The week ended, and Replication became available again with it.
Corvus finished breakfast with Elizaveta in the dining room of the frigate, set down his cup, and decided to go through the Veil this time.
She noticed he was making an important decision before he spoke. Her glacial eyes lifted to his and held.
"You are going somewhere unpleasant."
Corvus reached for her hand where it rested beside her plate and turned it once, thumb brushing the inside of her wrist. "Only briefly."
"Will you be in danger?"
Every time she made a flawless, pinpoint deduction, he was struck anew by the brilliance of her intuition and by the quiet awe she inspired in him as his wife.
He stood.
Elizaveta did not rise with him this time. She watched instead, reading the tension in his shoulders and the absence of hesitation in the way he moved. Her expression did not harden; she wanted to stay next to him in whatever hardship he was facing.
"At least tell me where you are going."
"The Ministry, my fierce wolf."
Her eyes widened, and everything she heard and read about the Veil came to her mind.
"Return to me, please."
She held his gaze for a moment longer, then let out a breath through her nose.
Corvus bent, kissed her cherry lips, and vanished from the frigate.
He reappeared in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic to the usual collapse of ordinary movement.
The Bastion Guards posted around the chamber saluted at once. Their shields remained lowered, and yet the sound of gauntleted fists striking armour carried across the polished floor with enough force to turn heads all over the atrium.
Passersby startled. One witch dropped a folder. An elderly wizard in dark green robes nearly walked into a statue while trying to look in two directions at once. A cluster of Aurors near the far security arch saw the salute, understood who had just appeared, and followed a breath later.
Corvus returned the acknowledgement with a slight nod and began walking.
He did not need to announce his destination. Two Bastion Guards moved into step behind him the moment he crossed the first ring of tiled floor. Ministry staff got out of the way before they were asked.
The lifts took him down.
By the time he stepped into the Department of Mysteries, the Unspeakables on duty were already expecting him. They did not ask questions around him. Fear handled that. Two of them simply joined the escort.
The deeper corridors of the Department kept their own atmosphere. Silence sat thicker there. Doors had no proper labels. Magic moved in the walls with the old confidence of a place built to keep dangerous thoughts behind stone and ritual.
As they reached the circular chamber with the rotating doors, one of the unspeakables led the group to the door of the Death Room.
He opened it with both hands and an expression that belonged on a man unsealing a tomb he would rather leave alone.
Corvus entered first.
The chamber remained as he remembered it, bar the captured souls. A vast stone amphitheatre cut in descending tiers, each bench curving toward the centre where a raised platform stood under the black arch. Ancient stone with old wear at the edges. A veil hanging from it in thin, tattered folds.
It had a haunting beauty.
It was beautiful in the way a grave carved by masters was beautiful. The veil moved when no wind touched it. Silver grey ripples crossed its surface. It was the boundary between this world and the Purgatory.
The whispers were already there.
He remembered his last time in this chamber and Croaker with his plans about him. The Druids and the Department now served a higher purpose. That had felt like a major victory then. Now the memory stood in a different proportion against what waited on the other side of the veil.
The Bastion Guards stopped at the outer line of the central dais. The Unspeakables halted with them.
Corvus moved on alone.
The veil hung before him.
The whispers were clear now. Not words exactly, but an invitation perhaps. Waiting for the wrong listener to cross the threshold.
He let his tendrils spill from his back in a slow, dark unfurling. They spread outward, then upward, thinning at the edges into the shape of dark wings. The room reacted immediately. One Unspeakable behind him took a sharp breath. A Bastion Guard shifted his stance slightly. His lord was to cross a threshold that had never been crossed before.
Corvus floated up from the stone platform and rose to the middle of the arch.
-
In another part of the Ministry, a Patronus arrived.
Arcturus Black had been in the middle of a meeting with Vinda and Grindelwald when the silver shape burst through the office door and cut across the room in frantic light.
He had been making a joke, dry and mildly offensive, about the pace at which newly married men forgot statecraft in favour of more domestic occupations. Gellert, to his own disgrace, had laughed. Vinda had not, though the twitch near her mouth suggested the old man's line had at least not offended her.
Then the Patronus spoke in the voice of an Auror loyal to House Black before he was loyal to the Ministry.
"Heir Black has entered the Department of Mysteries."
Every trace of humour vanished.
Arcturus was on his feet before the silver light had fully dispersed. His chair scraped hard against the floor. Vinda moved at the same instant. Grindelwald rose a heartbeat later, face already sharpened with attention that had once terrified the continent.
Arcturus's mind did not need to work through possibilities one by one. It leapt straight to the moment Corvus was lost two weeks ago.
When they searched, the tracking spells had pointed to the veil.
He started running.
The corridor outside the office was too narrow, the lift too slow, the Ministry too full of people who chose the worst possible moments to exist between one point and another. Vinda kept pace on his right. Grindelwald moved like a man much younger than his years on the left, robes cut back by speed and impatience.
They reached the Death Room with their breathing still under control and their nerves nowhere near it.
Corvus was already in the air.
His tendrils spread wide from his shoulders and took the shape of wings. The veil hung in front of him, moving in soft, restless folds as if it were pleased to be approached.
Grindelwald stopped where he stood.
Vinda made it two steps farther, then froze, her body had finally caught up with what her eyes were telling it.
"Corvus." The name came out thin.
Arcturus did not stop.
"Corvus, don't." The old man's voice cracked against the stone and the black arch alike. "Son, please stop."
There was no politics in the plea. No calculation or any noble coldness. The fear stripped all that away and left only the truth beneath.
Corvus turned in the air.
Vinda's hand rose to her mouth as if that might somehow keep the scene from completing itself.
He looked at his grandfather first.
"I will be back, Grandfather."
The words landed calmly. The slight nod that followed made them worse. Then he leaned back.
His tendrils touched the veil first.
His outline distorted as though seen through water. The grey ripples in the fabric thickened, climbed over him, and turned parts of him transparent from the edges inward.
Arcturus made one step forward and stopped because he had already seen enough to know that reaching would accomplish nothing.
By the time Corvus's face lost its solidity, the old man had dropped to his knees.
Vinda's hand stayed over her mouth. One tear went down her cheek in complete silence.
Grindelwald moved then.
"Seal this room." The order cracked through the chamber like a curse. He turned on the Bastion Guards with his wand already shaking in his hand.
"You betrayed him. You let him walk to his death."
The guards did not move.
One of them, his face remained hidden behind the heavy visor, and his voice, flattened by armour and discipline alike, spoke with certainty.
"The Lord will return."
That was all.
He turned toward the doors as though the accusation, the grief, and the existence of Grindelwald's wand were no more than weather.
"We will seal the Death Room for his return."
That practical belief did not calm anyone. It did, however, give the room something to obey.
Unspeakables moved first, rushing out. Bastion Guards arrived shortly and spread to the entrance, shields locking into a defensive line. The Death Room, which had been a theatre a moment earlier, became a fortress.
--
Behind the veil, Corvus arrived in the same corridor.
The transition took hold of his body again. His height increased, bones lengthened, and shoulders widened. The process did not surprise him. It only irritated him slightly.
He let it happen and then floated forward.
The life leech stayed close around him in a tight sphere, folded in until it hugged the edge of his own presence rather than spilling out into the corridor. He wanted to see how Thanatos would react to the trait. The last visits had been polite by necessity. This one did not need to begin that way.
He floated through the long corridor. The low pulse of Purgatory moved behind every surface. He passed the same points he had memorised on earlier visits and kept his pace unhurried.
When he reached the double doors to the throne room, they opened on their own.
His tendrils went through first, slithering ahead and spreading from wing form into dark, streaming branches.
Then Corvus followed.
Thanatos sat on the throne with his fingertips touching each other.
When Corvus crossed the threshold, the Architect rose.
The motion was smooth, and both figures floated.
They looked at each other across the throne room like two versions of death, considering whether resemblance should be treated as kinship or insult.