Private message to Barty

Benevolent gods and all the saints have mercy upon me, this has been a fucking awful day.

I don't want to distract you while you're in the middle of your misson; I should say that up front. Don't spend a minute worrying about me. I am fine, only heartbroken. And so damnably tired. And praying for whatever grace I may have earned that Our Lord does not take his temper out on me when he hears

You remember the summer spent going through Hogwarts' ledgers bit by bit, and how I could not untangle the rat's nest of layers they had accumulated throughout the years? I gave them to my analyst-in-training, the arithmantic genius. Redacted, of course; he's good enough to do the calculation without any of the details, and naive enough to never draw the lines between his reports and what might happen after he hands them over to me. It's a good thing, too; he would be heartbroken if he realised what he'd uncovered, and what it led to.

Pomona Sprout has apparently been supplying Black and the Order of the Phoenix from Hogwarts' greenhouses. I don't know for how long in all, but the last few years, at very least. I called her in this evening to discuss it, thinking she was only trading on the black market, but realised quickly there was something more sinister going on. I brought Bella in to question her, and although she tried to occlude, she slipped just enough, Bella reported, to think her regrets that she brought Auri in on it before getting caught.

This was apparently enough to trigger a mass exodus of those who had been lying in wait. When the dust cleared -- yes, I am summarising considerably -- Pomona was dead, and Poppy and Auri had fled the castle, David Brutka along with them. And according to the portraits, Brutka came into my office (where we had left Pomona under guard by two Enforcers), overcame my clerk, and escaped with him as hostage. I am left with one dead professor and Head of House, two escaped professors and one escaped matron, a missing clerk who knows far too much of my business and is undoubtedly in the hands of my enemies, a student body that was already traumatised enough, and far too many unanswered questions.

Why must this damnable vow hanging around my neck like a millstone force me to destroy everything I have built? He has driven so many good people to desperate straits and carved us into his pawns along the way, and nothing amuses him more than to force each of us to sacrifice every last scrap of what we've built for ourselves, one by one, and feed it to the fire in front of him so he can watch it burn. Auri was the only person remaining in this damned castle with whom I could let down my guard even slightly, and all I can give her now is as much warning as I can without endangering myself and the gift of a clean death when it comes to that. I owe Poppy my life, and that debt still hangs over me and I cannot now discharge it, and I know that if he realises he will take glee in making me be the one to kill her. And I have Savitha standing behind me and watching for the smallest sign of weakness, and Lana may value what I can give her but I do not believe for a moment she would hesitate to sacrifice me for the smallest advantage should it come to that point, and you are hundreds of miles away and the gods only know if you will make it back to me alive and I

The worst part is how I cannot disagree with a single word Auri wrote to me, and yet there is still nothing I can do about it. I can serve and obey him, or I can die, sacrificing whatever tiny scraps of influence I might have otherwise had, and if I die having broken the oath I made, I will have lost not only this life but any hope of the next. And I cannot ever say any of this to you openly, even when we are in our library behind every privacy ward I know to cast. I will not make you choose between your love for me and your own sworn vows, because I know your answer would be me and I refuse to lead you into that temptation. I will not force you into having to choose between being the one who denounces me or the one who shares my fate. One of us needs to get through this alive.

If Diggory should attempt to contact you in any fashion, let me know as quickly as possible; I do not know what they will try to get him to do. I will be spending the next week, at the very least, going through the remaining staff and questioning everyone in excruciating detail, and I will have to spend at least part of that time questioning the students our traitors were closest to to see how far the rot has spread.

I pray with all the breath left in my body that your mission is going far, far better than mine is at the moment. May the Seven Arrows of the lady of the place before the beginning of time turn away from you and strike your enemies down; may he who separates heaven and earth open your way to victory and clear your passage home. May you be free of the poisons of the encircler of the world, he who was spat out, the great undying destroyer, scourge of all that is right and true. There is nothing I would not do to free you from him if I thought it was ever possible

I love you, my son, and I will swear so to the gods themselves.