Chapter Text
“Are you ready?”
Hadrian hefted Wormtail’s still unconscious body up onto his shoulder.
“Is ‘no’ even an option?”
“No.”
“Then, as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
“That’s better,” Professor Truman took his other arm and Wormtail’s hand discretely-enough that she could let go immediately and pretend Hadrian hadn’t needed to side-along with her.
With a final *CRACK* they too were on their way.
Hadrian held on for dear life—for all the thirty minutes of it he'd had since coming back from Death—as Professor Truman’s arm attempted to violently rip itself away from him and Wormtail. Everything went black. He felt as though he was being crushed from all directions. He couldn’t breathe! Everything felt tight, like some phantom constrictor had suddenly coiled up his entire length and started crushing down. Then, just as suddenly as the pressure had set-in, it was gone.
He almost immediately would have preferred if the screaming, suffocating, spiraling trip through the vacuum of Apparition had lasted a bit longer. It was like arriving at the edge of a bombsight, without any previous warning one had even exploded. Scorch marks and Lichtenberg figures carved across the walls, ceiling, and blackened the blasted apart remains of a reception desk. Through the lingering smoke, signage indicated their destination had been—until recently—the North Yorkshire Floo Station. The remnants of several free-standing fireplaces lay scattered across the floor.
The stench of charred flesh, singed hair, and boiled blood clung to everything alongside the lingering vestiges of magic and echoes of the freshly-dead. Hadrian was sure, even an hour ago, he wouldn't have been able to detect the last of those; but now, it clawed at the edges of his awareness demanding acknowledgement. Professor Truman's face twisted in disgust, but not surprise.
“I was afraid we'd stumble into something like this,” she sighed. “You can feel it, can't you; the haunt… the place-memory?”
“W—what happened here?!” Hadrian stammered, the reciprocal mounting panic at the other end of his and Cedric's soul bond wasn't helping him keep composed.
Surely, some echo of Hadrian’s own distress was having a similar effect on his boyfriend as he delivered the tragic news; The-Boy-Who-Lived was dead, Harry Potter died in the graveyard during the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament (what they weren't saying was that he'd been reincarnated under the name Hadrian Peverell).
“I don't know for certain, but I suspect this is at-least partially our sleeping prisoner’s doing. You could probably call up the scene, however, we need to press forward. We'll alert the Aurors of what has happened here once we've reached the Ministry.”
“Why didn't we just Apparate directly?” Hadrian was sure there was a good reason, but it wasn't coming to mind immediately.
“We're acting in the name of the French Foreign Aurors, we'd cause an international incident if we didn't appear to have at least intended to declare ourselves prior to arriving at the doorstep of the British Ministry.”
“Oh,” that actually made a lot of sense. “Speaking of, who exactly am I supposed to be?”
“The badge you're wearing will pull up a sealed service record, read-name-only, Florence Castillon—”
“Is that why I look like an aged-up version of Luc?” Hadrian had been trying desperately not to consider too closely the features the Beauxbatons champion displayed for him to morph into, in favor of copying them accurately so that they could put their clothes back on. Reconsidering his disguise, however: straight blonde hair extended down to his shoulders from a sharp center-part (not quite the platinum blonde he'd associate with the Malfoys but impossible to call any shade of brown either), his facial structure was fairly angular, almost elven, the only feature that had been immediately distinct from Luc—now that Hadrian thought about it—were the eyes, which were a deep blue over his natural steely grey… “Am I posing as Luc's dad!?” That would explain a few things, except—
“No, Florence Castillon was my service name. I never petitioned to act under my own. Speaking of, you’ll need to present my old service wand for weighing.” She quickly withdrew a second wand from her robes and passed it over. “Now, I just need to check—ah, excellent—the chimneys weren't destroyed at least! This will just take a moment, then.”
With a flourish, the pieces of one of the exploded fireplaces flew from the floor and realigned themselves before settling back into place. One of the pots littering the floor flew to hang from its hook at the mantle, along with enough of the scattered Floo Powder to land roughly half full. Hadrian reached for the pot to collect his handful of the stuff, but the professor blocked his hand.
“Hold it, this is a Ministry office, their Floos still use the original formula. It acts the same as genuine Angelfire, not the the commercial-grade phoenix-substitute,” she reached into her robes—notably farther than should have been possible without magic—and withdrew a smaller clip-topped glass jar filled with what looked like the exact same stuff as was in the mantle-pot.
“Commercial-grade phoenix-what? What's the difference?”
She stared at him for a moment, likely weighing whether or not they had time to get into that, before evidently decided better now, while there was no one around to see.
“Put him down a second, and I'll show you,” she gestured rudely towards Wormtail.
Hadrian all but dropped the man to the hard floor, only sparing enough effort to keep from dashing his brain matter across the tile. Another flick of the professor’s wand conjured a pair of uneven beams with particularly uncomfortable looking manacles at the ends of each. Wormtail was hoisted into the air and his arms bound into either end of the long beam while his ankles were shackled into place along the shorter. Both levitated a set distance apart and off the ground resulting in a sort-of sagging restraint.
Professor Truman went on, only after double checking that Wormtail, in fact, remained unconscious.
“Probably best to start with a demonstration why you—and Cedric—will need to be careful about using the Floo Network from now on, especially when traveling between Ministry-controlled fireplaces. Incendio!”
A tongue of fire licked from her wand to light the hearth as she reached to retrieve a handful of Floo Powder from the mantle-pot before tossed it into the flame. The now emerald-green fire instantly reared up to fill the fireplace as she stepped back.
“Step through to the North Yorkshire Station,” she gestured Hadrian forward toward the flame.
Hadrian hesitated. Everything about the way Professor Truman said that told him something wasn’t going to be the same as he’d experienced the previous few times he’d traveled by Floo. He needed only take a couple cautionary steps forward before the problem became blisteringly obvious, as the emerald flames he’d previously experienced as heatless this time remained—or perhaps had even become more—intensely hot. Backpedaling a step, Hadrian turned to Professor Truman.
“What—how—?”
“That green isn’t just for show,” she nodded toward the fire. “Necromancers gave witches and wizards the foundations of the Floo Network, built it on the back of the Crossroads even, as both a novel method of transportation and literal trial-by-fire. Used to be, even up until just a hundred years ago when I was still a teenager, being able to safely arrive via Floo-travel was an implicit declaration that one was untouched by Death. If you survived—” she swept forward into the flame, crying out “North Yorkshire Station!” before vanishing and almost immediately reappearing unharmed out of the same fireplace—“then you were alive. If you died, you were dead, and more importantly you already had been.”
“I’m not sure I follow. What is Angelfire?”
“There are three greater dark fire spells: the protective ‘Friendly Fire’ Dark Charm, Protego Diabolica; the Fiendfyre Curse; and Soulfire Dark Vanishment, also known as Angelfire. It drives away spirits, and burns non-beings, the living dead, the constructed undead, and all their like. It also drives out possessing forces. Unfortunately, it also burns Angels. Given that’s what both you and Mr. Diggory have become, you need to know it’s one of the few things that’ll put either of you down for longer than a minute or two; the other being the outright Killing Curse, though even that won’t last as long since it wouldn’t also cremate your body. Angelfire does not, for the most part, touch the living or objects.”
“Wait, did you say the Killing Curse won't kill us?!”
“Oh it will, you just won't stay dead so long as your partner is still, quote, unquote, ‘alive.’ Angels come in pairs, I suspect one of the reasons The Lady sent you both back was to protect your partner-to-be while he was vulnerable without you. Nothing truly immortal can walk the earth, but Angels of Death get around that by each acting as a crux anchoring their partner to living death and usually some semblance of human morality.”
“So we can be killed, but not permanently?”
“Unless you're both destroyed in short succession. Angelfire opens the longest window that I know of, but you'll only really run into it nowadays if you're set on fire and hit with—” she pointed toward the mantle-pot once more—“Mystery-Grade Floo Powder. Which also, thanks to certain pureblood families’ superstition, has remained on the books as the only formula stocked in Ministry Fireplaces, prices be damned.”
Hadrian was reeling, he'd definitely need to share this with Cedric as soon as possible. Was this the kind of information he'd passed up on by not learning how to get into Death's Library?
“It sounded like you said ‘up until a hundred years ago’ at one point, what was that about? What changed for everyone else?”
“It started becoming impossible to affordably produce enough of the original Floo Powder to meet market demand. The use of Angelfire was an inextricable step in the original recipe, but because it’s dark transfiguration—which is just a ministry-approved way of saying necromancy—it was rapidly becoming a rather rare bit of magic for someone to just know unless explicitly taught by, say, someone who already knew. The Old Ways were entering another phase of decline and disinterest, so…
“Long story short, the witches and wizards whose family grimoires still contained the necessary spell realized they were rapidly becoming essential to the continued functioning of magical communication and commerce, and started demanding higher pay for their services. Over the course of only five years, starting from about the time I first enrolled at Hogwarts actually, the unit price of Floo Powder rose from the then-standard three Sickles, eighteen Knuts to a Galleon, four Sickles, and sixteen!”
Hadrian quickly did the math on that before exclaiming—
“That’s a five hundred percent increase!”
“But, it’s the same number of coins, so no one would really notice, right?”
“Tell me no one actually made that argument…”
“My father, may he rest in pieces, did so before the entire Wizengamot… The Treasurer nearly had an aneurysm. Needless to say, it didn’t go over well. It became clear something had to be done. Contracts were rewritten, spell books seized, regardless of the fact many possessed enchantments to keep their contents secret unless called forth by blood. By that point, my family was already essentially set for several generations, even splitting the fortune between my brother and I.
“Still, after graduation I volunteered to join the team of alchemic researchers who would go on to create the Commercial-Grade Floo Powder that’s still in use today. With a little phoenix-fire, we were able to replicate the original functionality, no necromancy required. However, we had to retool the entire binding agent in order to make it still turn the fire the same iconic color for marketability, because people are stupid and didn’t trust that it actually worked unless it still turned the fire green!”
“Which makes it impossible to know until I feel the heat or not whether it'll burn me to smithereens. Great. Fantastic… I see the problem.”
“Once you get the hang of Crossing from one location to another, you’ll hardly need to bother with modes of wizarding travel aside from occasionally keeping up appearances.”
Professor Truman sliced her wand through the air and the fire extinguished before she lit the hearth once more, tossing in a handful of powder from her personal supply. This time, Hadrian couldn’t feel anything from the viridian flames.
“You go through first, to the Atrium, be ready to catch this one when I send him through behind you.”
Hadrian nodded, stepping through the fire and calling out the given destination. He felt the strange pull, as though he were being sucked down a giant drain, and the spinning, deafening roaring in his ears, and soot blasting his face. He felt like he was going to be sick. Why did wizards travel this way?! Finally, the stream none-too-gently disgorged him from what must have been the receiving fireplace, dizzy, dazed, and disheveled.
Cedric hadn’t been there to catch him this time, and he barely avoided falling flat on his face. After quickly cleaning himself off with a flick of his athame, he marveled for a moment at how natural the otherwise alien magical conduit felt in his grip, to say nothing of how he must look waving a blade over himself, even if it was unsharpened. Thankfully, no one seemed to be around either to see him stumble or now fumble around with a knife.
He’d only just gotten he bearings again when the fireplace behind him roared back to life and Wormtail’s body was unceremoniously evacuated into Hadrian’s Levitation Charm. Moments later, Professor Truman emerged, dusted off her own robes, and took back over.
Re-sheathing his athame in his transfigured Invisibility Cloak, he focused for a second and Vanished them from his hand.
“Looks like we’re all here, let’s get a move on. I owled ahead for Amelia to come in tonight and await a special debriefing. I didn’t realize at the time we’d be escorting a third, so this is going to get interesting rather quickly.”
She began marching down the long entry hall they’d arrived along the left-side of; Hadrian followed behind, keeping Wormtail hovering between them, and tried to keep from staring about. Between the highly-polished darkwood floor, tiled walls, and peacock-blue ceiling, supported by golden arches, the architecture of the place was quite stunning. Halfway down the hall was a tall golden fountain; larger-than-life statues of a witch and wizard raising their wands to the ceiling, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf—the last three of whom were each staring in awe at the first—stood in the middle of a circular pool. Hadrian could see a plethora of Sickles and Knuts along the bottom, and wondered slightly cynically how frequently the button of the fountain was actually emptied. Professor Truman did not pause more than a moment to snort in derision as they passed a small sign reading:
ALL PROCEEDS FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF MAGICAL BRETHREN WILL BE GIVEN TO ST. MUNGO’S HOSPITAL FOR MAGICAL MALADIES AND INJURIES.
“Magical brethren, indeed; I personally ushered the leader of the last goblin rebellion to our Lady’s embrace, centaurs are classified as Beasts by this Ministry at their own request—unwilling as they were to share ‘Being’ status with any possessing necromantic affinity antithetical to their healing arts—and house-elves are literally born into bondage either to the same master as their parents or to the nearest human, magical or otherwise.”
“Really?”
“Honestly, to anyone who knows the signs, their entire cursed existence reeks of some long-off fey bargain which their ancestors obviously got the short end of, or else a wager they lost; probably to teach humans to Apparate—”
“—Excuse me! Sir? Ma’am?” a man’s voice nervously called from a desk just past the statue and along the left wall, over which hung a sign saying SECURITY. “All v‒visitors are re‒required to present themselves prior to entering the Atrium.” The wizard’s eyes kept flickering between Hadrian, the professor, and Wormtail’s suspended form. He was poorly-shaven and wore peacock-blue robes far brighter than the navy blue of Hadrian and the professor’s and a far more movement-restricting cut than their own Auror-style. For supposed security personnel, he looked utterly unfit to even defend himself let alone the Atrium if he had to try…
“Of course,” Professor Truman gave a genial smile as she strode over to the desk; the poor man nearly jumped out of his skin when she withdrew her wand until she placed it upon the strange brass implement resembling a large scale standing beside him.
“Fourteen inch unbending yew, unicorn-hair core, in use a—a hundred and nine years?!” the security clerk’s eyes bulged as he did a double-take, re-reading over the Wand Weigher’s printout, his eyes jumped to scan over Professor Truman’s poised but undeniably elderly figure.
She arched her brow as if daring him to comment further. He wisely did not, instead simply folding the parchment over and raising a quill from the desk drawer to fill out a short form across the back.
“Name?”
“Delilah Rose Truman Bones,” she accepted her wand back as the security clerk scribbled-in her name, waiving Hadrian forward to follow her earlier example and present his borrowed wand for registration. “We have urgent business with Madam Interrogator Bones, she should be expecting us.”
Unlike when weighing the professor’s civilian wand, the moment the device received her service wand from Hadrian, a soft alert pinged from the device as a wax seal swiftly came down over the head of the printed parchment, stamping the document as it began to fill itself out by magic. Staring at the development in confusion, it was clearly the first time he’d witnessed such a response. Taking the auto-completed parchment, his eyes scanned the printout.
“Eleven and three quarters inches silver fir, wood nymph-hair core… issued to Florence Castillon of the…” his eyes jumped from the parchment to the badge affixed to Hadrian’s stole and robes, widening as he finally put together what appeared to be happening. He straightened up immediately, as if doing so at this point would somehow make them forget how he’d appeared when they arrived. “Ah, I see… yes, of course, right this—”
“—Munch, what’s going on here?” Everyone turned to find none other than Cornelius Fudge’s bewildered expression as he marched towards them from just down the entrance hall. “Who are these people?!”
“Ah, Minister!” Professor Truman broke into a polite smile which just missed her eyes. “Your timing’s impeccable as they say.”
Fudge didn’t seem to know how to take that and gaped for a moment before finding his next words.
“Why, it’s the middle of the night! Who are you and what are you doing here at this hour?!”
“Forgive me, Minister, I assumed too much,” Professor Truman introduced herself, extending her hand for Fudge to take. “My old colleague and I have an urgent meeting with my Niece, Amelia. Will you be accompanying us or is your own business part of another matter?”
Fudge stopped to consider her words, scanning her over with his eyes, taking in the specific cut of her and Hadrian's robes, the badge, then scrolling over as though only just realizing there was technically a third member of their company. Hadrian could tell the moment Fudge clocked who exactly they were bringing in.
His eyes bulged, cheeks flushing further than they already had been with stupefied outrage.
“Tha—that’s—!? What sort of trickery is this?!”
Professor Truman's eyes narrowed at the implication.
“I take it you'll be accompanying us after all, then.” Without really pausing to wait for a response—nor Munch’s actual leave—she directed Hadrian forward into the Atrium proper, towards one of the several lifts along the walls.
Fudge sputtered indignantly behind them, but his footsteps dutifully followed all the same. After some maneuvering of Pettigrew’s levitated form, the three standing found themselves abreast in front of the caged-door as the lift began to climb.
“Level Two—Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Auror Headquarters, Offices of the Wizengamot, and Administration Services,” a dispassionate feminine voice announced overhead before the lift re-opened.
“If you would be so kind as to escort us from here, Minister?” Professor Truman politely, but without question, motioned for Fudge to exit first.
As their unusual cavalcade marched along the perimeter hall, Hadrian noticed despite the midnight hour there were still at least a dozen or so witches and wizards, all dressed in deep crimson versions of his-and-Truman’s robes, seemingly on-call to answer summons should the event arise. Aurors who either took no real notice of or clearly thought twice about approaching them once they noticed Fudge leading the way. For all he’d demonstrated otherwise in his and Hadrian’s previous interactions, Fudge demonstrated decent-enough situational awareness to realize he was best-served appearing to be in-front of whatever was about to happen, rather than being so obviously caught unawares.
They came to a halt suddenly beside a stretch of office desks, at one of which sat an obviously taller-than-average bald black wizard with gold hoop earrings and a kufi cap matching his own robes. He was bent over a series of parchment scrolls, clearly deeply invested in whatever he was looking for, as he didn’t outwardly seem to acknowledge their near-passing.
“Shacklebolt,” Fudge called out, drawing the Auror’s attention.
With a borderline frightening calm, the man allowed the scroll he’d been examining to curl back up before sliding it back into its case and standing. His dark eyes scanned Hadrian and the professor, arching an eyebrow at the color of their matching robes, before landing on their unconscious guest and clocking that they intended on going further. Without any further instruction, he nodded, picked up his wand and flicked open a drawer at his desk before withdrawing a ring of heavy iron keys and falling-in behind them.
Hadrian didn’t want to risk outing himself ignorant of what was supposed to be happening, but took Professor Truman’s amused smile as a good sign and said nothing.
They continued a little way further until they were roughly opposite the lift across the Atrium before stopping again outside an unmarked door, which Shacklebolt unlocked with one of the keys he’d retrieved. Across the barren room revealed, aside from a long metal table at the center and handful of chairs sitting against the far wall, was another door similarly without a clear handle.
“If it pleases our guests,” Shacklebolt began slowly, his voice deep and naturally reassuring, “I assume my Minister intends for me to watch over your… suspect—” he glanced over to Fudge for confirmation before continuing—“while you attend the Head Auror and Madam Interrogator?”
This felt like a test, or a fishing expedition. Hadrian didn’t like it, and it must have shown because Professor Truman placed a calming hand against his shoulder before responding.
“Your Minister presumes too much,” Fudge and Shacklebolt stiffened at her bemused tone. “To be brief, this convict is all-but-awaiting sentencing by the French Ministry for the abduction, attempted murder, and torture of one of her minors. Given what we have to report, I would hope before we’re done tonight your Ministry will be pressing its own additional charges. He’s only here now because I'd already planned to escort my former colleague to debrief my niece following actions taken on foreign soil. This is not a hand-off; Peter Pettigrew will be delivered to Paris er sunrise. It was, however, brought to our attention that your previous administration made a grievous error in posthumously awarding an Order of Merlin—First Class, no less—to a very-living Death Eater. I was under the impression you might like to know."
The longer Professor Truman spoke, the higher and higher Shacklebolt’s eyebrows rose and the closer and closer to purple Fudge’s face became.
“Now see here—!” Fudge hissed before another, far more collected voice interrupted.
“Kingsley, see to their detainee, the rest of you—” all eyes turned to find the source of the booming woman’s voice, only to find a surly-looking square-jawed witch with shoulder-length greying blonde hair—“unless you’d honestly rather have this out in my very public hallway, kindly accompany me to my office. It’s late.”
The witch, who could only be the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones, turned on her heel and marched back down the hallway. Hadrian immediately noticed she, like her aunt, did not appear interested in waiting to see if they actually followed, rather taking it as a given they would.
She was not wrong, and Pettigrew was levitated into what Hadrian could only guess was meant to be an interrogation or interview room to wait with Shacklebolt in the meantime.
They were escorted to a medium-sized meeting room across the hall from a simple office door bearing the Madam Interrogator’s name. Already inside and watching the door sat another wizard in black robes of Auror-cut with crimson trim. There were grey streaks in his mane of tawny hair, and his bushy eyebrows sat perfectly behind the gold wire-rims of his truly ancient-looking spectacles. His keen yellowish eyes reminded Hadrian of Madam Hooch in their shrewd intensity as he appraised both visitors.
“My Head Auror, Rufus Scrimgeour,” Madam Bones introduced the man, closing the door behind them and circling the table to take a seat at the head and motioning they all take seats as well. Fudge took up a seat at the other end, while Hadrian and Professor Truman sat opposite Scrimgeour. “Now, I get the feeling the situation has become more complicated than a simple debrief and follow-up report would cover. Case-and-point, our Minister’s presence and the man Kingsley just took off your hands for the time being… I understand there may be details you’re not entirely at liberty to disclose at this time, but please share what you can. What happened out there tonight?”
“The short-and-sweet version?” Professor Truman smiled far-too-sweetly. “Nearest we can gather, the Triwizard Tournament was hijacked by a particularly-skilled and zealous faction of Lord Voldemort’s Death Eaters in a concerted effort to kidnap and ritually sacrifice Harry Potter in order to restore their Dark Lord to even greater power than he previously possessed. We stumbled upon the rite in-question in the course of a rescue operation for another of the Triwizard Champions abducted from the Second Task. Fortunately, we were able to intercede once it became clear it wasn’t a mere Jericho Plot as we’d initially believed, thwarting the reconstitution. Unfortunately, the Dark Lord remains at-large in some capacity to try again, and Harry Potter is dead.”
“I’m sorry, I’m going to need the long-and-scary version…”