Tom counted on his fingers. "Nicolas Flamel. Greatest alchemist in recorded history. Newt Scamander. Master of magical creatures. The man Grindelwald hates most personally."
He pointed at himself.
"And the future's strongest wizard."
Sirius and Dumbledore both absorbed this with the expression of people who have decided that objecting would accomplish nothing. It was not a statement either of them could honestly refute. Tom's name was already worth something in North America that Dumbledore's couldn't quite match.
"That group attending Regulus's funeral is enough to put it in the history books by itself," Tom continued. "Ask Dumbledore to bring a few others he trusts completely, round out the numbers. Is that not enough?"
Sirius blinked. Then nodded, slowly.
"Then it's settled." Dumbledore pressed the moment before any second thoughts could form. He set the date for the penultimate day before term began, a week away, enough time for preparation and to gather the right people.
The days that followed were quiet ones. Tom spent most of them working alongside Nicolas on the purified Inferi, and the work went well enough. The extracted spiritual essence existed, and they could retrieve it, though the quantity per subject was a fraction of what a living person would carry. Volume compensated for yield, and across enough subjects they had sufficient material to continue.
Tom finalised the consolidated order from multiple wizarding governments, a logistical problem that had looked formidable and turned out not to be.
Fudge received the completed delivery in a state of baffled suspicion, unable to reconcile the quantity with the timeline and privately convinced something had been substituted. The spot checks came back clean on every item. He released the remaining payment with the expression of a man who has run out of legitimate reasons to delay.
The real constraint on further business had dissolved anyway. Rosier's parting warning had made most governments reluctant to be seen obstructing Tom's commercial arrangements. Very few people wanted Grindelwald dropping by for an unscheduled conversation.
On the day of the funeral, the sky produced a light and cooperative rain. Tom wore a black robe with a white flower at the chest and brought Daphne, who had dressed in a long black gown. A small number of people had already gathered when they arrived. The most immediately visible was Arthur Weasley's red hair. Near him stood a young witch with long curling red hair, currently in conversation with Sirius.
"Tom, glad you're here." Sirius spotted them and came over. He had made an effort. The usual loose tangle of black hair had been tamed into something structured, his beard trimmed back to a clean shadow across his jaw.
"Does this count as sufficient respect?" Tom asked, smiling.
"More than." Sirius nodded firmly. "Regulus would have been pleased. The finest Slytherin of the age came."
Something had shifted in Sirius overnight, quietly but clearly. Whatever bias he had carried toward Slytherin had simply stopped being there. The problem had never been the house. It was never the ambition or the pride or the hunger for recognition. It was the people who had turned those things toward ruin. The qualities themselves were not wrong.
The young witch with curling red hair had followed Sirius over and was looking at Tom with open curiosity. She extended a hand. "Hello. Nymphadora Tonks. I hate that name, so just Tonks is fine."
She paused, apparently registering that Tom already knew it.
"You've heard it before."
The word Nymphadora traces through Greek to the nymphs of mythology, beautiful spirits and minor divinities. In contemporary English slang, however, the prefix had a rather different association, roughly equivalent to a British man going through life being introduced as Richard and insisting on the short form.
"A pleasure, Miss Tonks." Tom shook her hand.
The moment their hands met, Daphne made a small startled sound. Tonks's hair shifted from vivid red to bubblegum pink, and her nose stretched outward and downward until it reached elephant proportions.
She looked at Tom, who had not blinked.
"Why aren't you reacting?" She sounded genuinely put out. This had been a carefully arranged moment, designed specifically to catch the rising young genius off-guard. "That's my best one."
"Sirius told me," Tom said, withdrawing his hand. "He said his niece was a natural Metamorphmagus. I've been looking forward to seeing it."
"I had no idea," Daphne said, with complete sincerity and significant envy.
"He sold me out," Tonks said, directing a look at Sirius that communicated this clearly, then immediately cycled through four different hair colours and three different faces in rapid succession, each one more unexpected than the last. Daphne dissolved into laughter. The two of them had closed half the distance between strangers in under a minute.
Tom eventually reminded Tonks, with some patience, that this was a funeral. She composed herself. Somewhat.
Half an hour later, Dumbledore arrived with Nicolas and Newt, and that meant it was time.
Regulus lay in his coffin surrounded by flowers, the Black family crest on the lid, dressed in deep green robes with silver threading. He looked, in the way only the properly buried dead can, as though he had finally stopped being somewhere uncomfortable.
Sirius drew a long breath, and in the quiet that had settled over the gathered mourners, he began to speak.
The funeral started.
And in Albania, a very long way away, Grindelwald was doing his best to arrange a funeral of his own.
He had been searching for the better part of a month. The search had finally turned up something.
The old Dark Lord and the new one were about to take their first measure of each other.