St Mungo's discharged him on a Tuesday. The Healers kept the bandages on his left arm and gave him a pouch of Nerve-Knitting Potion to take twice daily, which tasted like copper filings dissolved in vinegar and left his tongue numb for an hour afterward. The curse damage was healing slowly, the feeling returning in patches, his fingers tingling one morning and then going dead again by evening. The lead Healer said it could take weeks. Rowan didn't ask what happened if it took longer.
Lawrence had barely left the hospital. He'd slept in the chair beside Rowan's bed for two nights running, eaten whatever the Healers brought him, and spoken mostly about what needed doing next. Clara was awake but confined, the tremor in her hands persistent enough that the Healers wanted another week of observation before they'd discuss discharge. She'd sent Lawrence to Rowan's room each morning with the same instruction: "Tell me what we're doing about the shop."
Iris had gone home with her parents on the second day. She'd stood in the doorway of Rowan's room for a long time before leaving, caught between staying and being pulled away. Her mother's hand on her shoulder had been firm. Her father hadn't come in at all.
She'd pressed a folded note into Rowan's good hand. Write to me. Every day. I mean it. And then she'd turned and walked out, and Rowan had watched the empty doorway for longer than he should have.
The Flamels took him back to the shop.
What they found was worse than he'd expected. The Prophet article had called it "significant damage," which was the kind of understatement that only worked if you hadn't seen the inside. The front door hung from one hinge. Scorch marks blackened the threshold where his trap array had discharged, and beyond that the runic inscriptions on the doorframe were burned out, the Thurisaz cores dead and dark. Inside, the display cases were shattered. Glass and silver fragments covered the floor in a layer thick enough to crunch underfoot. The counter where Clara had cut ginger cake three days ago was split down the middle. The ceiling above the main room had a hole large enough to see sky through, and rainwater had pooled on the floorboards beneath it, warping the wood. Every ground floor window array was spent.
The workshop door was closed. Rowan opened it and exhaled. Weasley and Hecat had sealed the shopfront with locking charms and a Protego Totalum after the attack, and the seals had held. Nobody had been inside. The athanor, the press, the transmutation station, the reagent shelves. All untouched. Lawrence's tools hung on their hooks exactly as he'd left them.
"The structure is sound," Nicholas said, running his hand along the interior wall. His fingers found the load-bearing beam and traced it upward. "The damage is dramatic but superficial. The walls and foundation haven't shifted."
"Can it be rebuilt?" Lawrence asked.
"It can be rebuilt better."
Lawrence looked at the wreckage the way he'd looked at the runic press schematics back in the Room of Requirement. His jaw set and his eyes moved across the debris with the systematic attention of someone already sorting it into categories: salvageable, repairable, gone.
"How much time do we have before September?"
"Eighteen days," Rowan said.
"Then we start now."
They started that afternoon. Nicholas and Perenelle handled the structural magic, spells that Rowan had read about but never seen performed at this scale. Perenelle cast a Stabilising Charm on the foundation that made the entire building hum for three seconds before settling into silence, and Nicholas repaired the ceiling with a Restoration Spell so precise that the new plaster matched the original down to the grain pattern. Where Rowan's Reparo would have approximated, Nicholas's magic remembered what had been there and put it back.
By evening, the structure was whole again. The walls stood, the ceiling was sealed, and the rain no longer came in. What remained was the interior, and that was where Lawrence took over.
Rowan brought up the wards on the third day. They were sitting in the workshop during a break, the noise of Lawrence's hammering filtering through the wall.
"You wrote to Vorzak before the attack. You said the door wasn't closed entirely."
Nicholas set down his tea. "I did. And it wasn't. But what I proposed was a standard commission, gold for services. Vorzak was willing to consider it personally. The problem was never Vorzak. It was the Council."
"What would it take to get past the Council?"
Nicholas and Perenelle looked at each other. The wordless communication they'd developed over five centuries passed between them in the space of a breath.
"An offer they've never seen before," Perenelle said. "Gold from the Stone. There is nothing a goblin values more, and nothing they can get from anyone else."
"Would you do that? Use the Stone?"
"We've already discussed it," Nicholas said. "Between ourselves, while you were still in hospital. We'll produce what you need. Write to Vorzak with the offer and let us worry about the quantity."
Rowan wrote the letter that evening.
To Vorzak, Master Craftsman of the Goblin Forging Guild,
I write to you on behalf of myself, with the knowledge and support of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel. Your crucibles, loaned to Nicholas, have served as the foundation of my alchemical work this past year. The quality of the craftsmanship speaks for itself.
I am aware that the Goblin Forging Guild no longer undertakes ward-crafting commissions for wizardkind, and that relations between our peoples are strained in ways that make such a request difficult. I do not ask lightly.
My shop on Carkitt Market was attacked three days ago by five dark wizards. My employee was tortured with the Cruciatus Curse. My owl was killed. The Ministry has declined to investigate. The only protections available to me through wizarding channels are inadequate against the level of threat I now face.
In exchange for the construction of the most powerful wards your guild is capable of producing over my current property at Number Four Carkitt Market, and over any future properties I acquire for the duration of my life, I am prepared to offer one hundred pounds of alchemical gold, produced by the Philosopher's Stone and verified to any standard of purity the guild requires.
I understand if this is impossible. I ask only that the offer be heard.
Respectfully,
Ashcroft
He finished the letter, sealed it, and reached for the windowsill before he remembered.
The perch was still there. Lawrence hadn't taken it down. The water dish sat empty beside it, and a single grey feather had lodged itself in the gap between the wood and the wall. Rowan stared at it for longer than he meant to. Athena would have been on his shoulder by now, nipping at the parchment, trying to read it before he'd finished writing. She'd have complained about the weight of the scroll case and then carried it anyway, because she was stubborn and proud and his.
He pulled his hand back from the sill and went downstairs to find the Flamels' eagle owl instead.
The same evening, he borrowed Clara's owl and wrote to Sophronia Inkwood.
Miss Inkwood,
You will have seen the Prophet's coverage of the incident at my shop. I assume you recognise the difference between what the article described and what actually happened, given that you have visited the premises and spoken with me directly.
I would appreciate any insight you can offer into how a story so thoroughly divorced from reality came to be published under your editor's name.
Ashcroft
Inkwood's reply arrived the next morning. It was short and carefully worded.
Mr. Ashcroft,
I did not write the article. Barnabas wrote it himself, which he rarely does unless the subject is politically sensitive or the coverage has been specifically requested.
I cannot say more in writing. What I can tell you is that the Prophet operates as a neutral paper when no one is paying for it to operate otherwise. The coverage you received from me was fair because no one had a financial interest in making it otherwise. Draw your own conclusions about what changed.
If you are planning what I think you are planning, I would very much like to be involved.
Inkwood
Rowan read it twice. Inkwood had confirmed what Hecat had sketched out in the hospital room. The attack article had been purchased. And Inkwood wanted in on whatever came next.
He filed the letter and turned his attention to the rebuild.