In the office, Professor Watson stood at the edge of the enormous enchanted map model. The wavering candlelight casted shadows across his young face in shifting patterns, lending him an air of severe authority.
He stood completely still, wearing only a faint smile. And yet Luna felt something radiating from him. She found herself instinctively narrowing her silver eyes against it.
"Good evening, Professor Watson—"
After a brief moment of this dazed admiration, Luna tilted her head slightly to one side and gathered herself. The corners of her mouth curved up in her particular smile, and when she spoke, her voice emerged clear and cool without the usual dreaminess.
"Strictly speaking, it's already past midnight, Luna."
Bryan acknowledged her greeting with a nod that contained within it a gentle correction.
He turned simultaneously to give a brief nod to the agitated Ministry employee still hovering in the corridor behind Luna.
Bryan's gaze turned warmly on Luna, who had already bounded to his side and was leaning over the Enchanted Map on the table with completely open curiosity.
"Would you like some tea? You look as though you've travelled quite a distance."
"Thank you—"
Luna's eyes fell upon the model with and she was immediately drawn to the structure at its centre: a strikingly unusual building rising from the heart of the circular outer wall, positioned at the intersection of the regular octagonal inner district.
"—but I need to get back before dawn to sleep, Professor Watson, so please don't trouble yourself with tea." Her eyes remained alight with genuine fascination as she leaned closer, unconsciously bracing herself against the table's edge.
She pointed to the peculiar yet magnificent high-rise at the model's centre—where eight equal zones, divided by radial lines, converged like spokes meeting a hub.
"May I ask what that is, Professor Watson? It doesn't look like anything I've seen before."
"Oh, while the reconstruction plans for Diagon Alley are officially still strictly confidential at this stage—I don't see why you shouldn't know." Bryan made no move to ask Luna the purpose of her visit.
He smiled and said: That is my design for the Ministry of Magic's new headquarters. It is slightly taller than the Magical Congress of the United States' building in New York—which holds the current record among magical governmental structures worldwide. One hundred and eight floors in total."
He moved to stand beside Luna at the map table, the two of them were looking down at the miniature structure together.
"Its exterior form is that of an inverted tornado—you'll notice how the base is narrow and the structure widens as it climbs, reversing the conventional relationship between foundation and height.
And once completed, every floor of the building will be able to rotate independently around the central support column as its axis. Individual floors can reorient themselves—for ventilation, for view, for structural response to weather conditions. The entire building will be slightly different every time you look at it.
The exterior façade is transfigured glass that can display content. Ministry policy announcements, public information, emergency communications."
Bryan raised an eyebrow with a smile.
"And advertisements, naturally. A small but consistent revenue stream for the Ministry. The building will begin paying for itself from the day it opens."
Luna could hear the silent pride threading through Professor Watson's tone. She could easily imagine that once this remarkable building was complete, the biography on his Chocolate Frog card would need yet another update.
"But why does the Ministry need to relocate?" Luna still found something faintly strange about the premise. "Is there something wrong with where it currently is?"
"Oh, Luna—" Bryan said it as though the answer were the most self-evident thing in the world. "How many countries do you know of where the Ministry of Magic is buried entirely underground, where the staff have to rely on magically projected imitation windows just to catch a glimpse of something akin to sunlight? Where visiting witches and wizards arrive by flushing themselves down public toilets?"
Now that she thought about it carefully, it was rather odd.
Luna nodded slowly.
She let her gaze drift across the full breadth of the Map Model, taking in the whole of it now rather than the single structure that had first captured her attention.
The map breathed—that was the only word for it.
The enchantment made it subtly alive, the miniature landscape were shifting in tiny ways.
With her quick mind and her habit of seeing patterns, Luna understood at once what she was looking at: Professor Watson had no intention of simply restoring the destroyed Diagon Alley to what it had been before.
He intended to build an entirely new Magical City upon its ruins.
Beyond the Ministry's "Tornado Tower" at the centre, the eight surrounding zones each had their own distinct character.
Luna recognized immediately what the southernmost zone was intended for. Unlike the other zones with their orderly rows of tall buildings, this one was lined with low street-front structures whose architectural style consciously imitated the old Diagon Alley. Clearly, this would become the wizarding world's new commercial heart.
"Diagon Alley plays an irreplaceable role in the daily lives of British witches and wizards," Bryan said, noticing where her attention had settled. "It cannot simply vanish—people's lives are organized around it in ways that go deeper than simple commerce. So, it—along with the Ministry's new tower—"
He gestured with his wand toward two other zones, indicating them precisely. "—the passenger terminal in the residential district and the freight terminal in the industrial zone are all included in the first phase of construction. The things people need most urgently will be built first."
Luna nodded, still gazing at the model. Her eyes found one zone that was clearly residential but then, set apart from it, another residential area was completely different in character.
Where the ordinary housing was plain and sensibly proportioned, this area's architectural models were conspicuously lavish. Each main structure set within its own private garden of sculpted hills and water features. Each estate had considerable ground. The miniature trees alone were the size of her finger.
"That is…" Luna murmured, her lips were barely moving, studying the disparity.
"Oh, that's for the wealthy." Bryan raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Adjacent to the commercial district, set among landscaped hills and water features for privacy and natural beauty with a dedicated medical wellness retreat designed directly into the district."
He continued: "Every unit is astronomically priced, and strictly limited in number. Once built, a private security team will be contracted specifically to protect the district, separate from general Ministry security."
He paused, then added the part that clearly interested him most:
"But compared to ordinary residential properties, the conditions for purchasing one of these private estates are tough. If you wish to buy, you must have an established workshop or registered company operating within the British wizarding world.
The Ministry will formally assess each applicant's tax contributions over the previous years and their concrete role in providing employment for ordinary wizarding citizens. Only after passing that review are you eligible to enter the lottery."
"The lottery?"
"A draw," Bryan smiled pleasantly, leading Luna in a slow circuit around the Enchanted Map Model.
"If fortune favours you and you receive a purchase allocation, you must still pay the full price upfront within a specified period. The price is fixed and non-negotiable." He glanced sideways at her, seeming to anticipate her next thought.
"Though of course, if your vaults happen to be running a little light at the time, Gringotts will be more than happy to extend you a loan against your assets. At competitive rates."
Luna processed this for a moment. "So—collect the money first, then build the houses."
She stated it plainly.
She looked at Professor Watson who seemed to hold every thread simultaneously, who appeared to have accounted for every variable she could think of and several she couldn't and her expression was faintly, genuinely dazed.
"Would anyone actually agree to that arrangement? Surely people with property and businesses already have their own manors and villas?"
Knock knock—
Bryan rapped his knuckles twice against the rim of the great Model on the table and his smile deepened. "You don't understand the psychology of the wealthy, Luna. They will be perfectly happy—enthusiastic, even—to fund this new city."
He paused, looking at the model rather than at her, "I rather think a good number of prosperous foreign wizards will go to quite considerable lengths to secure a purchase allocation."
He surveyed the master plan before him—conceived under his direction, though shaped by the input of various senior Ministry officials as if looking at a finished work of art.
"The new Diagon Alley will no longer be limited to a wizarding shopping street and a disorganized industrial quarter. It will be a modern, fully integrated Magical City. The first of its kind in the world."
He moved to stand at the far end of the model, taking in the whole of it at once.
"Encompassing the new Ministry headquarters. Ordinary residential housing accessible to working families. High-end private estates for those who can afford them. A wizarding commercial centre rebuilt on the bones of old Diagon Alley but larger, better protected, better connected."
His gaze moved across the zones as he named them:
"A dedicated business district. An organized industrial park to replace the chaos of the old workshops. A magical creature nature reserve. A wizarding hospital built to actual modern standards, with sunlight and space and proper facilities, instead of the overcrowded institution in that department store basement."
He stopped. His eyes blazed as he gazed upon it. "And a grand Quidditch stadium. Because people need somewhere to cheer."
Bryan stopped walking. His eyes remained on the model as his voice rang through the small office.
Luna followed a step behind him, watching his face rather than the model, and an odd feeling settled over her that she didn't immediately have words for.
Out of nowhere, a thought surfaced in her mind. Voldemort's return had shattered the peace of the British wizarding world, upending the lives of tens of thousands of witches and wizards beyond recognition.
Yet Professor Watson had not shut himself away in grief or rage or even in the purely reactive logic of fighting back. His gaze was fixed on a horizon entirely his own—higher than the war, higher than the recovery from the war, already past both of those things and looking at what could be built in the space they would eventually leave behind.
This vision and audacity that Professor Watson had revealed almost without realizing it—if Luna was being honest with herself, she thought that even Professor Dumbledore might fall slightly short of it.
"Of course, we mustn't ignore the very real obstacles before us—" Bryan caught himself, and the heat in his expression banked down.
He seemed to step back from the vision. "Building this Magical City is hardly something that can be accomplished overnight, or even over a decade. Even with the full support and cooperation of the Ministry under whoever succeeds Minister Bones when the time comes—"
He said it without any particular weight, as a simple fact. "—I expect the complete realization of this plan will take twenty or thirty years."
He rested half of himself on the Model table's edge without any apparent concern for decorum or dignity and let his gaze settle on Luna with an encompassing, leisurely patience.
"So—however bright the future may be, we must still give proper weight to the difficulties of the present."
He looked at her steadily.
Luna drew her eyes away from the Enchanted Map Model at once, releasing herself from its pull. She knew it was time to say why she had come.
'Where to begin?'
A chain of events moved through her mind. Luna drew a slow breath, her eyes went distant and luminous again.
"Professor Watson… tonight I saw Lucius Malfoy."
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