After dragging on for nearly a month, Lockhart's trial finally opened as October arrived. The venue was set in North America. Besides Dumbledore, the British delegation included officials from both the Muggle side and the Ministry of Magic.
Dumbledore invited Skyl to accompany him.
Skyl grinned and asked whether the old man was afraid that, once he was out and about, no one would be there to change his adult diapers—so he'd called in a younger lad like Skyl.
The old Headmaster chuckled, handed him two Galleons, and said, "Your wages for this week."
The day Dumbledore and Skyl left Hogwarts, it rained. A rain cloud roughly forty square kilometres in size blanketed the entire campus. The workers hurried to throw tarps over the piles of planks, and took advantage of the drizzle to rest for a bit.
On the cliff north of the main castle, a new tower was being built. It wasn't for owls, and it wasn't the Astronomy Tower either. Even the people building it didn't understand what it was meant for. The marble of the tower body looked pale in the rain, like a snapped white birch.
When the Headmaster and the transfer student arrived in London through the Floo Network, the weather was half-cloudy, half-sunny, with fierce wind. After walking a short distance from the Ministry of Magic, they reached Downing Street, where Muggle officials were waiting to receive the visiting wizards.
The gale tore Fudge's wizard hat off and wrecked the Prime Minister's hairstyle. Their eyes were bright, their smiles warm and friendly, with none of that stiff politeness—more like two neighbours meeting again after a long time apart.
They shook hands.
It was the first meeting between Britain's magical world and Britain's Muggle world in centuries.
Reporters watching nearby raised cameras in unison. Muggles used portable film cameras and digital cameras, while wizards used old-fashioned ones whose flash was loud and dramatic. Standing together, both sides were full of curiosity.
"When did you start standing here?"
"I've been here the whole time. It's just that you (Muggles) can't see."
"This is an incredible photo. History will remember it forever."
"Yes. History will remember this day."
The delegation climbed into Bentley sedans—old-fashioned, dignified cars forming a convoy—and with mounted police escorting them, they headed for the airport.
On one street they passed, they ran into a protest march. People held banners, dressed up like wizards, and shouted at the top of their lungs:
Gilderoy is innocent! Long live Lockhart!
Skyl tilted his head and looked out the window. These jubilant people were demanding that an international court release the arrested Lockhart. A man in a suit had climbed up high and was shouting into a loudspeaker at the marching crowd. Skyl couldn't make out the words, but every so often the crowd would erupt into cheers.
"They seem happy," Skyl murmured.
"Oh, don't mind those people," the Muggle civil servant sitting beside him explained lightly. He was the British Muggle delegation's spokesperson. "Just a few little tricks from the opposition. They think supporting Lockhart's release will play well with the public."
This trial was destined to be a huge spectacle. Countries all over the world would send designated representatives to take part in judgement—standing for their national apparatuses, for their heads of state, and for the interests of the groups behind those heads of state. The very peak of the world's power pyramid would gather in New York, representing 6.5 billion people on Earth, to judge one tiny wizard.
Seven continents, four oceans, and a speck of dust—which mattered more? Until the verdict came down, no one would know the answer. And no matter what the answer was, it would overturn all of humanity's history up to this point.
"Do you think Lockhart will be released, or executed?" Skyl asked.
"Sir, I think both are entirely possible," the civil servant replied. He looked to be in his thirties or forties—very young by bureaucratic standards, with a bright future ahead. The way he looked at Skyl carried curiosity, along with an adult's gentle composure.
"Then which side do you support?"
"In principle, we support the justice of the procedure, not the outcome."
"But we all know what the outcome will be," Skyl shrugged. The scent of industrial air freshener in the car was fairly pleasant. Leaning back in his seat, he softly hummed a neat, showy little tune.
"Refreshing," the civil servant said with a smile. "Is that a variation on Carmen?"
"No," Skyl said. "It's Gilderoy Lockhart."
These days, most songs were called that, so the civil servant assumed Skyl was joking.
The convoy reached the airport. During security screening, the wizards demonstrated their traditional craft—though their suitcases were packed with magical items, in the inspectors' eyes they were all just everyday necessities. But the trick couldn't fool the X-ray scanner. Some of the Ministry representative's potions and odd magical toys couldn't be brought on board.
Dumbledore and Skyl were travelling light. The old man carried only a small wooden stick, while the transfer student had casually brought a notebook—Mora's Book. Even so, security scrutinised them for ages.
A chubby, guileless Black security officer pinched the old wand, gave it an experimental wave, and then sagged in disappointment as he confirmed the sad truth that he was, in fact, a Muggle.
A pretty blonde security officer flipped through Mora's Book and winked at Skyl, asking with nervous curiosity, "Is this… sheet music? Sorry, you don't have to answer. I just thought you'd bring a spellbook, you know—whoosh—" She even mimed casting with two fingers, though Skyl had no idea where she'd learned it.
Skyl couldn't help laughing. Then he asked, "Can you read music?"
"A little."
"Then please hum the notes you're seeing," Skyl said. When he noticed how uneasy she looked, he reassured her, "It's fine. Hum it boldly. We're not in a hurry—this plane only has a few passengers anyway."
He turned his head to look behind them. The Ministry's representatives were in chaos, hurriedly pulling items out of their suitcases one by one for inspection. A security officer beside them praised an enlarged suitcase, saying, "Your case can really hide things, huh."
The flustered scene was oddly funny. The blonde security officer visibly relaxed and hummed a brisk little melody.
Skyl took Mora's Book back from her hands and offered sincere wishes. "You're going to have good luck, ma'am. Get ready for a fortunate stretch of life. If I were you, I might go buy a lottery ticket—or prepare to receive a romance."
"Really?" Her eyes lit up.
"Of course. That's a wizard's divination."
Beside him, the sly Dumbledore said as if it were nothing, "Yes—divination from a divination master who failed Divination."
"Hey, old man, don't ruin my act," Skyl shot back. "Careful—one day no one will change your diapers."
"I paid for the service," Dumbledore said calmly.
The blonde security officer rolled her eyes at Skyl in a perfectly beautiful way, then laughed and thanked him for the blessing.
Once everyone attending the court and accompanying the delegation boarded the plane, the Muggle officials pulled out professional documents—and alcohol—to brief their wizarding friends on the current world situation.
There were three factions on the plane: the domestic Muggle officials, the wizards representing Britain's magical world, and members of HUMANs (also called the Human Union Department) representing the international court.
"In order to respond to the worldwide phenomenon of magical anomalies, and to eliminate the disasters brought by those anomalies, nations across the world have urgently established HUMANs," explained a HUMANs operative—a lean, capable young man. "We are an international, pan-Earth administrative organisation. Our members come from all over the world. We possess a certain degree of independent law enforcement authority and special immunity. However, we are not a political entity, and therefore have no authority to wage war."
Skyl had seen that face before—on the Daily Prophet's front page. He was the one who had personally arrested Lockhart.
"Sounds like a makeshift troupe," a Ministry representative said half-jokingly. "But your efficiency is far higher than ours. The decision to arrest Lockhart kept bouncing between the Minister and the office heads, and you lot acted first."
"Forgive me for being blunt," the man said evenly, with an unshakable firmness. "Right now, every organisation in the world is a makeshift troupe."
He glanced around at the bureaucrats who bragged endlessly and drank as if it were water. "Our constitution and laws, proof of royal bloodlines—everything humanity relies on to see our own history clearly has turned into waste paper. If our memories weren't correct, human civilisation would have already collapsed by now, and the Earth would be full of wars. The appearance of HUMANs is a cooperation by the world's political elites, undertaken to maintain civilisation."
Dumbledore asked what mattered to him most. "How do you view magic?"
"How we view magic isn't important," the operative replied. "What matters is how magic views us. If it wants peace, then it will get peace. If it wants war, then it will get war."
The old educator smiled and shook his head. "Please believe me—we absolutely do not wish to see war. I personally recognise your principles, but achieving true peace is not easy. After all, there are so many countries on this planet. A single trial cannot unite everyone."
The Ministry representative also nodded, swallowed a mouthful of whisky, cheeks flushed red, and echoed, "It absolutely won't be easy."
Through a patch of turbulence, the plane pierced the heavy clouds of the troposphere and entered the clear stratosphere, drifting through sunlit air toward the country on the far side of the Atlantic.
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