Hagrid squeezed his great beetle-like eyes, his voice like a low rumble of thunder.
"Oh, right, nearly forgot something important."
He grinned, a broad smile showing through his beard.
"Headmaster Dumbledore told me Douglas will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year."
The moment he finished, every gaze turned to Douglas.
He said nothing, merely curling his lips into a smile, his expression mingling a hint of amusement with understanding.
As though everything had been written long ago.
Hagrid waved his enormous, fan-like hand at everyone, then turned and disappeared into the crowd without looking back.
The crowded street seemed to part under an invisible force as people stepped aside for him of their own accord.
"Oh, Douglas!"
Mrs. Weasley gripped him tightly, her grasp full of excitement and pride.
"I knew Headmaster Dumbledore always had a keen eye! Congratulations!"
She spoke rapidly, with a hint of relieved joy.
"Working at Hogwarts is certainly better than wandering around out there all alone..."
"Dear, Douglas was traveling around the world, not wandering!" Mr. Weasley corrected her solemnly from beside them.
The children's expressions made for a subtle tableau at that moment.
Fred and George exchanged a glance that held no congratulations, only the quietly burning flames of revenge.
Harry's heart, meanwhile, sank sharply.
A cold sense of regret crept through his veins. He had actually let his new professor see him coming out of Knockturn Alley.
Hagrid's words still rang in his ears-that was no place for a good child.
Hermione's keen gaze, meanwhile, caught the complicated expression that flickered across Percy's face.
It was a mixture of shock, hesitation, and a little something hard to describe... nostalgia?
After their brief encounter, everyone soon went their separate ways.
The Weasley family took Hermione toward the white marble building-Gringotts.
Douglas turned away alone, heading as planned toward an unremarkable secondhand shop in Diagon Alley.
The bell hanging above the shop door had lost its voice and made no sound.
The shopkeeper was a skinny old man who looked as though someone had stolen half his teeth, and he smelled of old parchment mixed with mold.
He could not even be bothered to lift his eyelids, busying himself with polishing a rust-spotted brass balance.
Perhaps, to him, everyone who entered this shop, however well dressed, bore the same label deep down-short of money.
Douglas swept his gaze around the shop.
It was almost exactly as he remembered it.
Battered wands lay piled in a corner like snapped, withered twigs.
But books were by far the most plentiful things there.
Countless old books were packed tightly into rows of shelves that reached the ceiling.
Dust floating in the air danced slowly in the shafts of light streaming through the skylight.
There were no categories or indexes here. Finding anything depended entirely on a pair of hands and sufficient patience.
Except, of course, for secondhand Hogwarts textbooks.
Those had been picked out separately and stacked beside the counter, the shop's most marketable commodities.
Douglas strolled over to a shelf and pulled out a heavy volume.
"Important Discoveries in Contemporary Magic." The publication year printed on the title page was 1921.
He shook his head with a chuckle. This "contemporary" certainly had some years on it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a small, thin figure curled up in a chair in the shop's deepest corner.
The young wizard was engrossed in the novel he held, which Douglas had written under a pen name.
Douglas made a circuit of the shop and found more of his own works on an inconspicuous shelf.
He pulled one out and leafed through it.
They were all early publications, though not first editions, and the edges of their pages had yellowed and curled.
The blank spaces between the lines were crammed with comments in all sorts of handwriting.
It was as though many readers had held a silent tea party in this book.
In the past, he had never opened the readers' letters that came pouring in like snowflakes, leaving them all for Slane to handle.
Now, seeing these sincere, sharp, and interesting comments with his own eyes felt rather novel.
Just then, a familiar voice came from the other end of the shelves, carrying a trace of weariness.
"Sorry... sorry for the trouble, but could I have a set of first-year Hogwarts textbooks? Ones in... in better condition..."
Douglas rounded the shelves and stepped out.
"Hello, Mrs. Weasley. We meet again so soon."
Mrs. Weasley, who had been bent over a pile of old books, sorting through them, looked up at his voice. Surprise crossed her face before it broke into a smile.
"Oh, Douglas! What are you doing here? Looking for books too?"
She immediately turned to the children behind her, her tone instructive.
"Percy, Ginny! You should both learn from Douglas. Even after becoming a Hogwarts professor, he never forgets to read!"
Ginny's face flushed scarlet.
Having a new Hogwarts professor discover that her family was so hard up they could only afford secondhand textbooks made her wish she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
Percy immediately straightened, adjusted his robes, and spoke in an extremely formal tone.
"Good day, Professor Holmes. I'm terribly sorry I failed to greet you properly earlier."
One of Douglas's eyebrows rose.
"Do you need to be so distant with me?"
There was a hint of teasing at the corners of his mouth.
"You didn't say a word earlier. I thought you no longer acknowledged me as your boss."
"No! That's not it!"
Percy immediately shook his head so vigorously it looked as though it might fall off his neck.
"It's just... you never wrote to me after you graduated, boss... I thought..."
His voice grew quieter and quieter, the last few words almost disappearing into his throat.
"Thought I'd forgotten you? Or that I looked down on you?" Douglas chuckled, his voice quiet, yet it made Percy's shoulders relax.
"Still being so awkward when you talk to me? Have you given everything I taught you back to the owls?"
"Of course I haven't forgotten!" Percy protested urgently. "I actually wanted to write to you too... it's just..."
Seeing how ill at ease he was, Douglas held out the book he had just picked up.
"If you don't mind, you can keep calling me boss."
"Bill wrote earlier and said the family had another prefect. Congratulations."
"This book is for you. I think you'll like it."
Percy took the book instinctively. When he saw the gold-stamped title on its cover, his eyes lit up.
"How Prefects Gain Power."
He looked up, his gaze once again shining with that mixture of admiration and trust, as though he had found his anchor.
"Thank you... thank you, boss!"
He stumbled over his words.
"I... Bill told me you were traveling around the world, so I didn't dare disturb you..."
Ginny watched her third-oldest brother curiously.
She had never seen the usually rigid, serious Percy wear such a childlike expression.
Mrs. Weasley, however, was not surprised.
She knew very well that when Douglas was at school, he had not only been Bill's best friend, but practically another older brother to Charlie and Percy.
Douglas turned to Mrs. Weasley, who was about to pick up a set of secondhand books in passable condition.
"Mrs. Weasley, I've already prepared Ginny's textbooks. Consider them my gift to her for starting school."
Before Mrs. Weasley could refuse, he continued.
"You know, I did say back then that I'd give every child in the Weasley family a present when they started school."
"Though I missed Fred, George, and Ron, I certainly don't want to miss the Weasley family's little princess too."
"Besides, I've already bought the gift. You can hardly make me sell it to this shopkeeper secondhand, can you?"
He tipped his chin toward the counter, his tone light, yet carrying a gentleness that would brook no refusal.
"If you refuse, I really won't feel comfortable accepting your Christmas presents anymore."
Mrs. Weasley's hands stopped.
She remembered the ache and embarrassment that had welled up in her just now at Gringotts, when she saw the single, solitary Galleon in their family vault.
A brand-new set of Hogwarts textbooks cost almost a month of Arthur's salary.
Douglas's kindness was like rain arriving just when it was needed.
In the end, she nodded and stopped declining.
"All right, then. We'll do as you say."
She gave Douglas a long look, her eyes filled with gratitude.
"But you must spend Christmas at the Burrow this year! I've been working on a few new dishes, and you simply must try them!"
"Ginny," she said, turning to her youngest daughter, "hurry up and thank Douglas!"
Blushing, Ginny said "Thank you" in a voice as faint as a mosquito's hum.
Her impression of Douglas was vague, limited to her family's everyday conversations.
Douglas smiled and ruffled her red hair, telling her she was welcome.
He turned and paid the displeased-looking shopkeeper for the copy of How Prefects Gain Power.
They left the secondhand shop and returned to bustling Diagon Alley.
"Douglas, what are your plans next?" Mrs. Weasley asked. "Would you like to visit Flourish and Blotts? Gilderoy Lockhart is holding a book signing there today."
"Perfect." Douglas nodded. "I need to stop by Flourish and Blotts too."
"Oh, sorry, I can't go there just yet," Mrs. Weasley said, quickly waving a hand. "I have to take Ginny to buy robes and a wand first."
"How about this? If you have nothing else to do, you can look around on your own first, or go to the Leaky Cauldron and have a chat with Arthur."
"We'll meet outside Flourish and Blotts in an hour."
"Then we'll all have dinner together tonight to celebrate for you!"
Before you continue