"Oi, look!" Tam said brightly.
Miranda's head popped out from inside a room, a mess of wiry hair.
"I found more dirt!" Tam kicked happily at the rubble on the floor, sending up a puff of dust. "Very nice dirt."
Miranda gave him her special scowl. The one she reserved just for him. It was how he knew she cared. "Remind me again I why bring you along?"
"For the looks obviously. I'm practically eye candy. Wanna dance?"
Miranda snorted and returned to scavenging through the room.
"No?" Tam asked. "Then it must be because you love me."
"Can't be that," Miranda said from the room. "I'm not capable of love. Too much a curmudgeon."
Shame they hadn't found anything in that nice city a while back. Tam would have loved it there! Now they were scavenging through abandoned buildings like thieves in the night.
Miranda's room must have been the main office of the orphanage, since it had drawers and drawers of old documents. Most were so weathered down by time and bad conditions that they crumpled at a touch, but Miranda was waving her wand around to restore them and then read them. Something moved in the decrepit building, and Tam spun with incredible speed, wand pulled out, coat fluttering.
A rat. It was just a rat. Tam relaxed and pointed his wand accusingly.
"Now sir. I'll need to be asking you a few questions," He said gravely. He pulled his hat lower and looked down his nose toward the small rascal. "Where were you on the twenty-first of November, the year nineteen-seventy-nine?"
The rat just squeaked, too scared to move.
"Now that's right suspicious behavior, innit? Dodging questions, acting all anxious. What are you hiding sir?"
"Tam," Miranda said, walking past "Stop talking to the rat and take care of this place. There's nothing here."
Tam grinned and tipped his hat at the rat. He strolled into the office Miranda had just left and reached in his mind for a memory. Yes, there it was, he'd taken that one before they started searching the abandoned building.
He raised his wand and the room changed. Objects replaced themselves, the papers restored by Miranda turned yellow and dusty again, flying back in their metallic drawers. Rubbish on the ground zipped back to its original place. A wardrobe ground its way to the entrance. Even dust seemed to zip back from where it had been disturbed.
Tam closed his eyes after the commotion stopped and inspected his work. He compared what he saw to the image in his mind. Yes. He smiled. It was identical.
Then he got out his bottle of Hunger Dust. Tam had been using it for a long time. It was yellow-ish now. It wouldn't turn blue for another couple of months.
He poured all the golden Hunger Dust in his gloved hand, which he raised. It shone brightly in the dim room. He blinked, then blew the dust away in a spinning motion. A maddening flurry of coat, hat, keen eyes, and specks of light. The dust showered the room like molten sunlight. Some dust floated away in the corridor, like millions of tiny comets.
The dust formed itself into shapes in mid-air. Tam himself, waving his wand just earlier, Miranda waving pages around with her wand, the wardrobe they'd moved away because it was partly blocking the entrance. Tiny little tentacles of dust spun around the lockers of drawers - the Alohamora charms they'd had to use. The dust was moving inside these ever-changing contours, its light starting to grow progressively dimmer.
When the forms finally seemed to be disintegrating, dust no longer following specific outlines, Tam raised his empty bottle. The sand zipped back into it.
