Don't Panic Chapter 25: Runes of the First Men

Last Time: ... Slint perused the titles as he placed them in the pile, having read a few in an effort to know his enemy better. “A Treatise on Ancient First Men Languages and Runes” by Maester Wyler. It was a bit disappointing to note that Maesters of old saw fit to record such barbarian practices. It was easy to forget that the Maesters of Old Town were formed as an order before the rightful introduction of Andal culture to Westeros. Thankfully the order of Maesters saw the light and adjusted to living under the light of the Seven with little concern.   

Chapter 25: Runes of the First Men  

Harry sat staring at the ancient book in his hands. This was what he’d been waiting for. “A Treatise on Ancient First Men Languages and Runes” by Maester Wyler was likely the key to translating and understanding first men runes to a degree he hadn’t managed so far.  

Dobby may not have realised the incredible value these books held when he saved them from that misguided Septon, but he had stumbled upon a real treasure trove of knowledge. Harry would have to find a suitable gift for the elf in thanks. 

Harry had always enjoyed learning magic, but after the Horcrux had been removed from his head at the end of the war, he’d found a new love for the art. Knowledge that had previously eluded him suddenly came easy. It was like a haze had been lifted from his mind, and his magic.  

In the short time of peace following that war, he and Hermione had spent many an hour diving into the Black and Potter libraries, uncovering the mysteries squirreled away in those shelves. He’d also discovered, in that time, that most of the ancient wizarding families had a terrible habit of keeping magical discoveries to themselves.  

Just combining the Potter and Black libraries alone joined so many dots on partial discoveries made by ancestors in each family line. “If only they’d been a little more free with their knowledge” Harry sighed to himself, they’d have carried the backward wizarding world forward in leaps and bounds. 

Alas, it wasn’t to be, that world was gone. If Harry was honest with himself, this might be one of the reasons he’d picked up a very occasional and mostly minor habit of acquiring books whenever he could get his hands on them. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the constant question of whether the next book he found would somehow shed light on some lost knowledge or connect the dots for questions he didn’t even know to ask. 

He’d already found evidence of geographic knowledge disappearing, based on those ancient, but detailed maps of the north that outstripped any he’d seen in Stark’s solar.  

The vanishingly few references to the White Walkers was also a bit disturbing. But most frustrating of all had been the barely mentioned magics of this world. Usually brushed over at the highest levels.  

Even books he’d acquired from the Starks and the Night’s Watch had been less informative than he’d hoped. Those ancient scrolls hidden down in the Stark crypts had been the most informative so far, but they were still missing the depth of detail he had been looking for. More importantly, they were missing the beginner's instruction manual on the old magics of Westeros. You can’t build a wardstone with complex First Men runic scripts like the one under Winterfell without at least some beginner level instruction, and Harry had no guides to lean on beyond the books he’d found so far. 

Now he had in his hands that detailed guide he’d been seeking. He smiled to himself, and if the low, flickering firelight reflected in his eyes made that smile look a little manic and obsessive, that was no concern of his. This was now his most precious... book. 

Thankfully, Sirius seemed all too happy to carry on with the launch of their burgeoning trading business on his own, and Dobby seemed to have his own thing going on when he wasn’t caring for the three of them. So Harry had all the time he might need to pursue his passion. 

Settling into his favourite cosy nook in the tent library, Harry started the slow task of translating the ancient scrolls and tomes, some of the most ancient being from their treasure trove find under Winterfell. 

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Harry’s desk was strewn with handwritten notes, scribbles, translations and re-translations. Harry was tired. The sort of tiredness that comes from using your brain for far too long. Nonetheless, there was nothing but satisfaction to be found in those notes.  

The treatsie of First Men runes had been everything he’d needed to get started in these studies. He was now, finally, making some real headway on understanding his surprisingly large collection of ancient tomes and scrolls, along with the meticulous notes he took on the scripts of the Winterfell wardstone. 

Though, the satisfaction he felt at his progress was slightly offset as he quietly simmered at the idiocy of that Septon, who’d almost destroyed what might be the only introduction to First Men runes he’d ever find. Having read the book and realised its true value, he was more furious than ever at this hidden faction that had seemingly set itself against the Magic of Westeros. He’d certainly not forget that there was a seemingly hidden enemy out there. They’d get what was coming to them for daring to destroy his precious books, if nothing else. 

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Harry unrolled yet another ancient scroll, this one titled ‘Bread and Salt in Trust Based Rituals’. The candles would have well and truly burnt to nothing if they weren’t everlasting, but things were really starting to click into place, and Harry couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie.  

Alas, all the attempts he’d made to prepare and power runic scripts from even the most basic scrolls had failed... explosively failed.  

He was still missing some crucial aspect to linking his own refined foreign magic with that of the raw and rugged magic of the First Men.  

He knew it must be possible to adapt his own magic to that of First Men runic scripts, since Ignotus had clearly done so himself back in the Age of Heroes.  

Harry had even identified a few familiar ward structures in the scrolls, that he suspected were introduced by Ignotus. But still something was eluding him. 

Whatever their origin, these scripts had evolved to the point that the runic strings for even the more familiar wards held very little resemblance to ancient runes of his old world.  

He suspected the issue was one of translation. Harry’s knowledge of the spoken Old Tongue or First Men language was thorough from Sirius’s time in the Thenn village, and he now had a reasonable grasp of the core First Men runes and their meanings, but the written language was finicky, and there was no room for vagaries in runic magics. The wording had to be precise. 

The problem was the passage of time, and its impact on the meaning of words in the old tongue. Even though the Thenns spoke the old tongue, it had clearly evolved since the early days and some of the meanings for words had changed over time. While the meanings of the written runes had stayed the same.  

It was like a modern English speaker reading the Old-English of Chaucer or Shakespeare. For instance, the word ‘Quick’ in the modern era referred to speed, but in Shakespeare’s era it had a meaning closer to ‘alive’ or ‘living’. If that same difference were expected in the evolution of First Men language, then a rune to ‘quicken’ the speed of a ship may well inadvertently give it life instead. And no-one needs their ships to suddenly have a mind of their own. No, precision in the meaning of the runes was vital. 

So, ultimately, he was a lot closer to deciphering the runes with the guidance he got from the book Dobby stole .. er.. borrowed. But it would still take some effort to really nail them down. He could disentangle the hints of meaning, but it required experimentation. A lot of experimentation.  

He’d learnt that lesson the hard way when his latest wood practice block, coincidentally carved with the First Men rune for ‘speed’, decided to rise from its place and scuttled off the edge of the workbench. 

To be honest, that was one of the better results, most simply exploded and he wasn’t sure why. Exploding runes certainly weren’t going to help him decipher the meaning of the runes any time soon. 

Not that they were supposed to explode. That seemed to be an entirely different problem all by itself, probably caused by the powering of the runes. But what exactly he had to do to solve the powering problem had so far eluded him. For all he knows, it could be as esoteric as trying to power them while the moon is waning instead of full. 

If the tests kept failing explosively, he’d be stuck with nothing but drafts, and a beginner’s grasp at best.  

Harry grumbled and threw this last scroll to the floor. It’s protective charms stopping the innocent object from disintegrating due to age and poor handling. He’d keep at it until he had a solution. No-one ever said Harry wasn’t stubborn. 

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Not one to be interrupted when he had a goal in sight, over the next few days Harry found himself falling into a steady routine. He would spend most of the morning poring over the various scrolls he had accumulated in his travels so far, before heading to his workshop in the afternoon to experiment and mostly fill his workshop with smoke.  

Things were progressing though. After accruing a pile of cinder ash larger than he cared to admit, he’d discovered that First Men runes were better carved into stone or metal surfaces. With bronze and gold being particularly powerful conductors.  

This learning could have come much sooner, but he was making the mistake of relying too much on his old world knowledge in his experiments.  

It was common knowledge in his old world, that you should always experiment with runes on wood first. Mainly for the safety of the learner. Turns out that’s terrible advice for anyone experimenting with First Men runes.  

He was just lucky he could heal wounds from projectile wood shards with relative ease. He was even more thankful that his workshop seemed to be charmed to repair itself overnight or something of the sort. He hadn’t looked into it really, as he was too focused on the runes, but it was useful, as the exploding wood tended to leave a lasting impact on his poor workshop by the end of his daily experiments.  

Any attempt to use the scripts on parchment were equally lacklustre. The runes just seemed to shimmer slightly upon activation, before flickering and burning the page to ash.  

This was a massive disappointment, as he’d been planning to experiment with contracts to enforce terms on his business ventures and future allies.  

He could use his old world runes, but he’d experimented with that option and found that the local ambient magics tended to interact poorly with the contracts. The document would work fine upon activation, but soon enough the initial charge of magic he infused into the runes would fade out and the contract would fail entirely. Which would inevitably release the parties to the affected contract. In his old world, the runes written on parchment would recharge themselves by absorbing ambient magic, but that just didn’t seem to be happening here in Westeros. 

Writing the contracts on stone might help a bit … but it just seemed a bit too eccentric for even Harry to get away with long term. No merchant or lord would take him seriously when presented with a stone tablet to sign. 

Harry suspected this issue was down to the more refined and delicate nature of the runes from his old world. Clearly they didn’t work well with the more primal nature of the ambient magic in Westeros. Which is why he really needed to get these First Men scripts to work. 

Thankfully, after switching to soft gold, his runic experiments on First Men runes started to pick up pace. He learned that the main issue was indeed power related and was mostly due to the sheer force of the magic disintegrating the source material. He also learned, to his interest, that the more primal nature of this magic allowed for vastly more powerful wards, but the lack of refinement limited their scope of purpose. 

It was apparent to Harry that if he wanted to power the types of wards he was used to, and subsequently leave them to the whims of the ambient Westeros magic to maintain, he’d need to combine his own refined runic scripts with the limited but powerful First Men scripts.  

If he could combine the scripts though, it did pose an interesting opportunity in terms of increasing the area of coverage. 

Back in the wizarding world, you could maybe get a simple area of effect ward to cover a whole village. Like some of the more simple fertility wards, or that damned caterwauling ward that Voldemort set up over Hogsmeade during the war. That was about the limit of ward coverage though, and only worked for very simple wards. 

Anything more complex, like intent wards or a fidelius charm, would have covered the bounds of a manor or castle at most. Those surrounding Hogwarts and Grimmauld place being perfect examples. The Hogwarts wards were some of the most powerful around, but even they couldn’t cover the nearby town of Hogsmeade as well; even though they drew power directly from one of the largest ley lines in the country. There just wasn’t enough power. 

Westeros was not short on power though, just a bit of finesse.  

He was also keen to test whether the greater power would allow trust and loyalty wards to hold more sway over those within their bounds, where previously they were regarded as useless and unreliable by warders in his old world. Only the goblins managed to make use of such wards, and even then, they relied more heavily on artifacts and charms like that waterfall he’d had so much trouble with, the thief’s downfall.  

He just needed a First Men runic string to absorb the raw ambient magics and refine it for use in his own scripts. That alone should enable the use of softer mediums like parchment. Everything pivoted on this one need to capture then refine the magic. 

Harry gritted his teeth as another script fizzled and died on his workbench. He would get there in the end. He was sure of it.  

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Dobby was a little worried about Harry’s slightly obsessive ‘research’ projects.  

The increasingly loud explosions down the hall every afternoon weren’t helping temper his concerns at all. As a house elf, he was very familiar with the joy of having a task to work on. But none of Dobby’s tasks tended to explode quite that often.  

Not that Dobby complained about the satisfying work Harry left him each evening in repairing the poor half-exploded workshop. It was the sort of work any house elf would enjoy. But it still left him slightly concerned. 

He had heard from other house elves that wizards tended to get ‘troubled’ in their old age, and start blowing things up or coming up with increasingly convoluted plans to solve simple problems. The more powerful the wizard, the more pronounced the problem tended to become. It was apparently the main reason the house elves were so insistent on lacing old Dumbledore’s lemon drops with calming potions.  

Dobby heard the headmaster had got into all sorts of hijinks whenever the house elves left him alone for too long. The poor house elves would take one day off near the end of every school year for their annual festival, and every time they came back there was another mess for them to clean up. 

According to old Tippy, he had come back early one year and found the headmaster leading an honest to merlin Cerberus into the castle. It had apparently all been downhill from there. 

Now Harry wasn’t ‘old’, necessarily, but Dobby had never heard of a more powerful wizard than his master and friend. So he was understandably a little worried. 

Sirius had, however, reassured Dobby that Harry was not ‘troubled’ as the elves had called it. He apparently just tended to get a bit reckless when he had something to focus on. Either way, it didn’t sound healthy. 

Dobby had even brought Harry that statue with the gold sword the other day to try to draw his attention toward the wonderful arts of the people in this region. Dobby figured if Harry wouldn’t leave his workshop he would bring the local arts to him instead, but Harry was apparently not one to be distracted even then. So after an hour or so of letting the statue watch over his master’s slightly manic experimentation, Dobby just popped it back to its pedestal and went back to preparing dinner. Dobby was pretty sure the slight scorch marks on the statue would go unnoticed. 

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“EUREKA! I’ve got it, YES, I’ve got it! HA! It worked!” The slightly muffled yelling trickled into the living room as Sirius sipped a whisky on the evening. He raised an eyebrow but did nothing more, instead shuffling the parchments in his hand. Maybe Harry would have time now to hear of the progress he’d made on launching the company, it was his idea after all. Not that Sirius minded much, he’d quite enjoyed handling everything so-far. 

BOOOM!... “Shit!”  

Or maybe it would be a while longer Sirius thought as he set the drink down and made to retire for the evening, casting another silencing bubble around himself as had become habit over the last week or so. 

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Harry was chuffed, if slightly soot covered and dishevelled.  

After countless failed attempts, he’d finally, finally uncovered the key to stabilizing the flow of the stronger ambient magic of Westeros with First Men runes, and funnelling that stabilized power into the wizarding runes of his home world.  

Satisfaction would barely begin to describe what Harry was feeling right now. It was like he’s been freed from the shackles of his most recent obsession, it was a breath of fresh air. 

“Huh, fresh air, I should get some of that”, he momentarily mumbled to himself, not knowing exactly how long he’d resided solely within the tent. 

Nonetheless, the discovery was worth the effort.  

He’d found that by placing a simple Gyfu (ᚸ) rune next to a Yr (ᛉ) rune, it would first capture, then buffer the flow. Thus stabilising the ambient magic and redirecting the flow into any script he wished, whether it was First Men, Nordic, Egyptian, or even the most delicate scripts like Japanese Kanji. The whole thing was so damn simple it was almost maddening. 

It had taken him longer than he would have liked, but he reminded himself that any truly original discovery would take time and this one was groundbreaking. 

He celebrated hard that night, treating the entire tavern to drinks on his own dime, or ‘on his own dragon’ he supposed. Even shilling out some samples of whiskey to the lucky patrons.  

Life was good.  

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Thankfully, with the powering mechanism sorted, Harry’s progress accelerated rapidly.  

He readily admitted he may have gotten a bit sidetracked with his experimentations. But this was a minor break from their travels that he felt it was warranted for the benefits it would bring.  

Sirius seemed happy enough to be working on some project or other down by the docks anyway, so he didn’t feel too guilty extending their stay in White Harbour slightly. They weren’t in a rush. 

He was actually quite excited by the new First Men runes he had discovered in his research. Some of them were proving to be quite useful, once he figured out what their effects actually were. 

The Awahl rune, for instance, meant to block, or defend, and combined nicely with hardening and deflecting runes on armour. It both strengthening the metals, but also interestingly caused direct attacks to occasionally miss despite a clear line of sight. This was most obvious when every other arrow seemingly curved around the dummy he’d strung up to test a breast plate engraved with the runes. It was a much more powerful effect than any of his old world runes could have achieved on their own. The wizards in his old world weren’t particularly focused on protecting against physical attacks after all. 

Durahal, on the other hand, seemed to have a meaning along the lines of ‘threat’ and proved to be effective in enhancing the detection of people with ill intent. This had an interesting effect when Harry, while testing the ward, detected a malicious character cross the boundary, which by his calculations would be somewhere on the street outside the tavern. 

Upon closer inspection he noted this to be Maester Cressen himself. Harry would have to look into that when he broke off from his runic study binge. Remembering well their discovery of the dangerous level of infiltration in Winterfell, and the suspicious Septon here in White Harbour. Harry wasn’t all too surprised to discover another possible spy or infiltrator in a major house here in the North. The order of Maesters were already under his suspicion after all.  

Tagungi, was a simpler rune, and might be the reason he melted so many of his first test stones … and a truly unfortunate number of workbenches. The literal translation was fire, but the effect was more one of extreme heat. In-fact, the raw and more powerful nature of this first men rune made it far more effective than the Nordic Futhark rune equivalent, ‘Fehu’. 

Harry could see this being incredibly useful in a mass forge, or in future glass making endeavours, massively cutting down on the amount of burnable materials needed to produce the highest temperatures and form the hardest alloys. 

The list went on. In general, Harry discovered that by carefully selecting and arranging the two runic scripts together, he’d usually end up with a far more powerful scheme than if he just used one language or the other. Though, with occasionally unusual or unexpected side effect.  

If Harry wasn’t popping his head up for air each evening, he could very well have lost himself in the world of runes. He and Sirius did meet once more with Lord Manderly on a matter of some warehouse and agreements for storage of goods, though Harry’s head was in the clouds at the time. 

Harry had made remarkable progress. Likely making himself the foremost runic expert in Westeros. Though he was still holding out hope of finding some small communities of rune users that could teach him a thing or two. 

Stretching his back, and feeling that he was emerging from a haze or cocoon of study, Harry made his way out into town to hunt down Sirius. Only now realising that he’d not really seen the sun in weeks. With winter only just fading, the sun still set fairly early, and he’d only been emerging in the later afternoons to grab dinner in the Tavern and occasionally roam the lamp lit streets. 

He would take a day or two to relax and refresh, and then dive in to the hopefully much shorter task of building a town-scale wardstone for the White Harbour Godswood, much as he’d promised Lord Stark he’d do if given the chance. 

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With the breakthroughs he’d made in understanding the First Men runes, Harry felt ready to tackle a new, combination wardstone for White Harbour. It would be an ambitious project, but he was sure his weeks of experimenting would pay-off in this endeavour.  

The wards would be similar to the ones he had built for the Stark lands, but with enhanced power capacity, longevity and reach. His plan was to place this wardstone beneath the Heart tree in the Godswood of White Harbour. 

He wanted it to be capable of casting a vast ward that would cover not only the town but also a good portion of the farmlands outside the walls, and the waters of the harbour itself. This would save him having to prepare many smaller stones to scatter around the local farms and the coast. 

To achieve this, he decided to use the same basic soil fertility rune schemes he had used for the Stark lands, along with a mild weather moderation rune scheme.  

Possibly the most useful addition would be the mild ill intent ward using the new ‘durahal’ rune in the traditional detection chain. This would encourage those with ill intent to believe they have a pressing need to be somewhere else, anywhere else. 

The intent ward would have to be fairly mild, since he couldn’t account for the varied purposes of the many people moving through the city. Even so, Harry was confident that even a mild ward would help push some of the more troublesome elements to move on as the effect built up on them through long term exposure.  

He could also only tie the intent wards to the benefit of the city itself, rather than the House of Manderly, as the Manderlys weren’t in-the know. Not that this bothered Harry too much. He was doing this mainly for the benefit of the people who resided in White Harbour. 

He may have liked Lord Manderly well enough, but who was to say his son would be as capable a ruler. It would be much better to look out for the wellbeing of the people of the town in the long run. 

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With the Faith having a fairly strong foothold here in White Harbour, as evidenced by the Septon who tried to burn his precious books, Harry was determined to keep the magic of the wardstone and its effects a secret.  

He also didn’t want to tip off this secretive Tresy-Jor order that seemed to be anti-knowledge and possibly anti-magic if he guessed correctly. Most religious fanatics were.  

Harry privately mused that the intent wards might negatively affect the reach of the Faith in White Harbour in the long run anyway; but that was no concern of his, in-fact, it might be for the best. 

He would certainly inform the Starks of the Wardstone’s installation when he finally got around to sending them a letter or two, but the people of White Harbour would have to notice the effects on their own. 

With the effects strongest around its central point, they might eventually pin-point the cause, if only because it would become very hard to lie whilst standing next to this Heart Tree. A side effect of the trust ward and the sheer power involved.   

Helpfully, he was doubtful they’d try digging to discover the real cause. The northerners of the Old Faith wouldn’t allow it, and he doubted Lord Manderly would allow his people to offend the Starks. 

Nevertheless, he had agreed to plant more wardstones throughout the North as he travelled, and felt that White Harbour, as the largest population centre in the North, would greatly benefit from the powerful magic he had harnessed.  

Thankfully, the single large stone he had carved with his combined script would end up being far less work, and a far more effective solution that the tiny stones he’d originally planned to distribute around the city. He also suspected his original wardstones would have failed in fairly short order due to his ignorance of the power differential and its effect on ruining his foreign scripts. 

 He’d have to get an elf to replace the stones he’d setup in Winterfell at some point. Hopefully his Winterfell portkey stone hadn’t failed already. He’d been overconfident in his own magic when planting those stones without first understanding this world’s magics. 

Harry and Dobby worked quickly and quietly, using levitation charms to carefully remove the soil beneath the heart tree. As they dug, Harry felt the powerful energies of the weirwood tree pulsing around him.  

He’d yet to uncover what made these trees such powerful conduits of magic, and he suspected it would be a study of years to even scratch the surface. He also suddenly got the distinct impression that he shouldn’t even try. An impression not of his own mind by from the ambient magic in the air.  

Harry snorted slightly at the attempted warning. “Dumb trees,” he muttered to himself. 

Harry was a sucker for mysteries and never one to shy away from danger if it meant solving them. After all, he had run full pelt into a corridor that promised a ‘certain and painful death’ in his first year just to find a shiny rock. If anything, the ominous warning just moved the trees up on his list of things to investigate. But not right now, he needed to get back to his vacation, and he had a wardstone to place. 

Together they floated, pushed and pulled the wardstone between the tree’s roots, ensuring that the symbiotic magic he had observed in Winterfell would be recreated here in White Harbour through contact with the roots. As the wardstone settled into place the scripts carved into its surface glowed briefly, before dimming to a slow pulse. 

“I can already feel the ward taking shape” he whispered to Dobby, sharing a smile with the elf, happy that the ward stone was working after all the effort he put in to designing it, “there’s nothing left for us to do here, let’s get this covered and get back to the tent, I’m in need of a drink, something to celebrate.”  

They quietly reversed the process to cover the ditch, stopping only twice as city patrols clanked by on their regular routes. Finally, covering the spot where the hole had been with leaves and twigs to hide the disturbed earth.  

Looking around in the dim light, Harry was sure the leaves of the weirwood seemed redder, and the gardens seemed to have more blooming flowers than he recalled. Though with the darkness of the night it was difficult to tell. 

Dobby insisted on staying behind to, in his word, “clean up the Godswood”, and “give the tree a golden sword, because it would look prettier outside”. Or something. Harry wasn’t even going to attempt to deconstruct that sentence as he made his way back to the Tavern. It was far too late in the evening to try and understand his excitable house-elf friend. Either way his drink was calling to him. 

Harry’s immersion in his studies might have been a tad excessive, but he was satisfied that he’d gotten enough magic study in to carry him comfortably through their next round of adventuring.  

Now free of all rune related tasks and with his head firmly back in the real world, Harry turned his attention to wondering what Sirius had been up to during the few weeks. He had a vague recollection about a meeting to discuss a warehouse … maybe?  

Harry shrugged as he ducked into the Tavern. He was sure Sirius knew what he was doing. 

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Upon rolling, grudgingly, out of bed the next morning, Harry staggered almost drunkenly into the kitchen, not being much of a morning person. Only to find Sirius waiting for him, a bright grin on his face.  

Harry hated that Sirius was a morning person. “What sort of sadistic person likes mornings?” Sirius would of course always respond that “early morning was the best time to get good pranks set-up back in Hogwarts and the habit stuck”.  

Harry wasn’t convinced, he usually encountered his school adventures in the evening. Though, to be fair, Harry’s adventures involved a lot more brushes with death and a truly astonishing number of class XXXX magical creatures. Honestly, sometimes he wondered what Dumbledore was thinking bringing so many deadly creatures into the school. Though maybe Harry could have avoided his years of misadventures by simply being a morning person instead of a night owl ... oh well, it was too late to know now. 

Shaking himself from that deep spiral of thought, and begging Dobby of a coffee, he settled in for breakfast. Sirius had clearly been told by Dobby that Harry was ready to return to the land of the living and their burgeoning trading business.  

Harry was done with runes for now, it was out of his system. Now he was keen to get up to speed on Sirius’s projects. If the gleam in Sirius’ eyes was anything to go by, he wouldn’t be bored. 

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Chapter 26 Teaser: 

The building was a burnt-out husk, nothing more than a series of charred beams and blackened walls. Clearly the victim of a devastating fire. Small flurries of melting snow layered the charcoal beams. The adjacent dock appeared to have suffered a less violent fate, though scorch marks and fire damage were evident in various spots on the dock planks. All-in-all, it made for a sorry sight.  

“It’s perfect!” Sirius announced loudly to absolutely no one, in his usual exuberant manner. This got some suspicious and groggy looks from the previously napping Royal Fleet guards on the neighbouring warehouse.