Will watched his owl, Awn, fly farther and farther into the night sky, then went back inside.
With a wave of his wand, Will brought the Dark Wizards he had captured in Knockturn Alley floating up from the basement. They hung in a row, their eyes vacant and drool running from their mouths. The Draught of Living Death was still working; none of them had been awake in a long time.
Will cast Sleeping Charms on them every day and fed them enough nutrients to keep them from starving. But a month of experiments had steadily used up his subjects. Of the dozen or so Dark Wizards he had captured, only three remained.
Will used Transfiguration to make several monkeys. They poured the "nutrient solution" he had prepared into the Dark Wizards' stomachs. He could have used the Imperius Curse, but he wanted to practice Transfiguration.
Once they had been fed, Will sent them back to the basement, sat down at his desk, and opened the latest letter from Grindelwald.
It was long, with tiny, densely packed writing covering more than a dozen sheets of parchment. This section discussed combinations of magic Grindelwald excelled at. Protego Diabolica, for instance, could be paired with a few minor charms to distort light and shadow, causing an opponent to attack a shadow instead.
What Will found rather funny, though, was that Dumbledore had added notes in the margins.
Will knew Dumbledore would check the letter first, but he had not expected him to write down his own interpretations as well.
"Who are you writing to, Harry?" Mundungus Fletcher asked curiously from his chair as Harry scribbled away.
When the Dursleys learned that this shabby-looking man had come to protect Harry, they had, for once, allowed him to stay in the same room