"We also want the Shield Cloaks and Guardian Necklaces. As many as you can spare."
"Let me first see what the situation looks like."
The greetings wound down and everyone found a seat. Fudge presided over the table with barely concealed delight, reporters capturing it all from the edges of the room. There was no real substance to the image, but that was beside the point. When the story was told later, it would become another polished line in his record: that under his leadership, multiple Ministries of Magic had stood together against the dark wizard Grindelwald.
His résumé was getting luxurious.
Tom listened to the demands moving around the table while a Quick-Quotes Quill worked steadily beside him and a separate part of his mind ran the numbers. Production capacity. Margins. Realistic timelines.
The greatest demand was for WhatsApp notebooks, then Shield Cloaks, then the range of equipment supplied to Auror departments. His Acromantulas had been well fed and were producing better quality venom than before. He had reasonable stockpiles of Runespoor skin and Whomping Willow leaves. Basic paper production had already been handed off to the alchemical constructs entirely. For the lower-tier items, Shield Cloaks and True Sight Eyes, he could speak to the twins this weekend. If that fell through, there were acolytes to draw from. Expansion was possible.
"Everyone," Tom said, "what I currently have on hand is limited. There's no way to satisfy all of this at once. I'll take responsibility for providing the goods. How they're divided among you is a matter for you to settle. Does that work?"
The representatives nodded.
"Then for pricing." Tom leaned back slightly. "In support of the effort against Grindelwald, I'm prepared to offer a concession. All products at ninety-nine percent of the standard retail price."
Every person in the room, including Bones, experienced a small involuntary movement at the corner of their mouth.
One percent.
"Mr. Riddle, we're talking about large-scale purchases. Retail pricing as your baseline is hardly reasonable. Twenty percent off?"
"Mr. Fletcher, are you some variety of vampire? Ten percent off would already leave me bleeding."
...
While Tom traded words with a room full of Ministry officials, Hogwarts had come awake. Students drifted down to the Great Hall for breakfast, listening to the storm work itself into something worse outside. Lightning split the sky at intervals. The question of whether to attend the match was already circulating at several tables.
Rain was manageable. Lightning was a different calculation.
As for cancellation, nobody seriously entertained the idea. Hailstones, gale-force winds, a passing tornado, none of it would stop a Quidditch match.
By eleven, most people had made their way to the pitch anyway.
Both teams emerged in full kit. The wind took their cloaks and billowed them outward like something inflated. On a clear day, Harry's build was an asset for a Seeker, light and quick and responsive. In weather like this, the other players quietly wondered whether the gusts might simply carry him off.
Fred clapped him on the shoulder before kicking off. "Clamp your legs around the broom."
Harry could barely hear the whistle over the storm, but the moment it sounded he accelerated, pulling away from Hufflepuff's Seeker, Cedric, immediately. He had been in the air for about five minutes before Lee Jordan, doing commentary from the stands, registered what was different.
"Merlin's beard, what am I seeing?!"
"Potter! Harry Potter is on a broom! I mean, he's riding a Firebolt!"
"It really is a Firebolt, the Irish national team's official model! Guaranteed to shine at the World Cup!"
"Jordan! The match!" McGonagall's voice cracked across him like a ruler on a desk.
"Absolutely, Professor, and I'll just mention quickly that the Firebolt also features an automatic braking system which-"
"Jordan!"
He behaved after that, more or less.
The storm worsened.
Wood called a timeout, and the team dropped to the sodden pitch.
"Score?" Harry landed and immediately wiped his glasses, shouting to be heard.
"Fifty ahead. Doesn't matter. We need to end this, the weather's going to get us killed," Wood said.
"I can't see anything. Three seconds after I clean these, they're useless again."
Fred reached over without ceremony and took the glasses, adding a Waterproofing Charm before handing them back. Wood looked at him the way a man looks at someone who has just saved his life.
They went back up. Through the curtains of rain, the other players were dark shapes at the edge of visibility. The speed increased. The crowd in the stands roared for their teams, voices barely carrying above the weather.
Then the temperature dropped.
Not gradually. It fell hard and fast, cold enough to turn the rain to frost where it hit. With it came the pressure, that familiar, suffocating weight settling into every chest in the stadium. Unpleasant memories began rising from places people preferred to leave undisturbed.
In the air, Harry felt his body going numb.
He had just seen the Snitch. A glint of gold, there and real. Then he looked down.
A black cloud of Dementors directly beneath him. As he watched, every hooded face seemed to tilt upward toward him, and something like a blade of ice went cleanly through his chest. The voices came flooding in.
A woman screaming. Pleading. Terrified.
A monster's roar and the laughter underneath it.
Harry's eyes rolled back. His mind felt like it was expanding past the point it could hold, too full of dark weight and noise.
The stands erupted.
Harry fell from over a hundred meters. The Dementors surged upward beneath him, rising to meet him like something welcoming a feast.
McGonagall's face went white. Her wand was already out, the spell forming on her lips.
Before she could cast it, a voice broke through the storm. Clear and sharp and luminous, the kind of light that cuts through everything.
"Expecto Patronum!"
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