"In 1692 the Statute of Secrecy was brought into law. The magical community forced into hiding and silence. Forced to keep our magic quiet and private! Because we make the muggles uncomfortable!" Barty had shouted these words, eyes wild, his tongue darting out of the corners of his mouth, wetting his lips nearly constantly, nervous energy pouring from his every word. "But why? Why did we go into hiding. Because we were being BURNED." He spat the word as though he were breathing the very fire he spoke of and everyone jumped a bit in surprise at the sharpness of his tone. He looked around, eyes glowing.

"Crazy nutter," muttered a few people 'round the edges of Speaker's Corner. "What sort of rubbish is this, going on like a bleedin' crazy person. Magic and wizards!"

"Yeah, we're meant to be talking serious politics 'round here!" cried a man as he turned and walked away from the Corner. "Like what about the bleedin' polls what's takin' place right down the street."

"Let's talk about that Thatcher woman iffen it's a witch yer wantin' to be talkin' about!"

Barty seemed not to hear any of it, but continued on twitchy as he was when he started. "BURNED for helping the muggles. Once, the wizarding community was integral! Relied upon by Kings and Queens, Knights and the common people. It was to us that they brought their sicknesses and their woes and to us they commended praises of thanksgiving and appreciation because we could do what they could not... until... they sought our power for themselves. No longer contented with accepting our help, trusting our wisdom, our benevolence was paid back with violence!"

"Get off your soap box, lad!"

"WIZARDS SAVED MUGGLE LIVES AND WERE REPAID BY BEING PUT TO DEATH!" Barty pressed on, "MURDERED BRUTALLY, BURNED ALIVE, DROWNED, THROWN INTO PITS TO STARVE AND DEHYDRATE, LEFT IN SHACKLES, TORTURED, GUILLOTINED, MUTATED... AND FOR WHAT? FOR CARING ABOUT MUGGLES?"

"The kiddie school is down the street, you can go and tell your fairytales there!"

Barty's face was red, "There are whole parties of political thought in the wizarding world founded on the idea that wizards ought to  show their faces to protect the muggles from themselves and there are political powers rising that think we should reveal to protect... and there are parties rising that think that we should reveal to destroy... to destroy them as they tried to do to us... wipe the slate clean... start over..." Barty paused. "Such a small difference, such a small difference in our reasonings, really, between a follower of Grindelwald and a follower of Voldemort..."

Here, you could see the split as clear as day - the people who knew these names compared to the ones who did not was written on the faces that looked at Barty. Shock and horror compared to complacency and amusement, mockery... Peter looked at Oni and her eyes were wild and wide.

"He's a nazi," someone cried.

"He's a nutzi!" the heckler who had accused Barty of fairytales shouted, and he laughed, "What kind of wanky name is Voldemort? Sounds like someone who needs a good blowy to release some tension."

Laughter rippled through the people gathered about.

And it seemed they appeared out of no where. The flowing, wild black hair of Bellatrix Lestrange and her deranged husband, Rudolphus. They were suddenly there among the people and Peter gasped and reached for Oni's arm, knowing the moment the wild curly head appeared at they needed to get out, and he pulled her off the bench and 'round the bushes to duck behind the stone wall lining the corner as Bellatrix walked sternly up behind the heckling bloke. Oni and Peter dropped to their knees and ducked down and Peter leaned over Oni, who covered her ears and eyes with her hands, sobbing as people screamed in surprise.

Belltatrix walked like a teacher hurrying across the school yard to an unruly bully child, but instead of a stern talking to, she grabbed the man from behind, snaking her arm about his chest almost seductively, her wand to his throat, and pulling him back into her by the grip of her fingers knotted in his hair. She held him like a cello across her chest as her wand's tip indented against his throat and her cold black eyes sparkled with sick amusement as she stared into the man's eyes and she hissed, "None mock the Lord Voldemort! Avada Kedavra!" 

Screams filled the corner, people were fleeing every which way and Rudolphus laughed and waved his wand, shooting spells that exploded bits of the wall and a passing car, shooting down fleeing muggles and Bellatrix let the heckler's body fall with a heavy sound to the ground, his body lay at her feet as she turned and set fire on the bushes. Peter yanked Oni back just in time, landing side by side on the grass and he scrambled and disapparated, clutching onto her just as the  cracking sounds of aurors apparating into Speaker's Corner began and Barty Crouch Junior disapparated away.

Bellatrix's laughter rang high and sharp over the scene and Rudolphus sent a shield charm to block the incarcerus spell sent Bella's way and slashed a second time to send the auror who had shot it to the ground, a line of blood across her chest and he turned and locked in a short duel with her back up. Bellatrix shrieked with amusement as she disapparated away. Moments later, Rudolphus had swept his opponent off his feet and disapparented away as well so that the square was suddenly empty, save for the bleeding auror on the ground, whose blood pooled about her as she gasped and the auror on his hands and knees several feet away, winded by Rudolphus's spell...

"McKenna!" Frank gasped. He struggled to get the words out, his lungs having been completely emptied of air by whatever spell Rudolphus had cast, it now stung to breathe, sharp pains cutting across his chest. He crawled hurriedly, dizzy, his vision dotted by black spots to her side. "McKenna!" his palm slipped in the pool of blood. "Holy shit," Frank whispered, and he grabbed onto her and panted, "Mungos, Mungos..." fixing his mind on the place, disapparating, too.

By the time the muggle police arrived, the square was empty save for the pool of blood with no victim laying in it, and the dead body of the young man laying several feet away whose body was in perfectly healthy condition, apart from the fact that he was dead.

Peter Pettigrew sat beside Oni Lamm on a bench in the park across from the curry shop and the flat in East London. Both stared wild-eyed straight ahead, both in shock, neither sure what to think - much less, say.

It seemed they'd been there forever.

"I've never studied Grindelwald's theories a lot, have you?" Oni asked after a long time.

"No not a lot," Peter muttered, "They never taught a lot about Grindelwald, did they?" his voice was rasping, a low whisper, practically a wheeze. "Binns was always just going on and on about the Goblin Wars, hardly ever anything else... Or at least not that I remember. Of course, as Sirius always said, Binns's class was the best time for a good nap, so..." Peter flushed.

"My family followed Grindelwald you know," Oni hissed, "All the Sacred Twenty-Eight pretty much did, with a few small exceptions, but only part of them follow --" she mouthed the name Voldemort instead of speaking it, "-- and it must be this bit of divergence that turns them away!"

Peter stared at the ground. "I thought they were both for killing muggles. I don't know. It's too much. I don't know what to think. We shouldn't have gone."

Oni shivered. "Definitely not."

Peter was glad now that he hadn't shown the other Marauders the flyer. If he had, they all would've been there and all hell would have broken loose. Or else Sirius might've understood better the language of what the flyer said, would have caught the  clues that it was a miniature rally for the Death Eaters, would've accused Peter of wanting to be a Death Eater or something when really all it had been was that Peter was stupid and didn't see the warning signs...

Peter felt his face flush and he covered his eyes.

"I thought it was a cry to  help the muggles protect themselves," Oni whispered.

Peter nodded, "So did I."

"I guess it meant to just leave them to it, leave them vulnerable."

"Apparently," Peter agreed.

Oni sniffed and shook her head, "Oh my gods, I feel so naive, so stupid, so --" she shook her head. "I just wanted to do something, you know, I wanted to  do something to - to help - to make Regulus's death mean something, to fight back against You Know Who like he was doing." She wiped her eyes with her palms and looked down at the ground. "I feel like nobody's doing anything now that he's gone."

Peter thought about how it had been months since the Order had met. "Yeah," he said, "Nobody's doing anything. They're just living their own lives. That's what they all always complained about before, before they were the adults, and now everyone's too busy for doing anything about You Know Who, or for anything really..."

As he spoke, his eyes followed the form of James Potter, walking briskly down the sidewalk toward the flat. He watched as James ducked down the alley between the curry shop and the brownstone next door. 

"Oni, I gotta go."

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"But I feel like --" she paused, then shook her head, "Nevermind. Go on and go if you've got to."

"You feel like what?" Peter asked.

Oni looked up at him, "Don't you think maybe since everyone else is too busy and we're the only ones recognizing that, that maybe we ought to do something about it? Maybe that we ought to be the ones that... I dunno... make the bloody time to stop him?"

"Uh-uh-us?" Peter stammered.

"Yeah us," Oni answered. "Doesn't it seen like it makes sense? Or do you want to just be like them, like those people who don't take the time to do anything because they're caught up in their own lives?"

"I don't want to be like them," Peter said quickly.

Oni stared into Peter's eyes. "Well, what do you reckon we should do?"

Peter had never had anyone look at him like that. It was the way people usually looked at James Potter, with a clear expectation that James would have an answer to the desperate question being asked, that James would fix some broken thing. It was a stare loaded with expectation, with desire to be done right by, and with trust that he, Peter, would know what they ought to do. Peter had never had anybody look at him as though he could do anything to help them before. But Oni looked at him like that now, as though he were a hero already.

And Peter rather liked being seen by somebody.

And he drew a shaking breath, his mind racing for a reply that sounded cool and confident, one that deserved to be looked at that way.

What would James Potter do? he asked himself.

And so he puffed up his chest and, in as confident a tone as his voice would let him speak the words, he said, "We - we should stop him."

"How?" Oni asked, eyes widening even more, mouth dropping slightly.

"You Know Who," Peter repeated, "We should - we should -" his mind went to the story of Ottalie, of the things Dora Potter had told them just the other night 'round the dinner table, about the pretty Potter girl who had tried to save the world with her friends, and he whispered, "We should assassinate him."

Oni gasped. "Us? Kill the Dark Lord?"

"Yes," Peter said firmly, gaining confidence in the words as he repeated them, thinking about how James would say them. "We should kill the Dark Lord."