"Mr. Potter."
Harry turned. The voice was low, almost private, pitched carefully to not carry across the office.
It was the second Auror from the door — the one Kevin hadn't recognised. Large man, built solidly, with a face Harry couldn't immediately place. He had moved to the edge of the room at some point during Kevin and Fudge's argument, standing apart from the others in a way that might easily read as keeping watch.
Harry stepped over. Nobody else seemed to notice.
"John Dexter," the man said. He extended a hand, and his grip was firm and careful. "I know the timing's strange. I've been wanting to speak with you for a while."
"About what?"
Dexter glanced at Fudge — still locked in negotiation with Kevin, attention fixed elsewhere — and back. "About the Minister." A note of frustration, barely contained. "He won't listen. He sees what he wants to see, and anyone who contradicts it gets reassigned to paperwork in the sub-basement." He paused. "I believe You-Know-Who is back. I've believed it since last year. But without proof he can't dismiss, nothing changes."
Harry studied him. "What kind of proof?"
"The prophecy orb," Dexter said. "Department of Mysteries. You know about it?"
"The one Trelawney made? The one about—"
"About you, yes. The boy born as the seventh month dies who would have the power to defeat him. Prophecies that have been fulfilled — or are still in play — glow when the subject touches them. They can replay." He held Harry's gaze steadily. "Your prophecy hasn't gone dark. Which means it's not finished. Which means Voldemort is alive, and the record of that is sitting two floors below us, accessible only to you. Take it in front of witnesses, have it play — and Fudge has nothing left to stand behind."
Harry's pulse was quickening despite himself. It made sense. Concrete evidence, in a form Fudge couldn't attribute to anyone's agenda. He turned toward Sirius—
Sirius was nodding before Harry finished speaking. "Let's go now," he said quietly. "Get it done before anything else changes."
They slipped out through the office door behind the Auror's back. The corridor beyond was busy enough that nobody looked twice at two more bodies moving through it. Dexter led them to the elevators, took them down two floors, walked them through doors Harry hadn't seen before.
Something nagged at him. A small voice in the back of his mind asking why the timing was this convenient, why no one was watching, why Sirius's smile looked slightly too practiced.
He didn't listen to it. The prophecy. That was all that mattered.
Back in the Minister's office, Kevin had laid out his terms clearly, and Fudge — after sufficient resistance, sufficient face-saving, sufficient negotiation of exactly whose name would appear where in the official announcement — had agreed to all of them.
Enhanced security for wizarding families with known Voldemort ties. A formal coordinated response to the next attack, under Ministry authority but Order of the Phoenix execution. A public framing that cast Fudge as a cautious leader who had waited for incontrovertible evidence before acting — not a man who had been dragged to the truth by a sixteen-year-old.
Fudge got to keep his credibility. The Order got the cooperation and resources they needed. Nobody had to pretend Fudge was brave.
Kevin stood up from behind the Minister's desk — he'd stayed in the man's chair throughout the entire negotiation, which he chose not to think too hard about — and looked around the room.
"Right. I'll fetch Harry and we can—"
He stopped.
He looked at the space Harry had been standing in. The space beside Sirius, where Harry had been for the past forty minutes.
Empty.
He looked at Sirius, who appeared to be on the verge of realising the same thing.
He looked at the door.
Closed. He hadn't heard it open.
He looked at where the second Auror had been standing.
Also gone.
The room went very still.
Kevin was already moving before anyone else had processed what had happened. He didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. Harry had been taken in the middle of the Minister's own office, in broad daylight, while everyone's attention had been somewhere else.
And he had walked out voluntarily, because someone had given him a reason to.
Kevin had the door open and was in the corridor before the echo of his chair had finished.