London. Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
Dusk was settling in, the light was draining out of the sky in slow stages. Two rows of streetlamps stood in the wind along the square, their feeble yellow light falling in thin puddles over the bleak, wind-scoured face of the place.
Along the road from the Underground station came a young Muggle couple, arm in arm, faces haggard with the weariness of a full day's work behind them.
"What a miserable place—"
The road, torn up and only recently repaired after a gas explosion some time back, ran on ahead of them to meet the square.
The moment they stepped into the round little square, the cold that had made its home there sent a visible shiver through the man. He tugged his scarf tighter around his throat, drew in a breath of the chilly air, and let out a low groan.
"It's absolutely desolate!"
"That's exactly why we picked it, isn't it, love—"
The girl, round-faced and freckled, hunched her shoulders up against the wind and said, in a practical, slightly weary tone, "The rent's cheap enough—"
"That's true enough, but if I had it to do over, I wouldn't rent here. Damned landlord, hiding it from us like that, before we'd even had a proper look round in daylight."
The boy narrowed his eyes against a fresh gust of wind coming straight at them and stamped his feet hard against the pavement, trying to shake off a cold that seemed to creep in everywhere.
His grumbling seemed to strike her as more endearing than anything else; she let out a soft giggle and pecked him lightly on the cold-reddened cheek.
"Don't be silly, love. There's no such thing as ghosts, I'll have you know—our neighbour was only having a laugh at your expense, seeing how easily you'd take the bait—"
"Neighbour—that's just the thing I wanted to mention, actually—"
The boy frowned, coming to a half-stop, staring past her at the wall dividing their neighbour's house from the one they rented.
"Doesn't it strike you as odd, Ava? We live at number thirteen, Mrs. Mance lives at number eleven—so where's number twelve, then? Shouldn't there be one, right there between them?"
The girl shrugged, treating the question as beneath notice, tugging gently at his arm to keep them both moving toward home and warmth.
"Maybe whoever built these houses just didn't care for the number. Builders do strange things, my gran always said."
"Don't be silly, Ava—"
The boy's eyes narrowed slightly as he glanced once more at the gap in the row of houses.
"They kept the number thirteen, didn't they. There's no reason they'd have left out twelve on purpose and kept that."
The desolate square went on receiving the cold wind from every direction, whistling faintly around the corners of the old brick, and the girl, shivering more now, burrowed herself further into the boy's arms.
"Oh, would you rather come home and have some of the hot mushroom soup I'm going to make you, or stand out here in the cold gawking at a wall all night?"
Some strange feeling welled up from deep inside him and instantly the boy lost interest in the question entirely.
"You're right, it's a silly thing to wonder about. Let's go home—"
He pulled his girlfriend close against his side and strode the last few steps toward the house waiting for them.
"I can't wait to taste you—"
Just as she began to blush, he arched an eyebrow and grinned.
"—your mushroom soup, I mean!"
She swatted at his arm laughing and the door clicked shut behind them a moment later, cutting off the sound full of love and shy embarrassment.
Whew!
Bryan watched the young Muggle couple disappear into Number Thirteen, Grimmauld Place, the faint violet glow in his eyes were fading slowly back to their ordinary colour as the front door shut behind them.
He let out a slow breath, and it left an irregular smudge of fog on the cold windowpane in front of him.
Turning away from the window, he gazed with an expressionless face at the firelight in the grate, watching it throw strange shapes across the stone wall of the room.
Since delivering Jasnah Rosier to Avalon Prison, Bryan had made only the quietest of stops at Hogwarts—slipping in just long enough to collect the letters piled up in his office, before leaving again without alerting anyone to the fact he'd even been there.
It wasn't that he had no wish to be seen.
It was only that the thought of Professor McGonagall's furious face, the moment he'd inevitably have to ask for leave yet again in a few days' time, already made him wince in anticipation to:
You are, without question, the most irresponsible professor Hogwarts has seen in a thousand years, Bryan Amos Watson!
Just thinking about it gave Bryan a headache.
So, he decided he might as well skip a few more days of work while he was at it.
It wasn't that he didn't want to settle in at Hogwarts, teaching and training young witches and wizards in something like peace. It was only that, in a certain sense, his contest with Voldemort had reached something close to its most critical juncture, and peace had become a luxury that kept getting pushed further down the list of things he had time for.
On the Ministry's side of things, the reconstruction of Diagon Alley had already broken ground.
He'd promised Ludo that the plan to found an officially-backed betting platform, jointly run by the Quidditch World Cup League Committee and the British Ministry of Magic, needed to be put formally on the agenda as well.
Arthur and Frank's new oversight department had already been formally established and was busy spreading word of the new regulations to every department in the building.
Those exacting new rules had, unsurprisingly, stirred up plenty of resentment.
Bryan also needed to make appearances alongside them from time to time, to demonstrate how seriously he took the matter.
And then there was the pressure bearing down on Amelia's side of things too, which was considerable in its own right.
Lately there had been no shortage of voices in the wider magical world attacking her as nothing more than a puppet Minister, a mouthpiece installed to say whatever Bryan Watson told her to say.
If it weren't for the display of resolve she'd shown when he'd used the trial of Harry, Ron, and Hermione to push her into office—and the sheer, overbearing force she'd shown afterward, forcing so many pure-blood families into signing over their equity in the Diagon Alley shopfront square—which had left even those most displeased with her far too wary to move openly against her—then all the reforms he'd put in place, Amelia very much included among them, would very likely have already been unwound by now.
As her loyal ally in all this, Bryan also needed to return the favour now and then, showing Amelia public respect on occasion, standing beside her where it would be seen and counted.
Bryan, lost for a moment in the silence of the room, shook his head faintly, as if trying to dislodge the weight of it all, if only for a minute.
A strange phenomenon was now emerging across the British magical world, one he had, if he was honest with himself, rather expected from the start.
Voldemort's name was infamous, reviled among the common folk sitting at the bottom of magical society. And yet among the long-established old powers of Britain's wizarding world, his reputation wasn't nearly so poor as it ought to have been.
After all, he championed the rights of pure-bloods to defend themselves as they saw fit, and never once interfered with how they ran their businesses or managed the holdings their families had spent centuries accumulating.
He himself was exactly the opposite.
What he'd done over the years had won him a solid reputation among the common folk. But among the upper and middle tiers of British wizarding society, he had disturbingly few admirers.
History is written by the victors.
Whoever lost this war between him and Voldemort, in the end, would be consigned permanently to the dustbin of history.
To say he felt no pressure at all from that thought would be nothing but lying to himself.
Alone, with no one else present, the faint furrow between Bryan's brows let slip a trace of unease.
The kettle on the mantel let out a thin plume of steam that rattled its lid faintly, and at a glance from Bryan, it rose steadily into the air on its own, floated across the room to the table piled high with documents, tipped its spout and poured a stream of hot water into a cup without spilling a drop.
He walked over slowly and sat down at the table, holding the warm teacup in both hands, his gaze drifting first to the wine flask resting beside the candelabra then settled finally, on the irregular black stone that had quietly appeared in his palm.
The ring of emerald light circling the stone's surface, like a thin halo drawn round it, cast a faint glow across his face, lending his already still expression a further tinge of gloom.
Salazar Slytherin!
Just thinking of that legendary wizard again gave Bryan another headache.
What that bad-tempered founder of Hogwarts had left behind was less a matter of two tidy revelations than a riddle bound up tightly with a difficult problem.
A ball of light, faintly tainted through with darkness, sealed inside a small glass bottle, appeared now in his other hand.
This was the answer to the difficult problem he'd solved regarding Slytherin.
Ever since he'd graduated and returned to Hogwarts, retrieving the sealed memory from his old dormitory, he'd been laying his plans with purpose.
But whether any of it would actually succeed remained, for now, a open question.
Whoosh—
The steadily crackling fire in the grate suddenly surged and flared violently. Bryan's brow lifted at once; he rose to his feet and in that same instant, both objects in his hands vanished from view.
"Ah, Bryan, you really are here!"
Remus stepped out of the fireplace flames, brushing a dusting of soot from his sleeve, and the moment he caught sight of Bryan standing by the table, a flicker of surprise crossing his face turned to a delighted, wide smile.
"Remus?"
Taking in Remus's travel-worn appearance, Bryan glanced briefly toward the window, at the sky that had only just fallen into darkness.
"Off work already? That's not like you at all."
"No, it isn't—"
Remus laughed, unwinding his scarf loop by loop and shrugging off his new greyish-brown coat as he came further into the room.
"I went to the Ministry for a meeting with the International Magical Trade Department—Minister Bones was there too, actually—and that's how I ran into Sirius afterward. He knew I'd been looking for you and told me you were here—"
"You were looking for me?"
Bryan conjured a second cup of tea with a small motion for Remus as well and waved him over toward the empty chair at the table.
"That's right. I've wanted to see you for days now, if I'm honest. I know you and Albus were caught up in meetings in Paris this whole time—but after Albus went back to Hogwarts and you didn't, I started to worry I wouldn't manage to let you know in time—"
Glancing sideways at the stack of envelopes piled on the table between them, Bryan's eyebrows twitched faintly in confusion.
"I've been dealing with some matters—there's a problem with the workshop's operations I had to sort through—but I never got a letter from you, Remus."
"Oh, I never wrote to you, Bryan—"
Remus's smile spread wider as he settled into the chair, happier than Bryan had seen him look at any point in all the years they'd known each other.
"I thought it would be far better to invite you in person. Yes, Bryan—I'm getting married!"
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