"You saw him. Lucius Malfoy?"
Bryan repeated the information Luna had given him in a leisurely tone, then said, "Please, go on, Luna—"
Professor Watson's expression caught Luna somewhat off guard. She had expected him to show some wariness, perhaps alarm. She was certain he would understand what it meant—that she had come to him at this particular hour, at this delicate moment, telling him she had seen Lucius Malfoy.
The timing alone should have communicated everything.
But Professor Watson's eyes were as inscrutable as the ancient night sky she had peered into through the telescope in Astronomy class.
"Yes, Professor—" Still, she obeyed the implicit instruction.
"Tonight, in the village of St. Catchpole—at the home of a Mr. John Cena. He is a local man; he and his wife Yvonne are raising a six-year-old daughter together, a little girl called Bona. They make their living farming their small fields and taking whatever odd jobs are available. The family has been struggling since the workshop that employed Mr. Cena was shut down in the aftermath of the Diagon Alley battle."
She paused, ensuring her account was precise. "It was there, in his home, that I saw Lucius Malfoy. He had changed his face but I recognized him nonetheless, despite the disguise. I had seen him before, at Hogwarts, during the Triwizard Tournament."
"You recognized his magic, didn't you?" Bryan asked this with a composure that Luna could not entirely account for.
He was well aware of this particular girl's peculiar gift. Ordinary Transfiguration was no disguise from her perception it.
Luna nodded, and those clear silver eyes widened slightly. She began to recount everything that had happened from the beginning.
Bryan listened without interruption throughout. His expression remained unmoved as she described the workers' meeting.
Until the moment Luna described Lucius Malfoy and his companion leaving the workers' meeting and moving quietly up the hillside toward the Lovegood house. At that, something shifted briefly across Bryan's face.
But then he smiled, and in that smile was a warmth of genuine admiration for Luna's quick-wittedness.
Taken all together, surveying everything Luna had described, the only aspect that gave him any pause was the moment she had rushed through John Cena's fireplace to investigate the strange gathering directly—that had been somewhat rash.
Everything else she had done was, by any measure, impeccable.
A Ravenclaw witch who had not yet reached her fourth year, demonstrating this quality of presence of mind and clarity of thought in genuinely threatening circumstances—that was rare indeed.
Of course, one had to account for the cover that Malfoy had provided—
"I believe Lucius Malfoy and his companion may be using those villagers to plot against the Ministry," Luna said, bringing her account to its conclusion. "The villagers are in danger without knowing it. That's why I came to you—"
She added directly: "You're the only one who can help them."
Bryan pursed his lips. "Then what do you think I ought to do, Luna?"
The question clearly startled her. She had not anticipated him turning it back on her so immediately.
"You, or the Ministry—" Luna hesitated—and that hesitation was itself notable, because she was not someone who hesitated easily.
"—could send in Aurors to place those villagers under protection. That might be the proper course of action—"
"You don't know why these two sought out farmers living in hardship specifically, Luna." Bryan shook his head gently.
"Taking them into protection—might protect these specific people from whatever immediate use is planned for them. But it would only push others into misfortune in their place." He paused, letting the logic build. "It solves nothing at the root."
He straightened and placed a hand briefly on Luna's shoulder. Then he walked her out of his office heading toward the lift.
Together they stepped into the Ministry's elegant, brass-fitted lift, and Bryan pressed the button for the Atrium. The lift descended through the levels of the Ministry.
By the time they re-entered the gleaming, gold-lit halls of the Atrium—Luna, who had been quietly dazed for some time, finally could not hold back any longer.
"I don't understand, Professor Watson. John, Yvonne, and Bona—and the other villagers of St. Catchpole—they need protection."
"Based on what you've described, Luna—" Bryan nodded pleasantly to a wizard standing guard at the lift lobby and then let his expression settle into something still and careful.
"Those villagers face no immediate physical danger. Malfoy and his companion left without harm, and the reason they left without harm was calculated rather than coincidental. A Ministry intervention at this stage would actually bring those villagers risks that cannot be foreseen—"
"But—!"
It was the first genuine surge of emotion Luna had shown all evening. She stood before the fireplace in the Atrium, its emerald flames flickered in her silver eyes as she blinked rapidly.
"Are you going to simply ignore—"
"Here is what I'll say, Luna—"
Bryan raised one hand cutting gently across her question.
"If we were at Hogwarts right now, I would certainly give you House points. A significant number, in fact. For the cleverness you have shown tonight and for the goodness of heart that brought you here to the Ministry at this hour to protect people you barely know from danger they aren't aware of."
He held her gaze making sure she understood.
"But what I must tell you is this: in truth, there is rather little more I can say to you about this particular matter."
He guided the bewildered Luna gently toward the fireplace with a hand at her elbow. And just before she stepped into the green flames, Bryan raised one index finger slowly to his lips and smiled slowly and calmly.
"I am not entirely without knowledge of these things, Luna."
"Wha—" Luna did not have time to ask the question. Professor Watson's face was already swallowed by the spinning dark of the Floo passage.
Whew—
Bryan breathed out softly. He shook his head once with an expression that contained multiple things simultaneously and was therefore difficult to read.
Then he turned and made his way back into the Ministry's interior.
The lift carried him downward.
In the lift, the cold air rushing through the shaft roused him from the faint weariness that had begun to settle in.
The lift stopped at Level B1. Rather than returning to his own office, Bryan turned in another direction, toward the Minister's suite.
It was easier to receive reports and maintain connection with the Ministry's working reality from an open door than from behind a closed one.
When Amelia was not meeting with visitors or discussing classified matters with internal officials, she kept her office door open also as a habit.
When Bryan walked in, Amelia was sitting behind her desk with dark circles prominent beneath her eyes. She was in the act of pouring a restorative potion down her throat.
Bryan's gaze went immediately to the glass vial in her hand, and a slight movement passed across his expression.
He glanced at Sirius, who had apparently returned from injury leave and was now curled up on the armchair by the marble fireplace, sleeping with great contentment. A smile escaped Bryan despite himself as he shook his head.
"Oh, don't blame him, Bryan—"
Amelia set down the empty vial with a faint clink and was not the least bit surprised to find Bryan still awake and moving through the Ministry at this hour.
A great wizard of his particular calibre would have energy to spare long past the point where normal people had collapsed.
"He knows that when you're in the Ministry, nothing here will go seriously wrong. So he's allowing himself a little rest. Keeping up with me really is a thankless post. Perhaps I ought to think about giving him a raise—"
"He doesn't care about the gold,"
Bryan's nostrils moved slightly as he fixed his gaze on the empty vial she'd set aside.
"But you, Amelia—though time is pressing and I understand that better than most—you must take greater care to balance work and rest."
His tone was sincere. "If you don't fall to some scheme the Death Eaters have spent months laboring over but then collapse of sheer exhaustion in the Minister's chair while doing paperwork at three in the morning—they would have every reason to laugh."
Amelia pressed her hand to her forehead with a tired smile, her mind was heavy and swimming in a slightly surreal way that extreme fatigue produces.
The restorative potion she had just swallowed seemed to have done nothing at all as yet.
"It seems I really do need to rest properly….. Oh!"
A bolt of sudden clarity cut through the fog. Amelia looked up, her brow furrowing with attention.
"You mean Voldemort's Death Eaters are actively planning something specific You've received word. That's why you're mentioning this now, isn't it?" She was quick. Even exhausted, she was quick.
Less Death Eaters planning something of their own initiative, and more Bryan himself carefully positioning certain Death Eaters into schemes that would use their own ambitions to unravel their foundations from within.
What Bryan actually thought, he did not say. His expression remained entirely peaceful.
"I have heard certain murmurs, Amelia. The Death Eaters intend to stir up unrest once more. So, you must ensure you are sufficiently rested—you'll need to be ready for a crisis that could arise at any moment."
"But after the Battle of Diagon Alley, Voldemort's forces were considerably weakened, weren't they?" Amelia's brow furrowed deeper, genuine puzzlement appeared on her tired face.
"The informants we have posted along the British borders have been reporting that large numbers of unidentified persons have been slipping out of the country—people with no apparent intention of continuing to follow Voldemort are cutting their losses.
That's partly why security in the wizarding world has improved so markedly in the past few weeks. I had assessed that Voldemort would be incapable of raising any large-scale unrest in the near future—perhaps not for months." "One would certainly hope so—but complacency won't serve us, and the threat I'm describing doesn't require the organization Voldemort was capable of at his peak."
Bryan did not share the full shape of his designs with Amelia. This was not deliberate concealment in any hostile sense. It was simply to spare them both unnecessary friction.
"With Hogwarts reopening soon," Bryan continued, shifting the register of the conversation, "I must reserve a portion of my attention for the various matters that come with the start of term."
He looked at her gravely. "And you must give considerably greater weight to your own security arrangements."
"Ah, yes—" Amelia adjusted her square monocle, managing a faint, weary smile.
"Hogwarts reopening….. I had nearly forgotten that the world outside this building continues to operate on its normal schedule. Tell me, Bryan—I believe I heard a rumour that Dumbledore handed you that perennial, wretched, impossible headache of a problem?"
The helplessness that crossed Bryan's face at this was so real that Amelia, who had been perpetually besieged by small crises for weeks without pause, laughed aloud for the first time in some considerable while.
"There is a candidate, isn't there? I've always considered that you might try inviting Alastor again—"
"Short of a miracle, I see really no chance of him agreeing," Bryan said, shaking his head with a sigh.
"As for the position—I do have one rather undeveloped idea about who to approach—"
"Who do you have in mind?" Amelia asked with keen, genuine interest, leaning slightly forward.
On the sofa, Sirius stirred and cracked one bleary eye open.
"Too soon to say just yet—"
Bryan smiled—and in the smile was a meaning that could not quite be read from the outside.
————————————
For More Chapters; patreon.com/FicFrenzy