Chapter 10

Five minutes after Moody left the Minister of Magic arrived, demanding to see Dumbledore. Upon entering the hospital wing and seeing the Headmasters condition, he had promptly borrowed the Floo to go to St Mungoes and return with as he put it, a professional Healer for severe damage, not one who, while competent enough, was used to only treating students of their various ailments and the occasional potions accident.

Moody was pleasantly surprised at how quickly he had made it through the bureaucracy, and that the Master of the hall hadn't argued at all about retrieving the orb one they heard that Dumbledore needed it, only removed it from the shelf and the curses thereon. It had then been passed to an Unspeakable, who would carry it until Moody signed for it at the department edge. At this rate Moody might be able to return to Hogwarts in time for lunch.

He wondered what the fact that a prophesy orb had gone dark meant. Ah well, it wasn't his place to ask, he was just to take out the targets assigned by Dumbledore. He bitterly regretted the loss of his magical eye. The glass had nothing left on it, no trace of the spells that had animated it, no residue that could be used to restructure the spells, the Unspeakable had said. And Dumbledore didn't seem in any condition to re-enchant it, what with the fact that Poppy thought he would be dead by tomorrow's sunrise.

They stepped into the death room on the way back, and immediately the air seemed to change: it felt charged, and anticipatory. He turned on instinct to where that feeling was strongest. Of course it was the Veil, but what had happened to it? It had gone still, and instead of looking like a ragged black curtain, it seemed like a rip, now, that left an unsettling sucking feeling behind his remaining eye as he stared at it, unable to look away.

The crumbling stone archway surrounding it seemed less like it held the Veil up, and more like it was holding it in check. The faint whispering noise that had always accompanied its movement had vanished, and been replaced with a sound on the edge of hearing, a high giggling noise.

He took a step backwards, filled with a sense of not wanting to go anywhere near that thing as it was now. But he couldn't back up. The air had somehow thickened, making leaving impossible. He could only move forward. The Unspeakable next to him swore, and fired off a message spell of some kind. Three seconds later ten more came running in. "What the—"

The first one pointed at the Veil.

A faint glow had emerged on the stone archway, as the charged feel grew stronger, and that glow suddenly blazed, a brilliant blue-white light. Answering runes lit across the room, covering the floor and walls, and even the far distant roof, all blazing blinding bright, so bright that it was impossible to make out the fine detail.

The feeling grew stronger, and all watching got the sense that whatever was happening with the Veil was something that these runes were set to contain. The Unspeakables were casting various obscure spells, and Moody was trying to figure out how to get out of the room, when he realized that he was —without his consent— walking towards it. With an effort he stopped moving.

Memory flashed in his mind, of a grin, and the lightning that had flickered when Dumbledore was wrapped in the same stone that had been imprisoning him. Then even he blanched, as, while the light of the runes remained a blazing blue-white, the light that filled the room was not that blinding bluish-white, but a sickly purple, like a bruise. The same eerie light emanated from wisps of black fog which drifted through the room, and then the rift began to widen.

It was no longer even vaguely like the Veil, but a graceful curved eye shape, and barely had he thought this when an eye opened within it. Five violet-grey rings around utter blackness, and he knew that thing! He knew it from a mural he had disbelieved, and he knew it from a mind he had intruded in. Thousands of little black hands shot from the archway, even as the stone began to crack, and the hands came unerringly towards him. Before he knew it, they had latched on to him, and were dragging him towards the eye and the rift. Magic couldn't touch the hands, anything he cast seemed to dissolve— rather than affect the hands— and likewise for the Unspeakables' spells. Struggling did nothing, and his last sight before being dragged in was of some of the hands tearing at the stone, and then he saw nothing but white.

"Hello again." Truth said.

What the Unspeakables saw as Mad-eye Moody was drawn into the Veil, was that some of the little black hands seemed to be seeking a particular spot. They felt around the stone, and one Unspeakable had the presence of mind to try and cut one off with a slicing hex. But nothing happened. The hands continued to move, and then several of them landed on the peak of the arch, where the central rune blazed. No one had even seen the runes before. No one had ever gotten close enough to the Veil to note them as anything more than faint scratches in the rock, but also, no one had ever seen anything like them anywhere. The hands pulled on that bit of stone, and others on the sides of the tear in reality, seeming to be trying to close it, and then it was all gone.

For a fraction of a second the arch stood empty, the light gone from the runes on the archway, and the laughter ceased.

Then it fell, cracks splintering this way and that and shards of stone hitting the ground in a slow thunderous roar, a cacophony that seemed to go on and on forever.

And then it was over, the stone cracking ever smaller, and then not even ruins were left to show what had been there. One Unspeakable, who had picked up a smaller shard, found his hand empty.

Then came another rumble, as the light returned to normal, and the runes faded out all over the room, some of them fading with a noise that everyone had just become intimately familiar with:

The sound of splitting rock.

First the ceiling over the dais fell in, and then the cracks arrayed out from it, hexagonal pieces of stone falling, as the rock splintered.

The Unspeakables fled.

Behind them the sound of crashing rock echoed a little while longer, and then all anyone could see through either doorway was tumbled stone. One doorway was covered over by a large slab of rock, and the other by medium bits of it, and one small hole that could possibly let one see into the ruins of the death chamber, but no one felt like putting their eye to it to look.

At that moment, in the great hall at Hogwarts while the staff and Minister were eating and trying to tune out Sybil's wailing about premonitions of the trip going badly and one of the party dying and now the headmaster would not live to see nightfall; if they had just listened to her it would be different, the Seer suddenly stiffened, falling silent, and staring ahead vacantly. Pomona, who was next to her, noticed first.

"Sybil?"

Sybil said nothing, still staring at some distant point in the air. Then suddenly she spoke in harsh, ringing tones quite different from her own. "Woe," Sybil cried in the harsh tones of true prophesy, "we have angered the Alc-Che-Mist! Doom comes, for in crossing the Al-Che-Mist we have incurred the anger of Truth! The doom set so long ago is upon us! It is already begun! The debt incurred will not be balanced in the Tolls of the Fool; the Liar; and the Shattered False Lord and all his marked servants, alone! Though the changer may avert a portion of the Toll, the doom comes! Woe to those who anger the All, for Truth comes again to collect its due! Fate comes undone, the age-old pact broken, the long held rift sealed, the truce revoked, the Gate awaits! Woe, woe unto to us all, and first to he who crossed the Golden Alchemist, for the Truth that went unheeded shall laugh as he is undone! Woe to the False Alchemist, come at last to the death he so long evaded, and the Truths he fled! Doom to the Shattered False Lord, and with his doom the eye of Truth shall fall once more on its own and reclaim them! Woe to us... for in arrogance the Liar crossed the True Alchemist! The Doom is already begun … We cannot escape … The Fool is fallen, the Liar dies the final death! At the coming of the Herald of the False Lord's death, the doom shall fall! Measures will balance! The Debt… Comes Due…

Complete mayhem erupted.

Some hours later, one particular Unspeakable remembered the prophesy orb in his pocket, and— having worked in the prophesy section of the department enough to know what the fact that it had darkened meant— decided to take it to Dumbledore, as Moody had meant to do, only that fascinating event with the Veil had killed him. Thus the Unspeakable decided to take it himself, and see if Dumbledore had any idea what those strange runes were. The man had some extremely rare books in his personal library that many collectors would kill for, after all.

He spun on his heel, focusing on Hogsmead, as usual, and almost fell over when the Apparition failed. What was happening? He knew how to do it, and why had he gotten a sensation of having bounced off of something?

He tried again.

This time he did fall over. He picked himself up and tried a third time. Nothing. He returned to the ministry to ask for a portkey and report this. As soon as he opened the door he heard angry shouting about Apparition not working. Clearly no help would be found there, and the invalidated prophesy really did need to go to Dumbledore so—

He looked both ways, and picked up a rock. "Portus," he whispered, fixing Hogsmead in his mind. Technically as a Ministry employee he was authorized to do this, but he was still cautious about being sighted doing it.

The portkey worked, even though Apparition hadn't, and he was soon standing outside the Three Broomsticks, asking to borrow a broom from the barmaid rather than walk all the way to Hogwarts. Rosmerta obliged, and he was quickly there.

Upon arrival at the castle he was hustled to the hospital wing, where he was amazed to find Dumbledore looking like he was on his deathbed. The aura of power that had always surrounded him was gone, as had the force in him, this was merely a feeble, elderly man.

"Prophesy." The old man croaked, and the Unspeakable noticed that his beard was shorn— and he was surrounded by a faint smell of burnt hair.

"It's here sir." Madame Pomphry said. She motioned and the Unspeakable held out the orb.

Albus looked at the orb held out to him. It was dark, not the silver glow of an active prophesy. That meant—

"It's been invalidated," said the nondescript man who had held it out.

Invalidated, but that meant that everything came tumbling down! Everything he had planned for, and the things that he had arranged to happen in event of his possible death, or if he were unable to attend to them in person, Gone! Perhaps they could be salvaged— but there was no ti..

"Hello again, Wiz-ard."

A.N. Death update: Magic is not exactly alchemy any more than Alkahestry is Alchemy, but it operates on similar principles about equivalent exchange, only instead of being powered by plate tectonics, or the dragons pulse, magic is payed for in the users own strength, at least it should be. Using it with a wand is like using a Philosophers Stone, a large amplifier that means that none of the energy comes from the wizard, and the wizard pays nothing for what he obtains. Going wandless means that the wizards will be paying their own tolls, and evening out their debt. At least the ones who learn it early enough will, but the ones who've been using wands all thir lives, and will say "I've done it this way all my life and I'm not going to change it now" have something very unpleasant waiting for them.

Guest: Yes Voldemort will be dealt with, by someone unexpected.

Guest: Yes this story does have a purpose, it just demanded to be written this way. This is not my usual style at all, and I'm sorry if you find it difficult.

Guest2: Sorry, not yet.

To everyone who favorited and followed, I hope you like this one.