Consciously borrowed characters, ideas, and worlds, from Harry Potter and works by Mike Carey.

I. Lacrimosa

The cold autumn night stirred as a gust of wind blew through the quiet town of Belmont. Ominous clouds, illuminated by the bright moon big enough to fall out of the sky, eagerly waited to cast their shadows over this diminutive civilization beneath, catching them in despair as they peacefully slept, blissfully unaware of the storm to come.

A figure walking briskly down the street disrupted the suffocating stillness. The red ember of a cigarette glowed brightly in the shadows. A thin cloud of smoke emerged behind him as he made his way through the center of town. Just as the man walked past the church, he suddenly stopped in his tracks and approached the entrance.

He quickly examined his surroundings, out of habit rather than necessity, and tried the door. The figure, a man somewhere in his mid-to-late twenties, is illuminated by the light above the doorframe. He can only be considered average, from his size to the uninspiring shade of brown of his hair. A faint scar on his forehead emphasized by the angle of the light. Glasses reflected the light, hiding his eyes behind them. His head moves with quick, minute motions as he once again looked around for any signs of disturbance. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the church and produced a stick out of the pocket of his ministry-issued all weather jacket. An audible click followed a deft flick of the wrist. The heavy wooden door groaned from the pressure as he put his shoulder to it, protesting against being moved at such an ungodly hour. The figure walked inside, closing the door behind him. Stillness returned under the stifling clouds, except for the wisp of smoke rising from a cigarette butt, dissipating into the night.

Once inside, the man wasted no time and took out a silver pendant from his jacket and withdrew the content, hastily wrapping the chain around his fingers before gripping it in his hand. He knelt to the ground with his back towards the weeping figure on the Cross, closed his eyes and began to quietly hum a tune. It started out as barely a whisper, but "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem soon filled the Church, the melody reverberated between its walls.

Raising the dead is tricky business on the best of days. As the famous Albus Dumbledore once said, "necromancy is a branch of magic that has never worked." This is both right and wrong. You could animate a corpse, even though Piertotum Locomotor is a tricky piece of magic on its own, let alone applying the charm to organic materials. But an Inferius is only that, an animated pile of meat and bones and nothing more. A different way of raising the dead is to call upon a soul from the "next plane." The first problem with that, is that summoning a ghost is never a sure thing. And even when you succeed, the soul's presence in our world is always an unstable one, flickering and transparent; anchored by the emotions of the summoner and reflects them back to you a hundred times over (which could be dangerous for a whole different set of reasons). Ghosts forced to come over to this side are a lot different from ghosts who chose to stay on this side. Getting a ghost to interact with the living requires an equal amount of coercion, mental fortitude, and luck.

There are other ways to talk to the dead. A near death experience, for one, is almost guaranteed to be successful. But it also comes with the overwhelming risk of death, which turns away even the most dedicated necromancers. The singing creates a wormhole between this world and the next, allowing a soul to get from its world to ours and the summoner. Of course, not every sorcerer dabbling in the arts of spiritualism uses music as their instrument of choice. Some of the more religious ones pray, or recite verses from the Holy Book. Some choose to draw pictures, some play exploding snap with themselves, make lists of potion ingredients, interpretive dance, so on and so forth. It doesn't matter how. All of these are simply meant to create a magical connection between the spirit and the summoner, an anchor for the soul to hold on to while traveling between the planes of existence.

The man paused mid-verse. A small smile appeared on his face. A pale translucent figure rose like smoke from the pendant between his fingers.

"Hello Mrs. Lovegood."

"What do you want, Harry Potter?"

"Why'd you think I wanted something? Maybe I've missed your company."

"We're not your toys, Harry. I thought you would've learned your lesson by now." The ghost replied with an uncomfortable forwardness.

"Don't remind me."

"I see you've found yourself a proper church," Pandora Lovegood changed the subject as she examined her translucent fingers, "I can really feel the devotion."

Harry that churches are a good place to communicate with the dead. The soul, for whatever reason, is almost always more collected and solid, less smoke and mirrors and, well, less dead, in a church. The location amplifies the psychic energy in a way that makes connecting to the afterlife more likely to occur. The older the church, the stronger the amplification. Harry finds that old stony catholic ones tend to pack the biggest punch. Maybe it's because his songs are usually Latin hymns, and there's a connection between those and catholicism. Maybe old is just better, and some of these are really, really old. Maybe it's even the presence of God, who knows? Harry never asked too many questions about religious convictions.

"Yeah, this one is a lot older, I think."

"So what do you want, Harry Potter?"

"I need a favor."

"Why?"

"Always the hard hitting questions," Harry smiled, "that's what I like about you."

The ghost, however, did not return his smile.

"I need you to find someone," Harry continued.

"I'm bound to that necklace, Harry. So, unless you'll be finding someone yourself, I cannot help you find them. And since you'll be looking for someone yourself, I fail to see how I can be of help. Though I suppose I could go through walls, but you could just walk around them to get to the other side." Pandora smiled as playfully as a ghost's expressions allowed her to.

"I'm going to set you free."

"What's the catch?"

"No catch. you've been a tremendous help, really. I've learned a lot from you, Pandora. If you do this for me, I will unbind you from this world and you'd be free to go back to yours."

"And what exactly is stopping me from leaving the moment you unbind me?"

"Because I need you to find your daughter."

Author's Note: I've edited this chapter because I realized that in the two chapters I've written, I have advanced the storyline by 0. So I figured it'd probably be better to have to story actually go somewhere in the opening chapter, and then introduce some backstory.