Late at night...
The scaffolding and the covering cloth outside the house had all been taken down. Inside the Ground-floor living room, Kasenhis sat leisurely on the fabric sofa, watching television.
As for the others, they were still using little paintbrushes and paints to decorate the wallpaper with patterns.
"Professor, are you really just going to sit there watching us paint over a thousand square meters of wallpaper?" Neville suddenly poked his head out from the stairwell.
"What else? The flooring, wallpaper, furniture, carpets, decorations, even the lamps and the kitchen pots were all handled by me. You painting wallpaper is perfectly reasonable... Besides, you can ask Sirius for wages... Remember, charge by the square meter."
Kasenhis waved his hand, and a bag of crisps from the corner flew into his grasp. Under the amplified field of his augmentation frame, the crisps obediently lined up one by one and flew into his mouth.
The next day...
When Kasenhis reappeared at Sirius's front door, he pushed it open and used his magical field to carry each young wizard into their respective rooms... Well, not really "respective"—he simply divided them crudely: one room for the boys, one for the girls.
As for Sirius... well, since they'd forgotten to buy bedding yesterday, only two rooms were actually livable. Hermione got one, the three boys squeezed into another, and Sirius tagging along on top of that really was pushing it.
After placing the breakfast he bought on the way onto the dining table, Kasenhis picked up a paintbrush from the floor and continued the grand wallpaper-painting project that last night's laborers hadn't finished.
Noon...
As one of the young wizards sat up groggily and yawned, the chain reaction woke the other two in the room. The noise spread further, waking Hermione in the next room and Sirius, who was sprawled downstairs on the sofa.
Well—one of them actually fell off the sofa.
With expressions as though someone had just died, they all dragged themselves back up to the 1st floor. But as soon as they picked up their paintbrushes again, they noticed something shocking—the unfinished wallpaper from last night was already done.
"Oh... thank Merlin." Sirius let out a long sigh of relief. At that moment, Kasenhis walked out of the bathroom, fresh from washing off paint. Without hesitation, he wiped his wet hands on Sirius's clothes and even gave him an elbow to the ribs.
"The one you should be thanking isn't Merlin—it's me."
Sirius quickly laughed it off. "Yes, yes, of course, that's exactly what I meant."
"There's breakfast for you lot downstairs... or I guess it's more like lunch now. Just remember to heat it up with a spell—or use the microwave."
"We will, we will." Sirius nodded rapidly, but then he suddenly remembered something. Turning to the younger wizards, he said, "I'll give you some money later. We'll drop you off at Diagon Alley—you can spend the day there. Kasenhis and I need to head to Romania to drag Lupin back and make sure he actually files for leave."
"No problem," Neville replied, nodding as he gulped down his cold milk.
Hearing the commotion, Kasenhis came down from upstairs. "What's this? Lupin's not coming?"
"He says there's too much work at the dragon reserve," Sirius explained.
Kasénhis snorted. "What a joke. Does he think we're asking him?"
The young wizards all swallowed nervously at Kasenhis's bandit-leader-like tone."Professor, aren't you being a bit... extreme?"
Kasenhis flipped their thinking with just one question:"If the four of you agreed to go out together, and then one of you bailed at the last minute, what would you do?"
"Call him a sour pickle and storm into his house to drag him out!" Ron blurted without hesitation.
Harry, who had once been in the position of being dragged out himself, nodded in agreement.
"In that case, Professor, I wish you victory. Hurry up and drag Professor Lupin back," Neville said earnestly.
"Mmm..." Hermione only slurped at her milk, noncommittal.
When they'd all finished eating... well, "finished" was a bit of an exaggeration. For kids who'd skipped both breakfast and lunch, the portions were hardly enough to be called filling—more like an appetizer.
After they'd eaten their fill, Kasenhis simply used Ender Blink to take everyone straight to Diagon Alley. Sirius pulled four pouches out from behind him.
"This is four hundred Galleons. Each of you gets a hundred. Buy whatever you like, keep the rest as pocket money. If it's not enough, just write an IOU in the name of the Black family. I'll settle it when I'm back."
"..."
The young wizards—especially Ron—instantly looked at Sirius as though they were staring at their long-lost lover—ehm—family member.
Meanwhile, Kasenhis was mulling over whether to cobble together a small plane to Romania or just Ender Blink there. But he quickly made a decision.
Lucius Malfoy, Dumbledore's informant 2.0, had already revealed the latest Death Eater movements. That meant Voldemort had either fully returned or at least re-established contact with a follower.
Which also meant that while the kids should be safe enough wandering Diagon Alley by day, at night they'd be better off not even thinking about staying at the Leaky Cauldron.
Old Tom was excellent at mixing drinks, sure—but as for magic... let's just say that against the kind of Death Eaters who were masters of the Dark Arts, he'd struggle to even make enough noise before being finished off.
So once Sirius had handed out the Galleons, Kasenhis didn't waste any more words. He just expanded his force field to scoop Sirius up and brought them both to the front gate of the Romanian dragon reserve.
They knocked on the duty office door, registered themselves inside, and the on-duty wizard even pointed them straight to where Lupin was supposed to be at the moment.
As the two of them walked across the dragon reserve's grounds, a strange sensation suddenly swept through them.
Something like an electric arc surged into Kasenhis's body, and a little light bulb lit up above his head at a perfect forty-five-degree angle.
"Sirius... I've got a plan!"
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