Ten minutes later.
The seating arrangement in the courtroom had shifted entirely.
Robert, Babajide, and the rest had quietly migrated to Tom's side of the room. The opposite end had been left open, reserved now for Vinda Rosier and the handful of followers she had brought with her.
This was not a moment for ambiguity about where one stood. Standing against Grindelwald was the politically correct position, and anyone caught sharing a table with one of his Saints could expect their family history examined back three generations.
Dumbledore, Babajide, and Tom himself sat at the front.
Tom was, truthfully, a little thrown. He had told Grindelwald to send someone, a messenger, someone to apply pressure from a distance, nothing more. He had not expected Rosier. He had not expected Grindelwald to send his own right hand.
Anyone with half a mind could work out that Grindelwald must have something to rely on. A man did not send his most valuable lieutenant into a room full of enemies without a reason. But the wizarding world had never been particularly well-stocked with people who thought before they reacted, and if someone in this room decided to do something foolish, Tom had already decided he would not be lifting a finger. This was Grindelwald's calculated risk to take. Whatever came of it was Grindelwald's problem to solve.
Tom glanced toward the President of the Confederation.
Babajide's eyes were gleaming. Everyone knew who Vinda Rosier was. The Black Rose of France. Grindelwald's most trusted lieutenant. The Saints' second-in-command. If she could be captured here, in this room...
Vinda had already read the thought on his face before he finished having it. The corner of her mouth curved upward, unhurried and faintly amused. "Akingbade. You're considering having me arrested right now, aren't you? I genuinely would not recommend it."
"You think I don't dare?"
Akingbade glanced at Dumbledore seated beside him and felt his nerve steady. He was even briefly disappointed that it was Rosier who had come and not Grindelwald himself. Had it been Grindelwald, he might have found it worth any price to keep him in London.
The worst of the fallout would land on the British magical community anyway. Their relationship with him had never been particularly warm.
"Mr. Grindelwald is watching this room," Vinda said. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, entirely at ease, as though she had walked into a garden party rather than the headquarters of a hostile government. "If I am unable to return to Berlin by tomorrow, he will attack Muggles and wizards without distinction. The existence of the magical world will be exposed to everyone."
The room went cold.
"He wouldn't dare." Akingbade's voice had anger in it, and underneath the anger, something shakier. "We will not be held hostage by your threats."
Rosier regarded him with patient calm. "You're welcome to test that."
Akingbade found himself with nowhere to go. He could talk tough, but unless he was actually willing to act on it, Rosier would not even flinch. And if he did act on it, if he actually gave the order, and Grindelwald meant what she said...
Grindelwald had always been unpredictable. Since his escape, the unpredictability had taken on a stranger quality, harder to anticipate, harder to read. Akingbade was not certain enough to gamble the Statute of Secrecy on it.
It was Dumbledore, in the end, who shifted the ground beneath the conversation and gave Akingbade a way to step back without losing face.
"Rosier." His voice was calm, but the register had changed. "Why has Grindelwald sent you to find my student?"
Faced with Dumbledore, Vinda's composure tightened slightly, though her expression remained composed. This was the mountain they had never been able to cross. A hundred years old and he was still standing between Grindelwald and everything Grindelwald wanted.
She turned toward Tom and the easy manner returned, graceful and deliberate. "Master Riddle, Mr. Grindelwald sends his regards and wishes you every success."
She inclined her head, the gesture precise and unhurried, every inch of it suggesting genuine courtesy.
Nobody in the room found it strange. Not even Dumbledore, who had lived long enough to see through most things. Vinda Rosier's manners were the kind that elder generations remembered and remarked upon. She was a woman who could hold a door open for you, smile warmly while she did it, and slide a silent Killing Curse between your teeth before you had processed that she had moved.
"I'm... well enough, thank you," Tom said, matching her register with a cooperative nod.
"I rather doubt that."
The Black Rose smiled, the kind of smile that gave nothing away, and let her gaze rest on Akingbade and Robert for a moment longer than was necessary. "It is difficult to imagine that someone of your gifts should be subjected to treatment so obviously beneath you. Master Riddle, the decay of the magical world is no longer something anyone with open eyes can deny. It was precisely to prevent the collapse of our entire kind that my master left his tower and returned to the world at the age of a hundred, choosing to act when others would not."
She paused, and when she continued, there was something in her voice that had not been there before, something that moved through the words rather than sitting on top of them.
"I and the other Saints gathered beneath his banner for that same ideal."
Her eyes lit when she said it, the way a person's do when they speak about something they genuinely believe in, not performance, not calculation, something closer to devotion.
"Master Riddle, Mr. Grindelwald has said that your gifts surpass his own. It is on that basis that he extends this invitation, sincerely and without reservation. Should you choose to come to Berlin, you will become his one and only apprentice. The future leader of the Saints. And, in time, the master of the magical world itself."
The room went absolutely still.
"Rosier."
Dumbledore's voice had not risen. It did not need to. But something in it had settled into a different weight, and Akingbade, seated beside him, felt the air thicken, as though it had stopped moving, as though it had become something you could press a hand against.
"That is enough."
Dumbledore's face had closed over entirely, whatever warmth usually lived there replaced by something flat and final. "Tom is the finest student Hogwarts has produced in living memory. His professors have devoted themselves to his development, and so have I. He does not require a teacher whose word means nothing."
He let a moment pass.
"Go back and tell Grindelwald that the greatest regret of my life is not having finished what I should have finished when I had the chance. Not with him. And not with the rest of you."
"I will pass that along." Vinda did not seem offended. She knew more than most of the Saints about the history between those two men, understood what lived in that particular silence, and if she were being honest with herself, there was something in losing to a man like that which simply did not sit well, no matter how many years had passed.
"But before I do." She turned back to Tom. "Your answer, Master Riddle?"
Every eye in the room followed hers. The thoughts behind them varied considerably. Robert, for his part, was quietly hoping Tom would say yes. If Tom became a Saint, Robert could pursue him with the full combined authority of the ICW and MACUSA and no one could accuse him of anything other than doing his job.