Sirius was wearing a pair of thick dragon-hide goggles.
He was hunched over his workbench, focused, coaxing tiny sparks from his wand tip to weld a palm-sized brass box. Delicate work. He looked like he was defusing a bomb.
When he spotted Douglas, he yanked the goggles off, face lit up, two comical red rings pressed into his skin where the lenses had been.
"Hey! You're finally back!"
He held up his masterpiece like a kid showing off at Christmas.
"Behold: the Roaring Communicator, version 2.0!"
"I added a voice-changer."
"Next time that old bureaucrat Scrimgeour calls to rush the order, I'll answer in Cornelius Fudge's voice and tell him the Ministry is actively researching the matter and to please wait patiently."
Douglas smiled and shook his head. Very Sirius.
His gaze drifted to the corner of the table, where a copy of the Daily Prophet had been crumpled into a ball and left there. The headline was still visible, stark and ugly even in the dim light.
Sirius followed his gaze and snorted.
"Rita Skeeter exaggerated the whole thing tenfold."
"Not that she spoke badly of us, for once. She's busy calling our Stunning Flash Grenades the saviors of the Auror Corps."
"Scrimgeour sent someone yesterday asking when the next batch ships. Apparently he wants to equip every Auror with one."
Douglas fished the bouncy ball from his pocket , the one trapping the light creature , and tossed it toward Wangcai, who was rolling around happily in the fireplace corner.
"New toy."
The golden sphere traced a brilliant arc through the air.
The moment it appeared, Wangcai froze solid.
It had been buried in a small pile of Galleons, rolling in them, blissful. Now it went perfectly still. Its flat nostrils twitched furiously. Its little black-bead eyes locked onto the slowly rolling golden sphere with an intensity that suggested everything else in the universe had ceased to exist , including the single, gloriously bright gold coin that had just tumbled out of its belly pouch and come to rest on the floor.
That coin lay there, alone, completely ignored.
Wangcai abandoned its treasury.
Its movements turned impossibly gentle, as if an invisible thread were reeling it in one careful step at a time. It crept closer. Extended one front paw, slow and tentative.
An inch from the sphere, the paw snapped back.
Like it had touched something hot.
The raw, instinctive greed for shiny things, the thing Wangcai was built from, bone-deep, was now locked in a violent standoff with something else entirely. An awe it had no name for. Something that lived in the gut, not the brain.
The two feelings tore at each other. Wangcai's small body trembled with the effort of holding them both. It was equal parts pitiful and absurd.
"Is that the Church's little monster Moony mentioned?" Sirius leaned in, curious.
He studied the vivid golden figure imprisoned at the sphere's center, clicking his tongue appreciatively.
"You've got it locked up quite nicely. Looks like an expensive glass paperweight."
"The Church hasn't made a single sound about it, by the way." A note of schadenfreude crept into his voice. "Word is the Italian Ministry sent our Ministry an official commendation banner. A proper one, with tassels."
"Wall-to-wall flattery about you, apparently."
"Fudge's face looked like he'd swallowed a fly the entire day it arrived."
Douglas asked about Lupin.
Sirius said he was in the Forbidden Forest with the Weasley twins, running basic orientation for Silvermane Academy's first intake of students. Everything was running smoothly.
Douglas picked up the crumpled Daily Prophet from the table and smoothed it open. He pressed one finger against the photograph , a Dark Mark, enormous, dominating half the front page.
"About this," he said. "What's actually being said inside the Auror office? Not the official line."
The grin dropped off Sirius's face. Not slowly , all at once, like a lamp going out.
He leaned in close. His voice fell to barely above a whisper, carrying the particular gravity of someone sharing something they probably shouldn't.
"Every Auror on the scene filed a formal report. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement ran Prior Incantatem on all their wands."
He paused.
"Not one wand showed who cast it."
Sirius seemed to turn the problem over in his mind, searching for the right words.
"It was like... a ghost. Branded into the sky from nowhere."
Douglas stared at the skull in the photograph for a long moment. From its gaping mouth, a serpent slithered and writhed across the newsprint in silent, patient malice.
"Interesting," he said quietly.
"A work without an author."
...
He slept.
The exhaustion of the journey — all those miles, all those days — rose like the Nile in flood and finally broke through. Douglas went under.
Dreams built their own stage.
One moment he was beneath the great baobab tree at Uagadou. The air was wet and alive, earth and wildflowers twisting together into something that tasted like the world breathing. Children swung their arms and sand gathered at their fingertips, coalescing into antelopes that ran. Magic was alive here. It breathed. It moved in the wind.
Then the scene cut.
He was in the underground corridors of the Egyptian Ministry of Magic, deep beneath the earth. Massive golden pillars rose on either side, the carvings of Horus and Anubis thick with dust, their divine light long since smothered. The air smelled of old papyrus and older rules. Everything was heavy. Everything was still.
Here, magic was dead. A specimen preserved in gold and procedure, sealed behind glass, going nowhere.
The two worlds collided in the dark behind his eyes , collided and collapsed , and dissolved at last into silence.
He woke to morning.
London's mist hadn't lifted yet. Douglas gathered his packages , several of them, bulging , and vanished from his living room in the familiar wrench of Apparition.
His feet hit solid ground. The smell came first: wet grass and soil, cool and clean. He breathed it in.
Not far off, a house stood in the morning light, defying several laws of architecture and apparently fine with it. Crooked, stacked, improbable.
The Burrow.
Smoke puffed lazily from the chimney like the house itself was still half-asleep.
He'd barely reached the door when it crashed open. Mrs. Weasley came out like a warm gust of wind.
"Oh, Douglas! Dear!"
She pulled him into a hug that left very little doubt about her feelings on the matter. His ribs registered a complaint.
"Merlin's beard, why do you always bring so much! I've told you a dozen times — just yourself is enough!"
She was already lifting the packages from his arms as she said it, her smile brighter than the sunflowers growing on the roof.
Inside, the living room was warm and loud with life. Ron and Harry were slumped over the table, staring at a pile of parchment with the particular misery of people losing a fight against summer homework. Hermione sat perfectly straight across from them, her own assignments already finished and neatly stacked, a book open in her hands, reading with obvious pleasure.
➤ Next: Harry: Uncle, Where's My Gift? Douglas: Come On, Let's Check the Homework!
───── ⊹ ⊹ ─────
📖 Main story COMPLETED + Bonus Stories ongoing on Patre\on
🔍 Search:p a t r e o n.com/GoldenLong
───── ⊹ ⊹ ─────