"Oh, enough with 'Professor'—I'm no professor anymore—hic—"
A small fire crackled in the hearth, beating back the faint, encroaching chill of a deep autumn night that had begun pressing against the cottage windows.
The room had warmed considerably since Bryan's restoration, warm as spring now, in fact, despite the season outside.
The plump old man had sunk himself comfortably into the cushions of his now-restored sofa, and with a lazy, slightly imprecise flick of his wand, the piano in the corner had begun playing on its own a meandering, honeyed melody that filled the room without asking permission of anyone.
He'd only had a few glasses by Bryan's count, but already a deep flush had crept into Slughorn's cheeks, softening his usual shrewd alertness into something pleasant and rosy and considerably more pliable.
"Call me Bryan. You call me Horace. Fair enough?"
"Oh, what a wonderfully approachable wizard you are, Horace—let's drink to that!"
Bryan aimed his wand at Horace's glass, and the empty vessel gurgled obligingly as it refilled itself with a thick, crystalline pour that caught the firelight as it rose.
Gulp!
They drank together, in unison. Horace's awareness flickered briefly at the impact of the swallow, he stared up at the chandelier for several seconds before his gaze drifted slowly back down to Bryan who sat across from him with perfect, unbothered posture and an impeccable smile, not a single hair out of place despite having matched the old man drink for drink.
"Where were we—where were we, Bryan?"
"I believe it was…" He made a visible show of considering, tapping one finger lightly against his glass. "…your exceptional approach to teaching?"
"Yes! That's it exactly!"
Horace slapped his own knee with considerable force and reached, somewhat unsteadily, into the half-emptied box of sweets for another, popping it into his mouth before continuing.
"Severus hasn't the faintest idea how to teach. Not the faintest. He simply isn't cut out for it, never was, not even when he was a student himself, mind, though I'd never have said so to his face back then."
He wagged his head at Bryan with great conviction.
"Now, I know that might sit a touch uncomfortably with you after all, he did look after you during your Hogwarts years but that amounts to nothing, really. If it had been me in his position, I'd have done the same and counted myself lucky for the opportunity. A talent like yours… hic!"
Tipsy and increasingly indignant on Bryan's behalf, Horace waved one arm about with considerable feeling, nearly upsetting the box of crystallised fruit in the process.
"Don't think I haven't been paying attention to things just because I'm retired, Bryan. Look at what's become of Slytherin these past years…. not a single remarkable student to come out of that House since I left it behind. Not one worth mentioning in the same breath as the old days. Ah—you're the exception, of course, Bryan. Obviously, you're the exception."
He muttered on, half to himself now, the whisky was loosening something that had perhaps been waiting a long while for an audience.
"But you got there entirely on your own, didn't you? Severus's so-called help was negligible to someone of your calibre. Negligible. And as for Albus—"
Horace squinted across at Bryan with a bleary, deeply self-satisfied expression, believing himself, in this moment, to be exercising considerable insight.
"Don't let all his praise and his twinkling and his fond little anecdotes fool you now, young man. I'd wager good money that he put rather more stones in your path than flowers when you were a student under his roof, didn't he?
Oh, I've heard about it—that business with the forest fire, back when you were still a student at Hogwarts. He had the absolute nerve to lay blame at your door, when it was his own failure to properly protect the school and its grounds that let the trouble in to begin with. Typical. Absolutely typical of the man."
"Heh, heh—"
Bryan laughed, and for once, the laugh seemed genuine.
"You are absolutely right, Horace. Dumbledore has always harboured a particular bias against Slytherin House. And that is precisely why, at a moment like this one, what the wizarding world genuinely needs is a figure of real standing and real fairness.
Someone with the authority and the moral weight to step forward and speak up, properly and publicly, for those Slytherin students who have long suffered under undeserved suspicion and casual, unexamined injustice. Don't you agree, Horace?"
"Oh—"
Horace's gaze shifted away abruptly, sliding sideways toward the fire, a sudden and visible self-consciousness settling over him where a moment ago there had only been righteous indignation.
He began to mutter, the conviction draining noticeably from his voice.
"Well… to be entirely fair about it, you can't lay it all at Albus's door either, can you. Given the sort of people Slytherin has, ah, produced over the years… hic… truly dreadful business, some of it. Truly dreadful. Best not dwell on it, perhaps."
'This old man.'
Bryan thought, watching the rapid retreat with something close to amusement.
"Shall we change the subject?" Bryan said pleasantly, offering the old man a graceful exit from a topic that had clearly wandered somewhere uncomfortable for him.
The unwelcome memory that had briefly surfaced sent a visible shudder through Horace. He grumbled silently into his glass for a moment, took a fortifying sip, and then brightened conspicuously, turning back to Bryan with renewed, eager energy.
"I hear Diagon Alley—devastated by the war as it was—will officially begin reconstruction before November?"
"Ah, you are well-informed, Horace—"
A word of genuine admiration, offered easily, and then Bryan continued smoothly.
"That's right. The Ministry is well aware that the entire wizarding community has been waiting with bated breath for this, and we are every bit as eager to give Diagon Alley back to wizarding Britain in a form worth having. The difficulty lies in the sheer scale of preparation required—the detailed architectural plans are still being drafted, in fact, with input from Muggle designers brought in specifically for their expertise in large-scale urban projects, since nothing of this scale has been attempted within the wizarding world before."
He took a sip of his own wine before continuing.
"To address the unemployment crisis simultaneously, the Ministry intends to recruit workers from among those without stable income—people from the lower-income community specifically. Though naturally, as this is fundamentally a skilled trade requiring real expertise, they'll all need proper vocational training before they can begin any actual construction work.
Then there are the goblins to manage. An investment running into the tens of millions of Galleons is no small undertaking even for goblin coffers, as deep as those famously run—they'll need considerable time to recalibrate their global financial strategy around a commitment of this magnitude.
And the procurement of materials in these early stages…"
Bryan let out a small, theatrical sigh. "Oh, to be honest, just thinking about the logistics of it all gives me a proper headache. Thank goodness I only have to come up with the ideas and not actually manage any of the tedious implementation myself—"
The quip sent Horace into a fit of wheezing chuckling and while the old man laughed, distracted, Bryan topped up his glass once more without ceremony.
"Oh, no, I'm sorry—phew—"
Horace noticed the refill a beat too late and waved the wand away with both hands.
"I'm afraid… I really can't manage another one tonight, Bryan, truly—"
"Just this one more, Horace?"
Bryan's voice was warm and gentle, carrying just enough genuine persuasive weight.
"For the great Salazar Slytherin?"
"For the great Slytherin—" Horace's resistance dissolved on the spot. "Oh, absolutely, Salazar Slytherin was a thoroughly good man, whatever anyone says about him these days, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!"
He was thoroughly, easily persuaded. Rosy-faced and beaming with joy, Horace raised his glass once more and drained it entirely in a single, decisive go. Bryan, watching with quiet satisfaction, did not touch his own.
"Now, about Diagon Alley—"
Horace swayed happily in his seat, his eyes had gone soft and unfocused with the dreaminess of pleasant intoxication.
"Word reaching me out here is that when it's rebuilt, the whole place will be quite transformed… oh, and it's long overdue, if you want my honest opinion. The place looked exactly the same—exactly the same, when I was a student there myself."
"Well, to be precise about it, Diagon Alley itself will largely be preserved in its essential character—it is something of a historic landmark, after all, isn't it?"
Sensing the old man's genuine, rising interest, Bryan decided to elaborate further, leaning forward slightly.
"The real transformation will be in the surrounding area, rather than the Alley proper. The Ministry plans to develop the land around Diagon Alley into something on the scale of an entire city divided into distinct functional districts, each serving a different purpose."
He began listing them.
"Ministry towers to crown the wizarding world's new capital. A state-of-the-art wizarding hospital to replace St. Mungo's ageing facilities. A nature reserve for magical creatures—lush, unspoilt, properly maintained, the first of its kind. A thriving commercial quarter, naturally, to replace what was lost. An industrial district, properly zoned this time, away from residential areas. Orderly residential neighbourhoods for ordinary working families…"
As Bryan continued painting the picture, piece by piece, a sweeping panorama of a magnificent future city unrolled itself before Horace's eyes and even through the comfortable haze of the whisky, those small eyes had lit up with something close to wonder.
"…As for why the Ministry felt it necessary to carve out a portion of the land for private manors and luxury villas—that, I'm afraid, was simply unavoidable."
Bryan smiled with serene ease.
Horace, meanwhile, had already drifted well past simple interest and into fantasy picturing, with vivid indulgent clarity, those estates perched on prime ground, backing onto rolling hills, facing open water, surrounded by sweeping private grounds in the very finest quarter of an entirely new magical city.
A thin trickle of drool appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"Right… yes, quite right—cunning little guy, this Ministry of yours—" He didn't seem to notice the contradiction in praising the Ministry while addressing Bryan directly.
"Those properties will fetch an absolutely astronomical price, you mark my words. Who on earth would turn down the chance at a legacy property in a city like that, passed down through generations… oh, it'll be eye-watering, the sums involved!"
Horace wore a slightly glassy expression now, consumed by a profound envy.
"I haven't the faintest chance of ever living somewhere like that. Not in this lifetime, not with my pension. Oh, the stingy old skinflint that Albus is—to afford something like that on a Hogwarts salary, I'd have had to start teaching a thousand years ago, like poor old Professor Binns, and even then it wouldn't help, would it, because Hogwarts doesn't pay its ghosts any wages at all, does it. Not a single Knut."
"Quite so—"
Bryan nodded along with a faint, knowing smile, watching the old man's envy build.
"Who wouldn't want to spend their remaining years in surroundings like that, after all? Fresh air, properly maintained. The finest security available anywhere in wizarding World. Respectable wizarding neighbours on every side. A single marble tile in one of those houses, I'm told, would be worth roughly half a year's salary for a sitting Hogwarts professor."
"Oh, dear—"
At that specific comparison, Horace let out a long, genuinely mournful sigh from somewhere deep in his chest.
His gaze swept slowly around the room—this Muggle cottage in this forgotten village that he had chosen with such defensive care, precisely because no one would think to look for him here and all at once, in the wake of Bryan's vivid description, it felt considerably less cosy it had felt even a moment ago.
"Of course, that quarter won't be given over entirely to the wealthy and well-connected."
Bryan lowered his gaze, took a slow sip of his wine, and let the next words fall as though they were the most minor and incidental of afterthoughts.
"There will also be a dedicated medical and recuperative retreat included in the plans."
"A medical and recuperative retreat?"
Horace's eyes flew open wide, the dreamy haze was burning away almost instantly. He stared across at Bryan with an expression of naked, yearning hunger.
"Oh, yes—precisely that—"
Bryan settled back into the soft sofa as though the wine had finally caught up with him too and smiled, looking languid and content.
"Dear Horace, surely a place like that oughtn't to serve only the wealthy and the well-positioned. That would hardly be fair, would it?"
When we were designing the plans, I always insisted that wizards who have made distinguished contributions to wizarding Britain, holders of the Order of Merlin, First Class, that particular calibre of person, all of them ought to have the right to enjoy such a place in their later years."
He paused, as though considering the examples.
"A retired Minister for Magic, naturally, would qualify without question. Oh, and Dumbledore would certainly qualify as well—he holds his Order, after all, and he has given a lifetime of faithful, exhausting service to Hogwarts."
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