Harry Potter: Multiverse Maelstrom: Chapter 12: The Rules of Engagement

The viewing hall was a chamber of ghosts. The ghost of Sirius Black’s stolen years, the ghost of Dumbledore’s authority, and most poignantly, the ghost of a little red-haired girl who had been lost to a world’s indifference. The revelation of Sirius’s innocence, delivered not before the Wizengamot but in the quiet, pragmatic office of a Muggle Prime Minister, had been a moment of profound vindication, yet it was tainted by the bitter reality of the decades of injustice that had preceded it.

"The truth is out," Jack said, his voice echoing in the charged silence. "A weapon, handed from a world of magic to a world of steel. A world that has very different ideas about justice, mercy, and the appropriate response to terrorism." He leaned forward, his amber eyes glinting with a serious light. "You're about to see what happens when the gloves come off. When a war that has been fought with wands and whispers is suddenly met with bullets and broadcasts."

The screen lit up, returning the audience to the tense, history-altering meeting at 10 Downing Street.

<Chapter 7 Start>

"Yes, sir. Even in the wizarding world everybody has the right to a trial, but the Wizengamot, the body that is tasked with judging cases and approving laws simply ignored that. I wasn't the only one they threw to the dementors without a trial either, I'm just the only one that managed to escape and survive there that long. And the only one that kept his sanity," Sirius added as an afterthought.

Amelia Bones, her monocle fixed on the screen, shook her head in disgust. "He's not wrong. During the chaos after the first war, Barty Crouch Senior authorized... expedited sentences. Many were sent to Azkaban on suspicion alone. It was a dark time for our justice system."

"A dark time?" Sirius Black scoffed, his voice rough with remembered pain. "It was the complete and utter collapse of it. They weren't interested in justice. They were interested in looking strong, in showing the public they were 'doing something'. And they didn't care how many innocent men they had to bury to do it."

"What do you mean, Mr Black? What effect does long-term exposure cause?" Blair asked worriedly. "Dementors take all the happiness you have and only leave you with your worst memories. ... Many lose the will to live and simply stop eating. Others break under the effect of only having their worst memories to think about. It's hell on earth," Sirius said sombrely. "But the worst about them is that if they kiss you, they take your soul. ... You could compare it with being brain dead."

The Prime Minister on screen listened with an expression of deepening horror. The real Tony Blair, in the audience, mirrored that expression. The concept was so alien, so fundamentally monstrous, that it defied normal comprehension.

The Dursleys, for the first time, seemed to understand a fraction of the world they so despised. Petunia remembered the cold dread of the Dementor attack in the underpass, a feeling she had never been able to explain. To imagine that feeling, amplified, for years on end... it was a horror that transcended magic.

"And we use those creatures as prison guards," Andromeda Tonks murmured, her voice filled with a shame she had long felt. "We subject our own people to that. How can we call ourselves civilized?"

"Good god, that's really serious. What can be done to protect people against them?" Blair asked shocked. "The patronus charm can protect somebody, but it's a very advanced and difficult charm... It takes a lot of mental strength to call up a really happy memory and concentrate that positive energy into the charm." "Could you demonstrate?" Blair asked intrigued. "Sadly not. I can't use it anymore after all the years with the dementors..."

The quiet, matter-of-fact admission of his brokenness was more heartbreaking than any shout. The Dementors had taken something from him that he could never get back. The real Sirius instinctively reached for his own wand, a phantom ache in his soul. He could still cast his Patronus, but he understood the wound his other self was describing.

Remus Lupin looked at his friend, his heart aching. "They scarred your soul, Padfoot," he whispered.

"They tried," Sirius whispered back, his voice thick. "But they didn't break me."

"...and Harry still has a few months before he turns seventeen and the trace leaves him. Outside of a warded place the Ministry of Magic could track him down if he used magic. And we want to prevent that they find him." "I see, well, I don't want you exposed to them either. Are there other ways to get rid of dementors? Fire for example, as you said that they emit coldness?" Blair asked. "I honestly have no idea. Nobody ever tried that as far as I know," Sirius pondered. "...A normal incendio charm wouldn't work..."

The Prime Minister's pragmatic, scientific approach was a stark contrast to the wizards' passive acceptance of the Dementor problem.

"He's asking the right questions," Moody grunted. "Standard procedure when facing a new type of enemy. Assess its weaknesses. Test different weapons. Has anyone ever tried to hit a Dementor with Fiendfyre? Or see what a Muggle flamethrower does to it?"

The wizards in the room had no answer. For centuries, the only response to a Dementor had been the Patronus Charm. It had never occurred to them to simply try burning one.

"So for now no solution. We can only try to isolate the areas where these monsters have chosen to breed. At least we now know how to detect them a bit. Well, then what can you tell me about the methods of that terrorist, most probable targets and so on? Our military would love to take him down," Blair addressed Sirius, who told him everything he knew over the course of two hours with some snippets of information thrown in from Harry from his first year at Hogwarts, where Voldemort had possessed his DADA teacher.

The scene on screen shifted to a montage: The alternate Sirius and Harry, now acting as advisors, pointing out locations on a map of Great Britain. Blair and several serious-looking men in suits listened intently, taking copious notes.

Dumbledore watched, a profound sense of obsolescence washing over him. The great game, the war of secrets and shadows he had orchestrated for so long, had been taken out of his hands. All his carefully gathered intelligence, all his plans, were being rendered moot. A new player had joined the game, and they weren't playing by his rules.

The screen then went black for a moment, before reopening on a chaotic, terrifying scene: a Death Eater raid on a Muggle town square at night.

Albus Dumbledore couldn't believe it. During the last raid of Voldemort the muggles had reacted with unprecedented violence against the Death Eaters. From the thirty or so Death Eaters, twenty five had died being shot with firearms. At least four more were severely injured and had barely escaped with their life from the place they had attacked.

The battle was not a duel. It was a slaughter. The Death Eaters had Apparated in, expecting screaming, helpless Muggles. Instead, they were met with floodlights and the deafening roar of automatic weapons fire from soldiers positioned on the rooftops. Green jets of Killing Curses were answered with disciplined, overwhelming volleys of bullets. Wizards who expected to be invincible were torn apart by projectiles they couldn't see and didn't understand.

The Death Eaters in the audience—and their families—watched in absolute, abject horror. Their entire worldview, built on the foundation of magical supremacy, was being shredded before their eyes.

"They're... they're just cutting them down," a pale Draco Malfoy stammered, watching the alternate Lucius fall, his silver-masked face a rictus of surprise before he was consumed by a hail of gunfire. Narcissa let out a choked sob, turning her face away.

Voldemort was rigid with a fury so cold it seemed to lower the temperature of the room. "Incompetent fools!" he hissed. "They stand there like cattle! Apparate! Use shields! Do something!" But he knew the truth. They had been caught in a perfectly executed ambush, their arrogance their undoing. They had never considered Muggles a physical threat, and they had paid the ultimate price for that prejudice.

He couldn't understand why they would do so. How would the Death Eaters be reformed if they were killed like that? And among the dead were many prominent purebloods. That wasn't good. Many lines would die out if that continued.

Dumbledore’s onscreen monologue, his inner thoughts laid bare, was the spark that ignited a firestorm.

"REFORMED?!" Lily Potter's voice was a shriek of pure, undiluted rage. She launched herself to her feet, her green eyes blazing with a fury that made her seem taller, more powerful than anyone in the room. "YOU ARE WATCHING MURDERERS AND TERRORISTS BEING STOPPED, AND YOUR FIRST THOUGHT IS THAT THEY CAN'T BE REFORMED?!"

"My son is dead in one world because of these monsters!" Molly Weasley wailed, her grief transmuting into a righteous fury. "My daughter is dead! And you're worried about their bloodlines?!"

James Potter stood beside his wife, his face a mask of cold fury. "We finally see it, Albus. We see where your loyalties truly lie. It was never about good versus evil for you. It was about preserving your precious wizarding world, pureblood lines and all. Even the ones that spit on my wife's blood and tried to murder my son."

The accusation was brutal, and it was undeniable. Dumbledore's lifelong belief in second chances, in the potential for redemption in every soul, sounded like a sick apology for genocide in the face of the Death Eaters' crimes. He was worried about the extinction of ancient families, while the Potters and the Weasleys were mourning the extinction of their children.

But his inquiries at the Ministry didn't give him any useful information. They were as surprised as he was. Nobody had expected that the muggles would react like that. And they had to have been prepared for a situation like that one. The muggle aurors had shot before even giving a warning. He didn't know that they had weapons that could kill as easily as a killing curse.

"They're not Aurors, you old fool," Moody snarled. "They're soldiers. And they're not playing games. They've been given a description of a terrorist cell that uses instantaneous killing weapons. Of course they have a shoot-on-sight order. It's the only sane response."

Arthur Weasley was looking at the screen with a mixture of terror and fascination. "The speed... the efficiency... it's incredible. One Muggle with one of those... devices... can kill faster than a wizard can speak." His lifelong fascination with Muggle ingenuity was now tempered with a profound and healthy fear.

Kingsley sat at the meeting of the Order of the Phoenix at the Burrow, which was their current headquarters... "So, Kingsley, what do you think is going on with the muggles? They never before reacted like that against Death Eater raids," Dumbledore wanted to know. "There is a campaign to warn all muggles against a terrorist group that has been detected in Great Britain," Kingsley said. "All muggles were warned through the radio and the telly how the terrorists look like... All over the country there are strategic bases of the army with soldiers trained to deal with them... The muggle police is also briefed on the situation and informed that in doubt they are to shoot first and ask questions later..."

The alternate Kingsley's report laid bare the sheer efficiency of the Muggle government's response.

"They told everyone," Hermione breathed, a look of awe on her face. "They used their... telly... and radio to warn the entire population. They armed their society with knowledge."

"And a rapid response force," the real Kingsley added, nodding in approval. "Ten minutes. They can have a trained unit on-site anywhere in the country in ten minutes. Our response time for an Auror squad is, on a good day, half an hour. We've been outclassed in every conceivable way."

"That definitely is a problem. Especially as the immediate killing of the Death Eaters could lead to more trouble and desperate actions from Voldemort. Any signs of Mr Potter?" Dumbledore asked. "Nothing at all, like usual. I'm not even sure if the boy is still in England," Moody commented. "In his place I would have gone to the States, Australia or another English-speaking country. "True, Alastor, I don't think he would be here anymore either," Remus Lupin said sadly.

The final lines of the chapter were a quiet, sad note in the symphony of chaos.

The real Remus looked at the screen, a pained expression on his face. "Even I gave up on him," he said softly. "In that world, even I believed he had abandoned us completely."

But the audience knew better. They knew that this Harry hadn't abandoned the fight. He had simply changed the rules of engagement. He had taken the war out of the hands of wizards who were worried about bloodlines and put it into the hands of soldiers who were worried about results. While the Order was sitting in the Burrow, mourning his absence, he was in London, actively helping the Muggle government dismantle Voldemort's army, piece by bloody piece.

The screen went dark, leaving the audience to grapple with the brutal, undeniable truth they had just witnessed. The wizarding world's ancient, ritualistic war of good versus evil had been interrupted by a far more modern and efficient campaign of pest control.

<Chapter 7 End> was displayed on the screen.