Chapter 29.6- Doom Days

Of course, it wasn’t like I could avoid attention just by walking and not making myself a target. I became one once the first person’s eyes flicked up to see the scar on my head and meet my green eyes. He turned, whispering to the student at his side, and from there the tide shifted. More and more eyes followed me as I cut through the crowd, but no one stopped or bothered me as I made my way through. Even the presence of what passed for a celebrity in these parts was insufficient to cut through the pail that the incoming g hostilities in Asia had cast over the collective.

It was telling that something as serious as Sirius Black being found innocent and Peter Pettigrew being on the run was only front page news for one day. The rest of the holiday coverage— when it hadn’t been about Snape and the Hogwarts drama there— had been on the ICW’s decision to refuse to recognise the governments of Magical Korea, China, Mongolia, and a few other countries during the session and hear their petitions. In a decision with only Britain as the major opposition, the ICW had essentially voted to do what it had abstained from doing for decades, and recognising Japan’s conquest over much of Asia.

Of course, opinions were split. The rebels in Asia were not well liked on account of the deaths they’d caused in their attack on the Yule Ball. And wrongfully or not, the average magical brit had somehow come to identify with Japan’s royal family on account of the fact that both parties had lost someone in the attack. On the other hand, while much of the government decried the rebel action that led to the deaths and losses, they still recognized the Japanese royal family as the true threats, it had turned into a war for public opinion. One that the Government had been losing and badly. And then Japan had gone ahead and pushed the tentative border that the ICW enforced as a result of the ceasefire that contained their conquest of Asia. They had taken the Himalayan Mountains again and were now threatening to push into Southern Asia, the point where the rest the world had managed to convince them to stop on threat of unified action. They were at it again, and now the world seemed unlikely to stop them.

With all that in mind, I must have been last year’s news, and yet someone seemed keen to bring that state of things to an end. My ritual enhanced senses and agility were the only reason I was able to catch the wrist that held a knife the assailant intended to stab into my ribes. I met the glassy eyes of the brown haired witch and felt a snarl building. A snarl that I was forced to swallow in favor of gracelessly falling to the ground to avoid the green curse that passed where my head had been.