We don't discuss it. We never have and we never shall. What some aurors have had to do to keep wizarding England safe. What some of them had to do to learn what they know and so that other people would not have to learn it the same way. What we also won't and don't discuss is how some of it feels. How good it is to give yourself that release. You know that feeling, maybe; we hope not. When you hold a pencil and start to bend it and you understand, instinctively, that eventually it must break if you continue to bend it. You understand at some point it will overcome the point where it was made to bend. There are no circumstances under which most people need a pencil that can be tied into a knot, can be folded against itself. What use would that pencil be? Why would anyone need to do that to a pencil and yet. You also know, or your body does, that if it does break, when it breaks, that it also might pose a hazard to your own safety. You break the pencil away from yourself without thinking. You squint and turn your head away in case. Then it breaks, sometimes with a bit of snap and sometimes, depending on the humidity, it sort of splinters softly away from itself. But it doesn't explode outward like a bomb. You probably could have kept your eyes open, watched the whole boring, anti-climactic thing and yet to do so would tempt a fate you would rather not and also, just in case, always just in case, you don't. You don't, just in case, because how would you explain it if something did go wrong, and also your body, even with a mind that is so invested in breaking pencils but still relatively healthy, insists you turn away and what do you need to pay that close attention for? It's just a breaking pencil. Don't be silly.

-

Lord Voldemort stood at the center of the table assessing the damage. A small crush of his inner circle made a semi-circle around him. Barty Crouch Jr. paced back and forth, like a cat, on the other side of the table. He had just given Lord Voldemort report about the failed ambush.

"Severus, do you know this spell?"

Severus Snape got close to the body, nodding his head in recognition. He waved his wands over some of the cuts, moving the flesh out of the way to get a better and closer look at how they were made.

"My lord, I know a spell similar to this but it is unlikely to be the same one. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they had the same origin". He stood to his full height with a barely contained smile.

"Unlikely, why?"

"It's a spell of my own creation."

Bellatrix crossed her arms against her chest and rolled her eyes, exasperated. Alecto Carrow lolled her mouth open and dropped her shoulders which made Alecto and Evan snicker. Severus' smile dissolved as he cut them a look.

"Indeed." Said Lord Voldemort with a smile of his own. "Thank you, Severus, for your expertise and focus." He said pointedly, but not harshly, emphasizing the last word with an exaggerated widening of the eyes as he looked at the members of the group behind him. He waved his wand and the body and all its blood disappeared from the enormous, heavy table.

"My lord." Replied Severus.

Cornelius Fudge heard a small snapping noise and felt a knot of air pushed against him ahead of the steadily dropping thing just-this-close right above his head. That thing hit the top of his head cooling it so drastically that he thought it was wet, passed through his skull, sped through his tightening throat, dried and closing on itself, through his now hollowed out rib cage, down and out past his feet where it would keep falling forever if he didn't say something, anything.

"No." He whispered, barely audible to anything but the dropping and now sinking feeling he felt. He had been wrong. He only saw him for the briefest fraction of a moment but he knew. He could not stand nor could he sit and he couldn't speak. A first. He could not be alive though, Lord Voldemort. It was impossible. It had been nearly two decades.

'But the breakout from Azkaban.' He thought.

'Sirius Black.' He said to himself.

'Maybe.'

'And Voldemort.' Both parts of him conceded.

But he was dead. You couldn't just come back from the dead. Lord Voldemort had died. Had he? He had! The very person who killed him, not killed, the person who had stopped him? Vanquished him? Survived him was in the room too, collapsed into a heap looking not unlike a small pile of dirty laundry. It didn't appear as if he could do it a second time and now the Minister of Magic seriously questioned how he could have the first time when he was only a baby. The heap looked so small. The glasses had slid on the floor just out of its reach. One lens was obviously cracked for how it reflected the little light flickering in the atrium bouncing off of several shiny surfaces, reflected back now in multiples. Someone, an auror?, knelt beside it and shook it gently.

"Merlin's beard-here…". The heap on the ground stirred.

"Cornelius."

"Dumbledore?" He said. He looked around the atrium recognizing what it once was. What it would mean. A bright, white flash went off somewhere that, ordinarily, would have snapped him back to himself. He closed his eyes and shook his head as if the flash had come from somewhere in his own brain. Cornelius recognized it was from the cameras used by magical law enforcement. The flash was a cold, unforgiving white. They would have to document as much as they could before another set of wizards and witches called in the chain of command would do their jobs taking samples, data collection and second pass magic readings, then yet another group to come in and clean up. There would be very little reason to keep the atrium as it was and the last group could get started as early as daylight. Besides Cornelius, the aurors, too, had seen who was there. This was only routine, just in case.

"Was that really him?" Cornelius asked looking up as he held his lime green boulder over where he thought his heart used to be. Dumbledore nodded as he kept an eye on the heap. Someone, called out but neither Cornelius nor Dumbledore turned at the sound or at the sight and sound of several people running in the direction of the elevators.

"But it's impossible. He died, didn't he? He died last time. Remember?" Dumbledore drew in a deep sigh to steady himself. He recognized the look of a man who had been lying to himself to all of their detriment. He exhaled.

"He has returned, Cornelius." Dumbledore replied evenly.

"But…"

"I must attend to other more pressing matters at this time, Minister. If you'll please excuse me."

"What could be more-"

Dumbledore strode across the atrium. His silk robes billowed softly around his long, graceful steps toward the auror and what turned out to be nothing more than a very, young man, a boy, really, who sat up slouching looking slightly dazed and teary eyed. Cornelius could tell that he might have just asked something about the location of his glasses.