---A/N
Just a quick one, thought I'd drop this extra chapter as a little thank you. Your support's been brilliant, and I'm truly grateful. Hope you enjoy the surprise!
Cheers---
Owl posts fell like winter ash across the wizarding world. Headlines bled ink. Seals broke. Quills scratched. In London the Prophet sold out by midmorning. In Paris, La Gazette pinned three moving frames on its front page, each one pausing a heartbeat too long on the moment a blue white bolt flung Albus Dumbledore into the air. Across the Atlantic, MACUSA's morning circular chose a cautious font and no photographs at all. Words only, a request for patience and an appeal to process.
The split showed at once. Ministries that had marched behind Dumbledore's banners sent out polished statements. Support for due process. Confidence in the courts. Concern for tone. Behind those lines, owls carried louder drafts that never reached print, full of questions about how a man who held so many titles could cast a killing curse in full view of the Wizengamot. Allies did not rush to denounce him. They did not rush to defend him either. They measured distance and watched the wind.
--
East of Berlin, the reaction carried heat. Sofia's broadsheets called the fall inevitable. Moscow's morning edition ran a sidebar naming funds siphoned from orphanages under the Chief Warlock's budgets. The Warsaw Courier profiled the new settlements planned in Norway for magical clans who answered to the moon. A single pull quote underlined it: Muggles are the primary threat. We reduce risk by separation. Readers clipped it and framed it in quiet agreement.
At the ICW, the corridors smelled of wax and parchment and faint worry. Clerks stacked memos for committees that had not existed the day before. Time for expansion had ended. It was time to hold the line. Delegates spoke in doorways instead of chambers. Everyone counted votes. Akingbade's bloc met twice after their request to visit Dumbledore was denied. The ICW sought calm, waiting for facts, though everyone felt the void where Dumbledore's private calls once turned favors as easily as chess pieces. Doors that had opened for him now stayed closed, waiting to see who would knock next.
--
Durmstrang woke to ice and light. Vinda Rosier skimmed the headlines with one black gloved fingertip, the pages crisp against her breakfast plate. Her smile began in her eyes before it touched her mouth. The photographs caught the sequence clean, shields rising, a curse dodged, and justice landing like thunder. Justice decades late, but justice nonetheless. She folded the paper once, set it beside her cup, and watched steam climb from the tea. Her gaze drifted to the rune etched skull fixed to a speaking pipe at the corner of her private chamber.
She sent confirmation of her new appointments through the encypted noted, first to Stockholm, then to Sofia. Her mind went back to Corvus. Her heir had stood beneath a killing curse and answered it with geometry and judgment. The image pleased her, as did the ripples it sent through every council and corridor. A boy compared to her years, a lord by any measure that mattered. A lord who thinks, acts and has already started to gather the old guard around him. The gamble she had taken when she supported his Rosier claim in Britain now looked brilliant.
She raised her cup toward the window. With Dumbledore gone, her next campaign would be France. "Paris next," she murmured, savoring the thought. Lightning bent; the phoenix fell like a coal into snow. She thought of Arcturus and the smug nod he would give for the part he played. Perhaps she owed him thanks... perhaps not. A nod would do. Gifts were for predators like her heir, not fossils with one foot in the grave. The fact that they shared similar ages never registered in her mind.
Her thoughts roamed maps. Bulgaria and Sweden secured. Poland nearly done. France within reach now that Dumbledore's shine had dulled. MACUSA would wait to see which way Europe leaned. That was fine. The longer they waited, the more they would follow the path Corvus had drawn. For the Greater Good... She whispered
--
In the main hall, a girl with pale hair read the same front page. Glacial blue eyes narrowed, then softened. Elizaveta Volkova traced the arc of the lightning with one fingertip, slow, as if the picture might feel it. A storm gathered beneath her calm. Not fear, nor pride alone. Something colder and sharper. How dare an old relic raise death at him and how satisfying to watch him eat stone for it.
She folded the paper along its crease, slid it under her plate, and took a measured sip of her drink. The ritual steadied her. She would write to him after lunch, no girlish flourish, no breathless praise. One line to show she had seen and approved. Perhaps another to remind him that discretion with women remained expected. Her lips curved, then flattened. He handled death like an equation; she would handle him with reason and her 'womanly' charms as her mother repeat it many times. The wolf in her bowed to strength, never to folly.
She set the cup down and replayed the sequence once more in her mind. Shields first, nine out of ten. The strike second, ten out of ten. Clean, efficient, no collateral harm. The restraint moved her more than the force. A leader who remembered the room even in fury. Her chest eased, her jaw unclenched. The storm in her eyes broke to winter calm.
--
Back in Britain, the political math shifted grain by grain. Progressives tempered their words. Letters that once began together now began with care. Traditionalists stood taller and started counting how many votes they could pull if Arcturus called a slate tomorrow. The neutrals who fancied themselves anchors realized anchors could drag.
By noon, three embassies had sent feelers to Grimmauld Place instead of the Ministry. Requesting talks on joint enforcement standards. One discreetly inquired about foreign residency inside the new settlements, could safety be purchased? The request went into a folder marked later. Arcturus Black did not sell sanctuary by the parcel. He imposed order, and safety followed.
--
In Durmstrang's library, Elizaveta penned her letter. The lines were neat, the ink dark. Restraint filled the first page, warmth edged the margin. A single sentence stood alone at the end: Do not make me worry for you again. She sanded the sheet, sealed it with the Volkov crest, and sat with her hands still in her lap until the wax cooled. The glacial eyes softened. The wolf within flicked an ear, then rested.
On another part of the castle Vinda gather her notes, signed two directives, and stepped into the corridor. The cold air bit at her throat; she liked it. The castle smelled of stone and snow and old wood. Everything smelled like resolve today. She let the door close behind her and walked toward the day's work, heels crisp on the flagstones. Europe was moving. So was she.
--
Cold light bled through the slit in the door and laid a thin bar across the floor. Stone pressed the ache in his spine. The cot smelled of stale potion and damp wool. He tasted copper when he drew breath and felt the tug of rough bandage where his jaw should have been. The Healer had packed the wound and muttered about fractures. No words had answered.
He closed his eyes and made the scene run again. The dais, benches, room leaning forward like a single creature that had caught a scent. His wand hidden under his sleve rising. The green blooming. The boy not there anymore. A flash at the floor, that impossible arc of blue and violet, and then the world turned over. Weightless. A cry from above and then heat snuffed. After the fall, a pull like an iron hook and stone under his teeth. Silence. Then wands.
Corvus Black. He rolled the name in his mind as if he could grind it down. The mistake had begun the day he allowed the boy to come back to Britain. No before that, the moment he decided he could not allow a rouge element of Britain to gain power abroad. A talented child at Durmstrang, far from British politics, would have been an irritant. Brought home, he could be shaped, watched, guided, kept from the crude uses others would make of him. That had been the thought. A controlled variable in a very large equation. A simple calculus of the greater good.
The calculus had failed. Oh how it failed. He tasted the failure in every swallow. Black moved like no student, like no master he had seen in years. Four shields raised in a blink. He knew the feel of that blow when it hit him square in the chest. There were broken bones, burns and cracks all over. The clerks would talk about them for weeks. The boy had aimed the rebound perfectly in a heeartbeat. It was not a duel, it was a dismantling. A dismantling of his decades long work.
He counted allies to settle himself. Names steadied the hands. Pierre from Paris. Graves across the ocean who owed favors. Akingbade's people on three continents who would write statements and send them with seals bright as summer. They would not leave him to rot in a Ministry cell. They would find a way to free him. They would call it a clash in the chamber, unfortunate but correctable. They would paint Corvus Black as rash, brilliant but rash. Dangerous in a way that needed guidance. The old network would wake and do what it had been built to do.
Footsteps passed outside. Keys touched iron. The bar of light shifted and steadied again. He drew a breath and felt the pull of stitches. He tried a whisper out of habit and met white pain that rang in the ear. Half of his chin was gone. The thought came calm and clear. Half of his chin on the Wizengamot floor like a lesson. He let the air out slow and counted again. Allies, letters, appeals through the ICW. A tide moving back toward him.
Fawkes. The name hit and hollowed everything. He had known that link since the first time the bird sang for a wounded child in a burned ward. The song had not come this time. A flash and then the small weight of a chick, robbed of it's majestic fire and dropped as a chick. He could still see the boy's face as he cast the curse that robbed him of his freedom. There was no cruel pleasure. He was studious, same as Gellert when he killed. Detached and cold. A true master in the making. The most dangerous type. Unlike Tom who was drown in the allure of the Dark Arts, Corvus was not slave of the rebound. He cast the killing curse as if shelving a book in its place.
Albus told himself the bird would molt and wake stronger. He told himself the chick would return when called. He told himself many things and kept his eyes on the door.
The wand. That hurt in another way. Old wood, older work then any memory could remember. He had held it for so long, it felt like part of his own hand. Power has a gravity after all. Some wands draw deeds to them, or so he had believed in his private hours. Would the boy sense it. Would he understand what he was holding in that simple wand? No... There is no reason he would. A wand is a wand to the uninitiated. It would sit in a drawer at DMLE and then return to him when law and sense returned to their track. He repeated the lie until it fit the room.
Charges swam up as if from a deep pool. Prevention of a will. Alteration of records. Unlawful wards. Custody without lawful standing. Each line neat in Amelia's voice. She would present them like exhibits. She would look like justice when she stood. The chamber would listen. They would forget the nights he carried petitions between offices and countries. They would forget the treaties shaped on parchment and tea. They would remember the cupboard under the stairs. They would remember the boy who lived in it.
His mind returned to the plan of his freedom. The old guard abroad would press for transfer into ICW custody for "clarification." The Progressives here would rally around the idea of a noble error. The Neutrals would be reminded, quietly, that chaos costs coin. He would allow the Ministry to believe he would accept house arrest under bond. Once back in familiar rooms he would set the board again. It only required time, and men like Arcturus Black to be eliminated.
Another tug at the bandage brought a small bright star behind the eyes. He let it pass. Heir Black had killed the songbird. He forced the mind to the facts. The bird was not dead. The cycle would hold. It always had. When the chick grew it would flash again. When it flashed he would be waiting. There are doors beyond doors in this building.
Outside, a quill scratched. He could hear the clerk in the outer room keeping his tidy lines. A cup set down. The faint clink of glass. Somewhere deeper, water ran through old pipes. The world continued. He folded his hands and rested them on the blanket to make the tremor still. He fixed his gaze on the line of light and imagined it widening, imagined the silhouette in the gap. Pierre first, perhaps. Or a junior from the ICW with a sealed paper and a careful tone. Or Croaker, if the Department decided that knowledge was at stake and not mere law.
"Soon," he tried to mouth, and the jaw punished him for it. He swallowed and let the word sit inside where it could do no harm. Soon. Out of this cot, out of this wing, out of this case. Back to work. The world did not correct itself. Someone must do it.
He lay back, eyes open, and counted the ways back to power. One. Two. Three. He stopped at four and began again. Counting held the room together. Counting made the door stay a door and not a wall. Counting kept that cursed child and the bolt of lightning from the front of his mind. Counting kept him from hearing the soft peep of a phoenix with no fire.