The photographed locket had a heavy gold chain and a green serpent across its face. Percy looked for the stone-set letter he remembered. He could not find it.
Percy stared at it across the breakfast table in the small meeting room. Beside him, Ron leaned closer to the photograph without touching it.
"That snake's got ears."
Hermione looked up from the transcription. She examined the shape, then adjusted the photograph until the light stopped reflecting off the copied image.
"Those are meant to be decorative flourishes."
"So it hasn't got ears tastefully."
Dorridge made a small mark on her own copy. Percy could not tell whether it concerned the ornament or the difficulty of conducting an investigation before Ron had finished breakfast.
McGonagall had given them an hour before lessons to examine copies of the records. Dorridge kept the originals in the evidence folder.
Harry had been offered a different seat, further from the documents. He had asked whether paper photographs could affect the fragment, received a clear answer that these had no active enchantments, and chosen his own chair.
Harry was still angry, but he passed Percy the marmalade when Percy reached for it. Percy took the jar and thanked him.
Dorridge placed a second photograph beside the first. This one showed an inventory tag, a velvet-lined box, and a ruler laid along the edge.
"Recovered last night from the address in the pumping-station papers. An appraisal office belonging to Edwin Vale, who is currently unavailable for questions."
"Unavailable how?" Harry asked. He set down the toast he had not eaten. "Missing or refusing?"
"The premises were empty. We don't yet know whether he left willingly."
Percy remembered small green stones set into a letter. He leaned closer to see the photograph, then asked whether Dorridge had a view of the hinge.
"The shape isn't what I remember," he said. He pointed to the photograph's lower edge. "That might mean my memory is wrong, or this one is different, or it's unrelated."
Dorridge asked Hermione to record those possibilities beside the intake description.
"Our examiners found concealment charms on the box," Dorridge said. She slid another sheet across the table. "They found nothing comparable inside the locket."
Ron glanced from the paper to the photograph. Then he looked at the expensive serpent with renewed suspicion.
"Someone put a disguise on an empty sandwich."
"Someone wanted the box to look more interesting than its contents," Hermione said. She read the inventory tag again. "Or less easy to dismiss."
----------------------
After breakfast, Dorridge laid out the receipts in date order. Percy moved his tea away from them and started comparing the listed weights.
Vale's office had received the locket from a storage concern called Greybank Depositories. The intake description listed a plain chain, a damaged hinge, and a weight that did not match the object in the photograph.
A later page charged for a repaired hinge and polishing. The photograph still showed grime inside the hinge. Hermione asked which examiner had checked that part.
Hermione laid the descriptions side by side. She used her own pencil to underline the changing weight.
"A replacement chain might explain some of this. It doesn't explain why the original receipt describes a fitted compartment and the appraisal calls it a portrait locket."
"Maybe he was a terrible appraiser," Ron said. He reached for the page furthest from Hermione's elbow. "People manage to be terrible at all sorts of jobs."
Dorridge almost smiled. Then Ron stopped moving the paper.
"What?" Percy asked. He followed Ron's gaze to a small rectangle beside the delivery signature. "You found something?"
"That mark. I've seen it before."
Ron searched the copied records. He found the returned-property list on his third attempt and placed it beside the receipt.
The mark appeared in the list of property returned to the rescued captives. Ada Merritt's shop used a narrow rectangular stamp with a nick missing from one corner.
"We gave her that box with her things," Ron said. He tapped the corner of the copied mark. "She said the stamp was always crooked because Jonah dropped it."
Dorridge copied the receipt number beside the damaged corner of the stamp. She checked the two impressions through a lens.
"Her shop handled packing materials," she said. She made a note on a separate sheet. "I will ask whether the stamp belongs on this receipt."
Harry looked up. His thumb had been worrying the edge of his parchment, and he pressed it flat.
"Ask her. Don't just bring her here because we've found something she might know."
"I intend to. She can decline."
Harry nodded and moved the papers back toward Dorridge.
----------------------
Ada came after lunch because she wanted the stamp explained. She arrived with Jonah, a repaired clasp on her coat, and the firm announcement that she was not entering another underground room for anyone.
"We have a table," Percy said. He pulled out a chair. "Its worst feature is paperwork."
"I've met worse tables."
Jonah stood behind her until she pointed at the chair beside her own. He sat carefully, keeping his bandaged wrist clear of the edge.
Ada studied the receipt for less than a minute. Then she pushed it back across the table.
"That's ours. The number isn't."
Dorridge asked her to explain. Ada took a pencil in her left hand and drew three short boxes on a spare sheet.
Her shop numbered packing orders by week, material, and quantity. The receipt used the right stamp with the wrong sequence, copying the appearance of an official entry without understanding what the figures meant.
"Someone stamped a blank sheet," she said. She looked at Jonah. "We had the pad in the front drawer."
Jonah swallowed before answering. His good hand flattened against his knee.
"Two men searched the drawer that morning," Jonah said. "Before the well went dark."
Dorridge asked whether he wanted to describe them now or continue later. Jonah took a breath before answering.
Jonah shook his head. He pointed at the delivery date instead.
"That says it was packed before they came. It wasn't. We closed early that day because the ceiling leaked."
Ada confirmed it. An ordinary leak from a cracked cistern, she added, with a glance at Percy that made him raise both hands.
"I wasn't involved."
"A refreshing change."
Jonah smiled briefly and looked back at the receipt. He pointed to the date again.
Dorridge asked Ada for the shop ledger that covered that week. She marked the receipt as disputed until she could compare the original entries.
A stolen stamp meant someone had manufactured a trail. It did not yet tell them where the real locket had gone, or whether the object in Vale's office had ever shared a box with it.
Ada glanced at the photograph once more. Her expression tightened around the mouth.
"I didn't pack that. But I remember a man asking for something long enough to hold a necklace without bending the chain."
"When?" Dorridge asked. She kept her quill still. "As nearly as you can remember."
"Before all this. He wanted waxed cloth as well, and he argued about whether a box could be called waterproof."
Percy looked up from the receipt. Ada noticed and gave him a dry, tired smile.
"I told him water eventually gets into most things. He didn't like that answer."
----------------------
Dorridge checked the customer's name and found no matching account. His delivery address led to Greybank's second building.
Greybank maintained a second storage building beside an old canal basin. Dorridge's team found a paid account there under the same initials used on the disputed receipt, along with a forwarding instruction written before the attack on the convoy.
The information arrived by an Auror who handed Dorridge a folded report. Percy saw her read it twice before passing the relevant section to McGonagall.
McGonagall asked the four students to leave the originals with Dorridge and return to class. The recovery team would inspect the canal building.
"I was going to suggest dinner," Ron said. He folded his arms. "Some of us have ambitions that don't involve drainage."
Percy might have laughed if Harry had not been staring at the new description. It mentioned an old oval locket with a stone-set letter, sealed in waxed cloth and stored in a narrow wooden case.
The clerk had recorded the case's shape and the letter on the locket. Dorridge had requested photographs before the examiners handled either object.
"That sounds closer," Percy said. He hated how weak the words felt and used them anyway. "It still isn't proof."
Harry nodded. This time he looked relieved rather than disappointed by the qualification.
Dorridge explained the next step before anyone could turn the room's silence into a rescue plan. Specialists would secure the building, evacuate anyone working nearby, and examine the case without opening it by hand.
Harry would remain at Hogwarts. So would Percy, Hermione, and Ron, who had found an important discrepancy without needing to stand beside the dangerous result.
"And if it's another fake?" Hermione asked. She held her notes against her chest. "The trail could have been arranged twice."
"Then we check the records behind it," Dorridge said. "The specialists have instructions to stop if the case reacts."
----------------------
They waited through dinner. Ron disputed ownership of a roll while Percy worked on his essay. Each time someone entered the common room, Harry looked up first.
Harry eventually reached across the table and turned Percy's stone into a wooden button. He set it down beside the unfinished parchment with a small click.
"There. Now you can stop threatening it."
"That was my process."
"Your process was mostly staring."
Percy smiled. Harry glanced at him, then took the quill back and returned to his own work.
McGonagall found them shortly afterwards. She did not ask them to follow her until she had said that nobody on the recovery team had been injured.
The case had been located in a locked cabinet above the canal's high-water mark. It contained a locket matching the second description, and the first examiner had heard someone calling his childhood nickname from inside it.
He had withdrawn immediately. The next examiner, kept beyond the first boundary, had heard a different voice.
Percy put down his quill. Hermione asked whether either examiner had touched the locket.
"Is it the thing you were looking for?" Harry asked. He stood up, leaving the button on the desk. "Do they know?"
"They have confirmed it is dangerous," McGonagall said. "They stopped after the voices began. The object is secured while another team reviews the readings."
Percy looked at the photograph Dorridge had left with them. The decoy had the wrong shape. The other locket had produced the voices he remembered.
He asked when they would hear from the examiners again. McGonagall said she would bring the next report after the team had checked it.
===========================
Genuinely running out of ideas. I am however planning to keep the arc going for like another 20-30 chapters. The start of the finale is coming soon. Also, I've had to search up Mcgonagall's name like 5 times because I can't believe that's how it's spelt.
[INDEED]
Uhh... I'm going to ignore that. Bye now!
[SHAMELESS PLUG]
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