InsaneJournal

You don't know who his supporters are, you don't know who's working for him and who isn't ... You're scared for yourself, your family, and your friends.

-- Sirius Black, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I have in my hand a piece of parchment containing the names of seventeen heretofore unsuspected Voldemort sympathisers still working in the Ministry of Magic.

-- Rufus Scrimgeour, former Minister of Magic, 2004

War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means.

-- Karl von Clausewitz, On War

It's 2008, almost ten years since Harry Potter destroyed Voldemort at the cost of his own life. The Death Eaters have gone underground, been prosecuted, or fled. The heroes have been honoured. The rest of the Wizarding World has gotten on with their lives.

After the trials were finished and the Death Eaters imprisoned in Azkaban, the Wizengamot pushed Rufus Scrimgeour out as Minister. Dolores Umbridge, the face of cheerful normality, was in. She's overseeing the rebuilding of Wizarding Britain: memorials to the dead heroes, new institutions to replace those destroyed in the war, and improved educational standards, to Headmistress McGonagall's dismay. Umbridge and her cadre of hand-picked Ministry up-and-comers are determined to remake the world in their image.

Others are less sanguine. The Order of the Phoenix is quiescent, but has never disbanded. The members of Dumbledore's Army still keep in touch, and worry at the rise of the Old Wizarding Literary Society, a salon for pure-blood literati where many former Voldemort sympathisers meet. Even the capture of Bellatrix Lestrange--at the low cost of two lives--hasn't allayed the fears of the Order or its old enemies. And, in the background, the Society for Muggle Enlightenment and Liberation agitates to open the Wizarding world to those without magic.

It's a closely-guarded secret that Harry Potter still lives, and so, presumably, does Voldemort. Even so, supporters of both sides in the last war are still active, moving, and recruiting. Lines are being drawn. New loyalties are promised and old loyalties are tested. Forgotten deeds are being remembered. Nobody is shooting curses yet, but for those with eyes to see, Wizarding Britain is already at war.

A cold war.