Ending Maker: Fate Wizardry

Chapter Intro:

This fic’s premise is inspired by the webtoon titled Ending Maker/엔딩메이커  by Chwiryong and their illustrator chyan . Please check them out.

Story Starts

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Ch. 6.3 - Marauder?

I Hardly Knew Her

(3 out of ?)

"Come now, Mad-Eye, Harry and Mum are going to be there," Tonks told her perpetually grumpy Auror trainer, trying to inject some enthusiasm into what she knew would be a losing battle.

"Hrmmm."

Tonks suppressed a sigh. Alastor already knew that sigh—had catalogued it along with all her other tells over months of training—but he'd let the lass tire herself out. Sometimes the young ones needed to exhaust their own arguments before they'd listen to reason.

"Are you just going to give me the grunt of acknowledgement?" Tonks pressed, determined not to let him retreat into his usual cantankerous silence. "Are you still sour about keeping secrets from the Supreme Mugwump?" She allowed herself a teasing grin as she grabbed Auror Moody firmly by the arm and pulled him far more quickly than he'd been shuffling towards Grimmauld Place. For all his paranoia and magical prowess—and Merlin knew he had both in spades—the old codger could be remarkably stubborn when he wanted to dig his heels in.

His magical eye whirred in its socket, spinning through its familiar rotation pattern—probably checking for threats that didn't exist, because they rarely did in broad daylight on a residential street. But he didn't shake her off. Tonks counted that as a victory.

"Welcome to Grimmauld Place, the happiest place on earth!" Tonks announced loudly as she bounded up the townhouse's front steps with exaggerated cheer, deliberately echoing some Muggle advertising slogan she'd heard once.

"Oh yeah, Harry and Hermione also purchased that one," Tonks added as an afterthought, gesturing towards the identical townhouse situated directly beside Number Twelve. She'd been gobsmacked when she'd first heard about it. "They apparently want to take some Muggle courses alongside the whole magical education thing. Mental, if you ask me, but then again, they're both brilliant, so they'll probably manage it somehow."

Moody merely raised a grizzled eyebrow at that revelation. Unlike most wizards—who couldn't tell a computer from a toaster—he remained remarkably well-informed about Muggle technology. He had to be, given the recent technological leaps the non-magical world had undergone. Ignoring such developments would be foolish, and whatever else Moody might be, foolish wasn't in his vocabulary.

Amelia Bones had been sending her senior Aurors to conventions for months now, dragging them kicking and screaming to talks on current advancements in Muggle technology and the increasingly complex challenge of maintaining the Statute of Secrecy in a world of mobile phones and surveillance cameras. Most of the old guard resented it. Moody saw it as necessary intelligence gathering.

So Moody understood the internet well enough—which was almost certainly how the two teenagers planned to manage both magical and Muggle education simultaneously. Clever, he'd give them that.

Tonks rapped smartly on the door with her knuckles. After a few expectant minutes, Hermione pulled it open, her face breaking into a warm, welcoming smile.

"Good, you both came." Then her expression shifted, becoming suddenly uncertain. "Umm, oh wait—"

Hermione's features transformed into something more serious, her eyebrow furrowing in concentration as though performing some complex mental calculation. After a moment's pause, she gave a decisive nod and gestured them inside with a sweep of her hand.

"Welcome," she said formally.

"Apologies, I forgot to broadcast my intent for the wards to allow you both through properly."

"Come in, come—"

CRASH!!!

The sound reverberated through the hallway like a thunderclap, sharp and violent enough that Moody's magical eye immediately began its frantic rotation, scanning through walls and floors with increasing urgency. His wand hand twitched instinctively towards his holster.

"I fucking hate nobles' houses," Moody grumbled, his voice rough with irritation as he rushed after Hermione. Bloody ancient wards blocking half his sight—couldn't see what was around corners, couldn't scan properly through walls. Made him feel blind, exposed, and he hated it.

Hermione's legs had somehow begun to glow with geometric, vector-like patterns that pulsed with an otherworldly light. With impossible grace, she needed only one powerful leap to reach the end of the hallway, her form seeming to blur with the speed of her movement.

Moody grumbled under his breath, a string of choice words falling from his lips as his prosthetic made an unholy racket against the mansion's polished wooden floors. The sound echoed embarrassingly loud in the confined space, each step announcing his presence like a drum beat. Typically, he'd silence the damned thing with a quick charm, but he didn't have the bloody time as he lagged painfully behind his current protégé. 'Getting too old for this shite,' he thought darkly, even as his legs pumped harder.

Despite its deceptively modest appearance from outside, the Black family mansion's interior was expanded to its absolute limits—a labyrinth of corridors that seemed to stretch on endlessly. It took several more turns, each one revealing another impossibly long hallway, before Moody fi... na... ly—

As he rounded the last corner, wheezing slightly from the exertion, he could see Hermione's back. Her legs were planted in a wide, aggressive stance, her left hand resting imperiously on her hip whilst the other hand's finger pointed accusingly as she berated somebody in that particular tone that reminded him uncomfortably of McGonagall at her most disappointed.

But that wasn't the thing that made him pause mid-step, his breath catching in his throat. It was the gigantic body laid sideways across the floor, massive and monstrous, with blood oozing steadily from its wounds in thick, dark rivulets that pooled on the expensive flooring. His eyes travelled instinctively towards the severed insectoid tail, noting the venomous spikes still glistening with poison, and then to the disturbingly humanoid face of the beast. Well, it looked humanoid—or had been, before it was split cleanly in half down the middle, the two sides of its grotesque visage sliding apart obscenely.

GASP!

"THAT'S A BLOODY FUCKING MANTICORE!" The words erupted from his protégé.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

The slow, mocking applause cut through the chaos like a knife. "Truly, what wonderful gift of observation you possess, oh, great-granddaughter of mine," a greyed-out old man cut in dryly, his voice carrying the particular aristocratic drawl. 'The Black family patriarch,' Moody surmised grimly.

"Shut up, Grandfather, you're not helping. What in Merlin's name did you do to yourself?" Andromeda's voice cut through sharply as she rushed towards the body that was using the dead XXXXX-classified beast as a casual backrest, as though deadly magical creatures made for perfectly acceptable furniture.

And of course, as he moved forwards from his new vantage point with Hermione no longer blocking his view, he could finally see the haggard-looking Potter boy properly. His whole body was absolutely drenched in blood, so thoroughly covered that it was impossible to tell where injuries ended and splatter began. Of course, judging from the deep, ragged slash visible on the jugular of the creature, the boy had probably even got a mouthful of the Manticore's blood—which would be poisonous as hell and explained the slightly green tinge to his complexion.

Andromeda shouted crisp orders at the nervous-looking elf that was standing rigidly beside the seated Harry, demanding specific potions for it to bring. The creature's beady eyes kept leaping frantically between the exhausted, blood-soaked wizard and the large, hulking, very dead beast, as though unable to process the reality of what had clearly transpired.

One of the goblins was already approaching the carcass, its clever fingers examining the body with professional interest. No doubt the creature would probably request that they process the damned thing for meat and parts—nothing went to waste in goblin culture.

Alastor's prosthetic almost slipped treacherously as he looked down onto what appeared to be a pool of water—wait, no, there was a distinctly acrid scent emanating from it that made his nose wrinkle.

"Eeewww, did you pee yourself, Harry?" the young Metamorphmagus cut in with the blunt tactlessness of youth, her nose crinkling in obvious disgust.

But Alastor's magical eye had already traced the source of the puddle to something far more interesting—a white bundle of cocoon wrapped in what looked disturbingly like silk, the kind that certain magical creatures used to preserve their prey alive for later consumption. Moody's eyes widened fractionally as he spotted the terrified face peeking out from a portion of the cocoon that had been sliced open.

And from that opening, he could see a face he'd honestly thought he'd never see again in this lifetime—someone who was supposedly dead, someone who supposedly only had a finger left after being blown to bits in a Muggle street.

Whilst the face had aged considerably, becoming gaunt and hollow with what looked like years of poor living, there was absolutely no doubt in Alastor's experienced mind who this pathetic specimen was.

Peter Pettigrew.

'Well, fuck me sideways,'  Moody thought with the distant, detached calm that came from decades upon decades of impossible situations, each one leaving its indelible mark upon his psyche.

Shink. Shink. Shink.

Shink. Shink. Shink.

The sound of metal sliding through stone sent warning bells clanging through Moody's mind like cathedral bells at midnight, each chime growing louder and more insistent. His magical eye whirled frantically in its socket as he took in the rapidly changing environment around him—all the walls and doors were now barred, the walls lined with blades as if they were prison bars but without any space between them, every surface covered by steel.

Pure instinct, honed by years of surviving when lesser men would have died, drove Moody's body into action before his conscious mind had fully processed the threat. He twirled on the spot whilst simultaneously pressing his thumb against the emergency portkey ring he always wore on his left hand—the one that was supposed to whisk him away to a safe house in the Outer Hebrides at the slightest pressure.

Shink.

Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.

The familiar hook-behind-the-navel sensation that should have accompanied apparition was conspicuously absent, and the portkey remained stubbornly inert against his skin. Both methods of magical escape had simultaneously failed—anti-apparition and portkey wards. Fuck.

"What is the meaning of this?" Moody angrily called out, his voice carrying the dangerous edge that had made countless Dark wizards think twice before engaging him in combat. His magical eye continued its relentless surveillance of the room, cataloguing threats—everyone, exits—none, and potential weapons—a tonne but probably useless. 'Fuck.'

"Alastor, I was the one who told them that they should trust you," Andromeda suddenly spoke up, her voice carrying an unexpected weight of authority that gave Moody pause. She was carefully feeding Harry several vials of potion—he could identify at least three different healing draughts and what looked suspiciously like a pain reliever—whilst the boy moved himself into a kneeling position with obvious difficulty. Andromeda pulled out her wand and cast a cutting charm to slice through his bloodied shirt, revealing a darkened back that made even Moody wince slightly—the bruise was sick and nasty-looking, spreading across the boy's entire lower back like spilled ink.

"As you can see—" Andromeda's profile shifted, her head turning deliberately towards the currently cocooned form of Peter Pettigrew. The look of pure disgust and disdain that twisted her aristocratic features was so visceral, so raw, that it reminded Moody uncomfortably of how people had looked at captured Death Eaters during the height of the war. "Trust or faith is something you can't gamble on when lives are on the line. Not any more. Not after everything that's happened."

"I'm sorry, Alastor," Ted said quietly from his position in the corner, and Moody's magical eye swivelled to focus on the man who just a few weeks ago had been singing his praises for being his daughter's Auror trainer.

Ted's normally cheerful face was drawn with what looked like genuine regret, but his wand was out and pointed in Moody's general direction—not threatening, but ready. "If I hadn't called you that time, you wouldn't be caught up in this mess. But both my wife and I already know the full picture from Harry and Hermione here, and we really urged them—practically begged them, if I'm being honest—that having you on their side would make things a lot easier for everyone involved."

"And you think trapping me here will help?" Alastor shook with barely suppressed anger, the kind that burnt cold rather than hot after years of learning to channel his fury into productive paranoia. He tried to take a step forwards and discovered, to his absolute horror, that he couldn't move his legs at all. His torso remained rigid, locked in place as if he'd been hit with a full-body bind. "What is this? What the bloody hell have you done?"

Alastor looked as if he were frozen in time itself, but his face remained expressive—a particular cruelty of whatever magic was holding him—and his magical eye continued to swivel around with increasing franticness. There, just behind him and slightly to the left, he spotted a thin sword with a distinctive cylindrical guard. The blade was positioned precisely behind him, and he could feel the faint hum of unfamiliar magic radiating from it. 'What the hell is this? I've never encountered anything like this before, and I've seen every binding curse in the bloody book.'

"Wait, wait, wait," Tonks suddenly interjected, stepping forwards with her hands raised in a placating gesture that reminded Moody painfully of her mother. Her hair was flickering between colours—pink to brown to blonde and back again—betraying her emotional turmoil. "Can everyone just calm down for a second? This is getting completely out of hand!"

"I don't care any more whatever shit you lot are selling—I'm opting out of this entire circus. Just do whatever you want with your grand conspiracy and be done with it." Moody stubbornly declared, though even as he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. He was trapped, literally and figuratively, and making threats he couldn't back up. But pride and forty years of being Alastor bloody Moody wouldn't let him show weakness, even now.

"For the greater good."

Moody's eyes—both natural and magical—turned sharply towards the Black patriarch, who was leaning back against the sword-covered wall with casual ease, clearly unimpressed. Arcturus Black's expression was thoughtful, almost philosophical, which somehow made him more threatening than if he'd been openly hostile.

"That's the motto of your goat-fucking leader, right?" The old man's tone was conversational, almost friendly, but there was steel underneath the civility.

"And what of it?" Moody asked, his voice clipped and clearly annoyed now. "Are you going to throw Grindelwald at me? That's old news, ancient history to those in the know."

Snort. "It's rather funny when you think about it—two of the most influential bastards in the past century, both of whom held that particular belief about the greater good, were directly responsible for a horrifyingly large proportion of the deaths of this century, both on mainland Europe and right here in the United Kingdom."

"What? It wasn't Dumbledore's responsibility to kill Grindelwald," Alastor objected, now just tired and weary of hearing the same old rehashed arguments that bitter old warriors liked to trot out at every opportunity. "The man ended the worst Dark wizard of his generation—that's hardly something to criticise."

The old Black just laughed out loud at the Auror's reply, a sound that held more bitterness than genuine amusement. "It's bloody hilarious that you leapt immediately to that conclusion, Alastor. I'm sure your great-uncle Gabriel would have disagreed with you on that particular interpretation of events, but I suppose the dead don't get much say in historical narratives, do they? Still, I can agree with you that it wasn't Dumbledore's responsibility to defeat Grindelwald—that much is accurate. It's just that Dumbledore is probably the major proponent, if not the number one bloody proponent, of why Voldemort came to power in the first place, and why our current government is in its current pathetic state."

"W-what are you saying?" Alastor spluttered, genuinely thrown off balance for one of the few times in recent memory. The accusation was so absurd, so contrary to everything he knew, that his mind briefly struggled to process it.

"I would like to quote our current benefactor here," Hermione suddenly interrupted, her voice cutting through the rising tension with surprising authority for someone so young. "Let's just cut to the chase and get to the point—we can debate the pros and cons of Dumbledore's various decisions later, preferably with a yellow legal pad, some strong alcohol, and several hours to spare."

Alastor now turned his eyes—both of them—to focus properly on the bushy-haired friend of the Potter boy, really studying her for the first time since this whole situation had started. There was an intelligence in her eyes that reminded him uncomfortably of some of the more dangerous minds he'd encountered during his career, the kind that could justify anything if they believed the cause was righteous enough.

"Harry, let him go—I'll handle the stubborn voyeur myself."

Tick.

"…"

Then, suddenly, Alastor pitched forwards as the invisible force holding him in place vanished without warning, and he caught himself from falling flat on his face through sheer instinct and decades of training in maintaining his balance under adverse conditions.

"As Andromeda said, trust and faith are premiums far too expensive when lives are hanging in the balance, and so you shall sign a geas that'll prevent you from telling everything to Dumbledore unless we've explicitly released you from this binding, and optionally—though we'd strongly prefer it—you'll help us with our current project." Hermione explained matter-of-factly as she nodded towards the cocooned form of Pettigrew, her tone suggesting she was discussing something as mundane as borrowing a library book rather than magically binding a veteran Auror.

"And what if I disagree with your terms?"

Alastor couldn't help but suppress a shiver at the grin that spread across the lass's face—it was the kind of smile that belonged on someone much older, much more jaded, someone who'd crossed lines that shouldn't be crossed and found it easier than expected. "Well, I'm sure we could probably just remove the information from your mind entirely. It's not ideal, but it's certainly an option if you insist on being difficult about this."

His protégé hesitantly stepped right in front of him in a defensive posture, clearly uncomfortable with how this entire situation was unfolding. Tonks suddenly sputtered out, her hair now a distressed mousy brown, "Again, wait, this is getting completely out of hand—"

"Fine, just remove it and be done with the whole bloody thing," Alastor stood straight as he looked Hermione directly in the eye, holding her gaze with the intensity that had made Dark wizards confess to crimes they hadn't even committed yet. He wasn't about to fight his way out of this room, especially not with the Potter boy who, despite being visibly injured and favouring his left side, still seemed like the biggest potential threat in this room. Especially when he considered the sheer number of blades jutting out from the body of the Manticore—the boy was almost certainly the one responsible for defeating the beast, and anyone who could take down a Manticore whilst he hadn't even started his formal education was not someone to underestimate. Besides, he had no real problem with this situation after all, because he had his contingen—

"—contingencies."

Blink. Blink.

"What did you just say?" Moody's voice came out sharper than he'd intended, his mind racing to understand how this slip of a girl had just plucked a thought directly from his head.

"Well, I'm sure a person as thoroughly paranoid as you—and I mean that as a compliment, truly—would have contingencies in place for situations precisely like this. You probably have daily checks, maybe even twice-daily, to verify if your mind has been tampered with in any way," Hermione explained, still maintaining that unsettling grin that made her look far older than her years. "That's why you'll sign and write a letter to yourself explaining that you willingly gave up your memories of important sensitive knowledge. Of course, we'll make absolutely certain you'll write it in such a way that you cannot warn yourself that you signed it under any form of duress, plus we'll extract a vow of silence from you either way, just to be thorough."

"Then why bother asking about the Obliviation and the letter if you're taking the vow anyway?"

Hermione just shrugged with affected casualness and said, her eyes gleaming with what might have been respect or might have been mockery, "Contingencies."

"So why not hear us out properly? After all, you currently have absolutely nothing to lose and potentially quite a lot to gain."

Alastor took a deep breath to calm himself down, forcing his racing heart to slow and his mind to reassert control over his emotional responses. He looked towards the misanthropic elderly Black patriarch, then to Ted with his apologetic expression, to Andromeda's surprisingly encouraging look, to Tonks who appeared nervous and deeply conflicted about this entire situation, to Hermione's arrogant gait and confident posture, to James's son—Sirius's godson—and finally, his eyes turned sharply towards the supposedly dead person cocooned in magical silk.

Alastor gave a weary sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul and said, his voice carrying decades of exhaustion, "Fine, but this better be fucking good!"

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"Is this really true?" Alastor whispered, mostly to himself, the words barely audible even in the tense silence of the room. Harry and Hermione had finally told him everything—laid it all out in excruciating detail—and whilst he was quite sceptical of the claims that Voldemort might somehow return, especially with something as vague and nebulous as a shared 'vision' by two barely adults who hadn't even started their formal magical education yet, he also couldn't bring himself to outright dismiss it. Not now. Not when standing before him were two of the soul tethers they'd described—physical, tangible proof of the very things that were supposedly preventing Voldemort's fractured soul from moving on to whatever awaited him in death.

The first was a locket, an ornate piece of jewellery with an embossed 'S' elegantly worked into its surface. His doubts, of course, had been immediately triggered when Harry first presented it to him. After all, they'd claimed they had already exorcised the piece of Voldemort's soul within it—cleansed it somehow. How was he supposed to verify that? Though even his considerable scepticism couldn't refute the undeniable fact of the heaviness—that oppressive, cloying weight—of dark magic that lingered around it when he'd cast a few diagnostic spells. The readings had been disturbing, to say the least. Residual dark magic, certainly, but of a type and intensity he'd rarely encountered.

It was only when the goblins brought out a sealed case—moving with the careful precision of those handling something extremely dangerous—and opened it to reveal what lay within, that Alastor truly began to believe. Inside sat an intricate golden goblet with scaled patterns worked into the metal near the base of the cup, just above the stem, and the quite noticeable badger emblazoned proudly upon it—the unmistakable symbol of Helga Hufflepuff herself.

This time, he didn't need to cast any diagnostic spells whatsoever to detect the sheer amount of dark magic positively oozing out of this one. The malevolence hit him like a physical blow. It took several minutes of him desperately slamming occlumency walls after occlumency walls—constructing mental barriers as quickly as he could manage—and Hermione urgently telling him to cycle his magic, to ground himself, before he was finally able to get a proper hold of himself and push back against the insidious influence.

The way the goblet subtly whispered to him, suggesting he drink from it, that passive influence you wouldn't normally think twice about—it was terrifying in its mundanity. Like how you wouldn't question your own actions when you, by pure instinct, held a door open for someone behind you. Automatic. Natural. Horrifying.

Though the influence was no longer remotely subtle after Harry brought out two weapons, those weird weapons he'd managed to conjure with magical properties—which seemed to kick whatever laws of conjuration and transfiguration in the bollocks. One was a dagger that appeared jagged and uneven, looking far more ornamental than functional—a ceremonial piece perhaps. The other was a crimson spear, wickedly sharp and radiating an energy that made Alastor's magical senses prickle uncomfortably.

Moody realised he hadn't really thought properly about these weapons Harry had been casually conjuring throughout their conversation. Was this truly how the boy cast his spells? Did he, instead of simply using Incendio like any normal wizard, conjure a sword or blade that summoned fire for him? Or was it totally different?

Strange applications of magic by the self-taught witch and wizard aside, he brought his thoughts back to the matter at hand.

As if the cursed object were somehow sensing that it was in genuine danger—that its continued existence was threatened—the goblet seemed to flare out in violent protest as Harry approached it with deliberate steps, his face set in grim determination. It began sputtering, the dark magic within roiling visibly like oil on water, as Harry calmly touched the polished surface of the cup with just the tip of the ornamental dagger. The contact produced a sound like glass scraping against metal, setting Moody's teeth on edge.

Then it violently shook, rattling against the case with surprising force, the golden surface tarnishing black as though burning from within. A spectre suddenly burst forth from the vessel in a rush of dark smoke and screaming magic. It wailed loudly—an unholy, piercing shriek that seemed to bypass the ears entirely and strike directly at the soul, the kind of sound that made you want to claw your own eardrums out—with Tonks immediately clutching at her ears in obvious pain, her face contorted.

Before the manifestation could do anything else, before it could attack or possess or whatever the hell it intended, Harry smoothly swiped at the spectre with the crimson spear, the motion economical and precise. For just a moment, the ghostly visage of Voldemort's face became terrifyingly apparent—those distinctive snake-like features twisted in rage and agony, red eyes blazing with impotent fury—before it dispersed violently into slivers of wispy light that faded into nothingness like dying embers.

And of course, if this entire situation wasn't already bad enough to process, there was also the staggering revelation about Peter Pettigrew. The faded Dark Mark on his pale forearm—still visible despite the years—and of course the thoroughly illegal interrogation conducted with Veritaserum. The truth serum had been supplied by the Black patriarch himself, Arcturus, who had raised a distinctly challenging brow at Alastor when he'd handed the crystal vial to Hermione, as if daring the Auror to object. They'd paired it with a Babbling Potion as well—a clever combination that Alastor had to grudgingly admit he might implement himself next time he needed to interrogate someone under Veritaserum's influence.

The pathetic little rat of a man had talked about a great many things—spilling secrets and justifications in equal measure—but when the questions were specifically directed, when Hermione had asked pointed queries about that fateful Halloween night, Pettigrew simply couldn't help but tell the complete truth. The revelation that James and Sirius had thought they were being so bloody clever about it—believing that publicly announcing Sirius as the Secret Keeper whilst Pettigrew served as the true one all along would protect the Potters—had really backfired on them spectacularly.

Alastor felt a pang of sympathy for the poor bastards; they'd thought they were being strategic, and it had cost them everything.

Pettigrew had then talked extensively about that specific night—his reedy voice growing more animated as the potions compelled honesty, words tumbling out faster and faster like a dam breaking—which had overlapped slightly with Hermione's earlier retelling of that scene, the vision she and Harry had described back in the deepest bowels of Gringotts when they'd first confronted the goblins.

Of course, Pettigrew hadn't actually been present in the scene when Voldemort had directly confronted the Potters inside their home. No, the coward had been outside Potter Cottage, keeping watch in his Animagus rat form, small and pathetic and safe, waiting and watching whilst his supposed best friend and wife died screaming. He'd only seen the aftermath—the destruction, the shattered walls, the bodies, the crying child in that cot. And in that moment of chaos and horror, whilst a baby wailed for parents who would never answer, he'd quickly pocketed his master's wand, already planning his next moves in a panic.

Later, he'd been found out by Sirius, confronted in the street the next day. But all this time—and this was perhaps the most damning part, the piece that made Moody's blood boil—Pettigrew had actually set up an elaborate trap. The place was one of his usual haunts, easy enough to be discovered by someone who knew him. He'd been deliberately positioning himself near a Muggle gas line he'd scouted earlier, already having cut his own finger with a silver knife in preparation. When Sirius finally found him, only then did Pettigrew loudly and publicly condemn Sirius for his supposed betrayal to anyone who'd listen—drawing a crowd, creating witnesses.

When Sirius finally cast a spell at him in his rage and grief—conveniently a Bombarda, loud and flashy and visible to all—he quickly timed an explosion hex and it was catastrophic, killing twelve bystanders, twelve innocent Muggles who'd just been going about their day. And in the chaos and carnage, in the smoke and screaming, he'd scurried away in his rat form, leaving nothing but a severed finger and the assumption of his own death.

Then, as if to twist the knife in a wound that was already far too deep, Pettigrew had all this time been living quite comfortably—comfortably!—with the Weasley family and within the very halls of Hogwarts itself as a pet rat. All the whilst, the innocent Sirius Black—who alongside James had been amongst the most promising recruits the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had ever seen—rotted in Azkaban. Everyone had been convinced that Sirius was the sole white sheep from a family of Voldemort supporters, up until the end where they condemned him without so much as a proper trial. Whereas the likes of Lucius ran free and powerful.

Of course, Moody hadn't known about Arcturus's stand against Voldemort at the time, and Andromeda had long since been banished from the family, struck from the tapestry and erased from their history. The narrative had seemed so clean, so obvious. How could he have questioned it?

And just to put the final nail in the coffin, to seal the horror of it all, after Hermione had hypnotised the rat Animagus into a deep, unbreakable sleep—ensuring the bastard couldn't escape again—she'd finally told him the real reason why they wanted absolutely no oversight from Dumbledore. Why they couldn't trust him, couldn't allow him anywhere near their plans.

Harry being a sacrifice. A willing sacrifice. The thought made Moody's stomach turn even now, remembering Hermione's calm, clinical explanation. The fact that that particular avenue was no longer viable because Harry would need to wholeheartedly give himself up, would need to willingly walk to his own death. And that option was no longer available, not when the boy's mindset right now was focused entirely on wanting to live a life, a full life, far beyond whatever grim, truncated future a revived Voldemort would provide. The girl had been quite clear on that point, her voice steady despite the weight of what she was revealing.

And the fact that—and this had struck Moody like a physical blow—even if they somehow followed Dumbledore's plan, even if Harry somehow sacrificed himself as intended, it wouldn't prevent all of the deaths that Voldemort and his Death Eaters would leave in their wake. It wouldn't save the countless victims who would fall before and after that moment. It was a plan that saved one thing—the final destruction of Voldemort's soul—whilst potentially sacrificing hundreds, thousands of others in the process.

Now he sat here, thoroughly confused, his world view tilted so far off its axis he wasn't sure he'd ever right it again.

"Quite frankly, I thoroughly reject that type of ending," Hermione interrupted his spiralling thoughts, her voice cutting through the fog in his mind. It had probably only been half a minute since she'd finished telling him everything, laying out the whole sordid mess, but it felt like hours had passed in his head. "We would rather make our own end, our own future. So, Mr Moody, will you help us? Or do you still think that Dumbledore knows best?"

Alastor sighed tiredly, the sound coming from somewhere deep in his chest, as he stared up at the ceiling of the Black family mansion. Another heavy sigh escaped him as he turned his gaze towards the patriarch, studying the old man's weathered face. "What do you mean by what you said earlier—when you claimed Dumbledore is the biggest proponent of why Voldemort was successful and why our government is in its current pathetic state?"

The two goblins—Gorkk and Morkk—along with Hermione, and of course Arcturus himself, all snorted in dark amusement at the question. Different variations of the same bitter, knowing sound. Moody, exhausted beyond measure, just let it be. He was too tired to call them out for their rudeness.

"Well, wasn't Dumbledore the sanctimonious bastard who delayed the passing of legislation for the use of lethal force when dealing with Voldemort and his merry band of fuck-wits?" Arcturus began, his voice deceptively mild but laced with acid. "Time and again, he argued for restraint, for mercy, for giving murdering scum second chances they didn't bloody deserve. Time and again."

"That's Ministry policy," Moody interjected automatically, though even as he said it, he knew how weak it sounded. "The Wizengamot sets the rules of engagement, not—"

"Ministry policy that Dumbledore personally championed." Arcturus's grey eyes glittered dangerously. "I have the Wizengamot transcripts in my study, Alastor. Fourteen separate motions for expanded Auror authority between 1971 and 1981. Fourteen. Would you like to guess whose name appears in opposition on every single one?"

Moody's mouth clicked shut.

"Wasn't Dumbledore the biggest bloody proponent of capturing everyone alive and letting 'proper' due process deal with them? And where did that get us?" Arcturus leant forwards in his chair. "How many of those fuckers are still out and about now, walking free without any repercussions whatsoever? Lucius Malfoy sits three seats from the Minister. Nott controls half the import licences in Britain, for Merlin's sake—and don't let me get started on the Carrows."

"The Carrows were imperiused," Moody cut in, but his voice lacked conviction.

Arcturus's smile was thin and cruel. "Ah, that argument, has anyone asked them under veritaserum?"

The silence stretched. Moody didn't have an answer, because he'd suspected the same thing for years and never had the authority to verify it.

"How many families were completely wiped out, entire bloodlines extinguished?" Arcturus's voice was rising now, decades of suppressed fury bleeding through the aristocratic veneer. "The Bones family reduced to one niece and her aunt—and that only because Edgar had the sense to hide his niece while the Death Eaters found his home. The Prewetts are practically extinct. The McKinnons, slaughtered and wiped out."

Andromeda made a soft, wounded sound. Her hand found Ted's and held on.

"And in exchange for their lives, for the lives of those who were tortured and slaughtered, what did we do? We gave the murderers a second fucking chance. We let them buy their way out with Galleons and influence, let them rise to power in present-day Wizarding Britain whilst their victims moulder in graves, forgotten by everyone except the families that weep for them."

"Some of them were under the Imperius," Moody said, giving the same excuse. He'd been at those trials. He'd watched confessed murderers walk free because they had the right connections, the right bribes, the right excuses.

"Some of them." Arcturus's contempt was palpable. "And Dumbledore advocated for leniency even for those who weren't. Rehabilitation, he called it. Understanding the trauma that drove them to extremism. As if understanding Bellatrix's childhood would bring back the Longbottoms' minds—at least she's rotting in Azkaban."

Tonks flinched at the name—Bellatrix was family, Moody remembered. Her aunt. Another branch of the poisoned Black family tree.

"Quite frankly, I don't give a rat's arse for your generation, but how many of these families' grandmothers and grandfathers who bled and sacrificed for the country during Grindelwald's reign of terror? How would they react to what Wizarding Britain has become?"

"Why didn't Dumbledore deal with Voldemort from the start?" Arcturus was on his feet now, pacing with the restless energy of a caged predator. "Why the fuck did he allow such blatant recruitment from his own bloody school? That shite was a fucking open secret—"

Arcturus shook his head as he took a breath. "And what did Dumbledore do? He sat in his ivory tower spouting platitudes about love and redemption whilst he policed the actions of those who'd actually wanted to put an end to the filth that Britain has produced."

He stopped pacing, turning to face Moody directly. "He had more concern for the souls of murdering scum than for the children they were torturing."

The fire crackled in the silence that followed.

"I didn't spend years in the trenches fighting Grindelwald—" Arcturus's voice cracked, the first genuine vulnerability Moody had heard from him. "—losing friends and comrades to that bastard's army, watching good men die screaming in foreign mud, only for Britain to produce another bloody Dark Lord just a few decades later. At least this time it was isolated."

His hands were shaking now. He gripped the back of his chair to still them.

"As if we'd learnt nothing. As if all those deaths, all that sacrifice, all that blood spilt on European soil meant nothing. As if we were doomed to repeat the same goddamn cycle again and again because one man thought he knew better than everyone else."

Moody caught Hermione, and Harry exchanged a look.

"Dumbledore had the power and the influence to nip this all in the bud right from the beginning." Arcturus's voice dropped, controlled now, but no less cutting. "Supreme Mugwump. Chief Warlock. Headmaster of Hogwarts. The only wizard Voldemort ever feared, if the rumours are true. And what did he do with all that power?"

He laughed—a hollow, mirthless sound. "He twiddled his thumbs and spouted platitudes about the power of love conquering all. As if love protected the families who were burnt alive in their homes, those dozens tortured and maimed, the thousands they'd killed in sport."

Arcturus gestured sharply at both Hermione and Harry. "And after listening to these two insufferable headaches, after hearing what they know, what they've seen in their visions... he'd do it all again. The manipulative old goat would let it all play out exactly the same way, wouldn't change a single damned thing."

His gaze locked onto Moody's, and there was something almost desperate in it—a man who'd been screaming into the void for decades and finally found someone who might actually listen.

"He'd sacrifice all of you—every single one—your lives, your futures, your children—for the conclusion of a fucking prophecy. All for whatever greater good he thinks he's serving. Because in Dumbledore's grand design, as long as the people he deemed good didn't spill blood, then they had the moral high ground. Never mind that their refusal to act cost countless other lives."

Arcturus sank back into his conjured chair, suddenly looking every one of his considerable years. The rage had burnt itself out, leaving only weary cynicism in its wake.

"The view would probably be good," he murmured. "A moral high ground created from the bodies of those sacrificed to the boot of the greater good. Mountains of corpses make for impressive vantage points, I imagine."

A long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper, and Moody heard something that sounded uncomfortably like a confession.

"But who am I to criticise, after all? I washed my hands of Magical Britain when I saw my family supporting another Dark Lord. I retreated to my cottage by the sea and let you all burn."

He met Moody's eyes. "Britain would probably had a better outcome if he did the same."

Moody just sat there on a conjured chair just a few centimetres from the dead corpse of a manticore.

Moody let his gaze drift across the assembled group, truly studying each face in turn for perhaps the first time since this whole bloody mess had started. His magical eye whirred as it shifted focus, though truthfully, he didn't need the enchanted prosthetic to see what was written plainly before him.

Tonks stood near her parents, her hair a subdued mousy brown—the most normal colour he'd seen on her in months. Her metamorphmagus abilities sometimes meant her appearance shifted with her mood, cycling through vibrant pinks and purples when she was happy, dulling to darker shades when stressed. A liability he'd been helping her control. But her posture spoke volumes—shoulders tense, wand hand flexing periodically near her pocket, ready despite the exhaustion that dulled her usually sharp eyes

Andromeda stood ramrod straight beside her daughter, every inch the Black she'd been born as despite decades of running from that legacy. Ted had one hand resting on his wife's lower back, a gesture of comfort that seemed almost unconscious. The Muggle-born solicitor looked thoroughly out of his depth—and who could blame the poor bastard?

Arcturus himself had settled back into his chair, though his fingers still drummed against the armrest in an irregular pattern that suggested his earlier fury hadn't fully dissipated. The old patriarch radiated controlled violence even in repose, years of actual fighting in a war evident in how he'd positioned himself—seemingly casual but with clear sightlines to every entrance, every window, every potential threat. A warrior's instinct, never truly retired.

Harry stood now wearing a new set of clothes. The boy had collapsed earlier from exhaustion and blood loss after that brutal fight with the Manticore, his body pushed beyond reasonable limits. Yet here he stood again, vertical through sheer bloody-minded determination.

And then there was Hermione—

"Well, Mr Moody?" Hermione's voice cut through his observations, precise as a scalpel. "Will you help us create our own ending? Or would you rather we go with option B?"

"I'll help," Moody interrupted, the words escaping before he'd fully processed them. His natural eye narrowed as he watched Hermione's lips curve into something that might generously be called a smile but looked more like a predator acknowledging successful prey. "But I want vows. Magical vows. From everyone involved in this insanity. If we're doing this—if we're actually bloody doing this—then I need guarantees. Protection. Some assurance that I'm not walking into another elaborate trap or conspiracy that'll see me hexed in the back."

"Of course," Hermione agreed far too readily. "That was always part of the plan. We'll all take vows—we'll fashion something both sides agree to."

Moody's magical eye spun rapidly. "You've thought about this. Planned for it. How long have you been—"

"Since we first decided to retrieve Peter Pettigrew," Hermione said simply. "We knew we'd need allies. People with experience, connections, resources we lack."

The compliment—if it even was a compliment—sat oddly. Moody shifted in his seat. "And if I'd refused? If I'd decided this was all too barmy and walked?"

"You already know what would happen. As my granddaughter said, trust and faith are premiums I'm not willing to pay." Arcturus answered with brutal honesty.

Snort. "Fine. So before we do our vows, what's the first step?"

Harry seemed to be looking everywhere else but at Moody as he scratched at his jaw.

"Well, it's time to arrange a prison break!" The words landed like a Bombarda in the sudden silence.

"Prison break," Moody repeated slowly, his magical eye focusing entirely on Hermione whilst his natural eye swept the room, cataloguing reactions. "You want to break Sirius out of Azkaban. Out of the most secure wizarding prison in Britain, guarded by Dementors and blood wards and—" Moody sputtered as he couldn't find the words but settled for two. "You're insane."

Hermione's smile widened. "Well, after we get magical vows from each other."

-=&<o>&=-

To be continued…

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