Maurise was just about to continue his story when he suddenly felt the atmosphere in the room shift.
Everyone's gaze uniformly snapped in the exact same direction. The entrance of the Great Hall.
Ron Weasley had just walked in.
He looked completely out of it. He had heavy, dark circles under his eyes, looking as though he had not slept properly in days, and radiated a gloomy, defeated aura.
Upon noticing the staring eyes of everyone around him, he froze entirely in his tracks.
"Wh... what is it?" he stammered nervously.
"We all know," a Gryffindor student stepped forward and patted Ron sympathetically on the shoulder. "Do not be too upset. Who could have possibly guessed that a rat was actually a fully grown man in disguise?"
"Oh. Thanks," Ron replied weakly.
"Let him be," Maurise told the students crowded around him. "I highly doubt Ron wants to talk about this particular topic."
---
The following day, Maurise was once again notified by a professor to head to Dumbledore's office.
However, when he arrived, he found that Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen. In his place stood a rather familiar figure.
Sirius Black.
The Sirius standing before him was a complete contrast to the man he had encountered before. He was wearing a set of clean, neat dark robes. While his hair was still quite long, it had clearly been washed and brushed, no longer tangled in a chaotic, matted mess.
At the very least, he looked like a proper human being now.
Maurise offered a completely natural greeting. "Hello. Where is Professor Dumbledore?"
Sirius turned around, visibly pausing for a second the moment he saw Maurise's face.
He was just about to answer when, suddenly, a burst of golden flames materialized out of thin air in the center of the office. Fawkes and Dumbledore appeared simultaneously from within the fire.
A trace of weariness lingered in Dumbledore's eyes, and his expression was incredibly stern.
"Ah, Maurise, you are here," he said, his voice noticeably deeper than usual.
Maurise felt a faint sense of unease. "Professor, why did you call for me?"
"Sirius wished to thank you personally," Dumbledore explained. "For helping him capture Peter Pettigrew."
Sirius stepped forward with a warm smile on his face. "Perhaps I should reintroduce myself. I am Sirius Black, but please, just call me Sirius. I owe you a great debt."
He extended his hand in a surprisingly sincere gesture.
Maurise shook his hand, responding briefly. "I am Maurise Black."
He had literally just hunted the man down and tied him up a few days ago. It was actually a bit awkward.
"Black?" A flicker of surprise flashed through Sirius's eyes.
"It is not a particularly rare surname in the Muggle world," Maurise clarified.
"I see." Sirius's tense face relaxed slightly. He had been worried some complicated distant relative drama was about to unfold.
At that moment, Dumbledore interrupted their exchange, his tone utterly serious. "I am afraid I have some bad news."
Maurise looked up and joked casually. "What is it? Do not tell me Peter managed to escape."
The office fell dead silent for a heavy second.
Dumbledore looked at him, his expression deeply complicated. "It seems your information is even better than mine."
Huh?
Maurise swore he had just been making a completely random guess.
"What do you mean!?" Hearing this, Sirius's voice instantly grew strained. "Peter actually escaped?"
"Yes," Dumbledore replied heavily. "Assuming Cornelius was not playing a cruel joke."
"How could this happen?" Sirius demanded in sheer disbelief. "Can the Ministry of Magic not even keep an eye on a single prisoner? Did someone break him out? Who rescued him?"
He was absolutely frantic. Even though he had been cleared of all charges, ensuring Peter faced justice was his ultimate goal.
"Calm down, Sirius," Dumbledore's voice carried a soothing tone. "Peter escaped while in transit to Azkaban. No one assisted him. He managed it entirely on his own."
"Did he use his Animagus form?" Maurise asked.
But that did not make any sense. The Ministry was fully aware that Peter was an Animagus. They should have implemented strict countermeasures to prevent exactly that.
Dumbledore shook his head. "It was not his Animagus form either. According to the Aurors on the scene, Peter simply vanished from his cage. When he reappeared, he was over a hundred feet away and even managed to snatch a Ministry official's wand in the process. The Aurors failed to catch him. The only thing left at the scene was this."
He extended his hand and opened his palm, revealing a dull, grayish cobblestone.
"What is that?" Sirius asked anxiously.
Dumbledore did not answer him. He merely looked directly at Maurise. "Maurise, do you happen to know anything about this?"
Maurise immediately felt a profound wave of awkwardness wash over him. He knew exactly how Peter had managed to slip away.
Because the object resting in Dumbledore's hand was none other than one of his own inventions. A Shadow Stone.
He had sold quite a few of those stones recently. Peter had likely pickpocketed it from some careless student. The fact that the Ministry had not thoroughly searched their prisoner before transport was a stunning display of incompetence.
"Well..." Maurise scratched his head guiltily. "That is a Shadow Stone."
Although he had never sold them openly, asking just a handful of students would easily trace the product right back to him. Word of mouth was an incredibly effective marketing strategy, after all.
"A Shadow Stone?" Sirius frowned deeply. "What on earth is that?"
"Allow me to demonstrate."
Maurise took the dull cobblestone from Dumbledore's hand, tossing it lightly to gauge its weight.
"It allows a person to temporarily slip into the shadows. I imagine it must have been quite a cloudy day when they were transporting Peter."
He stepped into a dark corner of the office where the sunlight did not reach and vanished instantly. Ten seconds later, he materialized exactly where he had stood.
"Do you understand now?" Maurise spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "This was the exact tool Peter used to escape."
Dumbledore rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking even more exhausted than he had just moments ago.
"Why would Peter be in possession of such an item?" he asked.
Maurise shrugged. "He must have stolen it. I have sold quite a few of those Shadow Stones to the students here."
Sirius stared at him in utter disbelief. How could anyone just casually sell something so incredibly dangerous to children?
Dumbledore took the stone back from Maurise, examining it thoughtfully. "I have never encountered a magical artifact quite like this before. Did you make this yourself?"
Maurise replied smoothly, "I learned the concept from a book."
It was a perfectly flawless excuse. The Book of the Magi was still a book, after all.
"It must be a remarkably ancient text." Dumbledore sighed softly. "Please stop selling these, Maurise. At the very least, do not distribute them to the students anymore."
What exactly would students do with a stone that granted temporary invisibility? It was not difficult to guess. The nighttime rule breaking rate at Hogwarts had likely skyrocketed to unprecedented levels recently.
"Understood." Maurise nodded obediently. The school market was practically saturated anyway. Giving it up was no major loss.
As the conversation drifted further away from the main issue, Sirius finally could not hold back anymore. "So what exactly do we do now? We have to catch Peter!"
His voice trembled with uncontrollable anxiety.
"Of course," Dumbledore replied calmly. "The Ministry of Magic will be dedicating all their resources to tracking him down."
The Ministry of Magic?
"Is there a phrase on earth less comforting than that?" Sirius groaned, burying his face in his hands.
It looked like he was going to have to hunt the rat down himself all over again.