Arthur had already gone to Amelia Bones, for the fifth time in the last two weeks. Still, he was not allowed to see Ron after the Bastion Guards took him. They were waiting for Corvus to return and give his verdict. He remembered his meeting with Headmistress Rosier and winced again.
Against everything he believed, he got a book on wizarding etiquette after that meeting, not to understand and acclimate, but to see if there was a way to save his son. His mind went back to his first meeting with Director Bones.
-
He had laid out the situation as plainly as he could, and she had listened in complete silence, and then she had told him that matters of honour between Houses did not fall under Ministry jurisdiction unless a crime had already occurred. He suspected personal feeling behind that answer and could not prove it either way.
-
Arthur was thankful towards Vinda Rosier after reading a bit of the customs of Noble Houses.
-
She was already behind the desk when he entered, a folder open before her, a quill resting across it.
She gestured toward the chair opposite.
Arthur sat and placed his hat on his knee and kept his hands still.
"Mr Weasley." Vinda's voice carried the temperature of a November morning. "You received my letter."
"I did, Headmistress."
"Then you understand the matter before us." She folded her hands over the folder. "I would like to present the full record before you respond. I ask that you allow me to do so without interruption. You will have time to speak."
Arthur inclined his head and prepared himself.
Vinda opened the folder.
"There was an incident with a Troll thanks to the former hedmaster in Ronald's first year." She did not look down at the parchment. She had read it enough times. "A mountain troll entered the castle on the night of Samhain. A staff member, at considerable personal risk, killed the creature before it harmed students, including your son. Later that night, he stood in the Gryffindor common room and told his Head of House, in front of witnesses, that the staff member had used an Unforgivable Curse and was a dark wizard." A pause. "When Professor McGonagall explained that the Killing Curse is not classified as Unforgivable when used against a rampaging magical creature threatening lives, your son attempted to argue the point. He was not dissuaded. He tried again." Another pause, shorter. "The staff member was Corvus Black. Your son had called him a dark wizard before the end of his first term in this school."
Arthur said nothing. His hands pressed flat.
"Dark Arts became a mandatory core subject when the curriculum was restructured. Your son did not attend the first lesson. He did not attend the second or the third. He informed his fellow Gryffindors that he did not take dark magic classes. Professor Baier's formal notice to his Head of House was the first of several interventions." Vinda's voice did not harden or soften. It simply continued. "Your son returned to class under direct threat of expulsion. He performed at a level consistent with a student who had not read the material, prepared the practicals, or retained a single lesson beyond what was absolutely required to avoid being removed from the school."
Arthur's jaw shifted.
"Mind Arts is another subject, mandatory from the third year. Your son attended these lessons with the same enthusiasm he brought to Dark Arts. He told his classmates, on more than one occasion, that mind arts were dark magic because they involved attacking another person's thoughts. He refused the paired practice exercises with three separate partners before a professor stepped in. He practised at a level below every student in his year, including students who arrived late due to settlement transfers and were already behind in every other subject."
Vinda set one hand on the folder.
"Mr Weasley, I want you to understand something clearly, because the corridor incident did not emerge from nothing." She held his eyes. "When Miss Delacour arrived with the Beauxbatons delegation, she stepped off the carriage as a young part-Veela witch. Her allure is not a choice she makes. It affects students across all years. The upper years in this school handle it with Occlumency. They have been building that skill since their third year. A number of younger students were visibly affected. Most of the upper years were not." She let that land. "Your son was the only student who stepped out of the line. He could not raise a single point of resistance. His four years of treating Mind Arts as dark magic cost him the one skill that would have protected him from exactly this situation."
Arthur sat very still.
"That was not the incident that is before us today. The incident before us today is that after being warned by Professor Flitwick, warned by myself, his head of house and his own brothers on multiple occasions, and warned by the visible presence of Bastion Guards accompanying Miss Delacour each time she moved through this school, your son stood outside the Charms classroom with flowers in his hand and waited for her to arrive."
Arthur closed his eyes briefly.
"The guards acted before he could speak. He was removed from the floor and placed against the wall. The flowers were destroyed in the process." Vinda's tone did not shift. "Professor Flitwick summoned me, and your sons Frederick and George. They arrived and made the case, with what I will acknowledge was considerable sincerity, that their brother lacked the cognitive architecture to understand the danger he was in. I found their argument compelling in its specifics, if not in its implications."
She closed the folder.
"When the additional guards arrived and announced that the matter had been escalated to an honour duel, your sons turned the colour of men who had just realised that every warning they had ever given their brother had expired simultaneously."
Arthur exhaled slowly. "Is Ronald expelled?"
"Yes." Vinda did not soften the word by surrounding it with others. "The formal paperwork will reach your home within the week."
Arthur's hands moved on his knees. He worked through the shape of what he needed to say next. He was a father, and there was a thing fathers said in rooms like this, even when they knew it would not move anything. "He is not a bad boy, Headmistress. What he did was stupid and wrong, and I will not pretend otherwise. But he is not a bad boy. What we taught him at home-"
"Your twins," Vinda cut in.
Arthur stopped.
"The twins had a record that made your younger son's look modest by the time I took this office. They were bullies who believed consequences were something that happened to other people. They targeted younger students, they tampered with meals, they treated this castle as a stage for their own entertainment." She paused. "They do not do those things now. They became students whom I can mention positively in any formal context. They worked for it. They decided what they wanted to be inside these walls, and they carried it out." Her eyes held his. "It is possible to change. It requires a decision and will."
The office held that for a moment.
Arthur looked at his hands.
"There is a second matter," Vinda said, "which I want to explain clearly, because you deserve to understand the full shape of where things stand."
Arthur looked up.
"Under the customary laws governing the Houses of Wizarding Britain, an approach of a dishonourable character toward the betrothed of a recognised house constitutes a formal insult to that house." She spoke carefully. "The recognised response under those customs is an honour duel, invoked by the insulted party at their discretion. The guards who escorted Miss Delacour announced the escalation when they took your son into custody. That announcement was not school policy."
Arthur was very still. "Corvus Black."
"Is Lord of House Rosier. Miss Delacour is his betrothed." Vinda let that sit for a moment. "Your son is seventeen years old."
Arthur's voice came out carefully. "Is there anything you can do, Headmistress. Whether he intends to pursue this formally."
"I have already written to him," Vinda said. "I requested that he consider Ronald's age and the fact that the incident was intercepted before Miss Delacour was directly harassed." She paused. "I have not received a response. I would not expect one quickly. He is occupied with matters of a scale that places your son's incident in a particular perspective." She held his gaze. "I cannot tell you what he will decide. What I can tell you is that I made the request, and that I will make it again if needed. That is the extent of what falls within my authority."
Arthur nodded once, slowly, the nod of a man who had arrived without hope and was leaving without any positive surprise.
He stood.
"Thank you, Headmistress."
Vinda rose and inclined her head with the correct formality.
Arthur turned toward the door. He reached it, then stopped with one hand against the frame.
"Fred and George," he said, quietly, not turning. "Are they well?"
"Yes, they are doing very well," Vinda said.
Arthur nodded at the door. Then he stepped through it and was gone, and the office returned to its quiet. Vinda sat back down, and the parchments were still waiting. Outside in the corridor, the Bastion Guard resumed his post without having moved at all.
-
He exhaled tiredly. He decided to take the risk of seeing Minister Black for permission to see his youngest son.
--
The practice yard on the castle's south side was not an official space. It was simply the flattest stretch of ground between the outer wall and the Herbology greenhouses, wide enough to run drills without losing hexes into the stonework. Fleur's Beauxbatons year mates had claimed it after breakfast with the quiet efficiency of people who understood that good ground, like good opportunity, should be taken promptly.
November had given them perhaps two hours of honest light before retreating behind its usual arrangement of grey cloud. The girls worked in pairs along one side while two boys ran counter-curse sequences near the wall. Fleur stood opposite Margaux, who was attempting a silent casting that kept failing, and who was getting increasingly tight-lipped about it.
The shadow came without warning.
It swept across the yard from north to south, wide enough to take the light off the entire group at once. Fleur felt it on her skin before she understood what had caused it, the particular chill of something large blocking the sky rather than cloud cover.
She raised her head.
The frigate sat above the castle at a height that made the towers look modest. Its hull moved through the air with the same unhurried certainty she remembered from her first visit, when she had stood on the deck and watched her father shake Corvus's hand while trying to look as though he was not calculating the distance to the nearest exit.
Margaux's hand dropped unconsciously.
Every student in the yard had stopped moving.
The Bastion Guards at the perimeter straightened in unison. Then four of them spread outward, creating a cleared space in the centre of the yard that had not been there a moment ago.
Students shifted back without being told. There was a particular quality to the way Bastion Guards moved when they were preparing for something.
The dragons came next.
Two of them descended from the frigate's deck, one after the other, catching the air under wide wings before banking into a controlled descent toward the castle grounds. The wingbeats sent a wash of cold air across the yard that flattened cloaks against legs and made Margaux take a quick step backwards into Fleur's shoulder.
Both of them were Hebridean Blacks, ridge-spined and dark as old iron, their scales carrying that particular green-black sheen that caught November light and gave none of it back. Their purple eyes moved across the ground with the dispassionate assessment of creatures that had decided long ago that they were the most dangerous things in any landscape they entered. The riders on their backs sat with the ease of people who had made peace with that fact.
The first dragon landed with a sound that vibrated through the stones underfoot. The second followed ten feet away, head already lowering before its back legs settled. A Bastion Guard moved to the near side and spoke something quiet to the rider. The rider nodded once.
The first dragon dipped its head toward the ground.
Elizaveta Volkova stepped down from its neck with the composure of someone descending a moderate staircase. She wore travelling robes in deep navy, cut practically at the hem, her pale hair pinned back under the wind. She landed on the cleared ground and straightened without pausing, as though arriving at a school tournament via the spine of a territorial British dragon was a detail beneath remark.
She turned back to the creature that had carried her.
Her gloved hand moved along the jaw, firm and deliberate, the way one touched something powerful that had decided to cooperate and deserved credit for it. The dragon's head remained low, one purple eye tracking her. It did not flinch. Neither did she.
"Thank you," she said. Direct and entirely without calculation. She said something similar to the rider, inclined her head once, and stepped back.
Multiple guards closed around her immediately. She accepted the escort without interrupting it, moving to the edge of the cleared space while the riders took the dragons back upward. The wingbeats pushed another cold gust across the yard, and then the animals were climbing, banking north, disappearing back toward the hull.
The frigate vanished after the dragons reached the hull.
One moment, it sat above the castle in plain sight, and the next, the sky was simply empty again. Students stared at the empty air for two full seconds before turning their eyes back to the yard.
Where the future Lady Black was standing at the perimeter edge, looking across the cleared ground, and had just noticed Fleur.
She crossed the yard with a measured pace and a smile. Fleur stepped forward to meet her.
"It is nice to see you again, Fleur." Elizaveta's arms went around her, a proper embrace, brief and genuine.
Fleur held her back. Against the shoulder of Elizaveta's travelling robes, low enough that the yard full of watching students would catch only the shape of the gesture and not the word, she said, "Sister."
Elizaveta's arms tightened once before she stepped back. Her expression had not changed, but something in it had settled.
Around them, Fleur was distantly aware of the particular silence that had descended over the Beauxbatons group and, beyond them, over a growing cluster of Hogwarts students who had materialised at the yard's edge to observe. She understood what they were looking at. Two women, each with a title that was not yet formal and a position that was already absolute. The future Lady Black had arrived to visit the future Lady Rosier.
Elizaveta glanced past Fleur toward the practice formation with a professional interest that had nothing to do with sentiment.
Is Corvus aboard?"
Elizaveta shook her head.
"I do not know where he is." She said it plainly. It was a fact, and she treated it as one. "He left the vessel a week ago. "I stopped expecting him to provide itineraries some time ago."
Fleur held the pendant at her throat without thinking. It was still warm.
Wherever he was, it was still warm.
"Come," Elizaveta said, and turned toward the castle entrance. "We can continue in his chambers on the third floor. The space is better suited for work, and I have reports I should finish before evening."
Fleur looked back at her year mates and nodded. She turned and fell into step beside Elizaveta.
Behind them, the practice yard resumed its noise. Above the castle, the sky remained empty and unremarkable. The frigate, wherever it sat in its invisible patience, kept its own counsel.