Chapter 75

Atlas’s stomach gave an all-mighty lurch as she plummeted to the polished ground beneath her, landing with a hefty thud beside Harry who was staring, transfixed, at the trial playing out before him. They were sat in Courtroom Ten, inside the Ministry itself, the entire Wizengamot sat before them, a sea of plum-coloured robes with ‘W’ ‘s embroidered into them flooding the stands around one Barty Crouch Sr. They were in one of Dumbledore’s memories, from when Crouch was well on his way into Ministerhood and Atlas felt an icky sort of discomfort being inside the mind of a man such as Dumbledore.

Replaying memories as a concept was brilliant, a truly remarkable feat to have accomplished, however, there were just some things Atlas would rather not see, the setting of the courtroom being one of them. It had become this reminder, a memoir of the time Atlas had been sentenced to Azkaban, to when she was dragged off by Dementors, a muzzle secured around her face and her cries falling on deaf ears. Atlas closed her eyes, shaking off those thoughts as she turned to Harry.

“Harry, we need to –“

“Snape was a Death Eater,” Harry burst, turning in his seat to face Atlas. Her mouth snapped shut as she blinked through the absurdity of what Harry had just said but then it sank in and everything fell into place. Right, it made sense, of course, Dumbledore would want to collect an operative like Snape, he was useful. For what? Atlas didn’t know just yet. “And Ludo funnelled information to a Death Eater on accident, I think that’s why Winky doesn’t like him, because he made Crouch look like a fool in front of the court.”

“Winky doesn’t like Ludo?”

“Don’t you remember? She told us Crouch didn’t like Ludo, said he was a bad wizard.”

“No, I don’t, look, Harry, let’s just get out of here. I don’t like being in the courtroom,” Atlas urged, grabbing his shoulder and looking to the ceiling where she saw the canopy of Dumbledore’s office, blurred and distorted but her exit nonetheless. She made to stand, aiming to pull Harry up with her, but he did not budge, instead, he ignored her attempts, staring off at the entrance to the room. “Harry, come on, what are you even — ?” 

Six Dementors entered the courtroom, flanking a group of four people. At their arrival, many whispered voices echoed throughout the room, many eyes falling on Crouch as the four were slowly revealed and upon seeing them, Atlas knew just what court case this was, the blood draining from her face. This was the Longbottom case, something Neville wouldn’t want Harry to know, wouldn’t want anybody to know. She turned to her god-brother but it was too late, the case had started.

Bellatrix Lestrange sat in her seat as if it were a throne, a dirty smirk on her face as she turned and eyed her husband – Rodolphus – in a way that was almost mocking, not mocking of him but of the crowd around them. She soon grinned even wider, lolling her head about as she seemed to chuckle. Then, of course, there was Rabastan but he was so insignificant Atlas didn’t spare him a glance, instead, she looked down and upon Barty Crouch Jr, son to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

“You have been brought here before the Council of Magical Law,” Barty Crouch Sr said clearly, “so that we may pass judgment on you, for a crime so heinous -“

“Father,” Atlas narrowed her brows, sinking further into her seat with a grimace at the sight of Junior sobbing and slobbering all over the place, like some needy dog. “Father…please…”

“- that we have rarely heard the like of it within this court,” Crouch continued, speaking more loudly, drowning out his son’s voice. “We have heard the evidence against you. The four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror – Frank Longbottom – and subjecting him to the Cruciatus Curse, believing him to have knowledge of the present whereabouts of your exiled master, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named –“

Harry seemed to find some recognition in that, sitting up that bit straighter while Atlas continued to stare at the floor, a firm frown on her face. She didn’t feel right, letting Harry listen to all this stuff, letting him in on just why Neville was so affected by the Cruiciatus curse whenever it was demonstrated in DADA. It felt wrong, that was something Neville should be able to tell Harry in confidence.

“Father, I didn’t!” Junior shrieked, his chains rattling below. “I didn’t, I swear it. Father, don’t send me back to the dementors –“

“You are further accused,” bellowed Mr Crouch, “of using the Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom’s wife, when he would not give you information. You planned to restore He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to power and to resume the lives of violence you presumably led while he was strong. I now ask the jury –“

“Mother!” Junior screamed, and Atlas only now noticed the wispy little witch beside Crouch, watching as she began to sob, rocking backwards and forward. The sight reminded Atlas a lot of Winky when the little elf would get too ambitious with the liquor stores. “Mother, stop him. Mother, I didn’t do it, it wasn’t me!”

“I now ask the jury,” Mr Crouch shouted, “to raise their hands if they believe, as I do, that these crimes deserve a life sentence in Azkaban!”

In unison, the witches and wizards along the right-hand side of the dungeon raised their hands. The crowd around the walls began to clap and Atlas chanced a glance over to them, eyes raking across their faces, all savage and malicious looking as they all seemed to cheer at the trial result. There was one, however, a face in the crowd that had Atlas’s whole body freezing up. It was her mother. 

— The boy began to scream. “No! Mother, no! I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, I didn’t know! Don’t send me there, don’t let him!” —

But that didn’t make sense, her mother was dead, she’d died months before this particular trial so why — how was she there? Watching the trial with a face of stone. Was it really her? It couldn’t be. No, wait — this person had a sharper face, finer eyes and yes, Atlas supposed there was a sense of familiarity. Like she’d seen her somewhere once, a past forgotten to time perhaps? But that was all. Atlas was just seeing things that weren’t actually there, looking for her mother in strangers of the court.

A sudden cold seemed to settle over the crowd as the doors of the court opened once more. The dementors were gliding back into the room. The boys’ three companions rose quietly from their seats; Bellatrix, with the heavy-lidded eyes, looked up at Crouch and called, “The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!”

“I’m your son!” But Junior continued to fight, grasping at whatever love Mr Crouch may hold for him as his son. “I’m your son!”

“You are no son of mine!” Mr Crouch bellowed, his eyes bulging suddenly and looking much like he had when WInky had been found with Harry’s wand at the Quidditch Cup. “I have no son!”

The wispy witch beside him, Mrs Crouch, gave a great gasp and slumped in her seat. She had fainted. Crouch appeared not to have noticed. Atlas looked back to the uncanny stranger, finding her vanished, gone without anybody’s notice, as if she hadn’t been there in the first place.

“Take them away!” Crouch roared at the dementors, spit flying from his mouth he looked rabid, mad, with froth pooling from his mouth. “Take them away, and may they rot there!”

“Father! Father, I wasn’t involved! No! No! Father, please!”

“I think it’s time we go, Harry,” Atlas urged, gripping the boy’s elbow and tugging it.

“Indeed it is,” Atlas startled, turning to see Dumbledore staring right at her and Harry, it was the Dumbledore she knew, not the slightly younger one that was still sat, transfixed on the events below. No, this was their headmaster. “Come, you two.”

“Professor Dumbledore, sir, we –” 

But Harry’s words were cut short as they were soon shooting upwards in the air, the dungeon dissolving beneath them and for a moment, there was nothing but darkness, until that same lurch from before pulled at Atlas’s stomach and she found herself stood in the middle of Dumbledore’s office, her head swimming and body experiencing sporadic waves of horrific nausea.

Atlas groaned out in displeasure, falling into the seat at Dumbledore’s desk as Harry quick fired his apologies, looking up at the Headmaster, who merely peered down at him over the top of his half-moon spectacles, occasionally glancing over to Atlas. The girl glanced back, eyes squinted in an almost sleepy fashion, wondering what the old man wanted this time.

“Anything to say, yourself, Atlas?”

“Nope,” she said, popping the ‘p’ and smiling when Fawkes flew over to sit on her shoulder. “I just came here for Harry.”

“You have no questions about the Pensieve? Nothing you might have seen?”

Atlas stopped, thinking back to what she had thought she’d seen as she slowly turned her eyes to Dumbledore, surveying him quietly a moment before — “I don’t know, Headmaster. Was there something I should have seen in there?”

“Maybe not what you should have seen, rather, what you could have seen. So, Atlas, did you find anything of interest in my memories?” Dumbledore asked again, leaving Harry to gape between the two of them, completely out of the loop. 

“…Snape was a Death Eater,” Atlas said. It was all she could say, really because though there was that person, the one that looked uncanny to her own mother, she knew Dumbledore would not give her the answers she sought even if she had mentioned the stoic lady in the stands. That was just the way the old man was, he would not do anything that could disadvantage him in the future. 

One of those things being, telling Atlas all she needed to know, because that would be far too easy and then Dumbledore would have nothing of worth to Atlas, leaving her unwilling to work for him. Because, though Atlas was ashamed to admit it, if Dumbledore asked her to do something, anything, in exchange for the answers she wanted, she would happily do so. She would happily serve him, just as a Dire-wolf would serve the master they were shackled to. And Atlas hated it.

Feeling so shackled.

“He was,” Dumbledore nodded and removed a long wispy strand from his temple. A memory. Atlas had watched the man do this same process over and over again since she was a child, she would know the charm anywhere. He dropped the strand into the Pensieve and Atlas noticed Snape’s greasy hair manifesting in the pool, mumbling.

“It’s coming back…Karkaroff’s too…stronger and clearer than ever…”

“A connection I could have made without assistance,” Dumbledore sighed, “but never mind.” He peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles at the two of them. “I was using the Pensieve when Mr Fudge arrived for our meeting and put it away rather hastily. Undoubtedly I did not fasten the cabinet door properly. Naturally, it would have attracted your attention. Though I’m surprised, Atlas, that you ventured into the depths of my mind as well. As I recall, you don’t very much like the Pensieve, more specifically, my Pensieve.”

“She jumped in after me, tried to get me to leave but I didn’t listen. I’m sorry,” Harry rushed to defend Atlas, the girl going slight wide-eyed at the boy’s actions. Well, not the action itself, rather the person Harry was willing to do the action in front of.

Dumbledore shook his head. “Curiosity is not a sin,” he said. “But we should exercise caution with our curiosity…yes, indeed…”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Hermione says,” Atlas muttered.

“Quite a grim idiom, is it not? I would have thought you had gotten that from Professor Trelawney, rather than young Miss Granger,” Dumbledore mused and then put another of his memories into the stone basin, watching as a figure Atlas recognised as Bertha Jorkins manifested in the pool. She’d seen a picture of the girl and her mother once before, charred of course from the fire but it was salvaged enough to keep. “But why. Bertha,” Dumbledore mumbled and both Atlas and Harry shared a quizzical look, unsure of what their Headmaster was talking about, “why did you have to follow him in the first place?”

“Bertha?” Harry murmured, looking into the basin. “Is that – was that Bertha Jorkins?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore nodded sagely, prodding the thoughts in the basin again. “That was Bertha as I remember her at school. So, Harry,” he seemed to shift to another topic of discussion, banishing his Pensieve back into his cabinet and locking it, though he continued to extract his memories, storing them in open vials across the room. “Before you got lost in my thoughts, you wanted to tell me something.”

“Yes,” Harry began, glancing to Atlas who nodded reassuringly. “Professor – I was in Divination just now, and – er – I fell asleep.”

He hesitated here and Atlas chuckled, hiding her face beneath her hand. “Quite understandable. Continue.”

“Well, I had a dream,” Harry began and Atlas sat up, intrigued to know just what the dream had been about. She’d tried to ask him before but he had been too caught up in his thoughts to respond. “A dream about Lord Voldemort. He was torturing Wormtail…you know who Wormtail –“

“I do know,” Dumbledore assured. “Please continue.”

“Voldemort got a letter from an owl. He said something like, Wormtail’s blunder had been repaired. He said someone was dead. Then he said, Wormtail wouldn’t be fed to the snake – there was a snake beside his chair. He said – he said he’d be feeding me to it, instead. Then he did the Cruciatus Curse on Wormtail – and my scar hurt,” Harry said. “It woke me up, it hurt so badly.”

Dumbledore merely looked at him as Atlas blanched, looking between the two.

“Er — that’s all.”

“I see,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I see. Now, has your scar hurt at any other time this year, excepting the time it woke you up over the summer?”

“No, I — how did you know it woke me up over the summer?” 

“You are not Sirius’s only correspondent,” Dumbledore said. “I have also been in contact with him ever since he left Hogwarts last year. It was I who suggested the mountainside cave as the safest place for him to stay.”

Dumbledore got up and began walking up and down behind his desk. 

“Professor,” Atlas called, finding it to be quite unnerving, watching a man like Dumbledore pacing trails in his floor. It was the first time Atlas had really seen him stumped, unsure and not entirely all-knowing.

Dumbledore stopped pacing and looked at Atlas, who then motioned over to Harry.

“My apologies,” he said quietly. He sat back down at his desk, across from Atlas and then Harry when he sat on the arm of her chair.

“D’you – d’you know why my scar’s hurting me?”

Dumbledore looked very intently at Harry for a moment, and then said, “I have a theory, no more than that…It is my belief that your scar hurts both when Lord Voldemort is near you, and when he is feeling a particularly strong surge of hatred.”

“But…why?”

“Because you and he are connected by the curse that failed,” Dumbledore said. “That is no ordinary scar.”

“So you think…that dream…did it really happen?”

“It is possible,” Dumbledore muttered but then sought to rearrange his words, shaking his head. “No, I should say – probable. Harry – did you see Voldemort?”

“No,” Harry told, “Just the back of his chair. But – there wouldn’t have been anything to see, would there? I mean, he hasn’t got a body, has he? But…but then how could he have held the wand?” 

“How indeed?” Dumbledore muttered. “How indeed…”

Neither Dumbledore nor Harry or Atlas spoke for a while. Dumbledore was gazing across the room, and, every now and then, placing his wand tip to his temple and adding another shining silver thought to another vial. Atlas couldn’t take the silence so she stood, ambling around the office with her hands in her pockets, her gaze just as far away as Dumbledore’s, thinking of all that she had seen in the Pensieve. Or rather, what she had thought she’d seen. 

Maybe she should have asked Dumbledore about it, even if he had just left her with more questions she could at least say she tried. Now, however, it was too late, she could stay after Harry had left but that would make her seem desperate, in need and she did not want to be indebted to Dumbledore. Not right now, at least. Maybe once she’d exhausted all other options.

“Professor,” Harry said at last. Atlas peered over at him from the corner of her eye, idly feeding Fawkes some treats she’d found in a bowl she knew belonged to him, “do you think he’s getting stronger? Voldemort, I mean.”

Atlas saw the look Dumbledore gave him, that look that always made her feel as though Dumbledore were seeing right through her in a way that Rita could never achieve even in her dizziest daydreams, in a way not even Moody’s magical eye could. If Rita could pick at things only you knew and Moody could find things that you’d hid, Dumbledore could pick at things not even you knew, find things you didn’t even know were hidden within yourself.

“Once again. Harry, I can only give you my suspicions. The years of Voldemort’s ascent to power,” he began, “were marked with disappearances. Bertha Jorkins has vanished without a trace in the place where Voldemort was certainly known to be last. Mr Crouch too has disappeared…within these very grounds. And there was a third disappearance, one which the Ministry, I regret to say, do not consider of any importance, for it concerns a Muggle. His name was Frank Bryce, he lived in the village where Voldemort’s father grew up, and he has not been seen since last August. You see, I read the Muggle newspapers, unlike most of my Ministry friends.”

Dumbledore looked very seriously at Harry and even seemed to glance at Atlas.

“These disappearances seem to me to be linked. The Ministry disagrees – as you two may have heard, while…waiting…outside my office.”

Silence fell between them again, Dumbledore extracting thoughts every now and then. And Atlas felt as though they ought to leave, already standing and urging Fawkes to jump from her shoulder but it seemed Harry had other ideas and asked a question that had Atlas’s lips dip into a tight frown.

“Professor?” he had begun, Dumbledore confirming for him to continue “You know – you know the trial you found us in? The one with Crouch’s son? Well….were they talking about Neville’s parents?”

Dumbledore gave Harry a very sharp look. “Has Neville never told you why he has been brought up by his grandmother?”

Harry shook his head, looking to Atlas but she simply remained silent, staring at her feet and he knew then, that she had known.

“Yes, they were talking about Neville’s parents,” Dumbledore confirmed, also looking to Atlas. “His father, Frank, was an Auror just like Professor Moody and Atlas’s mother, I believe they even partnered up on occasion. He and his wife were tortured for information about Voldemort’s whereabouts after he lost his powers, as you heard.”

“So they’re dead?” Harry said quietly.

“No,” Atlas answered, before Dumbledore had even opened his mouth to speak. She turned to Harry, her gaze hardened and devoid of any warmth. “They were tortured to insanity. Neville visits them, with his grandmother, during the holidays, he told me…invited me to come along this Summer. He thinks that if they see me…they’ll think I’m Amaya and remember something, but Harry, they don’t even remember him.”

Harry sat there, horror-struck. 

“The Longbottoms were very popular,” Dumbledore continued. “The attacks on them came after Voldemort’s fall from power, just when everyone thought they were safe. Those attacks caused a wave of fury such as I have never known. The Ministry was under great pressure to catch those who had done it. Unfortunately, the Longbottoms’ evidence was – given their condition – none too reliable.”

“Professor –” Atlas was blatantly searching to shift the topic but neither Harry nor Dumbledore stopped her. “What made you think Snape had really stopped supporting Voldemort? And why did you take him in after everything?”

Dumbledore held Atlas’s gaze for a few seconds, Harry looking as if he’d wanted to ask the same, then he said, “That, Atlas, is a matter between Professor Snape and myself. Though I’m sure you’ve come up with a few theories yourself, am I right?”

Atlas stared right back before looking to the floor, taking a moment before confirming his suspicions with a nod. After that, she moved over to the door, Harry rushing to his feet to hurry after her. 

“Harry,” he said as they reached the door. “I’m sure this goes without saying and I’m sure Atlas will agree with me. Please do not speak about Neville’s parents to anybody else. He has the right to let people know, when he is ready.”

“Yes, Professor,” Harry nodded and Atlas smiled at him.

“And –“

They looked back. Dumbledore was standing over his fireplace, his face lit by its flame, looking older than ever. He stared into it for a moment, and then said, “Good luck with the third task you two.”