Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of A Reign of Silence. It will be followed next week by a one-shot, called "Dictionary of Losses," to continue the series.

Chapter Twenty—Out From Silence

Harry turned away from Draco, towards the office door. He would need to report the body, he was thinking, and make sure that Draco wasn't blamed for the death. Of course, the way Elder had used to kill himself ought to show that it clearly was suicide, without any instigation on Draco's part.

The doors opened before he could get there, and Harry assumed a defensive stance without even thinking about it. He wouldn't let someone hex Draco, or hurt him. He should have defended himself against Elder better, and not cost Draco all those hexes and attempts to kill him and protect Harry at the same time.

But it was Warren who entered. She swept the office with a critical look, and paused when she saw Elder lying in the corner. "Ah," she said softly. "So he got here before I could stop him. I'm sorry," she went on, turning towards Harry. "I would have done something if I could have, but the interrogation of Macgeorge and their decision to accept her as an Auror temporarily until they could set up a more formal hearing took a long time."

Harry nodded shortly. "Who told you where he had gone?"

Warren smiled grimly. "No one, as such. But someone mentioned that they had thought he would come as a witness, and then someone else hushed them. That made me suspicious." She shifted her weight for a second, and then asked, "How did you manage to kill him?"

"He committed suicide," Draco said coolly. "Sticking his hand in his mouth, and swallowing the fire that burned out from his fingers."

Warren blinked for a moment. Then she said, "Ah, well. There will be questions, you know that. Whoever was using him to hunt you—"

"My parents," Draco interrupted.

"He had to have collusion from the Ministry hierarchy," Harry said at the same time. Draco paused and looked at him. Harry held his eyes, ready to defend that opinion if Draco questioned him. "Well, he did. Someone had to protect him and look the other way when he came after us and hide him when we came back from the Forbidden Forest. And make sure that he was assigned to the Socrates Corps in the first place, of course."

"We'll find the name," Warren said, with the solid calm that Harry admired in her. "In the meantime, come upstairs and make a clean breast of it now, before someone else finds him or they start making up the story for you."

"Are they still interrogating Macgeorge?" Draco asked, letting Harry prod him ahead with his wand. Warren led the way, and Harry relaxed a little. He felt safer when Draco was between two people, more sheltered from any curses that might come his way. He did pause and turn to enchant Elder's body to float behind them with Mobilicorpus. It didn't look too horrible from the outside, and maybe someone would react when they came into the meeting room with it accompanying them and betray a hidden affiliation with the conspiracy.

"They're still assembled," Warren said, and jerked her head up the corridor. "Hurry, and you can catch them."

Harry caught Draco's eye, and had to bite his lip and grin a little. They were hurrying wildly towards what Harry had always considered a kind of personal nightmare, facing Ministry flunkies and officials with the sole purpose of judging them. But then again, this time they had reason.

No one flinched visibly when they carted Elder's body into the room—or at least, no one did it in a guilty way. There were stares and murmurs, and more than one person stood up in their seat to see Elder and try to envision a way he could have died, from their faces. But they sat down again, and smoothed their faces out.

Draco could feel the hostility all around them, the hostility that beat and shimmered around them like heat, that would have penetrated their bodies and worked its way down into their bones if they stayed there for long. He had always been skeptical about claims like that, but then, he had never been in front of an audience of people who hated him so much, either. Even the Wizengamot, when he went before them to be tried after the war, had been more bored and indifferent.

He wondered if his parents would feel like this if he went before them now.

Draco shook his head. He was going to forget about that for right now. He and Harry had a right to defend themselves, and everyone else had to listen to them. He turned around and faced the long table where the highest officials of the Ministry sat. Harry took his place beside him, Warren slightly behind, and Elder's corpse came up to float off to the side.

Of course, the first one to lean forwards and try to fix them with a stern eye was Okazes, who had always hated them. He frowned when neither of them bent their necks and exchanged a glance with the woman beside him. Draco knew her vaguely, Genevieve Edelstein. She was a tall woman with iron-grey hair and a nose that put Professor Snape's to shame. She sniffed a little at them and said, "Is there a reason that you've come into the room with a corpse?"

"This is Auror Elder, who a short time ago tried to kill me," Draco said.

He watched faces, and saw Edelstein grimace, and Okazes's eyes pop, and a few other people flinch or make gestures of disgust. No one looked especially guilty, though. Maybe they'd had peripheral knowledge but hadn't known much about the real reason Elder joined the Socrates Corps, Draco thought. He hoped that Jenkins could find more incriminating evidence in her search among Elder's records.

"How did he die?" Edelstein asked. Her face had gone back to its harsh mask, and she folded her hands as though she wanted to scratch strips of wood up from the table and was restraining herself.

"He committed suicide," Draco said. "When he learned that he might have used Dark magic and convinced himself it was Light under the pressure of his own desire to think he was innocent, he put his hand in his mouth and directed fire down his throat."

That caused another stir, but Draco attributed this one more to the grotesque manner of Elder's death than anything else. He could see Harry beside him, his eyes darting around, trying to locate someone who would reveal what they needed to know. Draco checked a sigh. Of course this wouldn't be easy, because nothing was for them.

"I think you should tell us what happened from the beginning," Okazes said, and Draco reckoned it wasn't a bad attempt to sound commanding, if you had never listened to anyone who had the real gift for it.

Draco told most of the story, starting from his conflict with his parents and their letter saying he was disinherited, with Harry jumping in to tell the story of the Dementor and how Elder had fought with them and then declared most of their magic Dark. They fudged certain details, of course. No need for these august Aurors to know that Draco knew soul-stealing magic, or that he and Harry had done illegal things in pursuit of their case. They didn't need to know about Rudie's necromancy to dissipate the wards on Ernhardt's door, either, or the location of Cuthbert's Corner, or—many things.

But at least their tale had few visible seams, Draco thought. And Warren stood beside them, watching, not interfering. Draco thought she would at least have blinked or tapped her throat with her finger if she disapproved of what they were saying.

When he had finished, there was silence for some time. Draco waited, and waited, and waited. He did his best not to show his surprise on his face, although he was afraid that he wasn't successful. And Harry was gaping, a moment before he shut his mouth with a click of teeth and his eyes darted back and forth between Okazes and Edelstein, whom he seemed to consider the most dangerous.

Draco would have expected more questions. They would leap at the chance to punish him and Harry, if they could. And he didn't dare hope that the silence meant Edelstein, Okazes, and the others were impressed.

Finally, Edelstein picked up a folder that lay in front of her. It was slim, and somehow familiar. Draco saw an amber-colored stain on the back of the folder that he thought he'd seen before.

He was still staring when Edelstein glanced up, gave him a hard, cool smile, and murmured, "How familiar are you with the various definitions of twisted that the Ministry has come up with, Auror Malfoy?"

She hesitated a second before she said my title, Draco noticed, and saw from the way Harry's neck muscles stiffened that he had noticed the same thing. Draco couldn't see whether Warren had or not. She was still standing there just out of Draco's sight, and he didn't dare turn his head to look at her, because he didn't dare take his eyes off his enemies.

"I know the five basic tenets," Draco said, and was astonished to hear the glacial way his voice came out. Perhaps, after dealing with Ernhardt and his parents, it took more than this to frighten him. "Based on the classification of the Dark Lord Voldemort, after the fact, and historical research to find other Dark Lords in history. They have a flaw, a gift of wandless magic that renders them powerful. They have a symbol, the way the Dark Lord had the Dark Mark." He didn't touch his left arm, because they would expect him to, and at the moment, any gesture of resistance he could make towards them was a good thing. "They have companions, usually either wizards they've enchanted to go along with them, or creatures created as a side effect of their flaw. They use only Dark Arts in battle, although they may use more ordinary spells in non-battle situations. And they cannot use Healing magic."

"Exactly," Edelstein said, and nodded, and went on nodding for a moment after she should have stopped.

And Draco knew. He knew what was coming. The words welled out of his mouth before he could even consider not uttering them. "You can't accuse us of being twisted."

"Why not?" Edelstein's eyes never left him as she drew the folder towards her again. "You each have a symbol." Her glance darted to Draco's left arm, to Harry's forehead. "You have companions—the other Aurors that you enchanted to work with you, when at first they held aloof and appeared to dislike you." This time, her eyes went to Warren, and her face softened a little. "It is known that you both have flaws. That you both use Dark Arts. It is harder to prove the lack of Healing magic, but you both visited private Healers and Mind-Healers after Mr. Potter was banned from St. Mungo's. That does rather suggest that you can't Heal yourselves."

"Healers are specialists." Harry's voice was calm. Only this close to him did Draco know how strong the vibrating, tense surface of that calm was, how close it was to snapping. "Of course we would visit them rather than try to cast the spells on ourselves."

Edelstein waved one hand. "It is well-known that twisted sometimes surface who lack one or more of those traits, but are twisted nevertheless."

Draco felt like vomiting. Yes, that was true—and he and Harry had been the first Socrates Aurors to submit reports after cases with that particular suggestion embedded in them.

Will they really make our own words a noose to hang us with?

One more careful look at Edelstein told him the truth. Yes, they will. And they'll enjoy it.

Edelstein leaned forwards slowly now, her fingers creeping across the table like spiders aiming for a trapped and struggling fly. Draco stared at them and fought to keep from clenching his fists or actually getting sick. They would like that, wouldn't they, the smug bastards who thought they could get rid of him and Harry by catching them in this trap?

"Madam Edelstein," Harry said at Draco's side, his voice so calm that Draco looked at him from the corner of his eye to be sure Harry understood what was going on, "if the definition of the twisted is flexible enough to bear that much change, doesn't that argue we shouldn't be treated as twisted? Not until they've shown that we're insane and a danger to others, in any case. If the twisted can have only one or two traits, that would cover a lot of other wizards, as well, and the real twist should be whether they're hurting other people."

Edelstein's mouth twisted gently. "Don't you understand?" she whispered. "You did hurt other people."

"We killed twisted under the permission of the Socrates Corps." Harry was standing tall, his hands at his sides. Draco continued to watch him, because he didn't understand what Harry's game was. Did he really think he could argue them around? "You can't punish us by retroactively withdrawing that permission."

"She isn't referring to twisted that you killed in the course of your cases," Okazes said, striking in as though anxious that Edelstein shouldn't get all the glory of condemning them. From the way Edelstein's head twitched, Draco didn't think she was pleased at yielding her place, but she didn't say anything. "She's referring to Head Auror Ernhardt."

"Excuse me?"

Can't you feel it? Draco wanted to ask them, all of them, the people sitting on the other side of the table from them, the people standing up now to watch Harry Potter losing his appeal, or maybe Draco Malfoy crashing down to an end that most of them would think was well-deserved. Can't you feel the way his magic's rising?

So this was the way it ended, Draco thought. Harry must have decided that this was the end, that they wouldn't be able to argue Edelstein and Okazes and the rest of them around, or he wouldn't have come this far.

But the magic was there, coiled around him, that endless, glittering strength Draco had felt when Harry was battling Ernhardt in the trap they had set up for him, and a few other times. It was only desperation that brought it out, Draco knew.

Draco swallowed and resisted the urge to touch Harry's elbow. Harry might be right that nothing could save them now, and Draco didn't want to distract or slow him down in the meantime. He waited.

"So," Harry was saying in a conversational tone. "Why would you count Ernhardt as one of the people we hurt, instead of a twisted that we hunted down?"

"What evidence do we have that Head Auror Ernhardt died in the way you said he did, other than your word?" Edelstein sat back and folded her hands. She had a very faint smile on her face. Draco couldn't remember any personal grudge she had against them, but on the other hand, she might rejoice in being the one to finally get rid of two very troublesome Aurors. "That is all we have. That is all we ever can have."

"Of course," Draco said. "Now that he's dead. I suppose the word of Auror Macgeorge isn't good enough for you, when she told you that she was imprisoned in her own mind and body by the will of Ernhardt?"

"Auror Macgeorge has obviously been through an ordeal," Okazes said, sounding as though he, too, rejoiced in being here at their fall. "She was insane for part of the time, which she has admitted. It's the only explanation for her undoubted practice of necromancy during that time. But precisely because she was mad, she cannot be treated as a reliable witness."

That's the way it's to be, then. Draco settled his shoulders and caught Harry's eye, nodding a little. Harry gave him a small nod in return, but still faced Edelstein and Okazes. He would get them back their position in the Aurors if he could, Draco knew. Well, he was not against Harry doing what he could.

Only in going beyond that, and exhausting himself in the service of an ideal that Draco realized, now, was tarnished, and had probably never been what they thought it was.

"Listen," Harry said. "We were told to take up this case, the case of Ernhardt, because it was an embarrassment to the Aurors and we had already failed to capture him once. That makes him a twisted we hunted, like Healer Alto or Nancy Morningstar. If we killed him, then we only acted as we were supposed to, once we became Socrates Aurors."

"But we do not believe Ernhardt survived the death of his body," said Edelstein delicately. "We have already introduced our objections to Auror Macgeorge as a witness. She was mad, and we must have compassion for that, but also, she cannot be trusted."

"You only want to get rid of us, then," Harry said. "You don't want to admit that a twisted could have fooled you and acted as your Head Auror for so many years."

"It's interesting," said Okazes, "that you never brought up these accusations until after you both became part of Socrates Corps and were partnered. Are we to believe that that frightened him so badly he began to demonstrate his twisted powers, which no one had ever mentioned before?"

"He possessed you too, you wanker," Harry said pleasantly. "Not that you remember, because his taint probably faded into the rest of the foulness in your mind."

Okazes flushed and started to open his mouth, but Edelstein rested her hand on his wrist. "Is that necessary?" she asked, her eyes not leaving Harry's. "Discourtesy to a superior whom a moment ago you were trying to impress with your knowledge of the rules?"

"He's not a superior if we're not Aurors," Harry said. "And we're not. You let us come here to strip us of our titles, didn't you? You've wanted an excuse to get rid of me for a while, and you probably expected Draco to die before now, once his parents began that stupid pure-blood process of forgetting him. You sheltered Auror Elder, who tried to kill him. Someone had to look the other way while Elder transferred into the Socrates Corps and made accusations against Draco. Was it you?"

"Mr. Potter," Edelstein said, and her face had started to turn pink, "this is inappropriate."

"Damn right it is," Harry said. "It's there, in the title you're calling us by. You've already made your decision. What's inappropriate is for us to stand around in the middle of this bloody farce." He lifted his wand.

Warren stirred behind them. Draco wondered if she intended to help them or not. He decided it didn't matter, because Harry's spell had already lifted, soaring high to bounce off a stone set at the corner where two walls met. When it hit that stone, it divided, refracting, dropping onto the heads of several of the watching Aurors. They dropped to the floor in reaction, Stunned.

Harry flipped a mocking salute and a smile that Draco wished he could savor for himself, sweet and bright, and then turned around and grabbed Draco by the arm. Warren looked once into their eyes and stepped out of their path.

"Go," she hissed, while Draco watched her in case she changed her mind. "I can cover your retreat in the confusion and pretend I'm trying to capture you, but I can't do that for long. You don't have much time."

Draco nodded once to her and began to run. He wasn't sure what they would do once they got beyond the Ministry, where they would go, or even if they ought to stop and grab something from their desks in the Socrates office, files that might reveal too much to unfriendly people who went through them.

But then he caught another glimpse of Warren, waving her wand and yelling in a distracting fashion, and relaxed a little. He thought she and Jenkins would make sure that no one else got the chance to go through anything except what would prove them innocent.

Harry could feel the exhilaration pouring through him like blood as he came out into the middle of the corridor and paused, panting and turning his head from side to side. The walls around them all looked the same, with no signs pointing to safety. The confused babble of voices from the room behind them would attract attention soon, he knew. They were just lucky that so many Aurors had been in there to watch the travesty of justice Edelstein had wanted to play out, or they would have been pursued before now.

"Aurors."

Harry knew that voice, had last heard it giving crisp advice to Macgeorge. He turned at once, his hand falling to the wand at his waist.

Auror Terry stood behind them, eyes so piercing that Harry knew he would never be able to think of her as innocent or doll-like again. She looked from one to the other of them, and Harry thought she gathered most of the relevant facts that way. He wondered absently if she was a Legilimens.

Then he remembered that what mattered more than anything else was that she was an enemy. She would ally with the Auror hierarchy both because she wouldn't want to risk herself and because she would think Harry and Draco had gone beyond the pale.

"Stay back," Harry told her quietly, aiming his wand. Draco braced his elbow against Harry's, then tugged, reminding him they had more important things to do than stand here and talk to Terry.

Terry only shook her head a little, never looking away even when Harry started to incant. "If they declare Macgeorge innocent, when they know perfectly well that she committed crimes under the influence of someone else, then they should do the same thing with you."

"We weren't possessed," Draco snapped back at her. "Harry, come the fuck on."

Terry spoke as though she didn't hear the swirling chaos in the other room approaching the doors. "I know that. But you tried to obey the rules, and you went outside them only when it came to a situation that there are no rules for. You restored Macgeorge to herself. You destroyed perhaps the most dangerous threat we've faced as Aurors since the Dark Lord, if what Macgeorge and Rudie were saying was true. You need help."

"What do you propose to do about it?" Harry asked quietly.

"Help you," said Terry, and cast a spell at the doors that made them stick fast. "Auror Malfoy, your file says that you have friends in the Demlan Werewolf Pack. Do you still have them?"

Draco's mouth fell open a little. Then he said, "I can't go to them. The Ministry will know that from my file, too, and they'll revoke the pack's permission to exist if they think that they're sheltering us."

"Hide yourselves well enough, and they don't need to know," Terry said, ignoring the frantic pounding on the doors. "Werewolves are good at keeping secrets, aren't they? Find evidence that will prove yourselves innocent, and come back."

"What kind of evidence would that be?" Harry demanded.

"I can't do everything for you," said Auror Terry crisply. "Go find it. Remember that they're going to be hunting you now—as twisted?" Harry nodded, no longer really surprised she knew about that even though she wasn't part of the Socrates Corps, not if she knew private things from Draco's file. "Good. Then go." She turned to face the doors.

Draco tugged on Harry's arm, and they turned and began to run.

Harry thought as they ran. They had enemies somewhere in the Ministry hierarchy, the people or person who had supported and protected Elder. They had been declared outlaws. The Aurors would have the permission to kill them on sight, as twisted. They had a few allies here, but not many. They couldn't go to any of their friends for long, or their friends would come under suspicion, too. Draco's parents had turned against them, and no longer even knew who he was.

They would have to run far, and long, and fast, and hunt down their enemies at the same time.

Harry reached out and took Draco's hand, and together, they began the first steps of that long run, away from the silence behind them, into light and noise.

The End.