Chapter 247: Final Judgment! Pettigrew, Time To Meet Merlin
It cracked like a whip.
Pettigrew let out a pig-slaying scream as pain tore through him. His body jolted into the air and crashed down hard, rolling and convulsing on the floor.
"No, no! Please, Snape, Severus! Don't—I never wanted to kill Lily—"
"How dare you say her name! Crucio!"
Snape's roar swept the hall like a storm, fury blazing from his eyes with almost physical force. He ignored the crowd of students watching. His wand slashed the air, and a scarlet bolt cracked against Pettigrew's body like lightning.
Another shriek ripped out of Pettigrew as snot and tears streamed down his face.
The students were stunned. They huddled together in fearful fascination, eyes wide and avid.
That gloomy bat was the angriest of them all? There was definitely a story there.
Red bolt after red bolt burst forth until Pettigrew lay in a reeking heap, limp as sludge, before at last Dumbledore called a halt.
"Ahem." Dumbledore's light cough floated through the hush as he raised a hand. "That's enough. Minerva, take Severus down to rest."
"Y-yes, Headmaster," Professor McGonagall murmured, still dazed. She glanced once at the wreck on the floor and finally looked away.
He was not her student.
On the other side, seeing the demon finally depart, Pettigrew began sobbing with relief.
Then two faces filled his view.
Harry and Sirius: Hello, hello. We're here.
Pettigrew froze.
He bared a ghastly smile through the pain and croaked, "C-can I go to Azkaban?"
Sirius: "In your dreams."
Bang.
Sirius's fist smashed squarely into Pettigrew's face. His nose broke with a crack and a spray of blood.
"Wait—ah—"
Harry brought his boot down in a furious kick.
"No—please, have mercy—" Bang.
"I confess, I confess—"
Bang, bang, bang.
Fists and feet rained down.
The students gaped. Ron's jaw hung open as he stared at Harry, transformed into a berserker.
After a long moment, he breathed, "Blimey."
Ethan, what have you turned our little white-rabbit Savior into?
When Harry and Sirius finally stopped, Pettigrew barely resembled a human being.
"Enough," Dumbledore said, clapping once to gather everyone's attention. "I believe we have all witnessed revelations of extraordinary weight. They may overturn the result of a crucial, long-standing judgment."
His stern gaze swept the Aurors. They all tensed and looked guiltily down. Many of them had been swallowed by Ethan's stag earlier, and like Harry, they had watched the painful past unfold in the painting. Shame left them speechless.
An older Auror said bitterly, "After Sirius was caught, there was not merely a 'rushed trial.' There was no trial. He was thrown straight into Azkaban, as if we were terrified of being proven wrong. The man who signed off on that proposal, who pushed it through with other departments, is now the Minister, Cornelius Fudge. It's hard to say whether he profited from it."
"I think," Dumbledore said, "we should hear from the one who showed all this to us."
He stepped back and ceded the lectern to the young, remarkable Ravenclaw.
At once, all eyes fixed on the figure stepping from the shadows.
"A monster!" Hannah Abbott gasped behind her hands.
A grinning demon mask, fanged and judge-like, rose into view behind the bronze eagle lectern. Through its two black eyeholes, it surveyed the silent hall.
Then a calm voice spoke.
"Do not doubt it. What you saw is real history, restored through my painting."
His first third-tier painting.
[Name: "Lily: An Eternal Love"]
[Type: Portrait]
[Tier: Third Tier · Blue Precious]
[Description: She lives truly within the work you created, gathers joy, meets her death… and wakes once more in her bed.]
[Effect: A painting wrought from a true moment in history, as vivid as reality. It can pull others in to witness from within, causing them to forget what lies outside.]
[Rating: Has special effectiveness against a certain individual.]
He had stitched it like a picture-book from pages of young Tom's diary. Truth be told, Ethan thought the painting already perfect. Yet it was only middling in rank. Third-tier paintings were indeed stricter in their demands.
As whispers rippled, someone tumbled headlong into the Great Hall with a thud.
Auror John Dawlish, fresh from the hospital wing.
He had clearly sprinted too hard and tripped. Face burning under the weight of everyone's stare, he scrambled up, pointed at Ethan on the dais, and shouted, "By order of the Ministry of Magic, Ethan Vincent, you are under arrest!"
His voice rang out into a stillness so complete that even his colleagues stared at him blankly.
As if looking at a hound worked to death.
At his words, Pettigrew's eyes flared with desperate hope. Azkaban. Let me go to Azkaban. Please.
No such luck.
Ethan would not allow it.
"On what grounds?" Ethan asked softly, looking down at the Auror—at the Minister's last, desperate card. "Pettigrew carries the mark of the Death Eaters."
Dawlish tried the same line, "The Ministry must render the final judgment—"
This time, the retort cut him off cold.
"What if I do not wish the Ministry to decide?"
The voice was low and hard, and it filled the Great Hall.
Power burst from Ethan in a wave. Wind howled. Candles guttered out one by one. The hall plunged into gloom.
Faces turned away from the gale, eyes streaming, to stare in shock at Ethan slowly rising from the floor. Black hair streaming, robes billowing, a wash of golden light spread from him, warping the air until it seemed to open a hundred unblinking eyes.
Pettigrew's face went ashen.
W-what is he doing?
Dawlish crumpled to the floor. Staring up at that demon mask, terror rose from the root of his soul. He shook so hard his wand nearly slipped from his hand.
Like an ant facing an elephant.
Only now did Dawlish understand that he could never arrest Ethan. They were not in the same league.
"In those days," Ethan said, while his voice rolled like thunder through the Hall and, through the water screens, across the British wizarding world, "the Ministry announced they had captured the murderer who betrayed the Potters, Sirius Black. And they locked an innocent man away in Azkaban."
In his office, Minister Fudge bit his finger and stared in horror, listening to Ethan's final words, hammered out one by one through the fanged mask.
"I will not trust the Ministry again. I will judge him myself."
Screams burst around Hogwarts as the floor and walls began to quake.
A deep rumble rolled up from the bedrock as if a drill were spinning toward them from below.
Dumbledore's heart sank. A very bad feeling rose within him.
Ethan threw back his arm and cried, "Come forth, High Arbiter Tier: The Roller Coaster to the Land of Light!"
Merlin will forgive you.
And I will send you to him.
Darkness dropped like a curtain. A straight track speared upward, punching through floor after floor, through ceiling after ceiling, near vertical, racing toward a vanishing point beyond anyone's sight.