After Kevin had gone, Dumbledore sat for a long time.
The letter was from the President of the Magical Congress of the United States — not a close acquaintance, not a regular correspondent. The formality of the envelope, the weight of the parchment, the particular care with which the seal had been applied, all spoke to official communication rather than personal news.
He slit it open.
To Albus Dumbledore,
I hope this correspondence finds you well. We have received news regarding Nurmengard Prison and felt you should be informed.
Gellert Grindelwald, who brought so much suffering to our world, passed away recently within its walls.
Dumbledore read it once. He did not reread it.
He folded the letter carefully and set it on the desk in front of him, and he sat there in the silence of his office with the fire burning low and the portraits of previous headmasters watching him from the walls, and he was very still for a long while.
Nurmengard. A prison most of the wizarding world had never heard of, on a mountain on the border between Austria and Germany, built at Grindelwald's own instruction and later used to contain him. He had lived there for over forty years. He had been the prison's only occupant.
Dumbledore had known, abstractly, that the end was approaching. Age made certain things inevitable, even for wizards.
He had not expected it to feel like this. He was not certain what he had expected.
After a time, he reached out and turned the letter face-down on the desk, and he picked up his wand, and he went back to work.
"Kevin, Harry's disappeared. Training wrapped up an hour ago and nobody's seen him."
Ron had come directly to the workshop, which was a reasonable first stop given the frequency with which people looked for Kevin and found him there.
"Room of Requirement," Kevin said, without looking up.
"Training's finished, though."
Kevin gave him the short version: Harry had found Helena, established her identity, reported to Dumbledore, been sent back to search the Repository section for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Ron absorbed this with the expression of someone recalibrating several recent conversations.
"So he's in there now looking for it."
"He won't find it immediately. The Repository is enormous. But he's the best placed to locate it — he has a connection to Horcruxes that the rest of us don't."
Ron settled onto the workshop sofa. He was quiet for a moment.
"What about Draco?"
"Plan's nearly set." Kevin set down his pen. "I'm going to Malfoy Manor to get his parents out. Once they're safe, we dose all three of them, the curse is gone, and Draco comes back properly."
Ron looked at him. "Where are you going to put them? They can't exactly go home."
"No. But they can go to the Ministry." Kevin leaned back, walking through it. "The Ministry now has an active interest in documenting Voldemort's operation. Lucius Malfoy, voluntarily presenting himself to report that Death Eaters have been operating from his home — under circumstances that include whatever mind-control narrative he and his lawyers can construct — gives the Ministry a reason to move on the Manor formally. Voldemort loses his comfortable base. Lucius demonstrates cooperation, contributes intelligence about every operation he's been present for, and negotiates his family's position from a place of information rather than desperation."
"That's—" Ron stopped. "That's actually going to work, isn't it."
"It's going to be messy. But yes."
He looked at Ron, who was staring at the wall with the slightly distant expression of someone running through scenarios.
"You alright?"
"Yeah." Ron's mouth curved slightly. "Just thinking that a year ago, 'rescue the Malfoys' would've been the stupidest sentence I'd ever heard."
Kevin laughed.
When he'd briefed Harry and Hermione that evening, the outline was complete. The week that followed was, on the surface, ordinary — classes, meals, the rhythms of a school term proceeding in the way school terms did. Kevin was absent from his workshop for large portions of each day, working on preparations Kevin didn't specify. Dumbledore had returned from whatever travel had occupied him and was visible at meals again but spoke to no one about his movements.
Then lunch, a week later.
The Great Hall was full and noisy. Kevin was eating. A letter appeared directly in his hand — no owl, no delay, materialising with the specific warmth of phoenix fire.
It hung in the air for half a second, then unfolded, and Dumbledore's voice came out of it, amplified just enough to carry above the hall noise:
"Kevin. Get to the coastal suburbs east of London — you know the spot. Come now. I need your back."
The letter closed and burned to ash.
Kevin chewed. Swallowed. Looked at the table.
"Good thing I have no afternoon classes," he said, to no one in particular. "Otherwise those students would be celebrating a free period."
Harry and Ron stared at him.
"I'll be back tonight." He stood, ruffled Hermione's hair as he passed her chair — she caught his hand briefly, squeezed it once, and let go without looking up — and walked out of the Great Hall at a pace that was purposeful without being urgent.
From a corner table, David Greider watched him leave.
He waited thirty seconds. Then he left too.
The sea cave on the east London coast was not a place that appeared on any Muggle map, which was appropriate because it was not a place any Muggle should have had occasion to find. The cliff face was raw and cold, the sea hammering against the rock in steady, indifferent swells. The cave mouth was a darkness that promised nothing comfortable beyond it.
Dumbledore stood on a flat rock at the water's edge. He looked out at the waves. When Kevin Apparated in beside him, he didn't turn.
"Headmaster."
"Ready?"
"Yes."
Kevin raised one hand. The waves went still — not frozen exactly, but gentled, their energy redirected, the water settling into a deep calm that spread outward from where he stood. The seawater rose, compressed, and froze into ice: a bridge, smooth and solid, running from the rock into the cave's entrance and disappearing into the dark.
Dumbledore stepped onto it. He walked alone into the cave, and the darkness took him.
Kevin waited until Dumbledore was clear. Then he raised his hand again and the ice bridge crumbled, the water resuming its normal chaos as though nothing had interrupted it.
He Disapparated.
Five minutes.
A crack in the cold air above the cave mouth. Voldemort.
He stood on the cliff edge, red eyes moving across the scene — the cave, the water, the fading traces of ice-magic that someone had tried and failed to fully conceal. He read it the way Kevin had intended him to read it: someone had been here. Someone had gone inside. The locket he thought he'd sealed away was in play.
He dissolved into black smoke and shot into the cave.
Across London, a figure in a blue cloak walked up the front drive of Malfoy Manor.
The Death Eater on gate duty had been expecting visitors, but not this particular kind. He had time to notice the crowbar, the wand crackling at the tip with something he didn't like the look of, and the unconscious colleague slung over one shoulder before the relevant calculations completed.
Kevin surveyed the manor's front grounds, the assembled Death Eaters who had now registered his presence, and the building itself.
"Anyone want to save some time," Kevin said pleasantly, "and tell me where Lucius is?"
The first one to move got the crowbar.