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Sargeras silently closed the hourglass, his expression unreadable. He cast one final glance around the crude stone chamber, then turned and strode out without a word.
The moment his boots stepped once more onto the cold stone floor outside, he found that what had once been an empty underground hall was now teeming with people. A chaotic din filled the space as voices overlapped and rose in agitation, all converging around the grotesque and unmoving figure at the center. It was a towering monstrosity of twisted flesh, terrifying in its stillness.
At the very front of the crowd stood Albus Dumbledore, his silver beard swaying gently with each breath, his expression grave and composed. Behind him, the four heads of house stood like silent sentinels, their faces unreadable, forming a protective line at their headmaster's back.
Lucius Malfoy, immaculate as ever, stood to one side in tense conversation with Minister Fudge, flanked by several members of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, their faces darkened with displeasure and suspicion.
Cornelius Fudge himself, the Minister of Magic, was flushed a deep shade of red. His round face was taut with unease, and though he tried to maintain the air of an official in control, the cluster of nervous Aurors surrounding him told another story. Their wands were drawn and gripped tightly, as if they feared the creature might spring to life at any moment.
The loudest presence in the room, however, belonged to Rita Skeeter. She stood near the front with her ever-hovering entourage from the Daily Prophet — photographers and quick-quill scribes flitting about her like vultures. Their cameras clicked furiously, lenses fixed on the grotesque abomination in the center as if they were scenting blood, while magical flashes lit up the dim chamber in rapid bursts of white and blue.
Above them, Rita's infamous Quick-Quotes Quill danced wildly in the air, scribbling away with feverish glee, desperate to capture every detail.
In a dim corner of the room, poor Gilderoy Lockhart sat crumpled and forgotten, curled in on himself like a discarded doll. No one spared him so much as a glance… no one except Rita, who occasionally flicked a glance in his direction, her eyes gleaming with malice and morbid delight. At her command, the quill began weaving an embellished and sensational account of his condition, spinning the scene into something even more lurid.
Then, as soon as Sargeras emerged from the chamber, all eyes turned to him in an instant.
Like iron drawn to a lodestone, the crowd surged toward him. The roar that followed was a cacophony of fear, shock, and outrage. A wave of questions, demands, and barely-contained panic surged forward as if the very room itself had exploded into confrontation.
"What happened here?!"
Fudge was the first to break, his voice raised with forced authority, though beneath it lurked a note of instability; anxious and defensive. Still, he tried to wield the weight of his office like a bludgeon.
"That… that thing… what in Merlin's name is it? What happened to Professor Lockhart? And you… Sargeras—what exactly were you doing in there?!"
His pudgy hand shot forward, jabbing the air until it nearly touched the tip of Sargeras's nose.
"Explain yourself! Immediately!"
One of the Hogwarts Board members echoed the demand, his voice sharp and accusatory. Sargeras turned his head slightly and caught sight of the speaker, a wizened wizard with a cold, pointed glare who was clearly a patriarch from one of the old pure-blood families.
Before he could respond, Rita Skeeter had already elbowed her way to the front of the crowd. Her lips, slathered in a garish shade of crimson, flared open like a weapon primed for attack. Words fired from her mouth with the speed and relentlessness of a machine gun, each one sharper than the last, and her Quick-Quotes Quill buzzed madly in the air beside her, scribbling away with giddy abandon.
"Mr. Greengrass speaks first! We're live with the exclusive! Tell us the truth! Were you the mastermind behind this horrifying event? What's your connection to this creature? Or perhaps—"
She paused for dramatic effect, her voice slowing into a venomous drawl. Her eyes, those beetle-bright orbs behind glittering spectacles, gleamed with malicious delight as she launched her final accusation.
"—are you the one controlling it? Did you use this thing to carry out some twisted, unspeakable plan?"
For a breathless moment, the air itself seemed to freeze.
The room, once so loud and chaotic, fell into a strange, suffocating silence. Even the flashbulbs had stopped flickering. All eyes turned to Sargeras once again, but this time, they weren't just curious… they were suspicious, frightened, and already halfway to condemning him.
Snape, standing off to the side, wore the same sardonic twist at the corner of his lips that he always did, as though quietly amused by the chaos unfolding around him.
Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, said nothing. His face remained unreadable, his cold gaze unmoving, but he took a silent step back, deliberately distancing himself from the man at the center of the storm.
Fudge, along with the tense cluster of Aurors around him, clearly didn't know what to believe. But Rita's words had shaken them. You could see it in the way they tightened their grips on their wands, in the sudden shift in their posture. The unease was spreading quickly, and their mistrust was thick enough to taste.
And after all, none of them had ever truly trusted Sargeras. Not even before this moment. In their eyes, he was still the man who had once walked out of Azkaban.
Sargeras swept his gaze slowly across the room, studying each face in turn. Yet there was no trace of anger in his own. Not the slightest flicker of outrage, nor even a hint of defensiveness. Instead, his expression settled into a calm that bordered on weariness. It was the kind of calm that made it seem as if merely standing here, surrounded by these suspicious and accusing faces, was more draining than it was threatening.
He didn't even bother responding to Rita's provocation. With a voice clear and steady, devoid of emotion or haste, he began his "explanation."
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said quietly, and yet somehow his words carried through the clamor and reached every corner of the room. "As you can see for yourselves, this place was sealing away a remnant left behind by Salazar Slytherin… an experimental body, something incomplete. Unfortunately, a fragment of Lord Voldemort's memory managed to take control of Professor Lockhart and used him to reach this chamber. That fragment then fused itself with the experimental, leading to everything you now see before you."
He paused for a moment, letting his words settle, his gaze drifting over the skeptical expressions around him. When he reached Rita, whose face was practically glowing with excitement, he lingered just a heartbeat longer, then continued calmly.
"As for Professor Lockhart," he added, nodding slightly toward the corner of the room where the man still huddled, "he tried to deal with the situation himself. But… unfortunately, he overused his Memory Charm. He ended up wiping every trace of Voldemort's memory completely. What you see now is the result… a creature stripped of all intelligence and identity, nothing left but the most primal instincts."
"Absurd!" Fudge snapped, his voice trembling with emotion, his face flushed and contorted. "'You-Know-Who' is dead! Gone!"
He seemed desperate to wrest back control of the narrative, to pull the crowd back to reason… or at least to his side. "You expect us to believe some disembodied memory possessed him? That it was then erased with a Memory Charm? It sounds like something out of a third-rate wizard novel! Where's your proof, Sargeras? We need real evidence, not just some vague, convenient 'explanation'!"
"Evidence?" Rita Skeeter sneered, her voice sharp as glass, and her Quick-Quotes Quill spun even faster beside her, a frenzied blur in the air.
"Minister, what we're hearing sounds like nothing more than an elaborate story designed to avoid blame. Just look at him… he walks out of Salazar Slytherin's secret chamber completely unharmed, and then look at that… thing. You expect anyone to believe there's no connection between the two? The readers of the Daily Prophet want the truth. And that truth might very well be this… Sargeras Greengrass, you are the real mastermind behind all of this. You're the one who caused this chaos."
Her voice rose with each word, her steps carrying her closer, until she was nearly nose-to-nose with him. Spittle flew from her lips as she pressed the attack, all pretense of journalistic neutrality thrown aside, her greed and malice laid bare for all to see.
At last, Dumbledore spoke.
His voice cut cleanly through the storm, calm and firm. "Rita. You cannot accuse a Hogwarts professor like this without evidence. We do not make judgments based on fear and speculation."
But Rita was already too far gone, lost in the feverish high of the headline she was crafting with every word. She waved him off with a dramatic sweep of her hand and snapped back, "Evidence? Headmaster Dumbledore, sometimes the truth is written right there in front of us, plain as day. A man who once served time in Azkaban for murder. A creature that appeared out of nowhere. A professor barely clinging to life. You don't think this all smells like a carefully orchestrated plot?"
Then she turned back to Sargeras, her voice sharp with accusation, "So tell us, Sargeras… do you dare to undergo Veritaserum testing? Or shall we search your quarters and see what comes to light?"
Sargeras's brows twitched ever so slightly. The haughty tone in Fudge's voice, combined with the way Rita's Quick-Quotes Quill was now practically jabbing at his face, was finally beginning to wear on his patience.
With a slow and deliberate gesture, he raised his hand. At once, an invisible force shimmered through the air, gently but firmly pushing the nearest onlookers half a step backward. It wasn't aggressive, but it was assertive enough to mark a clear boundary. Then, with perfect composure, Sargeras turned to face Rita Skeeter.
His expression remained calm, his tone smooth and level, without the slightest tremor beneath the words.
"Rita Skeeter… are you questioning the truth of my explanation?"
The question came softly, but the weight it carried pressed into the space like a sudden drop in pressure, heavy and undeniable. A few people standing too close instinctively drew back, necks shrinking into their shoulders, as if the calmness in his voice made them feel more exposed than if he had shouted.
But Rita… the fire in her eyes only burned hotter, as if the tension in the air had given her a whiff of something intoxicating… something that smelled like the scent of a front-page scandal, hot off the press. Not only did she not retreat, she squared her shoulders and leaned in further, spine rod-straight, her bejeweled spectacles catching the light with a glint as sharp as her smile.
"Oh, ho!" she barked, voice rising in pitch until it cut through the chamber like a screeching quill dragged across parchment. "Professor Greengrass, was that supposed to be a threat?"
Her quill blurred through the air again, scribbling furiously across the scroll as though it were possessed. Spittle sprayed as she pressed up to the invisible shield, lips curled in gleeful accusation.
"Look at that! How textbook! That reaction says it all… I must have hit a nerve! Maybe all of this, from beginning to end, was your plan all along. A grand revenge against Hogwarts for your so-called 'dismissal' from back then. A masterpiece of retaliation, dressed up as a tragedy!"
She stepped in sharply, her heavily made-up face stopping just shy of the shimmering shield, so close her breath fogged against it. Her voice dropped low, but it didn't soften, it took on a feverish, almost religious fervor, as if she was preaching to an audience of ghosts and readers yet unborn.
"But let me tell you something—"
She leaned forward until it seemed her words were meant for Sargeras and the enchanted barrier alone.
"—no matter how you try to intimidate me, I, Rita Skeeter, will never back down from the truth. I! Will! Never! Compromise!"
She shrieked the final words like a declaration of war, each syllable flung into the air with the force of a spell, loud enough to echo through the chamber. And in that moment, the tension that had been simmering just below the surface of the room snapped taut.
The chamber, once still and silent, lit up in bursts of camera flashes, more frenetic and blinding than before, all dancing around her like the finale of some grotesque stage play. She stood in the center of it all, basking in her own imagined martyrdom, as though she were already immortalized in ink and memory, the heroine of a headline yet to be written.
The air was thick now, stifling and sharp, electric with something just shy of violence. Everyone felt it, though no one spoke. Something invisible had shifted… something smoldering had finally caught fire.
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[Chapter End's]
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