The rebuilt Hogwarts loomed above the Scottish Highlands once again, proudly defying the passage of war and time. Its towers stood tall, stone freshly bonded by magic, yet its heart pulsed with quiet sorrow. Within its highest chamber, long thought dormant, a figure once dead looked out across the grey morning mists.
Albus Dumbledore.
Clothed in deep indigo robes embroidered with runes long lost to most magical scholars, he stood silently in the Headmaster's Tower—reborn not through luck, but through sacrifice, brilliance, and an unspoken agreement. His hand bore the familiar twinkle of the Elder Wand, his face the same but lined now with deeper melancholy.
It had taken all of Nicolas Flamel's remaining Philosopher's Stone and Perenelle's centuries of alchemical mastery to restore him. But this was not resurrection—it was reconstruction. Dumbledore remembered death. He remembered the peace of it. Yet he returned because he knew the world had not yet been saved.
The door creaked open behind him. Severus Snape, restored from death himself by a curious concoction of basilisk venom antidotes and bottled memories, stepped into the room with slow purpose.
"It worked," Snape said. "Your presence is undetected. Officially, you remain entombed."
Dumbledore turned. "Then our deception holds. Good."
Snape crossed the room and placed a bundle of ancient scrolls upon the map-draped table. The parchment hissed slightly with contained enchantments.
"This," Snape said, "is everything we've been able to gather on magical density within post-war Muggle populations."
Dumbledore's eyes scanned the illuminated maps: pulses of faint energy registered all across the globe, like embers in a cooling hearth. Potential. Untapped. Invisible.
"They're awakening," he murmured.
"Or being manipulated," Snape countered.
A soft tap echoed on the tower window. A raven with silver-tipped wings landed with perfect grace. Tied to its leg was a thin roll of parchment, sealed not with wax, but magic: the sigil of Grindelwald.
Dumbledore untied it carefully.
Nurmengard. New moon. All must attend.
Three nights later, seven figures met in the ruins of Nurmengard's highest tower.
Gellert Grindelwald had aged, his once-sharp face now worn with decades of imprisonment, but his eyes were aflame again with dangerous clarity. Across from him stood Voldemort, resurrected into a human shell, his snake-like features less grotesque—more... composed.
Perenelle and Nicolas Flamel, still radiant with alchemical longevity, stood hand-in-hand. Snape held a silence colder than the wind. Dumbledore—alive again—completed the circle. And now they were joined by the shade of time's forgotten shadow: the very magic of their age converging.
They spoke in Parseltongue wards, shielding sound from even magical detection. The stars above shimmered as wards bent space to hide them.
"The Muggles are on the edge of collapse," Grindelwald began. "Plague, war, climate, greed. They are set to die of their own failures."
"Not if we guide them," Flamel said. "Magic can fix what they broke."
"No," said Voldemort, coldly. "Magic should rule them. Not help. They do not learn."
Snape raised an eyebrow. "But they are many. You are few."
Dumbledore lifted a hand. "Enough. This will not be a conquest. Not a genocide. It will be... integration. Quiet. Benevolent, but inevitable."
"A new world order," Perenelle whispered. "Hidden in plain sight."
Thus, the seven forged a pact—a secret cabal sworn to reshape the world through influence, infiltration, and arcane science. They would act without detection, replacing chaos with control, cruelty with silent strength.
They called it: The Phoenix Dominion.