The last nod came from Arcturus like a verdict.
Grigori's was slower. He held Corvus' gaze, then looked to Elizaveta, then back again. The old wolf did not like surprises where his blood was concerned. He still nodded.
Vinda did not nod at first. She set her cup down with care, porcelain against wood, then lifted her eyes.
"Blood and marrow are one thing," she said. "Anything beyond that becomes a different conversation."
Corvus kept his hands on the armrests. No fidgeting. No impatience. "I am not building a brothel, Aunt Vinda. I am building a nursery and an army of scholars to keep the nursery busy."
Arcturus' mouth twitched. "He means it," he told her, like that settled the matter.
"It settles nothing," Vinda replied. Still, she nodded. "We will start with what the Muggle scholars require. No more."
"Agreed," Corvus answered, and he meant it.
A light knock followed, polite enough to be a warning, not a request. The door opened.
Gellert Grindelwald walked in. The others flowed in behind him. Abernathy first, shoulders square, eyes alert. Moira Carrow was close enough to touch his sleeve if she had to. McDuff and Nagel last, both watching corners out of habit.
Gellert's gaze slid over the group, the cups, the papers, the expressions. His smile arrived a heartbeat after, bright and false and charming in the same breath.
"Well," he said, tone almost cheerful, "I come back from a little talk with an old enemy, and I find you all wearing the faces of Ministry clerks. Tell me you have not turned the liberation into paperwork."
Corvus motioned to the seats. "Sit. We are turning it into leverage."
Gellert chose the chair opposite Corvus. He did not sit like a guest. He sat like a man deciding where the door would be.
Gellert tapped the rim of his cup with a finger. "So. The Nest. How do we grow it? Should you need, I can negotiate with the owners of the neighbouring manors."
Vinda's eyes were on him the moment he walked in. She addressed Gellert. "I will speak to you in private."
Gellert lifted his brows. "You always did enjoy dragging me into corners, Vinda."
"Do not make this theatrical," she replied, and stood.
Before she moved, she looked at Corvus. "Is it agreeable if we speak with the Muggle scholars as well?"
There was no need for a seer, nor for Legilimency, he nodded. "You may speak with them. Take Rookwood with you; he can explain things."
Vinda did not argue. She left with Gellert at her side, and the room breathed out after them.
Grigori drifted toward the chairs where Abernathy and the others had settled. He leaned down to Gellert's vacated space first, then corrected and went to the American, voice low.
"You have been busy," he murmured, not a question.
Abernathy gave a small shrug, as if fifty years in a cell were simply bad lodging. "We survived. That was the plan."
Moira Carrow's eyes flicked toward the closed door. "Is she going to eat him alive?"
"She will try," Grigori replied. "He will enjoy it."
Arcturus did not join their quiet circle. He stayed with Corvus, the patriarch's attention narrowing.
"The political leverage is unimaginable," Arcturus said. His voice stayed calm, but his fingers pressed into the wood of the armrest. "Do you understand what it means if you can produce heirs on demand?"
Corvus watched his grandfather's face. "It means the dying houses stop bleeding out."
"It means more than that." Arcturus leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "It means the houses come to you for permission to exist. It means they stop negotiating with ministries and start negotiating with you. A line that has three daughters and no sons becomes a line that will kneel for what only you can provide. A line that has one sickly heir becomes a line that will accept terms it would have spat on days ago."
Corvus' eyes stayed steady. "It means they become dependent."
"If I know you, Corvus, you will not extend such help to anyone without hundreds of hooks in it. Therefore, it means they become loyal," Arcturus corrected, and his tone carried all the old Black arrogance. "If we do it properly."
Grigori, still half turned toward the Abernathy, added in a low voice that still carried. "This place needs more protection."
Arcturus did not deny it. "That is why I ask. Do you think this place will be enough for an operation of this size?"
Corvus looked past them, as if he could see the wards through stone and earth. The Nest was covered by layer upon layer of lethal wards, and on top of that, there was a basilisk. It was under Fidelius. The only thing more secure could be a private world folded inside a tiny space. He could do so. His gains from the Flamels were immense. He could expand a folded space. Add rooms, corridors, buildings and roads until it resembled a city, and the magic would not even strain.
"I can always enlarge the space and fold the manor in a single entrance," he answered. "Land is not the issue. Personnel is."
He flicked his gaze to Elizaveta. She stood near the window, posture straight, hands calm, listening without inserting herself. When she met his eyes, she tilted her head, as if to say she did not understand the math behind this conversation.
Corvus continued. "I need healers. Wet nurses. Caregivers who can follow instructions and stay in an isolated place with no contact with the outside world. I can train them in no time. I have my methods to turn them into experts in days."
This statement changed the equation. Arcturus, Grigori, the four acolytes, and lastly Elizaveta focused on him. "And how, pray tell, will you turn them into masters?" Asked Moira Carrow.
"I would like to keep some of my secrets to myself, Aunt Moira. There is no need to strip me bare." Corvus said.
Grigori's mouth tightened at that. "Russia will send healers. Wet nurses as well. Volunteers, not prisoners. I will send Oksana. I want you to train her, Corvus. Elizaveta could be transferred to Hogwarts as well."
Corvus accepted it with a nod. "Lady Volkova is most welcome. Elizaveta should graduate from Durmstrang." He turned to and locked his gaze with her glacial blue eyes. "It is only one term, Lizaveta. Hogwarts is still struggling with some issues. As for personnel, Good. I will take what I can get."
From the corridor beyond the study, the muffled sound of Vinda's voice carried for a moment, clipped and firm. Then Gellert's reply, softer, amused. Whatever they were doing, it was not friendly tea.
Arcturus pushed the discussion back to the table. "We need land across the Bloc. This operation will produce Witches and Wizards in large numbers. We will need settlements for them. Not only here. If we centralise everything, we build a single throat for our enemies to cut."
Corvus nodded. "Settlements. Warded farms. Military Academies for advanced education. Each one self sustaining. Each one is capable of housing thousands."
McDuff, quiet until now, shifted in his chair. "You are talking like you expect a war."
Corvus looked at him. "I do not expect. I am going to start one in three years."
Nagel's eyes narrowed. "With the Confederation?"
"With anyone who stands in our way," Corvus replied. "The Confederation. Muggles. Our own fools. It does not matter who fires the first shot. We will decide what survives."
That brought Gellert's people into silence. Even Abernathy stopped fidgeting with his wand.
Arcturus seemed satisfied. "Good. You finally speak like a man who understands time."
Corvus almost smiled. "Time is the one thing you do not get back."
They spoke for an hour after that. Not speeches. Practical points. Where land could be taken without lighting up wards. Which houses were failing, which were merely pretending. How to bind them without turning the offer into slavery in the eyes of the public. How to keep it clean enough.
When it ended, the room felt warmer and tighter, like too many bodies in a closed space.
Corvus stood. "I have work."
Elizaveta followed his motion. "You have lessons with me."
Arcturus' eyes followed them. "You mean experiments."
Corvus did not deny it. "I have a student as well."
Grigori glanced toward the door, where the faint sound of Vinda and Gellert still lingered. "Be careful with Corvus. I may not be strong enough to fight you, but she is precious to me."
Corvus nodded and left the study with Elizaveta at his side. First thing to do, arrange a place for Lizaveta to stay. A study room as well. He called Tibby and asked him to bring her stuff and arrange the room.
Once they were far enough from the study, Elizaveta linked her arm to his and stopped him gently. "I missed you," she said in a faint sound.
Corvus leaned in and inhaled her scent. "Yes," he said. "I missed you too, little wolf." he tilted her delicate chin slightly and kissed her gently.
After the dessert in the form of kisses from Lizaveta, they walked the corridor toward the lower levels. The Nest's air changed as they descended. Less polished wood, more stone and metal. The smell of potion solvents, the faint tang of disinfectant, the Muggles insisted on using, the hum of wards layered over the walls like a second skin.
He paused on the last stair and let his mind settle.
Nicholas had given him Alchemy that felt like a blade in the hand. Clean, exact, capable of turning simple procedures into a catastrophe or a miracle. Perenelle had given him the more dangerous gifts. Temporal insight that bent hours like soft wire. Soul knowledge that made most of Britain's rituals look like children playing with matches. Biological manipulation that did not care about consent or tradition.
Corvus placed a hand on the stone railing. He could feel the Nest's wards under his skin. He could feel the weight of the things he had taken from two immortals and the narrow line between using them and becoming the sort of creature people wrote prayers for or against.
He exhaled once, steady.
Then he continued down, thinking about the skills he had replicated from Nicholas and Perenelle, and deciding which one he would test first. Elizaveta had gone to her new room. Their first lesson will start with the first light of tomorrow.
"Rookwood, he called, bring me some of the prisoners, please."
--
Elizaveta kept her pace even. That was the first rule her grandfather drilled into her when she was still short enough to have to look up at every adult in the room. Never hurry. Never show that you are out of place. If you were lost, look bored, not frightened.
The Nest did its best to break that discipline.
The corridors were too quiet for a place this busy. Not silent, quiet. A constant, restrained hum sat under the stone, like a distant storm trapped behind glass. Wards. Arrays. Things layered on things until the air felt denser than it should. Even the torches burned with a steadier flame, as if someone had told fire to behave.
They moved as a group, but they were not really together. Arcturus walked as if the building belonged to him the moment he stepped into it, shoulders back, chin slightly lifted. Her grandfather kept drifting close to her, not touching, not crowding, only there. Aunt Vinda moved with purpose, already taking mental notes, already deciding what she liked and what she would demand be changed. The rest watched everything with the hunger of people who had missed fifty years of the world. Lord Grindelwald watched Corvus.
And Corvus did not pretend to defer.
Elizaveta had been in rooms with loud men. She had seen officers shout to prove they could. She had seen politicians turn every sentence into theatre. Corvus did none of that. He did not raise his voice. He did not posture. When Grindelwald tried to pull the room to himself, Corvus cut the line with a calm sentence and kept walking as if that was the end of it.
It was not the words that unsettled her. It was the assumption behind them. Corvus spoke to Lord Grindelwald the way her teachers spoke to a student who had failed. Not disrespectful. Not fearful. Simply certain.
She kept that thought to herself. It was not a thought for a corridor full of ears.
A door opened on the right. Warm air spilt into the corridor with the smell of chamomile, and a faint sharpness that reminded her of potions brewed too close to boiling. She glanced inside without turning her head too much. A nursery. Cribs lined in neat rows. A witch in plain robes moved from child to child, checking foreheads, murmuring soft words. The babies were too small to understand, but they calmed anyway. Magic listened when it wanted.
Elizaveta felt her stomach tighten. The first time she had heard the numbers, she had not thought of cribs. She had thought of scandal.
Now she saw the truth of it. Not lovers. Not bastards. Not a hidden harem like the filthy stories some of the girls tell. It was industry. It was planning. It was a project that treated time as a tool.
She let out a small breath and forced her mind back into order. She had been angry for an hour over something that did not exist. The thought made her cheeks warm, and she hated that her body betrayed her so easily.
A toddler laughed somewhere ahead. It was a bright sound, sharp enough to slice the quiet. Then came a clatter, a soft curse from an exhausted nurse, and a cup skittered across the stone by itself, dragged by accidental magic like a cat batting at a string.
Corvus stopped long enough to look at the child. His gaze softened by a fraction. It was a strange thing on his face, like a crack in marble.
"Strong," he said, not loud, not for attention, as if stating the colour of a robe.
Grigori's mouth twitched. Pride, clean and raw. The sort of pride he only showed when he thought no one was watching.
Elizaveta watched Corvus again. She tried to decide if he saw children as children or as numbers. She did not like the question, so she did not answer it. Instead, she stepped closer to him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his sleeve.
He turned his head slightly. The movement was small, but it was an acknowledgement.
She leaned in just a little. "Will they know?" The words were quiet. For him only.
Corvus closed his eyes for a moment. "Some will. Some will not, until they are old enough. They will be taught properly."
"Properly," she repeated, and her tone made it a question.
He gave her a sideways look. "Not with fairy tales or with guilt. Not with Dumbledore's habit of turning children into tools and calling it love."
There was a hard edge under the calm sentence. She remembered the corridor in the dungeons. The plaque that said Azkaban. The way Corvus had opened that door and the sound that followed. It was not a memory she wanted in her head near a nursery.
She nodded once. It was a small motion, but it steadied her.
They passed another set of doors. Beyond them, the air changed again. Hotter. Metallic. A faint sting in her nose, "Antiseptic." Corvus explained softly. That, more than anything else, still felt wrong on a primal level. Not because she hated Muggles. She did not hate them as a concept. She hated what they did and what they could, and she hated the way the progressive fools kept pretending fear was not the oldest law in the world.
Inside, she saw men in white coats moving between tables. Glass. Metal. Lights that did not come from fire. Corvus's time arrays pulsed faintly at the edges of the room. The bubbles were visible if you knew where to look. A distortion. Air bending in a way it should not. People inside were moving at frantic speeds.
A hooded figure looked up, noticed the group, and froze. His gaze caught on Grindelwald first, then slipped to Arcturus, then to Corvus.
Corvus spoke to him in a calm voice. Not kind nor cruel. Controlled. The figure listened as if his life depended on it. Elizaveta suspected it did.
They moved on. The tour continued. Names were exchanged. Hands were shaken. Corvus did the polite parts when he had to, and then discarded them the moment they were no longer useful.
Elizaveta found herself watching his hands more than his face. They were steady. Not the careful steadiness of someone trying to look calm, but the natural steadiness of someone who rarely doubted himself.
A sound rose behind them, low and wet. Water shifting. A ripple of movement that carried through stone.
Her mind flicked, involuntarily, to the pond and the basilisk.
She had seen Corvus shift. She had expected terror. She had been raised on stories of monsters. She had been taught to respect power the way one respects an aimed wand.
Yet she did not feel any fear. What she felt had been awe.
He had been enormous. Not simply large, but wrong for the space, like an ancient creature that belonged in myth and had decided to step into reality out of boredom. He had moved with certainty. He had hissed to Medusa with that same calm control he used on people. Even then, even with a basilisk coiled in the water, her fear had never locked on him.
She had been sure, in a way she could not explain, that he would not hurt her.
That certainty frightened her more than the basilisk ever could.
They reached her corridor at last. The house elf waiting there bowed so deeply its nose nearly touched the stone.
"Master's Wolf Lady," it squeaked, voice strained by effort. "Room ready for Wolf lady. Room next ready for mother wolf."
Elizaveta's throat tightened. Her mother. The thought grounded her. Her mother had always understood what her father did not. Her father wanted peace, comfort, and safety in the narrow sense. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to believe compromise was a virtue, even when it was only surrender with better manners.
Grigori had raised her instead. Not gently. Not softly. Properly.
Elizaveta stepped into her room. It was simple in layout, but it carried the same taste as the rest of the Nest. Dark stone, heavy wood, clean lines, no clutter. A desk by the window. A wardrobe that smelled of fresh polish. A bed that looked like it had never been slept in.
On the table, someone had left a small tray. Tea and a plate of biscuits. Practical and British.
She closed the door and leaned her forehead against it for a moment. The corridor sounds vanished, swallowed by wards. The quiet inside her room was complete.
She moved to the window and looked out. The garden below was a black green sprawl of sharp shapes and controlled wildness. Beyond it, the outer wards protected this place.
Her fingers rose to her lips without thought. She remembered the taste of his mouth, the pressure of his hand at the back of her neck, the way his composure had cracked only there, only for a heartbeat, before he put it back on like a robe.
She should have been angry at his absence. She had been, at first. She had rehearsed cold sentences. She had imagined herself making him chase her attention like a dog chasing a thrown stick.
Then she arrived here and understood the scale of what he was building.
She let out a small laugh, quiet and private. Not mocking, no. It was not bitter. Just the sound of an seventeen year old girl realising she had been thinking like a girl while her intended was thinking like a war council.
She turned back toward the room, eyes catching on the second door across the hall, the one being prepared for her mother. The thought made her chest loosen. It meant Corvus had listened. It meant he was making space for her world, not only asking her to step into his.
She set her tea down untouched and walked to the bed, sitting carefully as if the furniture might judge her posture.
"Only one term, Lizaveta," she murmured silently, remembering their sweet kisses.