Chapter 208: Level Two

The laugh arrived before its owner did, high and sweetened and about as pleasant as a nail drawn down slate.

Dolores Umbridge came across the hall in pink ruffles that hurt to look at, with a ruby the size of a walnut catching the chandeliers every time her hand moved. She stopped in front of Edward, put her head on one side, and let her small flat eyes travel over him.

"Well. And here is the little champion of Hogwarts himself." The voice was syrup. What sat underneath it made no attempt to hide. "So much better in person, I always think. Quite adorable."

Then she lowered her tone confidingly and raised her volume, so that every clerk within thirty feet was included.

"Only, you see, a Phoenix Animagus is a thing that has never once occurred in all our records, and the Minister has been quite firm with me. A form nobody can account for, with a risk nobody can measure, must go onto the Ministry's watch list at once. So I do think, for the safety of everybody, that it would be best if you were to put up with our hospitality for a few days. A room downstairs, some proper deep testing, and we can rule out anything dark once and for all." She beamed. "What do you say?"

What she was proposing, once the ribbons were off it, was to hold a fifteen-year-old boy in a Ministry cell without charge and take him apart at leisure.

Lupin's face closed.

"Madam Undersecretary. Edward Black's magical attributes have been tested three times inside the last month by the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, and no dark fluctuation has been recorded on any occasion." He did not raise his voice and he did not soften a syllable. "There is no provision anywhere in magical law for 'key monitoring' or for a 'mandatory stay' attached to a registration. What you have just described in front of forty witnesses is a detention without cause, and if you attempt it I will treat it as one."

The colour came up Umbridge's neck and into her face and stopped just short of the hairline. She could not tear the mask off in the middle of the Atrium and she knew it. So she smiled with her teeth together, said something about following her, and led them to the lifts.

She had already sent word down two levels. If the boy would not be frightened into a cell, there were other people in this building who would be delighted to have him for an afternoon.

The verification room on Level Two was four times the size of the one such things normally required. A great detection circle had been cut into the floor at the centre of it, and crystal chandeliers all round the walls put out enough light to remove every shadow in the place.

A registration is a small business. Two officers, a form, a demonstration, a seal. What was waiting in that room was eleven people.

Most of them were from the Department of Mysteries, white-haired and unhurried, and between them they had brought needles for drawing blood, shallow dishes for holding samples, and instruments for recording a transformation from beginning to end. Not one of them looked at Edward as though he were a student. They looked at him the way a collector looks at something that has just come up at auction.

Their senior came forward, long white whiskers and deep purple robes, and did not trouble with any greeting.

"The standard procedure is set aside. No Phoenix Animagus appears anywhere in the literature, which makes this an unrecorded and high-risk variant, and it will be handled accordingly." He spoke as though reading out something already decided elsewhere. "The supplementary process will be carried out. Blood will be drawn for analysis. The subject will demonstrate offensive casting while in Phoenix form, in full. The complete transformation signature will be retained and sealed permanently in this Department's archive."

The room went up. Two of the registration clerks were on their feet before they had thought about it.

Lupin's expression stopped being gentle.

He brought his wand up two-handed and two scrolls unrolled in the air on either side of him, and the gold in the text came up bright enough to read from the back wall.

"Article Five of the Animagus Management Regulations. A registration verifies three things and only three: that the form is genuine, that the transformation is under the wizard's control, and the basic magical attributes of the subject. Article Seven of the Privacy Act forbids any body of this Ministry from compelling a wizard to give blood or to demonstrate combat magic on request." He let it stand for a moment. "Every item on your supplementary list is unlawful. On his behalf and on the record, I refuse it."

Neither side moved. From the observation gallery above, Umbridge watched with her hands folded and a small satisfied set to her mouth, waiting for the boy to be worn down.

Edward stepped forward into the middle of the circle before anybody could speak again.

"I will give you the statutory demonstration and complete the registration." His voice went to the corners of the room without being pushed. "I will not give you anything that regulation does not require. You may have the transformation. That is the whole of what is on offer."

He had no intention of spending his afternoon inside a Ministry argument. There was a faster way through it, and he had brought it with him.

He shut his eyes and let everything else fall away.

There was no explosion and there was nothing violent about it. What came out of him was a mass of gold-red flame the colour of low sun, and it was warm rather than fierce, and it went up and around him and closed over his head.

It took under three seconds. When the fire drew back into shape there was a Phoenix standing at the centre of the detection circle, wings half spread, the plumage carrying its own light and the tail running from gold through orange into red like something still burning.

It lifted its head and cried once, and the sound went straight out through the stone and down the corridors, and people two levels below came out of their offices to find out what had happened.

The light went across the room like water finding its level. In the corner where the ventilation shaft met the ceiling, a stain of something old and dark that nobody in that building had ever noticed put out a thin sound like fat in a pan and stopped being there.

Every person in the room was on their feet, and not one of them had decided to stand.

The Phoenix is what the books say it is. Light. Rebirth. The thing that darkness cannot hold on to. There was no argument left in the room about heirs to Dark Lords, because the argument had been standing in the middle of the floor for four seconds and had answered itself.

In the gallery, Umbridge sat down slowly and the pink went grey.

The registration clerk had to steady his own wrist to write. What he wrote was the first certificate of its kind the Ministry had issued since its founding, and the gilt lettering set itself into the parchment as the words went down: Edward Black. Animagus form, Phoenix. Fire of a rare and extreme order. Transformation control, complete. No dark fluctuation present. Registration lawful and valid.

Edward came back into himself in the same three seconds and took the certificate with the seal still warm.

And while the room was still looking at where the Phoenix had been, Umbridge came down the gallery stair, drew the file toward her as though tidying it, and wrote one line into the remarks column in ink that dried invisible as it went on.

Form unrecorded. Magical fluctuation abnormal. Subject entered on the Ministry review list as high risk, for continuous monitoring.

She blotted it, closed the folder, and handed it to the clerk with a small pleasant smile, and nobody in that room saw her do it.

 

She had lost the afternoon. She had no intention whatever of losing the year.