McGonagall did not open the file immediately.
That was the first thing Adrian noticed.
She had asked him to stay.
He had stayed.
Now the file remained beneath one hand while the office carried on around it.
A silver instrument on the shelf clicked twice and released a thin curl of smoke. Somewhere behind Adrian, one of the portraits shifted in its frame. Dumbledore remained asleep.
Or committed to the performance.
McGonagall looked at Adrian.
"You wrote that the children should be remembered correctly."
"Yes."
"Did you mean it?"
Adrian considered.
"That sounds like a trap."
"It is a question."
"With you those categories overlap."
Her expression suggested she might have deducted points if either of them still possessed any.
"Yes," Adrian said.
McGonagall's hand remained on the file.
"That becomes more difficult once people begin deciding what correctly means."
Adrian looked down.
The cover was plain brown Ministry stock.
Not a Hogwarts file.
A small black seal sat in the upper corner.
Postwar Civil Reconciliation.
The same administrative family as his own forms.
"What is it?"
"A request for confirmation."
"About me?"
"No."
That changed the room.
Not dramatically.
Enough.
McGonagall drew the file closer.
"The Ministry has begun sending Hogwarts verification requests for former students whose wartime records require institutional confirmation."
"I saw the records room."
"Yes."
"That looks unpleasant."
"It is worse from my side of the desk."
She opened the cover.
Only the first page.
Not far enough for Adrian to read anything beyond the heading.
McGonagall's eyes moved over it.
"I have signed forty-three this week."
"That many?"
"Most are routine."
"Attendance."
"Attendance. House. dates of enrollment. examination status. whether the student was known to have remained at school during the occupation."
"And the others?"
"Conduct."
There.
Adrian leaned back slightly.
McGonagall noticed.
Of course she did.
"Conduct according to whom?" he asked.
"A question several offices would prefer no one ask before lunch."
"That sounds efficient."
"It sounds familiar."
She turned the page.
"Some classifications require supporting statements from institutions that knew the person before and during the war."
"Collaborators."
"Among others."
"Resistance."
"Yes."
"Victims."
"Yes."
"People who were all three at different points?"
McGonagall's eyes lifted from the file.
"Those are proving less convenient."
Adrian said nothing.
The room stayed quiet for a moment.
McGonagall looked back down.
"There is one former student I have not yet decided how to answer."
She rotated the file.
Not pushed across.
Rotated.
Enough that he could read the cover sheet without touching it.
VANE, ELIAS
The name was familiar.
Not personally.
School-familiar.
The kind of name that had existed at the edge of attendance rolls, House tables, corridor traffic. Adrian knew he had heard it before.
Elias Vane.
Slytherin.
He could not immediately attach a face.
That bothered him less than it once would have.
McGonagall tapped one line beneath the name.
POSTWAR CIVIL CLASSIFICATION
Below it:
COLLABORATOR
Then, in smaller type:
LOW-LEVEL WARTIME PARTICIPANT
Adrian read it once.
Then again.
"How old?"
"At the time?"
"Yes."
"School age."
"That category is broad."
"So was the war."
Fair.
He looked at the classification.
"Do you think it's wrong?"
McGonagall did not answer quickly.
That mattered.
"No."
Adrian looked up.
She continued.
"I think it is incomplete."
Different problem.
"Those are not the same thing."
"No."
McGonagall turned the file back toward herself.
"I remember Mr Vane."
"Clearly."
"I remember enough."
"Enough to disagree."
"Enough to hesitate."
That word had history in Adrian's life.
He ignored that.
"What does the Ministry say he did?"
McGonagall's expression hardened slightly.
"Mr Vale."
"Confidential."
"Yes."
"Then why show me the classification?"
"Because you were sitting in my office speaking about records."
"That sounds accidental."
"It was not."
Adrian waited.
McGonagall closed the file.
There.
Boundary.
"You should understand something before you make that face."
"What face?"
"The one in which a closed folder has become a personal insult."
"That sounds interpretive."
"It is extremely well-supported."
He looked away.
McGonagall folded her hands.
"I am not telling you Mr Vane was wrongly classified."
"Understood."
"I am not telling you he was innocent."
"I didn't assume he was."
"Good."
"I am assuming you dislike the category."
"I dislike what the category may imply beyond the evidence beneath it."
That was precise.
McGonagall's preferred form of discomfort.
Adrian looked at the closed file.
"What do you remember?"
She considered the question.
When she answered, the words came carefully.
"A frightened student."
That did not help much.
Perhaps it was not meant to.
"Many were frightened."
"Yes."
"Some still collaborated."
"Yes."
McGonagall's voice remained flat.
No excuse offered.
No sentimental rescue.
Good.
"I also remember," she said, "that fear did not make Mr Vane behave the same way every time it was asked something of him."
Adrian went still.
Small sentence.
More useful than a speech.
"What does that mean?"
"It means what I said."
"That is unusually evasive."
"It is appropriately limited."
She touched the file.
"I saw some things myself."
"What things?"
"Not enough to reconstruct his life for you."
"That wasn't the question."
"No."
McGonagall looked tired then.
Not old.
The distinction mattered.
"I saw a boy who made decisions I would not defend."
There.
"And?"
"I also saw occasions when he did less harm than he might have."
Adrian waited.
Nothing more came.
"That's thin."
"Yes."
"Too thin to change a classification."
"Yes."
"Enough to trouble you."
"Yes."
There.
Clean.
McGonagall did not improve it.
Adrian respected that.
Outside the office window, something heavy struck stone.
A worker shouted.
Another voice answered that the stone had been told not to move.
Hogwarts reconstruction continued with its usual respect for dignity.
Adrian looked again at the file.
"Why is the school being asked?"
"To confirm institutional history."
"That sounds vague."
"It is deliberately vague."
"Did they ask whether you agree with the classification?"
"No."
"What did they ask?"
McGonagall opened the file again and read from the request.
"Whether Elias Vane attended Hogwarts during the relevant period."
Pause.
"Whether he remained present at the school under the Carrow administration."
Another.
"Whether the school possesses disciplinary, attendance, or staff records relevant to his documented wartime participation."
Adrian listened.
"They aren't asking what kind of person he was."
"No."
"They shouldn't."
"No."
"But you think the answers will become part of that anyway."
McGonagall's gaze sharpened.
"Yes."
That was the problem then.
Not necessarily what the questions asked.
What the answers would be used to support afterward.
Adrian looked toward the window.
He had spent years watching people make that mistake.
A piece of evidence entered a room for one purpose.
Then someone else used it for another.
Location became intent.
Silence became agreement.
Fear became loyalty.
Not always falsely.
Just too quickly.
He stopped the thought there.
The user of the file had not even appeared yet.
No reason to indict a system because a category looked uncomfortable.
Arthur would have said that.
Probably with a pencil behind one ear.
McGonagall said, "Do not make him innocent because I dislike the neatness of the file."
Adrian glanced back.
"I wasn't."
"You were thinking."
"That remains difficult to regulate."
"Unfortunately."
A corner of her mouth moved.
Gone immediately.
She opened a drawer.
Placed the Elias file inside.
Closed it.
Adrian watched.
McGonagall noticed that too.
"You are not reading it."
"I had gathered."
"You are not entitled to it."
"I also gathered that."
"And I am not asking you to become involved."
There.
Explicit.
Necessary.
Adrian looked at her.
"What are you asking?"
"Nothing."
"That seems unlikely."
"It is accurate."
McGonagall sat straighter.
"I am informing you that the work we discussed is not theoretical."
The memorial drafts sat near her elbow.
Student files beside them.
Repair plans farther away.
She did not point at any of them.
"There are people whose records are becoming settled now."
Adrian said nothing.
"And once settled," McGonagall continued, "those records will affect things beyond this school."
"Employment."
"Yes."
"Education."
"Yes."
"Property."
"Yes."
"Reputation."
McGonagall paused.
"Yes."
There.
That answer carried more weight than the others.
Not because reputation was more important.
Because no office officially controlled it and nearly every office contributed to it.
Adrian thought of Harry's name.
Snape's.
Sirius Black's.
Three people whose public identities had survived facts with varying degrees of accuracy.
He did not say that aloud.
Too easy.
McGonagall looked at him for several seconds.
"Mr Vane is not Potter."
"I know."
"He is not Severus."
"I know."
"He is not a secret historical tragedy requiring redemption."
"That sounds specific."
"It is meant to be."
Good.
Very good.
"He is a former student," McGonagall said. "One among many. He did some things during the occupation which appear to have earned attention from the new authorities."
"Appear?"
"Careful."
"You said appear."
"I know what I said."
She did.
Always.
Adrian looked toward the drawer.
"What House?"
McGonagall stared.
"You read the cover."
"Slytherin."
"Yes."
"What year?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"That is public school information."
"And if you are curious enough to obtain public information, you may use whatever process currently exists for obtaining it."
There.
Not permission.
Not prohibition.
A route.
McGonagall had always preferred doors that required people to admit they wanted to walk through them.
Adrian stood.
She looked mildly surprised.
"Finished?"
"You said you weren't asking me anything."
"I am not."
"Then I assume this is the point where you return to governing a damaged castle."
"That would be helpful."
He moved toward the door.
"Mr Vale."
He stopped.
McGonagall remained behind the desk.
The drawer containing the file was closed.
"If you do become curious."
Adrian waited.
She chose the rest carefully.
"Do not begin by deciding what you want the answer to be."
Adrian looked at her.
"That sounds like advice."
"It is."
"You said you weren't asking me to investigate."
"I am not."
"Those statements are becoming difficult to reconcile."
"Then perhaps submit them for review."
There.
Almost a joke.
McGonagall looked offended by herself.
Adrian left before she could correct it.
The corridor outside the Headmistress's office was quieter than before.
Most workers had moved to the eastern side of the castle.
A distant hammer struck at irregular intervals.
Adrian walked without hurrying.
Elias Vane.
The name remained irritatingly light in his memory.
He had known hundreds of students by name over seven years.
Known did not mean known.
He stopped near a window halfway down the corridor.
The grounds outside showed scars more clearly from here.
Fresh stone.
Burnt grass.
Scaffolding.
People working.
He put one hand into his pocket.
The cracked Ravenclaw badge from the property box pressed against his fingers.
Elias Vane.
Collaborator.
Low-Level Wartime Participant.
Technically, he knew almost nothing else.
That should have been enough to make the name boring.
Instead McGonagall's hesitation had attached itself.
Not because she thought him innocent.
Important.
She had been almost aggressive about that.
No absolution.
Only incompleteness.
Adrian understood why that interested him.
He disliked understanding why.
A group of younger students came around the corner carrying boxes for the records room.
One nearly dropped his.
Adrian caught the lower edge before it hit the floor.
The boy blinked at him.
"Thanks."
Adrian let go.
"What is it?"
"Old House records."
"Which House?"
"Slytherin."
There.
Of course.
Adrian looked at the box.
The student shifted it against his hip.
"Professor Sinistra says these go to the west room."
"They do."
The boy started walking.
Adrian watched him go.
Ridiculous.
The castle had always possessed a talent for timing that encouraged superstition among people who should know better.
He continued down the stairs.
At the third floor he slowed outside the records room.
Only slowed.
Did not enter.
Professor Sinistra was inside arguing with a filing cabinet.
"I do not care what year you think it is."
The cabinet slammed one drawer.
"1998."
Another drawer opened.
"Correct."
Adrian kept walking.
Not yet.
McGonagall had shown him a name.
Nothing more.
If he walked into the records room now and started searching simply because an adult had expressed discomfort, he would be doing exactly what she had not asked him to do.
Which was not a strong argument against it.
Still.
There were proper routes.
Arthur had taught him that much.
There were school records.
Ministry classifications.
Public postwar review material.
Sources with different purposes.
If Elias Vane had been formally classified, some part of that decision would exist beyond McGonagall's private drawer.
Adrian reached the Entrance Hall.
The temporary reception witch looked up from her list.
"Finished?"
"For today."
She marked something.
Adrian noticed.
"What was that?"
"Departure."
"You record departures now?"
"Temporary safety procedure."
"Because of the staircase?"
"Because last Tuesday three visitors stayed after closing and one got locked in a bathroom."
"Same problem."
"Not according to Facilities."
Adrian accepted that.
He stepped outside.
The air had warmed.
Repair dust floated in the courtyard light.
Someone on the western scaffolding shouted for more nails.
A house-elf shouted back that nails had already been delivered.
The worker shouted that those were the wrong nails.
Hogwarts continued rebuilding itself through argument.
Adrian crossed the courtyard.
At the gate, he stopped.
Not intentionally at first.
The name had returned.
Elias Vane.
He took out his notebook.
Not the war notebook.
A smaller one he had begun using for postwar administrative questions.
The first pages contained:
MRD-47/C
Missing observation
Personal registration review
Arthur Pell's desk number.
He turned to the next clean line.
Wrote:
Elias Vane
Below it:
Former Hogwarts student. Slytherin.
Then:
Official classification: Collaborator — Low-Level Wartime Participant.
He paused.
Added:
McGonagall does not dispute wrongdoing.
Another pause.
McGonagall disputes completeness.
That was all.
No theory.
No innocence.
No conclusion.
Adrian looked at the page.
Then closed the notebook.
He had not been assigned anything.
No one expected a report.
McGonagall had not asked him to help Elias.
Elias himself had certainly not asked.
Good.
All useful reasons to leave the matter alone.
Adrian started toward the road.
By the time Hogwarts disappeared behind the trees, he had already decided where he would look first.
End of Chapter 114.