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Dust clung to Noctis's feathers as he glided down from the sky, his wings beating softly before he landed with a light flutter upon the windowsill of Sargeras's office.
The last rays of sunset poured through the stained-glass window, casting long bars of color across the floor.
Sargeras stood with his back to the light, a tome from the Restricted Section resting in his hands. His fingers traced the thick spine of the book in quiet thought.
"Welcome back," he said without turning around.
The raven hopped neatly onto his shoulder and used its beak to untie the small leather tube fastened to its leg. With a quick, gentle motion, it dropped the tube into Sargeras's open palm.
He moved to his desk, sat down, and opened the case. Inside was a roll of parchment covered with reports from members of the Bronze Feather.
He gave it only a brief glance before tucking it away into a drawer. He had already seen the contents through Noctis's eyes.
It seemed everyone was busy these days. Perhaps he ought to find something useful to do himself.
Fortunately, a letter from Lyall Lupin lay waiting on his desk. The man had written to thank him, but more than that, he seemed particularly intrigued by the spell Sargeras had used against Peeves.
Sargeras reached deep into the drawer and drew out a fresh sheet of parchment. He picked up a finely crafted quill whose silvered tip caught the lamplight, dipped it in ink, and began to write.
The structure and energy patterns of the Chaos Storm spell...
Before long, his quill glided swiftly across the parchment, recording every detail of the magic; its incantation, formulas, structure, mana pathways, theoretical foundations, and several key conjectures on its practical applications...
When the final stroke was done, Sargeras exhaled softly and blew the ink dry. Then he rolled the parchment with care and precision.
"Deliver this," he murmured, reciting an address, "and come straight back."
And so, without even a sip of water to rest his wings, Noctis took to the air again, resigned to his endless errands.
Thankfully, this time the destination was not far, somewhere within the borders of Britain.
That night, Sargeras looked through the raven's eyes once more and saw the home of Lyall Lupin, a secluded cottage in Gwent, its stone walls veiled in climbing ivy.
The interior was modest and a little worn, yet quietly warm.
On the mantel above the hearth stood a small picture frame, its edges scuffed and faded, though the glass gleamed as if polished with care.
It was a magical photograph. Beside a younger Lyle Lupin stood a woman whose smile was gentle and whose eyes shone with life. Cradled in her arms was a small boy of two or three, his soft brown curls catching the light as he giggled and reached for a strand of his mother's flowing hair.
The three of them glowed with that quiet kind of happiness that belongs to ordinary life, the kind that fills a home without ever needing words. It was the world Lyall Lupin once had, his wife and his son.
But clearly, this happiness had been cruelly shattered.
Through the eyes of the raven, Sargeras let his gaze sweep slowly across the walls.
The wooden panels looked old and frail, covered with yellowed pages of The Daily Prophet, their corners curling with age. Next to them hung several wanted posters from the Ministry of Magic.
The one pinned at the top had been touched so many times that its edges had folded and darkened. The face printed on it was that of a savage-looking man with wild eyes and a feral grin: Fenrir Greyback.
The poster listed the crimes of that infamous werewolf leader, a catalogue of horrors that chilled the heart: attacks on Muggles, the creation of new werewolves, and the brutal killings of wizards and witches.
Below the wanted notice, the empty space had been covered with scraps cut from old newspapers, each one a small article reporting sightings and scattered attacks committed by Greyback and his pack.
Sargeras noticed that one of the clippings bore a date close to when Lyall Lupin had resigned from the Ministry of Magic.
On the corner of the desk lay an open notebook filled with hurried, messy handwriting.
The titles were faint but still legible: "Speculation on Substituting Ingredients for Wolfsbane Potion," "The Moon Phases and Their Correlation with Werewolf Aggression." Every line was filled with a desperate kind of persistence, the writing of a man trying to grasp hope in the dark.
At that moment, the old man stood before the wall, his calloused fingers tracing the curled edge of Greyback's wanted poster again and again.
Sargeras's deep eyes remained calm, yet beneath that stillness there stirred a quiet understanding.
No words were needed; the truth was plain enough.
Lyall Lupin, the widowed old man, his broken family, his sorrow, and the sudden shift in his field of study... everything pointed toward a single source of ruin: Fenrir Greyback.
His wife and child had most likely perished at the hands of that mad werewolf or in one of the massacres carried out by his followers.
Noctis, perched on the window frame, suddenly moved.
The raven ruffled its feathers with a sharp rustle and let out a short, hoarse cry that broke the silence of the room.
Lyall Lupin turned around in surprise.
The raven tilted its head, its eyes gleaming like polished obsidian as it looked straight at him. Then it lowered its beak, drew out a rolled letter, and placed it gently on the worn wooden table.
"It's you!"
There was a hint of surprise in the old man's voice.
He hurried forward and picked up the parchment, his eyes scanning the lines as his brow furrowed again and again.
"Ah… I've thought of this too, though I never had the chance to test it…"
"What a wild idea…"
"This… this really is a question I've never considered before…"
"What a pity… my research on mischievous spirits has been set aside for so long, these past years…"
He muttered constantly to himself, completely absorbed in the parchment's contents. For a long while he stood there, lost in thought, before finally glancing back at the raven.
"I'm sorry," he said with a faint, apologetic smile. "I don't have anything to feed you. Owls rarely visit this place."
Noctis met his gaze in silence. Its stare was too focused, too human, as if those dark, glassy eyes saw more than any bird should. Lyall felt an uneasy chill creep into his chest.
Then, in a voice that sounded stiff and unnatural, the raven spoke.
"Fenrir Greyback. Dead."
Lyall Lupin froze where he stood.
The wrinkles on his face seemed to harden all at once, and his cloudy eyes flared with a light of disbelief. His lips trembled soundlessly, as if he wanted to confirm what he had just heard, yet the words stuck in his throat.
Noctis did not give him the chance to speak.
The message had been delivered, and its duty was done. It added in that same lifeless tone, "Time of death, two years ago, December."
Then, without another look at the old man's face — where confusion and grief mingled like storm clouds — the raven spread its wings. With a faint stir of air, it slipped silently into the night beyond the window, disappearing as abruptly as it had come.
The room was left in stillness. Only Lyall Lupin remained, standing amidst the quiet, his body hollowed out as if all strength had been drawn away.
The wanted poster bearing the snarling face of his enemy fluttered down from the wall and landed soundlessly on the floor.
On the mantel, the photograph still showed his wife's gentle smile, her arms wrapped around their child, who was giggling as he tried to grab a handful of her hair. Inside the fireplace, the last faint ember flickered once, then died into darkness.
Lyall's eyes moved dully over the fallen poster, yet he did not bend to pick it up.
Greyback was dead!
He had been dead for two years!
The news sank into him like a block of ice crashing into still water, and what it stirred was not relief or release, but a heavy, suffocating emptiness that swallowed everything inside him.
The thing that had kept him alive all these years, the burning hatred carved into his bones, the relentless obsession with the nature of werewolves, the countless nights spent studying every scrap of lore in hopes of finding a weakness or a cure, had suddenly lost its purpose.
He stumbled forward and dropped heavily into the worn armchair, the wood creaking beneath his weight.
Outside, the night hung thick and silent, ivy climbing across the walls, its shadowy tendrils brushing against the windowpane.
…
Not long ago, news had swept through the wizarding world that Damocles Belby had succeeded in creating a potion for werewolves.
Lyall had gone to great lengths to obtain the recipe as soon as he heard.
But the moment of elation faded almost instantly.
The ingredients listed on that parchment were rare and costly beyond imagining.
Even brewing a single dose would drain what little savings he had managed to keep, and regular use, the kind that might actually help, was utterly impossible.
For a wizard already struggling to survive, such a cure was nothing more than a cruel dream, shimmering just beyond reach.
He sat motionless in the chair, his gaze drifting once more to the open notebook spread across his desk. Page after page was filled with messy handwriting — notes about werewolves, moon phases, and desperate theories on how to restrain the madness. The writing grew more erratic with each line, as if his thoughts were unraveling before his eyes.
He had once believed that if he could understand it all, he might find a way, perhaps not to cure the curse, but at least to ease his son's suffering or to create some weapon that could avenge him against Greyback.
But now the man he had hated for half his life was gone, and the pillar that had propped up his purpose collapsed in silence.
His son still lived somewhere, bearing the curse alone, hidden from the world's eyes. There was a cure now, but poverty had sealed it away from them like a wall of iron.
Despair pressed down upon him, heavier and colder than any thought of Greyback's death.
The root of Lyall Lupin's pain had never truly been his enemy's existence.
The happiness within that picture frame had long been torn apart by another kind of curse... one that neither death nor time could dispel.
A son cast aside by society, a father imprisoned by poverty and old age, and a cure that lay so close yet forever out of reach.
That was the true shadow lingering over this little ivy-covered cottage, a darkness that would not fade.
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[Chapter End's]
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