Horace Slughorn waited in his cell. He'd already read the disintegrating magazines from cover to back, slowly. Repeatedly. The newest magazine held, among other things, birth and death announcements and he'd discovered Eupraxia Mole's obituary, which gave a slightly more flowery description of her negotiated truce with Peeves and why he agreed to relinquish the crossbows he'd somehow pilfered and taken to firing at students. Apart from that story none of the names meant anything to Horace, who considered himself fairly well connected, and aware of the various lineages.

The cell's surprisingly comfortable leather chair was padded enough to sleep in. There was no restroom, but since he'd been here Horace hadn't felt the need to go ... or to eat, for that matter. Horace Slughorn's stomach rarely complained, he ate well at Hogwarts and kept a supply of luscious snacks. But while he didn't need food, Horace missed the social and aesthetic pleasure of eating. His cell had no windows, just steady artificial lights. He could raise or lower the intensity, which was useful when taking a nap, but left him with no means to judge the passage of time.

He'd paced for what felt like hours, waiting. Horace knew he'd failed to kill Tom Riddle, and that meant he was in for an ugly end. Riddle dare not kill him right away, he was still in a young man's body and would have to bide his time, so Horace would be shipped off to the newly remodeled, Dementor-less version of Azkaban. There he would stay until he met with an unfortunate accident, or would perhaps be released after twenty-five years, only to disappear.

Such was the price of failing to kill Tom Riddle. He had all the time in the world to ponder it.

Undoubtedly that was their intent: leaving him here, alone, with his thoughts. The Aurors had questioned him under Veritaserum, and he'd answered truthfully enough. After all, some Aurors may be inclined to believe him. Barnaby Daksus was still an Auror, close to halfway through his career. Slughorn remembered recommending him for the job, had written a glowing letter about the lad's potions skills. Barnaby, now balding and his once-slim frame was burdened with a thick gut, but he was still remarkably handsome, had led the interview.

Horace described every detail, every single damning fact he could. But, as the Head of Slytherin he doubted most aurors would trust his facts. Still, Horace made sure that they were all truthful. Young Daksus will investigate. For me, Slughorn thought.

After conducting the interview Barnaby had returned him here. While it sat empty they'd upgraded his cell, added more security including a Thief's Downfall on the inside of the doorway. More intimidation tactics, he thought. But Barnaby would help him. Barnaby couldn't risk his career with such a public case. But he'd help his mentor, no doubt. Not by something so foolish as plotting an escape - I may be many things, but I am not an overly optimistic fool, thought Horace - but he'd make sure that Horace didn't vanish before his trial. Barnaby would ensure that the information got out, at least to sympathetic aurors.

Horace lowered the lights again, imagining what he'd say when Harry Potter came in and made his denials or clever threats. I've made my bed, mustn't cower and hide. In some ways the thought of cowering and begging was laughable, but too many had simply gone missing during Voldemort's shadowy campaign, and only a hand would be found. Or a slightly singed hat, made stiff and brittle from the fire. A slender birch wand, snapped in half. Entire families gone, nobody remaining in a pristine house except for the baby crying, still in its crib, barely alive. It's easy to be brave now, but when he arrives...

Gilderoy Lockhart looked up as the door to his cell opened, then smiled weakly. "I'd heard you'd recovered from Horace's attack. Would you prefer to be called General Potter? Or Harry? Or ..." Gilderoy shrugged, and left the sentence unfinished.

Harry looked around Lockhart's cell. It wasn't as spacious but was comfortably stocked, as these things went. Quills and parchment littered the surface of the crowded writing desk, besides a replenishing pitcher of water. Some glasses sat besides an empty plate and utensils. Harry spied a stack of Daily Prophets with today's edition resting on top.

Until recently (as wizards counted things) even Muggle prisons allowed well-to-do prisoners to bring in additional comforts, with friends or family of the prisoner bringing in food, reading material, and other provisions, typically for a small fee to the wardens. In the 1800s and earlier it wasn't even illegal, just a typical allowance and a way for the government to skimp on paying guards. Everyone knew of the Tower of London, of course. But Newgate was infamous for the Sheriff charging even poor prisoners for every single convenience, such as being let out of chains. Only recently had reforms attempted to make prison slightly more egalitarian. Serving a sentence had always been easier for the wealthy and well-connected.

Harry sighed.

Of course, Ravenclaw said, with a mental shrug. Lockhart fought along-side the aurors. He arguably saved at least one of their lives. Most of them would have crucio'd any witch who killed their fellow Aurors. If they'd thought they could get away with it, anyway. Did you really expect the guards to treat him poorly?

Slytherin broke in. The rank and file DMLE remain cautious. They don't know what to think about you. That's what's important now. Word about this is already spreading. Your actions now will affect their opinions.

Harry sat down, setting up the automatic transcription quill and scroll. "Harry will do now, I suppose. I've never stood on formality."

Harry paused, then said, "Follow on questioning of Gilderoy Lockhart under two drops of Veritaserum." He spoke the words quietly, and the quill perked up and wrote, triggered by his words. Gilderoy went over to his bunk and sat down, cross legged, on top of his blanket.

"I was not aware any further confusion remained about the attack or my crimes," said Lockhart. Harry had watched the Aurors dose him twenty minutes ago. He'd been tempted to go with the full three drops, but had decided against it. For one thing, it made conversations confusing, and in any case there were the Aurors to consider.

"Crime, singular. The only pending charge is your use of the Cruciatus spell," Harry said. "The confusion is more about Draco's involvement."

"I don't know anything about that," said Gilderoy. "As I testified before."

"And I believe you, of course. But you said you promised to keep Draco safe. The aurors never followed up on your motives. You said 'I promised to protect him.' Who did you promise?"

"I promised Lady Malfoy, of course," said Lockhart, briefly pausing before continuing (probably compelled, Harry thought) "and my position implied protecting the students under my charge and my promise to the Headmaster."

Ravenclaw repeated back the last word, Headmaster. Not Headmistress.

"Albus Dumbledore made you promise to protect Draco Malfoy?"

"Not by name, no. Dumbledore told me that there would be a student in dire need of my help at Hogwarts this year, and that it was vitally important. But he never said a name. Or even a House. In fact, he never used the word 'he' or 'she,' so I didn't even have that. He just said 'a student,' one that would be in my lectures, and that I'd know which one."

Harry paused for a second. "When was this?"

"I don't remember the exact date, but I was back in London and Dumbledore, Alastor Moody and a team of aurors had just broken into my cousin's house ..."

Harry's mind reached back to that night last spring, when he dueled Mad-Eye Moody. Dumbledore and Mad-Eye had then arranged a raid on Gilderoy Lockhart under suspicion of being Voldemort's thrall. Harry had pleaded for them to be careful, and asked that they not use the raid as a fishing expedition into the man's crimes.

"...anyway, after apologizing Dumbledore told me that he needed my assistance next year, teaching Defense, and that there was a particular student ..."

Harry thought. Dumbledore had access to every prophecy, and has already demonstrated the ability to subtly alter events years into the future. Dumbledore had been trapped in the Mirror of VEC, supposedly outside of time itself. Harry considered, not for the first time, that Dumbledore's 'curse' might have enabled Dumbledore to provide information to his younger self, well outside of the normal 6 hour limit.

He might have also told himself to nudge Lockhart. It's less ridiculous than destroying my pet rock. And if Dumbledore is behind this...



Harry set aside the thought, for now. "When did you believe it was Draco?"

"On Harry Potter Day. Draco found me and begged me to lock away some of his memories for his own safety. Draco was frantic, flushed like he'd been in a fight or argument, and that stood out because even when being bullied, Draco often projected an air ... ah, yes, I can see you know what I mean. I try to display a quiet competence, but perhaps I come across as trying too hard. Draco had none of that. I tried to talk him out of it, of course. But I was already half convinced this was what Dumbledore had been talking about. Even in my day The Headmaster had a reputation for being not just a few steps ahead but several mad leaps and a game of hopscotch. It felt like a Dumbledore thing."

Harry nodded. It does, at that. At least for Dumbledore's insane public persona. "And what convinced you?"

"Draco had been trying to impress upon me the severity of his problem, but refused to tell me what he knew that needed to be locked away, and he said - I remember it quite distinctly - ' the eyes of the basilisk are nearby, and always searching.'"

Harry waited for the end of the story for a second.

"And? That was a phrase Dumbledore used? Or told you?"

"Seeker in a Storm?" Gilderoy paused and looked quizzically for a second, then snapped his fingers. "Sorry! Muggleborn. Slipped my mind for a second. Seeker in a Storm is a play about a lone Auror who hunts down Paramoions, monsters that imitate people. They're not harmless, but not massively dangerous like an Aliquid in that their imitation isn't perfect and they breed slowly and prefer to blend into society. Like a cuckoo, not a voracious predator. Anyway, in the play the Auror slowly begins to suspect that he's actually a Paramoions that has been confounded."

Harry sat there and looked at Gilderoy Lockhart with growing incredulity as he explained.

"And that convinced you? No pass-phrase, no code to recognize. Draco recited a line to a play that dramatically conveyed growing paranoia, and you said 'Well, this must be it?'"

"Obviously," said Lockhart, no longer smiling, "As I told you this under Veritaserum."

While Hufflepuff chided Harry for his mocking tone, Harry took several deep breaths and counted internally to ten. He mentally adjusted his internal persona to flawed adolescent genius forgetting his place, which wasn't much of a stretch.

"I am sorry, Professor. I've been ambushed several times in the last week and between that and not being able to find a definitive chain of events ... so, you locked away Draco's memory. How did you arrange when to unlock them? Did Draco just give you a time, or tell you to watch for something..."

"Draco picked another line from the play, 'The eyes of the Basilisk are on you.' Or was it 'Upon you?' In either case in January I unlocked his memories. A simple Eunoe spell."

"So, Draco had the memory of you locking his memories, but not of the conversation with you?"

Harry wasn't entirely sure of how the Eunoe spell worked, but that seemed like a huge flaw. The existence of a locked memory wouldn't slow down an Legilemens much. He'd just unlock it. And if Draco didn't have the memory that he'd asked for this.

"No...," said Gilderoy, frowning in thought, "...I locked up the entire encounter. Draco asked me lock up a large chunk of time and to just have him wake up at his desk. So how did he remember the pass phrase?"

Harry nodded. Professor Lockhart had taken longer, but he'd seen it.

"He decided on the phrase beforehand and told an accomplice. Someone who decided when the time was correct, then told Draco to go see you." Harry offered.

"That makes sense. Although, Draco was terrified when he came to give me the pass phrase. He thought I'd ambush him or attack him."

Harry thought about this while asking Professor Lockhart a few more questions, pinning down the details and timeline of Draco, but Gilderoy didn't have many details (beyond the fact that Draco had his Armageddon Robe already in January). The first thought of accomplice was Neville, but had Draco been close enough at that point? Unlikely. Gregory was too close, but if Draco was trying to hide a fact from Harry, Gregory would be a poor choice. Still, if Gregory didn't know but was just watching for a signal, it would work. But only if the signal was not related to me. Harry was still left with the fact that he didn't know what change had triggered this. Another line of investigation, he thought as he finished up his questioning and stood up.

"Thank you, Professor. Also, I wanted to thank you for keeping Hermione out of that battle."

"You are welcome, Harry Potter," the smile had returned to Gilderoy's face. "You know, all this time you haven't asked me what I believe about you. Or why I crucio'd that witch."

Harry paused. "Those aren't really relevant to my investigation, I know the Cruciatus is Unforgivable, but there are levels. Yours was a heat of the moment crime, and it was wrong, but more indicative of frustration and anger than a deep seated hatred of humanity or anything like that. In this case 'Unforgivable' is more figurative than literal. There's a motion in the Wizengamot to just give you a slap on the wrist, as these things go."

"Well then, I hope I have your vote, Lord Potter. And you said crime, singular. So you know who murdered that attacker after he'd been knocked out? Who is charged? This is another one of those crimes where the criminal deserves a slap on the wrist, or possibly a commendation. I'd like to know whose wand killed the wizard that murdered Neville Longbottom."

Harry gathered up his transcript and equipment as he spoke.

"Nobody's wand. There was no trace of a lethal spell on his body, so I sent the corpse to some Muggle experts and they found a remarkably high level of toxins inside him. They said that he died by a snake bite on the shoulder. Draco killed Selwyn before you even got there, without his victim even noticing."

Was it vengeance, or just balancing out the two sides, Slytherin asked.

"Then I have some skill as a teacher after all," Gilderoy said with pride to Harry Potter's retreating form.

The crash of the Thief's Downfall woke Horace Slughorn, who opened his eyes to see Professor Asimov startled by the liquid crashing around him.

"Clever," Horace said, sitting up in his chair. "Sending my friends to interrogate me. And the Downfall means you aren't Imperiused, Isaac. So I can trust you. Assuming that is a real downfall, I suppose."

Isaac pawed at his hair, which had bounced away from his scalp after it magically dried. "I'm not here to interrogate you, Horace. They have others for that. I assume they do, anyway. I'm here to convince you that you are mistaken about Mr. Potter."

"Convince me?" Horace snorted, "No offense, Isaac, I truly do count you as a friend, but even though you aren't Imperiused, you labor under a false memory charm. For nearly a year, ever since Tom Riddle recruited you. I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry. Some good news, though. You are useful to Tom Riddle and, as a squib, completely harmless. I imagine you'll outlive me by decades, Isaac."

Isaac Asimov leaned against the wall and stuck his hands inside the pockets of his jacket. For a moment he reveled in his youth, being able to casually stand and lean. Even after a year he rejoiced at his stamina. "Why would he need to fake my memories, if Harry were Voldemort? I'm an ignorant squib. Harmless, like you say. He could recruit me without a false memory charm and I wouldn't know Voldemort from Van de Kampf. You misjudged him, Horace. He's just a boy. Perhaps he started out as some simulacrum of Voldemort's, can you blame him for hiding that fact? You're the Head of Slytherin. You murder wars when they are babes in cribs. Surely you of all people understand the need for secrecy, even for the innocent."

"A compelling argument, except that Tom Riddle's persona of Harry Potter professes not to believe it. 'Speak the truth, though your voice trembles.' That's one of his maxims."

"Some muggles have a saying, Horace: Speak the truth, then leave the room quickly. You are confusing the morality of truth-telling with the impracticalities of how mobs think. In the real world people compromise their standards. There are no super-heroes in this story, Horace."

"He's practically run the government for over a year, Isaac. He's secretly a copy of Voldemort. I can't know what he's plotting, but I can try to make amends and protect others. For once, Isaac. Draco told me of a story you wrote, called Gentle Vultures. You exhort the reader to not be profiteering scavengers after the war, but exhort them to step in and prevent war. Well, I tried. I gave up my comfortable life to kill and expose Voldemort before he divided us, before he gained power. Here I sit, no gentle vulture in this cage, Isaac. If I have one hope left, I'd hope that you appreciate what I've done and remember me well."

Isaac Asimov stared at his friend for a second, the lowered his face to his chest.

"I am proud, Horace. And I'm not the only one. You've made an understandable mistake. The Headmistress believes in you. Amelia Bones believes it. Even Harry understands. Nobody wants you to waste away your life. We're trying to fix it."

Isaac could hear Slughorn getting out the the chair to walk around, the sound of flesh pulling away from leather filled the small room. "Tell me, Horace, would this false memory charm leave traces? I mean, that another experienced wizard could detect?"

"Of course, depending on how skillful and how much time you had to investigate ..." Horace said, falling silent as Isaac Asimov removed his hand from his jacket pocket.

"Well, here's your wand, then. I'm trusting you to leave my memories alone, but aurors are watching to prevent your escape. We have nothing but time."

The carriage started up, heading back to Hogwarts and Professor Asimov said "Thestrals," to the boy sitting across from him. Harry Potter looked up from the scroll he'd been reading.

"What about them?" Harry asked.

"They're called Thestrals. Draco told me about them. He couldn't see them and seemed confused when I mentioned them, but he promised me to research invisible skeletal horses. A few days later he handed me an obscure book - something out of a horror movie really, leather bound and it even made a slight moaning noise when you opened it. But when I opened the book to the page Draco had marked with a feather, well, there was a picture. A sketch really, and a long essay about them. I told Draco thank you. I hadn't forgotten about it, not by any means, but it was such a minor thing."

Professor Asimov leaned forward and looked out the window. Such a noble means of travel, of a bygone time that I can barely remember, when I was a child. The city fell away behind them.

"And now you tell us that Draco, at that time, was busy planning a suicide mission. Or planning to fake one. He still took time out of his schedule to answer my question. Always polite. But he couldn't see the Thestrals. Draco was ... innocent of death. And now he's able to see the Thestrals, but he's not here. Something about that strikes me as poetic. Sorry, I sound ridiculous."

Harry looked out the window at the Thestrals, cantering at a slow pace, leathery wings stretching and relaxing with each pace, like tightly-laced accordions somehow propelling their movement. Harry sat back in his chair and looked at Isaac Asimov. "A few months after I saw my first Thestral I learned that I don't have to hate my enemies, Professor. I just have to defeat them. How is Professor Slughorn?"

"It's an odd feeling, having him root around my memories. He definitely didn't trust the last few days visions, and the explanation you provided last night, but he seemed to place some stock in my older memories, why is that?"

"Well, to fake a memory takes roughly as long as the time you are faking, and skill. The last few days I would have an obvious incentive to fake, I could have ordered a minion to spend a few days altering that. But even Voldemort couldn't guess which memories he'd inspect, over the last year."

"Well, I do hope you can convince him, and get him out of that cage," said Professor Asimov. "I don't like seeing him in there, but what just happened gives me the creeps."

"Having your memory invaded does that," Harry said.

"I meant being a con man, I'm not cut out for it." Harry started to say something, but Isaac was still talking.

"Not in the sense that you are Voldemort. 'Con man' is a funny phrase. On one level it means grifter. But the old etymology comes from 'Confidence man.' You trick someone not by gaining their confidence. You trick them by demonstrating absolute confidence in them. That's powerful. You know that of course, which is why you suggested letting Horace rummage around my head with his own wand. A powerful display of your confidence in him. Proving that you had nothing to hide, not really. What if he'd taken that wand and committed suicide, hm? What then? I assume he could do it, cast the killing curse at himself."

"I won't say I hadn't thought of it," Harry said levelly, "I judged it unlikely that he'd kill himself to avoid torture. He knows that even if I am Voldemort I can't be blatant, and he still has some influence, while alive."

"And if he'd come around and believed you weren't Voldemort? Did you consider that he might commit suicide rather than admit he was wrong?"

Harry started to protest, "People do kill themselves to avoid shame, but I don't think..."

"Well, you don't know him well. I think he might have. Perhaps I was being too cautious, but I'm not an interrogator or a confidence man. I ended it before we got that far. Horace was shaken, and I got worried. Give him some time to recover. I'll talk to him again, but only as a guest, not as an agent. I'll be your adviser, but Horace is my friend. He should walk out of prison alive, after he's served his time."

They rode the rest of the way back to Hogwarts in silence.

Author's Note - Thanks to u\veruchai for proofreading. As I made a few small edits afterwards, mistakes are still mine. This will be the only update this week, due to the (US) Thanksgiving Holidays.