"Allow me to first brief everyone on the current situation—"
Bryan had never expected much open participation in a setting like this. He had not arranged this gathering to receive their opinions.
He surveyed the figures assembled before him: representatives of the British wizarding world's most prominent industrial workshops and family enterprises, old names and older money with heads drawn slightly down, hands pulled in close to bodies.
"As you can see, a demonstration is underway outside." Bryan's gesture directed attention briefly toward the marchers seated behind him. "The people behind me are its participants."
Several of the attendees followed the direction of his gesture. The glances they cast at the workers were quick and contemptuous and then they snapped their attention back to Bryan as he continued,
"Just moments ago, during Minister Bones's attempt to negotiate with them, two individuals launched an attack against her. Those two used their own bodies as vessels for Dark Magic converted into instruments of detonation. They intended to kill Minister Bones and deal a devastating blow to the Ministry in a single act. Fortunately, it was stopped."
Bryan set his laced fingers on the table before him and settled into stillness of for the room to respond. The authority in his eyes was banked and quiet.
"Though a detailed investigation has yet to be conducted, preliminary assessment indicates this was an organised, premeditated act of terrorism."
Having said that, he closed his mouth and waited. He watched the faces around the conference table in silence—until the silence became unbearable.
Narcissa kept her expression completely still. Inwardly, behind the composure she had been maintaining since she stepped through the fireplace, her mind was moving rapidly.
How many people here had known in advance about the attack on Bones was impossible to say. But as for the demonstration itself, Narcissa could say with some certainty that every person currently seated alongside her at this table had known exactly what was coming.
She had assumed Bryan had summoned them all with such fanfare in order to deal with the widespread workshop shutdowns.
"Forgive my impertinence, Mr. Watson—"
The first voice to crack under Bryan's gaze was a wizard in a black cravat who looked no older than thirty. He was tugging at his collar with distracted urgency. His breathing was audible.
"A terrorist attack has been carried out against the Minister of Magic. I trust this is something no one here wished to see. But… you had Aurors escort us here." His voice took on a strained edge. "With all due respect, I fail to see what possible justification there is for that."
Most of those present remained silent. Only a scattered few murmured anything in agreement.
"Why not?"
Bryan tilted his head slightly, studying the Greengrass family branch-relative with leisurely interest.
"Why not?"
He repeated it without irritation, simply restating the question he was interested in having answered.
The complaining young wizard let out a short, brittle laugh. His lips pulled wide in something that was about a smile in terms of its physical components, and entirely unlike one in every other respect.
The beads of sweat along his temples caught the afternoon light and glinted revealing his nerves.
"Surely you don't believe we planned the attack on the Minister?" His voice had recovered a fragment of its composure. "Otherwise, why would you have summoned us in this manner?"
"That would be a reasonable assumption, wouldn't it?"
Bryan smiled. He looked at the group scrambling to prove their innocence, and said, with perfect equanimity,
"Mr. Greengrass, I believe you heard what I said—this case has not yet been investigated. However, as the proprietors of the workshops these workers once served, you are entirely capable of involvement in this matter. Is that not a reasonable assumption?"
"That is defamation, Mr. Watson!"
Callum Greengrass broad-faced, lank straw-coloured hair, a complexion that had been moving through several shades in the last five minutes barely contained himself.
The fury came through despite the effort, in the flatness of his voice and the his jaw and the way his hands which had been resting on the table had shifted without his apparent awareness to grip its edge.
"Without a shred of evidence, you have no right to accuse any person at this table of involvement in an attack on the Minister of Magic!"
He shot a sideways glance at the photographers with cameras still working and snapping and Narcissa watched his complexion move from ruddy to grey.
"The Ministry would never convict on mere speculation, of course—"
Bryan gave a slow, considered shake of his head.
"I raise this matter simply to make something clear to all of you: the Ministry will not allow those depraved enough to plot against the Minister of Magic to escape justice. Every individual under suspicion will be investigated. We will not condemn the innocent nor will we allow the guilty to walk free."
Narcissa's lips pressed into a thin, precise line. A coldness spread through her chest.
And the others around the table—save for one or two wizards who lacked any real familiarity with Watson understood precisely what he meant.
First: every person at this table had just been designated a suspect in the attack on Minister Bones. In public. In front of every journalist currently present.
Second: which of those suspects was ultimately named the perpetrator, which names appeared in the investigation's conclusions, which families faced formal charges was, in the end, entirely the Ministry's call.
This was a threat. It was an immaculate, publicly documented, entirely legal threat, and it was a prelude, laying the groundwork for whatever Bryan Watson actually intended to accomplish today.
The wizards gathered here were not, as a rule, men or women of exceptional cunning. They were men and women of considerable guile. Schemes and machinations were familiar to them.
A single hint from Bryan, and they grasped his intent.
No wonder he had chosen such a public venue for this negotiation. No wonder the journalists were present, with their cameras and their Quick-Quotes Quills and their editors who would decide tomorrow's front page before midnight.
"As for the results of this investigation—any developments will be published in the Daily Prophet. That concludes that matter—"
Bryan's expression had not flickered throughout any of this.
"The reason I asked you all here today is primarily for the sake of the livelihoods of the people behind me. This problem has been troubling the Ministry for some time. We need to work out a viable solution today and put the matter to rest."
The blade had finally slid free from beneath the sheath.
Under the table, where no one could see it, Narcissa's fist closed.
"I need you all to resume operations as quickly as possible."
Bryan said it plainly. He did not dwell on it. He settled back into his chair, his gaze deep and still, his young face carrying an authority that had nothing to do with youth and never had.
In the same moment, the shutters reached a crescendo seizing on the exact instant that the demand was made and the faces that received it.
Behind Bryan, the workers who had been watching the table in silence reacted to his words with a single unified intake of breath. They watched the figures at the conference table with tense, almost pleading eyes, waiting, hoping for an affirmative answer.
"I'm afraid that may be difficult, Mr. Watson…"
The voice that answered was thin and careful, pressed out through compressed lips.
A wizard with hair slicked into a gleaming widow's peak was dabbing at his forehead with a folded handkerchief.
Narcissa's gaze touched his face and moved on without lingering.
A Nott.
The family had suffered perhaps greater losses than any other at this table during the war's final months, even the Greengrasses—the Nott's Head of the family himself was taken by the Ministry.
From somewhere in the crowd behind, the sound of broken weeping began.
Bryan heard it. Every person at the table heard it. He did not acknowledge it.
He felt no anger at being refused so openly before an audience. He simply turned the weight of his gaze on the man who had spoken.
"Your reasons?"
His voice was completely steady.
"We've encountered… difficulties in our operations, Mr. Watson—"
The Nott spokesman looked on the verge of some kind of collapse and yet clenched his jaw and forced the words out.
The entire wizarding world was watching this negotiation. Every word said at this table would appear in papers. They could not be evasive. They could not be unclear. They had to make their position clear.
And they could not, under any circumstances, commit to something they could not deliver.
If they agreed to reopen workshops and then found themselves unable or found themselves compelled by circumstances their own networks had engineered not to follow through, they would face the combined condemnation of every witch and wizard in Britain.
"Difficulties in your operations."
Bryan let out a low sound that contained, somewhere in it, the ghost of a laugh, it was dry and entirely humourless. He lifted his gaze from the Nott man and swept it, slowly and with complete composure, across every face at the table in turn. He was not in a hurry.
"And the rest of you? What is your answer?"
No one dared stay silent. Silence, in this room, in front of these witnesses, with Bryan Watson's eyes moving from face to face—silence would be taken as agreement with the demand.
Even if it meant being designated suspects. Even if it meant appearing in an investigation whose conclusions the Ministry controlled. Even if it meant sharing walls with Acromantulas in Avalon Prison, they would hold the line.
One by one, the attendees gave their refusals.
Narcissa's came when it came to her.
Speaking on behalf of the Malfoy family's workshops and operating companies, she gave her answer plainly with the same composure she had maintained since sitting down.
No.
The plain faces of the waiting crowd were filled with despair. Stifled sobs broke out across the gathering overlapping among each other.
Even the journalists who had come hungry for a spectacle, who had been trained by their profession to observe rather than feel, fell silent.
Several of them were staring at the representatives with fury.
"They're all from the Sacred Twenty-Eight—I curse every last one of them to ruin!" one reporter muttered through his teeth, barely below the threshold of audibility, before being nudged hard by a colleague.
"Keep your voice down. Remember Romilda—we work for these pureblood lords ourselves."
The sound of the crying was filling Harry's ears.
He stared at the people behind the table with hatred, and then found himself silently praying that Professor Watson would—
'Kill them all?'
The thought surfaced without warning, and Harry nearly flinched from it.
"Couldn't the Ministry just give them some money, seeing as the goblins are backing it so heavily now…" Ron murmured.
His opinion earned a rare nod from Hermione, who looked toward Sirius with hope.
"The Ministry might be able to support them temporarily, but in the long run, Ron, they still have to support themselves—" Sirius shook his head, his voice was heavy.
He looked toward Bryan.
'What was to be done? How did Bryan intend to manage this?'
"Difficulties in your operations—all of you."
Bryan let out a short sound like a laugh.
"Very well. Then let's hear the specifics. Every enterprise and workshop under your management is a pillar of the wizarding world. The Ministry has no intention of ignoring the straits you find yourselves in."
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