24th June 1995, the Hogwarts grounds, 10:58 PM
Cornelius Fudge held out for a long moment under Dumbledore's steady blue gaze, his jaw working, the lurid copy of Witch Weekly still crumpled in one fist. Then, with the bad grace of a man conceding a point he had no honest way left to dispute, he gave a single tight nod.
"Very well," he muttered. "Very well. I will — consider — what you've said. I will take the — the recording to the Department of Mysteries for verification." He drew himself up, rescuing what dignity he could. "Shacklebolt!"
Kingsley Shacklebolt, who had just come up the slope from the smoking pitch where the last of the Ministry detail were warding the prisoners, crossed to the Minister with his unhurried stride.
"Minister."
"We're leaving. The Aurors will finish here and escort the prisoners to holding."
"Sir."
Fudge turned back, and even now, even cornered, he could not let it lie. "But understand me, Dumbledore — Esther — all of you. Even if — and I say if — He has returned, that does not mean another war. The wizarding world will not be plunged into panic on the strength of one bad night. And I will tell you now—" his chin came up, "—the Dementors stay at Azkaban. They are the guard of our prison and they will remain the guard of our prison. On that, I am immovable."
He turned and stalked away down the slope, Kingsley falling in beside him, the crimson-robed Aurors closing around them.
Dumbledore watched him go, and could not honestly have called himself satisfied.
"Well," the Headmaster said, after a moment, turning to the weary, frightened crowd still gathered on the lawn. His voice gentled. "It has been a very long and very dark night, and there is nothing more to be done in it that cannot be better done in the morning. Go and rest, all of you. You are safe within these walls. Go and sleep."
Slowly, in murmuring clusters, the grounds began to empty.
Sirius gathered the unconscious Harry up from Luna's arms with infinite care and carried him toward the castle and the Hospital Wing, Luna walking close at his side with her hand resting on Harry's, and Jasper riding on Sirius's shoulder, the small camera gone from his leg now, only a tired golden bird seeing his boy safely in.
Ethan and Sam exchanged a few low words — Atid Stella, the small hours, the full account — and Sam nodded and turned to gather his Unspeakables, the silver lemniscate insignia catching the torchlight as the Department team withdrew. Ethan inclined his head to one or two grave faces among them, men and women he had known in another life, and they returned it.
Lupin and Verrona started back toward the Atid Stella tent with Osian pacing between them, the great Re'em's horns dark against the firelit ruin. There was the tent to strike and the equipment to pack and, Lupin observed with a long-suffering sigh, a truly heroic quantity of incident paperwork to file before any of them saw a bed. Verrona laughed at him, low and fond, and they went.
And then there were only two men left on the lawn.
Dumbledore looked at Ethan, and tilted his head toward the distant lit windows of the Hospital Wing. "Walk with me?"
Ethan inclined his head. "Of course."
They walked a while in silence, the cool night air carrying the smell of wet ash behind them.
"How much," Dumbledore asked at last, "did you know, Ethan? Before tonight."
Ethan's mouth curved in a wry, tired smile. "Less than you imagine. People credit Divination with far more than it can carry. It is a kind of magic, Albus. No more, no less. It can be clouded. It can be blocked — as it was blocked tonight, by that altar in the graveyard, until the Cup gave me a thread to follow." He looked ahead into the dark. "I will not pretend I had no sense of it. The closer the Third Task came, the more the dread sat on me. I knew something would happen tonight, and that it would centre on Harry. I did not know it would be this."
He let a few paces pass.
"And you, Albus? You'll not stand there and tell me you had no suspicion at all of the man wearing Alastor Moody's face."
Dumbledore's blue eyes flicked sideways. He sighed — a deep, heavy thing — and the same wry smile Ethan had worn settled onto his own face.
"As you said. It was only a suspicion. A man too eager, here and there. A reflex that did not quite fit the friend I knew. A few small wrongnesses." He spread his long hands. "And a suspicion, without evidence, permits no proper action. I could hardly have him stripped of his post and dosed with Veritaserum on the strength of a feeling." The smile turned inward, rueful. "Even the greatest of wizards, Ethan, can be made a fool of by a clever enough man and a sufficient quantity of Polyjuice. I was. I shall have a long time to be ashamed of it."
"The real Moody?"
"Alive. We searched the impostor's quarters and found him — kept in a trunk, of all the indignities, alive only because his captor needed a living source for the Potion and a living habit to study. He is with Pomona and Poppy now. Half-starved, badly used, and very angry. He will mend. Alastor is difficult to kill... many have tried."
The corridor turned, and torchlight threw their two long shadows across the flagstones.
"Your Sight," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "I have always wondered. The future is a slippery thing — but the past, surely, would lie quieter under it. Easier to read."
Ethan laughed softly. "You're not wrong. The past holds still to be looked at. The future fights you." He glanced at the old man beside him. "You know a great deal more of this craft than you let people believe, Albus."
"A little." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled, briefly, and then went grave. "Tell me what you saw, then. Of him. Of the impostor."
So Ethan told him.
He told it as the Sight had given it to him the moment Crouch Junior's face had flickered onto the projection feed — and as Winky, recovering now at Atid Stella, had since filled in. How Barty Crouch Junior had not died in Azkaban at all: how his dying mother, in her last act, had taken Polyjuice to swap places with her son so that she might die behind those walls and he might come home. How Crouch Senior had hidden the truth, kept the boy a prisoner in his own house under the Imperius Curse, year upon year, with only the house-elf Winky to watch him.
How Bertha Jorkins had come to the house on Ministry business while Crouch was out, and seen too much — and how Crouch Senior had laid a Memory Charm on her so brutal that it broke something in her for good.
How that same damaged memory, years later, had spilled its secret to Voldemort when he tore the charm away — and how Bertha had died of it, used up and discarded on a roadside in Albania.
Dumbledore breathed a long sad sound, and gestured for him to go on.
Ethan went on. The Quidditch World Cup — Winky persuading her master to let the boy come, hidden under an Invisibility Cloak in the Top Box; Crouch Junior fighting the Imperius enough to make Winky steal Harry's wand; and when the renegade Death Eaters cast the Mark and fled, it had been Crouch Junior, furious at their disloyalty, who had seized the moment and the stolen wand to cast the Dark Mark into the sky himself. Winky dismissed for it. The boy dragged home and bound tighter than before.
And then — Bertha's secret in hand — Voldemort and Wormtail finding the house, freeing the son, and the whole long deception that followed. The capture of the real Moody. The Polyjuice. A faithful servant planted at Hogwarts for a year, keeping the boy alive in his trunk both for the Potion and for the habits — the better to fool the one man who might have seen through him.
"It was him on Harry's map," Ethan said quietly. "In Severus's office. Stealing the ingredients to keep the Potion brewing. And when the real Crouch — Senior — finally threw off Wormtail's watch and came here, half-mad, to confess his son's existence to you—"
"His son killed him," Dumbledore said.
"On the grounds. Transfigured the body to a bone, and buried it." Ethan's gaze drifted, through a window, toward the dark shape of Hagrid's cabin at the wood's edge. "In Hagrid's yard."
Dumbledore's face was very heavy. His own eyes followed Ethan's to the gamekeeper's garden, and rested there a long, sorrowful moment. "I shall see Bartemius brought home and buried properly," he said at last, very low. "Whatever else he was, and he was a hard and a foolish man — no one should lie transfigured under a vegetable patch." He drew a breath and turned away from the Forest. "Thank you, Ethan. For the truth. It is an ugly thing to hold, but it is better held than not."
"And the Cup," Ethan finished. "He volunteered to carry it into the centre of the maze. To make it a Portkey. And to set the others — the contact-portkeys Mordred's people came through. The last turn of a key he had been winding for an entire year."
They had nearly reached the Hospital Wing. The corridor ahead was quiet, a single lamp burning beside the great doors.
Dumbledore stopped.
"You know that a war is coming, Ethan."
"I do." Ethan's voice was without drama. "So do you."
"Then I will ask you plainly." The old wizard turned to face him. "Join us. There is an order — old friends, gathered in the first war, and being gathered again now. The Order of the Phoenix rides again — it must. And I would have your gifts, and your strength, at our side. And I would have Atid Stella beside us, if it is willing."
Ethan was quiet a moment.
"Atid Stella will be there," he said. "That I can promise you without hesitation. Whatever comes, my company and my people will stand between Voldemort and the innocent, with everything we have. On that you may rely absolutely." He paused. "As for the Order — myself, my name on your roll... that is a conversation for another night. Not this one." He looked toward the Hospital Wing doors. "This one belongs to my son."
Dumbledore smiled — the small knowing smile of a man who had expected no other answer.
"Of course. Go to him."
He turned to leave.
And Ethan, his hand already on the door, paused — and turned back, and asked the old wizard the question he had asked him once before, years ago, on another dark night.
"Tell me, Albus. Standing here, tonight — are you the Headmaster of Hogwarts? Or are you the Grand Sorcerer, the Chief Warlock, the man who would do anything — anything — for the greater good?"
Dumbledore halted.
For a long moment he did not answer, and the lamplight caught the deep lines of his old face.
Then he turned, and his blue eyes were clear and steady.
"I will not deny that I am the Grand Sorcerer. I am the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. I have been, in my time, a man who weighed the many against the few and made his peace with the arithmetic, and I have the scars of it, and the graves. I have done things in those offices that I must answer for... one day." A breath. "But tonight, Ethan — and tomorrow, and for as long as I am able — I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts. And those," he nodded toward the doors, toward the sleeping boy beyond them and all the frightened children behind their own, "are my students. All of them. Yours among them."
Ethan looked at him a moment longer.
Then he nodded, once, satisfied, and stepped through the door into the warm lamplit quiet of the Hospital Wing, where his son lay sleeping and a small fair-haired girl kept watch at the bedside — and the door swung gently shut behind him, and Albus Dumbledore was left alone in the corridor with the long dark night and everything it had brought.