It was nearly midnight, but Millicent Bagnold, Minister of Magic, was still sitting in her office and the only source of light was the old bulb above and the lamp standing on her desk. It was sort of beautiful, really, how the darkness of the night without fused with the light inside making the shadows curl darkly and elegantly between the folds of her magenta robes, around the creases on her forehead, snaked down one side of her face and along the arm to the hand that held a long, yellowing scroll of parchment. Her eyelids fluttered briefly beneath her gold spectacle frame. It really was quite late.
She scanned her tired grey eyes over the letter one more time and as though reading it had caused her physical pain, her eyes closed for a few seconds and she remained there, immobilised, frozen all over.
And then they opened, immediately pinning their gaze onto the clock on the opposite wall. Her eyes, flecks of hardened silver flickering around her irises with the ticking of the clock, bringing about distances to measure the minutes to midnight that spelled the end of the horrible week. With a loud finale clunk, the hands conjoined together at 12 and she got up from her chair with a bound of surprising energy. Snatching up the letter and stuffing it in her pocket, she waved her wand in one big circular motion and her office sprung to life as she walked out of the door.
The mahogany desk spat out its many drawers and the ruffling, organised papers slotted themselves into them, then closed together soundlessly. And as if they were paper prototype, her desk, the cabinet (which held numerous vases of tulips), the walls and even the wooden floor, folded themselves together like a giant-sized origami and only when her entire office was no bigger than a wallet did it stuff itself into the pocket of her robes and was no longer.
The sharp clip-clop of her high-heeled shoes resonated through the walkway as the door behind her simply melted into the white wall and out of sight. There were few lights illuminating the Ministry of Magic. It seemed to wallow in the only sound available to it and sent it back, again, again like a score of songbirds, but really was just emptiness.
She stepped into the elevator and the iron-wrought doors clanged shut, sending ripples into the space and made its way down to first basement and bumped into —
'Mr. Pestigur, have y- ….are you quite all right?' said Bagnold, peering into the old wizard's sunken, strangely blank face. She slipped her hand into her left pocket, gripping her wand.
'Yes… yes, I'm completely fine. Must be the…the…the weather.' Pestigur mumbled, snapping out of his reverie. 'Yes, the weather, just a little cold and tired is all.' He couldn't seem to meet her eyes. 'Best be going, Minister, since you're the last one. I'll pack up. Goodnight, Minister.'
'Goodnight, Mr Pestigur,' said Bagnold, but hardly noticed the greeting leave her mouth. She kept on staring long after he had shot her a tight-lipped smile that looked more like a grimace and hobbled as quickly as his skinny stiff legs could take him. Shaking her head slightly, as though trying to shake away the awful paranoia that leeched onto her like a layer of slime. We've got to trust people, she thought, looking at him extinguish the lights with a few flicks of his wand. Right now, overtaken with all the evil and darkness that anything could have mustered, if we couldn't even stop suspecting the fellow people around us, what is there left? And besides, everyone was worried sick these few days, it was pretty normal to not be completely on the dot. And it was really late.
Removing her hand from her pocket, she walked a few steps to the odd, dark tile at the side of the room and turned on the spot. The last thing she saw before she was overwhelmed in suffocation was the lights above flickering into darkness and whirled away.
And she was flying…flying…and she couldn't breathe, gasping for air…air, she needed air…air…air…And as soon as she was sure that she would die from the lack of oxygen, she popped up out of nowhere with a big resounding crack on the doorstep of her house.
Taking a huge, relieving, lungful of the fresh night air, she straightened out of her inelegant half-bow and took a moment to gather herself before grasping the knob with her right hand. It grew hot under her touch, burned lava red, before dimming and cooling down, though slightly wet with her hand sweat. She twisted it and for a moment she heard the prickling sound of slammed door and felt wrenching movement in her chest but the door gave way.
What had happened back there? She felt like a child, disapparating for the first time all over again. Shoving her trembling hands into her pockets, she took out the box and the letter and placed them onto the table and flashed in front of her the sound of shattering glass and shouting and she leapt back from it as though electrocuted.
She needed to stop thinking about it. It was in the past, gone. She was the Minister of Magic. She needed to up her game and pull herself together. This wasn't the time for falling apart, yet she had never felt more brittle. It was strange, she was never one for dwelling on the past, which was true: she hadn't thought about it that much after adulthood. Why now? In a moment of fleeting desperation, she scrunched up the petals of the flower tulip she loved so much, letting the wrinkled thing flutter to the ground and wasn't surprise to almost see how her hands looked like without their experienced coarseness.
Drawing in another huge breath to steady herself, she strode purposefully towards the bathroom door, determined that, nothing else would do, a hot bath was what she required to go to bed easily. However, not four steps towards it, she halted, turned to place her wand beside the box and the letter, before stepping into the room.
The past months had been a disaster. A mere 12 weeks after her success in campaigning for the top job, weeks of speeches and paperwork and handing out pamphlets, she had done it! The fifth female Minister in history, and still glowing with success came before her a letter from Albus Dumbledore, giving her a frustratingly cryptic warning of imminent peril, to brace herself, and the wizarding community. She had heard of Albus Dumbledore, who hasn't? That name was stamped over page after page of books after books like the printer had a crazy infatuation for him — the modern Merlin.
Who was he to tell her what to do? She had been most indignant to have received a letter from him, telli- no, suggesting certain measures that she should take, like she was some random giggling schoolgirl playing house. No, she was Millicent Bagnold, Minister of Magic, who rose above the terror of her childhood and into the magical world like one of steel. And yet, she couldn't help but feel the lingering wisps of magic in the air that spoke of cliff edges, last climbs, mounting influence, something…something just beyond her grasp.
And as though the demons had awaken out of their dormant sleep, all with her arbitrary ignorance came crashing down onto her together at once: Muggle attacks, threat messages from nowhere, and whispers of a wizard more powerful than the likes of anyone had seen before. And yet standing there, in the pounding heat of the shower, all the frustration, anger, bitterness, worry, the past, rose onto the surface of her skin and she let the warm water wash it away.
It was twenty minutes before Bagnold finally stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself and another one bundling up her wet hair piled on her head. The shower seemed to have galvanised something in her; she stuck out her little finger and drew a devil face on the fogging mirror, giggling unexpectedly. Ensuring that the towel was securely fastened around her body, she opened the door to her bedroom and wended her way out of steam.
He wouldn't have been noticeable if Bagnold hadn't been so sharp. He had his back turned, facing the quiet outside. His midnight robes rippling like calm waves in the galloping wind through the open window and the moon splayed soft light on the convexes. And turned, as though aware that he was being watched, though admittedly, she had not been discreet in opening the door.
'What are you doing here?' Her voice was steady. 'What do you want?'
He had his hood up, casting shadows over his entire face such that Bagnold could only see the edge of his white mouth. It was difficult to ignore the desperate thumping of her frantic heart that jolted her entire body with every beat.
'Oh, I think you know what I want,' he said, his voice scarily high, clear, and calm. 'I think you know very well what I want to do.'
Thump, thump, thump.
It had seemed as if all the whispers, lingerings, uneasiness she had felt had materialised physically in front of her and in the pace of the past few weeks, she had not realised… only once he spoke did it strike her that she was missing something.
'I had no idea someone like you could ever become Minister. Forgive me, but I think you incompetent and are indicative of the depths the world has sunk in scum to have even considered you a…person of importance,' he continued, his tone strangely light, and yet there was unmistakably a hint of malignity, the touch of dire contempt that was hard to ignore.
Thump thump thump thump.
'Who are you?' It seemed Bagnold had not heard the insults. She was staring intensely at him.
'Oh, I'm so glad you asked.' He whispered, his thin lips stretching painfully into a bloodless smile. 'It really is horrendous manners not to know the name of the person you are talking to, you know? And I know yours.'
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP
Raising a white, bony hand, he swept his hood off.
Bagnold's eyes were wide as saucers.
'To-?'
'NO!' he yelled harshly, pure hot rage twisting his features for the first time since their encounter. He looked mad enough to kill, and she supposed he was very capable of it.
'I…' His eyes glinted red, holding her rooted to the spot. '…am Lord Voldemort.'
Bagnold looked directly at the scarred, once-handsome face of Tom Marvolo Riddle as he whispered a two-worded spell. She could feel a droplet trickle down her back. And then a flash of bright green light burned against her eyes and rushed her into blackness.
What is there left?
The stirring question that slid itself minuscule between the cracks of unspoken words was yet hauntingly clear. He pulled the hood back over his head and with a defining swish of cloak noir, melted into the shadows and disappeared.
What is there left?
—..— —.
All of them donned badly mismatched muggle clothing, only adding to the oddity of the whole situation of forty of so grown men gawking at the green apparition in the sky and looking as if they had popped out from the nineteenth century. The garden they were standing in was so grotesquely small, all of them looked very massively clumsy in it and the two wizards at the back were squashed precariously near the rose bush. The skull figure in the sky cast a ghostly green visage over its black surroundings. It was completely still and yet the deep sunken sockets gave off the creepy impression of staring and its smooth porcelain skull seemed to pulse with the vitality of lost treasure, feeling intensified with the weird looking sceptre next to it.
"Alright, the skull doesn't seem to be doing any harm. Fudge, Scrimingeour, Clatinue, Moody, you're with me. The rest, disperse yourselves. You know what to do." Crouch was the first to snap his eyes away from the figure in the air. He had already steadied his gaze on the house door, as if trying to unlock everything beyond it with his eyes. The lips beneath his toothbrush shaped moustache stiffened slightly.
"Remember —"
"SSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
The whole bunch of them jumped in shock at the same time and the previously still and unsure wizards and witches were suddenly a mass of stumbling and stuttering, as a loud, strangely vicious and scary hiss emanated from the figure in the sky. Something about it stirred inside of everyone an innate fear that tugged violently the instinctive bone.
"Woah! Sorry there, Bomone!" Fudge squeaked as he elbowed Richard Bomone of the Auror department in the face, as he staggered back, looking horrified at either the amount of blood splattered on his victim's face or the revelation of how high his voice could actually go. Or both.
What Crouch had thought was a sceptre at first was actually a giant snake. It had sprung suddenly to life, hissing venomously and slithering inside the white jaws of the skull as it opened and closed sluggishly, as if underwater, its triangular face leering and hissing.
"What is that?"
"—some sort of alarm?"
"Is it…Is it real?" A particularly scrawny witch couldn't take her eyes off it.
"ARRGGHHHHH! A THORN'S STUCK IN MY BLOODY—"
Purple crackers shot out of Crouch's wand, bursting angrily into showery sparks and bangs. Everyone fell silent.
"Everyone! Calm yourselves. We are professionals!" Crouch barked. He and he alone had not been affected by it. "Resume your positions!"
Crouch strode purposeful long strides towards the door, the other four following behind. Moody, his beady black eyes flitting around violently; Fudge, who couldn't stop spinning his purple bowler hat; Scrimingeour, intensely focused, though his lion mane of hair had fallen out of its neatness; and Clatinue, looking unconcerned, but the hand that gripped his wand was trembling slightly.
Raising one hand above the doorknob dramatically, he hesitated for only a second before bringing it down and turning it, and surprisingly it flew open without resistance. They clambered after him through the threshold.
He scanned the dark interior with a trained, practiced eye.
"Lumos," he muttered, as the tip of his wand lit a bright blue. Behind him, he could hear the others do the same.
The thuds of heart pounded in his ears, his chest, his whole body. "Spread out," he added tersely, already moving towards the door on the right.
Jabbing his wand slightly, the door swung open yet again, revealing several pots and pans lying in the sink and a few clear tables. The kitchen was tinged a pale blue. Waving his wand around, he moved swiftly around the tables and the counters, opening several cabinets and drawers but they only contained kitchen stuff that didn't seem to be worthy of any suspicion.
Just as he was about to go around one last time, the wavering voice of Cornelius Fudge drifted from somewhere in the house, "I-I think I f-found something."
Crouch tightened the grip on his wand so much that his knuckles were white. And following the sound, he proceeded carefully through the corridors, flinching with so much as a creak or a rustle. The others were already there. They were squashed together, standing awkwardly in front of the door, blocking the entrance of the door, not speaking to each other. As though in a dream, he elbowed his way ungraciously to the front, the others shuffling out of his way to let him through. He could feel the weight of their stares and expectations pressing uncomfortably on his shoulders.
Fingers feeling slightly numb, he pushed open yet another door, his wand raised in preparation. Once he stepped over the line across the doorway, he felt an unnatural chill spike through his entire body. He could feel it, smell it, the room was full of it. It seemed to mumble, whisper, murmur all around him in a furious fury of words and yet he knew it wasn't any language that he knew. Moving as if in a trance, he, slowly, made his way to the body lying on the ground. Her hair was spread on the floor like a halo and her arms rested peacefully on her abdomen, which was covered by a towel. And her face…her face a pearly pale, and in sleep, she looked younger than she had had in years. His legs brought him forwards towards her.
His near presence had triggered something in her: her eyes flew open in one massive flap of motion. There was something wrong with them, almond-shaped, but a complete reptilian red, which looked fixedly at the ceiling above. Her mouth fell open and was empty, save for a bright green light that let out a ghostly wail, as her body was lifted up into the air, a graceful arch, she could have been flying, before dissolving into aurora wisps of pale smoke that whirled around him like a tornado, screaming, yelling, shouting...
And was gone. He stumbled out of the room, gasping, his ears still ringing with the force of that one word, amidst the startled cries of his fellow wizards.
"I know who it is."