Snow pressed at the mullioned panes and dulled the castle hum to a low breath. The faculty gathered in the long staff room, cloaks steaming, tea ghosting in the cold light. Seats scraped. The chair at the head of the table sat empty.
Snape prowled a slow line behind his chair, hands folded into his sleeves. A muscle worked in his jaw. He did not look at the tidily folded newspaper on the sideboard, the one that repeats Professor Black mid spell with lightning caught like a chain between floor and Dumbledore's chest. He did not need print to know the measure of it. He could hear the crack through the paper.
Flitwick fussed with a stack of parchment and a saucer, eyes bright. Sprout smoothed her skirt once, then twice. Hooch whistled under her breath until McGonagall lifted a hand. At the far end Sinistra leaned toward Corvus and traced a small map of stars on the table with her finger. He watched her patterning with polite interest, then murmured a question about drift calculations in winter skies. She tapped the chart again and smiled with the quiet pride of a craftswoman who knows her numbers.
McGonagall cleared her throat. The room stilled. She did not sit. "Colleagues." Her gaze moved along the table and did not linger on the absent chair. "As of yesterday, Hogwarts has no Headmaster." The words hung. Even the portraits along the cornice feigned sleep.
Her eyes found Corvus for a measured beat. The memory rose whether she willed it or not. The boy who had arrived with old manners and cold eyes stood firm in a ring of light while the most celebrated wizard in Britain raised a wand to kill. A lightning curse from a young lord. A fall that broke more than bones. She steadied her breath. "The Prophet has printed its version. A dozen foreign papers have printed theirs. We will speak to what concerns us. Our children. Our work."
A murmur started near the fire and died when Snape stilled. He took a seat at last, the robes settling in a quiet spill. Corvus did not look away from McGonagall. He had come in simple dark robes, hair neat, a slight burnished look to him that most mistook for ease. Sinistra's finger drifted once more over her star map and came to rest.
"Before we reach appointments," McGonagall went on, "we must speak to continuity of instruction, access to the library restrictions, and curfews. Lessons are canceled today while we align." She paused and in that pause something in her face wavered. It was gone when she set her jaw. "As to yesterday. I do not accept that Dumbledore would harm a child. I do not accept that he would abandon one to cruelty." The words came too fast. She felt it. A chill ran up her spine as she remembered the report about the cupboard under the stairs. She warned Dumbledore about those Muggles, yet she had agreed to leave him in front of their door because a man she trusted said so. If she believed the worst of the report, then the worst looked back at her from a mirror. She straightened. "We will let the Department of Magical Law Enforcement investigate. We will attend to our duties."
Across the table Corvus tilted his head a fraction. He let the silence work. Snape's eyes slid to him, dark and hooded, then away again to the empty chair.
A soft cough from Sprout. "The children are already whispering about a new Head." She folded her hands. "We should choose an interim. They will rest easier with a name."
"Agreed," Hooch tossed a quill between her fingers. "The castle hates a vacuum more than I hate rain on a match day."
"Headmistress," Flitwick offered, glancing at McGonagall with a hopeful little nod. "The staff can rally around you. We always have."
McGonagall's mouth thinned. Ambition never ruled her, but duty did. She looked from Flitwick to Sprout and then to Corvus. The lad watched her with that curious old patience. "Professor Black," she said at last, choosing plain formality and letting it carry the room back to steady ground. "You sit with us now and you are aware of the situation at hand. Will you rise to the call if I assign a role to you?" The question had a point. Arcturus Black served as interim Minister. Professor Black would see more than most of the coming events.
Corvus set his cup down and folded his hands. "No, Deputy Headmistress. I am a foreign professor here, not part of the faculty by default. As for choosing a new steward for the castle, I advise delay." His tone stayed mild. "The DMLE is already taking statements. They will expand inquiry to close allies of the former Headmaster. Appointing from that circle today invites trouble tomorrow."
A faint ripple went around the table. McGonagall held his gaze. "You imply that I stand within that circle."
"Of course. You stand within the history of this castle," Corvus answered without heat. "That is enough for caution. Parents are watching and you are not at a safe distance from the glaring problem of being a close ally to a dark wizard." The line landed. Her face showed that it landed.
"The world is watching, Deputy Headmistress, from Inverness to Istanbul."
Flitwick drummed a finger on his saucer and stopped when the porcelain clicked. "There is sense in that," he conceded. "An acting council then. We have precedent. The founders sat as four when they could not agree on a single chair."
Snape's mouth quirked. "A flattering comparison." He glanced at McGonagall. "A council prevents the appearance of a purge."
Sprout nodded. "And lets us keep the children in rhythm. Herbology can fold first and second year sessions into the afternoon for a week to cover today's cancellations."
McGonagall weighed it. Duty again, and under all those daily chores, the bruise of a thought she refused. She let that sit in its box and closed the lid. "Very well. An acting council. Heads of House to serve in an advisory role for curriculum and discipline. Pomfrey to sit for health."
Flitwick brightened. "And the Prefects will be briefed at dinner."
"Briefed and bound to discretion," Snape added, gaze cold. "No gossip while the children gnaw their meals."
McGonagall inclined her head. "So ordered." She reached for the parchment and began to note the assignments in her tidy hand. "Now, Professor Quirrell." The name cooled the room further. "Defense classes?"
Quirrell lifted his head as if waking from a dream. The turban gleamed in the gray light. His smile showed too many teeth. "The s s syllabus proceeds," he stammered. "M my students will n not suffer in interruption." His eyes slid toward Corvus and away. Behind that soft voice something older coiled and tasted the air. In the space between blinks it weighed a plan. Now that Dumbledore was out of the picture, he would get the stone first. He would build a body for the Dark Lord next.
Corvus watched the man with a fake stutter and held the gaze a heartbeat too long. He turned back to McGonagall.
She continued. "Curfew holds tonight. No exceptions. Sinistra, please consult with Filch on the tower patrols. Hooch, cancel pitch access until Monday. Pomfrey, I want a round of regular checkups through the dormitories before lights out." Those regular checks would confirm whether any of the hormone ridden girls had forgotten their potions.
Pomfrey's chin dipped. "Consider it done."
McGonagall set down her quill. "We will reconvene after dinner. Until then, keep your ears open." Her eyes found Corvus one last time. "Professor Black, a word after."
The scrape of chairs rose and fell. Robes brushed stone. The staff filed out in twos and threes, voices low. Quirrell lingered at the door a moment too long, then slipped away with a whisper of wool. Snape passed behind Corvus and paused, the barest hitch. He did not look at him. "Your shields held an unforgivable. Accept my congratulations on crafting something remarkable." He moved on.
When the room had emptied, McGonagall stood with both palms on the table. The empty chair at the head watched her like a portrait with its subject gone wandering. She drew a breath and lifted her gaze to Corvus.
"I will not have a purge," she said, voice more iron than wool. "If the DMLE finds rot, I will do my best to cut it out. It is my duty to keep this school standing."
Corvus inclined his head. "That is strange." He gathered his notes. "I wonder." He stood. "Was it also your duty to leave an infant at the door of some Muggles you warned Dumbledore about." He stepped into the corridor where the castle's heartbeat quickened toward lunch.
McGonagall stood where she was, her mind going to a cold November night. Outside, snow pressed its quiet face to the glass. Inside, the game set its next pieces.
--
Corvus inhaled the steam from Tibby's tea, then set the cup aside and opened the map. The ink bled into corridors and stairwells. Names moved like ants. Quirinus Quirrell drifted out of the Great Hall and back toward his classroom with the slow wobble of a man who had learned to walk around a second voice.
He drew on the cloak and vanished. A twist of flame put him outside the Defense classroom. Stone carried the echo of distant plates. The corridor itself stood empty, banners still, sconces breathing a steady light. He knelt and touched Elder Wand to the floor. Runes rose under the tip one by one, each stroke exact, each angle tight. The first circle locked to the flagstones with a soft hum of will. Immobilize, isolate, silence. The second circle nested inside it like a trap within a trap, built to snare a shade and hold it still.
He stepped back three paces and watched the map under the cloak. A name on top of another drifted nearer. Footfalls reached him, a soft scuff, the hitch at the end of a breath. He folded the map, slid it into his pouch, and waited.
Quirrell rounded the corner with his head tilted as if listening to an insect. Garlic did not hide the smell of fear. The turban hid the truth. The thing beneath pressed at the skin and whispered. The man twitched and scratched at the edge of the cloth. He was three steps from the door when his body froze.
The right hand spasmed and halted in midair. A heel hung above stone and did not descend. Quirrell's eyes went round. The voice in his skull rose to a shriek.
Run, fool. Run.
Nothing moved. The runes anchored more than muscle. They gripped intent. They smothered the urge to flee as cleanly as a pillow.
Corvus watched from the wall, breath slow, weight on his heels. The trap held. Good. Now for the tenant.
The skin at the nape rippled. The turban bulged and went still. Darkness bled through cloth like oil through paper. A smear of cold peeled away from bone and lifted. For a moment the corridor smelled of fever and wet stone. Then the shade slid free of Quirrell's skull.
No eyes. No mouth. A rag of will knotted into a shape barely human.
It pressed against the inner ring and met resistance. The runes flashed once, dull and patient. The wraith floated the line in a slow circle and tested each glyph with a thin push of intent. The array did not shift.
Corvus let the shade make one more blind sweep at the barrier. Then he drew a glass vial from his pocket, long and thick at the neck, no seam for teeth to catch. He tapped the mouth with his wand. The inner circle flexed. The shade dragged toward the glass as if the room had tilted.
It fought. Of course it fought. The corridor cooled another degree. The sconces burned shorter. Inked runes held firm while the pull tightened. The first whisper reached his ears then, not a word, not even a breath. Just pressure. A push against his thoughts the way a damp rag pushes at flame.
He let the thought pass through him. The vial filled. The shade curled on itself like a spider touched with fire. He corked it and set three quick binds on the glass, then a fourth, older and less polite. Corvus dismantled the runic circles without losing a moment. In less then a minute the deed was done.
Quirrell's knees gave first as the runes supporting him were gone. He folded to the stones with a dry sound and lay shivering, breath catching in his throat. Spittle clung to his lip. Without the rider he looked small and wrong, like if someone had taken a layer of paint off a portrait and left the sketch.
Silence returned in a rush. Quirrell tried to crawl. The hand that reached for the door shook like old paper. Corvus liked the neatness. No duel, no speech and no mess.
He made sure no residue, no hooks left for clever eyes. He spared the man on the floor a single glance. The twitch at the jaw looked like a dying moth.
A step, then another. His cloaked figure left a twitching man, soon to be corpse behind. He moved away before the first patrol rounded the far corner.
The vial rode cool against his palm. It throbbed once, then lay quiet, the thing inside crushed into the size of a fist. The urge to laugh rose and fell. Better to sort the rest of the board first. Diary and the Diadem.
He took a stairwell that cut down to the second floor and doubled back. Students passed on the landing with the hush of gossip barely held in teeth. A pair of Ravenclaws glanced past him without seeing anything unusual. He slid by, crossed the next corridor, and let the castle choose the route the way one lets a river pull at a boat towards the seventh floor.
The wall answered when he asked for what he wanted. A door formed in a length of plain stone. He palmed the latch and stepped into shelves that climbed into dim. The smell here was dust, oil, a hint of old thunder. The room for lost things waited as if pleased to be remembered.
He set the vial on a low table and started to etch tiny runes on to the glass with his 'new' wand. Not a prison, this was a promise. The binds would hold without flourishes. If by 'miracle' the vial will be lost, it would be impossible to open or destroy it, not without another set of runes, his blood and consent. He was aiming for overkill rather than arrogance.
He stood still until the pulse of the shade faded under the array. There was no more tug, nor any whisper at the edge of his occlumency. The vial went back to his inner pocket.
He went to a specific corner of The room for lost things. He levitated a tower of things from desks to chairs stack upon each other in a way only a house elf on crack could manage and hissed in parseltounge to deactivate the trap beneath. Ravenclaw's diadem appeared, laying innocently. He took out the vial and put it nearly ten steps away from him. Afterwards, He drew another circle and started to chant.
"Animus Reddo Invalesco." The soul shard withing the diadem was feeling the pull and fighting against with no success. In a minute it was extracted and absorbed. Tom Riddle's wraith was watching as part of his soul was extracted and absorbed as a drumstick on a platter. If fear has a meaning it felt it through it's lifeless formless and miserable existence.
Corvus stood and took the vial back. "I hope Tom Riddle, you enjoyed the show." he said smiling faintly and fire travelled back to his chambers.
He stored the cloak and rolled his shoulders. Tibby would bring more tea without asking when he returned. Before that, one more look at the map.
Names shifted. Quirrell had stopped moving. A pair of small dots near him wore Auror tags. It seems someone had found the sorry sod already.
Corvus closed the map and let his gaze settle on the vial one last time. The thing inside had hurt an innocent child to live. Now it lived at the pleasure of a glass wall. Justice takes the shape you give it.