Douglas turned his wrist slightly.
His wand slid out between his fingers, tracing a silent arc of light.
Hum-
The piercing shriek was cut off instantly.
Absolute silence swallowed the entire office.
He waved his wand again.
The air in the office rippled, then warped, and a searing barrier shut out every prying gaze.
He picked up the radar.
On the screen, the red dot representing Wormtail came alive.
It was no longer a motionless marker, but a wildly beating heart.
Each pulse splashed glaring red light across the screen, spreading into an ever-growing bloodstain.
Douglas reached out a finger and lightly tapped the screen.
The map abruptly zoomed in.
A place name stood out clearly against the blood-red halo.
Ottery St Catchpole.
In his mind, two locations lit up almost simultaneously.
The Burrow.
And the Lovegood family's tower.
A second later, he erased the image of the Burrow from his thoughts.
Wormtail knew the place well, but Tom's target was certainly not Weasley.
A Dark Lord who had only just recovered from weakness and did not even possess a body was not yet foolish enough to provoke a pure-blood family with close ties to Dumbledore.
That left only one target.
Xenophilius Lovegood.
The editor who had published his origins in The Quibbler in an absurdly outlandish fashion.
Douglas's lips curved into an icy smile.
"Tom, my senior, you did see that story after all..."
He murmured to himself, his voice sounding particularly harsh in the office stripped of every other sound.
"And you're even more impatient than I expected."
He paced to the window.
His gaze passed through the magically shielded glass toward the other side of the castle.
There stood Mad-Eye Moody's office, likewise guarded by layer upon layer of magic.
He could not see what was happening