Andromeda Tonks walked through the polished corridor of the Ministry with a pace that was just short of a march. The marble floor reflected the overhead lights in clean lines that made the building look calm, respectable, and orderly. It was a lie she had grown tired of looking at.
Ignatia Travers sat behind the desk outside the Minister's office, posture straight, quill moving over a stack of documents with the quiet efficiency that had become her signature.
She looked up.
"Mrs Tonks. How may I help you?"
Andromeda stopped at the desk. Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
Not only had her daughter been rejected from entering the Ministry. Ted had lost his parents, his cousins, his entire mundane family overnight. And now Corvus Black stood before the world like a benevolent king, dangling the key to return those same people to the magical side.
"As a citizen of Magical Britain, I would like to speak with the Interim Minister."
The words carried open hostility.
Ignatia studied her for a brief moment. The undersecretary had worked long enough beside Arcturus Black to recognise anger that had already decided the outcome.
She rose.
"Please have a seat."
Andromeda sat without answering.
Ignatia entered the office, and the door closed behind her.
Silence returned to the corridor. The kind that stretched long enough to make a visitor hear every tick of the clock on the wall.
Several minutes passed before the door opened again. Ignatia stepped aside.
"The Minister will see you."
Andromeda stood and walked past her. This was the first time she entered the office of the Minister. It had tall windows, heavy shelves filled with records rather than decoration. A desk large enough to discourage casual visits.
Arcturus Black stood behind it with both hands resting on the polished surface.
He did not gesture for her to sit yet.
"How can the Interim Minister for the last three years and for the foreseeable future help you, dear citizen?"
His voice carried frost that could have frozen water.
Andromeda knew that tone.
He had never used it on her when she was a girl. Only with her parents. Only when a Black had disappointed him beyond patience.
She swallowed and stepped forward.
"I would like to file a complaint against you and your heir personally. Another against the Ministry for discrimination against Muggles and Muggleborns."
The venom in her voice dulled halfway through the sentence.
Arcturus Black was still Arcturus Black.
Titles did not erase memory.
He turned his head slightly toward the door.
"This is the office of the Minister for Magic, girl. If you have any issues with Muggles, take it to their ministry." He was aware of the oaths and contracts, of course. Andromeda's face did not change, but her stance got more rigid.
"Ignatia, see if Madam Bones is available to record this citizen's..." His gaze paused on her with disdain. Andromeda felt her heart break. It was the first time Arcturus Black looked at her as if she were a lost cause. "complaints."
He paused.
"If she is not, bring two Aurors to take the statement."
"Yes, Minister."
The door closed again.
Arcturus finally gestured toward the chair opposite his desk.
"Why don't you sit, citizen?"
Andromeda sat.
The silence that followed pressed against the room like a weight. Arcturus watched her with an expression that was neither anger nor calm. It looked more like disappointment carved into stone.
"I hear your family was among the more affected ones, Tonks."
Each word landed with careful precision, especially the last one, which was spoken as an insult.
"Must be hard to lose your only relatives."
Andromeda's jaw tightened.
"You already know what happened to them."
"How could I?" Arcturus was mocking her. "I am a pureblood. As a citizen, you should at the very least know what that means." He folded his hands.
"What interests me is why a disgraced daughter of an ancient house walked into my office ready to accuse me while her troubles are the result of her own disloyalty."
"I am not a traitor! I am accusing you and your heir, not my family."
"You just did. Were you not a daughter of House Black?" Arcturus leaned back. "What we do, girl, is protect the Magicals."
Andromeda leaned forward.
"What you call protection has destroyed families. Ted had to witness the erasure of his parents' memories. You call that security. I call it cruelty."
Arcturus did not interrupt.
She continued.
"You segregated the magical world. Forced people to choose between two lives. Muggleborn children are treated like liabilities. And now your heir stands before the world claiming the right to decide which Muggles deserve magic."
Arcturus's eyes narrowed slightly.
"And that angers you. What is it you want? To let all the muggles be blessed by Mother Magic?"
"It will be fair."
Arcturus leaned back slowly.
"Fair."
The word carried no warmth.
"Let us discuss that fairness."
He opened a drawer and placed a thin file on the desk between them.
"Tonks, did your Muggleborn ever mention to you how he was encouraged by Dumbledore to pursue your hand in marriage?"
She frowned.
"What are you talking about?"
"Dumbledore called them the 'Pairings'."
Arcturus tapped the file once.
"Purebloods encouraged to court Muggleborn and vice versa. Students guided to dilute the bloodlines of old houses."
"That is a lie."
"No, it is not. We have every one of those names taken directly from that old goat's head." His voice stayed calm. "That was his strategy."
Andromeda stared at him.
"Dumbledore believed blood traditions were the source of every conflict in our society. His solution was simple. Dissolve and dilute them. He succeeded in many of those attempts."
"You are twisting this." Andromeda could not take it anymore.
"I am explaining it. With nothing but facts and evidence."
Arcturus leaned forward slightly.
"He interfered in family alliances. Guided Hogwarts staff to influence relationships among students. Quietly rewarded unions that weakened old houses."
Andromeda shook her head.
"That sounds like a conspiracy theory."
Arcturus's gaze hardened.
"You truly believe the man who manipulated two wars never manipulated marriages."
"He fought Voldemort."
"He created Voldemort, girl! He fought every family structure that resisted his vision."
Andromeda's voice rose.
"He protected Muggleborns."
Arcturus answered without raising his own voice.
"Half of them were traitors, the other half was used by him."
Silence filled the room.
Andromeda looked at the file but did not touch it.
"You expect me to believe that everything he did was some grand breeding program."
"I expect a Black to at least consider the possibility."
Her head snapped up.
"I am not a Black anymore."
The words came out before she could stop them.
Arcturus froze.
For a moment, the Minister vanished, and only the patriarch remained.
"As the lord of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, I, Arcturus Black, sever the bonds of blood, magic and name that tie you to my house. Your place in our lineage is stricken, your name erased from our records, your claim to our vaults and heirlooms revoked. From this hour, you are no child of this House, nor kin to its members. The wards shall not know you, our magic shall not answer you, and our honour shall not shelter you. You are cast out, and may Mother Magic reckon you as such." His voice was as sharp as blades.
Andromeda's hands went to her mouth. She could not believe what she had said; more so, she could not believe Arcturus Black had cast her out. She was aware of her position before. It was not official. She was a daughter of House Black and proud of it. Not anymore, a single tear trickled down her cheek.
"I chose my family."
"What you choose from this moment on is not my problem, Tonks. Your daughter can apply for any clerical post and never rise from that position as per our laws, unless a Pureblood house can sponsor her, of course. Though I wonder if her mother's hubris has cost her an ability linked to an ancient house."
A knock came at the door.
Ignatia's voice followed.
"Minister. The Aurors have arrived."
Arcturus stepped back toward his desk.
"Excellent."
He looked at Andromeda again.
"You may follow the Aurors. Your complaint will be filed properly."
He sat down.
"Then we will see whether the law agrees with you."
--
Not far from the Ministry, inside Grimmauld Place, Corvus lay on the master bed with his eyes closed.
In the adjacent chamber, the artefact remained trapped inside the array he had etched earlier. The containment circle hummed at a low frequency that only a trained magical sense could feel. Corvus did not need to stand near it. As the only master of the wards, he could feel the sphere.
He continued his absorption. Shadow pressed against his magical core.
The sensation was excited and obedient, like a dog waiting to be petted.
He had already replicated the skill from the artefact. Replication gave him the pattern. Absorption gave him understanding.
With understanding came the truth of the object he had captured in the Atlantic.
Shroud of Mictlan. The name arrived with the memory. An artefact created by Elder Mictlantecuhtli. The Aztecs worshipped the being as the god of death. The title did not interest Corvus. What mattered was the nature of the thing. The elder had crafted the shroud from a fragment of his own soul.
A being tied to death had shaped a tool from death itself.
The reason the artefact tried to merge with him became obvious the moment the memory settled.
Corvus carried the sacred blood, the Deathstick, the cloak and the resurrection stone.
The shroud had sensed familiarity. It had not attacked him with hostility. It had lunged toward him like a lost limb trying to return to its body. It was a worrying detail that the hallows were most probably another elder's remaining artefacts. But this was not the time or the place.
Corvus continued the absorption. Scenes of Mictlantecuhtli letting the shroud attach itself to him and using the Shadow Tendrils were getting processed one after another.
The skill did not feel like learning a spell. It felt like remembering a body part that had never existed before.
Pressure gathered behind his shoulder blades.
Something inside his magic unfolded.
He saw flashes of memory while the knowledge settled. Ancient ceremonies. Aztec priests kneeling before the skeletal throne of Mictlantecuhtli. Souls gathered in the vast darkness of Mictlan, the underworld where the dead waited. It was a dimension the elder created to store the souls to convert to stones.
Corvus erased most of the memories as they were processed. Many of them were useless.
One, however, was different from everything he knew.
The arrival of the elders into this world.
The memory showed several elders forming a circle. Their shadows overlapped. Each of them used abilities similar to Dimensional Passage. Their combined power opened a portal that tore space itself.
They had stepped through it into this world.
The memory ended before revealing how they chose the location of their arrival.
Corvus returned to processing.
Another ability remained inside the shroud. It was the other half of the tendrils, and he needed it to truly use them.
Soul Drain.
Shadow Tendrils were only the conduit. Without the second ability replicated, the tendrils could bind, pierce, lift, and throw, but they could not yet devour the soul itself.
He would replicate it the following week; the remaining two, Void Cloak and Dimensional Passage, would come after that. And when all the replications are done, he will devour the artefact entirely. It was a soul shard of an elder. Similar in nature to the Horcruxes.
"Three weeks," he murmured as he pushed himself up from the bed.
The old wood frame creaked under his weight. Corvus stood for a moment, letting the last of the absorbed knowledge settle into place. The pressure behind his back remained. Not painful, controlled and excited.
With a thought, he vanished.
The middle of the Atlantic Ocean replaced the quiet bedroom.
Wind struck his face at once. Cold salt air rolled across the open water. Waves moved slowly beneath him, dark blue stretching to the horizon in every direction.
The blue of the ocean and the blue of the sky filled his vision.
Corvus hovered several feet above the water and held still.
He reached inward; his new skill answered. Darkness unfurled from his back.
Tendrils of long, very long strands of shadow flowed outward like living extensions of his will. They did not burst into existence. They slid into the world smoothly, each one moving with eerie control.
Corvus allowed the tendrils to drift behind him again. The faint pulses of violet and crimson inside the strands shaped wailing faces that dissolved in an endless routine. It was not a power he had gained. They were remnants of what the elder's shroud had consumed across centuries.
Pure black formed their bodies, yet faint pulses moved inside them like distant embers. The glow of devoured souls travelled along their length in slow currents.
Their texture shifted constantly.
One moment, they resembled drifting smoke. The next moment, they thickened like liquid shadow. When tension passed through them, they hardened into obsidian, solid strands capable of striking with immense force.
Corvus remained motionless.
The tendrils moved regardless.
They coiled behind him, curling through the air like serpents tasting the wind. Some extended upward. Others drifted around his shoulders. Each one responded directly to his intent. Their general shape was of angelic wings.
He gave them their first command: lift. The tendrils spread wider, as weightless flight lifted him.
Corvus rose. He stopped his own flight and experienced the Shadow Tendrils. His body moved upward without effort. The tendrils did not flap or beat. They simply held him as if gravity had been dismissed from the conversation.
The ocean sank further below.
Wind rushed around him, but the tendrils cut through it without resistance. Their movement remained silent and controlled.
Corvus tested their reach. One tendril shot forward. The movement was sudden and violent. The tip of the shadow strand hardened as it struck through empty air. The tip extended nearly thirty yards before stopping.
Corvus pulled it back. Another tendril followed, then another.
Several strands lashed outward in the blink of an eye. Each strike was faster than the last. They pierced the air like spears before retracting and joining the wing-shaped form.
Control was immediate. Each tendril felt like a finger attached directly to his mind. Corvus shifted forward. The tendrils flowed behind him and carried his body through the air.
Flight became effortless.
The strands streamed outward like banners of shadow trailing behind a silent storm. They twisted and reshaped themselves continuously, adjusting to the motion of his body without any delay.
He accelerated.
The ocean blurred beneath him.
The tendrils remained stable, stretching behind him in long arcs while maintaining perfect balance. Their edges flickered faint violet and crimson in the darkening sky.
Corvus stopped abruptly.
The tendrils halted with him instantly. Not a single strand continued forward. Their obedience was absolute.
He rotated slowly in the air.
The tendrils adjusted around him like a living cloak of darkness.
Corvus directed several strands downward. They descended toward the ocean surface. The tips touched the water. For a moment, nothing happened. The water beneath the tendrils darkened and flattened. Ripples vanished as if the motion itself withdrew from the contact. The shadow strands remained still, signalling the sensation of cold water before pulling back.
Corvus raised himself higher again.
He pushed the tendrils outward once more.
Several strands whipped forward simultaneously, crossing through the air before curling back around him. Their movement carried a quiet menace, fluid and controlled.
He focused on concealment, and the tendrils responded. One by one, they dissolved into his soul. They did not vanish like smoke. They folded inward and disappeared beneath his magical aura until no trace remained behind his back. Yet he was still floating.
Only the wind remained around him. He called them again.
Darkness answered instantly and shot from his shoulder blades. The tendrils unfurled once more, faster this time, flowing outward like banners of void responding to their master. Corvus allowed them to stretch fully behind him. The strands drifted in the air with quiet authority.
Three weeks remained before he would consume the shroud itself. For now, this was enough.
Corvus turned toward the horizon and began to move again, a silent figure carried through the sky by living shadows that obeyed every thought he formed. He approached the surface of the water and ordered the tendrils to hunt. They started to pierce the surface, locating the fish by themselves. He let the pierced creatures back to the water, leaving a feast behind as he moved aimlessly.
He wondered what Soul Drain would add to his arsenal. What would he become after absorbing the soul shard of the elder?