Sunlight, bright and scorching, burst through the windows of an old Huguenot house on Folgate Street, tucked in between units 13 and 15. No passerby would have seen the house, but all who passed agreed that warmth emanated from that place, the magical warmth of a home hearth crackling with love and joy.
Ronald Weasley was presently rustling up a cough remedy from Ollie James's 15 Minute Potions, a popular home-brewing recipe book by a roguish potions master with somewhat brusque methods.
Emulating the art of the master, Ronald Weasley folded a square of muslin around some Billywig stingers and unceremoniously whacked the little sack against the countertop.
"For goodness' sake Ronald!" Hermione Granger tutted. "Carry on with that and I'll be ill myself."
"I'm okay," Hugo Weasley mumbled weakly. "I swear I am. I'm good enough to sit up and eat. I can run and walk now."
"You, young sir, are strictly forbidden from any physical exertion until next week," Ron lectured. "You will go to your grandma's house and you will rest in bed only to get up at appropriate intervals for food and medicine."
"Will Lily be there?"
"Yes but she will be busy with the homework your aunt requested I set her," Hermione replied.
"Boo," Hugo said, cupping his cheeks with his palms and resting his elbows on the table.
When the cough remedy was ready, the three of them gathered their things and blew over to the Burrow with a handful of Floo dust. Hugo Weasley was to be looked after by his grandmother Molly, while his parents headed off to work on this sticky summer morning.
As he was about to leave, Molly pulled Ron aside and slipped a biscuit tin into the crook of his arm.
Quietly, she told him that she finally got around to clearing the last of her brothers' belongings from the house. The biscuit tin belonged to Fabian, and it was warded with a spell she could not crack. The contents must have been important to Fabian, but as he was long gone and the tin showed no signs of yielding, she thought she might as well let Ron have a crack at it, and if there was nothing more to be done he could finally dispose of it for her. Molly could not, even after several decades, find it in her to discard anything precious to her late brothers.
Ron brought the tin to work and promptly got distracted by more urgent duties until it was time to leave, when he saw Harry Potter standing over his desk straining to pry the tin open.
"You cannot honestly be hoarding such tasty snacks all to yourself, can you? My best friend of over twenty years!" Harry said.
"Erm...Harry, that tin is from the late seventies. I'm not sure its contents are edible."
"Oh."
"Well we should figure out how to open it anyway. Mum wants me to do it for her. Belonged to my Uncle Fabian this tin did."
"Using the state of the art gadgetry of the Auror office?" Harry waggled his brows with much excitement.
They proceeded into the secret laboratories where they attempted all forms of ward-breaking on the slightly rusty tin. It took them nearly an hour of magical exertion when Ron finally had the idea to call Bill for help. He picked up his shellphone, an outmoded, clunky conch the size of a brick, and called his eldest brother.
A miniature version of Bill's head popped out of the conch. He looked slightly annoyed, like he had been interrupted. Exasperated, he offered the silly suggestion of banging the tin on the floor, claiming that it would crack open like an egg.
Harry incredulously flung the tin on the floor, whereupon it cracked and its contents spilled like runny yolk.
"Merlin's fucking underpants!" Bill croaked from the conch, his face suddenly contorting into expression of interest. "Well that's pornography if I ever saw it!"
Bill was referring to a series of coloured photographs that were splayed like a fan across the floor. They seemed like blue holiday photos, in the other sense of the word, besides the fact that some of the photos were literally blue from the sky and sea.
Ron picked up one of the photos-which seemed coloured by a large expanse of flesh tones-with a shaky hand. "Ma never mentioned Uncle Fabian was a poof."
"-I'm not surprised," Bill cut in, whereupon Ron gave him a cold stare.
"Bloody fucking hell," Harry wheezed, peering over Ron's shoulder. "It's not just that your uncle seems to be cavorting in the nude with some other man, it seems that the other man is-was-" Harry choked on his words dramatically.
"A death eater!" Ron finished.