The attic looked as though it had not been disturbed in centuries. Dust lay thickly on the wooden floor. Their footsteps echoed loudly as they crossed into the middle of the large space, walking carefully around mysterious chests and other objects. In the attic of a wizarding house it paid to take care.

Severus Snape looked around, seeking any sign of life – and finding none. "How are we to find them in this?" he whispered.

Dumbledore however had already pulled out his wand and was walking purposefully towards a stack of crates. He reached out to the empty air and pulled away – nothing, which then became a length of strangely patterned dark cloth.

"Invisibility Cloak," Snape muttered. "Naturally." He walked over to the now-visible group, his own wand held ready.

The two men who had been hidden under the cloak now stood up. "Dumbledore! Thank Merlin it's you!" said the roundest figure. He had tight hold of the other. "Have you seen them? Bellatrix and Lucius? Are they –"

"They are dead, Cornelius." Dumbledore's tone was gentle; the only thing, Severus realised as he threw a glance at the Headmaster, which could be said to be so. Any trace of the daffy, good-natured sentimentalist had vanished; in his place stood a figure of immovable, awesome power. "You may rest assured that you killed them."

Cornelius Fudge sagged slightly in relief. "Thank goodness. I threw the curses at them, but I wasn't sure they had worked – after all, I'm not often called upon to perform one of the Unforgivable Curses! But before I could check that they were – well, you know – I heard some sort of shouting in the hall. I thought it might be some supporter of You-Know-Who; some Death Eater, perhaps, whom we'd never known of; so I dragged Pettigrew up here with my wand at his throat and forced him to hide with me until the coast was clear. And all the time it was allies of my own!" he concluded, face beaming with good cheer.

"You performed the curses remarkably well for a novice, Minister," Snape congratulated him dryly.

"Yes, it appears my old duelling training hasn't quite been forgotten, Severus! But it really was quite an awful fight -"

"Enough, Cornelius!" Dumbledore's voice held a weary disgust. More softly he added, "It is enough."

Fudge looked puzzled. "Why, Dumbledore, what is wrong?"

Any attempt at an answer on Dumbledore's part was stopped by the sudden shadow of abject fear that passed over Fudge's face. He did not turn around but, dipping into Fudge's suddenly unguarded mind, saw through his eyes for a brief moment.

Minerva. Framed in the light filtering through the attic doorway she seemed somehow taller than she was in reality. Her wand was out and was pointed, rock steady, at Fudge's heart.

His own gaze now fixed on Fudge he heard her footsteps cross the attic floor steadily until she reached his side. "Avada Ke-"

"No!" With his own free hand he knocked her wand aside, pulling her hand firmly toward the floor, interrupting the curse before it could be completed. Nonetheless a bolt of deadly green energy hit the wooden floorboards just before Dumbledore's feet. A small, whimpering sound came from Fudge's throat.

She turned on him, balked, her eyes like a tiger's. "You know what he did – and I meant what I swore," she hissed. "Why are you stopping what we both know must be done?"

"Because this isn't a war, Minerva," he told her. "And no man should be killed, unless in war, without a chance to confess. It would be murder otherwise; and you, my Minerva, are no murderer." He let go his grip on her wand.

Her eyes flickered briefly at 'my Minerva', but her wand rose again immediately after he let go of it, and he sighed. "Then get him to confess, if you think he should. But I made a vow, Albus Dumbledore, and I will not break a vow."

She turned her tiger's gaze to Fudge. "We know everything you did, Cornelius. The –"

She broke off as noise and more figures streamed through the doorway – the Wizengamot members, having finally found their quarry, flooded into the room, their faces set and grim. Madam Bones flicked her wand towards Fudge. "Why isn't he dead yet?" she demanded.

Minerva didn't look around. "Professor Dumbledore seems to believe he should be given a chance to confess."

Amelia Bones raised an eyebrow. "Well, Minister, I'd say you have about five minutes left to live. Better make your confession now, before Professor McGonagall here gets too impatient to let you finish it."

Fudge looked from one deadly woman to the other, his mouth open. "What are you both talking about? "Confess"? Confess what? I caught the Death Eaters!"

"He did!" Peter Pettigrew piped up eagerly. "We'd been hiding out here in Bellatrix' old home, after we escaped in the riot. Lucius was trying to figure out some way to revive Voldemort's plans, to recruit new Death Eaters, to even revive Lord Voldemort himself! But then the Minister here –"

"Shut up, Wormtail," Snape said in disgust. "You always were a servile creature."

Pettigrew stuttered "S-s-severus, I s-s-swear-"

He broke off, wilting under Snape's scornful, knowing stare. Snape then turned the same stare towards Fudge. "Anteimagio videre is such a useful spell, Minister. I'm really surprised they don't teach it at Hogwarts. Of course, it is regarded as a Dark Arts spell, somewhat immoral, in fact; but, given what we all saw you do when I cast it in that bedroom downstairs, I don't think you'd object to the immorality of it at all."

Fudge's face turned visibly pale. "Anteimagio videre?" he gasped.

A breathless hush filled the room as Snape continued, his voice silken with irony. "Oh, yes; as I said, very useful. Voldemort certainly found it useful – I cast it for him many times. He enjoyed reliving someone's torture almost as much as he did causing it."

Somewhere at the back of the group Dumbledore heard a hastily muffled sob. He guessed it would have emanated from Ermot Herm. The mention of Voldemort and torture had a special significance for him.

"You know, Minister," Snape now dropped into a conversational tone, sounding eerily as if he were discussing Quidditch results over afternoon tea, "I really believe you have missed your calling. Had you joined the Dark Lord, you would have had many more opportunities to display your, um, talents, shall we say?"

Fudge seemed to shrink inward upon himself with every word Severus spoke. His eyes darted with a hunted look from one unfriendly face to another. Pettigrew, with behaviour uncannily like that of his Animagus form divided his attention between the grim group confronting Fudge and the seemingly terrified Minister himself, his nose actually twitching as if he could smell the anger and the fear.

"Who knows? You and Voldemort could have found you had much in common, not just a taste for power and for pain." Snape clearly relished speaking these words to the man who would have had him sent to Azkaban had Dumbledore not intervened for him so many years ago.

"Severus." Minerva McGonagall's wand hand had not moved a muscle. "Amusing as you no doubt find this, what is its point? We all saw what he did. And we have all agreed on the appropriate penalty."

Severus Snape looked at her with a certain disappointment, but casually shrugged. "As you will, then." He gracefully stepped backward into the group of the Wizengamot, leaving Minerva, Dumbledore, and Madam Bones facing the Minister of Magic and his 'prisoner'.

"Cornelius Fudge." The words were somehow still hard for Dumbledore to say. But he was the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot; it was his responsibility. "By a unanimous vote of a Wizengamot quorum, you have been found guilty of torture and murder. The penalty for those who would misuse magic in such ways is as old as our wizarding history itself; and now the Dementors are no more, we must return to the old ways. Do you have anything to say before the sentence is carried out?"

Fudge loosened his hold on Pettigrew, his hands shaking as he finally realised that any hope of pretence had flown. "N – no, you mustn't, you can't mean to, they were Death Eaters, don't any of you understand? You can't, not for them, you can't!"

"We will." Amelia Bones and Minerva McGonagall spoke together.

"Ermot! Ermot Herm! They did worse to your own family, surely you -" Fudge's voice was high, frantic, as he tried to sway any weak link.

Ermot shook his head. "What they did, I cannot forgive them for," he admitted. "But even so, I won't become like them. Nor will I condone it in anyone else. I'm sorry, Cornelius."

Fudge's shoulders slumped in defeat.

And the words burst out of Dumbledore before he could think about them. "Why, Cornelius?" Two words which bore all the old fondness. "Why do this?" All the old fondness but also the new betrayal, the new and immense pain.

Fudge's head flew up. "You! You dare to ask me that?" His voice was loud with fury. "Always you, Albus Dumbledore, standing in my way, judging me! Always you they spoke about with respect, always you whom everyone secretly wanted to be in my place – the place I earned! Finally I worked out a way to be seen beyond your shadow, and you, you stop me yet again! Look into my mind then, Leglimens, greatest wizard of the world, and tell me why I did it!"

Shocked, Dumbledore cast the spell without thought – and found in all of Fudge's thoughts and memories the limitless hate of a man who had always thought himself cast in second place. He flung his mind away from the others and stood aghast. Minerva laid her hand on his arm in quick distress, and Madam Bones moved her gaze to him in concern.

Fudge's eyes brightened with a wild hope. He pulled out his wand with snake-like speed and pointed it at Dumbledore's heart. Snape shoved the other Wizengamot members aside.

"Avada Kedavra!"