"Lockhart! Get over here!"

Fudge rushed to the edge of the sealed barrier and shouted, "Act now! Break through this barrier and get me out!"

Fudge knew exactly who Lockhart had brought with him.

Small numbers, but every single one was an ace from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, elite veterans who had spent years fighting life-or-death battles against the most dangerous Dark wizards on the front lines.

These were people who had genuinely seen blood. Who had walked the edge between life and death more times than they could count.

If Lockhart was willing to move and pool the strength of these elites, they might actually be able to shatter the blockade Hermione and Dumbledore had raised.

Once he was outside Hogwarts castle, he could Apparate straight back to the Ministry, expose the Witch's crimes to the entire world, and rally every magical force in Europe to bring her down!

Lockhart's smile didn't waver.

Fudge waited several seconds. Lockhart didn't move an inch. Something cold dropped in his chest.

"Lockhart! Can you not hear me?! I am ordering you to act!"

Fudge's eyes went red. "Do this today and I'll promote you to Senior Undersecretary the moment we're back!"

"I swear it, when I step down, the Minister's seat is yours. I will back you with everything I have!"

The promise was staggering. Lying on the ground, Umbridge nearly bit through her own teeth with jealousy.

Watching Fudge throw out one desperate offer after another, Lockhart's expression finally changed.

"Very well. Since you want me to act —"

A slight smile. He turned around and looked up at Hermione on the high platform.

Then, as every eye in the hall watched in stunned silence, he bowed with complete and deliberate respect.

"Your Ladyship."

His voice was unhurried, but each word landed clearly. "I had to collect someone from the Daily Prophet, which is why I arrived a step late. I hope you'll forgive the delay."

The moment Hermione's silver bird Patronus had delivered its order, Lockhart hadn't hesitated for a second. He'd led his people straight to the Daily Prophet headquarters, pulled the target directly out of her office, and pushed hard to get back in time. He'd made it just in time for the main event.

Those words hit the room like a thunderclap.

Fudge's mind went completely blank.

Lockhart... what did he just...

"Lockhart!" Fudge snapped back to himself, face draining to a livid grey. "You dare betray the Ministry of Magic?!"

His pointing finger trembled.

"You taught at Hogwarts for a year, fine! But you are a Head of Department in the Ministry! How dare you get into bed with this lunatic Witch?!"

"Do you have any idea what you've done to the Ministry's standing?!"

Lockhart straightened up.

The smile left his face. What replaced it was something closer to contempt.

"I haven't betrayed the Ministry, Cornelius."

"The one who betrayed the Ministry has always been you."

"You are the root cause of everything that's brought it to ruin."

He turned to face the full hall.

"Didn't you keep insisting just now that Her Ladyship has no evidence?" Lockhart snapped his fingers. "Then let me show you what evidence actually looks like."

"Bring her forward."

Two Aurors shoved the woman in green ahead of them.

She stumbled several steps and came to a stop at the center of the room, where every pair of eyes found her at once.

Rita Skeeter. Ace reporter of the Daily Prophet.

Rita glanced at Hermione. Her whole body flinched.

"Go ahead, Rita," Lockhart said. "Tell everyone exactly what certain people instructed you to do. From the beginning."

Rita swallowed. Her voice came out unsteady:

"It was... just over half a year ago."

She spoke quickly, as though slowing down might be fatal.

"Dolores Umbridge came to me herself. She told me to run a story in the Daily Prophet — a rumor — that Her Ladyship had died in an accident while exploring dangerous ruins. And the article had to explicitly implicate Headmaster Dumbledore. It had to say he'd arranged it quietly, to consolidate his own position..."

"I didn't want to write it."

Rita's face crumpled. She pressed on anyway.

"But Umbridge threatened me. She said if I didn't cooperate, the Ministry would find a hundred different reasons to end my career by morning."

"She also had my unregistered Animagus status over my head. She threatened to have me thrown into Azkaban. I had no choice. I did what she asked..."

Rita finished. She swayed like all the strength had gone out of her and fell backward, caught by one of the Aurors behind her.

The hall exploded.

Fudge had gone deathly pale. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.

Then he spun around and drove his foot into Umbridge with a furious roar.

"So you were behind all of this?!"

Umbridge hit the floor, clutching her arm, utterly bewildered. "M-Minister?"

"You vicious woman!"

He didn't give her a chance to say a single word. He jabbed his finger in her face and let it all out.

"You exploited Lady Witch's disappearance to manufacture lies, and you had the nerve to frame Dumbledore on top of it! This was your revenge, wasn't it, for losing your position at the Ministry! You did all of this in secret, this deranged, disgusting scheme, entirely on your own!"

He pressed a hand to his chest, the picture of grief and righteous indignation.

"And to think I wanted to give you a chance at redemption. That's why I brought you back!"

"I was blind. I let that two-faced act of yours fool me completely!"

Umbridge stared at him.

Her mouth hung open. Disbelief was written all over her face.

"Shut up!"

Fudge shot her a withering glare and cut her off before she could start.

The moment his tirade ended, he turned straight to Hermione and Dumbledore.

In the space of a single second, every trace of fury evaporated from his face. What replaced it was a performance of pure, fawning sincerity.

"Your Ladyship! Albus!"

"So that's the truth of it! The Ministry has wronged you both!"

"I was deceived by that venomous wretch Umbridge too! I never imagined she was abusing her authority and doing all of this behind my back!"

He raised his voice and made his promise to the room.

"Rest assured, both of you, the moment I return, I will set the record straight, punish Umbridge severely, and give you the justice you deserve!"

"The Ministry will offer you the fullest compensation. Whatever it takes." He spread his hands. "Is this satisfactory?"

Fudge's eyes were bright with desperate hope.

As long as he made it back to the Ministry alive. As long as he kept his seat.

Bowing his head and admitting fault was nothing. He'd already handed Umbridge the blame. The worst he'd face was a charge of negligent oversight.

On the high platform, Dumbledore said nothing. He simply watched Fudge, his eyes quiet and heavy with disappointment.

"Cornelius Fudge!"

Umbridge's head snapped up. The scream that came out of her was raw and furious.

That kick had done it. Whatever last illusion she'd been holding about the Ministry of Magic, Fudge had just destroyed it.

She came off the floor in one motion, any pretense of poise thrown completely aside, and aimed her finger straight at his face.

"You shameless bastard! You ordered me to do this! And now you want me to take the fall?!"

Rage had stripped away every last shred of calculation.

"Fine! Yes! I helped frame Dumbledore! I paid reporters to run those stories!"

"But Fudge was behind every last bit of it! He was terrified of Dumbledore's standing in the Wizarding World, terrified that Dumbledore would take his job! He said it to my face: once the Witch was dead, Dumbledore would be the greatest threat, and he had to be removed at any cost! Those oppressive school decrees, he personally signed off on all of them!"

The hall detonated.

The crowd surged with noise, gasps, shouts, a wave of stunned voices crashing over each other, as if every person in the room had just watched the biggest scandal in living memory break wide open.

➤ Next: Righteous Lockhart — Face to Face

Chapter 362 - Righteous Lockhart — Face to Face

Quite a few Aurors were staring at their Minister in open shock.

Fudge's face went livid. He roared, voice cracking with rage:

"Shut up! You crazy woman! Your plot's been exposed, and now you want to drag everyone else down with you!"

"Don't any of you believe a word she says!"

He wheeled toward Umbridge, eyes cold and flat.

"There are witnesses who can prove you framed Dumbledore. But you're saying I gave the order, so where's your proof? Produce it!"

Umbridge opened her mouth. She stammered, fumbled, opened it again. Not a single coherent word came out.

She had always done exactly what Fudge told her. Every scheme, every order, delivered verbally behind the closed door of the Minister's office. It had never once occurred to her to keep anything for herself.

Watching her flounder, Fudge felt the tension in his chest ease.

He'd always known Umbridge was an idiot. Idiots didn't cover their own backs. That was precisely why he'd cultivated her, someone that stupid, no matter how much power she accumulated, would never be a threat to him.

"You see."

He recovered some of his composure. "She can't produce a single piece of evidence. This is the last desperate thrashing of a woman facing her end, trying to pull me down with her."

Up on the platform.

Hermione and Dumbledore stood side by side, watching the two of them tear into each other. Neither spoke. Neither showed any particular expression.

Fudge's stomach dropped.

He forced a smile through it.

"Lady Witch. Albus. Surely you don't actually believe the ravings of a madwoman?"

Hermione ignored him. She tilted her head slightly toward Lockhart.

Lockhart caught it immediately.

"All right, Cornelius."

He stepped forward.

"You want evidence?"

"She doesn't have any — but I do."

Lockhart smiled and drew a fist-sized projection orb from inside his robes. He fed magic into it. The orb rose slowly toward the middle of the Great Hall and cast a sharp beam of light into the air.

The image that appeared was the Minister's office.

Fudge, sitting behind his desk. Umbridge, standing across from him.

"Dolores, that Witch has been gone long enough. Odds are she died in some ancient ruin somewhere."

The Fudge in the recording kept his voice low.

"This is a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity. Go to the Daily Prophet. Have them run the story, Dumbledore grew jealous of her and quietly had her eliminated."

"But Minister, if anyone finds out—"

The Umbridge in the image still looked uncertain.

"Once Dumbledore's reputation is in ruins, I'll promote you to Senior Undersecretary. Now go."

The image was sharp. Every word landed crisp and clear, ringing through the Great Hall without so much as an echo's worth of distortion.

Fudge stood completely still. Like something had simply switched off inside him.

Lockhart tucked the projection orb away and looked at Fudge with an easy smile.

"There's your evidence. You two can stop tearing at each other."

"As for whether this recording is authentic, the Ministry has plenty of ways to verify it. Minister, it's over. Stop."

Fudge looked like he'd been dropped into ice water, all the color gone from his face. Umbridge, by contrast, lit up.

"Did you see that?! He was the one behind it all along!"

Fudge's eyes went red. He fixed them on Lockhart with pure, focused hatred.

"Gilderoy Lockhart."

"What did she give you? How much was it worth to betray the Ministry like this?"

Lockhart let the orb disappear into his robes. The easy smile vanished with it. What replaced it was something else entirely, measured, grave, righteous to the bone.

"Cornelius, I genuinely don't know what you mean by that."

His voice filled the hall.

"I am the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

"Upholding the law is my duty. How does doing my job become a question of personal gain when you say it?"

He looked Fudge straight in the eye.

"Even if it's the Minister of Magic who breaks the law, I will arrest him all the same."

"I didn't do this for any personal benefit. I did it for justice. To give the Wizarding World back its integrity."

A beat of silence.

Then someone shouted: "Well said!"

And the Great Hall exploded.

"Brilliant!"

"Lockhart, you legend!"

"Take that shameless excuse for a Minister down!"

The students clapped until their palms stung, shouting over each other, electric with it. The bumbling professor they'd once rolled their eyes at, that image was gone. The man standing in front of them now was a hero, someone who'd faced down power without flinching and hadn't looked away.

Lockhart raised both hands and pressed them gently downward.

The applause settled.

"Teachers and students of Hogwarts — rest assured."

"As long as I, Gilderoy Lockhart, hold any position in the Ministry of Magic, I will never stand by while the laws of the Wizarding World are trampled and the innocent are persecuted."

Hermione watched him radiate conviction from every angle and couldn't help rolling her eyes.

A few years in the Ministry, and his performance had become genuinely flawless. If she didn't know exactly what he was, even she might have almost bought it.

Lockhart turned. His gaze moved across the hundred-odd Aurors picking themselves up off the floor, disheveled, shaking dust from their robes.

"I believe none of you were part of Fudge and Umbridge's conspiracy. You were following orders. Doing what your commanding officer told you to do."

He spread his arms.

"The truth is out. The architects of this are answered for. Will you step away from the darkness now?"

The Aurors looked at each other.

They looked at the Witch on the platform, untouchable, terrifying, something closer to a force of nature than a person. They looked at Fudge, crumpled on the ground. They looked at Lockhart, who had somehow, in the space of ten minutes, become the legitimate face of the Ministry of Magic.

And honestly, they hadn't known. Any of it. Fudge's private dealings had never touched them.

There was nothing to weigh.

One by one, they stepped around Fudge and moved to stand behind Lockhart.

Fudge watched them go. Every face. Every set of boots walking past him. The entire network he'd spent years and a fortune building, defecting in real time.

Something in him came apart.

"You, you're all betraying me too?"

An Auror in the front rank stepped forward and jabbed a finger at him.

"Shut your mouth!"

"You put your own ambitions above the safety of the entire Wizarding World and plotted against Headmaster Dumbledore! If Lady Witch and Director Lockhart hadn't exposed you today, we'd still be standing here as your unwitting accomplices!"

He spat on the floor.

"The evidence is right in front of everyone, and you're still running your mouth."

"You shameless old snake."

Lockhart turned and pointed at Umbridge.

"The moment you illegally reinstated her, I knew you were planning something you couldn't do in the open. I had no choice but to put you under covert surveillance."

"I never thought you'd actually go this far."

He exhaled slowly, a long heavy breath, and something almost like regret crossed his face.

"That said. I obtained the evidence against Fudge, but my methods were irregular. Conducting unauthorized surveillance on a superior is, at the end of the day, a violation of procedure."

"When this is settled, I'll resign from my post as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and present myself to the Wizengamot."

The Auror who'd just dressed down Fudge cut in before Lockhart had even finished.

"Absolutely not!"

"Director Lockhart, you did what you had to do to root out corruption and cut the rot from within the Ministry. There was no other way."

"Putting justice above everything else isn't a crime. It's exactly what you're supposed to do. Anyone who dares question your integrity over this?" He squared his shoulders. "They'll have to go through me first."

➤ Next: You May Leave, She Stays