The quiet of early morning hung over everything. On the horizon, the sun had barely crept above the rooflines, a wavering, hazy silhouette that seemed not yet entirely committed to the day.
Wisps of pale smoke curled from the chimneys set into the warm brick walls of Hurst Orphanage's newly built wing, rising lazily in thin columns before dissolving into a sky still veiled in the last traces of blue-grey night.
"Won't you stay a few more days before you go?"
Mrs. Reagan watched Bryan in the growing dawn light, his face warm with a familiar smile, and couldn't conceal the reluctance in her own.
"You're always rushing in and out these past two years, Bryan. Here for a few days, then gone again before anyone's had the chance to—"
She paused, smoothed her apron with both hands, and gave a small, complicated smile. "The children. They wish you could stay longer. They ask after you, you know. Even when they don't say it directly."
"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Reagan. I'd love nothing more than a proper holiday—"
Bryan gave a helpless shrug, the regret on his lips were totally genuine. "But the company is expanding so rapidly, and the workload has become... well. I do believe it's only a phase."
Mrs. Reagan studied the young man's thin cheeks with concern. She wanted to say it: you look tired, you don't need to put yourself under so much pressure, rest for once in your life—but the words rose to her lips and she swallowed them back down.
"And Mr. Lawrence—"
Her gaze shifted to Lawrence, who stood a few paces to the side in his neat charcoal-grey suit, the brim of his bowler hat set at precisely the correct angle. The same reluctance softened her expression as it settled on him.
"What a dreadful morning for the children. When they wake and find you've both gone—" She shook her head. "They'll be heartbroken. Particularly the younger ones."
"The feeling is entirely mutual, Mrs. Reagan—"
Lawrence spoke with the unmistakable sincerity.
"Once this business is settled, I'll come back. You have my word on it—so long as you don't feel I've been more trouble than I'm worth."
He flicked a quick, almost imperceptible glance at Bryan before turning back to her.
"Oh, you've helped us so much—" Mrs. Reagan was both moved and flustered.
Before passing through the iron gate at the courtyard's edge, Lawrence paused.
He turned back to look at the Tudor roses in the flowerbed, their pale pink and cream petals opening slowly in the morning light. He stood very still for a moment, drinking in the sight of them—the courtyard, the warm brick, the smoke still rising from the chimneys.
Then he exhaled a quiet, melancholy breath, and followed Bryan out through the iron gate and into the street.
The street outside was nearly empty.
The occasional figure they passed was a shopkeeper readying for the day's trade, or a milkman and newspaper boy making their early rounds.
These Muggles knew Bryan. They knew Mr. Lawrence too—or rather, they knew the version of him that the neighborhood had constructed from observation: the generous benefactor who had donated so handsomely to Hurst Orphanage.
When they passed, the locals offered cheerful good-mornings and friendly nods and both Bryan and Lawrence returned every greeting with equal courtesy.
"The promise I just made to Mrs. Reagan—"
They turned the corner, leaving the street in front of the orphanage behind. Lawrence suddenly removed his hat. He smoothed the silver at his temples with an anxious hand, and looked at Bryan with open unease.
"Can we actually keep it, Bryan?"
"Nothing to worry about, Lawrence—"
The message received the night before had apparently done nothing to weigh on Bryan's mind. He moved through the quiet street like a traveler setting off on a long-anticipated holiday, his stride easy, unburdened, radiating contentment.
"I give you my word: I'll bring you back from the wizarding court in one piece."
Lawrence walked on in silence for a moment. The worry behind his eyes was undiminished.
It wasn't that he doubted Bryan's assurances. And it wasn't even his own safety that preoccupied him.
He knew nothing of the wizarding world but that had never meant he lacked common sense, and common sense was telling him clearly that what he had witnessed ran considerably deeper than it appeared on the surface.
Bryan had been candid with him, within limits: certain powerful figures within the wizarding government had deliberately engineered this catastrophe to serve their own ends.
And Bryan had come to him precisely to expose that conspiracy. Which meant, in plain terms, that the boy was setting himself against the wizarding government.
Lawrence studied Bryan's profile from the corner of his eye as they walked—that composed, seemingly fearless face.
No government, in any land or world, was to be taken lightly.
Young Master Watson was going to war with the authority that governed all wizardkind. Would he come through it unscathed?
"Bryan—"
After a long pause, Lawrence spoke.
"Is it just the two of us speaking in that boy's defense today? Ought we not to have..." He searched for the phrasing. "More?"
"Actually, we have a great deal of support, Lawrence—"
Bryan seemed not to grasp the old butler's true concern. He smiled with confidence.
"But we won't need to call on most of them to make our case. You'll understand when you see it—the wizarding world is, in its own way, quite a reasonable place."
'A reasonable place.'
Lawrence's unease deepened.
Half a lifetime of experience had taught Lawrence one thing above most others: there was no such thing as a world entirely governed by reason and law. Not unless wizards had somehow managed to build themselves a genuine fairy-tale kingdom, which he considered unlikely given that human nature appeared, in his observation, to remain fairly constant regardless of what additional abilities one happened to possess.
"Is that so..."
He turned it over carefully, then decided he owed it to the young man to offer a gentle word of caution.
"In my day, working alongside His Lordship, I dealt with no shortage of officials. Judges among them. Men whose entire purpose was the application of law." He paused. "To speak plainly: the law was not always the highest authority in their eyes. Though of course, as you say, I know nothing of the wizarding world. Perhaps it is different there."
"Wizards aren't exactly devoted to the letter of the law either, truth be told—"
Bryan gave a soft laugh.
"But they do have a healthy respect for force."
'Force?!'
Lawrence stared at him, taken aback.
"Ah—the bus is here. Lucky us, we didn't have to wait long." Bryan brightened, tilting his head toward the red double-decker. "I seem to recall that back when I lived here, buses were rather like true love—they never came when you needed them most."
He took Lawrence by the arm with cheerful firmness and steered him toward the stop before the old butler could gather his thoughts into the question that was clearly forming behind his eyes.
They boarded the near-empty bus. It smelled of damp coats and diesel and something indefinably of early morning. Lawrence settled into a seat by the window and placed his hat on his knee.
"Are we riding a bus to…the wizarding government's headquarters?"
He said, after a silence of several minutes in which he had clearly been organizing his thoughts.
"I rather expected something more... I mean to say, I had assumed wizards would have more—" He searched for the word. "Remarkable ways of getting about."
"Oh, we may have to switch to the Underground as well before we're done. You're not wrong—wizards do have methods of getting places considerably faster—"
Bryan said cheerfully.
"Because those methods would be rather stimulating for you. And given that I need you clear-headed, composed, and in sound condition for what comes next, I'd rather not spend the morning managing the aftermath of that particular experience. The Mugg—the ordinary way is much safer for you."
Lawrence absorbed this. He drew a slow breath, gave a single nod, and said nothing more.
The young master was not a reckless person. He would have prepared for whatever might arise today.
Lawrence told himself this, sitting very straight in his bus seat with his hat on his knee, watching the city roll past the window as the morning light strengthened around them.
Whatever dangers lay ahead, he would give it his all. After all, it was Bryan who had asked for his help.
The bus swayed and rattled for twenty minutes before they descended into the Underground at a station that smelled of warm dust and electricity.
The novelty of Muggle transport was, it had to be said, not proving particularly pleasant for Bryan. Station by station as they drew closer to the city Centre, the carriages filled with young commuters heading to work until the press of bodies became uncomfortably close.
It was enough to unsettle even Lawrence, let alone Bryan.
Forty minutes after descending into the Underground, they emerged blinking into a street in the heart of London. Lawrence straightened the creases from his suit, resettled his hat, and looked around at the familiar buildings with an expression of mild, genuine surprise.
"I assumed we'd be going somewhere on the outskirts," he said.
"The Ministry of Magic was in a quieter district when it was first established quite a long time ago now—"
Bryan led Lawrence across the road and into the rundown alley where the Ministry's entrance telephone box stood.
"But the wizards evidently didn't anticipate how quickly the Muggle city would grow up around them."
He had barely stepped fully into the alley when his eyes narrowed.
A row of journalists was queuing outside the telephone box. Six or seven of them, cameras hoisted on their shoulders, notebooks in hand. They were speaking in low voices amongst themselves.
Bryan stepped back, retreating smoothly to the street without having drawn any attention. Lawrence followed.
"What is it, Young Master?"
The sudden reversal had put him immediately on edge.
"To avoid unnecessary complications—"
Bryan thought for a moment.
"It would be better if no one knows you're here until I actually need you. And it would also be better if those journalists don't notice me either. They wouldn't let me pass without a great deal of fuss, and fuss is not what we need this morning."
He said this, then drew his wand and, while the nearby Muggles were distracted, tapped it lightly against Lawrence's shoulder. Then he did the same to himself.
"Oh—I'm—!"
Lawrence's eyes went wide. He turned toward the nearest shop window and confirmed what his suddenly strange awareness of his own body had suggested.
In the glass, the alley behind him was entirely visible. He was not.
"We've turned invisible, Young Master! Is this—this is magic as well?!"
"Just Bryan, I've told you repeatedly." The words came from approximately where Bryan had been standing, though nothing was visible. "Yes, this is magic. Disillusionment—it's among the less complicated things a wizard can do, though it tends to make a considerable impression."
Lawrence's eyes darted about, unable to locate Bryan now that he was concealed. So, Bryan took the old butler by the arm and guided him back into the alley.
"Extraordinary!"
Even though it was not the first time he had seen Bryan use magic, a deep awe welled up in Lawrence's chest.
"Compared to wizards," Lawrence murmured, "we are so terribly clumsy."
"That's not necessarily true—" Bryan flicked his wand.
A sudden gust of wind sent the queuing journalists stumbling into one another, and in the resulting confusion, the two of them slipped to the front of the line.
"Muggles have achieved their own remarkable things through their own means. Look—even the lift into the Ministry was borrowed from a Muggle idea. Human ingenuity runs in both directions."
A button was pressed. The telephone box began and without fanfare, to descend.
Hum—
A moment of darkness—then light flooded back into Lawrence's eyes, along with it the layered hum of many voices speaking at once.
None of that mattered now.
"Welcome to the wizarding world, Lawrence—"
Bryan smiled at the old butler, who stood struck dumb by the soaring grandeur of the golden Ministry atrium—and by the surging crowd around him, every one of them dressed in the most extraordinary fashion.
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