"Thank you for the kind words, Professor Slughorn—"
Bryan chuckled, then let his gaze travel slowly around the wrecked room.
"There's no need for us to sit here chatting in the dark amid all this, is there? If you'll allow me, I can help tidy up."
"Oh—and a good deal more polite than Dumbledore, too, offering to clean up your own host's mess for him."
Slughorn grunted and waved one thick hand in a gesture of permission.
"Be my guest "
Bryan gave his wand a single, fluid flick.
The scattered furniture leapt back into place piece by piece, each item found its proper position. The grandfather clock's shattered face reassembled in midair, until it hung whole and ticking once more.
The ornaments that had been flung about the room rose, drifted, and settled back onto their shelves in careful order. Feathers that had drifted into every corner of the room lifted from the floorboards in a soft, swirling current and burrowed back into the cushions they'd escaped from.
The damaged books knitted themselves back together and slotted neatly into their places on the shelves.
Every broken thing returned, piece by piece, to its original state.
Bryan reached up and caught a glass bottle that came sailing through the air toward him and with a small motion of his wand, drew the thick red liquid that had been clinging to the ceiling down into it in a single, unbroken stream.
By the room's newly rekindled light, he studied the dragon's blood for a moment, turning the bottle slightly to catch the light against its contents, shook his head and set the bottle down on the small wooden table beside the sofa.
The bottle holding, by Bryan's estimate, at least twenty ounces of genuine dragon's blood was pushed across the table, along with the box of crystallised fruit, toward Professor Slughorn, who had by now settled himself comfortably back into the sofa positioned beside the newly restored fireplace.
"Oh, what fine quality!" Professor Slughorn's small eyes had gone wide with unmistakable admiration as he lifted the bottle and held it to the light. "I'd wager the harvester drew this off the poor creature before the wretched thing had even properly breathed its last."
"More or less—"
Bryan said it with mild, unbothered vagueness. It had, admittedly, been a while; he couldn't entirely recall whether the dragon in question had still been alive when the blood was collected.
"But if this is merely meant to make up for the dragon's blood I lost, it's considerably more than necessary. A bottle of this quality is worth at least a hundred Galleons on the current market—"
The admiration in Slughorn's eyes faded, replaced by the swift return of a measure of wariness.
"Consider the rest compensation for disturbing your evening's rest with a visit at such a late hour."
Bryan said it with an easy smile, and the appreciation in the eyes of the long-retired Head of Slytherin deepened once more.
"Then my thanks for the compensation—"
Slughorn gave a couple of low, gravelly laughs, settling more comfortably into the sofa cushions.
"Care for a bit of whisky? Seems only proper, given the hour and the circumstances of your arrival."
"Oh, nothing could suit me better. I've come a considerable way to find you, Professor."
Bryan nodded, smiling, settling himself into the armchair opposite.
Slughorn hauled himself up off the sofa with some effort and made his way across the room toward a liquor cabinet. He hesitated there for a moment, surveying several bottles of aged whisky.
"I'd wager Dumbledore decided he'd finally run out of his own luck with me, and so sent you along to try yours instead, didn't he? Honestly, young man, you're bringing this particular hardship entirely upon yourself, you know. There's really no need for it. I'm quite settled here. Quite content."
Having made his selection at last, Slughorn shuffled back toward the sofa, a bottle of whisky held in one hand and two crystal glasses balanced carefully in the other.
"Do you take my meaning? It's only because you're a fellow Slytherin that I'm willing to tell you this much, mind—I haven't got the thing Dumbledore wants. He's got it entirely wrong. Wasting your efforts tracking me down to this corner of nowhere is a complete waste of your evidently considerable time!"
"Oh, I'll grant you part of that—"
Bryan took the offered glass with a small nod of thanks and smiled across at the old House head, who had sunk back into the sofa cushions, slightly out of breath from the brief exertion of fetching the whisky.
"We can both agree, I think, that Dumbledore sometimes behaves like a clever old stubborn fool."
"A clever old stubborn fool—oh, what a splendid turn of phrase!"
Slughorn repeated it with evident relish, clearly delighted by the description, the sound of his laughter rolled through the now-restored sitting room. But then a small frown of genuine puzzlement crossed his face.
"Well, now I really am at something of a loss. If you already know perfectly well, you'll get nothing out of me, why bother tracking down where I live and coming all this way out here in the dark—"
"That would be because—"
Bryan raised his glass with grace.
"As you are the former Head of Slytherin, a towering figure in the history of British Potions scholarship, and a wizard of considerable and well-earned renown throughout magical Britain—surely there's no harm at all in my simply paying you a visit?"
"Ha!"
Slughorn eyed him with shrewd, narrowed attention, the small eyes were sharpening with sudden suspicion.
"Don't think for one moment that you can charm your way past me with flattery, young man! I've had considerably more skilled flatterers than you try that particular approach over the years, and I always see it coming."
But his shrewdness and his wariness lasted barely a second longer before crumbling. Glass in hand, Slughorn studied the brilliant young man seated across from him, and was unable to entirely hide his own astonishment.
"When I left Hogwarts, Albus did try rather hard to talk me into staying on at Slytherin a while longer. But I wouldn't have it. I was getting on in years by then. It seemed like time I finally enjoyed a comfortable retirement, away from marking essays and breaking up House rivalries and the general exhausting business of shepherding teenagers through their formative years."
Bryan didn't interrupt. He kept up an air of polite, genuine interest, his expression remained attentive without being intrusive, and waited quietly for his old Head of House to continue at his own pace.
The mood between the two of them had settled into something remarkably comfortable, almost companionable which was precisely what made it strange.
In truth, the two of them had never actually met before this evening. They had never exchanged so much as a single letter. They were, by any conventional measure, complete strangers to one another, meeting for the first time.
And yet Bryan had heard a great many stories about his old Head of House from Dumbledore over the past years. And Horace Slughorn, for his own part, had quite clearly been keeping a close and attentive eye on Bryan's rising reputation through various channels of his own.
Bryan had even heard, in passing, from Dumbledore, that after he had helped manoeuvre Amelia into the Minister's seat, Professor Slughorn had sent Dumbledore a carefully worded letter of his own.
Its gist, as Dumbledore had described it with a certain dry amusement, had amounted to a warning. Something to the effect of: learn from past mistakes.
Bryan had not asked Dumbledore to elaborate on which past mistakes, specifically, were being referenced. He had a fairly clear idea already.
"—Hardly anyone could manage what Dumbledore does, you understand. Devoting an entire life to Hogwarts, giving up one's own private existence almost entirely in service of it. So in the end, I turned him down—"
Slughorn was still eyeing Bryan with that same appraising, assessing attention.
"But I'll admit—you make me regret that decision, just a little, now that I'm sitting here looking at you."
"Ha. How do you mean by that?"
Slughorn lifted the lid off the box of crystallised fruit Bryan had brought, selected a piece with evident care, and popped it into his mouth, chewing slowly.
His small eyes narrowed with genuine pleasure proof enough, that the gift had pleased him considerably more than he'd let on.
He pointed a thick, sugar-dusted finger across the table at Bryan, regarding him with no small measure of wistful regret.
"If I'd known, all those years ago, that a wizard of your particular calibre would end up sorted into Slytherin, I'd never have let you slip away to retirement without a fight! And instead, Severus got you for absolutely nothing—what an extraordinary, undeserved windfall for that man, taking over the House just as someone like you came through it!"
There was a touch of genuine warmth in the quiet laugh Bryan let escape at that.
Just as Dumbledore had described to him, more than once, his old Head of House was looking at him now the way a man might look at a particularly fine piece of art he'd once had the chance to acquire cheaply and let slip through his fingers.
"You flatter me, Professor. Hogwarts has turned out no shortage of remarkable young wizards over the generations—plenty of them every bit my equal in raw talent, if not more. I suspect I simply have more of a particular knack for catching the public's eye than most of them did."
Bryan said it with genuine, unforced modesty.
"Not a word of flattery in any of that, and don't try to suggest there was—"
Professor Slughorn wagged a thick finger in vigorous disagreement, nearly upending his own whisky glass in the process.
"If someone walked through that door right now and asked me to name a single wizard to come out of Slytherin more remarkable than you currently sitting in front of me, I'd have absolutely no choice but to point them toward Salazar Slytherin himself, and even then I'd want a moment to think it over properly."
His old Head of House gave Bryan a faintly sour, put-upon look and Bryan, for his part, only smiled and said nothing in response, letting the silence sit.
"Not one single student I've taught across my entire career measures up to you, and that includes the ones I was genuinely, properly proud of at the time. That boy—Severus, I mean—what dreadfully enviable luck that man has had!"
"Surely no shortage of your former students went on to become senior officials at the Ministry, or recognised leaders in their respective fields?"
Bryan was careful not to mention Voldemort as one possible example of Slughorn's more notable former students. He had no wish to spoil the pleasant mood that had settled over their conversation by introducing that particular name.
"Don't try to comfort me with that sort of generality. I know perfectly well, in my heart, that I'll never live to see anyone properly surpass Severus—"
Slughorn said it rather glumly, fishing out another piece of crystallised fruit and tossing it into his mouth with absent-minded comfort. Then, quite suddenly, he brightened, evidently struck by an entirely new thought.
"Speaking of which—the Daily Prophet once reported that you were Muggle-born? Is that actually true, or was that simply meant to—to—"
Slughorn waved one hand vaguely through the air, fishing for the precise word he wanted.
"To make yourself rather easier for the general public to take a liking to?"
Bryan finished the thought for him smoothly, his tone was entirely unoffended by the suggestion.
"Just so—"
Slughorn said it with certainty believing he had just solved a small puzzle.
"I'd wager you've been dressing yourself up a bit for public consumption, haven't you? A Muggle-born wizard achieving everything you've achieved makes for a far more compelling, far more admirable story.
So you've told everyone your parents were ordinary Muggles. But in truth, I'd wager you come from a perfectly respectable family, don't you? Let me guess—" he leaned forward with the eager anticipation "—your father is Raphael Watson, isn't he?"
"Ah—the editor-in-chief of Charm Innovations?"
Bryan let out a short, genuinely amused laugh at the suggestion.
"I'm afraid I'm not nearly that fortunate, Professor Slughorn. As a matter of fact, my parents are Muggles through and through—"
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