Dumbledore's letter reached Fudge's desk within the hour, and the Ministry moved with the kind of efficiency it usually reserved for situations where inaction would be more embarrassing than action.
One team collected the Death Eater who had been occupying David Greider's position at the Ministry. Another team went to collect the Malfoy family.
The arithmetic of the Malfoys' situation was not complicated. Voldemort was alive and operational. The Malfoys had supported him. The last time, they'd survived by combining Lucius's considerable legal spending with the convenient fact that Voldemort had been temporarily non-existent. That particular exit was now closed.
Pick Voldemort's side: Azkaban, and whatever came after.
Pick the Ministry's side: lose half their business dealings, take significant social damage among the pure-blood families who still thought Voldemort was the future, and live with the lasting stain of having turned.
They were not stupid people. Voldemort's idea of gratitude towards useful servants had been made extremely clear over the past several days. No one at Malfoy Manor was entertaining fantasies about his gentler side.
Dumbledore had said a quiet word. Lucius, reading the room with the instincts of a man who had survived thirty years of wizarding politics, took it from there. Kevin and the others were not needed.
The result: a comprehensive list of Voldemort's Ministry infiltrators, delivered in a voice that implied Lucius had simply been waiting for the right moment to be helpful.
Draco returned to Hogwarts a few days later.
His reception in Slytherin was what it was. There were faces that turned away. Voices that used the word traitor close enough to be heard. He moved through it without breaking stride. He was, by Kevin's rough count, very much in the minority of people who had actually spent time in the same room as Voldemort and survived it as anything other than a servant. The other Slytherins' opinions ranked somewhere below his immediate concerns.
His actual welcome came from a cluster of Gryffindors who'd been waiting by the entrance hall.
He tried to look annoyed about it. He didn't quite manage.
The quiet stretched into something genuinely pleasant.
The O.W.L.s revision season had settled over Hogwarts like a light snowfall — present, but not catastrophic. Hermione had claimed the armchair by the window in Kevin's workroom and treated it as sovereign territory, her books fanned out across every available surface, Crookshanks curled beside her producing the loud, self-satisfied purring of a cat who had fully claimed his afternoon.
Kevin sat at his workbench with sunlight across his back, working on something that required more concentration than it was currently getting.
It was, he reflected, extremely peaceful.
The big external news: Dumbledore had departed for somewhere overseas and hadn't specified a return date. McGonagall was running the school with the crisp efficiency she brought to everything. Sirius Black and Lupin had come back to Hogwarts and were running combat sessions for the advanced students — which had revived Harry's enthusiasm considerably and given Ron someone to complain about again.
Harry, Ron, and Draco had become, in the past few weeks, essentially the same organism. If you saw one, you saw three. They'd developed the comfortable rhythm of people who had been through something together and were now on the other side of it.
Hermione, for her part, was enjoying the relative solitude.
Right up until the door flew open.
Harry, Ron, and Draco came in at speed, bringing cold air and noise with them.
"Why is it absolutely freezing in here?" Ron demanded, hugging himself.
"Kidney problems?" Kevin offered. "Classic symptom. You should really tell someone."
"It's not kidney — we don't have — that's not what—" Ron went red.
"Bullshit!" All three of them protested at roughly the same volume.
"Kevin." Harry was already reaching into his jacket. "We've got something."
He produced a tiara. Silver, heavy, extraordinary — an eagle's head at its crest and a large gem seated precisely at the centre, catching the light of the workroom and throwing it back in fractured pieces.
Ravenclaw's diadem.
Hermione was on her feet and across the room before she'd consciously decided to move. Kevin leaned forward from his bench.
"We found it in the Room of Requirement," Harry said. "Helena Ravenclaw showed me — the Grey Lady. She knew where it was." He set it down on the workbench. "We tried everything. Can't break it. Has to be a Horcrux."
Kevin turned it over in his hands carefully. He already knew what it was, but knowing it and holding it were different things. The object radiated a faint, cold wrongness — like touching something that looked like food and smelled like rot.
Two left after this. The cup. The fragment in Harry.
Both manageable. Not today, but manageable.
"Ravenclaw had genuine taste," he said, setting it down. "Elegant. Classic. None of this tacky locket business."
"Slytherin taste is objectively superior." Draco's voice had the tone of a man defending something sacred. "Voldemort is the aberration, not the standard."
"Snakes and green everything," Ron said. "Very varied. Very subtle."
"Weasley, I will duel you."
"Bold talk from someone who needed three Gryffindors to rescue him."
Draco pointed his wand at Ron. Ron pointed his wand at Draco. Neither of them moved. This had become, apparently, their primary form of bonding.
Kevin tuned them out, pulled a fresh sheet of parchment, and wrote Dumbledore a short note. Harry found the Ravenclaw Diadem. It's a Horcrux. We have it. He folded it, sealed it, and handed it to Fawkes, who had been sitting on the top of a shelf pretending not to exist.
Wherever Dumbledore was, he'd get it.
Malfoy Manor had been repaired.
Not completely — certain things couldn't be replaced with a charm, and Kevin had been quite thorough. Some of the gardens were gone. A set of irreplaceable portraits had been reduced to ash. The east wing had needed more structural work than Narcissa cared to think about.
But the bones of the place were sound. The staff had returned. Additional security had been arranged, including a few Ministry-approved wizards patrolling the grounds, largely because Lucius had made it financially attractive.
The business losses stung more persistently than the physical damage. Old alliances had shifted overnight. Some of the pure-blood families who'd been partners for decades were keeping their distance. It was the kind of calculation Lucius understood — he'd done it himself, often enough, to others — and understanding it didn't make it easier.
He was managing.
In the main drawing room, Lucius and Narcissa sat in the side chairs with the careful posture of people who were guests in their own home.
At the head of the table, an elderly man turned his teacup in his hands, considered it thoughtfully, and took a slow sip.
"Excellent," he said, setting it down with a small, genuine smile. He settled back into the sofa with the ease of a man who had decided, some time ago, to be comfortable. "You have a remarkably fine household, Lucius."
"I'm glad it pleases you." Lucius was careful to keep the relief out of his voice. "I'll have more brought up."
"No need to fuss." The old man — Gellert Grindelwald — waved it off pleasantly. "Nurmengard cured me of the habit of making demands. I find I appreciate things more when they're offered freely."
He smiled again. The smile was warm. Easy. There was something grandfatherly about it — a quality that sat strangely alongside the knowledge of what he could do when he chose not to smile.
Lucius and Narcissa knew what he was. They had not forgotten the confrontation at the Manor, the blue fire that had climbed the walls, the sheer scale of power that had been moved through this very house. This was not a gentle old man who had wandered in from the countryside.
But he wasn't Voldemort. He'd never hurt them. He'd never given an order. He seemed to simply — like the Manor. The architecture. The history of it. The quality of the tea.
He had come back and said he intended to stay for a while, if they didn't mind.
They had found, surprisingly, that they didn't.
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