The eavesdropping charm sharpened the voices into clarity.
"...cannot in good conscience allow him to return to that shop." Weasley. Her tone had the quality of someone who had rehearsed an argument and was delivering it with more conviction than flexibility. "I co-signed that business registration, Dinah. I helped him set up the legal framework. If he'd been killed last night, that would have been on my hands."
"And pulling him back to the castle changes what, exactly?" Hecat. Calmer, but with an edge beneath it that Rowan recognised from their duelling sessions. "He was attacked because of what he is. A Muggleborn who succeeded visibly and publicly. That target doesn't vanish because he stops running a shop."
"At least inside Hogwarts he has protections. Wards that have stood for a thousand years. Staff who can—"
"Who can what? Follow him every waking hour? He's already more capable than half the staff, and you know it. What he needs is better training, better defences, and the freedom to build the life he's already building. Not to be sheltered until he's old enough for the world to hurt him properly."
Silence. Rowan could picture Weasley's face, the conflict between duty and knowledge pulling at each other.
"If he'd died, Dinah."
"He didn't die. He fought off five adult dark wizards, two of whom used Unforgivables, and he held them long enough for Clara to join the fight. And when Clara went down, his two best friends came through that workshop door and stood beside him. If you take his independence away after what all of them proved, you will break something in that boy that won't mend."
Another silence, longer than the first.
Rowan cancelled the charm.
He understood Weasley's position. She felt responsible. She'd been the one to take him to Diagon Alley, to co-sign the business papers, to approve the arrangement that put him in a shop on Carkitt Market with nothing between him and the world but his own abilities and a handful of runes carved into a doorframe. She was not wrong to feel the weight of that.
But Hecat was right.
He gave them another minute, then cleared his throat.
The whispering stopped. Footsteps, and the door opened, and Weasley and Hecat entered with the studied composure of two people who absolutely had not been arguing in a hospital corridor.
Weasley looked worse than Hecat. Her hair had come loose on one side and the circles under her eyes spoke of a sleepless night. Hecat was more contained, but the tightness around her mouth gave her away. They'd both come quickly. Travel dust still clung to Weasley's robes and Hecat's wand holster sat slightly askew, strapped on in haste.
"Mr. Ashcroft," Weasley said. Formal, defaulting to professionalism because emotions ran too high for anything else. "How are you feeling?"
"Alive. Thanks to Clara, and to Iris and Lawrence." He looked between them. "I didn't expect both of you."
"An attack on Diagon Alley doesn't stay quiet, even at midnight," Hecat said.
"The Healers told us you appeared outside the entrance just after midnight," Weasley said, and her voice cracked slightly before she caught it. "Clara was barely conscious. You weren't conscious at all. Iris and Lawrence were holding both of you upright." She stopped. Swallowed. "Clara was very brave."
"She was. They all were."
"Tell me what happened," Hecat said. "From the beginning."
Rowan told them everything. From the anti-Apparation ward to the five attackers, the barrier trap, the Killing Curses, Athena's dive, Clara joining the fight, the Cruciatus, Lawrence breaking the curse with the pipe, and the final moments before the recall spell pulled the attackers away. He kept his voice level, reporting with the precision he'd use to describe a runic array.
Halfway through, he saw Weasley glance at Hecat. A quick look, there and gone, but he caught its meaning. Listen to him. Listen to how he's talking about this. The same way she'd looked at him in first year when he'd described the orphanage without inflection. Clinical. Detached. The voice of someone who had put the human part of himself behind glass.
Weasley's face grew whiter with each detail. Hecat listened with her hands clasped and her expression carved from stone, but her knuckles were pale.
"You don't know who they were?" Hecat asked when he'd finished.
"They were hooded. One lost his hood when the barrier trap caught him, but I've never seen the face before." He paused. "They knew what they were doing. Old magic, the kind that gets passed down. They threw Killing Curses the way you'd throw a Stunner. Whoever sent them thought five would be enough to finish it."
"And they were nearly right," Weasley said quietly.
"What matters is what happens next." He looked at them both. "Has the Ministry responded?"
The silence that followed had the texture of barely restrained anger. Weasley reached into her robes, drew out a folded newspaper, and handed it to him.
The Daily Prophet. Evening edition, dated the fifteenth of August, 1888.
DIAGON ALLEY SHOP DAMAGED IN MAGICAL ACCIDENT Experimental Products Cited as Likely Cause
By Barnabas Flint, Editor
DIAGON ALLEY — A shop in Carkitt Market sustained significant damage late yesterday evening in what Ministry officials are calling a magical accident involving experimental products.
The Crucible, a recently opened establishment operated by thirteen-year-old Rowan Ashcroft — the Muggle-born orphan whose controversial appearance at last year's International Youth Duelling Championship drew widespread scrutiny — was found extensively damaged shortly after midnight. Ministry investigators arriving at the scene observed shattered display cases, structural damage to the walls and ceiling, and a hole blown clean through the roof, all consistent with what one official described as "a volatile alchemical reaction of considerable force."
"The boy has been conducting dangerous experiments in a commercial building without adequate safeguards," said a senior Ministry official who requested anonymity. "Mixing unstable alchemical compounds in a shop that shares walls with neighbouring businesses is reckless at best. It is fortunate that no one beyond his own premises was harmed."
The shop's adult employee, Mrs. Clara Goode, was found injured at the scene and has been admitted to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The nature and extent of her injuries have not been disclosed, though sources within the hospital describe her condition as "serious but stable." Two Hogwarts students, both minors, were also present in the building at the time of the incident and were treated for minor complaints.
Despite the severity of the damage, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has declined to open a formal investigation, stating that no bystanders were harmed and that the damage was confined to Mr. Ashcroft's own premises. A Ministry spokesperson confirmed that the case has been classified as closed pending any new evidence.
"This is precisely the sort of outcome one might predict when a child with no grounding in proper magical tradition is permitted to play at alchemy unsupervised," commented Silvanus Selwyn, a prominent figure among the Ancient and Most Noble Houses and well-known advocate for the preservation of established wizarding customs. "One hopes the boy has learned something about the limits of ambition untempered by breeding."
Readers may recall that Mr. Ashcroft's unusual abilities first drew public attention at last year's Paris championship, where his rapid advancement and unconventional techniques prompted concern from several members of the Wizengamot including Mr. Phineas Nigellus Black. This latest incident will do little to quiet those who have questioned whether a Muggle-born child of thirteen should be trusted with volatile magical materials and no adult oversight worthy of the name.
Rowan read it twice.
None of it made sense. The same paper had run Inkwood's interview without changing a word. They'd printed his rebuttal to Black and Malfoy and let him speak for himself. Flint had personally approved the interview, and the piece that came out of it had been fair. And now the same editor had buried an attempted murder under a headline about dangerous experiments and handed Silvanus Selwyn a platform to lecture him about breeding.
Why? The Prophet had treated him fairly when it suited them and savaged him when it suited them and Rowan could not see the pattern that connected the two. Was it Flint's own prejudice, surfacing when there was no interviewer to keep it honest? Was it pressure from outside? Was the fair interview the anomaly, or was this?
He didn't know. And the Ministry had let it stand. Declined to investigate. Classified it as closed because the damage was confined to his own premises, as though a woman being tortured with an Unforgivable was a matter of property damage rather than attempted murder.
He held the newspaper steady and kept reading, because the alternative was setting it on fire and that would accomplish nothing.
The article ran to three columns. Below it, continuing on page seven, were smaller items. Ministry appointments. A Quidditch score. An advertisement for Madame Glossop's Restorative Tonic. And near the bottom of the page, four lines that would have been invisible to anyone not reading carefully.
MISSING: Bardolph Beaumont, 24, of Upper Hogsfield, has not been seen since early August. Mr. Beaumont, a herbalist, was last seen by neighbours departing on foot toward the Forbidden Forest. His sister, Claire Beaumont, asks that anyone with information contact her at the hamlet shop in Upper Hogsfield.
Beaumont.
The name snagged on something older. He saw a duelling platform in Paris, powder-blue robes and blonde hair and lightning spells. Apolline Beaumont, who had beaten him in the finals and shaken his hand afterward. The connection was tenuous, nothing more than a shared surname. But he noted it.
Rowan set the newspaper on the bedside table. His hands were steady. The rest of him was not.
"Flint approved Inkwood's interview," he said. "He let me speak for myself. That piece was fair. So why is this one—" He stopped. Looked at Hecat. "What changed?"
Hecat didn't answer immediately. She looked at Weasley, then back at Rowan, and when she spoke her voice was careful in a way that suggested she was choosing how much to say in front of a student.
"The same thing that changed after the tournament. Someone wanted a particular story told, and Flint told it."
The implication sat between them.
"We can't prove that," Weasley said quietly.
"No," Hecat said. "We can't."
Rowan breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. The suspicion had been forming since he'd noticed the inconsistency, and Hecat had just given it a shape. Someone with money was directing the Prophet when it suited them. The fair coverage in between was what happened when no one was paying.
He couldn't prove it. But he would remember it.
"All right," he said. "I also heard your conversation in the corridor."