Word of Marcus Flint's injuries reached the castle within hours. When the boy was carried to the Hospital Wing, one of the first people to storm into Dumbledore's office was not a parent pleading for mercy — it was Lord Flint himself, furious and red-faced.
"Whoever did this must be expelled at once!" he demanded, voice like gravel. "Remove them from your school or suffer the consequences of allowing such thugs to learn here!"
Dumbledore's expression never lost its patient calm."Lord Flint, Hogwarts can't operate by threats," he said quietly. "We will look into what happened and take appropriate action, but you may not dictate expulsions based on anger."
Lord Flint left in a storm of rage and clenched fists. He went back to London certain he had the power to bend men — and certain, for the moment, that he had been humiliated.
Roy heard the story that afternoon, as it spread in gossip from person to person. He did not rush; he did not shout. He never needed to. Instead he used the tools his family had built over generations.
Within a day Roy had done what no prefect, no professor, and no Ministry official could do so quickly: he traced the Flints' interests, followed shell companies, and pushed a single question through his contacts — where did the money move when someone wanted secrecy?
The answer was dark.
Hidden within shipping manifests, export licenses, and charitable trusts were links to illegal laboratories and black contracts: experiments conducted off the books, clinics registered under false names, shipments routed through offshore addresses that supplied equipment and "subjects." There were accounts linked to trafficking of contraband and unregulated medical testing — activities that would ruin reputations in any world. Most damningly, Roy turned up evidence suggesting children had been used in some of those covert experiments.
He did not publish the dossier to scandal or press. He took it to Darius and Clara Valvas and asked for counsel — and action.
The Valvas response was methodical and devastating in its efficiency. Using political and economic levers, Valvas Group froze accounts, filed sealed complaints, and placed legal and diplomatic pressures on the jurisdictions that sheltered the Flint operations. Information packets, compiled by Roy and augmented by Valvas intelligence, were sent — securely and anonymously — to multiple ministries and international regulatory bodies. Those governments, unwilling to be linked to experiments on children, moved quickly.
Raids were mounted, shell companies were shuttered, bank accounts were frozen, and the Flints' legal cover began to collapse. Investigations were opened in several countries; embargoes and sanctions followed. The Flint family businesses — once a local dynasty — began to crumble under legal pressure, sudden loss of credit lines, and the withdrawal of partners.
Some of the people running the illegal sites were arrested; in a few cases, the force used to bring them down left them dead during raids. Those details trickled through covert channels and whispered corridors, and they hardened Lord Flint's fury into something worse: helplessness.
Lord Flint found his empire smashed overnight. Credibility evaporated. Trade partners withdrew. Ministries called for explanations and closed doors. In whispers and behind diplomatic screens, accusations surfaced that linked him to trafficking and unlicensed experimentation. The name Flint moved from respect to shame.
Roy, for his part, did not gloat outwardly. He had achieved his aim — stop the experiments, protect the innocent, and neutralize a direct threat. Still, he wanted to deflect the immediate heat and avoid personal scandal, so he directed his grandfather to add a small, poisonous final touch: an anonymous letter implicating a rival set of partners, the Rosetti family, as the ones who had betrayed Flint's trust and siphoned funds. The letter, planted in channels Lord Flint trusted, gave Flint a scapegoat to hate — and an explanation that did not require him to confront his own family's crimes.
It was easy to predict: Lord Flint's fury turned outward. He planned reprisals against the Rosetti name, convinced by the anonymous evidence that they — not his own business decisions — were to blame.
When Marcus Flint finally awoke and was discharged from the Hospital Wing, the world around him had changed. Where there had been a network of business, there was now only a husk of accounts and rumors. He received from his father a letter full of calculation and humiliation — and, importantly, the seed of an enemy to target.
Marcus read of the Rosetti frame, the ruined partners, and the supposed betrayal. He felt his loyalty — to his blood, to his name — crack open into hot, roiling anger. The pain in his healed arm and leg hardened into purpose. He vowed, with the fervor of the wounded and the desperate, to help his father take back what was lost — and he vowed to destroy whoever was said to be responsible.
Within Hogwarts, the fallout was immediate and social. Slytherins who had once openly mocked Roy found their tongues clipped. Where confidence and cruelty had been loud, now there was a hush, an edge. In the corridors, astute students and professors connected the dots: someone with resources had brought down a powerful family in a day. No one publicly named the Valvas family — not even Dumbledore — but the castle felt the ripple of high-level politics for the first time in a generation.
Roy watched the shifting faces, the new caution in the eyes of boys who had once laughed, the new distance in Marcus Flint's posture when he crossed Roy's path. He did not smile. The cost of justice had left a balance to tend.
Dumbledore, private and thoughtful, took Roy aside not long after the raids. His tone was grave and careful.
"You did what you believed was right," Dumbledore said. "You protected the innocent. But power used without visible accountability — even when well-intended — can create cycles of revenge."
Roy listened, silent and composed. "I understand, Headmaster. I'll be ready for the consequences."
Dumbledore placed a hand on Roy's shoulder, eyes soft with old sorrow and hard experience. "Just remember, Roy — taking the weight of the world on your shoulders is no small thing. You do not have to carry it alone."
And so the Flint dynasty fell into ruin, its scions left to nurse fury and shame. Lord Flint swore retribution at the Rosetti name. Marcus, once an arrogant bully, felt the cold rebirth of purpose in his bones. Somewhere beneath those new plans, a quieter war began to form — one Roy had started, but would now also have to finish.
Roy returned to his duties at Hogwarts with the same quiet efficiency he always had: tutoring friends, tending enchanted creations in his pocket-dimension, and watching the slow turn of the school's seasons. He had protected children from harm. He had broken a corrupt machine. But he had also made enemies who would not vanish with a single stroke.
In the hush that followed, Hogwarts slept uneasily, and Roy — silver hair glinting in the moonlight — kept his eyes open.