Arcturus lifted his face from the Pensieve. Silver light dripped back into the basin and left the room to the steady glow of the hearth. The memory had been exact. The lightning cut on the boy's brow was housing a shard of another man's soul.
He turned from the stand. "Tell me," he told the hooded figure across the desk. "Can the Department clean the scar and spare the boy from that abomination."
Croker's hands stayed folded. The voice that came from under the hood did not rise or fall. "There is no need, Minister. Someone proficient in ritual work has already removed it. The skin is whole. The residue is gone."
Arcturus did not move. He let the quiet fill the space between them.
"The Department was built to address the kinds of problems such as undying Dark Lords," Croker continued. "This issue concerns us. We will need the cooperation of Heir Black. Different from the DMLE, we act on the obvious. Only person could have conducted that ritual was Corvus Black. We want him to work with us. Failing that, the Department will host him for a few days while we make our assessments."
A silence settled as if death has turned it's gaze toward the office. Arcturus' eyes took on a colder shade. "Are you threatening me with my heir in my own office."
Croker did not flinch. "We have multiple subjects to discuss with him. It is best if he works with us. It will be efficient for the Ministry and for the Department."
Arcturus stood, placed both palms on the desk, and leaned forward until the light caught the coldness in his eyes.
"You will remember your place," he said, each word measured. "You serve the Ministry. You do not sit above it."
"We serve the realm," Croker answered, no louder than before.
Arcturus held his gaze locked in to that damn hood for a long count. He saw it then. The Confederation abroad was not his only problem. A domestic bureau had a need to be reminded the shape of its chain of command.
"You are dismissed, Unspeakable." He straightened and lifted the quill from its rest. "I will call for Corvus." Arcturus smiled faintly.
"He will visit your department soon, you can be assured."
A small change passed under the hood. Croker stood without scrape of chair. "We will be ready," he said, and turned for the door. The rune lock noticed him and opened with a click that sounded polite.
The room steadied after he left. Arcturus covered the Pensieve with a soft charm. He touched the Black ring once against the wood, then reached for the bell cord to summon Ignatia.
-
Croker stepped out of the Minister's corridor and set a steady pace through the Ministry. The Atrium's sound rose and fell around him. He did not look at the fountain. He took the lift down. Brass gates closed. Cables sang. When the doors opened, the air changed. Colder, drier and way older by design. Older than the Wizarding Council. The Department was the ruling body of Avalon. It was where Merlin ended when he stopped playing with muggle and magical politics. There was a reason why the 'legendary' figure has disappeared without a trace. He chuckled to the term legendary. Now they were called the Department of Mysteries, but before, way before they were the council of Druids. The number of people who knew this was less than five at any given time.
He crossed the antechamber and showed the bone token to the ward. The Department admitted him without voice. He walked past the room of swinging planets and the long corridor where clocks learned to argue with time. Two hooded figures fell in behind him at a respectful distance. They did not speak. The door to the council room opened when it knew his step.
"Alert level two," Croker said, and laid a flat palm on the table seal. The wards answered him. Lamps brightened. The wall took on the faint sheen that meant it would keep a conversation inside a space even time pretended not to touch.
A dozen figures found their seats. A runner slid in with a ledger and left without meeting anyone's eyes. Croker set the book on the table and opened it to the fresh page. He wrote a single line in neat script.
We have contact with the Minister Black. Hostile potential acknowledged when threatened. Heir Black requested for cooperation. Expecting movement within the days.
He looked up. "We poked the nest," he said. "We wait for the wingbeat."
A ripple of dry humour moved around the table and vanished. The Department had not seen some action in years. The last time was when the man in Nurmengard had been young and loud and not yet tired of speeches.
--
Corvus closed moved towards his chambers after the snack. It had taken the edge off a long day. It had not changed the fact that the night would be longer for most of the faculty and student body though. He crossed to his chambers, locked the door with a thought, and sat on the edge of the bed with the ledger of his own peculiar craft open in his mind.
Replication was ready. The question was which gift to take from the happiness eaters. Flight could wait. His Shadow Raven form made the skill a luxury, not a need. Frigid aura had uses, but without the Emotion Manipulation it would chill air and little else. Phase clenched his attention.
He stood. Decision made. "Phase," he told the empty room, as if naming a lesson before starting it might keep the hand steady.
He activated his speed, agility and flame travel at the same breath. The skill he got from the Phoenix turned the world to quick heat and then to cold wind. He reappeared over black water and battered stone. The air above Azkaban tasted of salt and iron. Dementors drifted below him in slow motion, their tattered robes moved like weeds under water. Their presence turned the air brittle at the edges of thought.
Corvus shifted into Shadow Raven between one heartbeat and the next. Feathers caught the thin light. Wings cut the wind with no sound. He dropped until the nearest Dementor filled his sight and let the craft take hold. Replication reached and got the skill he was aiming for.
He turned on a wing and climbed hard until the island fell away. The moment he had the height, he shifted back, called the fire, and returned to the bedchamber he had left moments ago.
Speed and agility were still active. The bed canopy lifted in a slow wave from the rush of air. His robe shrugged off his shoulders and fell without urgency. He lay back as the mattress fluttered under him.
He closed his eyes and started the absorption. The memory that came with it was not a story to warm the heart. A cell, a dead man, screams of a woman from nearby. The same agony and desperation followed with the birth of a Dementor. It moved through iron bars as rain moves through mist. No hinges or locks stopped it. Corvus took in the experience. He took the way the creature had ignored matter.
He opened his eyes after a while. The world snapped back to its ordinary speed as he dropped the skills. The robe was already on the floor. He flicked two fingers and drew it into his hand without a wand or a word. Cloth settled on his shoulders.
Time to test.
He faced the door, set his feet, and reached for the new skill. He stepped and the floor took him to the ankle like a mouth. Shock punched up his spine the disturbed his concentration.
"Perhaps flight first would have been smarter," he said to the empty room, and let a thin smile show for a second.
The lesson was clear. Intangible was not weightlessness. Gravity was an old law and did not care for new tricks. He tried again, this time with a small hop to give himself a push under the sole before the phase took. He caught the timing on the third try and slid through the door as if it were smoke. He stepped back through the frame with more control, then did it again until the action felt like setting a book on a shelf.
Walls were one thing. Floors were another. He used the bed as his first anchor and tested the craft in inches instead of strides. Knee in, knee out. Hip in, hip out. Every success wrote another small rule in his head. Start the use of the skill in movement while in the air, not on the ground. End the skill before his foot touched land or he will sink as stone in water.
Speed and agility changed the lesson again. He continued to test with both skill active. Together they made the phase less a trick and more a tool.
He crossed the chamber without touching a handle. He crossed it back the ordinary way to make sure he had not forgotten how. He sat on the bed, looked at the door, and pictured the routes the castle hid from children. He knew one of them led down to a vault that should not be in a school. Flamel's pretty stone was somewhere below, tucked into a set of trials that had been written for a different time. A smile tugged at his mouth. Time to put Phase into a real test.
--
The corridor outside the forbidden part of the third floor was layered with wards most probably linked to some of the strange items that were on Dumbledore's desk or shelves. He dismantled them . The door lay still under torchlight. Corvus palmed the ward clustered on the handle and felt for the seams Dumbledore had left. The web was neat, not vicious. He eased a sliver of magic between two threads and let the knot slacken without breaking. The latch lifted with a soft click.
The three headed dog woke on breath alone. Wet musk rolled across the room. Each head stirred at a different pace. The left yawned. The middle sniffed. The right drew a low growl from somewhere deep. Corvus did not wait for the chorus. Elder Wand came up and held level. Three stunners left in a tight fan and landed before any head could decide which scent to hate first. Heavy bodies sagged. One paw twitched and went still. He crossed the floor in three steps, Phased through the trap door, and dropped through without a sound.
Vines met him on his way down. Devil's Snare tried to tightened around something it could sense but cannot feel. He did not give it the pleasure. Phase continued to take him to the next room.
He moved on. A locked arch sat at the end of a short passage. Keys chimed beyond it. Wings flashed silver and blue in torchlight. He placed his palm on the stone, took one clean hop, and stepped through as if the wall were smoke. The chill of the phase brushed his ribs and was gone. The click of a hundred wings fell behind him like rain.
The next chamber held a simple table set for a cruel chess lesson. he did not wait for it to activate and continued to the room with bottles stood in a precise line. Fire burned in two low doorways, black on one side and purple on the other. He knew the logic game. He knew the answer by memory. The smallest bottle would take a body forward. That was not why he had come this way.
He wanted to test if Phase will bypass the magical barriers as well. He set his boots on the floor, took a small jump, and let the skill carry him through the threshold where black fire should have burned him. Heat licked at his face without finding anything to hold. He landed on the far stone with both feet under him and stopped the skill cleanly. The air behind him sighed as if it had been cheated of a spectacle.
The final room was quiet in a way that did not belong to basements. The Mirror of Erised stood where the old goat placed it. The frame rose heavy and bright with old work. No dust lay on the glass. That told him as much as the wards did.
He did not look into the face of the thing. He walked a circle and studied the back. Wards layered with patience, not brute force. A concealment that flowed into a transport, a compulsion wrapped in a condition, a fail safe to throw a thief into a loop if he reached with greed in mind. It was tidy. It was made for boys who believed that wanting was the same as deserving.
Corvus touched the wood at three points and felt for the joins. He eased the concealment away from the anchoring wards first, polite as a guest returning a borrowed coat. The transport runes showed next. He traced the compulsion and bled it out to the edges. He left the loop asleep so that the Mirror would still feel clever when the next person came to feed it a dream.
The Stone nested where the ward said it would be if the right mind asked and meant it. He reached in under the tricks and closed his hand on a weight that should not have been found without a lecture and a tear. Warmth moved across his palm and settled. He brought the red stone to his eye once to be certain he did not hold a glamour. The colour same as fresh blood, the hum of it steady and old. He slid it into the mokeskin pouch and felt it vanish against the inner lining as if the world had shrugged.
He stepped back from the Mirror and set the small things straight. The concealment sat back on its anchor points. The transport held its place. The compulsion was back for the Aurors when they find this place. He brushed a thumb along the frame and removed the shadow of any touch. He did not glance towards the glass, not even once. He already knew what he wanted.
He left with fire travel. The dog was ennervated, the corridor received him as if he had never set foot on it. He relaid the slackened knot on the handle until the ward sat with the same tension as before. The last charm on the latch laid a thin skin of dust where it had been.
The Stone was not a trinket. It was a lever. A thing that changed every conversation where it existed and many where it did not. Wizards would sniff at immortality and call it philosophy. Muggles would tear their world apart for a hint of what it could make. He did not intend to chase life with it. He intended to make use of what it could build and what it could buy.
He took the last step to the corridor above and let the ward on the hidden door fall back into ordinary quiet.