Harry Potter: Reunion with the Enemy

Diagon Alley was deserted late at night.

"Should we just break in first or wait for news from Draco? It sounds like he may need help at any time." Lancelot was standing at the door of Gringotts Wizarding Bank, unsure. He turned his head and asked Ed who was standing beside him.

Draco had suddenly hung up the phone a few minutes ago.

So Ed and Lancelot came to Diagon Alley as planned. The California King Snake was still trapped in the secret passage of the underground lake and its life or death was unknown.

"Wait a little longer? Maybe Draco wants to avoid being discovered by those two strangers. We won't be able to Apparate once we go in." Ed was obviously shocked by the messy scene in front of him. "Merlin - what happened here?"

The moonlight today was also exceptionally bright, which made the scars on the Gringotts building look even more shocking. Gringotts Wizarding Bank was originally one of the most imposing white buildings in Diagon Alley, but its entrance was now filled with all kinds of garbage, and the door was covered with deep scratches. In addition to damaged wizard hats, empty packaging of various food, and broken potion bottles, there were also some withered potted magical plants, strange magical items, and large patches of unidentified stains in the garbage. Their smells intertwined, emitting a foul odor.

"They all look like fresh wounds." Ed lowered his voice and walked around to observe the surroundings. "Has the conflict become so intense?"

"Be careful, I always feel that something in it is cursed." Lancelot pulled Ed back.

The entrances of other shops in Diagon Alley were all clean, but this one was the only one that was not cleaned.

Ed narrowed his eyes and quietly read the huge notice hanging on the door of Gringotts. The notice was made a few days ago. "Wizards, please pay attention to other creatures in the magical world. Goblins are an indispensable part of this society. We will pursue our rights throughout our lives. Gringotts will be closed and on strike from today until a new treaty on magical creatures is promulgated. If wizards are unwilling to give in, you will pay the price for it."

"The goblins control important coinage rights and banks, so they have the confidence to negotiate with wizards." Ed carefully avoided the unknown creatures that suddenly emerged from the garbage dump and took a few steps back.

"If necessary, the outer door of Gringotts is meaningless to me--" Lancelot's attention was attracted by the new message.

It was a message from Draco—a brief, one-line address.

"Look. We should go now." Lancelot put the mess in front of him aside for the moment, "It seems we should go to the owner of the little snake first."

-----

The two werewolves in front of him finally stopped communicating. They stared at the gap between the two houses, as if they were concentrating on something. One of the werewolves pointed his wand at the air and muttered something. Draco recognized that he was talking about the address of Tonks's house.

Soon, an old door appeared between the two rooms on the left and right, followed by a small garden in front of the door, then mottled walls and gray windows. The house in front of me swelled up until it expanded to the same size as the duplexes on both sides.

The wooden door was not closed, and Draco could vaguely hear the noisy voices in the house. The iron fence surrounding the small garden deformed and finally became the shape of a mouth. It opened and closed, making a sound like a goblin: "Please check the password."

"I am willing to use my blood to build a ladder to ascend." The werewolf answered with an ugly twisted smile, as if he was disgusted by the flowery slogan that the goblin came up with.

Draco held his breath and followed their steps. He quickly scanned everything in front of him. A stench between animals and humans hit him where werewolves and goblins gathered. Even though the Disillusionment Charm prevented them from seeing him, Draco felt his heart beating strangely. The attic in front of him was as strange and bizarre as the surrounding environment.

A strange intuition came over him like a tide, and it made him look up at the half-lit window on the second floor. The gray window seemed like a lighthouse flickering across a vast and quiet ocean.

"Teddy, don't bother." One of the werewolves said when he saw the child squatting in the small garden.

Draco came back to his senses and looked in the direction of the werewolf's gaze. A brown-haired boy was holding a flower pot. Although he couldn't see clearly what the lifeless magical plant in the pot was, the decadent look of the branches had already announced the death of the plant.

There was no expression on Teddy's face. He raised his head, looked towards the door and greeted with his eyes.

"Even if you can successfully cultivate the wolfsbane potion, the other ingredients are too expensive to afford." The werewolf patted Teddy on the head. "No one here can teach you how to make potions."

"This woman named Sprout wrote it like this - the breeding method. I don't think I missed any steps." Teddy shook the torn book that he had thrown aside and took another careful look. "She's a professor."

"Go to bed early." Another werewolf yawned. "Maybe next week we'll all go to Azkaban for free meals. Or we can ascend directly to see Merlin."

"What?" Teddy frowned. "What do you mean?"

The werewolf knew he had said something wrong. He didn't plan to attack Teddy this time. He quickly changed the subject and said with a smile, "Nothing. I had a dream yesterday. I dreamed that no one wanted to kiss me. I was very heartbroken. I was walking in the forest alone. Suddenly, someone behind me said that he was willing to kiss me. I turned around in surprise -"

Teddy kept a wrinkled face, as if trying to resist his curiosity. Finally, under the werewolf's deliberate silence, he couldn't help but ask: "And then?"

"Then I found out it was a Dementor." The werewolf spread his hands and laughed. "It not only wanted a kiss but also my entire soul. After I woke up, I felt that this dream was romantic in a different way. And it was also terrifyingly reasonable. After all, no one except the Dementors would love us so much."

Teddy threw the torn book in his hand at the werewolf.

"Bad joke."

The werewolf dodged nimbly to one side. The page brushed past Draco's hand and he quickly moved to the other side.

"Hurry up and go upstairs. The floor is already occupied. If it's any later, you'll have to sleep under your godfather's bed." The werewolf said. "Everyone is already unhappy because you put your godfather on the only bed in this shabby attic."

"I don't need to sleep. I'm not sleepy." Teddy fell on the soil in the garden, and then simply lay down. He looked at the moon that was getting rounder and rounder these days with some weakness, and his two dark pupils reflected two small shadows.

There are three moons in total, one in the sky and two in the eyes.

Draco took advantage of the break in their conversation to gently skirt the garden path and ran upstairs as fast as he could.