Beneath the swaying willow branches, trailing thin and gold-edged in the last of the evening light, the two old men had fallen silent, and the mood between them had turned stiff.
After the destruction of the Resurrection Stone ring Slytherin had left behind, there couldn't be many Horcruxes left in the world, by any reasonable count.
But this was not a matter that could tolerate the slightest margin of error.
Aside from Nagini and Harry, who stayed close by Voldemort's side—did any other Horcrux exist out there?
And if one did, was it one, or was it two? The difference mattered enormously.
If none did—Dumbledore stirred his silvery brows, turning the thought over slowly.
Then the situation would be far simpler than it currently stood. Add Bryan to the calculation, and he'd even dare, in his most private moments, to hope he could bring this whole sorry business to an end before Christmas came round again.
But the crux of it was that Horace had never once been willing to give them this one crucial piece of information.
Dumbledore sighed privately, a few times over, and looked toward his old colleague. But at the sight of Horace's expression in that moment, something flickered in his own eyes.
Beneath the blood-red glow of the dying sun, painting both their faces in warm colour, Horace's face carried a trace of sorrow, unguarded for once.
He was gazing out across the lawn, and judging by the angle of his eyes, it seemed he was looking at Harry, tracking him among the scattered students.
Behind the crooked half-moon spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, Dumbledore's deep blue eyes sharpened with sudden focus, cataloguing the detail.
Horace was no cold-blooded, heartless wizard, whatever his other faults ran to. He was, without a doubt, feeling genuine guilt.
So many people had died at Voldemort's hands over the years, Lily among them—Harry's mother, who had been, by Horace's own frequent and fond admission, his favourite student of all in decades of teaching.
And yet Voldemort, by possessing his Horcruxes had always managed to slip free of the punishment he deserved.
For that alone, Dumbledore suspected, Horace must have been suffering privately for years.
But the trouble, the real trouble, was that Horace was not a brave wizard. He was afraid to face his own mistakes, and afraid, more than that, of what retribution might follow if he ever did.
So then—perhaps—
In the midst of these turning thoughts, something stirred at Dumbledore's brow, a fresh idea was taking shape. He looked up, drawn by motion, toward the young figure now making its way over along the path.
"Ah, Bryan—"
"What?"
Still sunk in sorrow and self-reproach, Horace came back to himself with a small twitch, and then he, too, spotted Bryan, who was strolling across the grounds, cheerfully answering the students' questions along the way, pausing here and there for a word or a wave.
"Ha!"
Horace's gloomy expression brightened at once, the whole weight of it was lifting off his face. "Well, would you look at this—Slytherin's most outstanding young wizard, home to Hogwarts once again with his glorious achievements trailing along behind him!"
"Ha, your opinion of me doesn't much match the latest issue of Witch Weekly, Horace—" Bryan laughed as he approached. "According to them, I'm probably the most destructive wizard the British wizarding world has seen in a thousand years. They've even revoked my 'Most Charming Smile' award, if you can believe it."
"Oh, pay them no mind, Bryan!" Horace had evidently seen that hatchet job of an article too, and he said it now with real, sputtering indignation, his whole face was going red with it. "Absolute rubbish, every last word of it. I'd wager whoever wrote that drivel had one too many cups of cheap mead before putting quill to parchment."
Dumbledore pressed his lips together as well, amused, and it was then, in that moment of laughter, that he noticed the fresh weariness sitting between Bryan's brows.
What had happened? Had Bryan been in some kind of fight, out there wherever he'd been?
A flicker passed through Dumbledore's eyes at the thought; he could sense just how heavily Bryan's magic had been drained recently.
He said nothing of it, though only met the light, casual glance of inquiry Bryan sent his way with a look that carried a meaning all its own.
Ah, I see—
Bryan understood at once, reading the exchange, what the two of them had likely been discussing before he'd arrived.
"Speaking of cheap mead—" Bryan let out a theatrical sigh, rubbing at the back of his neck. "If it's not too much trouble, I really could use a glass myself. You have no idea how far I've come today, one way and another."
"Why ever not!" Horace said, delighted, plainly relieved to drop the heavier subject with Dumbledore and move on to something more comfortable. "I've got a bottle in my office, as it happens. Oh—a lovely oak-aged mead, aged a full dozen years if it's a day!"
"I wonder whether I might have the honour of sampling your private collection myself, Horace?" Dumbledore asked, his interest evidently genuine, some of the earlier tension was already easing from his shoulders.
"Don't be silly, Albus, of course you're coming too—" Horace waved him along with a broad, generous gesture. "Just so long as you don't bring up any more unpleasant topics up there. I'll not have my good mead spoiled by gloomy talk."
The sun had already sunk below the mountains by the time the three of them set off together, only its last light was still lingering. Looking out into the distance, the far-off peaks seemed to glow faintly red at their edges, as if lit from somewhere deep within the rock itself.
Inside the Great Hall, glimpsed through the tall windows as they passed, a thousand candles had already been lit and were floating in their usual slow drift above the tables.
The stars had not yet come fully into their brilliance overhead—what the enchanted ceiling showed instead, for now, was a dim, transitional sky streaked through with a few last drifting clouds.
From the entrance hall came a sudden burst of startled cries from the students gathered there—it was Hagrid's brother Grawp, evidently, barrelling eagerly toward the Hall with his usual lack of concern for anyone in his path.
Bryan, Dumbledore, and Horace didn't go in themselves, even with the crowd already gathering thick near the doors. Instead, under the curious stares of more than a few students who clearly wondered what business had the three of them together, they waited patiently for Grawp to make his lumbering way down before heading up the entrance-hall stairs in the opposite direction.
Professor Slughorn's office was on the sixth floor, tucked away from the more heavily trafficked corridors.
Compared to an ordinary office, it looked rather more like the top-floor suite Bryan had once stayed in—a hotel occupying the Twin Towers, back when he'd been on business in New York.
"Well, now—this is really something."
It was the first time Bryan had ever set foot in Horace's office.
Stepping onto the sumptuous velvet carpet, sinking slightly with each footstep, he looked around with genuine, curious interest—the private balcony overlooking the mountains beyond, the grand fireplace already crackling low, the sheer variety of luxurious furnishings crowded comfortably into every corner of the room.
"Ah, I'm not like you, Bryan. I'm getting on in years now—it's about time I let myself enjoy a bit of comfort, don't you think—"
Horace waved Bryan and Dumbledore toward the soft leather sofa arranged in the middle of the room, then made his way over to a tall, cabinet-like liquor stand standing beside the floor-length curtains.
As he went, he raised a finger nearly as thick as a carrot and wagged it back at Bryan, scolding gently.
"This is the one thing about you that makes me doubt you're really a Slytherin at heart, Bryan. That office of yours down there is quite famous, you know—people talk—and if you ask me, even if you're going for a look of hard-won austerity, you've rather overdone the whole business. Just look at Albus's, now, for comparison—his is the truly luxurious one."
"I must correct an error of yours there, Horace—" Dumbledore said, chuckling warmly as he settled onto the sofa. "Most of what's in the headmaster's office actually belongs to Hogwarts. Very little of it, in the end, is genuinely mine to claim."
"Oh, it's all the same in the end, surely—no one's stopping the Headmaster from carting the school's belongings back to his own private vault one piece at a time, are they, if he takes a fancy to something—"
Horace crouched down with some visible, grunting effort, his knees were not quite what they used to be, rummaging through his waist-high private liquor cabinet with both hands, and after a moment came back up, a little flushed, with a bottle of oak-aged wine held triumphantly aloft.
On his way past a side table crowded with mismatched drinkware, he picked up a few crystal glasses without breaking pace, holding them against his chest.
"So—how's that Joint Task Force of yours coming along, Bryan?" He set the glasses down on the low coffee table with a soft clink, drew his wand from an inner pocket, and pointed it at the bottle's mouth. The cork sprang free at once with a small, satisfying pop under the spell.
As he began pouring the wine into the three waiting glasses, he asked, with strong and genuine curiosity, "Going by what the Daily Prophet's been saying, it sounds as though the moment that Task Force of yours is properly up and running, every problem out there will just go ahead and solve itself!"
"Haha—well, they may be a touch too optimistic there, I'm afraid. Actually—" Bryan said with a relaxed smile, watching the golden liquid pour steadily into his glass.
His nose twitched, once, then again, without his quite meaning it to—and then the smile at the corners of his mouth stiffened, just slightly.
He let his gaze drift, seemingly by idle chance, over Horace's face—content, entirely at ease, now filling the second glass with the same care—and something in Bryan's own eyes sharpened. "Mm, this is a rich bouquet, really lovely. You must have been saving this one a good while, I'd guess?"
Dumbledore's forehead wrinkled at once, catching something in Bryan's tone He glanced toward Bryan, his own face giving nothing away in return.
What is he probing at—
"Wrong guess there, Bryan. I haven't actually had this particular one very long at all—"
Horace, utterly oblivious to the undercurrent passing between the other two men, looked over at Dumbledore instead, chuckling to himself.
"As it happens, this bottle was meant to be your Christmas present this year, Albus. But a good wine ought to be drunk at the right time, not simply left to gather dust waiting for a date on a calendar, and I can't imagine you'd mind terribly sharing your Christmas present early with Bryan here, would you—"
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