The rain was starting to let up a bit but it didn't matter. Albus was completely soaked and so had no problem just walking through the streets, not even bothering to find shelter. He had considered stealing an umbrella from somewhere but at that point it wouldn't have made a difference.

His phone started to ring.

"You're lucky that I can scrub the CCTV footage otherwise the police would be after you right now," Joe said as soon as he answered.

"I didn't kill the guy, she did!"

"I know. Why Scorpius at Cambridge university?" he asked.

"Do I even want to know how you know that?"

"Probably not."

"Cambridge might have a manifest from the museum. He's gonna get it to you so that we can figure out what she stole," he said quickly heading towards the red phone box that served as the visitor's entrance to the ministry of magic.

"If it exists," Joe reminded.

"Keep your fingers crossed," he said. "I'm back at the ministry, Scorp will let me know if he gets the manifest. Do what you can to try and find her."

He hung up the phone and stepped into the box dialling the word MAGIC into the old device. A few moments later, he was standing in the ministry Atrium. People had obviously heard what had happened because he immediately started receiving nervous looks from the wizards and witches around him.

He couldn't really blame them. In the last few days there had been quite a bit of destruction surrounding him. And of course, Hermione and Harry had decided not to inform the public that Morgan Le Fey was behind all this. Voldemort's return had sent the wizarding world into a spiral of panic and despair. Telling them they an immortal god-like witch has returned as was planning to eradicate them all would have caused it to collapse completely.

Albus didn't get far before he saw the trio approaching him. They all looked very worried.

"What happened?" Harry breathed, as if he was afraid of the answer.

"Apparently, she can see through Polyjuice. I thought I'd have more time to catch him," Albus admitted.

"Catch him?" Hermione snapped. "The head of magical transport just got flattened by a truck!"

"I know, I was there. She really has a twisted sense of irony, doesn't she?"

"Are you seriously making jokes at a time like this?!" she said with outrage.

Albus rolled his eyes and kept walking towards the atrium lifts that would get him back to the auror office.

"She was talking to him the entire time! Xeno charm! And she got what she was after," he said quickly steering the conversation back on topic. "We need to find out exactly what it is and why she wants it."

"Albus!" Harry growled, grabbing him by the arm and forcing him to stop and face them. "A man is dead!"

"You think he's the only one she's got? I wouldn't be surprised if they're more of her puppets in the ministry right n –" he suddenly broke off, starting directly ahead. "Holy shit!"

They turned to see what he was looking at and the moment they did, their eyes went wide with shock as well.

Morgana had just walked into the ministry!

Harry reacted instinctively. In the blink of a eye his wand was out and pointed directly at her. But something was wrong.

She was still wearing Alex body but all of her confidence and strength seemed to have vanished. She had her hands raised in surrender and her face was filled with fear and pain.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!" Albus yelled at all the people in the atrium, just walking around and getting on with their day-to-day.

"DON'T MOVE!" Harry ordered her.

She stopped in her tracks, keeping her arms raised just as Hermione shot a patronus from her wand. The ghost otter flew beneath the floor, no doubt heading for the auror office, calling for back-up.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" Albus hissed at her.

"Albus…I'm so sorry…" she whimpered sounding nothing like the Morgana he'd spoken to. "This has gone too far."

"Down on your knees! Now!" Harry yelled.

She complied. She refused to make eye contact.

Albus was taught as a piano wire. This was wrong! It was all wrong! Morgana would never surrender. This was some kind of trick. Any second now she would burst back to her true self and begin wreaking havoc as payback for his interference.

The lift doors behind them opened and a horde of aurors came rushing out, all immediately taking up positions around Harry. Their wands all targeted Morgana.

"Albus," she begged, "this has to stop!" her eyes were turning watery red.

What the hell was this?!

"YOU SAID NO ONE WOULD GET HURT!" she suddenly screamed before bursting into tears.

"What the hell kind of game are you playing?!" Albus growled.

Before she could answer, another person spoke from behind him.

"What do you mean 'he said'?"

It was Blagden. The same auror that thought he'd been making up everything Alex being possessed because he was angry at being rejected.

"Don't blame him!" she snapped. "It's your fault! All of you!"

"What?" Harry asked looking truly confused.

"You still can't see it?" she gasped in horror. "Don't you understand? The weight…the burden…you, the entire wizarding world, put on his shoulders?! To live up the being the boy who lived?! How could anyone handle that?!"

Harry glanced between her and Albus, still looking completely stumped but now also very worried.

"Years of that pressure building…and then everything that happened at Hogwarts…he was just trying to be who you wanted him to be…" she cried.

"What on earth are you saying?" Hermione asked.

"She's saying he's lost it!" Blagden answered. "She's saying this is all him!"

"What?!" Albus blurted.

"You set this whole thing up, didn't you?!" Blagden yelled, now pointing his wand at him.

"Are you bloody demented?!"

"Blagden, do not point your wand at my son!" Harry warned.

"Oh, come on, Harry! You know what he can do! That mind vault of his! You think he couldn't set something like this up?!"

Before Harry could retort, Morgana, still sounding very much like Alex spoke up. "I'm as much to blame! I wanted to help him. We hid what happened between us at Hogwarts because we knew it was wrong!"

That stunned just about everyone in the atrium. As far as they knew, she had just confessed to having an affair with a student whist being his teacher. The only person that wasn't shocked by the revelation was Albus.

He and Alex had come very close to crossing that line but never had. He was in love with her but nothing had actually happened. And he really didn't care about the looks he was now getting. He was too busy studying her, trying to figure out this move.

What was she doing? Trying to create confusion or get them to fight amongst themselves?

"I should have stopped him," she carried on. "I should have stopped myself! But…he was hurting…in so much pain…I wanted to help! He said he had to live up to his father's name. He had to fight a villain, like Voldemort!"

"Really? This is your tactic?" A cold humourless laugh came from Albus' mouth. "You're the victim and I'm the mastermind behind the whole thing?!"

"I'm not a victim! I accept any punishment I'm given. But, Albus…you need serious help! You blew up a train! You almost killed a muggle and now a member of this ministry is dead!"

"I didn't put the bomb on that train!"

"But you did set it off."

This time Albus was shocked because it was Hermione that had spoken.

"I had no other choice!"

"The bomb was in your trunk," Blagden reminded. "How did your trunk get onto the Hogwarts express, Albus? You resigned at the start of the year."

"She planted it!"

"How did I know about Craig Bowker Jr.?"

All eyes turned back to Morgana/Alex.

"Do any of them know who he is?" she asked looking around the atrium. "Only Harry and Hermione…and me. Because you told me, at Hogwarts."

Albus had gone pale as he always did when that name got mentioned. Even now, he still blamed himself for that poor kid's death.

"Stop it!" he growled.

"I'm trying to help you!" she cried, more tears falling from her eyes.

"She lying! Don't you see what she's doing?!"

"You still haven't told us how your trunk ended up on that train," Blagden reminded.

"She stole it!"

"From the house of the most famous auror in the world? A house that has as much protection on it as the ministry itself?"

"You don't know what she can do!" he rasped.

"I know what you can do!" Blagden returned.

"This is insane! You don't honestly think that I…"

But his voice suddenly disappeared. He had just turned and looked at his father's face.

It was pale. Tiny drops of sweat had appeared on his forehead. His pupils were dilated…he was in shock.

Not because of what was being said but because he believed it.

Albus suddenly felt like his knees were about to give out. His gut tightened up. His whole body had gone numb.

She had been planning this for months. She had been warning him about it since the moment they met.

She had said that Albus' family would turn against him.

They had been worried about his mental state and been urging him to see a therapist. His mind vault unnerved them to say the least and his recent actions had made them question him even more. It didn't matter if they believed her. The sob story she was giving them would fall apart under scrutiny, even with the confirmation bias of idiots like Blagden. It only mattered that they didn't believe him. The simple fact that they couldn't give Albus the benefit of the doubt showed that they had not only lost confidence in him but that even love and family bonds weren't enough anymore.

Fear had gotten the better of them.

And just like she had promised…they had indeed turned against him.

In that second, his mind shot back to their talk in the wood. The day he'd found out who she really was.

"All war is based on deception," she said. She had made a flame appear in the palm of her hand and was watching it dance over her skin without burning it.

"Sun Tzu," Albus said automatically.

She nodded. "But if that's true, then all of what war accomplishes is also a lie. Including peace."

"I don't follow," Albus admitted.

"What's true, is always true. No matter where you go in the universe, two plus two equals four. I know there are people that would argue, the truth is what you make it. History is written by the victor and so on, but it has reached a point where those philosophical views are no longer attenable. If you worked hard enough, if you put enough time and resources into it, if you had a big enough amount of support, you could convince anybody of just about anything!" she said with a smile, still playing with the flame.

"You could convince people that JFK was a time traveller, that the earth is flat, that God exists! But, eventually, reality would prove you wrong. Because nature doesn't have grey areas. There is what is, and what isn't and everything else is just shit we don't yet understand…my point it, with or without me, reality wins."

"The muggles find out about magic, one way or the other?"

"Yep. That goes for you too, Albus."

"Well, I already know that magic exists so –"

"Wasn't talking about that. Sooner or later, with or without me, no matter how hard you try to deny it or ignore it…sooner or later, the reality of the life you are living will catch up to you…I hope I'm there when it does…I don't want you to be alone for that," she said suddenly snuffing the flame out.

Albus' mind snapped back to the present just in time for her words to ring true.

"Arrest them…arrest them both," Harry said in barley more than a whisper. He couldn't even look at Albus when he said it.

He barely moved, barely felt it when aurors clamped down the enchanted cuffs on his wrists. At some point he had fallen to his knees but he couldn't recall it happening. He only knew now because they had to pull him back up onto his feet.

Like a homing beacon, his gaze moved to look at Morgana.

"I've only ever wanted to help you, Albus. This is for your own good," she said softly.

There was triumph in her eyes.