Chapter Thirty of 'His Darkest Devotion"- Tricks

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter One.

Title: His Darkest Devotion (30/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily, Molly/Arthur, Ron/Hermione, possibly others
Content Notes: Extreme AU, soulmate-identifying marks, angst, violence, torture, gore, minor character deaths
Rating: R
Summary: AU. Harry Potter has been hiding in plain sight all his life, since he carries the soul-mark of Minister Tom Riddle on his arm—and a fulfilled soul-bond will double both partners’ power. His parents and godfather are fugitives, members of the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry is a junior Ministry official feeding the Order what information he can. No one, least of all him, expects Harry to come to the sudden notice of Minister Riddle, or be drawn into a dangerous game of deception.
Author’s Notes: This is a long fic and an extreme AU, as you can see from the summary. The different facets of the AU will be revealed slowly, so roll with the differences at first; in time, all should be revealed.


Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty—Tricks

Peter was breathing hard by the time Fawkes finally set him down in the middle of the corridor near the statue of the humpbacked witch, but he tried to concentrate through his terror. He had sometimes felt like this right before the Marauders played some big prank, he remembered dimly.

What had he done then?

He had gathered up all his courage and gone through with his part in them, that’s what he had done. And sometimes he had come up with clever twists that not even Sirius and James could have anticipated.

New thoughts bubbled to the surface of his mind, pranks he had idly contemplated in the years since he had stopped playing them, tricks he had seen students play, and things that had gone wrong in his Transfiguration classroom. Peter settled himself with a shake of his tail and then glanced up at Fawkes.

Fawkes landed on the statue of the witch and spread his wings, crooning softly and encouragingly at Peter.

Peter darted through the space between the witch and the opening of the tunnel, which was more than big enough for a rodent, and scampered down the corridor. Ideas were whirling together in his head, but some of them would require a wand, so he stopped and transformed, listening hard with both kinds of hearing.

He didn’t hear anyone yet. Dumbledore must be pretty far down the tunnel.

Peter drew his wand and started casting.

*

Albus pressed forwards with a faint smile on his face. He didn’t actually enjoy the terror and fear that he could feel coming down his bond with Gellert, but he knew that it was for the best. The bond existed, and that was something most magical theorists would have said was impossible, after Albus had been foolish enough to reject their first one.

He would do what had to be done—discover new techniques of magic, exploit his own heart, exploit his own soulmate—if it meant that the visions of peace and a quiet future would come to pass, not the ones where Riddle and Potter ruled.

The tunnel bent in front of him and then straightened out. Albus paused to glance back at Gellert, who was still attached to the floating chair.

“Are you all right, Gellert?”

Gellert never answered the questions that Albus chose to show his love and care, although given the way he probably thought of their renewed bond, Albus supposed he couldn’t blame him. He was staring up the tunnel instead, his brow wrinkled. “Did you hear something?”

“I cast a charm that would have detected anyone in the tunnel with us before we started down it,” Albus reassured him.

“But there’s still something—”

A second later, Albus heard it, too. It was an odd, skittering noise. He had to liken it to a swarm of insects building up and rushing towards them, but he couldn’t imagine what that many insects would be doing in a deserted tunnel. Hogwarts had active spells that usually took care of vermin. He turned with a frown.

A wall of rats came rushing around the corner towards them.

Albus couldn’t help his jerk and shout of disgust. It was immature, but when the rats started pressing around him, and he could feel their sleek bodies, their long and squirming tails, he leaped back. Then he started casting the kind of barrier charms that would hold them back.

One bit him on the ankle.

Albus dropped his wand in shock. The bite hurt so much that it felt poisoned. He clapped his hand over the wound and bent down to see what it looked like.

“Albus!”

Gellert’s shout tugged on the bond between them and spun Albus around. The bond was resonating with panic. Some of the rats had leaped from the ground and were climbing up the floating wicker chair to chew on his robes.

Albus reached up to free Gellert. He would do that rather than allow him to be eaten alive.

Then, abruptly, the rats vanished. Albus glanced around, and found no trace of them, nor of the objects that he would have suspected they were Transfigured from. Nor had the bite on his ankle disappeared the way it should have if the rats were mere illusion, and Gellert’s robes bore true marks of chewing.

“Are you hurt?” Albus scanned the corridor closely. No, there was no trace at all, and that was more than unnerving.

“No.”

Gellert was still breathing fast. Albus nodded and went to find his wand.

It was gone.

Albus immediately clasped his hands in front of him and closed his eyes. The first wandless spell he had perfected was one to Summon his wand, which was a prime target in duels. Unless it was actually broken, he should be able to pull it back to him.

Other than a distant rattle that might have been his wand bouncing off some unseen barrier, nothing happened. Albus shivered and opened his eyes.

Illusory rats shouldn’t have been able to take his wand away. Transfigured ones shouldn’t have been able to disappear so completely. Real ones wouldn’t have had the brains, or be able to prevent his wand from coming to him now. Like any Summoning Charm, his wandless one could only be foiled by the object being locked in a box or container of some kind. If a real rat under someone’s command had stolen it, his wand would have lifted over them and flown back to him.

“Let’s get out of here, Albus.”

Albus shook his head, not taking his eyes away from the corridor in front of him. There had to be someone there, but he should have been able to make out the shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm, and any Invisibility Cloak except the one the Potters possessed would be permeable to his eyes. “Are you there?” he called out.

“Of course they’re bloody there!” Gellert hissed from behind him.

Albus ignored him. “Listen to me,” he said, as kindly and firmly as he could. “You may not understand the importance of the wand you stole, or of helping me preserve our world, but I assure you that there is a great—”

“Get out of here!” Gellert called. “He’s mad!”

Albus turned to stare at him, his love twanging inside him in betrayed shock. Gellert raised his eyebrows.

“What do you want me to say? You are.”

“Shut up, Gellert.”

“No. Don’t do it!” Gellert kept yelling down the tunnel. “You have the bloody Elder—”

Albus clenched his magic in a long surge, and Gellert gagged and then went under the wandless Silencing Charm. Albus shut his eyes. “I hate hurting you, but there are things that are more important than our bond,” he said, and once again faced the motionless, silent tunnel stretching out in front of him.

It somewhat unnerved him that he could see and hear nothing. There was faint light from the torches in the walls that lit whenever an adult walked through here, as opposed to a student. Why wouldn’t he see a shadow cast by those torches? Hear a voice, a shuffling step?

“I will give you one more chance to come forth and give me my wand back like a civilized wizard,” he called.

Silence.

Albus closed his eyes to center himself. The next feat of magic he was about to perform would have been beyond his wandless abilities most of his life, but since he had bonded with Gellert, there was little limit to what he could do.

When he was sure that he had the power built up, he whispered, “Dolor,” and let the spell go.

*

Peter crouched on the floor of the tunnel, shuddering in relieved disbelief. He hadn’t been at all sure that would work, but it had.

He had copied a Transfiguration failure that had happened in one of his third-year classes the previous spring. The student had been meant to be Transfiguring a carved wooden rat into a real one, and Peter always measured the success of that exercise by checking for things like the correct beat of the rat’s heart and the length of its whiskers, things he knew intimately. (He didn’t let the students Transfigure the rats back to wood, either, instead keeping them and letting them go in the Forbidden Forest).

Yet, somehow, the student had Transfigured the wooden rat into two of them, one real and one not-real—an illusion that nonetheless felt solid until Peter actually poked it with his wand. The two rats had run around the classroom and acted like complete mirrors of each other. Peter had been fascinated, but he’d unfortunately had to correct the mistake when other students started shrieking in fear.

So he had imitated it on the dust in the corridor, with a small twist of his wand that greatly multiplied the number of illusory rats per Transfigured one, and then made sure that all the “real” rats were in the vanguard of the army, with himself in his own form among them. He’d been the one to snatch Dumbledore’s wand and get it to safety, and when all of the Transfigured rats were back around the corner, vanished the illusions. The Transfigured ones were hiding in corners now, silent, waiting.

Albus was surely planning a counterstrike now that his appeals had failed. What was it—?

“Dolor.”

The spell filled the corridor with invisible waves of pain, and Peter transformed sharply as the agony nearly made him cry out. He wasn’t about to reveal his position to Dumbledore, especially since the hastily Transfigured box that he’d hidden the wand in might not hold forever against the thing’s rattling and thumping.

As a rat, the pain was dimmer and sort of turned sideways. It was the kind of spell meant to affect humans, not other animals. Peter crouched in place, shivering, until the last part of it was gone, and then cocked his ears.

“Are you ready to come out and speak like a normal person?”

Peter shuddered all over. Dumbledore’s voice was calm and patient and utterly mad. How could he have sent a spell like that and then expected someone to stand up, walk around the corner, and admit that it was “normal?”

For that matter, how had he managed to send that kind of pain curse with wandless magic anyway? Peter knew that particular curse, and it was only a few shades less intense than the Cruciatus. James and Sirius had tried to learn it wandlessly for when they were cornered by Slytherins, but neither of them had managed.

Then Peter reminded himself of the second figure floating in the corridor. He swallowed. It might have been—

Dumbledore’s soulmate. He might have found a way to resurrect and force the bond.

The mere thought made Peter scratch himself in desperate nervousness. Then he crept to the corner of the corridor and peered around, keeping it to the absolute least portion of his eye necessary, so that he could see without being seen.

Dumbledore was standing with his hands on his hips, shaking his head back and forth. “If you would only give me back my wand, then perhaps we could discuss this like civilized people and there would be no need for these curses!” he called.

Peter focused his eyes and nose, as best as he could when he was so close to the ground, on the figure floating in the wicker chair behind Dumbledore. The man’s face was covered with grizzled beard, and his scent wasn’t familiar. But—

There had been stories, hadn’t there, around the time Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald? That the man had been his soulmate?

Peter shivered. There had been stories, yet, but Dumbledore tended to smile sadly when people asked him about his soulmate and show the black-edged mark. Peter, who bore a black-edged one himself, could understand not wanting to talk about something so painful. He thought that people inducted into the Order of the Phoenix had learned the truth, but that had never been Peter.

Of course, there was supposed to be no way of getting the bond back once it had been rejected, or Sirius would have managed to repair the bond he’d had with Remus when it snapped after the Tree Prank. Who knew what Dumbledore had done?

“I am growing impatient.”

Peter retreated back around the corner. His mind, which had been as twitchy as fleas, suddenly was cool and deep, like a pool of still water.

The knowledge that Dumbledore had repaired his bond with Grindelwald had to leave the tunnel. Presumably Fawkes had known, but either he couldn’t talk to people the way he had to Peter about his “destiny” or he wouldn’t. Peter had to survive because people had to know about this—travesty.

Of course, Peter also couldn’t just retreat and hope that someone else would take care of Dumbledore’s entrance to the school. He had to do what he could to distract Dumbledore. Seizing his wand was an unexpected stroke of luck—

There was something he could do.

Peter turned back to human and cast a certain spell, then became a rat again and slunk around the corner, moving carefully. Dumbledore had his back turned talking to the floating man, luckily, and didn’t see him as Peter crept carefully through the shadows and forwards. If the floating man saw him, he was going to keep it to himself.

When Peter got close enough, he could hear Dumbledore saying, “It pains me to hurt you, Gellert. You will only know how much if you concentrate on the bond. But I hope you’ll understand me declining to free you.”

Gellert. It is Grindelwald.

Dumbledore turned to face the main mouth of the tunnel again, and cast another wandless Summoning Charm that made his wand rattle against the conjured box. Peter crouched and leaped as high as he could.

If the conjured rats he had made had done it, he could do it, too.

Peter sprang from the ground, shaking, and landed on Grindelwald’s bound leg. He bowed his head and began to gnaw on the ropes that some of his Transfigured rats had also worked on. Grindelwald stared at him, but didn’t say a word.

“I am beginning to grow impatient,” Dumbledore said, in the kind of patience-dripping voice that had terrified Peter when he was a student. “I will come around the corner in a moment, and it will not go well for you.”

Peter swished his tail, but refused to be hurried. Unlike regular rats, he knew exactly where to gnaw, and the rope parted around Grindelwald’s ankle with a quiet hiss. Dumbledore started to turn back around.

At that moment, the charm Peter had cast before he became a rat erupted with a boom.

Mad, cackling laughter filled the tunnel. Dumbledore stiffened in shock and pivoted back to face it. Peter crawled up to Grindelwald’s shoulder and began to chew as fast as he could on the rope that bound the Dark Lord’s right hand. He would have grimaced and spat if a rat could. The musky, woody taste of the rope was disgusting.

“Albus!” called the conjured voice that Peter had set up, one of the pranks that the Marauders had perfected in their third year. “I see what you are doing there!” More mad laughter followed.

“Who are you?” Dumbledore moved forwards a few steps, his hand twitching down at his side where he sought his wand and then forming into a fist. Peter paused to exhale and went back to gnawing. “What do you want from me?”

“Albus!” The voice descended to a low, growling sound. One part of the prank that Sirius had come up with was that the voice always sounded like all four of their voices together, not one, which would make it difficult for Dumbledore to be sure that someone was here who couldn’t be. “What evil have you done?”

That was a standard phrase that they had used to make the Slytherins run, but Dumbledore seemed to take it more seriously. He lifted a hand and yanked out with another wandless Summoning Charm.

Nothing happened, of course. Peter had anchored the charm in the walls and floor of the tunnel. Dumbledore’s wandless magic was still good enough to make a few pebbles fall, but not to summon half the building.

Peter could only hope, as he chewed one more time and the rope around Grindelwald’s right hand parted, that Grindelwald was just as adept with wandless magic due to their bloody soul-bond.

The moment his hand was free, Grindelwald was moving. Peter sprang free and ran towards the nearest dark corner, ignoring the impact made as the ground slammed his body. So it hurt a little. So what? It still hurt a lot less falling that distance as a rat than it would as a human.

He crouched and whipped around, digging into the floor with all four feet, ready to scuttle or leap at a moment’s notice.

Grindelwald had broken the other ropes and was already directing his own blast of wandless energy at Dumbledore’s back. Of course he felt it coming, as he would have felt his soulmate’s surge of emotions down the bond, and was turning to counter it. But the point was, he had eyes for nothing else but the way Grindelwald was free, and Peter could go running around the corner and back towards the box the wand was in.

He had to get it out of here.

Peter nerved himself, and when white lightning crackled between the two men and Grindelwald said something in what might be German, he scuttled along the wall back towards the corner. The air behind him was filled with flame and light, and magic that made his spine tingle. Peter didn’t know what he would see if he looked back, and he honestly couldn’t think of a reason why he should. He kept running.

*

Albus could feel the bond twisting between him and Gellert with exultation and despair and his own surprise, all of them sharp as rapiers. What he didn’t understand was how Gellert had got free. The person who’d been lurking about in the tunnel had helped him, obviously, but why? Why would they choose to help someone with a reputation for being a Dark Lord over the Headmaster of their own school?

He felt weak and shaken. His wand had been taken from him. Gellert had broken the Silencing Charm with easy magic. His love was turning on him.

Of course, that didn’t mean he would simply give in and go meekly along with Gellert. Not at all. He clenched his hands, and white sheets of flame danced up and down on his arms, joining the glare of yellower light from Gellert.

“You will not destroy what I have worked so hard for,” Albus said, and winced a little when he heard his voice come out as a snarl. Someone watching them from a distance might have had a hard time telling a difference between them.

And that thought was distracting. He put it smoothly away, as he had done with many distracting thoughts over the years.

“As far as I can see, Albus, what you have worked so hard for consists of your mad Order of the Phoenix, which is now broken and fleeing from the war you have lost.” Gellert snapped a sheet of yellow light into being in front of him and began moving to the left. Albus turned to counter, his own white flame curling around his feet. “And there has been little enough benefit for me from our resurrected bond or your relentless campaign. But I will take the magic.”

“I cannot allow you to go off on your own,” Albus said steadily. “You might try to take over the world again.”

Gellert rolled his eyes, as if that made sense, as if Albus’s words deserved such a contemptuous gesture. “You’re confusing me with yourself.”

“I never wanted the world! I simply wanted to make sure that Tom Riddle didn’t have it.”

“And in the meantime, you didn’t care if you plunged it into chaos, or killed people, or betrayed the ones who used to follow you—”

Albus snapped out the white lightning he’d been gathering when he was sure that Gellert was pretty far into his little speech. He hissed as the lightning turned back from the yellow shield that Gellert had conjured. Even worse, the magic was weak and hesitating, partially because of the wandless power he had expended already.

And partially because he was attacking his soulmate, and with all his soul and his power, he did not want to.

However, if he was right about the length of time that had passed since they had completed the bond, he had only to wait.

Gellert darted abruptly to the right. Albus again turned to counter him, and the yellow light Gellert had summoned danced back from his shields as surely as Albus’s lightning had rebounded from Gellert’s. They were equal in power, although Albus knew he loved Gellert more.

But they were not equals in body.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, Gellert bent over, the tearing cough he had acquired in Nurmengard and that Albus had dosed him with potions for bubbling up in his lungs. Albus ran forwards, ready to take advantage of the distraction, but also to rescue his love from the poor decisions he had made in the past.

Gellert met him with a rope of light that snaked around Albus’s ankles and tripped him.

Albus’s mind was full of blank surprise as he went over. This was ridiculous. It was a prank spell, rather like the ones that the Marauders had sometimes used on other students. He could not be defeated by something like this.

He couldn’t be defeated by a wall of rats that must have been mostly illusion, either. But somehow, it had overcome him and deprived him of his wand.

He rolled over and started to come back to his feet. Then he went very still, because there was a hand on his throat, and it clenched tight as he coughed. And there was something hot and burning in it.

Albus imagined Gellert burning his face off, and even though the bond trembled at the thought of it, he continued to be still.

“You rejected our bond all those years ago,” Gellert breathed. “And you thought I would be happy to resume it? Where have you been burying your head, Albus? You thought I would just happily agree to this?”

So he wants to talk. Albus relaxed a little. Someone who wanted to talk was less likely to burn his face off. And although Gellert didn’t understand or want the bond the way Albus did, he might still be able to persuade him around.

So long as he kept talking.

“I did what I had to do,” Albus said, his eyes fixed on the far wall of the tunnel. He listened intently, but heard nothing other than Gellert’s heavy, hoarse breathing from behind him. No sign of whoever had stolen his wand. “I know that you didn’t see Riddle and Potter as the threats they are, but they are, Gellert. And as powerful as they are, the only way I could fight them was by resurrecting our bond.”

“They matter to you more than I do.”

“Of course not, Gellert!” Albus’s love sizzled in his veins, love even for Gellert in this violent state that wasn’t really him, love even for the fingers that closed around his throat in warning when he started to turn his head. He sighed and held still again. “You matter more to me than anyone else. My soulmate, my bond partner. I would give up the fight against Riddle and Potter in an instant if I thought we could go on living in the world without winning it.”

Gellert was silent. Albus wondered if that was something he hadn’t considered. The bond pooled between them, at least, cool and contemplative.

“You don’t mention me in those visions you have.”

“I don’t see myself much, either,” Albus admitted. He shifted under Gellert. Neither of them was young, but he stood a better chance of overpowering Gellert than the other way around, he was sure. He had fully embraced the bond, which meant he had more access to the magic, and more capability to wield it. Gellert would never have managed to ambush Albus at all if he wasn’t surprised. “It’s mostly Riddle and Potter. But I know that we didn’t save the world because I see them destroying it, Gellert.”

“How?”

“They’re taking it over. Riddle becomes Minister for years and years—the rest of his life, or a little less than that. And they’re immortal, Gellert. Even if Riddle gave up the Ministry, think of how much they could influence society if they were still alive.”

“Is it a pernicious influence?”

Albus nearly gaped, but then managed to control himself. “Of course it is, Gellert! Riddle hates Muggleborns and Muggles. You can’t think that a world he made would be kind to them.”

“I remember, once, that you didn’t care about that.” Gellert’s voice was growing stronger, but Albus didn’t know why. He shifted balance a little, and Albus began to gather strength in his back and knees, adding magic to the old muscles. “I remember that you talked about dominating Muggles in the name of the greater good.”

“I learned better.”

“And what makes you think I have?”

The words shocked Albus so much that the strength he had gathered went fleeing after all, and he barely managed not to flinch. But he shook his head and said as calmly as he could, “You’re toying with me, Gellert. You know as well as I do that you gave up that vision when I defeated you.”

“Numengard killed it, not my defeat.”

“Well, then,” Albus said, a little reassured, although he still didn’t like the tone in his bondmate’s voice. He loved it, of course, but he didn’t like it. “We are going to bring the world into alignment with the phoenix’s vision. We’re going to do the right thing.”

“That’s not a vision I serve, Albus.”

And the pressure was abruptly gone from Albus’s back. Albus rolled over and sprang to his feet, using magic to oil his joints and call fire into his hands.

Gellert was standing there with hands cupped around fire of his own, but for some reason, it was a spark far too small to be an offensive weapon. Albus eyed him in perplexity. “What are you doing, Gellert?”

“I don’t think I can change your mind,” Gellert said, meeting his gaze, his blue eyes so old and weary that the dim trembling of the bond couldn’t compare to them. “And I can’t change the way things will probably fall out. But I can do one thing.”

And he blinked, as if he was an illusion like the rats, and then turned into fire himself and drained into the spark.

Albus stared. The spark hovered in the air for a moment, and then darted towards the walls. Albus tried to seize it, either with his hands or with the magic of the bond, but it slipped through both as easily as water.

That left him standing there and staring helplessly after the spark.

He knew the bond hadn’t been severed, because he could still feel it, although stretched and strained. Soulmate magic was always easier to access when the bondmate was right at one’s side, which was why Albus had gone to such grievous measures to keep Gellert with him.

But how had Gellert done that? Albus tried to imagine leaping into a spark of fire to go after him, and it should have been possible if Gellert had called on the magic of their bond. But he remained stolidly human, his feet planted on the stone floor of the tunnel. He couldn’t imagine his way into the flames.

The only time he had seen something like that had been…

When his goals were still aligned with Fawkes’s, and the phoenix had transported him by fire.

Albus’s mind flashed back to the moment that Fawkes had left them in the Forbidden Forest, and the glittering thing that he had thought, for a second, Gellert was clasping to his side. Fawkes had given him that spark.

A sense of betrayal as profound as the sea flowed over Albus, and he found himself sinking to his knees in the corridor. He put his trembling hands over his face. How could Fawkes have done that to him? Why was he so determined to see the world destroyed under the hands of Potter and Riddle?

Albus had not believed that phoenixes could be evil. But now he had to question it.

A soft crooning noise made him look up. Fawkes was sitting on a small projection of rock from the side of the corridor that Albus couldn’t have sworn was there a moment ago, staring at him with steadfast sadness.

“You did this,” Albus whispered.

Fawkes tilted his head and gave voice to a long, rising and sweeping trill. Albus felt none of the joy he once had when the phoenix sang. He stood on shaking legs and said between clenched teeth, “The phoenix who comes to me never intervened directly. I know that agents on that level must have someone else to act for them.”

Fawkes ended his song, and continued to perch there. Then he sang again. But this time, Albus didn’t think he was wrong that the sweet music was mocking.

“You did intervene directly!” Albus shouted. “That spark couldn’t have been anything but phoenix fire! How dare you?”

Fawkes fluttered his wings and faded away in wisps of red and gold. Albus took a step towards the projection of rock and then stopped himself, hard though it was to do when his desire for revenge rode him almost as hard as his love for Gellert.

He had to find his wand. That was the best thing to do, and it didn’t matter who had stolen it. He would need it when he went after Gellert. They were far nearer equals in the contents of wandless power than he had speculated.

With no impending battle or worries except the ones that waited in the future to wrack him now, Albus thought it ought to be a simple matter to Summon the Elder Wand back with his wandless power. He clasped his hands in front of him and focused on the tug that would affect any object hit with an ordinary Summoning Charm, and the way that it would speed towards him.

“Accio the Elder Wand,” he said, softly but firmly.

There was nothing, not even the sound of the distant bang against a solid object that he’d heard before. Albus stared down the tunnel until his eyes watered, and then at last walked around the corner where the rats had come from.

There was nothing and no one there. Albus looked around helplessly. The Wand would have come back to him even if Fawkes had hidden it somewhere, he thought. It would have battered down barriers in the way to reunite with the wizard who planned to use it in conquest.

Unless…

Unless Albus’s suspicions about phoenixes being unable to intervene directly, and needing allies to move their visions of the future forwards, remained true. And that would mean Fawkes had intervened only to give the spark of fire to Gellert, which could be used only if Gellert somehow got his hands free.

There had been someone else here who had sent the rats and stolen his wand and somehow managed to free Gellert’s hands, although on that one Albus was unsure of the method.

“Hello?” he called.

The silence that answered sounded as mocking as Fawkes’s song.

*

Minerva pulled her head out of the Pensieve memory and stared at Peter for long moments. Peter tried to act as modest as he could, even though once he was out of the tunnel, exhilaration had burned away his fear.

“This is something to make the Minister aware of at once,” Minerva finally said.

Peter nodded. “I’m happy to supply my memories or speak to him, whichever you think would be better.”

“I’ll send him a copy of this memory, with your permission,” Minerva said, and Peter just nodded again. “He’ll probably be along to speak to you tomorrow.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why Albus could have gone so mad.”

Peter preserved a prudent silence. Telling Minerva that he’d seen it coming long before when the man began to recruit school-children for his imaginary war probably wouldn’t sit well with her when she’d been one of Dumbledore’s adherents for so many years.

“And then there’s his wand.” Minerva poked the box that Peter had put it in. “Does it feel oddly inert to you? Not that wands are truly alive, but they usually have more of an aura about them than this.”

Peter blinked. He could feel what seemed like a strong aura himself. But the Headmistress had more experience in matters like that. Peter wouldn’t have said he had expertise in anything except Transfiguration and pranks, himself. “Maybe so, Headmistress. Are you going to send it to the Minister as well?”

“I wouldn’t trust owl post with something like this,” Minerva said shortly. “Best to keep it under guard until Riddle gets here.”

Peter nodded and stood. “Then with your permission, Headmistress, I’ll try to get a few more hours of sleep.”

“Please do that, Professor Pettigrew. Peter.” When Peter glanced at her face again, Minerva was watching him with a softly glowing smile. “Please know that I’ve seen no more Gryffindor act in all my tenure as Head of House. No matter how it was accomplished.”

Peter left the office feeling as if he was a core of light around his burning joy. Except that, oddly, something seemed to be tugging on him as he left, too, trying to call him back.

But he forgot about that when he saw Fawkes perched on the gargoyle at the bottom of the Headmistress’s staircase. Peter scowled at him. “I am going to sleep, and I don’t care what you want me to—”

Fawkes spread his wings, soared as lightly as a butterfly across the distance between them, and perched on Peter’s shoulder. Then he rubbed his head against Peter’s cheek, and sang a little trill of song. It fell on Peter like a blessing.

Peter went to bed and had the best night’s sleep he could remember in decades.