Hogwarts had anti-Apparition enchantments, so they couldn't get back quickly.
So, just like when they'd set out, they returned to the road that led to Hogsmeade.
All around was silent. The night was pitch-black, lit only by a few streetlamps and a handful of glowing windows upstairs.
"We completed the mission brilliantly?" Dumbledore said. He touched his wand to Sean's arm, and the wound that was still seeping blood healed a fair bit.
Just as they'd expected, the cave had been saturated with Voldemort's magic—magic meant to torment intruders—so the cut had refused to stop bleeding.
"Mhm." Sean lifted his head and saw a star shining overhead. He recognized it as Jupiter.
"Come on. Hopefully Madam Pomfrey is still awake…" Dumbledore said, and started down the path where purple flowers grew.
Along the winding trail, the outskirts of Hogsmeade gave way to wild ground and fields.
There were only a few small wooden cottages here, but each came with a surprisingly large plot of land.
They walked toward the foot of the mountain, with the road back to Hogwarts hidden in the mountain's shadow.
"Do you have something for me?" Dumbledore asked, suddenly smiling again as he held Sean's hand.
Sean nodded. His Wizard's Book unfolded in an instant and "spat out" a small, unusual object.
Dumbledore's smile slowly froze as he looked at the lens in his palm.
"This is…?" he asked.
"A magic hand mirror. It can place calls regardless of distance. It's a variant of the two-way mirror, and supports up to seven people in a group call.
It can be face-to-face, or audio-only."
Sean explained it in detail.
"Oh—excellent. Very excellent," Dumbledore said, taking the mirror. A miniature Sean appeared inside it almost immediately.
In the mirror, the tiny Sean was reading, until the lake-smooth surface rippled. Only then did the miniature Sean close his book.
A moment later, the real Sean appeared on the mirror's surface.
"If you want to say something right now, Headmaster, you can just say it," Sean said.
He "hung up." Inside his mirror, the tiny Dumbledore—who had stopped eating lemon drops—started eating sweets again.
That was Sean's design: a "call status" animation, borrowing from the principles of magical photographs. All he had to do was rework the internal magic circuit from auto-triggering to triggering based on the mirror's different call states.
At the same time, the tiny Sean went back to reading.
"Ah—" Dumbledore's interest visibly brightened at that discovery.
He looked through the mirror's little figures:
Minerva McGonagall had become a tabby cat grooming her fur; Severus Snape was brewing a potion; Flitwick looked like he was about to climb onto a lectern made of stacked books…
"Oh, what an interesting creation."
The mirror rippled again—Dumbledore was clearly placing another call.
"Minerva's asleep?" he murmured, though his gaze stayed on Sean.
"I haven't delivered the remaining ones yet," Sean explained.
"…That's unusual. I ought to tell you—someone may be even more eager than I am."
Dumbledore sounded surprised.
"You pulled me into the Headmaster's office," Sean finished, completing what he'd meant earlier.
The air fell quiet. In the silence, you could even hear the distant shouting of patrons in the Hog's Head.
"Come on. Let's get back to Hogwarts quickly," Dumbledore said as though he hadn't asked anything at all, and he didn't try to press Sean about the locket either.
They passed through the same dark, twisting alleys as before. The night wind brushed Sean's ear.
Inside the half-open Wizard's Book, the Pukwudgie butler was guiding the animals back where they belonged.
"Come along, come along, you little heroes—you've completed a great mission!" Sean could hear Will pumping himself up aloud.
"Except you, you greedy pig!"
Then came a loud thud—and the warthog's aggrieved snuffling squeal.
Voldemort's potion had been meant to inflict unbearable suffering. The potion Sean had taken from his vault, on the other hand, made the drinker feel energized, exhilarated, faintly euphoric.
So aside from the potion possibly tasting awful, the animals were perfectly fine—Sean had checked.
"Hogwarts has anti-Apparition wards for Pukwudgies, but that cave doesn't… I'm glad you noticed that," Dumbledore said, his voice drifting along.
"Of course, Voldemort looks down on house-elves and the like—just as many pure-blood wizards do… They never imagine that elves might possess magic he himself lacks.
He put corpses in the lake, but corpses aren't something to fear, Sean—no more than darkness is something to fear.
But Voldemort doesn't see it that way. Deep down, he fears those two things.
Once again, he's revealed his lack of wisdom. When we face death and darkness, what we fear is only the unknown—nothing else."
With Dumbledore's voice floating on, they finally returned to familiar Hogwarts.
Madam Pomfrey was still awake, and for once Sean found himself lying in the hospital wing.
Voldemort had gone farther than any wizard in the branch of magic called curses.
Even Dumbledore couldn't fully remove the weakness the curse caused, and Madam Pomfrey was so startled she quietly asked Sean where he'd been injured—she'd never seen such a hateful kind of magic.
Madam Pomfrey refused to let Sean leave the ward. For a full week, he had to cooperate with curse removal.
And Headmaster Dumbledore, smiling as always, said he'd approved two weeks of leave for him.
Being on leave didn't really affect Sean's studying.
Ever since the Wizard's Book came into being, most of his study tasks could be done inside the Wizard's House.
The only slightly annoying thing was that his magic hand mirrors would have to be delivered by Whitey.
As for the locket…
Sean took it out and placed it inside the enchanted box in the Wizard's House.
His plan was progressing steadily. Once he had the locket, he could use it as a bargaining chip to get Kreacher to help him find the real one.
And as for how to find Kreacher—that would depend on Harry…
The hospital wing was always quiet.
Moonlight seeped through the windows, falling across the locket on the young wizard's chest and along his cheekbones—
like a dusting of salt.
Now and then, an injured Quidditch player would let out a low groan, and you'd hear the clack of devices being fitted together.
Mist slowly began to rise.
When the thin fog draped itself over the rows of beds,
Sean opened his bright eyes.
Looks like… it was time.
Tonight, he had a lot to do in the Borderlands—
talk with Headmaster Dumbledore… examine how the Castle Familiar Club's "threads" affected things… and, most importantly, Rowena Ravenclaw…