"That is your name, Muguet," the bearded old wizard said excitedly. "It is also our family's affectionate nickname for you."
Roger looked at him with an awkward expression. The portraits all seemed overjoyed that the Travis bloodline had continued, but being called by some old family pet name within five minutes of entering a ruined manor felt deeply uncomfortable. "It sounds French," he muttered. "Just call me Roger."
"All right, Muguet… Roger," Torquil said, correcting himself with visible effort. He stared at Roger with delight, as though the boy's existence had restored half the colour to the gloomy hall. "Child, tell us. What is the wizarding world like now?"
"Quite peaceful," Roger said. He waved his wand, and the fallen portraits floated back to their proper places on the walls. "Voldemort is dead, and Headmaster Dumbledore is busy knitting at Hogwarts."
"Damn it," Torquil snapped at once. "Then the Travis family has no chance of recovering."
"Why do you say that, Grandfather Torquil?" Roger asked, frowning slightly.
"Roger, it is my fault that all of you were ruined," Torquil said, his painted face twisting with grief. He began telling the story at once, and because the old man had clearly not had anyone new to talk to in years, his explanation stretched into a long historical lecture.
"Back then, a dark wizard appeared in the European wizarding world. His name was Gellert Grindelwald," Torquil said, raising his chin with old pride and old bitterness tangled together. "I led the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and forced Dumbledore to deal with his former flame. After my death, the Travis family declined, and that must have been Dumbledore's revenge."
Torquil's voice grew heavier. "Later, under Voldemort's influence, several family descendants became Death Eaters. Now only you and Buck remain. Do you understand? The family fell step by step because I offended the wrong man."
"No," Roger said after a moment. He doubted Torquil's conclusion very much. With Dumbledore's power, if he had truly wanted to act against the Travis family, the family would have faced annihilation long ago.
"Damn you, Torquil!" the other portraits roared almost in unison. "So it was you who nearly destroyed our entire family!"
The portraits surged toward him within their frames, shouting and striking at Torquil from every side. Torquil yelped, begged for mercy, and repeatedly pleaded with them to show restraint in front of the child. The child in question watched calmly, having no intention of interrupting his ancestors' long-overdue internal settlement.
"Roger, where are you staying now?" Granny Anne asked after the commotion finally settled a little.
"I live in London with my mother," Roger replied.
"London?" Granny Anne's painted brows drew together. "No wonder Jessica came by the other day and took Bubble with her. That woman, hmph…"
She clearly disliked Jessica, but for Roger's sake, she did not say much more. The other portraits exchanged looks, but none of them seemed brave enough to continue that topic in front of the family's only young heir.
"I brought back a large number of books, and my house in London cannot hold them all," Roger explained. "So I came here to take a look."
His head ached as he glanced around the messy manor. With this ruined environment and a hall full of nagging elders, he suddenly understood why Jessica had no desire to move back and live here.
"I am sorry, child," Granny Anne said helplessly. "As you can see, the Ministry of Magic made a complete mess of our manor. If not for Torquil, they might have burned the place down with Fiendfyre."
Roger could hear the anxiety and sadness in her voice. This manor had once been glorious, and seeing it reduced to a hollow shell was undoubtedly a heavy blow to the portraits who had guarded its memory for so long.
"After that, many dark wizards came to steal what remained," Torquil added bitterly. "Especially Mundungus Fletcher. That damned thief came several times and stole everything of value from the manor."
The portraits erupted into curses again, but their anger was powerless. Trapped inside their frames, they could do nothing except watch as the family's history was stripped away piece by piece.
"The manor is missing too many things, so Reparo alone cannot fully restore it," Torquil said. "If you want to store books here, the entire estate must be renovated first. To avoid damaging the honour of the Travis family, it will cost at least one million Galleons."
"How much?" Roger's eyes widened. "One million?"
"Yes, and that is only the most basic cost," the bearded wizard added solemnly. "That would merely make the manor look presentable. A proper pure-blood manor still requires ancient and magnificent collections for decoration. They are indispensable to maintaining the dignity of the family."
"Stop, stop, stop," Roger said quickly.
He swallowed hard, feeling for the first time how expensive pure-blood honour could be. No wonder the Weasley family had not bothered pursuing this kind of grandeur. Poverty might be embarrassing, but trying to maintain an ancient family's dignity sounded like financial suicide.
"I am only looking for a warehouse to store books," Roger said. "We can talk about repairing the manor later."
Ignoring the portraits' endless chatter, he raised his wand and cast Reparo. Toppled furniture, broken railings, and the fallen gate of the main building quickly pulled themselves back into their original shapes. The result was still empty and looked faintly as though the whole house had been chewed by dogs, but at least it was barely usable.
"Let's clear out the unnecessary furniture first," Roger said.
He waved his wand, and anything too damaged or useless was swept aside. Next, he carefully began creating a suitable storage environment for the books. He layered dustproofing, insect-repelling, waterproofing, and fireproofing spells throughout the hall, then added temperature-control charms to keep the whole building stable.
"Roger, spellbooks contain magic," Torquil reminded him. "They do not need such a strict environment."
"Grandfather Torquil, I am not storing spellbooks here," Roger replied.
He opened one of the expanded cases, and tens of thousands of books flew out at once. They fluttered through the air in waves, some bound in ornate covers with gold patterns, others wrapped in worn leather that looked ready to fall apart. Together, they represented the accumulation of human knowledge across many eras, and this was only a small portion.
"Roger, are you insane?" the portraits roared. "Those are Muggle books! Throw them out!"
"I already said they were not magical books," Roger replied calmly.
He paid them no attention. The books remaining in the warehouse outside Moscow had not even all been moved yet. This was only the first delivery, and the manor would have to learn patience whether it liked it or not.
The books began stacking from floor to ceiling in neat rows and columns. Literature, mathematics, architecture, art, history, medicine, astronomy, engineering, and countless other subjects spread through the hall in a flood of paper and ink. The more the piles grew, the quieter the portraits became.
"You pure-blood traitor," Granny Anne shouted, though her voice had begun to lose confidence. "Do not defile the family manor with these things."
"Foundations of Classical Medicine, Kepler's Laws, Linear Algebra…" one portrait murmured as he read several English titles flying past him. Surprise replaced anger on his face, because he had clearly never imagined the Muggle world could contain knowledge so broad and intricate.
The enormous living room was soon filled with a sea of books. They rose layer by layer like a flood, swallowing empty space and burying the manor's old silence beneath a magnificent ocean of words. Even the portraits who hated Muggles could not stop staring.
"Stop," several portraits cried when they saw the hall slowly disappear beneath the growing stacks. Their painted faces turned pale, and their outrage had shifted into something closer to horror.
"This is only the beginning," Roger said calmly.
He instructed Bubble to bring over the rest. The main hall of Travis Manor covered around two thousand square metres, and with its three-storey height, it could store nearly three million books if arranged carefully. That would make it a decent private library, but Roger had brought back far more than that.
Thirty million books required at least one hundred and fifty thousand cubic metres of space. Compared with that, the seemingly enormous hall suddenly felt pitifully small.
So Roger simply knocked down several walls. He demolished the useless staircase and unused bedrooms without hesitation, reasoning that if the whole manor would need reconstruction someday anyway, a little additional damage did not matter.
"Stop, child!" Torquil pleaded, his eyes filled with despair.
Roger did not stop.
One day later, every building in the manor was filled with books. Whenever the elders in the portraits opened their eyes, they found themselves surrounded by impenetrable mountains of paper. Most of the books were in Russian, but the sheer number alone was enough to dazzle and overwhelm them.
"Perhaps there will be more books here in the future," Roger said with a smile.
That final sentence became the last straw. The ancestors who had spent their lives clinging to pure-blood ideology stared blankly at the endless walls of books, because Roger had told them this was merely the collection of a single library from one Eastern European country.
The books from one country and one library were enough to amaze their entire world. That vast ocean of knowledge far exceeded their imagination, and even if every book in the wizarding world were gathered together, it might not amount to half of what stood before them now.
Faced with that unimaginable sea of books, they could no longer speak a word of doubt. Perhaps the Muggle world truly did hide astonishing secrets waiting for wizards to explore and learn. Perhaps living knowledge, rather than bloodline alone, was the true treasure the family needed to pass down.
The two-week Christmas holiday was short but fulfilling, and Roger regretted not being able to see who had won the prizes at Shadow Golem House. He waved goodbye to Jessica at King's Cross Station, carrying a bag that contained Nagini and a suitcase filled with dark magic texts related to the Maledictus curse.
In the train corridor, young wizards ran everywhere with their magical instant cameras, snapping photos without pause. The crisp clicks rang through the carriages again and again, followed by delighted laughter as pictures developed in their hands.
"That sounds wonderful," Roger said with a laugh as he sat in his compartment.
To him, the sound of the camera shutter was the crisp, pleasant clinking of a cash register. The magical instant camera had become a tremendous success in the British wizarding world, utterly defeating old-fashioned magical cameras.
Except for a few extremely conservative wizards, almost no one bought the older models anymore. After all, the basic Shadow Golem House kit cost only nine Galleons and nine Sickles, and there was a monthly photography contest with a grand prize of one hundred Galleons for the winner.
Which wizard would not want one?
.....
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