The next morning.
Isaac had gone to bed early and slept well, so he was up early too.
Krik delivered his breakfast to his door, just as he had delivered dinner.
After Isaac finished eating, Krik brought him a message from Dumbledore.
Following Krik's directions, Isaac headed for the Headmaster's Office.
He stopped when he saw an enormous, hideously ugly stone gargoyle.
He spoke the password Krik had given him. The gargoyle suddenly sprang to life and leaped aside, and the wall behind it split in two.
Beyond the wall was a spiral stone staircase that moved slowly upward like an escalator.
Isaac stepped onto it. The wall closed behind him at once, and the stairs carried him upward in circles.
At the top, Isaac stepped off and knocked on a pair of oak doors. They opened without a sound, and he went in.
Dumbledore's office was a spacious, beautiful circular room, filled with all sorts of funny little noises.
On slender-legged tables sat strange silver instruments, spinning and puffing out little wisps of smoke.
Portraits of former headmasters and headmistresses covered the walls, each one snoring softly inside its frame.
A huge desk stood in the room, its legs shaped like claws.
On a shelf behind the desk sat the Sorting Hat.
Isaac soon shifted his gaze from the Sorting Hat to the phoenix perched on a gilded stand behind the door.
The phoenix was the Dumbledore family's "companion" pet. When members of the family were in danger, they could count on its help.
Well, Fawkes certainly didn't look the way Isaac had expected.
Then again, strictly speaking, he was a Western phoenix, not at all the creature Isaac pictured when he thought of one.
Finally, Isaac looked at the two people in the office.
One was Dumbledore. The other was the Ministry of Magic Auror he had met yesterday, Gawain Robards.
"Good morning, Professor Dumbledore. Mr. Robards."
Gladwin smiled and nodded at Isaac. Then Dumbledore spoke. "Isaac, Gladwin has brought the Ministry of Magic's interrogation results and sentence for that Death Eater."
"Mr. Robards?
So the person who attacked me last night really was... a Death Eater?"
Isaac asked Gladwin with feigned "curiosity."
"Yes, Isaac." Gladwin nodded, then continued without batting an eye.
"But don't worry. The Ministry of Magic has been hunting down Death Eaters all along. You hardly see any these days.
The one you subdued might even have been the last Death Eater. Who knows?"
The last Death Eater? Gawain Robards really knew how to joke.
He was treating Isaac like a child he could fool. Granted, Isaac was a child right now.
The most reckless of the Death Eaters who had followed Voldemort were in Azkaban.
Those a step below them, yet still part of the Death Eaters' inner circle, were the heads of various Pure-blood families.
The last Death Eater, my ass. If Voldemort so much as raised a hand, every last one of them would be pressured into serving Tom again.
"So why did that Death Eater target me?" Isaac asked curiously.
Gladwin's expression turned peculiar. "That actually has something to do with Professor Dumbledore."
As Gladwin spoke, he looked at Dumbledore, then turned to Isaac.
Dumbledore, then Isaac. Back and forth.
The more he looked, the more obvious his confusion became.
This young wizard doesn't even look like Dumbledore. Why does Dumbledore care so much about him?
As it turned out, the Death Eater had been fairly lucky.
He hadn't been strong enough to make it into the Death Eaters' inner circle.
Still, his ruthlessness and utter lack of scruples had earned him instruction in the Unforgivable Curses.
After Voldemort's fall, he had gone into hiding and secretly studied those curses.
He studied them until they damaged his mind.
Later, Dumbledore brought Isaac to Diagon Alley and announced that he would pay Isaac's bills.
Naturally, that made the merchants of Diagon Alley curious about Isaac's identity.
Speculation spread, with everyone offering a different story.
The Death Eater was misled by those rumors and decided to do something "big" in the name of the Death Eaters.
Like kidnapping "Dumbledore's son."
Instead, Isaac subdued the Death Eater whose mind had been ruined by Dark Magic.
As a bonus, the Auror Office also cleared up quite a few cold cases involving Dark Magic.
What an awful Death Eater!
"Anyway, get ready, Isaac. You're about to be famous! Oh, and Minister Fudge will probably invite you to the Ministry of Magic before long.
The Ministry has a surprise waiting for you~"
Gladwin winked at Isaac as he finished, and Isaac put on a suitably expectant expression.
After exchanging a few pleasantries with Dumbledore, Gladwin hurried out of the Headmaster's Office.
According to him, there was more to uncover about the Death Eater's crimes.
There might even be offenses they hadn't discovered yet, waiting for him to confess to them.
Once Gladwin had left through the fireplace in the Headmaster's Office, Isaac finally let his tense expression relax.
Rubbing his face, Isaac complained to Dumbledore. "Professor, you don't actually believe the Ministry of Magic's story, do you?
No matter how damaged that Death Eater's mind was, it couldn't have been that bad."
Dumbledore's half-moon spectacles reflected two patches of white light.
"In fact, even if Fudge uncovered the truth, he would bury it."
Isaac was the second Seer Dumbledore had met. Dumbledore knew that group far too well.
So he had never treated Isaac like an ordinary child.
And Isaac certainly didn't behave like one.
"So it really was Voldemort? He can't just play dead quietly? He has to come out and cause trouble?"
Isaac was baffled. He genuinely couldn't understand it.
Shouldn't Voldemort be figuring out how to use the Sorcerer's Stone to come back to life right now? Why send someone after a young wizard like him?
Just because Dumbledore was willing to pay his bills?
Hell, Dumbledore would pay Grindelwald's bills too. Why didn't he go to Nurmengard, then?
Because Dumbledore was still alive, and Tom didn't dare?
What the hell? Was he picking on the easy target?
Since Tom was being so rude, Isaac saw no reason to be polite to his senior.
He immediately said to Dumbledore, "Professor, why don't we team up and bring Tom here?
You can ask him yourself why he wanted to capture me."
Dumbledore: ???
The sheer amount Isaac had revealed in those few words was staggering.
He had just shown that an eleven-year-old wizard knew where Voldemort had been hiding for the past eleven years.
And that same young wizard had invited the one man Voldemort feared to speedrun the "Dark Lord's Soul Fragment" dungeon with him.
Isaac's prophecies... Why did they seem more reliable than Gellert's?
For a moment, Dumbledore even wondered whether Grindelwald had lied to him under the covers all those years ago.