There was a book of ancient Turkish war magic on his desk, in the original Old Turkic, and that was what he'd decided to devote this otherwise lazy Sunday afternoon to. Translating it into anything he could comprehend was laborious, as there wasn't (at least as far as he could find) a translation book which took the extinct language into English, and even if there was, it would hardly have helped in some cases where the Latin spell root really needed to be understood in context in order to function. It was the sort of puzzle that he enjoyed spending time on, because no one else had performed these charms (at least in England) for decades or possibly longer, but it was also a riddle whose usefulness remained a mystery until it was solved. He thought the ritual he was decoding at present was some sort of torture spell that focused on the victim's eyes, but he could have had it all wrong and it would be difficult to say until the translation was complete.
A servant had knocked on the door to offer him tea, and Tiberius had unlocked it with a wave of his wand without bothering to rise. It wasn't as though any of the household staff would be able to read Old Turkic, so this was one of the pursuits he undertook in his study which was relatively safe from outside speculation. The servant left the tea tray on the corner of the desk without a word and departed; they were trained well enough to know when they were not wanted. The animals which occupied the house, it seemed, were not, because one of the cats ran into the room just as the door was closing behind the servant and alighted on his desk.
The cats belonged to Antigone (and, honestly, Tiberius wasn't even sure whether there were still two of them or whether their numbers had been increasing or decreasing while he paid attention elsewhere) and he would hardly have bothered looking up if this one hadn't placed itself directly in his way. The sudden movement startled him, and he reached out instinctively to smack the thing off the desk before it could step into the wet ink on his parchment and ruin hours of work translating. He thought the cat looked strange (had Antigone been transfiguring her pets, or was this one he hadn't seen before?) but didn't have time to get a close look, because his sudden movement had also upended the bottle of ink, and sent the cat careening towards the just-arrived tray of hot tea.
"Damn cat," he hissed as the porcelain on the tray clattered to the floor, sending tea and ink everywhere.
A servant had knocked on the door to offer him tea, and Tiberius had unlocked it with a wave of his wand without bothering to rise. It wasn't as though any of the household staff would be able to read Old Turkic, so this was one of the pursuits he undertook in his study which was relatively safe from outside speculation. The servant left the tea tray on the corner of the desk without a word and departed; they were trained well enough to know when they were not wanted. The animals which occupied the house, it seemed, were not, because one of the cats ran into the room just as the door was closing behind the servant and alighted on his desk.
The cats belonged to Antigone (and, honestly, Tiberius wasn't even sure whether there were still two of them or whether their numbers had been increasing or decreasing while he paid attention elsewhere) and he would hardly have bothered looking up if this one hadn't placed itself directly in his way. The sudden movement startled him, and he reached out instinctively to smack the thing off the desk before it could step into the wet ink on his parchment and ruin hours of work translating. He thought the cat looked strange (had Antigone been transfiguring her pets, or was this one he hadn't seen before?) but didn't have time to get a close look, because his sudden movement had also upended the bottle of ink, and sent the cat careening towards the just-arrived tray of hot tea.
"Damn cat," he hissed as the porcelain on the tray clattered to the floor, sending tea and ink everywhere.