalities would join their nations such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Roumania and Yugoslavia.

Enid Geraint first appeared in Wizards and Avalonians III.​

 

Here's the first scenes of a story that would tie into the reference file, directly centred on the War Hawks themselves. It's set in 1939 just before the start of World War Two and is inspired very much by the events in The Crimes of Grindelwald (whose script I was able to purchase recently).

Enjoy!

****

Near the summit of Mont Raoul Blanchard in Québec (sixty-four kilometres northeast of Québec City), Sunday 25 June 1939, two hours before midnight...

"Are you sure this is the place?!"

"It's where the seer said we should go!"

The small crowd of dwarfish people - all of whom shared the same features of tapered ears - fell silent as the echoing crinkle of dry leaves on the slopes of the highest mountain in the Laurentides made them scan around this dark evening so far from civilization, both magical and mundane. After a moment as the group - all of whom were dressed in clothing that might have been seen as in fashion a century before - seemed to relax themselves before the leader of the group, a middle-aged woman dressed as if she was a matron to a very rich nobleman, pointed uphill. "There! There's a cabin..."

The others looked, quickly spotting the small wooden building mostly obscured by the old growth trees that dotted one of Québec's tallest mountains. Without anything further to say, the refugees from metropolitan France turned to head up towards the cabin...

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

They screamed as a bolt of green light lashed out of the darkness behind them...

...before the energy of the killing curse disappeared into nothingness!

Stunned silence fell as the part-elves looked wildly around, wondering what it was that had just spared them from instantaneous death. Before anyone could ask the obvious question, footfalls and crinkling leaves heralded the appearance of a middle-aged man in more recent fashions...though still not modern in this age during the last years of the Great Depression. In his hand was something that all of the halfbreeds who had fled to Canada from Europe honestly wished they had...but had been blocked by French magical law since they weree not simon-pure humans.

"You were LUCKY, creatures!" the stringy raven-haired bounty hunter and part-time executioner for the British Ministry of Magic snarled as he levelled his wand at the leader of the group of halfbreeds who bore damaging secrets that could be used against his TRUE master now active in Germany. "It was a merry chase indeed, but it's over now..."

"Excuse me! Is it de rigueur for a MONSTER to monologue while he's trying to hurt innocent people?"

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

Then...

Spinning around, Pierre Macnair screamed out, "CRUCIO!"

The scarlet bolt of torture energy lashed out into the darkness...

...and then faded also into nothingness!

"M'sieur...you're standing in my YARD!"

Macnair gasped as he spun left...

...then he screamed as an invisible wall of sheer FORCE slammed into him, sending him careening back-first into a nearby oak tree. As all the air escaped his lungs from such a harsh impact on his body and he collapsed to the leaf-strewn ground below while his very brain seemed to ring loud in his ears, a lithe and very attractive raven-haired woman with eyes the shade of purest emeralds stepped out of the shadows. Draped in a dark green button shirt and form-fitting dungaree slacks with brown slip-ons covering her feet, she seemed young even if she spoke with a mature tone and clearly was upset at the disturbance unleashed by the native of Madras on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in British India.

And...

And yet...

All the part-elves blinked as it came to them all at once.

SHE HAD NO WAND!

Which meant...?

"Filthy creature! IMPERIO!"

This time, a blast of gold magic lashed out from the tip of Macnair's wand towards the newcomer...

...and AGAIN, it faded into nothingness long before it was to strike its target.

Staring at her would-be attacker - who was still quite dazed from being tossed back-first a half-dozen metres into the sides of a VERY hard tree trunk despite the dawning look of complete disbelief and incomprehension crossing his face - the newcomer shook her head as her long straight hair seemed to sway with the slight wind that was currently shifting the leaves and branches of the trees covering this part of the mountain. "Oh...you must be one of those..." she began before a questioning look crossed her face. "Oh, what on Earth was that word I heard when I went to Manhattan last summer..." she then trilled as she seemed to think hard about something.

As the part-elves got back to their feet, an "ah-ha!" look crossed the young woman's face. "Ah, yes!" she then smiled before the humour disappeared from her face, replaced with a look of sheer disgust.

"Staleblood."

Macnair jolted as if he had been struck by lightning. "MUDBLOOD! HOW DARE YOU...?!"

As he scrambled back to his feet to curse this interloper anew for such a vicious insult delivered to him, the newcomer allowed her left hand to clench. Energy instantly billowed from her hand before her arm whipped around in a side pitch, sending a glowing silvery crystal the size of a penny to fly right into the bounty hunter's forehead, causing him to jolt before his blue eyes went wide with shock...

...and then he SCREAMED!

"You'll excuse me if I'm not up to the niceties about interrogation, M'sieur..."

Macnair collapsed to the ground while his whole body started to violently quake as if he was being subjected to the Cruciatus Curse. The woman came over to stand over him, clearly unbothered by the level of pain she was directly unleashing on his mind thanks to the crystal projecting energy into the bounty hunter's brain while it seared through his memories, copying everything for her future attention. "After all, you magic-borns always have these wasteful RITUALS..." she added with a disgusted sneer. "Creating potions that force people to speak the truth, then only allowing certain 'licensed' brewers the right to prepare such, no doubt to shield 'purebloods' like yourselves from the righteous vengeance of other magicals when their homes are invaded and they want to understand 'why'." She shook her head as the strength began to fade from the wizard's body, he collapsing against the tree, a dazed look crossing his face. "Well, you won't escape it this time. Should the local gendarmerie come by here, they'll note my cabin is warded and they'll be able to detect the curses you tried to use against myself and the petits. I doubt you'll have been given any license to hunt here..."

She perked as the rushing noise of people apparating onto the hill echoed through the air, then looked over as people came out of the shadows, dressed in the brown-khaki-and-dark blue duty uniforms of Canada's federal police force. Many of them had wands in their hands while others made use of other foci the young woman who owned the parcel of land they were teleporting onto didn't recognize. All of them looked ready for action. "DON'T MOVE!" the sergeant in charge of the patrol snapped with a Sonorus-enhanced voice. "'W' DIVISION! WANDS IN THE AIR WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!"

"I have no wand, M'sieur. Here's this fellow's wand."

The sergeant, a middle-aged man with greying raven hair, perked as a wand sailed through the air towards him. Fortunately, the corporal who served as his second-in-command was quick to snare same with her hand, said covered in gloves dotted with crystals that the woman who had taken Macnair down recognized were ruby-pattern mesonium. Once that was placed inside what had to be an evidence bag, she nodded before perking as the Indian-born bounty hunter gargled, the crystal attached to his head floating off to drift into her hand. Noting that, the sergeant then asked, "What is that, Madame?"

"I copied all his memories into a crystal so I can understand why he was trespassing on my property throwing curses at the little ones here," she answered as she waved to the part-elves, all of whom nodded rapidly in agreement while two of the constables that had apparated in from Québec City came over to examine them and start interrogations. "After all, such is my right, isn't it? The ownership of this cabin was registered with the county government in Château-Richer."

The sergeant blinked as he took that in, then he seemed to relax himself as he allowed his own well-developed magical senses to reach out. A moment later, his eyes went wide. "Nice warding schemes," he declared, respect in his voice. He then looked as two of the constables of his patrol went over to secure the dazed man by the tree with restraints. "Ah, M'sieur Macnair! I WARNED you that if you tried to ply your trade here, you'd become a long-term guest of ours in Quttinirpaaq. You're lucky the nice young lady here was so restrained. If you tried such with a member of our magical militias, we'd be sending your CORPSE back to Britain soon enough!" That earned him a gargle as some lucidity came back to Pierre Macnair's face, he turning to stare wide-eyed at the sergeant. "Teleport him back to headquarters and have him confined in isolation. Keep it quiet!"

"Yes, Sergeant!" the two constables handling the Indian-born bounty hunter called out before they and Macnair apparated away back to their troop's headquarters in Québec City's old town.

"Sergeant!"

Everyone turned as another corporal apparated in, he dressed in the red serge review order worn by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on parades. "What is it?" the sergeant asked.

"We just got a message from the Innu Council," the corporal declared after snapping himself to attention in respect to his senior. "One of their seers just had a vision concerning a 'grand sorceress of the Laurentides' being revealed to us, soon to join forces with Professor Raeburn, Staff Sergeant Larsden and Miss Dover." He then perked as he looked around before a whistle escaped him. "My! Who did the warding scheme here?" he demanded as he turned back...before his eyes went wide on seeing the young woman claiming this part of the mountain as her "yard". "Mère de Fée Morgane...!"

The sergeant gazed at their host. He then shook his head. "Madame, pardon our ignorance, but what's your name and when did you attend the Institute?" he then asked, trying not to pinch his nose.

Hearing that, she sighed. She had HOPED that those paranoid fools in New York City had passed on information concerning her to the Ministry of Magical Affairs in the wake of her killing that wild animal who had been poisoned to the state of sheer barbarism with ebony mesonium, forcing her to kill him via beheading. "Heather Thompkins," she then answered. "Jeanne-Marie Eleanor Heather Thompkins. And no, I never went to your school. Or any other school for that matter." As everyone standing there stared in disbelief at that assertion, she added, "My magic developed after my first blood."

Silence fell over the scene...

****

Magic and Canada: Rise of the War Hawks
by Fred Herriot

Based on characters and situations from Harry Potter, created by Joanne K. Rowling; and Dial "H" For Hero, originally created by Dave Wood and Jim Mooney, with follow-on stories by Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino, based on characters created by multiple fans.

Also based on Magic and Canada, written by Fred Herriot.

****

Sainte-Foy (six kilometres upstream from downtown Québec City), Monday 26 June 1939, an hour after dawn...

"Marcel..."

"Mmm...what is it, Anna...?"

"I think there's an owl at the window."

Hearing that, the blue-eyed blond geologist's son who now called Chibougamau in the geographic centre of Québec his home perked before he looked over, then he smiled on seeing the calmly-relaxing barred owl sitting on the ledge of the bedroom window gazing at both him and his lover. Shaking his head at how quaint their friends on the magical side of things could be at times, Marcel Robitaille sat up, reaching over to open the outside screen and allow the handsome avian inside. Sure enough, there was a letter tied to the creature's limb, one it was happy to display to Marcel's current companion.

"For me, I assume, Sébastien?" Anna Delacroix wondered as she sat up, offering her arm for the owl to perch itself on while her other hand untied the letter from its limb, making the paper stumble onto the covers. As the owl then fluttered to the raven-haired doctor's shoulder and preen her curly raven hair, she then fully unrolled the letter to scan it. After a moment, her eyebrow arched. "My God...!"

"What?"

"Incident last night involving a possible metahuman like us," she explained, her hazel eyes narrowing. "Turns out her father was your father's old teacher in the Geological Survey, Professor Thompkins."

That made Marcel gape as he stared wide-eyed at his lover. "Heather Thompkins?!" he demanded. He hadn't known her personally even if his own father Perceval had considered the older geologist's child a potential wife for him. After a moment, his eyes narrowed as he considered something. "That's right! She quit school after the eighth grade, pulled out by her parents for some reason." His eyes then narrowed as he gazed on Sébastien. "That's from 'W' Division, right?" he asked. After the owl hooted an affirmative with a bob of its head, he laid back on the bed. "Too late to start magical training..."

"According to the letter from Sergeant Dubois, she's totally self-trained in a school of magic that can't be classified by the Ministry," Anna said as she scanned the letter. "Her mother's descent from French wand-magicals, but didn't have the gift. She knew enough to help her daughter get started in a self-training course her father helped to develop." That made her snicker. "Oh, my! No wonder our friends in l'Habitation are in such a tizzy right now!" As he shook his head, she then blinked. "Oh, dear..."

"What?"

"Mademoiselle Thompkins was involved in that fracas last summer in New York City," the doctor reported, trying not to wince. "She was the one who beheaded that metahuman who hired M'sieur Langford to cover the attack by M'sieur Grindelwald's people on their magical secretariat."

A knowing smirk crossed his face. "'Magical Congress', Anna..."

"Not according to their constitution," she wryly commented before leaning her head over to rub her nose against Sébastien's beak. "We'll be right behind you, Sébastien...unless you want to come with us...?"

The owl rapidly nodded his head...

****

 

And what exactly IS happening in l'Habitation...?

****

Québec City, on the Rue Sous le Fort in the Lower Town, after breakfast...

"Albus Dumbledore! So they decided to let you loose from Scotland, eh?!"

Hearing that cherry voice, the middle-aged transfiguration and alchemy prodigy who was now one of the most famous magicals of any stripe in the world perked before a delighted grin crossed his face. "Bill Harlan!" the native of Mould-on-the-Wold near the border between Somerset and Cornwall called back as he came over to warmly shake the hand of the man in the dark blue dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Navy, full admiral's rank insignia on his sleeves. "I heard the King promoted you on the retired list when he visited the country last month, but I only thought it was to vice admiral!" He indicated the flag officer's thick strip topped with three thinner stripes that denoted the official rank of the man who founded the Magical Service of Canada's navy. "It's well-deserved!"

"Hah!" William Harlan snapped as he reached over and squeezed the younger wizard's shoulder while they heartily shook the other man's hand. "You should talk! Got your DM accredited with the ICW, I just heard! I guess studying under Professor Flamel did you a tonne of good!"

"'DM', sir?"

Albus Dumbledore perked, then he flustered. "Oh! I'm sorry about that, Mister Kowalsky!" he said to the portly raven-haired man who accompanied him and his party to Canada, then he indicated the three others who had come with the transfiguration master to visit the Ministry of Magical Affairs. "Bill, I believe you already know Minerva McGonagall, Newt Scamander and his fiancée Porpentina Goldstein. This is Jacob Kowalsky, Newt's normal friend from New York. He was close to Porpentina's sister..."

"Until she joined forces with Gellert," the native of Bayham on the shores of Lake Erie in southwest Ontario declared as he came over, offering his hand to Kowalsky. "My deepest condolences, Sergeant Kowalsky," he stated as the Polish-born veteran of the Great War firmly shook his hand. "I'm sure Miss Goldstein's remarkable Legilimency gifts will eventually help her see the truth of what that lunatic is trying to unleash on us all, then she'll come back home safe and sound."

That made the baker and former bank clerk gape. "How'd you know I was a sergeant, Admiral?"

"With the popularity of that bakery of yours to our embassy staff down in Manhattan?" Harlan declared, his bushy brown eyebrow arching. As Kowalsky flustered and his companions knowingly grinned - the house elves of Hogwarts had gone insane learning all his recipes - the recently-retired Canadian Minister of Magical Affairs added, "Didn't take us too long to learn your service history during the Great War from friends we recently made at the Navy Department in Washington." Ignoring the surprised look crossing Tina Goldstein's face, Harlan pulled his hand back. "Eighty-second Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment; later detached to the headquarters of Third United States Army for occupation duties in Germany after Armistice Day to supervise the disarmament. You were at Belleau Wood; nasty business, I've heard." As the Polish-American veteran of that war nodded in grim understanding, Harlan gazed in amusement at Dumbledore's other companions. "You've done good to keep these people grounded in reality, Sergeant. They'll need it, especially these days..."

"WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME...?!"

Heads snapped over...

"Oh, Merlin!" Dumbledore groaned, breaking away from the others as he marched over to where a wide-eyed Leonard Spencer-Moon was standing in the main reception hall of the headquarters of Canada's magical ministry. The recently-elected head of Britain's magical government was staring in disbelief at two young people dressed in the form-fitting colourful costumes of "mystery men" that had begun to make their appearance across North America in the last five years. Given the shock on Spencer-Moon's face, the two newcomers most likely had apparated or portkeyed in themselves from wherever they had come from. "Are you alright, Leonard?" the current transfiguration professor at Hogwarts called out.

Spencer-Moon perked on hearing that welcome voice, then he nodded apologetically at the newcomers. "Forgive me! I was startled when you appeared like that!" he said before gazing at his old classmate. "You never warned me that these metahumans had such free reign here, Albus!"

Before Dumbledore could reply to that comment, the raven-haired beauty in the full-body white jumpsuit with the colours of the rainbow displayed sash-like from right shoulder to left hip smiled. "Normally, we don't, M'sieur...but we were both invited here by the good fellows of 'W' Division due to an incident last night near here which they believe merit our attention," she declared with a winning smile that made the British minister perk and his old classmate's eyes widen in recognition.

"Doctor Anna Delacroix, I presume?" Dumbledore asked before gazing on the man in the green bodysuit with the silver trim and the gold-trimmed hood covering his face. "And M'sieur Marcel Robitaille?"

"The same, M'sieur," the masked metahuman said as he offered his hand, which the British wizard took to shake it before he took his companion's hand to kiss it. "Here for la Fête de la Confédération?"

"Of course!" the native of Somerset declared. "All those who understand the TRUE ways of the world always come here during that time to learn what could befall the world over the next year."

"A pity your peers elsewhere seem not to listen very well, Professor Dumbledore," the woman known to the general public as the Mistress of Colour, Rainbeaux, noted as she gazed at him before she looked over. "M'sieur Scamander! You're here too?!" she asked as she broke away from her lover and walked over, allowing Newt Scamander to take her hand in his own and give it a firm shake. "I appreciated that free copy of your book, by the way! So detailed...and it certainly answers some questions I've had about potential magical incidents since I mastered my abilities and became a mystery woman."

Scamander flushed; even if he had been warming up to his girlfriend for over a decade, he was still NOT unused to hearing such honest praise for his work, especially when said praise came from a very attractive woman. "Given what you and M'sieur Robitaille had to do to that Wendigo last spring when it was running rampant all over Chibougamau, it was the least I could do, Doctor!"

That comment made several among the crowd of travellers coming into the Ministry atrium perk as they gazed wide-eyed at the strangely-clothed woman who had now been confirmed by the magizoologist to have fought the most dangerous land creature ever to live in Canada. One of them was the British minister. "Wait! You two actually fought a WENDIGO?!" Spencer-Moon demanded as he stared wide-eyed at the geologist's son who had gained the sobriquet "the Vanishing Fighter" when applied to his chosen pseudonym, Teleman. "Those things are said to be even more dangerous than a nundu!"

"I didn't fight it, M'sieur," Robitaille affirmed with a shake of her head. "I just teleported..."

"Apparated," Dumbledore augmented.

"...the beast out of Chibougamau to a place where Anna could destroy it with her powers," the geologist's son finished. "Damned thing had already killed a dozen people - including two members of 'W' Division - by the time we got there to help out. Thank God that no one put out the news via shortwave radio; that would have given the security experts quite the few headaches if it happened."

People nodded. "So what does bring you here anyway?" Dumbledore asked as Harlan walked over to join them while Delacroix took the chance to describe what had actually befallen her and her husband the previous spring to a wide-eyed McGonagall, Goldstein and Kowalsky.

"Possible magical metahuman, Professor."

That made people's eyes widen...

****

 

Meanwhile, the magical Mounties based in l'Habitation are busy with investigations..

****

L'Habitation du Québec, Headquarters of 'W' Division RCMP Troop 2, that moment...

"There you are, Madame Dugard. My apologies for not having our elves come here to make sure your friends and yourself were properly fed before we'd officially take your statement, then move you on to the immigration teams to process your refugee claims."

Adèle Dugard nodded her thanks as the cup of coffee was passed over. "Merci, M'sieur Sergent," the part-elf matron declared before taking a sip of the soothing brew. "Are you sure le Ministère des Affaires Magiques will not be able to force us back to France?" she then worriedly inquired. "Given all the horrible rumours concerning how many in le Ministère are supporting M'sieur Grindelwald..."

Sergeant Henri Dubois nodded in understanding. Ever since the worldwide revolt provoked by the native of Budapest pretty much kicked off near the end of the Great War, magical refugees of all sorts had been fleeing Europe to Canada and other "liberal" nations like Australia and New Zealand, seeking refuge as magical governments on the Continent began tightening regulations in hope of containing Gellert Grindelwald's people while also keeping the secret of magic protected from normal society. Such sent the Dominion's overall magical population skyrocketing to unprecedented levels, which was stretching the public security forces almost to the point where the assistant commissioner in charge of "W" Division was severely tempted to ask the Minister of Magical Affairs to partially mobilize the Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters in an aide to the civilian power mission.

"You will not have to worry about that issue, madame," Dubois stated as he crossed his arms, relaxing in his chair. "I personally think my grandaunt's counterpart won't press for any extradition even if those of his advisors who support M'sieur Grindelwald try their best to make the fool demand such should they learn you and yours are still alive. Given how xenophobic the stalebloods who help administer things in les Catacombes are, the idea of actually demanding 'creatures' be returned to France for whatever reason when they could stay in Canada and not cause 'trouble' in the old country..." Here, the thirty-year veteran policeman's eyebrow arched as he gave his current guest a knowing look. "Besides, my people were quick to detect tracking runes having been inserted into your clothes and other belongings by whoever helped put M'sieur Macnair on your trail. Once we have them removed and analyzed, we'll pass on the word back to Paris. Whether it'll be acted on, though..."

Here, he shrugged. Seeing that, the younger sister of the late Irma Dugard sadly nodded. Like all of Europe save the Soviet Union, the legal rights of sentient magical creatures were scant to non-existent depending where one lived. Part of the reason Dugard and her friends had chosen to flee to Canada was that the second-largest country on Earth possessed a magical government that honoured in its basic law the rights of ALL sentient magicals, human and non-human alike. Stemming from the stance made by the magical government of old New France when the Ancien Régime held sway over the Saint Lawrence River valley before 1763 - where the royal colonies on the North American continent earned the nickname la Terre de Liberté Égale - this was a land where people from normal-born human magicals to Veela to most vampire types to lunar therianthropes of ALL types to kobaloi, dweorg and other such semi-humanoid sentients were see as equal in the eyes of Magic and the Crown.

And most people on the Continent considered Canadian magicals crazy...?!

Shaking herself out of her self-introspection, Dugard gazed on her host. "M'sieur Sergent, what will happen to Maîtresse Thompkins?" she hesitantly asked. "Given she never went to l'Institut...?!"

Hearing that, Dubois sighed. "That is a very honest question, Madame..."

****