Mr. Granger's smile was warm, carrying a father's particular pride.
"That's wonderful. I think I must ask Professor Holmes's parents for some advice."
"To see how we can raise our Hermione to be as outstanding as you..."
Before he could finish, a burst of hurried coughing forced its way in.
It was Mr. Weasley. He nudged Mr. Granger gently with his elbow and lowered his voice, a trace of urgency in his breath.
"Ahem... Douglas's parents... passed away before he went to Hogwarts."
The air seemed to freeze for a moment.
The color rapidly drained from Mr. Granger's face, leaving it paper-white, panic and remorse churning into a storm in his eyes.
He was not worried about himself, but about his daughter's professor, a powerful wizard he had unwittingly offended just after meeting him.
"I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry, Professor Holmes..."
His voice trembled a little.
"I... I had no idea..."
There was not a trace of gloom on Douglas's face. Instead, he reassured him gently, while Arthur hastily explained how highly respected Douglas was at school.
It took a good deal of talking from both of them before Mr. and Mrs. Granger's anxiety finally began to ease.
"Oh, don't worry, Mrs. Granger." Douglas turned his gaze to Hermione. "Miss Granger's thirst for knowledge and talent mean she is destined to become an exceptionally accomplished witch."
During this brief conversation, several familiar figures made their way through the crowd toward them.
They were Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
When they saw that Douglas was there too, a different expression appeared on each of their faces.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger immediately drew Hermione proudly in front of them and introduced her to Douglas.
Perhaps they did not know just how dazzling their daughter's school report was.
But finishing a small mountain of textbooks in a single summer was enough to make them proud.
Just then, Mrs. Weasley emerged from the bookstore crowd, her face glowing, like a battleship returning in triumph.
She held a book high, an ostentatious gold signature showing on its title page.
"Oh, everyone's here!"
"I'm so happy! This is Gilderoy's own signature! I thought you'd all be interested..."
Douglas smiled, a barely perceptible hint of teasing tucked into his words.
"Mr. Lockhart certainly tells his stories wonderfully."
"They're not stories, they're experiences!" Mrs. Weasley corrected him immediately, her eyes shining with admiration. "It's hard to imagine everything he's been through..."
Douglas's gaze passed over Mrs. Weasley's shoulder and suddenly fixed on something in the distance.
A figure with long platinum-blond hair, an exquisite black robe, and a snake-shaped cane topped with a silver serpent's head.
Lucius Malfoy.
Douglas's impression of the man was like a scar seared into his memory by a branding iron.
Especially during his first few years at school, Lucius's name had appeared in the society pages of the Daily Prophet almost every day as he tried to wash away the stain of being a Death Eater.
But at that moment, something else, colder and more cloying, rose in Douglas's mind.
An old diary that whispered.
His brow furrowed involuntarily.
Mr. Weasley noticed the change in Douglas's expression and followed his gaze.
Disgust instantly seeped into his voice, like the stench of a rotting swamp.
"Malfoy. Hmph! From the look of him, he's just come out of Knockturn Alley."
"The Ministry of Magic has been keeping a close eye on him lately..."
Douglas's gaze slowly shifted downward, settling on the cauldron Ginny Weasley was holding.
He clapped his hands, the crisp sound drawing everyone's attention.
A bright, enthusiastic smile spread across his face, as though that earlier gloom had never appeared.
"By the way, Mrs. Weasley, didn't you say you wanted to celebrate my becoming a professor?"
"As it happens, I'd like to invite everyone to my house, and you can try my cooking while you're there."
His gaze swept over each of them, carrying a sincerity that brooked no refusal.
"None of you will turn me down, will you? My home is just outside London. It's not far at all."
As his words fell, everyone's expression froze.
Then, before the Weasley children could burst into cheers, Douglas had already turned and headed straight toward the Leaky Cauldron.
He looked back and smiled, gesturing for everyone to follow.
"It's getting late. Let's not stand in the middle of the street blocking people. We can go outside and discuss the details."
He seemed certain that no one would refuse the suggestion.
Sure enough, as though a Summoning Charm had been cast on them, the Weasley family rushed excitedly toward the Leaky Cauldron.
Seeing Harry and Hermione still hesitating where they stood, Mrs. Weasley swept out an arm and gathered them both in.
"Keep up, boys and girls!"
Mr. Weasley also pulled along the equally bewildered Mr. and Mrs. Granger, following close behind.
George and Fred flanked Percy, conducting their secret conversation in lowered voices.
"He's a great man!"
"No one's ever dared to invite our whole family over for a meal so casually!"
"Should we have a 'trick or treat' ready...?"
Percy finally lost patience and growled under his breath.
"Shut up! It's not Halloween!"
He cleared his throat and added another sentence.
"No, what I mean is, if you dare cause trouble at the bo... at the professor's house, I won't let you off!"
George and Fred exchanged a sly look.
"Our outstanding Percy isn't saying 'I'm telling Mum' anymore!"
"No, he just called that fraud boss. Oh, heavens, our upright Percy has gone bad."
Percy's face flushed scarlet, and he snorted.
"A fraud? Say that one more time, and I'll tell Ron and Harry what happened back then!"
The moment he finished, George and Fred lunged at him like two cats whose tails had been stepped on, clamping their hands firmly over his mouth.
Only when Mrs. Weasley's furious roar rang out did the three reluctantly separate.
Just as their group disappeared through the door of the Leaky Cauldron.
In the shadows a short distance away, Lucius Malfoy's expression was dark enough to drip water.
His fingers gripped his serpent-headed cane so tightly that every knuckle had turned white.
Beside him, Draco Malfoy wore his signature look of disdain.
"Father, I don't think I was mistaken. The famous Harry Potter really is hanging around with those Weasley paupers."
"And Muggles..."
"At school, they stick together all day like slugs."
Lucius's other hand, hidden in his sleeve, was tightly clutching the corner of a hardback notebook, his fingertips drained of color.
His voice was icy, like wind blowing out of a tomb.
"Pure-blood scum, actually mixing with Mudbloods."
With his eye for such things, he could naturally distinguish three people in the group whose clothing was entirely out of place in the wizarding world.
He tugged Draco's sleeve.
"We're leaving!"
Inside the Leaky Cauldron, when Tom saw Douglas enter with the vast Weasley family procession, he immediately kept quiet about treating him to beer.
He knew perfectly well that if he dared mention it, the newly appointed Professor Holmes would absolutely take the opportunity to ask for a glass for every adult beside him.
When they passed through the door leading into the Muggle world, an entirely different world rushed to meet them.
Car horns and the sound of tires rubbing against the road mingled with the smell of exhaust, noisy and vibrant, instantly washing away the quiet of the wizarding world.
Looking at the busy street before them, Mr. and Mrs. Granger felt a sense of reassurance well up within them.
When they looked back, the shabby pub they had just left had vanished, as though it had never existed.
Even as they marveled at the wonders of magic, they could not help worrying whether their daughter Hermione might one day quietly disappear from their world just like that pub.
That was precisely why, when Mr. Weasley enthusiastically pulled them along, they did not decline in the slightest, not even offering a polite protest.
They needed a point of connection.
And this Muggle-born wizard professor, this man Mr. Weasley had called "one of the few who can switch freely between the two worlds," was exactly the piece of driftwood they desperately needed to grasp.
Having just left the pub, Douglas cast an unobtrusive glance at Ginny's cauldron.
It was piled with brand-new textbooks, with no old, battered notebook tucked among them.
His mood immediately lightened considerably.
Doing a good deed really did feel rather nice.
As for whether this would change the future, whether it would throw the familiar plot into chaos and cost him his supposed advantage of "foreknowledge."
Mr. Douglas Holmes had only a dry chuckle for that.
Change had already begun the moment he set foot in Hogwarts.
Everything he had gained in his seven years there had come not from nebulous foreknowledge, but from his own painstaking effort and calculation.
He was not Dumbledore. He did not have the leisure to watch from the sidelines and wait for things to blossom.
What he could do was reach out, within his means, and pull his friends away before they were caught in the maelstrom.
Of course, that was also because he was close enough to the Weasley family.
As for whose hands that diary would ultimately fall into, that was not a question he needed to consider.
He only needed to keep closely in step with Dumbledore and raise that flag high at the crucial moment.
In short, Douglas believed that as long as that Horcrux entered Hogwarts, Dumbledore would definitely have a way to deal with it.
Besides, he had prepared quite a few contingency plans himself.
Before you continue