At Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall was doing what she did every summer: reviewing the list of incoming students. Children from wizarding families usually needed little more than their letters and a trip to Diagon Alley, but Muggle-born students required more care. To Muggle parents, owls carrying letters from a hidden school of magic sounded less like education and more like a fairy tale that had lost its way.
That was why professors usually made personal visits. A demonstration of magic, a calm explanation, and a properly signed letter could do what parchment alone could not. Unfortunately, some professors were deeply unsuited to that sort of work, and Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin House, was perhaps the finest example.
In the Transfiguration classroom, Professor McGonagall sat with several members of staff. Bathsheda Babbling, the Ancient Runes professor, had taken a seat near the window, while Charity Burbage from Muggle Studies was checking her own notes. Professor Grubbly-Plank, the substitute Care of Magical Creatures teacher, stood beside Madam Hooch, who had the sharp-eyed expression of someone who spotted trouble faster from habit than from choice.
"Professors, this is this year's list of new students," McGonagall said, passing the parchment along. "Please check whether there are any issues with the children assigned to you."
There were fewer than fifty names in total, so the list was not even as long as a lazy student's end-of-term essay. Once the children from wizarding families were removed, each professor only had one or two Muggle-born students to visit. It should have been a simple administrative morning.
When the list reached Madam Hooch, she looked over it from bottom to top as usual. Her brows drew together almost at once. "Professor McGonagall, could Roger Williams's address be wrong?"
McGonagall looked up sharply. "Wrong in what way?"
"I remember the Williams family being associated with the south," Madam Hooch said, checking the line three more times. "But this address is in the North Sea, and it says Azkaban. If it weren't summer, I would suspect the Weasley twins had somehow got hold of this."
"Williams?" Professor Babbling murmured. "That name sounds familiar."
"Buck Williams," Professor McGonagall said, rising from her chair. She pronounced the name with cold precision, because she had not forgotten the man behind it. He had been one of the Death Eaters connected to attacks on members of the Order of the Phoenix.
"Perhaps it's only the same surname," Professor Burbage said, though no one sounded particularly convinced. The classroom went quiet, and the parchment suddenly seemed far heavier than it had a moment before.
Before anyone could speak again, the door opened hard enough to rattle in its frame. Professor Sprout rushed into the Transfiguration classroom covered in soil, her face flushed with anger and distress. She clutched a copy of The Daily Prophet in one hand as though it had personally offended her.
"Professor McGonagall, have you seen today's paper?" she demanded.
"What is it, Professor Sprout?" McGonagall asked.
"The Daily Prophet says the Ministry of Magic left a baby in Azkaban for eleven years." Sprout's voice cracked as she spoke. "The whole wizarding world is talking about it, and Headmaster Dumbledore has already gone to the Wizengamot."
"Roger Williams?" Madam Hooch asked at once. Her tone was half question, half confirmation, because the line on the list was suddenly impossible to ignore.
"The report doesn't give the child's name," Professor Sprout said, wiping at her eyes with the back of one muddy hand. "But the Ministry and those Aurors have gone too far. How could anyone leave a child in Azkaban? That place is full of Dementors. Poor child, poor little thing."
Several professors gathered around the newspaper. The front page carried a full-width headline in enormous black letters: Little Star of Azkaban: A Hogwarts New Student. Beneath it was a moving photograph taken through a cell door, showing a small figure standing before a Dementor in a cold, dark Azkaban cell.
The boy raised a silver-white Patronus against the monster, and a moment later, he collapsed into his mother's arms. Beneath the photograph was one small line of text: A child who has never seen the sun. The words were simple, but they cut more deeply than any elaborate accusation could have done.
Rita Skeeter was, in some ways, the most gifted journalist in the British wizarding world. This report was worthy of her skill, and perhaps even beyond her usual standard. In another writer's hands, the facts might have become dry outrage; in Rita's, every sentence gleamed with personal grief, indignation, and carefully sharpened drama.
Her usual articles were often dismissed as exaggeration, rumor, and showmanship. This one, if true, was something else entirely: a rare masterpiece of public fury. Each sentence flew toward the Ministry of Magic like a curse, and the sharpest of them landed directly at the feet of Minister Cornelius Fudge.
Only the day before, the Ministry had issued a solemn announcement insisting that wartime imprisonments had been reviewed and justified. Now Hogwarts had been dragged into the storm as well, because Albus Dumbledore was both Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rita had not spared him.
Everyone in the wizarding world knew that a Hogwarts acceptance letter bore the current Headmaster's authorization. The letter sent to Azkaban naturally carried that authority, and Rita had photographed it clearly enough to hang it before the public. Whether Dumbledore had noticed the address himself no longer mattered to angry readers.
"This is negligence. This is a crime. This is contempt for the Wizengamot Charter of Rights," one passage declared. Rita went further still, comparing the Ministry's hidden machinery and Hogwarts' silence to the very institutional cruelty the war was supposed to have defeated.
They use the name of equality to trample law and justice, then silence the witches and wizards who oppose them. They label their targets as dangerous, lock them away, and allow Dementors to reduce them to shadows, without even sparing an infant. If the soil remains poisoned, it can only grow the flower of evil.
Rita's article did not stop there. I looked through the cell door at the little star shining in the darkness, and hot tears rolled down my cheeks. A child raised beneath Dementors still conjured a Patronus. What, then, has the world above done with its freedom?
By the time the professors finished reading, the Transfiguration classroom had filled without anyone quite noticing. Almost every Hogwarts teacher was there, apart from Professor Binns and Headmaster Dumbledore. Even those who disliked Rita Skeeter found themselves staring silently at the photograph.
"Professor McGonagall," Charity Burbage asked softly, "is this true?"
Everyone looked toward McGonagall. The new student list lay on the table between them, with Roger Williams's address written in plain ink. There was no comfortable interpretation left.
Professor McGonagall removed her glasses. With a quick flick of her wand, she transformed the quill beside her into a handkerchief and wiped the lenses carefully. When she put them back on, her expression had regained its usual firmness, though her eyes remained troubled.
"Everyone, please do not allow emotion to outrun action," she said. "Headmaster Dumbledore has already gone to the Wizengamot to address this matter. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will protect every student."
At that same moment in the Ministry of Magic, Cornelius Fudge had nearly destroyed his office. Papers lay scattered across the floor, a chair was overturned near the fireplace, and a cracked inkpot bled black across an official report. Fudge paced like a furious bull, wishing he could personally send Rita Skeeter to Azkaban for the humiliation she had caused.
"That woman set me up!" Fudge roared at everyone unfortunate enough to be in the room.
Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the Ministry's announcement, and Rita's report had struck the entire institution across the face. Fudge had every reason, or at least every desire, to believe it was a conspiracy. Rita Skeeter, that scheming, shameless witch, had launched an attack not only on the Ministry of Magic, but on the Minister himself.
The corridor outside his office was packed with Ministry officials. Some argued loudly over whether the story was true, while others insisted it must be exaggerated. Almost no one seemed interested in verifying the facts; instead, officials of every rank were exhausting themselves trying to prove that the Ministry could not possibly have imprisoned the wrong person.
Fudge's secretary squeezed through the crowd and caught Dolores Umbridge by the sleeve. "Dolores, Rita's report is false, isn't it?"
"No," Dolores said. As Senior Undersecretary, she had gone straight to the archives the moment she saw the newspaper. Her expression was tight, which was answer enough before she continued. "At the very least, it cannot be dismissed easily."
"If it's true, how could a baby survive an Unforgivable Curse?" the secretary asked, lowering her voice. "That was the Imperius Curse. And if the child was brought into Azkaban by Jessica, how did he grow up there?"
"The person who acted was Barty Crouch Sr.," Dolores replied. "We all know he had no patience for Death Eaters."
The secretary stared into Dolores's eyes, hoping to find the answer she wanted there. The longer she looked, the clearer it became that no comforting answer was coming.
"Who knows?" Dolores said helplessly. "Merlin above, our Savior survived Voldemort's Killing Curse."
"But…"
"That's enough," Janus, the Minister's personal assistant, said as he approached. He gave Dolores a subtle look, warning her not to say more in the corridor. "Go guard the fireplace. The Minister will need it kept clear."
"The Minister believes that if former Minister Millicent Bagnold steps forward, things may still turn around," the secretary said anxiously. "I heard him say Headmaster Dumbledore and Barty Crouch Sr. also bear responsibility that cannot be denied."
The secretary was clearly afraid that Fudge might be forced to resign over this. Everyone in the office understood they were in the same boat, and if the Minister sank, too many careers would be dragged under with him.
"You're hoping the previous Minister will step forward?" Janus shook his head, pushed the secretary into a quieter corner, and took the documents from her hand.