The Imposter Complex, Chapter 38: Catching Up.

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'And then the Dementors swivelled as one to face Lord Voldemort, who had gone very still. They started to move in his direction, and the Dark Lord turned tail and fled. He soared across the sky, faster than Dementors could fly or we could hex, before disapparating the moment he crossed the ward line. I admit, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Lord Voldemort against a Dementor horde would certainly have been a sight to see.'

Minister Bones looked at me incredulously as I brought my account of the battle of Azkaban to a close. The rest of the little war council that she'd called looked no less dubious. Except for Dumbledore of course, but he'd been there.

We sat in a Ministry boardroom, rather unadorned. It wouldn't look out of place in a muggle building. All the figureheads of the war effort were here. Dumbledore, Bones, Scrimgeour, Shacklebolt, and two new faces, Gawain Robards and Saul Croaker, were all sitting along one side of the table. I sat on the other, feeling more interrogated than debriefed. It wasn't entirely clear what the official reason was for Shacklebolt, as a regular Auror, being present. I assumed it was simply because he was low-key Dumbledore's de-facto general and nobody wanted to directly acknowledge it.

'I'm sorry,' said Robards, the new chief Auror who was looking particularly thrown. 'The Dementors made you their king because you... fed them golems? How does that make any sense at all?'

I repressed my irritation carefully. The question itself was hardly egregious, but my head was throbbing, and I had barely slept. My Unbreakable Vow had been prodding me all night, beyond my ability to passively ignore. It really didn't like that I'd been that close to fulfilling it and let Lord Voldemort slip between my fingers.

'I'm not their king.' I said shortly. 'I'm just the person they think is going to provide them the most souls to feast on.'

'Are you?' Scrimgeour asked, his tone its usual flinty and unreadable.

'No. Well, not living souls anyway. There's still almost eight thousand Terracotta soldiers out there somewhere. Each one contains the perpetually tormented souls of five sacrificed peasants. There were, what, three or four hundred terracotta husks retrieved from Azkaban when all was said and done? That is why the Dementors do what I say. I just handed them a feast the likes of which they have probably never known.'

It must have been a mercy for those souls too. Even I would take oblivion over two thousand years of torment. This whole doing-good thing might not be so hard after all.

Robards spoke up again, rather forward for someone so new to leadership. 'And they aren't concerned that it came at the cost of so many Dementor... uh, well, not lives I suppose, but...'

I leant back in my chair. I had spoken rather a bit with the Dementors during the aftermath at Azkaban. Mostly to get out of doing the nasty cleanup work. The Terracotta Army had left some shockingly gory scenes in their wake.

'Not particularly. From what I can tell, they don't seem to have much individuality. The ones I was talking to kept referring to itself as Gestalt.'

'That is correct,' said Croaker. The bald man's voice was actually surprisingly smooth. 'By what my department's research has revealed, all Dementors are piloted by a single mind, and a simplistic one at that. To it, losing individual Dementors in its hunt for souls would be like a small gash upon the forelimb when catching prey. Though I imagine it was certainly startling to experience... this is the first documented case of Dementors actually being destroyed in combat.'

He cleared his throat unnecessarily, and shuffled the papers in front of him for a moment before continuing. 'On that note Minister, the Department of Mysteries have retrieved several intact specimens of the Army's weaponry. I shall keep you abreast of our studies on them.'

I had recovered a few pieces myself, not that I felt like volunteering that information. They had their fair share of it, it wasn't like I was denying them potential intelligence. I didn't know if the swords would still work against a Dementor in a living person's hands, but this union I'd formed with them wouldn't last forever. Couldn't hurt to have a potential ace up my sleeve. Even besides that, unravelling the secrets of that strange antilight substance could have all sorts of possible applications...

Bones was speaking to me. '-ink you can order them to guard specific locations on the mainland without them going off and eating someone?'

My brow furrowed, but Dumbledore cut in before I could speak. 'Amelia, I must protest. Look at the debacle that we saw in nineteen ninety three under Fudge.'

'I don't like it any better than you do, Albus. But we lost thirty of our best at Azkaban.' She closed her eyes, and for a moment grief leaked through her steely demeanour. 'Good people. Loyal people. That could cripple us. So what other choice do we have? Those soldiers carved through them like they weren't even there, we cannot afford to risk any more of our countrymen meeting the same fate.'

Bones turned back to me. 'So I ask again, Riddle: If you order it, will Dementors obey?'

I looked between Dumbledore and Bones for a long moment. '...Yes, I think so. They're still ecstatic over the last feast, they seem very pliable to my requests, at least for now. But if Lord Voldemort starts holding the Army in reserve, they may become unruly again. I don't know enough about how their mind works yet. It's not something I'd want to count on long term. Plus, they aren't like, say, Veela. They can't control that aura they have, and that's going to seriously impact morale if you can't go anywhere without a patronus and not get depressed.'

I ought to know. I was in no hurry to go back to the days of Dementors marching down Hogsmeade's main street every night.

'Hmm... how goes your hunt for that thief of yours? Prosper Deveny, I believe you said his name was?' Dumbledore peered at me hopefully.

I grimaced. 'Slowly. I recruited Diggory to help me out with it, the kid's got a knack for details. We're reasonably sure he's currently somewhere in India.'

Say what you will about Hufflepuffs, but that work ethic of theirs doesn't flinch in the face of multiple filing cabinets full of paperwork. Was it unethical to exploit that so? No, I didn't think so. Loving hard work was their whole thing.

'In the mean time, we'll just have to deal with the Dementors giving us all seasonal depression,' I continued, plucking out one of my handguns from my pocket and laying it on the table. None of them flinched; wizards often barely recognised guns as weapons. 'I also think we should give the hit wizards some training with muggle guns. I have developed an enchantment schema that allows firearms to penetrate the Army's arrow wards, although it's useless against modern stuff. It won't keep the soldiers down, but it'll disable them for a bit. That can make all the difference.'

Croaker looked intrigued, and I think Scrimgeour was too, but it was impossible to be sure. He spoke up, at least. 'A sound idea. Send the schematics my way, I'll see what we can make of them.'

The war council continued for a time longer, before Bones dismissed us. The Death Eaters had in fact attacked whilst the Ministry was distracted by Azkaban. They'd struck at Diagon Alley, blowing up several shops and kidnapping half a dozen people, including Ollivander. The going theory was that the bastards were trying to seize control of the wand supply, but that seemed an oddly long-term plan to me.

I had my own suspicions - and voiced them - that Lord Voldemort was discovering he could find no wand that suited him as well as the one in my pocket. I did take some glee at the thought, though it also came accompanied with some guilt for feeling such. At least four people had died for an endeavour Lord Voldemort was already doomed to fail on.

The meeting came to an end. I delivered the agreed assignments to the Dementor envoy that they'd reluctantly let me bring with me, then left the Ministry behind, striding out the visitor's entrance. I had more business in London this morning, and it was the kind I'd rather walk to.

:—:

Naturally, Dumbledore was waiting for me as I clambered out of the phone box, where the visitor's entrance

'Ah, Tom. I was wondering if you would mind my company for a time. There are things of a personal matter I would like to discuss.'

I found myself caught between a grimace and a sneer. I had hoped for some alone time. My Vow ached.

'Fine.' I said shortly, and turned left, stalking down Whitehall grumpily.

'I see your usual demeanour has made its return.' Dumbledore said neutrally, keeping pace with me. At some point his flowing opalescent robes had turned into a lime green three piece suit, his beard and hair neatly tucked away.

I bit back a nasty response. The man was right. 'Bad morning.' I grunted instead.

'Indeed.' Dumbledore said understandingly. 'I confess, I slept poorly myself. Such a close brush with the Dementors is seldom to be taken lightly.'

'Lucky for me. Plenty more of that in the near future.'

'For all of us.' Dumbledore agreed. 'I imagine we shall see a similar spike in wizards learning the Patronus charm as we did when Sirius was on the run.'

'Not me.' I said resignedly.

'Oh?' The Headmaster sounded genuinely surprised. 'What makes you so assured of that?'

I frowned as we came to a traffic light, turning to him. I waited for a young muggle woman with a pram to pass us by before responding. 'I'm a dark wizard, Dumbledore. It's common knowledge that a tainted soul cannot cast a Patronus. I've tried.'

Dumbledore gave me a grandfatherly look that didn't irritate me as much as it once did. 'Many dark wizards can produce a corporeal Patronus, Tom. Severus is well versed in the Dark Arts, yet I have seen him cast one on several occasions. Even Gellert Grindelwald, at the lowest depths he ever fell, was able.'

I raised a disbelieving eyebrow. 'Truly? What was the form?'

Dumbledore ignored the question, now in teacher-mode. 'The Patronus is not a test of virtue, Tom. It is an act of passion, of zest for all the very best parts of life.'

I turned away dismissively, and started walking as the lights changed. I heard Dumbledore follow. 'Ridiculous. I have an enormous zest for life. I chased down immortality at sixteen for Merlin's sake. I've got plenty of happy memories too, and that spell has never done a thing at all for me.'

Dumbledore didn't reply, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. He looked thoughtful, as we crossed onto Trafalgar square. 'Alas, perhaps that pursuit has been your downfall.'

I laughed harshly. 'Tell me something I'm not aware of.'

He didn't reply. There were more muggles about here, and neither of us moved to cast a spell that would let us talk freely. It would not be until we were on Whitcomb street that he spoke up again.

'I have been thinking on your words when we caught you.' He said at last. 'Your accusation that I have treated you unfairly since the day we met.'

I snorted. 'My statement of fact, you mean.'

'I have come to conclude that you were right.'

That stopped me in my tracks. 'Not words I ever expected to hear you say.'

'It is the curse of aged men,' said Dumbledore. 'That we see patterns everywhere we look, even when they may not be there. We judge the new always through the lens of the old.'

I looked at him, confused, and he gestured to a street bench. 'Shall we sit for a moment.'

We sat. Dumbledore continued. 'When Harry came into my office, the night he confronted you in the Chamber of Secrets, he said that you compared the two. That you saw a likeness of yourself in him, do you remember?'

I cast my mind back. 'Vaguely. I think I was mostly just messing with his head at the time.'

'I saw it too.' He said bluntly. 'It was among my deepest fears, when he first came to Hogwarts, that he would become another Voldemort. That is why I sent Hagrid to guide him, I think, rather than Minerva. I wanted an opinion of him, from someone who had known you. Hagrid has always been an excellent judge of character.'

I scowled. 'Agree to disagree. I don't see what this has to do with your snap judgement of me.'

'As I said, Tom. Patterns. When I met you, the ease with which you wielded magic at such a young age, the sly cunning you had, the ambition... even at eleven you reminded me very much of Gellert.'

I blinked. 'You said I was nothing like him.'

Dumbledore looked regretful.

'A myth that I have long told myself, to overlook my bias. But I was judging you against his record, even if I didn't know it. For so long, I assumed that I had simply seen you for precisely what you were. That you were always going to be headed down a path of malevolence. An easy conclusion to make, given how things turned out. But I wonder...' he paused for a moment, and he looked almost tearful. 'I wonder how things might have been if I had given you the benefit of the doubt when you were a boy, as I should have. If I had taken you under my wing instead of keeping you at arm's length in spite of your obvious brilliance. How much of the suffering and death of the last fifty years ultimately falls at the foot of my own arrogance?'

I shifted, very uncomfortable. I had not ever pictured myself being in the situation of trying to make Albus Dumbledore feel better.

'You didn't set me down my path, Dumbledore. I did that to myself. You aren't any more responsible than anyone else from those days.'

'Perhaps. But I did nothing to prevent it.' Dumbledore dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief that appeared from nowhere. 'We must all live with the mistakes we've made. But as I said to Harry, it is our choices which define who we are. Despite my failure, you chose a new path. You chose to stand against Lord Voldemort. That matters.'

We sat in silence a while longer, before Dumbledore stood. 'Alas, I am needed back at Hogwarts. I shall leave you to your errands, Tom, though do not forget your class this afternoon.'

'I won't,' I said amiably. 'And Dumbledore? It was... good fighting alongside you yesterday. It felt right.'

He beamed. 'I could not agree more.'

With a pop, he was gone.

:—:

I detested hospitals. Always have. Always will. They're where less fortunate men go to die slowly. I'd spent years stealing knowledge from the most gifted Healers on the planet specifically in order to prevent myself nor anyone I cared overmuch about from having to see the inside of one.

But when Garrow did not rouse from his Chalice-induced slumber, I had little other choice. Neither I nor his daughter could give him full time care, and I was hardly going to entrust it to a house elf. So I had brought him here, to the Janus Thickey ward at St. Mungos, to make them do what they could.

My distaste showed on my face, passing by cot after wretched cot. The smell always got to me. It was worse in muggle hospitals, but even here it was everpresent. The cold odor of sterility. Antiseptic. And beneath it all, the poorly-masked yet unmistakable scent of the dead. My Vow prodded at me again, reminding me that I'd wind up the same way if I displeased it further.

Garrow's daughter Belinda was there, sitting quietly at his bedside reading a novel. I knew from the security charms I had erected that she visited twice a week after work. Me, I hadn't returned since I brought him in.

'How is he?' I murmured, taking a seat beside her. She started, looking up from her book. Her wand was in her hand where it hadn't been an instant ago. Garrow had raised her right.

She slipped it back into her pocket with a sigh. 'No change. The healers say he should be in full health. He's not brain-dead, they can reach him through Legilimency, and he is dreaming. They just can't wake him up. Whatever You-Know-Who did to him... they just don't know.

I grumbled something uncharitable about the British healthcare system under my breath, and Belinda looked at me oddly.

'Are you going to talk to him?'

I paused. Garrow, yet another person hurt by my actions a hundred times over. I wasn't going to hide behind the excuse of "not I" any longer. I'd shown up for just that reason, yet now that he lay before me in a hospital bed, I could not help but recoil at the idea of facing him. Not so soon after the rest of my crisis of regret. My heart panged harshly at it. I was weak.

'I...I'll speak to him when I find a way to bring him back to the Real.' I said, and the words felt awkward and stilted in my mouth. 'If there's any news, call for me.'

I left that place of decay and death, distaste cloying once more upon my tongue. I needed a godsdamned drink.

:—:

I apparated back to Hogsmeade, electing to go for a german lunch at Lang's before my Second Year class in the afternoon. As so often happened at Lang's, particularly in my current state of mind, one litre of Spaten turned into four, and so I was a little buzzed as I taught that day. Irresponsible, I know, but it was a theory lesson and I felt like I had earned it. Besides, it took the edge off of the Unbreakable Vow still pounding away at my head.

After class was done, I flicked a letter off to Sirius to invite him to dinner and drinks. Or rather, drinks with a side of dinner. Either way, I wanted company.

We wound up going out to London, to a tiny little Polish restaurant in Holborn that one of Sirius' friends had recommended. I flicked up a charm to make the muggles ignore the content of our conversation, as the topic quickly shifted to the war. I caught him up on the events at Azkaban, before he began to describe the attack on Diagon Alley. Unlike the war council, he'd actually been there himself.

'Yeah, Pyrites is back, the dandy prick.' Sirius said, sipping at his Sobieski. 'With a nice shiny pair of peg legs, too. That was you, wasn't it?

I snorted into my own drink, my third of the evening. I was starting to feel it. 'Yeah, when I was in Rome. Him and some other Death Eater were digging up some...'

Sirius looked up from his menu to see me staring off into space.

'Tom?'

'Oh fuck!' I swore. Oops.

'What?'

'The crate, I forgot the bloody crate!'

Sirius looked nonplussed.

I slapped myself in the forehead. 'There was a chest, that's what they were digging up. Not like the one from Poland, a normal one. I was going to take it but then I learned that McGonagall was a spy. I completely forgot about it!'

I leapt to my feet, and Sirius yelped as I dragged him to his feet as well. 'Oi!'

'We've got to go now! There's a chance it still might be there!'

'Wh- Tom, it's been weeks! We can wait until after supper! I'm hungry!'

But I was having none of it. 'Adventure waits for no man, Sirius!'

:—:

As it turns out, there was little adventure to be had in getting to Italy, even on zero notice. Honestly, Italian magical border security was shocking.

Indeed, the first unpleasantness of the trip was when we walked into the ancient laboratory of Galen of Pergamon, and were forced back by a wall of stench so thick as to be almost physical.

'Bloody Merlin!' Sirius exclaimed, retching. 'What is that?'

'Tergeo.' I muttered, and the miasmic stench was siphoned from the room, sucked toward my wand tip and vanishing. 'I, uh, might have left some bodies behind.'

That was putting it mildly. My skirmish here had been three weeks ago, and it was abundantly clear that nobody else had visited since. Even cleansed as thoroughly as I could make it, the air still reeked of rot.

I was immediately glad that we had not picked up food on the way. The corpses were hard to look at it, and worse still for I had been the one to make them. I felt sick to my stomach, it was hard to believe that I had been so callous a killer a mere few weeks prior.

Sirius seemed to agree, looking pale. '...did you do all of this?'

I opened my mouth, a half dozen different defences of my actions bubbling up in my mind before I even realised it, and I stopped. Even after my own horror, my reflex had still been to assuage, to dodge the blame.

'...yes.' I said finally, quietly.

'I know you don't have trouble with killing, Tom, but this is...'

'I know. Call it a wake up call. I'm... trying to be better now.'

Sirius didn't reply.

We moved through the lab, stepping carefully over corpses. When we were done here, I'd have to report the location to the Italian authorities - anonymously, of course. Hopefully they'd have some way of identifying these men and their next of kin, because I hadn't the stomach for it.

The crate of oak was, miraculously, still there, lying next to Argo Pyrites' severed shins. Perhaps Pyrites had simply assumed I cleared the place out, and had never elected to return to check. It was coated in the gruesome stains of pig-man's demise. I looked down at the rotted, headless man, whom I had chosen to execute without a thought, and for the first time really contemplated who he had been. He had been a Death Eater. He'd been in the last war, no less. Had Garrow known him? Had he been a friend? Had he had family, whom even now searched for him?

I shuddered, and scoured the crate with scourgify. I shrank it down to a matchbox size, and tucked it into my pocket. I turned back to Sirius, who was examining the corpse of the mercenary I had made kill himself.

I swallowed. 'Come on. Let's get out of here.'

:—:

The trip back was rather more subdued, and I went to bed still feeling ill, the Vow pounding like a migraine in my head. I slept little more than I had the night before.

Teaching class was, surprisingly, an escape. The second years were ever-excitable, especially during practical classes, and it gave me an eager opportunity to escape the realities of the outside world for a few hours. They were studying minor jinxed objects today, and one could hardly spare the brain space to contemplate one's personal life when one was busy showing two dozen thirteen year olds how to not spill their worldly secrets to a cursed matryoshka doll.

Sirius and I reconvened in my cellar that evening, and he had regained the spring in his step. With more to spare, oddly enough. I didn't ask.

'Alright Grey, lay it on me.' He said brightly. 'What's in the box?'

We stood at the far end of the cellar from the oaken crate. I jabbed my wand at it, ripping away the last of the meagre protections it had offered. A second jab flipped it open, and we both braced for what might come out.

Nothing did, save a little plume of dust. We glanced at one another, then back to the box, then scurried forward to peer down into it. The contents were... surprisingly mundane.

One half of the crate contained books, and scrolls. Several dozen of them. The other was full of what appeared to be ingredients, organised into a set of racks, with phials, flasks, and larger jars for the specimens that couldn't be broken down so easily. Yet what unusual specimens they were. The top layer alone had hydra fangs, a yeti heart, and an unmarked phial of dark russet powder. It looked like some kind of dried blood.

Sirius reached forward first, plucking out one of the books. He squinted, murmuring the French title.

'The translated works of Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus, volume six. Third edition. How can there be a third edition if he's dead?'

My face fell, disappointed. 'I've already got that one.'

In fact, as we worked through the contents, almost all of the written texts turned out to be duplicates of grimoires and ritual books that I had long ago recovered from the Gaunt vault at Gringotts. I rifled through a few of the ingredients quickly, and recognised a pattern. I cursed inwardly. This was no trove of hidden knowledge. It was just a cache. A safekeep with all the materials one might need to resurrect Lord Voldemort in a pinch, as well as a half dozen other ritual processes. He probably had many just like it peppered around the world, even if he didn't actually use any of them for over a decade. Hell, he even had Riddle family bone in here, a knucklebone of some unnamed ancestor. I suppose that explains why the ritual didn't explode in his face, the bastard.

'Hey Tom, look at this. Lord Voldemort likes doodling snakes.'

I looked up, incredulous. 'What?'

Sirius held up a battered old notebook, the hardbacked, lineless kind. He had it opened to a random page. Drawings of snakes covered the pages from end to end, drawn long and horizontal across them, or coiled up in a great mass. Pythons, vipers, all sorts, and phenomenally detailed. I was befuddled. The fine arts had never been a source of interest to me. A new hobby borne of boredom perhaps? But that wouldn't be worth sticking in a hidden cache. Unless...

'Out of the way!' I hissed at the paper in Parseltongue, and Sirius flinched. The snakes came to life on the page, hissing back at me and slithering away, to settle on other parts of the notebook. Beneath lay writing.

When the concoction has boiled for, once more, precisely sixteen minutes and fourteen seconds, remove it from the fire. If done correctly, it will have achieved a pale purple hue, with mild iridescence.

Drop in the diced thunderbird liver at a rate of three cubes per minute, and at the end of each minute add an eye of sky newt. Do this until all ninety nine cubes of liver have been added, capping it off with a thirty third eye of sky newt.

Stir vigorously for eight rotations clockwise, then put back on to boil for another precise sixteen minutes and fourteen seconds.

It didn't match any potion I'd ever heard of. I flipped back a few pages, shooing snakes away. And then it was there, before my eyes.

The Ritual of Flight.

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A/N: My apologies for running so late on this one, I realised shortly before my usual upload that I wasn't happy with the original version. Yay for rewrites.

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