"I—I—"
"You fled," Maverick cut him off again, saying matter-of-factly. "In case your old master came looking... How did a scum like you even managed to cross the threshold from Magus in the first place?"
"You—you... you're speaking nonsense." Karkaroff finally managed to scrape together what little remained of his nerve. "I am the headmaster of Durmstrang. I am a headmaster." As though saying it twice might somehow lend the point more weight. He was breathing heavily now, like an ox after a hard run. "You... you have no right to level baseless accusations against me." By the time he finished, his face was slick with cold sweat.
"I won't stand for this." Contrary to his own words, he rose to his feet only after saying them. "If this is all you wished to discuss, then I'll be leaving!"
Once again, his actions failed to match his words. Truth be told, he didn't have the nerve to walk out, all that bravado was nothing more than a show.
He looked between Dumbledore and Maverick for several more seconds, waiting for their reaction. Maverick was propping his elbow on the armrest, his cheek resting against his curled fingers, looking utterly bored, while Dumbledore simply watched him with that familiar, knowing smile.
His forehead broke out in even more sweat until, finally, Dumbledore made a small gesture.
"Do sit back down, Igor, won't you?" Dumbledore inclined his head. "My apologies. Maverick does have a way with words at times."
Dumbledore's attempt at smoothing things over seemed to hand Karkaroff a scrap of borrowed courage. He gave a short huff, looked toward Maverick, who was watching him in turn, when a thought seemed to strike him.
"I see now." A crooked smile slowly formed on his lips. "Is this about my vote against your proposal, at the Assembly? How childish. A dignified Archmage, resorting to such petty means."
Beside him, Snape shot him a brief sideways glance. His expression never changed, not once, not from the moment he had arrived, but inwardly he found himself almost admiring the man's audacity.
"Severus, you're seeing this, aren't you? Two Arch-Mages ganging up on a humble Great Mage simply because he doesn't share their political views…"
Snape didn't so much as bat an eye. If you're courting death, don't drag me into it.
Maverick, meanwhile, finally moved from his relaxed position. He reached for the steaming cup of tea in front of him, took a slow sip, and set the cup back down with a quiet click against the saucer. Then he calmly raised his hand, his fingers curling one by one as though closing around something only he could feel.
At the same instant, Karkaroff found himself suddenly unable to breathe, as if something had seized him by the throat. Something had, in fact, though he couldn't have said what, and he found himself rising slowly off the floor.
He broke into a fit of coughing, clutching at his neck with both hands. His fingers found nothing, yet he could feel something there.
"You're right about one thing."
Karkaroff struggled for air, his vision beginning to blur. Through the haze, Maverick's voice finally reached him.
"Aside from the fact that you fled when you were asked to watch over the students, I do indeed find you rather an eyesore..."
"—Dumble... dore..." Karkaroff was properly terrified now. He tried to summon his magic on instinct, but there was no response. He couldn't even feel it anymore, as though something had silenced it completely.
A series of strangled sounds escaped his throat as his eyes turned toward Dumbledore once more, surely this benevolent wizard wouldn't stand for such violence, not here, not inside his own school.
Through his fading vision, he watched in disbelief as Dumbledore calmly lifted his teacup and took another sip, not even looking up.
Karkaroff's heart sank.
If Dumbledore had any objection to what was happening, he would have stopped it already. The fact that he hadn't could only mean one thing, he didn't care.
His mind scrambled frantically, consciousness already beginning to slip at the edges like something coming loose at its moorings.
What in Merlin's name had happened to Dumbledore?
The wizard across from him with his teacup bore almost no resemblance to the Dumbledore he remembered. Where was the righteous old man who had spent a lifetime preaching peace, who had always sought to talk his way through every conflict before he would so much as consider anything else?
Actually, Karkaroff wasn't entirely wrong in his assumption. Under ordinary circumstances, Dumbledore would never have permitted violence in his office, of all places.
Which could only mean Dumbledore was simply letting Maverick do as he pleased.
That, and Karkaroff had indeed fled when he was explicitly told to remain and watch over the students in the absence of Dumbledore and everyone else who had left with him.
If there was one thing this old wizard would not abide, it was anything that put Hogwarts, or the children within it, at risk.
Another fit of coughing wracked Karkaroff's body, until at last, Dumbledore spoke. His calm voice reached Karkaroff's desperate ears like a warm spring breeze at that moment.
"Well... I suppose there's little harm in giving my old friend another chance to explain himself, wouldn't you say?"
Friend? Karkaroff turned the word over in the back of his failing mind.
Is this how friends treat each other? Sitting there calmly, drinking tea, while their friend is being choked half to death right in front of them? Naturally, he kept those particular complaints to himself. There was no need to invite another "friendly" gesture.
The grip around his throat loosened at last, and he dropped to the floor on all fours, gasping and retching, his body pulling in air with the desperate, graceless urgency of something that had come very close to running out of it entirely.
Snape was still sitting there with the same blank expression, firmly declaring that none of this had anything to do with him, except that his forehead had, sometime in the last few breaths, begun producing a small but telling number of beads of sweat.
Karkaroff's hand shot out for the edge of the table, and he hauled himself upright, panting hard, his chest heaving with the effort of it. One hand stayed clamped around his own throat, rubbing at the skin as though he might somehow rub the memory of that grip away along with the sensation. He could still feel it there, the shape of fingers that had never truly existed, and a few more wretched coughs tore their way out of him before he could stop them.
"Talk."
He glanced toward the sound, and found himself staring into a pair of bored, half-lidded eyes.
He cleared his throat again. "Exactly what... do you want me to say?"
Honestly, he still didn't understand it. Yes, he had fled the school, but he had returned almost immediately, the very night after watching it happen live, watching his old master fall. It hadn't even been that long, he came back well before the next day broke.
On the other hand, whether he would have returned at all if Voldemort hadn't fallen... that was an if, wasn't it?
Maverick didn't repeat himself. He only furrowed his brow, waiting.
Karkaroff swallowed dryly, a faint twitch running through one eye. Did he really have to spell it out? That he had fled because he was a coward?
"Fine!" Whatever, he thought bitterly. It wasn't as though they could kill him simply for leaving. He had committed no crime. A bit of humiliation, he could stomach that much, at least. "When I advanced to Great Mage, I removed the Dark Mark from myself by certain means. The Dark Lord was, by all accounts, dead at the time, and with my newfound power, I saw no reason to keep following him."
He glanced toward Snape as he said it, but Snape still hadn't moved so much as a muscle.
He looked back to Dumbledore and Maverick and pressed on. "Not all Death Eaters followed him out of loyalty. For most of us, it was fear… fear, and nothing else."
He cleared his throat once more. "When I saw that lunatic alive again, in the flesh, it terrified me. I knew he'd call his followers to him the moment he was resurrected, and when he didn't find me there, he would come looking. The Dark Lord, if he hates anything more than failure, it's betrayal. I feared for my life. You might even say I did the school a favour. Staying here would only have drawn that madman straight to Hogwarts. Isn't it rather fortunate that I left?"
"How noble of you."
Karkaroff could feel the sarcasm dripping off Maverick's tone from a mile away, though he found he no longer cared.
"Have I answered your curiosity, Lord Arch-Mage?" He put a faint, deliberate weight on the title as he said it.
Maverick only gave a low hum in response, lazily making a small shooing motion with his hand. "You can leave now."
That's it? Karkaroff looked at him in bewilderment. All of that, just to make me admit I had fled to save my own skin? He stood frozen for several more seconds, stunned into silence, until a flicker of movement caught his eye, Dumbledore, reaching for his cup, taking an unhurried sip.
Fine, fine. I'll endure it for now. Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river. Don't bully a man just because he's weaker today.
He didn't voice it aloud this time either, merely swallowing his humiliation bitterly. As for the future, that was simply his way of giving himself some closure.
He cleared his throat for what felt like the hundredth time, then turned without another word and made for the door. The room had fallen deathly silent, and the short distance across it seemed to stretch on far longer than it should have.
Then just as his hand reached the door, Maverick's voice came from behind him once again.
"Once you return to Durmstrang with your students, you will resign as headmaster."
Karkaroff spun around at once, genuinely confused, and more than a little startled. The word left him before he could stop it. "Why?"
Aside from his rank as Great Mage, his position as headmaster of Durmstrang was the thing Karkaroff took the most pride in. It gave him standing enough, at times, to stand shoulder to shoulder with Archmages themselves. How could he possibly be expected to give that up?
Again, why?
"Your kind of thinking has no place in the world that is coming…"
Maverick's words landed with the certainty of a fact. Karkaroff realised he wasn't being asked. He was merely being informed.
"...and I have no interest in seeing your beliefs passed down to the next generation—"
"—This isn't fair!" Karkaroff protested. "All I did was disagree with you politically—"
"—Your politics bore me." Maverick replied calmly. "Your demeanor is that of a pouting child. Someone like you should be kept as far away as possible from anywhere that educates children."
Maverick continued before Karkaroff could get another word out. "I expect your resignation within a day of the school term ending. If I don't hear from you…" Maverick left the rest unsaid.
Karkaroff's mouth hung half open, the protest dying somewhere in his throat. He wanted to argue. But the other side had just made a threat, plainly enough, and he had no doubt it would be collected on, should he choose otherwise.
In truth, this had been the whole reason Maverick had summoned him here in the first place. Durmstrang was, after all, one of the wizarding world's most prestigious schools, and Maverick had no intention of leaving it in the hands of a man whose thinking still lagged decades behind the times.
And Karkaroff had been quite right in his guess. Maverick had brought him here also because of the vote he had cast against him at the ICW Assembly.
After clenching his fist in frustration, Karkaroff gave a final nod and walked out without another word.
The silence didn't linger for long before the attention in the room turned toward the other elephant.
"Severus… I do apologize that you had to sit through all of that."
Dumbledore didn't wait for an answer. He waved a hand, conjured a cup of tea, and handed it to Snape with a smile.
Snape didn't refuse either. His throat had grown rather dry during the exchange anyway.
He had barely taken a sip when Maverick's voice reached him. Compared to how he had spoken to Karkaroff, the tone was almost mild. Almost.
—————————
Author's Note:
So, a new arc and a new world have already kicked off in the advanced chapters.
A Song of Ice and Fire.
Just fyi, world travel will not be quite the way you might be thinking. Any new worlds or stories Mavrick stumbles upon will exist as planets somewhere across the universe, rather than separate dimensions or realities.
Uh... anyways.
If you enjoy the story, please donate your daily Power Stones. They are an essential nutrient for both this story and the author's survival
If you wish to support me, you can visit my P@tr3on, where you can read 20+ extra chapters ahead!
You can find this story on Webnovel, Royal Road, and FanFiction, all under the same author name: RyanFic. Updates drop first on Webnovel!
PAT r30n [.] com / RyanFic
Thank you so much for your support. It means the world! 💙😊