Moody shifted, his magical eye swinging toward the window as if he could still see the chaos of that night playing out in the rain.
"Not bad. Real combat awareness. Faced with a Death Eater attack, they didn't panic. They knew how to protect themselves. Some of them even hit back."
He pulled his gaze from the window and fixed it on Douglas.
"Better than those spineless paper-pushers at the Ministry who think filing a report counts as fighting."
Coming from Moody, even a compliment landed like an accusation.
"They were just lucky, sir," Douglas said, with appropriate modesty. "I only taught them some basic defensive spells."
"Basic?"
Moody's magical eye snapped to Sirius.
Sirius read the room immediately. "Douglas is underselling himself, Alastor," he said, jumping in with a grin. "His curriculum reforms have been genuinely impressive. The students today have better instincts and sharper practical skills than we did at their age. And frankly, they're a lot better behaved, too."
He was trying to soften the air in the room. It didn't work.
"Rules?" Moody's cane came down hard on the floor, the crack of it cutting through Sirius's sentence. "On the battlefield, rules won't save your life!"
He growled it, his scarred face twisting with something that went beyond agitation.
"Teaching them to follow rules is worthless. Teach them how to survive when the rules stop mattering! Constant vigilance, Holmes! Make them understand — danger is everywhere!"
He took a long pull from his flask, as if trying to push something back down, then turned and limped toward the door.
"Stay vigilant, Holmes."
At the threshold he stopped. Turned.
That magical eye seemed to push straight through the wall, focusing somewhere deep in the corridor beyond.
"Hogwarts' walls are easier to penetrate than you think."
He pulled the door open and walked out.
The CLACK CLACK CLACK of the wooden leg faded down the corridor.
Sirius exhaled, draining his glass in one go. "I'll go show him around the staff room." He stood, straightened his robes, and followed.
The office door swung shut, cutting off the sound of those footsteps.
The smile dropped from Douglas's face the instant it did.
He moved to the window and looked out at the downpour.
Moody's performance had been perfect. Paranoid, rude, relentlessly suspicious , every detail exactly what people expected from Mad-Eye Moody.
But that last line. Hogwarts' walls are easier to penetrate than you think.
Too deliberate. Too pointed.
That wasn't the kind of thing that slipped out from years of battle-scarred instinct. That was a taunt. A pretender leaning across the table and smirking: I'm already inside.
The real Moody was a paranoid who operated on instinct. This one was an actor who had studied him.
Less than a minute later, Sirius came back alone, closing the door behind him. His expression had shifted.
"That's just how he is," Sirius said, dropping back into his chair and refilling his glass. "Hopelessly paranoid. I mentioned one detail about the curfew schedule and he nearly tore my head off. Said I should be focused on how Death Eaters might disguise themselves as students and slip inside."
Douglas turned from the window, gaze sharp.
"No. Black. His paranoia isn't the problem." He kept his voice low. "Take out the map. The real one."
Sirius paused for just a moment. Then he reached into the inner pocket of his robes and pulled out a neatly folded square of blank parchment.
He drew his wand and touched it to the surface.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Ink lines spread from the wand tip like veins, racing across the parchment. The structure of Hogwarts Castle took shape, corridor by corridor, room by room. Dozens of tiny labeled dots moved across it.
Albus Dumbledore's dot traced a slow, patient circuit around the Headmaster's office.
Severus Snape's dot paced the Potions classroom with restless energy, circling whatever was bothering him tonight.
Argus Filch's dot swept along a first-floor corridor like a hound locked onto a scent.
Everything looked normal.
"Here," Douglas said, pressing one finger to the corridor outside their office.
His own dot wasn't there. He'd hidden the Defence Against the Dark Arts office from the map weeks ago.
"Doug, maybe I should hide the staff room too while we're at it — wait." Sirius leaned forward. "Where's Alastor?"
The dot that should have appeared near the staff room was gone.
Alastor Moody's dot was simply not there.
"That's impossible!" Sirius's voice came out louder than he meant it to. "He walked right past me. I watched him turn down the corridor toward the staff room with my own eyes!"
He pressed his knuckles against his eyes, blinked hard, and looked again.
Empty.
Douglas stared at the blank space on the map. The corner of his mouth curved upward.
This was more interesting than he'd expected.
Whoever this was had not only nailed Moody's mannerisms down to the last twitch , they had a way to drop off the Marauder's Map entirely. The Marauder's Map, one of the greatest things the four of them had ever built. The thing that tracked every person in the castle and had never cared about Animagi or Invisibility Cloaks.
"Fast reflexes," Douglas said quietly, his voice as cold as the rain against the glass. "Can't say I'm surprised. Former Head Auror, after all."
Sirius's face had gone pale beneath the shock, something uglier moving underneath it , violated, almost. Angry in a way that was personal.
"Someone's cracked our magic again," he said. The lightness that had been in his voice earlier was completely gone.
"A Confundus Charm couldn't do that, and neither could a Disillusionment. How did he react so quickly? All he had to work from was whatever was in your office..."
Douglas looked at him flatly. "His eye, Black. You walked in here carrying a blank, folded piece of old parchment in your inner pocket. Did you really think an Auror of his caliber wouldn't notice something like that?"
Sirius went still. He thought back to the way Moody's magical eye had moved during the meeting. Then he turned and stared at the wall in the direction of the staff room.
Douglas poured himself a drink and said, almost cheerfully, "Don't worry. He can't see through my office walls from out there. He already tried looking through my clothes and ran into something unpleasant."
Sirius threw the map onto the table. "You could have warned me," he said, with feeling.
"You wouldn't have remembered it unless you learned the hard way." Douglas shrugged. "Go by the house tonight. Get those special-order sets of robes from Dobby , I had a few made. Split them between yourself and Remus."
Sirius stared at him. "Doug, you absolute — you had these ready the whole time?"
Douglas laughed, bright and genuinely pleased with himself, and ruffled Sirius's hair before Sirius could dodge.
Sirius yanked his head away and smoothed his hair back with an expression of profound personal offense. He turned his glare back to the Marauder's Map, turning it over in his hands.
The map had been a masterpiece when they were students. But word of the staff room's detection-blocking enchantments would get out eventually, and once it did, more people would start figuring out how to slip past. That was inevitable.
It had always been a school project, in the end. Brilliant, but built by teenagers. With enough knowledge and intent, someone would always find the gaps.
Maybe it was time to give it an upgrade.
➤ Next: A New Hogwarts Tradition Is Born
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