A new energy had come over Slughorn. His smile spread slowly across his rosy, whisky-warmed face.
"Yes, yes, of course," he said, nodding along with himself. "If the Ministry went to all the trouble of building a proper sanatorium, they can hardly limit it to the wealthy alone, can they?
They must make provisions for those who have rendered truly distinguished service to wizarding Britain over the course of their careers.
And how does one go about paying for it, exactly?"
"Ah, that depends, Horace—"
Bryan settled his elbow comfortably against the armrest of the sofa, propped his cheek against the back of his hand, and let his eyes go just slightly bleary.
"Those who own property in the affluent districts qualify automatically, of course—they simply pay an annual fee, on a fixed schedule, like any other premium service. But for those with distinguished service records specifically, the Ministry's settled position is that they ought to receive their care entirely free of charge—"
"Free of charge!"
Horace's small grey-green eyes lit up at the phrase. His breathing had grown noticeably heavier.
"Now that's something. I've laboured my whole life in service of this profession—a place like that would suit me perfectly, suit me right down to the ground. But the Order of Merlin, First Class… that's no small distinction to claim for oneself. When it comes to contributions of that calibre, I'd say—"
He rubbed his palms together with a soft, dry sound, still smiling.
"My dear Bryan, in your honest estimation—do you think I might qualify for something like that? Given everything I've contributed over the years?"
"Oh—you have your eye on it too, Horace?"
Bryan, who had been feigning a comfortable, wine-softened drowsiness for the better part of the last quarter hour, opened his eyes fully and studied the old man across from him, pausing for a second or two before speaking again.
"I honestly couldn't say with any certainty, Horace. Of course, I know perfectly well that you hold an esteemed and well-earned position within Potions scholarship, and that you've cultivated a great many gifted young witches and wizards across your long career. But—"
He paused again, his expression shifting into something apologetic. "I'll be entirely honest with you, since I think you'd prefer that to flattery. Please don't take offence at what I'm about to say—"
"Where do I fall short, then?"
Horace asked it quickly, urgency breaking visibly through the careful composure he'd been maintaining.
"The Ministry can hardly admit every retired Hogwarts professor, or every distinguished academic working in some particular magical discipline, into this facility, Horace. What they're building is meant to be a genuinely world-class sanatorium—the finest of its kind anywhere in magical Britain. Not a general retirement shelter for anyone with a long career behind them."
Bryan's expression showed real, visible apology as he said it.
"Even among the current Hogwarts staff, if I'm honest with you, I suspect only Dumbledore himself would clearly qualify under the proposed criteria. And perhaps, given certain recent events, myself."
Horace opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, several times over in rapid series, working up the nerve to ask a question he already suspected will embarrass him—before finally managing, with careful delicacy:
"Then in your view, Bryan… is there any—any avenue at all that I might reasonably pursue toward such a thing?"
"If you could perfect the Wolfsbane Potion—find a true and lasting cure, give those poor things who never chose to become werewolves their proper lives back in full—I daresay Amelia herself might send you an entire manor as a gift."
Bryan let out a chuckle at his own suggestion. His gaze drifted, with apparent idleness, toward the grandfather clock standing in the corner.
"Good heavens—it's already two o'clock. The night really does fly when the company is good."
He pressed both hands against the armrest and pushed himself up to his feet with a series of small exhales. He turned to face a rather visibly caught-off-guard Horace, who had clearly not anticipated this conversation concluding so abruptly, mid-revelation as it was.
"Thank you for your gracious hospitality this evening, Horace. Talking with you has been genuinely illuminating—more so than I'd expected, honestly."
"Oh—you're leaving, Bryan?"
Horace, startled, began fidgeting with the hem of his dressing gown.
"I'm afraid so. It's grown quite late, and I need to return to Hogwarts tonight—there's still a considerable amount of work waiting to be arranged before term properly begins."
Bryan picked up his briefcase from where he'd set it beside the armchair and extended a hand toward the still-seated Horace.
"I would love nothing more than to talk through the remainder of the night with you, Horace, truly. But I think that would be rather too taxing on a retired gentleman's reserves. So—farewell."
"My reserves aren't quite that depleted, Bryan—"
Horace seized the offered hand and shook it, his gaze were shifting between Bryan's face and the door, something uncertain and unresolved was still flickering behind his eyes.
"Very well, then. Goodbye—"
"Until we meet again, Horace—"
Bryan smiled faintly, turned, and walked slowly out of the parlour.
Horace stood fixed to the spot for a moment after Bryan's departure from the room.
In his small grey-green eyes, a struggling, indecisive light flickered and wavered, caught between two competing impulses. He watched his late-night visitor make his way unsteadily or so it appeared out through the narrow hallway, listening as those receding footsteps grew fainter and fainter against the floorboards, until at last the distinct, final sound of the front door reached him.
"Hey—wait!"
In an instant, the fog of alcohol that had clouded Horace's mind for the better part of the past few hours lifted all at once, like mist burning away under sudden sun.
Horace sprang nimbly over the scattered wine bottles and empty sweet tins still littering the velvet rug, his earlier unsteadiness vanished without trace, and burst out of the parlour into the narrow corridor, calling out after Bryan, who was already stepping through the open front door into the night.
In the cold, clear moonlight spilling across the front garden, the young man's violet eyes held not a single trace of intoxication. He smiled back at Horace with the same courteous, perfectly composed expression.
"What is it, Horace? Is there something more you'd like to discuss? I really must be going—"
Horace couldn't quite put his finger on the exact source of the feeling, but he had suddenly, and with considerable conviction, the distinct sensation of having been played for a fool across the entire earlier hours.
He glared at Bryan from the doorway, irritation was rising fast and hot.
"You're leaving. Fine, go ahead and leave. But—" He pointed an accusing finger. "Weren't you supposed to have come here as Dumbledore's advocate?"
"Ah, yes, indeed—"
Bryan inclined his head graciously toward the man still standing in the doorway.
"But when our conversation began, you told me that you knew nothing about the matter that Dumbledore was looking in entirely the wrong direction with his suspicions. Isn't that right, Horace? That's precisely what you said to me."
"Well, of course I did!"
Horace sputtered, a fresh flush was creeping rapidly up his cheeks.
"But…. but surely, you're not just going to go straight back and report exactly that to Dumbledore?"
"I've never been one to press people who clearly don't wish to be pressed, Horace—"
Bryan said it lightly.
"I'll tell Dumbledore that you and I spoke at considerable length about Riddle's Horcrux, and that I'm quite satisfied, based on that conversation, that you genuinely know nothing about the matter. And I'll do my very best to persuade him not to trouble you with it again going forward."
He tilted his head back slightly and took a slow look at the house behind Horace—the most decent-looking building in this entire little village tucked away in the middle of nowhere.
"Not to disturb your comfortable retirement any further than this single evening already has. But truly, Horace—"
Beneath Bryan's composed voice lay a base of settled confidence.
"Returning to Hogwarts to teach is not such a terrible choice, when you actually weigh it properly against the alternative. At least so long as I remain there, Riddle and his Death Eaters will never set foot inside those walls to disturb anyone sheltering behind them—you included.
That's a considerable improvement over living out the rest of your days in fearful, isolated hiding in the back of beyond, in a Muggle cottage with a name no one will ever think to look for. Wouldn't you agree, Horace?"
In the shadows of the doorway, Horace said nothing at all.
"One more small thing, incidentally—since Hogwarts broke free of the Board of Governors' oversight and began operating with independence, the professors' salaries have gone up rather considerably—"
Bryan finished with a relaxed parting smile, turned, and stepped fully into the void of the night beyond the garden gate.
"A pay rise alone isn't going to be enough!"
Horace clattered after him across the creaking floorboards of his own front porch and shouted into the darkness after Bryan's already-retreating back.
"They'd better keep a place reserved for me at that sanatorium when it's finished—I know you have the authority to arrange that, so don't pretend otherwise!"
Bryan's genuinely amused laugh carried back through the still, cold air as he disappeared beneath the vast, starlit sky beyond the village's last scattered lights leaving Horace standing alone on his porch.
The owl bearing the letter flew north through the remainder of the night, bathed first in fading moonlight and then in the thin, grey edge of approaching dawn, soaring steadily over mountains and rivers and the vast, dark stretches of uninhabited land between them, until at last it reached that place of eternal desolation.
It seemed, in that place, as though winter's last snow had only just finished melting away as though the black, exhausted earth had only just lifted its face long enough to breathe in a few mouthfuls of fresh, thin air—when the dim and indifferent sky began, once again, to let fall its first scattered silver-white flakes of a new season's snow.
The bitter wind shrieked across the open ground like the dying cries of countless restless dead, circling endlessly, mournfully, around the cursed black tower that rose alone from the frozen landscape.
The owl spiralled around the tower's height several times, navigating by some instinct toward the single lit window near its peak, then dove and flew in through the highest opening, landing in an exhausted, ungraceful heap on the desk below it, its small was chest heaving with the effort of the long flight.
…..
The old man sitting at the edge of the narrow bed nearby had his hair tangled and shot through with streaks of white, his eyes filmed over with the milky, opaque cloud of cataracts that had clearly been growing for years—he was reading a newspaper by the dim light of a single candle.
He noticed the owl's arrival. The faint movement at the edge of his clouded vision registered, somewhere behind those filmed eyes. But he did not look up from the page in front of him. He went on reading, slowly.
BRYAN WATSON SOUNDS THE TRUMPET OF REFORM!
The headline article beneath it seemed unusually dense and convoluted. It took the old man the better part of half an hour, working through it line by line, before he finally turned to the second page.
The photograph there was familiar to him already—that same young man, standing composed and entirely unbothered at the centre of a packed square of sun-scorched earth, surrounded on all sides by a crowd of witches and wizards dressed in their finery, every face in the crowd was turned toward him.
A GREAT VICTORY!
Then the third page, turned with the same slowness:
DESTRUCTION OR REBIRTH?
Accompanied by a photograph of Bryan Watson in the act of signing his name to an agreement.
The fourth page:
THE MINISTRY! THE MINISTRY!
The article beneath that headline read, in part:
'After centuries of spectacular inertia, the Ministry of Magic has finally seen fit to make some genuine contribution to the lives of British witches and wizards.'
This particular line was attributed, in the article's own wording, to Rita Skeeter, the paper's well-known current-affairs correspondent, who had offered it during an interview when asked specifically for her thoughts on the Ministry's upcoming welfare policy implementation.
The article went on to note that numerous prominent figures throughout the magical world had already publicly expressed their support for the measure, several of them were quoted by name.
Fifth page:
THE LEGENDARY CAREER OF BRYAN WATSON
The usual recounting of Bryan's accumulated exploits, trotted out once more for fresh circulation in light of the day's events. The photograph chosen to accompany it this time was from the Battle of Diagon Alley itself: Bryan transformed, in that frozen instant, into something that looked very much like a giant sun blazing up into the sky above the ruined Alley.
He flipped through a few more pages—cursorily, as if he'd already seen enough. Every page of the entire newspaper carried some photograph of the same man: those sharp steady, settled gaze.
The wrinkles on the old man's old face seemed to grow a little deeper.
As though he had lost all further interest in the paper, he folded it carefully into a neat rectangle, rose from the edge of the bed to his feet, and shuffled across the room toward the opposite wall where he placed the folded newspaper on top of an already towering stack of identical papers piled there.
Kreee—
The owl, having made its long journey over mountains and rivers, had recovered a little of its strength. It ruffled its wings and stood up, its brown eyes were fixed on the old man still standing with his back to the room, staring at the wall.
The old man turned, slowly, to look at the owl—at the letter tied to its leg—and stood in silence for a long while.
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