The castle was silent by midnight, wrapped in the heavy, breathing quiet of a thousand sleeping students. Richard moved through the shadows of the fifth-floor corridor, a dark silhouette blending seamlessly into the stone. He didn't use a Lumos charm; he didn't need one. His spiritual senses allowed him to feel the contours of the castle walls, tracking the faint, pulsing wards of the school like a map.
He bypassed the standard exits, steering clear of Filch's usual patrol routes and the portrait holes. Instead, he made his way to a narrow, disused spiral staircase in the West Tower. At the base was a heavy iron grate that opened into the wet grass of the grounds, well away from Hagrid's hut.
With a silent, non-verbal Alohomora, the lock clicked. Richard slipped out into the cool, damp September night air, the Forbidden Forest looming like a wall of black velvet to his right.
Once he crossed the boundary of the Hogwarts wards near the edge of the lake, the heavy, comforting pressure of the ancient school magic lifted from his shoulders. He was in the open now. He drew his secondary wand—the dark, unyielding ash wood he had crafted in the Black Forest—and turned on his heel.
With a sharp crack that sounded like a breaking twig, he vanished.
Wiltshire
Richard materialized at the edge of a dense, perfectly manicured hedge in Wiltshire. The air here smelled of expensive soil and roses, a stark contrast to Scotland's wild, earthy scent. Ahead of him, past a pair of towering wrought-iron gates topped with stone peacocks, lay Malfoy Manor.
The house was dark, its grand diamond-paned windows reflecting the pale moonlight. To a common thief or even a dark wizard, the estate looked completely undefended. But Richard could feel the faint, humming vibration of the Malfoy family wards pressing against his skin. It was an intricate web of old, aristocratic magic—designed to alert the master of the house to any uninvited magical signature, tracking everything from bloodline to intent.
Richard closed his eyes, his mind focusing on the structure of the wards. He didn't try to break them; tearing through a pure-blood family's defenses would sound an alarm in the Ministry within minutes. Instead, he looked for the gaps. Lucius Malfoy was arrogant, confident in his family's ancient reputation, but arrogance always left a seam.
He found it near the eastern conservatory—a small grounding loop in the magical perimeter where the house's water pipes met the estate lines. Richard aligned his own magical signature to match the residual trace of the manor's house-elves. It was a humiliating shortcut for a proud wizard, but completely invisible to the security net.
He slipped through the iron gates without a sound, the wards washing over him like warm water, accepting his presence as nothing more than a passing servant.
The Drawing Room
The manor's interior was a museum of cold, black marble and heavy velvet drapes. Richard moved through the grand hallway, his boots making no sound on the polished floorboards. He didn't use his wand for light; he relied on the moonlight streaming through the high windows, illuminating the pale faces of Malfoy ancestors staring down from their gilded frames.
He reached the drawing room. The air here felt heavier, thick with the residue of dark magic performed within these walls for generations.
Richard didn't waste time looking through the obvious places—the display cases or the locked writing desks. Lucius Malfoy wouldn't keep something truly dangerous where the Ministry inspectors could find it during a surprise raid. He needed a place hidden from both Muggles and magical law enforcement.
He walked toward the massive, ornate fireplace. His spiritual senses throbbed, a localized sharpness focusing on the dark floorboards beneath a heavy Persian rug near the western wall.
He rolled back the rug, revealing the seamless dark wood. Tapping his wand against a specific knot in the oak, he whispered a low, localized unmaking charm. The wood groaned, a secret hatch pivoting upward to reveal a cold, stone lined vault beneath the floor.
Before reaching for the vault, Richard paused. His spiritual senses picked up a faint, shimmering haze over the knot in the oak floorboards. It wasn't a lethal curse, but something far more insidious: a highly potent Confundus Charm keyed into the vault's location.
Had a Ministry inspector or an ordinary thief stepped here, their mind would have slipped. They would have looked at the floorboard, forgotten why they were in the drawing room, and walked away convinced they had searched the entire house.
Richard raised his secondary wand. With a precise, whispering counter-charm, he neatly unravelled the thread of the Confundus, folding the magic back just enough to bypass it without breaking the structure. Lucius would have no idea the charm had been temporarily deactivated; to the manor's master, the memory-bending defense would look completely intact.
Only then did he lift the secret hatch and pocket Tom Riddle's diary.
Before closing the secret vault beneath the floorboards, Richard paused. While his internal senses had successfully navigated Lucius's initial Confundus trap, he knew pure-blood paranoia well. Lucius might not check his dark artifacts every day, but a sudden whim or a dynamic shift in Ministry politics could prompt him to open the chest sooner than anticipated.
Richard raised his secondary ash wand, weaving a complex, layered Confundus Charm of his own into the vault's residual magic.
It was a delicate piece of mental manipulation. He didn't lock the chest; instead, he anchored a suggestion to the wood itself. If Lucius's mind ever drifted toward checking his hidden vault over the coming months, the charm would subtly nudge his thoughts away. Not today, the magic would whisper to his subconscious. The Ministry isn't raiding. The artifacts are secure. I will look into it during the summer.
Coupled with the original, restored defense mechanism, this new layer guaranteed that Lucius would remain entirely oblivious to the theft. He wouldn't think to lift that specific floorboard until the summer holidays, months later, when the evolving political climate would finally compel him to retrieve his dark insurance policy—only to find the velvet lining empty.
The Forbidden Forest
With a sharp, muffled crack, Richard materialized back on the dark boundaries of the Hogwarts grounds. He didn't return to the castle's safety. Instead, he turned directly toward the suffocating darkness of the Forbidden Forest.
He walked deep into the ancient trees, pushing past the borders where the centaurs typically patrolled, until he reached a desolate, rocky clearing where the dense canopy opened slightly to reveal the pale moon. The air here was thick with wild, primal magic—the perfect insulation to mask a localized magical explosion.
Richard pulled the black notebook from his inner pocket and placed it firmly on a flat, weathered stone. The moment the containment charm was lifted, the diary shuddered violently against the rock. The leather bubbled, and a dark, shadowy mist bled from the edges of the parchment, twisting into the vague, shifting silhouette of a handsome teenage boy.
"You think you can cast me out?" the spectre of Tom Riddle hissed, its voice echoing directly in Richard's mind, cold, desperate, and mocking. "I am a piece of the greatest wizard who ever—"
"You're an anchor," Richard interrupted coldly.
He didn't waste time conversing with a memory. He raised his ash wand and focused his intent, channelling his magic into the same highly compressed, unmaking Transfiguration variant he had used to dissolve the Diadem.
A beam of searing, white-hot localized energy erupted from his wand tip, striking the center of the diary.
The spectre's arrogant expression shattered into a mask of pure agony. A high-pitched, non-human scream tore through the clearing, startling a flock of hidden creatures into the night sky. Oily black ink poured from the pages like blood, sizzling violently against the white-hot magical stream. The diary buckled, its cheap bindings snapping and turning to ash until nothing remained on the stone but a smudge of scorched carbon and a lingering smell of ozone.
The oppressive, hungry presence vanished entirely. The clearing fell silent again, save for the wind rustling the pine needles.
Richard lowered his wand, exhaling slowly as his magical breathing stabilized. The diary was gone. Combined with the destruction of the Diadem, Voldemort's direct anchors within the school's immediate reach had been thoroughly dismantled.
Lucius Malfoy would continue to sleep soundly in Wiltshire, completely unaware of the void in his drawing room. Richard adjusted his travelling cloak, turned back toward the distant, glowing windows of the castle, and walked into the shadows of the trees. He had a class of second-years to teach in the morning.
The heavy oak doors of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom rattled as they were flung open with a sudden, dramatic bang.
Richard Prewett didn't break his stride. He was in the middle of a lecture on the offensive capabilities of the Reductor Curse for the fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins. He paused, his chalk hovering an inch above the blackboard, and turned slowly to face the disruption.
Professor McGonagall stood in the doorway, her tartan cloak slightly askew and her breathing uncharacteristically shallow. Trailing a few paces behind her, looking small, pale, and thoroughly convinced he was about to be marched straight to the chopping block, was Harry Potter.
The entire classroom went dead silent. The fifth-years craned their necks, their eyes darting from the trembling first-year to the severe Deputy Headmistress.
Richard looked at Harry, then at Minerva's flushed, triumphant face, and instantly connected the dots. The first-years had flying lessons with Madam Hooch this hour. Harry was covered in a light sheen of sweat, a stray blade of grass was stuck to his robes, and McGonagall looked like she had just witnessed a miracle.
The Remembrall, Richard realized, a faint, knowing smirk playing at the corner of his lips. He caught it.
"Professor McGonagall," Richard said, his voice smooth and level, cutting through the sudden outbreak of whispering in the room. "To what do we owe the pleasure? I was under the impression the fifth-years were securely under my supervision for another twenty minutes."
"Professor Prewett, I must apologize for the intrusion," McGonagall said, though she didn't sound apologetic at all. Her eyes were flashing behind her square spectacles. "But this is a matter of utmost urgency for Gryffindor House. May I borrow Wood for a moment?"
In the second row, Oliver Wood blinked in utter bewilderment. He looked at his classmates, then stood up slowly, clutching his wand as if he weren't entirely sure whether he was in trouble or dreaming.
"Wood, step outside, please," McGonagall commanded, gesturing for him to follow her into the corridor.
"Go on, Mr. Wood," Richard said with a slight nod.
Wood hurried out of the room. As the heavy wooden door shut firmly behind them, Richard calmly drew his secondary wand. With a casual, non-verbal flick toward the door, he threw up a standard privacy ward. To the students, it looked like a simple precaution to keep the class quiet, but Richard's amplified senses easily pierced the barrier, letting him—and only him—follow the muffled conversation outside.
"Wood, I've found you a Seeker!" McGonagall's breathless, piercing whisper carried straight to Richard's ears.
From the corridor, Wood's booming, incredulous voice echoed back: "A Seeker? Great Scott, Professor, he's a first-year! They're not allowed their own brooms, and—"
"I know the rules, Oliver," McGonagall's voice cut him off, sharp but laced with a rare, fierce pride. "But the boy just caught a Remembrall in a fifty-foot dive after a dead drop! He didn't even use his hands until the last second. Charlie Weasley couldn't have done it. Look at him, he's built for it. Light, fast..."
Inside the classroom, the students sat in absolute silence, staring at the closed door, completely unable to hear a thing through the heavy oak and Richard's privacy charm. They could only speculate based on the frantic look on McGonagall's face.
Richard stood at the front, keeping his expression neutral as he listened to Wood practically vibrate with excitement outside, already plotting a rigorous training schedule for the scrawny first-year.
A few moments later, the door swung open again. Richard dropped the privacy ward seamlessly as Oliver Wood walked back into the classroom. His face was completely flushed, and a massive, uncontainable grin stretched from ear to ear. He looked like he had just been handed the keys to the Ministry of Magic. He sat down at his desk, his hands shaking so much he could barely steady himself.
Harry was no longer in the corridor; McGonagall had clearly marched him off to see Dumbledore to finalize the bureaucratic loophole for a first-year broom.
Richard set his chalk down in the groove of the board and wiped his hands on a cloth. He looked directly at the ecstatic Gryffindor Quidditch captain.
"I assume, Mr. Wood, that whatever occurred in the corridor has not entirely erased your capacity to understand defensive magical theory?" Richard asked, his tone dry but amused.
"No, Professor! Not at all!" Wood blurted out, trying and failing to look serious. "Reductor Curse. Structural targets. Got it."
"Excellent," Richard said, walking out from behind his desk. He glanced toward the classroom's high windows, watching the bright autumn sky. Harry was finding his place in the school, carving out his own identity just as Richard had challenged him to do. The pieces of the board were moving rapidly.
Richard turned back to the blackboard, his expression hardening back into his professional mask. "Then let us return to the lecture. As I was saying before we were so thoroughly interrupted... precision of intent is everything. If your focus wavers, you aren't breaking a solid object—you are merely cracking the surface."
The heavy oak doors of the Great Hall didn't just open—they vibrated.
Richard sat calmly at the staff table, taking a measured sip of his morning tea, when a familiar, formidable magical signature stormed across the threshold.
Molly Weasley stood in the entryway, her traveling cloak slightly wind-blown, her hands planted firmly on her hips. Her face was a brilliant shade of crimson that rivaled her hair, and her chest was heaving with an explosive mix of maternal panic and sheer fury. At the Gryffindor table, Ron instantly buried his face in his arms, while Fred and George slid down their bench, trying to look as small as humanly possible.
The low chatter of breakfast died down instantly as Molly marched right past the house tables, her boots snapping sharply against the stone floor. She stopped directly in front of the staff table, locking her eyes onto Richard.
"Richard Prewett!" Molly's voice rang out, echoing off the enchanted ceiling. "Do you have any idea what you have put me through? Three days! Three days I have been sending owls to this castle, and every single one of them returned to the Burrow with my letters unopened and completely scorched around the edges!"
Richard didn't flinch. He slowly set his teacup down and leaned back in his chair with calm, unbothered grace. A few seats down, Dumbledore watched with mild amusement, picking up a slice of toast.
"Good morning, Molly," Richard said smoothly, his voice carrying effortlessly over the silent hall. "I see you found the Floo network working perfectly."
"Don't you 'good morning' me!" Molly clamped her hands back onto her hips. "You were supposed to be at a known location. Dumbledore assured me you were safely ensconced in the castle! I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere, or captured, or—why on earth are the school owls refusing to deliver my mail to you?"
"Because the school owls do not possess the clearance required to bypass my threshold," Richard replied, standing up from the staff table and smoothing the front of his robes. He stepped down to meet his sister on the main floor, lowering his voice slightly so as not to entertain the entire student body. "I placed a heavily layered, localized redirection ward on my personal quarters and my workspace the day I arrived."
Molly blinked, her fury momentarily derailed by sheer bewilderment. "A redirection ward? Whatever for? You're a Hogwarts professor, Richard, not a fugitive!"
"I am a man who values his sanity and his hearing, Molly," Richard said, a dry, knowing glint appearing in his eyes. "The ward is specifically keyed to identify and incinerate troublesome letters, unauthorized tracking charms, and... most importantly, Howlers. I had a very strong suspicion that a certain someone from my past would attempt to scream my ears off the moment the Daily Prophet announced my return to Britain."
Molly's eyes narrowed instantly, her maternal radar locking onto his specific phrasing. Her arms crossed tightly over her chest. "A 'someone'? Richard, if this is about the Ministry or old political rivals—"
"It isn't the Ministry," Richard cut in, a rare, slightly sheepish shadow flitting across his usually unreadable expression. He looked away for a fraction of a second, his voice dropping an octave. "It's... let's just say she has a particularly fiery temperament, a masterful grasp of vocabulary, and a standing grudge regarding my sudden departure to the Black Forest. If she discovered I was sitting comfortably in Scotland without so much as a—"
He caught himself instantly. The words died in his throat as his professional mask snapped back into place. He cleared his throat, adjusting his cuffs with sudden, rigid precision.
"—Anyway. It is a necessary security measure. For the defense of the castle."
Molly stared at him, her jaw dropping slightly as the pieces clicked together in her mind. The fierce, overbearing mother vanished for a split second, replaced by a woman who knew exactly what a guilty wizard looked like. A knowing, dangerous smirk replaced her scowl.
"A 'she'?" Molly echoed, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly perceptive tone. "Richard Prewett, are you telling me you barred the entire postal system of Great Britain because you are hiding from a—"
"I am hiding from nothing," Richard interrupted swiftly, his tone absolute, though the faint tightening of his jaw betrayed him. "I am merely managing my correspondence efficiently. The ward ensures that only official school business and pre-approved magical signatures make it to my desk."
Molly took a step closer, her eyes gleaming with a mixture of intense curiosity and satisfaction. "I knew it. I knew there was a reason you refused to settle down before you left! Who is she? Is she French? You were in Paris before the Forest, weren't you? Or is she—"
"Molly," Richard said, his voice carrying a warning weight that put a firm end to the interrogation. "As delightful as this family reunion is, the students are beginning to stare, and your own sons look ready to pass out from dread."
Molly glanced over her shoulder, noting Fred and George, who were currently trying to blend into the Gryffindor table. She let out a sharp huff, but the explosive anger she had entered with had completely evaporated, replaced by a deeply amused smugness. She adjusted her traveling cloak, giving her brother a thoroughly assessing look.
"Very well," Molly said, turning back toward the Hall entrance. "I shall leave you to your... security measures. But don't think for a second you're getting out of Sunday dinner next summer, Richard. And you had better bring enough cutlery for two, just in case."
She swept out of the Great Hall, her laughter echoing faintly into the corridor.
Richard stood alone for a moment and let out a slow, measured breath. He looked up at the staff table, where Dumbledore offered him a cheerful nod, then turned back toward his seat. The ward had been a practical choice, but as he remembered the particular, tempestuous witch currently residing on the continent, he felt he might need to double the structural density of those privacy charms before the term was out.