Chapter 3
Much of the week went by in this vein; feasts for all three meals, with much cheering from the small folk, separated by long stints in the council room receiving “tribute” as Q insisted on calling it. The afternoon session was interrupted for half an hour or so with afternoon tea, which Devanye, Severus, and Carson took with various people. On the second day with her parents and grandma, on the third day with her siblings. On the fourth day, she decided to take afternoon tea with each of the prospective godparents in turn.
Lady Arya was bloodthirsty as ever, and blunt, and did not make the best impression on Severus and Carson over tea. But then, tea was not her forte. She spoke of the many ways they could dispatch Cedric, and was very curious (once Devanye brought up Michael in his isolated snowglobe) to know what Devanye intended to do with the Wraith.
“So this is a different operation from our one and the wizard’s people?” Arya asked when Devanye explained about rendering his powers inert with Elf DNA. “Less running and more fighting?”
“Just what are you insinuating?” Severus seethed.
“No, she has a right to ask,” Devanye excused her. “Arya, you know I always try to fight at first. This is a bigger operation than I’ve ever attempted before, and Cedric appears to have suffered a crucial setback that I think I can exploit.” She raised her teacup with a smile. “So yes, less running and more fighting. There’s still going to be quite a bit of running from the wizarding world, though. Dumbledore’s people.”
Arya nibbled a scone thoughtfully. “What sort of setback?”
“He tried and failed to kill Severus and Carson,” Devanye explained. “If I can figure out how killing them specifically fits into his plan, I might be able to figure out more of his plan. Also, he doesn’t have Lupin anymore ― a werewolf and wizard that he tried to turn into a Wraith. So now he has a limited supply of the weapons he was using Lupin to create. Lupin and his wife Tonks are Delphi’s godparents.”
“What’s a werewolf?” Arya wanted to know.
“It’s a person who turns into a wolf on the full moon.” Devanye took another sip of tea and looking at Carson and Severus. “Anytime you two want to dive in?” Then she turned back to Arya. “Speaking of wolves, how’s Nymeria?”
Arya’s face lit up and she whistled, Nymeria bounding obediently in. Severus and Carson screamed, nearly overturning the table to beat a hasty retreat, and Devanye had to escort Arya and Nymeria out with her apologies. Carson and Severus had never seen a wolf the size of a pony before.
The next day was Mr. Spock.
He had been at the wedding, of course, so they started with that.
“I found it fascinating,” he answered Carson’s question with his hands wrapped politely around his teacup. As this set ― in deference to Spock’s heritage ― had no handles, only Devanye and Spock were actually able to touch their teacups; a set of stone owlets nestled around a stone owl teapot. And Devanye was wearing a set of fingerless gloves.
Severus and Carson, in their own sets of gloves, had opted to wait until their cups cooled down, and were snacking on scones and madeleines.
“Fascinating?” Severus frowned.
“Jews were eradicated in the Third World War, along with a majority of their sacred texts and all of their traditions,” Mr. Spock went on mildly, arching a brow when Severus and Carson blanched. “There has been some effort to revive the religion from the little that was preserved, but it is a small ― if outspoken ― movement. I would never have thought to be invited to a Jewish wedding, it simply isn’t logical.”
“World War Three?” Carson managed. “When ― when is that, then?”
“I cannot tell you without breaking the temporal prime directive,” Mr. Spock deflected apologetically.
“2026 if you believe the canon,” Devanye filled in grimly. “Granted, the canon I’m familiar with is very different from the history I lived through. There were no Eugenics Wars in the nineties, for instance. There was the War on Terror at the turn of the century.”
“That’s putting a lot of faith in the very wrong notion that the canon isn’t deliberately misleading you!” said Q, bursting into their alcove with a brilliant flash of light. “For the sake of the temporal prime directive!”
Devanye (who had nearly spilled her tea at his arrival) scowled at Q. “Could you not?”
“Surely you can’t mean to let the Jews be eradicated!” Carson was gabbling in disbelief.
“It may be out of her hands,” Severus murmured. “She’s saved a few hundred thousand people, but there are millions of Jews.”
“Well, she’d need to get more witches in on her ― whatever it is she does to rescue all these people, but … eradicated …”
“Don’t worry, she’s got this well in hand,” Q assured him with a wicked grin.
“It’s nothing I can discuss in front of Mr. Spock,” Devanye snarled. “And I haven’t done it yet. May never have to do ―”
“Do you want to see what she did?” Q asked Severus, rubbing his hands together. “She’s been keeping a spectacular secret from you both.”
“Not yet I haven’t!” Devanye snapped.
He produced a snowglobe with a flourish. Inside was the Dome of the Rock, gleaming and golden, and all around were tiny people in even tinier hats, yarmulkes, and tichels. “Any Jew with a mezuzah on their door was saved,” Q chortled. “Replaced with a doll. It took two decades of enchantments, but in the end they were all caught up like the Rapture and deposited here, leaving nothing but a crater and a bunch of displaced non-Jews ― and the dolls, of course ― where the covenantal borders of Israel used to be.”
Severus and Carson gawked at the snowglobe.
“Devanye, you didn’t!” Carson finally managed. “You wouldn’t! Did you at least discuss it with them?”
“I fully intend to ― there are a lot of moving pieces and I don’t know if they’ll even believe me, okay?” Devanye defended. “I’m from 2020, not 2026, I just … I don’t know how things go so horribly wrong in six short years. Where I come from, there’s a conspiracy theory about a Jewish space laser, and that’s it. I mean, there’s Hamas and all the jihadists, of course, but they’ve been there for ages. And antisemitism is ramping up in the U.S., which is troubling. I just … I don’t know what happens between now and whenever Q got that snowglobe from.”
“2026,” Q informed her helpfully. “Right before the nuclear war that caused World War Three. It started with an attack on Israel, which you and the Israeli Minister of Magic helpfully warned the Knesset about, and laid out your plan to rescue all the Jews with a mezuzah on their doors. Any Jews who took you seriously were inside their homes with their loved ones and any homeless or secular Jews they could find and called up to your magical Second Jerusalem.”
“There’s gotta be a better, more Jewish name for it than that,” Devanye shook her head. “Something like Breishit ― Creation,” she added helpfully for Carson and Severus.
“He said the covenantal borders ― that includes Palestine and Gaza,” Carson frowned. “What about them? What about all those people you left behind?”
“Their governments made unfortunate choices regarding the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of my people,” Devanye returned. “And chose to use nuclear weapons to do it ― I will be goddamned before I see one square inch of Israel touched by nuclear fallout.”
“But ― what about America? Scotland? England?” Carson pressed. “They’re our people too!”
“It’s World War fucking Three, Carson!” Devanye burst out, tears stinging her eyes. “I can’t save everyone! They live! They go on to eventually form the Federation! Wizards don’t! Jews don’t ― I have to help where I can.”
“And now you have 16.1 million more people who have a stake in Cedric’s War!” Q enthused, hissing violently and nearly dropping the snowglobe when his Vow burned.
“What?” Devanye took the snowglobe from him, vacating her chair and ushering him into it as she set the snowglobe down on the tea table and produced a jar of salve. “Cedric’s War has to do with World War Three?”
“Oh, keep up, darling,” Q tutted as she spread salve over his burned arm. “Cedric’s War is World War Three.” This was too much for him and his Vow burned white hot.
“Sorry, sorry,” Devanye apologized profusely as he cried out. “I’ll stop asking questions. Thank you so much for what you’ve given me already, Q.” She finished with the salve and conjured some gauze, wrapping his arm. “I’m so sorry you got caught up in all this.”
“As you should be,” Q sniffed, and disappeared, leaving the snowglobe on the tea table.
“Fascinating,” Mr. Spock remarked over a sip of Earl Grey, black.
Devanye blushed. “Spock, I didn’t mean to …” She trailed off uncertainly.
“You hold reservations regarding my compliance with the temporal prime directive,” he finished for her mildly. “And you are correct, I would hinder your plans to change the past. But as it happens, you haven’t changed the past, Devanye.”
She blinked. “I haven’t?”
“In 2026,” he told her, “Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran allegedly traced the eugenics experiments that had been plaguing Earth to Israel and launched a nuclear attack that carved the whole country and Palestine out of the ground, leaving nothing behind. You left enchanted dolls in the place of the people you saved, so there will be bodies to find, survivors to arrest and persecute. You haven’t changed history, but you have saved 16.1 million people. Who I assume you will send with us to the future.” He arched a brow and Devanye nodded. “They will be invaluable to the Jewish Restoration Movement.”
“You’re not mad?” Devanye asked.
“To be angry with you for saving the Jews and the land of Israel would be most illogical,” he pointed out, and raised his teacup in a toast. “To Devanye Hansen.”
She blushed an even deeper red, clinking her mug against his. “They’re going to be furious that I’ve uprooted them. Stranded them in time. Taken them away from anyone not in their houses with them when they were taken ― it’s not a perfect system. And a bunch of them are really going to hate that I left the Palestinians behind. I just …” She gave Carson an imploring look. “I couldn’t think of a way to pull it off. Most Jews ― not all ― have a mezuzah on their doorposts, which means I can use sympathetic magic to enchant them through mine and make them into Portkeys to transport the whole house with everyone inside to the snowglobe. It’s going to take a long time to accomplish it on the scale required, but … I’m doing the best I can, Carson. Magic has limits.”
“Of course you are, luv,” he murmured, reaching across the table to take her hand. “We’ll get through this. All this nastiness with Cedric, with the Wraith, all of it.”
“Sympathetic magic?” Severus prompted.
“It’s a concept in magic as a spiritual practice,” Devanye explained. “You do see it in magic proper of course, it’s just not called sympathetic magic as such. Basically, the idea is that everything is connected and doing something to something that represents a thing, does it to the thing you’re directing your magic to. So in the case of the mezuzahs, enchanting my mezuzah while it represents all of the other mezuzahs enchants them too. It doesn’t pack as much oomph as enchanting an object directly, and the wider it disperses, the less oomph it packs, hence why it takes so long to make 4 million mezuzahs or so into Portkeys.”
“I imagine it would,” Severus agreed. “Shall we pay a visit to your new subjects?”
“What, right now?” Devanye frowned. “We’re having tea with Mr. Spock.”
“Well, when we’re done,” he conceded, and Devanye nodded.
The remainder of the tea was comparatively uneventful.