Corvus kept to the shadowed spine of the corridor, breath quiet, steps lighter than dust. The high security ward hummed with the thin, hopeless chill that sinks under nails and into marrow. Iron doors slept behind layered wards. Beyond them, the worst remnants of a bygone war rotted at the state's leisure.
A gaunt figure surfaced in the nearest slit of light. Antonin Dolohov. Scar along the jaw, eyes still sharp behind the hollows. Corvus no uncertain enough, he decided to shelve his sentence for later.
Two cells down, a pair of eyes blinked slow and hateful. Rabastan Lestrange. Corvus watched the pest for a while. Tip of his wand slowly got out of the cloak, a whisper of intent and the rot began to take hold from the inside, a patient curse that eats the flesh slowly, where healers could not help nor can reach. The body sagged the way wet canvas surrenders to gravity. He did not linger.
A member of House Yaxley lay farther along another undesired, a masked thug who earned this cell. The same soft touch of magic settled over him. Bones would ache. Organs would complain. Nothing spectacular, nothing loud. Just a slow unspooling. Civil service, he thought a dry note in the back of his mind. Not even the Dementors would applaud. He was the 'hero' Wizarding Britain will get. He did not care what they needed or deserved.
Augustus Rookwood sat like a broken hinge in the next cell, head tilted at an angle that suggested listening. Unspeakable once. Too dangerous to rot, too valuable to waste. The cloak slipped just enough for the wand to kiss the air. A silent sleep of a Coma curse fell over the man, clean and deep. Transfiguration followed, quick and precise. Flesh folded to stone, angles tightened, and the former researcher was a palm sized bust with the same faintly amused mouth. Corvus weighed the little figure, nodded once, and slid it to an inner pocket. Not the mokeskin. It could not hold living beings.
Mulciber received the curse next. Jugson was not spared. He did not forget Rodolphus. That one was a bit specialized. The ward was a ledger. He was balancing it.
One level down, the stink of neglect thinned to the simpler odor of damp stone. The cell he wanted waited with its own quiet. Rags on the cot. A toad's face under a mat of greasy hair. Dolores Jane Umbridge blinked awake to silence at the pressure of being watched. Her eyes skittered, found nothing, skittered again. The lock turned without drama and the door closed to a neat click after a moment.
The silencing charm settled over her, followed by a muffiliato the room like a thick curtain. A flick of the wrist sent a soft jolt through her limbs; the flailing stopped, then stilled. Corvus let the cloak peel away by degrees, the shimmer of it falling from his shoulders until the toad could put fear to a shape.
"Bitch," his tone almost warm, "I heard you were looking for me."
Her mouth worked. No sound found the air. Panic clawed forward in her eyes, that small animal awareness that knows the predator by silhouette alone. She tried to shrink from the cot to the stone, tried to fold into a crease the world could not reach. A spell held her upright for the upcoming lesson.
"You sent an Auror after me." He stepped close enough for her to see the turquoise in his eyes. "Now you will consider the cost."
The first touch of pain was delicate. Not the grandstanding of a Cruciatus, not the drugged fog of a potion, just a careful unpicking of nerves that taught the body how to tremble. Her fingers curled. Her breath hitched. The silence of the room made her fear the scream inside her skull. He let it build, then released it, then built it again, a tide that never quite allowed the shore to dry.
Memories surfaced against her will. Pink offices. Kittens on plates. He made sure to bring the worst of her memories to the surface, adding new ones on top of all as the cherry. Dementors were in need of feeding after all.
When her eyes finally met his without skittering away, he inclined his head, as if a point had been proven to a stubborn pupil. He fed her two doses of Aetherveil. "We will continue this conversation another day."
The cloak returned. The door locked itself with a neat charm that muffled even the click, and the corridor took him back without keeping footprint or echo.
He finished the floor like a book he had already read, leaving the same quiet curse behind in a dozen discreet places. Rodolphus Lestrange twitched in his sleep and did not know why his bones had started to ache as if winter had taken up residence beneath the skin. Dolohov remained spared.
At the end of the run he reached a wide slit that looked straight over the sea. The cloak slid away. Cold air took his face. The Dementors felt him at once, the way an arrow flies towards its target. Several drifted down from the upper ring, tattered robes breathing on wind that did not stir them, the void under their hoods drawing the light thin.
He stepped forward and fell.
Stone flashed past. The world tilted to sky and sea. Midway, the man unspooled to raven. Wings bit the air and held. The nearest Dementor shuddered closer, the edges of its robes dancing like grass in a current. Even at a distance he watched frost race along the stone lip of the window as its aura spread. The emptiness of it pressed like cold hands against his ribs. Fascinating. Repulsive. He gave it a narrow pass, tips of his wing brushing the black cloth. He felt the temperature dive, and skimmed clear with a harsh caw that echoed off the tower.
The sky took him. The prison shrank to a knuckle of rock clinched in a grey fist of water. Behind him, curses would ripen on their slow clocks. Ahead, the wind pulled steady and clean. He climbed into it without a backward look, laughter caught in the sound his wings made as he rode the air back toward the world.
--
Corvus returned to Hogwarts in a quiet good mood. The outing had been useful. Two targets sat on his ledger now. Extreme Speed worked, but without the unicorns' extreme agility he could only surge in straight lines or make small corrections. Even so, a few stolen seconds change outcomes. The other quarry was the Dementors themselves. Flight, Frigid Aura, and Phase Veil went on the list. First the unicorns, then the cloaked gluttons of misery. Rookwood could sit as a figurine a little longer.
Hot water filled the marble tub in his chambers. He slipped in, sank to the collarbone, and let his breathing settle. A thought triggered Extreme Speed. Time thinned. Steam unwound from the surface and rose in slow ribbons, each curl taking an age to turn. Droplets slid down the tap like beads on a string. The world became a patient lesson.
He closed his eyes and let the absorption of Memory Mapping start. The copied skill opened like a shutter. His mind dropped into a cold scene that did not belong to him.
Winter. A cottage at the edge of a village. The year tasted of smoke and ash, the pestilence years when bells tolled without rest. A woman lay failing on a straw pallet. Fever burned and could not warm the room. Outside came the crack of a door bar giving way. Boots. Voices of bandits. The daughters' cries rose afterwards. The mother listened to her own daughter's defilement. Powerless, the air filling with the sour smell of panic, misery and helplesness. The knowledge that no one would come filled her dying heart with enough hatred to burn the heavens.
The room did not darken as she exhaled her last, her daughter's cries for help cut by a sound of hard slap. The air emptied. Warmth left before the breath did. What remained was a pressure in the corner, a place where grief had nowhere to go. Cold gathered there, the way frost gathers on glass. Something took the shape of absence and learned to move. The first touch it made on the air turned memory sour and made the heart refuse hope. The survivors of the village would say a shadow had settled as they moved the bodies. The truth was simpler. A dementor was born. An amortal being was born where a mother was surrendered to plauge in agony, in misery, in hatred, her daughter joined her in death after hours of pain and suffering. Bandints killed her only after they were done with her undeveloped body. Their bodies burned on the same fire. One of them fed a nightmare to roam to earth. Other simply gone. A broken flower, before she could bloom to be a wife or a mother.
Corvus returned to the tub with his pulse steady. Humanity, he thought, did not need much help to manufacture its own nightmares. Give the right kind of enviroment, the right kind of power and even saints forget what was the values they were preaching. Magic only writes the outcome in a clearer hand.
Corvus continued to study the memories of the Dementor using the skill. When compared by the process, legilimency finds a passage. It pries, levers, and reads, then fights the mind that pushes back. Memory Mapping works differently. It reads the mind as a whole, as if a photograf was snapped. Heat, light, sound, the shape of thought around the moment all the memories from start to the moment of the snap, even the way emotion colors the edges. Without brushing the mind. No need to guess which shelf holds the book. The book arrives opened to the page.
Dementors use the map like a hunting chart. They select the bleak entries, swell them, and bend feeling toward despair until the victim collapses into a harvestable state. They do this in blink of an eye. Corvus had no interest in their diet. For him this was a tool. A perfect tool. An eyewitness that did not blink. A way to test lies against the grain of reality. A way to plan. A way to learn. A way to frighten the right people without touching mind arts at all.
Steam curled in the still air. He let Extreme Speed drop. The ribbons snapped back into quick, harmless breath. He leaned his head to the rim and considered the rest of the list. Phase Veil might let him slip between edges when stone and silence meet. Flight will be usefull when combined with his speed. A convenience rather than a need, yet he will get it, who could deny such a lovely skill. Frigid Aura would demand caution; too much and rooms would frost and questions would follow. Sequence mattered. First the unicorns. Then the agony munchers.
The mapping lattice settled in his thoughts like a constellation. He smiled without showing teeth and closed his eyes again. He will test it soon enough. For now, the water did its work and the castle hummed beyond the walls.
--
Mel knifed down from the rafters and landed beside the teapot as if the High Table were her stage. She stuck out one leg, very pleased with herself. Corvus paid the toll in bacon. One slice. Two. Three. By the time he checked the seals, the plate was bare and the falcon was already a grey streak in the painted sky above.
Filius chuckled behind his cup. Corvus rescued an apple before another thief arrived and rose from the bench. A nod for the Charms Master earned a bright twinkle. The rare quiet of the corridors were refreshing. His chambers opened at a touch. The wards settled back into place.
Arcturus' letter first. It was written in clean lines. Cadmus Selwyn had done as asked. A small clutch of marked men wanted the stain gone and were willing to pay for it. The minister did not write insults, but the contempt was easy to hear between the strokes. 'Spineless shit stains.' Corvus hear the words in his mind with Arcturus' sharp tone. Heads that bowed to any hand with a whip. Corvus smiled without heat and set the letter aside.
'Uncle' Grigori's was the next letter. Broad hand. Blunt points. Three hundred squibs gathered and housed. Ledgers of stores and roofs. Names of stewards. He was asking when he could be there. Corvus had already pointed to two locations before they left. Moscow and Saint Petersburg wanted will be the targeted locations. The old wolf ran his house like a quartermaster and a general in one.
Elizaveta's letter was the last. Pale blue wax. Even script. Her tone balanced invitation with restraint, he was starting like her loyalty to tradition. A line about winter lights on frosty nights. A sentence that glanced off their last conversation and felt like a secret she had decided to keep. He read it again, then let the page rest on his palm.
He wrote the replies in the same order.
For Arcturus he kept it spare. Assemble the marked in a quiet place. No press. The price will be heavy. Gold, favors, and names. No one walks away clean from branded loyalty. He added a family postscript. Lestrange Manor in Wiltshire to be deeded to him as was in need of some personal space.
For Grigori he set a steadier hand. He scheduled the main operation to Beltane and the spring equinox, A promise to come sooner for a quick survey. Moscow first, Saint Petersburg next. He asked Grigori to start to buy large tracts of lands far away from muggle cities and villages. A short note about banked blood supply for the night folk and secured villages for the moon bound.
For Elizaveta he allowed himself a smaller script. He thanked her for her grace. A polite request for the Beltane dance. No ornament past that. Meaning travels better when it walks on its own feet. He paused, then crossed to the workbench.
Two blocks of wood waited. A flick and a press thinned them. A second pass brought shape. The first became a white tiger, shoulder and flank and tail caught in a poised step. The second settled into an arctic wolf with ears pricked and a proud line from brow to nose. He did not forget to make sure the wolf has her eyes. He tapped each with his wand and layered the enchantments, one after another. Movement, awareness, loyality. He fed them from his core until the material seemed to breathe. The tiger stretched. The wolf set its paws and watched him as if it understood.
He sealed the letters and the small parcel. Umbra arrived as if summoned by the thought. His eyes like wet coal checked each letter and the parcel carefully. Corvus pointed to them. "To Arcturus, if you will. The minister will route the Volkov packet." Umbra took the lot and leapt, a shadow pulled across the light.
Silence settled after the beat of wings. Corvus stood a moment with the apple in his hand and the room breathing around him. Work waited. So did the North. So did a garden under snow and a woman who met the world with clear winter eyes. The thought of Beltane caused a smile before he could stop it.