Chapter Text
GUILTY! LUCIUS MALFOY, THE DEATH EATER WHO HAD FUDGE’S EAR
THE NOBLE AND MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK: A FAMILY SPLIT BY WAR
WHO IS ROY MUSTANG? THE MAN WHO TOOK DOWN YOU-KNOW-WHO’S MOST LOYAL FOLLOWERS
Following the trial of the Death Eaters captured at the Department of Mysteries, the Daily Prophet had gone down a new frenzy of war-related articles, effectively twisting public perception so the people would forget their long smear campaign against anyone who had opposed the ministry’s previous official stance on the war. Fortunately only four members of staff were residing at Hogwarts when the latest article made the Prophet’s headline, and none of them held that newspaper in high regard. That didn’t stop McGonagall or Snape from side-eyeing Roy. Before anyone could address him, though, owls swarmed the Great Hall. A large flock, not unlike the numbers that often came during the school year, descended on the small table they occupied, pecking and shoving their way towards Roy.
A golden dome encircled the table when the first, rather deranged-looking owl dropped its letter, the envelope bouncing off of it onto the hall’s floor.
Roy lowered his hands from where he had raised them to clap and glanced over to Albus.
“Well. This is unexpected.”
“I thought you’d enjoy your newfound fame, Mustang,” Snape said derisively.
Roy shot him one of his smarmiest smiles.
“Somehow I doubt these are love letters.”
McGonagall snorted.
“You’d be surprised. Many people have nothing better to do with their time than profess their undying love or hatred for the latest celebrity on the papers.”
The owls were now dropping their letters and even some packages where the first letter had fallen. As Riza often reminded him, Roy was no expert on animals, but he would swear some of these owls looked offended.
Roy sighed.
“I’ll burn them.” He reached for the robe he’d hung on the back of his chair, where he kept his old gloves. Roy was keeping the capabilities of his fully white gloves to himself for now, and had no interest in showing his lack of need for arrays unless the situation called for it –or he was startled, as he’d just proven.
“No, don’t,” Albus said, standing up. “There is much to be learned from this type of spontaneous mail. If we split the task, we’ll sort through them in a jiffy.”
McGonagall looked annoyed, but Snape’s glare could wither a cactus.
“I have better things to do than reading Mustang’s fan mail.”
“Nonsense,” Albus said dismissively. “This is a perfect chance to assess public opinion.”
The main issue with the plan to remove the horcrux from within Harry’s body without hurting him was that they couldn’t test the removal method on the only other known living horcrux. Targeting Nagini before they could draw Tom to a final confrontation ran the very possible risk of triggering Tom’s paranoia, which would result in either his complete avoidance of any foes he feared might best him or the creation of even more horcruxes. Most likely a combination of the two.
Their next best option relied on a questionable branch of alchemy Roy had encountered while fighting the same alchemists who attempted to turn a whole country into a philosopher’s stone: soul alchemy.
The notion of transferring a soul from a living body into a different body or even an inanimate object was aberrant, and Roy had admitted back at that time he hadn’t looked into the method more than was strictly necessary to know how to deal with such enemies. Now, though, Roy had spent over a year developing a method to affect souls within a body with as few side effects a possible to any other inhabitants, a task he’d performed through memory alone since he had once told Albus the wizarding world’s alchemy was centuries behind in comparison to the resources he was used to have on hand. He’d been very candid, in fact, when expressing his annoyance at the state of local alchemy.
Roy himself wasn’t concerned about the repercussions of this array potentially being Dark Arts, but by now Albus had noticed a concerning lack of a self-preservation instinct on Roy’s part, so Albus had done what he could to minimize the magical darkness necessary for their little experiment.
“Once again, thank you so much for agreeing to help us on this venture, Sir Nicholas,” Albus said, offering a respectful bow of his head.
“Of course, of course,” Nearly-Headless Nick replied enthusiastically. “I am honoured to be of assistance in your fight against those despicable dark wizards.”
Sir Nicholas floated over to where Roy was meticulously drawing a surprisingly simple array on a slab of slate they had specifically sourced for this purpose. Not transfigured or transmutated, since either of those would add more variables to their test, but bought through muggle channels. According to Roy’s explanation, this design combined elements of the soul-binding examples he had come across with others from the array used to create the philosopher’s stone. Albus had never seen that array, Nicholas Flamel had included nothing but an explanation of why that array shouldn’t be researched in his notes, and his quick perusal of Roy’s design hadn’t yielded any clues on the elements. Which was probably for the best, since Albus’ willpower had already failed once when faced with a sufficiently tempting horcrux.
“I’ll need you to be in contact with this array, Sir Nicholas,” Roy instructed after inspecting the design one more time.
Sir Nicholas nodded and floated over until his upper body protruded through the stone surface. Roy nodded at Albus, who obligingly levitated the bag that held Slytherin’s locket over the array and upended its contents on the center of the circle. He summoned the bag back to his own desk.
Roy removed his gloves, revealing the awful scars on his hands, and pocketed them. He then stepped closer to the slate and placed his hands on the array. A bright blue light coursed through the lines and rose around Sir Nicholas, latching onto his ghostly figure. Lightning-like threads extended from his form to connect it to the locket.
“Oh, that is a strange feeling,” Sir Nicholas exclaimed.
Around the office many of Albus’ magical trinkets began whirring and shrilling in response to the immense amount of magic coursing through the array. Sir Nicholas’ shape disappeared into the sea of blue lightning, which then rushed at the locket as though syphoned into it. The blue light vanished, leaving Albus and Roy alone in the office for all appearances.
Roy stepped back from the slate. Albus conjured a handkerchief and floated it over to Roy so he could wipe the chalk off his hands.
“I must say, this is nothing like what I remember of having a body,” Sir Nicholas’ voice came from the locket. “I believe my new companion isn’t very pleased by my presence.”
“Is the horcrux hurting you?” Albus asked, concerned by this claim.
“No, no. I think it is mostly confused by my arrival.”
“Can you give us more details?” Roy asked. He walked over to Albus’ desk, where the house elves had rather pointedly delivered a tea tray when Roy arrived even though it wasn’t time for any scheduled meals. “This is an unprecedented circumstance, so any small thing could be key.”
“I will keep it in mind. Did you say a month, professor?”
Roy poured two tea cups and levitated one to Albus alongside the sugar bowl. He took a long sip of his own tea before responding.
“Yes. My calculations show a month should be long enough for any issues with the merging of souls to happen. Beyond that time the arrangement should have stabilized for our next step.”
The Ministry of Magic put a great deal of effort into keeping Dolores Umbridge’s trial a small and insignificant affair. This effort was doomed to fail the moment the date of the trial trickled down the grapevine to Rita Skeeter, who decided to face the very healthy dose of fear of Roy Mustang she had developed upon learning exactly what had happened at the Department of Mysteries and contacted Mustang to negotiate the terms under which she could include what had been going on at Hogwarts, and specifically with Harry Potter, during the previous school year in her article. Mustang had surprised Rita by summoning her to the Hog’s Head at Hogsmeade, where he provided her with a detailed account of what transpired in Umbridge’s office –sans some omissions Rita chose not to pursue– and extremely precise instructions on what Rita could and could not say about him and every student present, as well as any other student that came up in her investigation. Rita had tried to argue that only Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were part of their deal, but knowing the man could literally incinerate her in under a second had put a dampener on her argumentative side. Rita really didn’t want to test whether she was faster at conjuring a shield charm than the likes of Bellatrix Lestrange and Augustus Rookwood.
In spite of her private complaints about her article’s limitations her piece dragging Dolores Umbridge through the mud had been a great success, and it had made that fool Barnabas Cuffe forget his retrospective indignation over how Rita had supposedly sold the interview with Harry Potter to The Quibbler. As though Cuffe would have agreed to publish such a thing while under Fudge’s thumb.
Now if only she could convince him she shouldn’t be part of the effort to investigate Mustang without endangering her reputation…
Andromeda Tonks was a very imposing woman. At first glance she looked very much like her older sister Bellatrix, who had featured prominently in newspapers for over half a year in every iteration of her likeness the Ministry had managed to get their hands on. This realization had been followed by the reminder that this woman was Nymphadora Tonks’ mother, something Bill Weasley was starkly reminded of when she had calmly reached out to stop Tonks from stumbling into the umbrella stand as usual. She was also, as Sirius yelled loudly once Bill brought the two women to the kitchen, Sirius Black’s favourite cousin.
All in all, Andromeda Tonks was doing a great job of upending Bill’s preconceived ideas about members of the oldest pureblood supremacist families who weren’t Sirius Orion Black, and it brought to mind the article on the Black family from two weeks ago. Bill knew better than to bring up that bit of dubious reporting, and instead focused on the unusual party spread around the kitchen table.
Kreacher was fawning over Andromeda, which, added to his recent attempts to scold Tonks into behaving like a more dignified lady of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, was proof of how much Kreacher had changed following the mess at the Department of Mysteries. Bill had teased Tonks relentlessly over this, and today he was snickering into his pumpkin juice now and then. Mrs. Tonks had taken to this with an amused quirk of her lips, but Bill’s own mother was noticeably less amused by his constant laughter.
Molly Weasley, meanwhile, was getting along much better with Sirius now the man could leave the house whenever he pleased and no longer antagonized her at every opportunity. They had reached such an understanding that Sirius had ordered a very disgruntled Kreacher to let Molly take over the kitchen whenever she was in the house. Now the house elf was actually making an effort to take care of Grimmauld Place he didn’t like to have humans taking over his domain.
“Thank you all for joining us today,” Professor Dumbledore said from where he sat at the head of the table with Professor Mustang. “First and foremost, I must stress the importance of keeping the contents of this meeting quiet. I trust everyone in this room to do their best to protect our world, and to this end I remind you now what we discuss in this meeting mustn’t leave this room. This isn’t a matter of lack of trust in those not present, of course, but a measure of safety for what’s to come next.”
The first of September dawned dull and unassuming, a dismal end to a vacation period that had been all but restful. Back at home Hermione had swung between terrible worry about the deteriorating situation in the wizarding world and crippling guilt over the fact she was deliberately keeping her parents in the dark about said situation. She knew her parents would never agree to leave the country without her, and Hermione couldn’t execute any of her plans to ensure they did while she was deemed a minor under wizarding law. Her best choice now was to reduce their exposure to the wizarding world as much as possible, and thus she had left for Grimmauld Place before O.W.L. results were due, and spent the remainder of the summer lying through her teeth whenever she wrote to her parents.
Since Hermione wasn’t yet an adult –by a matter of weeks– she spent the summer focusing on the one task she could do to help the war effort: planning the meetings of the defence club. For once Harry and Ron didn’t scoff at her interest or focus and instead joined her in her efforts: they came up with suggestions on skills they wanted to improve before the next confrontation, waylaid Order members to ask questi⁸ons about the first war or their personal experience in duels, and even sat willingly a few hours a day in the Black family library poring over spell books with her.
For the first time since she received her Hogwarts letter Hermione Granger boarded the Hogwarts Express without feeling as though she was completely unprepared to face whatever the wizarding world threw at her.