TICK—TICK—TICK.

The room was deathly quiet. The only sound breaking that terrible stillness was the slow, rhythmic drip of blood falling from the shattered wall to the floor below.

Drip—Drip—Drip.

Bryan slowly withdrew his hand from where it had been pressed against Dawlish’s face.

Dawlish, robbed of all support, his body suddenly freed from the crushing force that had held him pinned, slid down the wall like a broken puppet. He crumpled to the floor with a hollow crash that made everyone flinch.

GULP—

Harry swallowed hard, his throat was clicking audibly in the silence.

When Professor Watson turned around to face them all, the complete blankness on his face—that cold, incomprehensible calm that looked as if nothing at all had just happened—sent a chill racing down Harry’s spine.

“Bryan!” Moody erupted, his gravelly voice was filled with shock and controlled rage.

“Dumbledore sent us here specifically to stop you from going on a killing spree! What good does killing Dawlish do any of us? You’ve only made things more complicated!”

Bryan glanced down at Dawlish’s crumpled body sprawled on the floor the way one might look at a piece of discarded rubbish. He shook the blood from his hand with a casual flick, spattering drops across the floor, and said with perfect, unsettling calm:

“He’s not dead.”

Of course, Bryan wouldn’t kill Dawlish. Not yet, at least. Not now. If he did, certain matters would have no one left to answer for them when the time came—dead men tell no tales, and Bryan needed Dawlish alive to face consequences.

That Dawlish was still breathing, still alive despite his injuries, was cause for relief—for everyone present in that devastated room, Harry included.

And yet somehow the oppressive mood did not lighten at all with that revelation.

The Ministry Aurors who remained standing—those who hadn’t been thrown across the room by the initial blast stared at Bryan Watson with wide eyes. A tide of helplessness and primal terror was roaring inside each of them, trying to overwhelm their training and discipline.

“Unless you can produce concrete evidence that Harry Potter committed murder—”

Bryan’s tone softened slightly as he turned to address the remaining Aurors directly, his voice was losing some of its edge. These were people following orders from above, not the architects of this conspiracy. He had no particular quarrel with them personally.

“—I’m afraid I cannot permit you to take Harry Potter from this house.”

There was only silence from the Aurors in response.

If left to their own instincts and survival drives, every single one of them would have bolted from Bryan Watson’s presence on the spot, would have run from this house and never looked back. But the Minister’s direct orders held them in an agonizing deadlock.

Harry opened his mouth—he wanted to say something, anything, to break the terrible tension but at that precise moment a silver lynx dropped gracefully through the ceiling as though it were water and landed directly in front of him.

A Patronus.

Harry recognized it immediately. He’d seen Professor Dumbledore’s magnificent silver phoenix and Professor Watson’s serpent Patronus before.

The sight of Dawlish lying there, alive but barely conscious and injured, made the silver lynx pause for just a moment. The blood on Bryan’s hand and the shattered wall told Kingsley roughly what had transpired in this house. He chose not to comment on it.

The lynx turned to face the Aurors who had been struck mute in Bryan’s overwhelming presence. Its voice rang out—clear, resonant, and slow, each word was perfectly articulated.

“Ten minutes ago, Albus Dumbledore reached an agreement with the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge. Harry Potter is to be placed under house restriction at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place until his official hearing, scheduled for the twentieth of July. The apprehension order has been cancelled. All Aurors are ordered to return to the Ministry immediately.”

A long, collective exhale of relief swept through the ruined room like wind through grass. Several Aurors looked as though they might simply collapse on the spot from the release of tension.

“Bryan—” The lynx turned its shimmering head to face him.

“Albus asked me to pass on a personal message. He’s waiting for you at Sirius’s Black Manor. He’d like to speak with you as soon as possible.”

Bryan considered this for a moment, his expression was incomprehensible, then gave a single, curt nod of acknowledgment.

CRACK—

With a soft burst of silver light that briefly lit the entire room, the lynx Patronus vanished like a smoke dispersing.

“Well then, let’s get out of here, shall we!” Moody barked at the Ministry Aurors, his voice was like a thunderclap breaking the spell.

“Move yourselves! Because I can’t guarantee St. Mungo’s has enough beds for the lot of you if you linger!”

And so, the Aurors who had swept into this house not even an hour ago with such swaggering authority and overwhelming force—now hauled the half-dead Dawlish between them, supporting his limp body, and beat a hasty, utterly undignified retreat from the Dursley home like soldiers fleeing a battlefield.

The heavy, suffocating atmosphere in the room didn’t lift much with their departure. But at least the murderous edge, that sense of imminent violence, had gone out of the air.

Remus wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with a hand and managed a tired, wry smile.

“For a moment there I really thought you’d killed him, Bryan—”

“Frankly, I don’t see what would’ve been wrong with that!” Sirius stuck out his chin defiantly, his grey eyes were flashing.

“At the very least it would’ve put Fudge firmly in his place—warned him not to pull dangerous stunts like this again!”

“I agree completely!” Tonks grinned brightly.

“And then we could’ve sent both Bryan and Harry straight to Azkaban for murder. Perfect plan.”

It was clearly a joke, an attempt to lighten the mood. Not a single person laughed or even smiled.

Amelia crossed the room to Bryan’s side in a few quick, decisive steps, her face was creased with deep worry and concern.

“We’re all completely in the dark here, Bryan. None of us understand what’s happening. Remus and I were about to leave for work when Sirius came bursting back and told us—the Minister held a press conference this morning about the Azkaban breakout, and he announced that the reason the Auror Office was caught off-guard and unprepared was because they’d been tied up investigating a murder case in London. And that they’d already obtained critical evidence. That the prime suspect is…”

Amelia looked toward Harry, trailing off. Her brown eyes were shadowed with concern.

“Absolute rubbish!” Harry hadn’t even had the chance to defend himself, to open his mouth, before Sirius was already shouting in outrage.

“I’ve never heard a single word about the Ministry investigating any murder! This is completely fabricated!”

“It’s too soon to jump to conclusions, Sirius!” Moody said in his typical growl, his magical eye were spinning.

“We need facts, not emotions.”

“Oh, but surely it can’t be—?” Dedalus Diggle adjusted his outlandish purple top hat nervously and yelped with dramatic horror.

“You don’t actually believe Harry Potter is capable of murder, do you, Alastor?!”

Harry found he didn’t need to say much in his own defense at all, which was both comforting and strange.

Nearly everyone Sirius had brought with him through the fireplace had already concluded, without hesitation or doubt, that he’d been framed by the Ministry.

And most of these people he’d barely met—some he’d never spoken to before—yet they believed in him without question. Harry felt a sudden warmth move through his chest, pushing back the fear.

“But the Ministry must have something!” Moody insisted.

Moody was the lone dissenting voice in the room. Both his eyes—the magical one spinning wildly and the real one fixed and steady were focused on Harry in what could only be described as a menacing glare.

“Fudge wouldn’t make this kind of aggressive move unless he had something substantial to stand on. Unless, of course, he’s perfectly happy proving himself a laughingstock to the entire wizarding world and destroying what’s left of his credibility.”

He thumped his staff hard on the floor and gave Harry a sharp stare. “Come on then, boy—you’ve been getting into some mischief on the sly, haven’t you, and it’s finally caught up with you?”

“I haven’t, Professor Moody—I haven’t done anything wrong!” Harry protested heatedly.

“And don’t call me professor—I never got much of a chance at the actual teaching part!” Moody roared back, even louder than Harry.

“Alastor—” Remus sighed, his tone was reproachful and weary.

He glanced at Harry, and something flickered briefly in his amber eyes—hesitation, perhaps, or uncertainty but in the end he didn’t press Harry with any uncomfortable questions. Instead, he looked back toward Bryan with concern.

“I can’t understand how Fudge could be this reckless, this foolish,” he said slowly. “The Ministry knew Harry was here at the Dursleys’, which means they must have known you were here too, Bryan. Did Fudge genuinely believe his Aurors could walk Harry out from under your nose? What was he thinking?”

“Fudge likely didn’t know I was here specifically—” Bryan said calmly, his voice was returning to its normal pleasant tone.

“He probably tracked Harry down using standard procedures because Harry still has an active Trace on him from the Ministry.”

“What’s a Trace?” Harry asked, his brow was furrowing in confusion.

He didn’t know the term at all, but judging by the immediate recognition on the faces around him, Bryan’s explanation had clearly satisfied everyone else in the room.

“Ask Hermione when you see her, Harry,” Bryan said with a small smile.

Bryan said. He cast his pale gaze around the wreckage of the room—the shattered dishes, the cracked walls, the splintered floorboards, the overturned furniture, the blood staining the wood.

SNAP

A clean, sharp click of his fingers echoed through the space. Instantly, the shattered dishes reassembled themselves piece by piece, the cracked walls and splintered floorboards knit back together seamlessly, the furniture righted itself and rectified its position, and in mere moments the entire room was restored completely, as though time itself had run backwards and erased all the violence.

The Dursleys, forgotten entirely in all the chaos and confrontation, had been huddled in the corner of the dining room the whole time, watching everything with wide, stunned eyes that had barely blinked. They only came back to themselves, only seemed to remember they existed, when Bryan’s shadow fell over them where they cowered.

As it did, they began to tremble violently.

They stared up at him in naked, primal terror even Uncle Vernon was trembling head to toe, his massive body was shaking because just minutes ago, this young man had nearly killed someone right in front of them, had buried a man’s head in their wall.

“Y-you—you… I—I—I—”

Vernon Dursley’s teeth were chattering too hard for him to form a clear sentence. He raised one shaking hand in front of his wife in an instinctive shaking shield.

“I apologize for the disturbance—” Bryan said.

He clicked his fingers once more and a small drawstring pouch appeared in mid-air and dropped into his palm with a muffled jingle of coins.

“This is some gold. I hope it goes some way toward compensating you for your trouble.”

The trembling stopped immediately.

Bryan set the coin pouch directly in Vernon Dursley’s thick arms and dismissed them from his attention, turning away. He walked back across the restored room to Harry.

“Would you mind helping Harry pack his things?” Bryan asked the Order members.

“I’ll take him on ahead to Grimmauld Place.”

He rested a gentle hand on Harry’s shoulder, the same hand that had just crushed Dawlish into a wall.

With a soft crack like breaking wood, the two of them disappeared from sight, leaving the others behind in the ordinary suburban house.

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