Half an hour later, Clare hadn't moved from where she lay.
A knock came from the door.
She didn't bother to look up or even take the pillow off her head. "Come in!"
She heard the door open. "Is this—" started a familiar deep and rich voice.
She jerked up.
"—a bad time, Miss Cooper?"
She scrambled off the bed and tried to wipe the tear stains away from her face. "N-no lord, I'm sorry."
Lord Slytherin inclined his mask. "No worries." He reached into his pocket and produced his tiny trunk. "Shall we?"
She nodded, and together they descended into the now unshrunk trunk.
"Clare!" cried Emma Granger from inside the trunk. She rushed over to her and took her hands in hers. "Have you been crying? What happened?" Dan Granger stood up and shook Slytherin's hand.
Clare tried to wave it off. "It's nothing, don't worry about it, I'm fine."
Emma looked unconvinced, but didn't drill down any further. They all sat around the same table they'd eaten at the previous week.
Clare fiddled with the cuffs of her robe. She looked nervously from the Grangers to Lord Slytherin. Finally, she took a deep breath as thought getting ready to step off a cliff and into a deep an unknown sea . "If I accepted your offer… what would my repayments be?"
Daniel and Emma Granger smiled.
Thirty minutes later, Clare watched, heart racing, as Lord Slytherin put quill to parchment and signed into magic his decision to buy her debt. The parchment glowed white for a moment, then vanished.
It was done.
Lord Slytherin stood up, produced his wand, and tapped her collar. It flashed green. "I've granted you a leave of absence from the containment wards. We have an appointment with the ministry."
She looked up, startled. "So quickly?"
"Yes."
The walk down Knockturn Alley felt surreal. It was the first time she'd been outside since her sentencing.
Dan and Emma walked at her sides and Lord Slytherin strode ahead, parting the crowd like a prophet parting a sea. She couldn't help but notice the mixed looks of nervousness and fascination that Slytherin seemed to garner as they moved from Knockturn Alley and into Diagon. A group of children gaped and pointed and an older witch actually yelped and ducked back into the shop she'd just left when she spotted him. Just what had she gotten herself into?
Soon enough, they'd reached what looked to be a fireplace, complete with chimney in a random wall section of the Alley. After a quick explanation of what a floo network was, Clare found herself tumbling out of a fireplace and into a large indoor space where dozens upon dozens more witches and wizards walked and milled.
"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic," Slytherin said, appearing behind her. "I don't suppose you've seen it from this side, have you?"
She shook her head and tried to fight down her unease. The last time she'd been here hadn't been fun. They made their way through the hallway and past a massive statue of a wizard and witch surrounded by a centaur and two very different little knobbly creatures.
Slytherin stopped briefly to have his wand checked and they took an elevator down several floors.
Everywhere they went, wizards and witches stared and whispered.
"Lord Slytherin! My dear chap!" A shorter, plump wizard wearing yellow and black stripes bounded over to them. "I've been meaning to ask you for a chat for ages!" Slytherin managed to extract himself from the man with a promise for a later talk and they soon found themselves in a waiting room. The secretary stood up from behind her desk. "Court room six, my lord."
Clare had to suppress a shudder as she walked into the court room. It was exactly like the room she'd been tried and sentenced in. Small, with a row of benches around the main entrance and a raised table on the far side of the room, in which sat an ancient witch. A court scribe sat in a lower chair. Other than that, they were alone.
"Ah, Lord Slytherin," the ancient witch stated. "I don't suppose it would be too much to ask for you to take off your mask?"
"My deepest apologies, your honour." The witch sighed. "Very well then, let's get this sorted out shall we?"
Clare was shocked at how easy it was. Slytherin stood there and gave some reasons about why he wanted to move her from her current prison to a new one, managed by his vassals, the House of Granger. The judge, who the court scribe had identified as a Madam Marchbanks, listened and added a few stipulations of her own, which Slytherin agreed to, and they came to an accord.
"One last thing, your honour," Slytherin said.
Madam Marchbanks raised an eyebrow.
"I wish for my debtor to have the opportunity to attend Madam Goose's Home for the Magically Gifted."
Clare's head shot up. "Obviously, this would require Miss Cooper to be out of the primary containment wards for longer periods of time than stated in the original sentence. I have already spoken with the school's administration and they are willing to key Miss Cooper into a separate set of containment wards at the school on your honour's approval of an alteration to the sentence to permit a secondary confinement location."
Madam Marchbanks rested her chin on her knuckles. "And what does Miss Cooper think about this?"
Clare looked nervously from Lord Slytherin to Madam Marchbanks. She swallowed. "It sounds too good to be true."
Madam Marchbanks smiled.
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