[SHOCKING: Unknown Force Attacks Azkaban — Ten Dangerous Convicts at Large!!]
[Is the Mysterious Man's Return No Longer a Rumour?!]
Christmas hadn't arrived yet, and the wizarding world had been shaken to its foundations.
The day before, an explosion had torn through Azkaban's outer barriers. At least ten high-security prisoners had walked out through the gap. The perpetrator was unknown. The Ministry was conducting a "thorough investigation," which was Ministry for we have no idea.
The result: the rumours about Voldemort's return — which Fudge had been desperately trying to smother for eighteen months — had reached flash point. The Daily Prophet couldn't bury the story. The Order hadn't even needed to say a word. People were drawing their own conclusions, and no amount of official denial was going to stop them.
"Dumbledore warned Fudge," Hermione said, staring at the newspaper. She looked tired in the way she got when the world was being spectacularly stupid at her. "He warned him months ago. They didn't do anything."
Breakfast. Kevin and the group had known the news since the previous night — the Order had been alerted within the hour. They were hashing through implications now, with Christmas break on the horizon and the world outside the castle looking increasingly hostile.
The Order had already moved. With Umbridge's Educational Decrees limiting Moody's access to Harry, the standing protection detail had been reshuffled. Sirius and Lupin were covering Harry's holiday — and both had, apparently, jumped at the assignment with the enthusiasm of men who had been confined indoors too long and were desperate for an excuse to do something useful.
Dumbledore, meanwhile, was preparing to leave.
Since completing the alchemy project with Kevin last month, Dumbledore had been working the Horcrux problem in earnest, factoring in what he now knew. The calendar had cleared. He was leaving today — properly, with intent, for the duration of the holiday — and would return when school resumed.
In the films, this would have been odd timing. In the films, a great many things had gone differently.
Kevin sat with his breakfast going cold, turning the problem over in his mind with a steadily increasing sense of unease.
The Azkaban breakout had happened after Christmas in the original story. Last night should have been Mr. Weasley's snake attack — the scenario Kevin had been quietly preparing for. He'd had it mapped out: the attack, the badge triggering, Dumbledore Apparating directly to St. Mungo's, the snake in custody, the possibility of examining a living Horcrux carrier under controlled conditions.
That opportunity had just evaporated. Voldemort had rearranged his schedule.
More troubling: if the Azkaban breakout had moved up, where had the snake gone? Had the attack on Mr. Weasley been cancelled entirely, or simply delayed? And if Dumbledore was now heading out to retrieve Horcruxes on an accelerated timeline — the ring in Little Hangleton — was he walking into a trap that had been set specifically because Voldemort knew Dumbledore would move early?
In the original story, Dumbledore had come back from the ring with a blackened hand. A curse, almost certainly embedded in the Horcrux itself or in the space around it — the kind of thing designed to punish exactly the person who would come looking.
Kevin needed to flag this.
"You've gone quiet again," Harry said, nudging him.
"Just thinking about whether my Christmas plans with Hermione are going to survive the week."
"..."
Harry and Ron exchanged a look. Hermione's cheeks went pink, but she didn't argue. The shift in energy was deliberate — Kevin had decided not to share his actual concern in a crowded dining hall — and she recognised it for what it was.
The conversation moved to holiday plans. Light, practical, relatively harmless. Kevin let it carry him along.
After breakfast, he went to his workroom and wrote Dumbledore a letter.
He didn't attempt to explain the full picture — Dumbledore was not the kind of man who needed every detail spelled out, and he was not the kind of man who blundered into traps out of carelessness. If Kevin had spotted the ring risk, Dumbledore had almost certainly spotted it first, assessed it from seven different angles, and made a plan. That was simply who he was.
What Kevin could offer was the back-up. If you need another pair of hands, or someone standing outside a door, write and I'll come. He also flagged the locket situation: still intact, still untouched, still sitting where they'd agreed to leave it. Dumbledore had wanted to wait — to use the locket as a test, to see whether Voldemort reacted to a missing Horcrux before they committed to a destruction timeline. The logic was sound. Regulus Black had swapped it years ago, and Voldemort had never noticed. That gap in his awareness was an intelligence asset.
Kevin sealed the letter, sent it off, and went back to his curse research.
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