In Black and White

'This library would be great,' said Matt as he pulled a hefty tome off the shelf, 'if it weren't all in French.'

'It's not all in French,' said Rose, squinting about the main magical library of Paris, a huge stone building with a vaulted ceiling and windows of coloured glass through which the bright sunlight cascaded to cast the stacks into severe shadow. 'Just most of it. Besides, I thought you could read French?'

Matt sighed, clambering down from the short ladder and handing her the tome. 'It's been a long time since I had lessons and spent holidays out here. I could probably, yeah, read a novel in French. But it would take time. To go through this much information is best done skim reading incredibly dense academic writing, which is difficult enough to do in English without missing something integral.' His gaze swept across the books. 'And then there's the fact that I don't read Old French, or Middle French, or Latin. This is going to get ridiculous.'

'Maybe we should wait until Mum has us hooked up to the Hogwarts library?'

'Even that won't be as good a source as looking in a Parisian library and records room for Parisian matters.' Matt's lips pursed as he shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Maybe we should ask her for a translator.'

'And miss out on poring through these books yourself?' Rose gave him a wry glance. 'That must have hurt to even consider.'

'A lot of things hurt these days,' he said without meaning to, and so was relieved when the voice of Selena came from the end of the shelf, sounding arch and tired.

'Weren't you going to look at more modern stuff? Thule running around Paris and the records of those?' She was standing in the aisle like coming down the stacks would physically hurt her, as if books might reach out clawed hands to pummel her with knowledge.

Matt scowled. 'That's even worse. Those are city records, donated diaries, planning reports - I don't know where to start looking, and this is all in a foreign language. Don't get me wrong, give me the right book and I'll probably get through it in time, but sifting through a dishevelled collection of city records - at least there are booksin this section in English. God knows what's in that pile.'

'I don't know.' Selena shrugged. 'If I were Prometheus Thane, then I'd start by looking where the Thule Society went eighty years ago, instead of where the Templars may or may not have been seven hundred years ago. So we should look where he looked.'

'That's lovely,' said Matt, 'except we have no idea where he looked.'

'Unless he used this library.'

He turned to her and ignored Rose's warning, concerned look. Upset as Selena might have been, he didn't have time for inane commentary when he had a monstrous piece of research ahead of him. 'And how, exactly, are we supposed to know that?'

Selena met his gaze, expression flat - then she gave the faintest hint of a superior smile, and his aggravation wilted as she pressed a finger to the open register next to her. 'We check the record. Of course.'

Matt and Rose exchanged bewildered looks before they hurried down to join her. 'The record...'

'We signed in to get access to the building. The library keeps track of where we are. And when you take a book off a shelf, it leaves a record for it. So they know who had a book last, whether it was returned - so if someone comes looking for a specific book, they know where it is.' Selena's superior smile remained. 'Standard magic for a public library.' And there was, indeed, the title of the book The Dark Ages of Dyfed written in the register, his name scribbled next to it in a facsimile of his own handwriting from the entrance book he'd signed.

Matt had spent his childhood either wanting for nothing by way of books, or being too young to care about a public library's magic records. Then there had been Hogwarts, which used the more personal security system of a librarian nobody dared cross. Although he'd known of these record systems such a thought hadn't occurred to him, and he felt his gut tense with indignation that the one of them least interested in research had pointed this out.

'It's not like he'll have listed himself as Prometheus Thane if he even came in,' said Matt through gritted teeth. 'That's like begging to be arrested.'

'I could question how much a French librarian cares,' said Rose, lifting a placating hand, 'but we're talking about the public records from the 1940s. There won't be that many people who accessed them over the last few days, which is our time window. If we see anyone who had a pattern of looking for Thule Society movements in occupied Paris within the last week, that's going to be rather telling, isn't it?'

Matt had to smother the stab of jealousy he knew was unfair when he looked to Rose. It was an old feeling, this, the surge of competition that he'd never been able to shake. As a couple, before, after - they had their respective strengths academically, but he'd always felt his came from hours of hard work and hers came from sudden flashes of inspiration. She could turn her attention to any topic and master it, while he would have to graft and struggle and still come second place to her - or third, or fourth. It was one reason he'd turned his focus onto a topic such as history; brilliance could not compensate for hours spent gathering a huge body of knowledge, and she had never had enough interest to rival him.

And now she'd trumped his most significant skill with a simple deductive reasoning that had passed him by.

Of course, she spotted the expression that flashed across his face before he could smother it, and he received the briefest indignant glare for his sins.

"Stop looking like that. I can see you sulking, and that's not fair just because I got a better mark..."

So many rows before they'd ended it. It had been mutual, whatever Selena said - it had been for the best, lest they ended up hating one another.

Maybe hating one another would have been easier.

'That's a good idea,' he said instead, and tried to sound as sincere as possible in apology. 'All right. Let's take a look. It'll get us further than me pretending to be competent going through the French books.'

The self-effacing gibe was enough to get a flicker of a smile from Rose, the unspoken acceptance of his unspoken apology, and Selena waved an imperious hand and turned on her heel to lead them down through the library. Somehow she'd already picked up where the records section was, or perhaps she knew to zero in on the most abandoned and forlorn part of the entire library.

These bookshelves were stacked in order - but the papers and bindings upon them were arranged by date, rather than topic or any categories. The bindings themselves indicated if these were planning records, or donated diaries, or government records, or so forth, but this would not help narrow down finding anything of the Thule Society - especially if anything had landed in the dauntingly thick 'Miscellaneous' binders.

Matt sighed. 'We've got about five years to go through,' he said. 'Let's see who was fixated on city matters in the last few days.'

'Oh,' said Selena. 'This is the part of research that's really boring.'

Rose sighed and passed her the hefty book on Welsh magical history they'd found, the English language book which had looked the most promising. 'Go through this, then,' she said, 'and find the chapters and sections which might give us something on the Chalice of Emrys.'

Selena took the book, expression flat. 'This is better,' she said, 'but in the same way that stabbing your little finger is better than stabbing the palm of your hand.'

'Come on. It'll be fun,' said Matt, and meant it, pulling off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. 'There's going to be so much in here.'

Rose gave him a lopsided smile. 'In French.'

'I know enough.' I hope. 'Let's check the records book - simplest way is to go through person by person, you tell me which binder they got, I tell you what's in it, and we keep a tally on the topics they investigated until we get an agenda to match Thane's.' He reached to his backpack to pull out a notebook and pencil, nodding with satisfaction at the prospect before him.

Mercifully, there weren't a lot of people who'd gone through the records in the last few days. Some had been so obvious in their narrow agenda as to not possibly be Thane - others had browsed far and wide, and so it was through every single one of these journals they had to look, trying to discern what their research had been about before they could dismiss them or consider them a candidate. No names lunged out at him, Thane or his men sensible enough to use a discreet pseudonym, and several times Matt wondered if they'd even been here, but eventually he frowned at his notes.

'This Dupont guy,' he said, tapping his pencil. 'He's been looking a lot into local wizarding family lines, which is a bit odd, but he's also been looking over things from the Occupation. Let's read some of these journals properly before we move on.'

Rose looked up from the stack of papers in her arms, and nodded. 'He seems a good bet. But there are still about a dozen binders he took out. So let's get to work.'

It wasn't a competition. That was what Matt told himself when they hauled the binders off the shelves and set them on the table Selena had claimed, going through them page by page to try to see what Prometheus Thane, if he had indeed used this pseudonym, had sought and found. They were here to thwart his efforts and save the day. It wasn't about who found the answers first.

Which was why Matt made sure to grab the last book this Dupont had looked in, on the principle that it was in there he'd probably found what he wanted.

'Ugh,' he said once he saw the headers. 'This one's all about assessments of damage done to the city after the Alliance of Wizards retook Paris. There could be something buried in a single line of text here...' His eyes narrowed. 'It's at least organised district by district.'

Rose nodded. 'Then I'll see if I can point you in the direction of the right district.'

And the work began. Matt had to grab a dictionary, and the going was slow with his perfunctory grasp of the language. All he could do was try to get the gist of each paragraph and see if it was useful. He scanned chunks of text for references to the Thule Society, but he was only a few pages in before there was a noise from Selena.

'I've found a part on the Chalice of Emrys,' she said, voice guarded. 'It's probably still just mythology...'

'Anything we don't already know?'

'I'll see.' A moment's silence as she sat there, lips moving. 'A lot about the idea of it having been created, and this book's citing someplace called Amroth as having been Myrddin's home in the period.'

Matt's nose wrinkled. 'I thought that was a place from Lord of the Rings.'

'Apparently it's in Wales. Go figure. It's talking about caves and what have you and... okay, this is really boring. Travels of Myrddin. What an enormous arsehole he was in the mythology -' Selena stopped, and squinted at the book.

'Yeah,' said Matt. 'This is why I really hope he's not the same guy as Merlin. Or that's ruined all sorts of childhood inspiration.' He shook his head at Rose. 'You don't want to know.

She nodded, and frowned at the page she'd just turned in her journal. 'Excavations,' she told him. 'That seems to be what he's after - that's what lots of these books are about.'

'I figured. But it narrows the field.'

'There's a mention here of the Chalice falling into the hands of a wizard called Aessin, who may or may not have been one of Myrddin's apprentices,' continued Selena.

'I don't know this one,' said Matt, looking up. He shrugged at the glances he got. 'I've never studied the bloody thing, I just know the stories. This is exactly what we're here to find out.'

'Apparently he used it to bring a Saxon warrior friend of his, Tancred, back from the dead.' Selena arched an eyebrow. 'This is supposed to be the first time the Chalice was used in such a way, but there's this... ugh, there's waxing lyrical here...'

She descended into silence and so Matt let her work, bending over his dictionary to try to identify a few key words he could scan for. This carried on for some time, Selena muttering something about old English, and the moment was broken not by her, but by Matt himself as he picked up the next binder.

'There's a name which keeps on popping up, or a group of names,' he said. 'Wizards of the Resistance - the magical contingent fighting against the occupation in general and the Thule Society in specific. There's a branch of them who're in about three of these books so far - it could be a coincidence, or it might be them specifically that Thane - if this even is Thane and not just some local history nut - God, I don't know -'

Rose placed a hand on his arm. 'Breathe, Matt. This is our best lead. Let's see it through before we start second-guessing ourselves. Who're this branch?'

'Libération-Magique. They seem to have been one of the major early groups of resistance fighters, though I'm not seeing any references to them in these '43 and '44 records - I'm going to stop and check out who they are.' Matt looked at her apologetically. 'If you think it's a good idea?'

'No, go ahead. I'm trying to find patterns, still. Which is hilarious in a foreign language. This is all down to the planning permissions and - ugh, carry on. I have a dictionary, and this is about all I can do to be useful, I can't pick out any detail like you can.'

'Assuming this is even right,' groaned Matt. He'd disregarded the books on wizarding families so far, but after scribbling down a few notes of the names he'd picked up from the references to the Libération-Magique, it was to them he turned next.

It was long and excruciating work. Tracing names referenced back to the 1940s, trying to find patterns or determine the fate of this group in old records which had been poorly-maintained and from an era where the authorities didn't care in the first place. So when a name lunged out at him that he recognised, it was like a gut-punch.

'Kerner,' he breathed.

Both Rose and Selena sat bolt upright, happy for any distraction. 'He's in there?' said Rose.

'He's mentioned in this book - he was the Thule Society officer who had a member of the group captured and executed in December 1941. A whole lot of them died around then, or in the few months beforehand - not all of them have a cause of death listed, for some of them the mentions just stop. But there were about four ringleaders, three of which were dead by December 1941. One doesn't have a cause of death listed, just his death's mentioned, and the other two were executed on Kerner's orders.'

'Who's the fourth?' Rose asked.

'A man named Guerrier. Charles Guerrier. There's no mention of death, but records on him just dry up, and - huh.' Matt turned another page. 'Copy here of a wanted poster for him dated June 1942, issued by the Thule Society. So they thought he was alive by then, and still wanted him.'

'Okay. So this Magic Liberation - could they sound more fruity - pissed off Kerner the Friendly Ghost,' said Selena, eyebrow arched. 'Kerner was probably a busy man. Likely had a lot of oppressing to do. Does this have anything to do with the Chalice?'

'I'm ready to guess this Dupont name is a pseudonym for Thane, or one of his people, doing reading here. That their research led to Kerner is way too big a coincidence. So Thane's people thought this group of wizards, or possibly this Guerrier guy, were important,' said Matt, defensive.

'Great. What's our lead?'

He scowled as he found himself with no answer, and in the end the response came from Rose, who unfolded a page of her binder to show a large plan of the city. 'Catacombs,' she declared. 'That's what he was looking for, in the end. What he wants is in the Paris Catacombs.'

Matt raised an eyebrow. 'You're sure?'

'Dupont's research went through excavations from the era, and eventually he focused exclusively on those in the Catacombs of Paris. The only question is where.'

'I guess that narrows the field. Look for any connection between the Catacombs and the Libération-Magique, the Thule Society, the Templars…'

'Paris has catacombs?' Selena chipped in.

'Old natural caverns under the city, the south side,' said Matt, leaning back on his chair as he pondered. 'They were expanded in the... eighteenth century? I think, because the cemeteries were running out of space, so they expanded and developed the caverns into a great big underground mausoleum. It grew over time and a portion of it's a tourist attraction now, but the catacombs are supposed to be huge, stretching across great chunks of Paris. The caverns are why you don't get tall buildings in certain parts - not enough ground support to build up. I went there once, couple of years back. Family holiday. The walls are lined with skulls and bones, it's a really creepy place.'

Selena was looking at him, expression somewhat more taut than he thought was necessary for an explanation like he'd given, but before he could ask she snorted and turned her attention back to her book. 'Scorpius was right,' she muttered. 'With facts like this, you must be a lot of fun at parties.'

Matt felt heat rise to his cheeks, and he straightened. 'I don't know about Templar connections to the place,' he said, looking at Rose instead. 'So let's see if there's any place the Thule Society or Libération-Magique and the Catacombs show up together.'

Rose nodded, gaze sympathetic. 'I'll take some copies of these maps.'

They didn't speak much for the next couple of hours. Matt remained bent over his book, going through excruciating pages of a language he half-understood and finding nothing useful - and repeatedly convinced he'd missed something essential.

It was Selena who broke the silence, voice tense. 'There are a few references in here to the Chalice of Emrys being used on the dead to bring them back. Though in every case it's only been used moments after they died, in a fight usually. Bathing the wounds and pouring water of the chalice down their throats did the trick. It even mentions a wizard trying to use it on someone dead a day, and the chalice doing nothing.'

'Brink of death, then,' said Matt, brow furrowing. 'That would make sense. Even Muggles can do that now.'

Selena stared at him. 'Muggles can bring people back from the dead?'

He looked startled. 'In a manner of speaking. The heart stops, breathing stops, you're dead, right? But if you get the heart pumping again, then they live. We can do it with charms, have been able to for years.' He nodded at the book. 'I'd reckon the chalice would be special because it could heal the wounds that killed someone and get the body started again, even if the injury was tremendous. The charms, and Muggle medicine, are imperfect at best. But this is only if you get to them soon enough, before the body begins to degenerate too badly, before the soul has properly departed.'

'So it's more like really advanced magical healing,' said Selena quietly, looking back at the book.

Matt shrugged. 'Sure, if you add in an extended lifespan and magic which surpasses anything we can do. It's weird, older magic - in some ways it was so much less sophisticated, wands and staves so much less capable of interpreting a wizard's will, so personal spells were less effective, but then you have these enormous feats of power which can't be replicated today. Some scholars reckon magic was more powerful back then, and it's not just that wands were less sophisticated but magic was harder to harness -'

'I'm going to put this back,' said Selena, jumping to her feet. 'There's no more of use in it.'

He scowled as she grabbed the hefty tome and hurried back towards the shelf they'd found it on. 'Was I boring her?' he asked Rose.

Rose sighed. 'No. You were just sat in a library explaining things enthusiastically.'

Matt bent back over his papers. 'That makes no sense.'

'I should -'

She was halfway to her feet before Matt's hand shot out to grab her arm, heart thumping in his throat as words on the page leapt out at him. 'I've got it.'

'What?' Her attention was on him now, and she moved closer, bending over his shoulder to read. 'You'll have to translate for me.'

Her hair dangled down to brush against his ear when she leaned over the paper. He fought to ignore it. 'It's the briefest mention in a section about rebuilding work in the 14th Arrondissement - district. Somewhere near the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire, excavation work conducted by the Thule Society in the region - Kerner, again! Early 1942, Kerner had excavation work done, yes, in the Catacombs, but at this point the Libération-Magique were dead or gone and this was meant to be their old meeting place!' He thumped his finger against the page. 'Get me those catacombs maps - and a city map, if it doesn't mark what's in relation to where...'

Rose hurried to rustle across papers, and Matt grabbed the one of the modern city to trace his finger across the 14th Arrondissement until he found the right road. 'There, that's the region... now where's that in relation to the Catacombs...'

She had that map, too, and her gaze flickered across both. 'Okay, so if there'san entrance to the Catacombs here, they run down this way… so we want any tunnels which run across the 14th - there, this little network here. Or, not so little.' Rose made a face as she drew a circle with her finger around a section of the catacombs.

'Rue de la Tombe-Issoire...' Matt frowned. 'Tombe - tomb? No, fall... what's Issoire? It might be nothing, road names come from all sorts, I just wonder...'

'We could research.' The corners of Rose's lips twitched. 'Or we could go check out the Catacombs, see if your lead's right. Good work.'

'I just read the book. You figured out we wanted the Catacombs in the first place.'

'Team effort, then?' She gave a pleased smile which lit up her whole face. 'More than enough credit to go around.'

'I thought you didn't share credit for your achievements?' He made sure to keep his voice light, the ribbing gentle as he got to his feet.

'I can share credit where credit is due.' She stuck her nose in the air. 'And I could deign to allow you some recognition. You did the leg-work, after my brilliance guided the way.'

He had to grin back. 'It did.'

'Ahem.' They turned in a jolt to Selena, who had returned, empty-handed, to the table. 'Do I need to be here for this?'

Colour shot to Rose's cheeks. 'We're done researching -'

'I can see that.' Her expression was flat, one eyebrow arched. 'If you two are done kidding yourselves, then, do we have a lead?'

Matt cleared his throat and picked up his jacket. 'We do,' he said, nodding. 'Or, at least, I know where to start.'

'I'm sensing we're going to spend a lot of time in the next few weeks underground,' mused Scorpius as they padded down the dark corridor. 'That said, do we really think the tourist district's where we're going to find artifacts of ancient power?'

He'd been excited when Matt and Rose had burst into the hotel room, insistent they'd found a lead and that they had to go explore dark catacombs under the city. It sounded exactly like the sort of solution their problem needed, and was even enough to make him less irritated about how Matt and Rose had fallen into finishing each other's sentences as they explained, Selena stood behind them and looking unimpressed.

Excitement had dampened when Matt led them to the one entrance of the catacombs he said they could reliably access: the Muggle tourist venue. They'd paid for tickets. They'd taken the long, cold stairway down into the dark, the spiral steps winding round and round enough to make him dizzy, sunlight and life of the city left far above until they reached dim, artificial lighting. The passageways stretched on ahead, iron gates locked at certain points to corral them forwards, Muggle tourists stopping and gawping at the sights.

Somehow he suspected Prometheus Thane hadn't come this way.

'I don't know of any other ways down,' said Matt, lips pursing as he led the way. 'I mean, sure, there are some marked on the map, but I have no idea if they're still accessible. I know this is accessible, and you know what else I know?'

'No, but I just bet you're going to tell me.'

'I know we can Alohomora any of the gates that keep Muggles out, I know there will be plenty of spots down here where nobody will see us do it, and I have the maps so I know how to get to the right section of passageways from here. Or we troop around Paris looking for where we think access points might be, when they could have been blocked off even if we find them.'

'Fine, fine,' grumbled Scorpius as they turned a corner. 'It just sounds like a lot of hiking -'

And he stopped at the sight before him. Until now they had been walking gloomy stone passageways, cold and brown, the roof rounded, the ground a mixture of paving stones and, where those had been lost and cracked to time, hard earth. But the passageway widened as they turned the corner, and now they saw the Catacombs proper.

Matt had not been exaggerating when he talked of walls lined with skulls. He had been a little misleading, perhaps - they were not all skulls, but an array of bones set into the walls, not piled but carefully arranged as if they were parts of an intricate mosaic, evenly placed or creating a pattern. Layers of skulls lay at the top, empty eye sockets and fixed grins leering down at them.

It was like the site of the world's most organised mass-murder.

Everyone's jaws dropped except for Matt's, who strode towards the door on the far end of this passageway, and nodded at the writing inscribed at the top. '"Arrete. C'est ici l'empire de la Mort",' he read, voice low but carrying across the hallowed passageway. '"Stop. Here is the empire of death". Or, perhaps, "of the dead", I'm not entirely sure.'

'Well,' said Selena with a sigh. Her expression had changed the least of all of them for the last hour. 'That's suitably creepy.'

Scorpius winced. 'Are we going to piss anything off by being down here?'

'Down this section?' Matt shook his head and carried onward. 'No. Muggle tourists come through here all the time. No indications that wizards have identified of actual hauntings. But we're going to be heading into the blocked off passageways, the ones it's illegal for Muggles to access because people get lost down there, have even died down there. There's no telling what's in those sections.'

Silence fell as they followed Matt, who had taken copies of the Catacombs maps they'd found in the library - evidently wizards cared less than Muggles if people wanted to troop underneath the city - and had picked out the best point for them to break off from the official passages.

It didn't take too long. The passageways wormed their way along, sometimes opening up to grander segments of displays of full skeletons, inscriptions set into plaques in the walls making note of where bodies had been excavated and relocated from, the entire display a macabre celebration of centuries of Parisian dead.

But it was well-lit, which was more than could be said for the passageway beyond the iron grating at which Matt stopped and pulled his wand. 'Nobody coming?'

Albus looked up and down. 'Nope.'

'Good.' A flick of the wand had the rattle of the gate's lock, and Matt swung it open, careful to avoid a noisy creak. 'Quick. We want to get out of sight before we spark up a light. No need to add trouble with the Muggles to our list of problems.'

Bundling down a dark passageway until they reached a corner felt like a terrible idea at the best of times. It felt even worse when Scorpius knew the walls were lined with skulls and bones, and so he had no desire to reach out to steady or guide himself. Instead he settled for falling into step behind Matt, as Albus was taking up the rear, and he reached for Rose's hand.

He pretended to himself that this was to offer her reassurance, and pretended that he wasn't at all comforted by the tight squeeze of her hold. So he made sure to not sigh with relief when they rounded a corner and Albus' voice, sudden but never startling because it was Albus, sounded out in the silent dark. 'We're clear.'

'Thank God for that,' said Matt, voice hoarse. 'Lumos.'

Scorpius almost dreaded the light. Sometimes ignorance in darkness was better than illuminated knowledge. But to his infinite relief, this forbidden passageway of the catacombs was no more gruesome than the well-organised tourist section. He supposed that it was in the city's best interests to keep most of it organised and not falling into disarray - and that anything else would be disrespectful.

'We've got a way to go,' said Matt as they all lit up their wands, 'but I'd be surprised if it's more than a half-hour's walk. Assuming I'm reading the map properly.'

'I'm marking the way,' said Rose, lifting her wand to a patch of plain stone. 'Magical marker, no Muggles will be able to see it, it'll fade when I want it to,' she added as Matt gave her a scandalised look over his shoulder. 'I'm not carving on skulls, Matty, relax.'

Scorpius couldn't tell if he hated Rose being familiar with Matt enough to call him 'Matty', or if he loved that Matt hated it. It could be both, he supposed. 'So what exactly are we looking for?'

'A Templar repository, or possibly an old meeting spot for the French Resistance,' Matt said.

'Great. And what does that look like? I imagine it's not obvious, or Muggles and other wizards and the like would go tromping in there. And artifacts were meant to have been hidden there for hundreds of years. So logically it's hidden, probably more hidden than just happening to be in the catacombs.'

'Also,' said Rose, 'you said the catacombs were built a couple hundred years ago. We have to be looking for somewhere a good seven hundred years old, if not older.'

'Like I said, the caverns were here all along.' Matt's voice was tense. 'Maybe the Templars built something down here. It'd be a good hiding place. I don't know how hidden it'll be, because the Thule Society did excavate and uncover this, but - there you go, Rose, job for you. Trace any magical signatures in the area.'

Rose gave his back an arch look. 'Fine. When we get there.'

They continued to troop in Matt's wake for a good while, the macabre environment soon enough becoming normal, though Scorpius reckoned he'd never think skulls would make a decent door-frame ornament. They had been silent for maybe ten minutes before he spoke. 'Nasty thought occurs. So we're following the same line of inquiry as Thane, right?'

'That's right,' said Matt.

'So, logically, he and his guys have been down here before us, if they found this lead two days ago.'

'Almost certainly.'

'Which means one of at least two things, but two options spring to mind. The first is that he beat us here, found the Chalice, and is off cackling to his masters to enhance Phlegethon or Eridanos as we speak.'

Albus sighed. 'Possibly.'

'The other possibility,' said Scorpius, 'is that he didn't find it yet, which means he, his goons, and his Nazi are all still in the city. Maybe crawling over this very area.'

'That had occurred to me,' said Matt, but his voice was so tense Scorpius would bet his Gringott's account he was lying.

'Then we'll be careful.' This was Albus, and just a few words were enough to calm the fear that had crept up at the prospect of a run-in with Thane and his men. 'We'll keep an eye out for signs of others, and we'll back off if it looks like there's someone else here. We're not going to engage.'

'Not that I disagree,' said Matt, 'but surely we're going to have to fight Thane and his men at some point, unless we get really lucky?'

'I was going to go with really smart,' said Albus. 'Thane's a tremendous fighter. We've fought one of his men, and he was a tough nut to crack.'

'Thane was faster than Downing,' said Scorpius, awkward in this admission. He had trained himself for so long to not speak of fighting Thane, or to be evasive if he had no choice. Discussing it felt like lying by now. 'Downing was good, but Thane, he... he moves like nothing I've seen. I reckon I could have ten seconds against Downing, one on one, before he won. I didn't have two against Thane.'

'But you're better than you were,' said Albus. 'We all are. And there's no more sure way to lose than to assume we're done going in.'

'I like to consider it a survival tactic,' said Selena, voice wry. 'But I'm not going toe-to-toe with mercenaries anyway.' She was indisputably the weakest of them all at magical combat, though Scorpius suspected his edge only came from training hard these past few months, a greater physical fitness and, when they worked, his illusions.

'We'll be careful,' said Albus again, and they descended once more into silence.

'We should be getting near the area,' said Matt after another fifteen minutes, consulting his map, and Rose lifted her wand.

'Wandering a bit might be necessary,' she warned. 'It depends on how powerful a - oh.'

Scorpius looked over his shoulder. 'Good "oh", or bad "oh"?'

'There's - a significant magical signature down here.' She looked surprised. 'South. Head south.'

They did so, as soon as Matt reached a turn which would lead them that way, and as Scorpius watched Rose's expression he could see the rising anticipation. 'I can't get a pin on what it is, exactly,' she said, wand still lifted, and with the distraction in her gaze he took her hand again to guide her. 'It's big, whatever it is - I don't think this is a spell, I'm not detecting the same... active working in the weave of magic.' Her voice was low, awed. 'This is something that's emanating magic. Or has been.'

'It could be here,' said Matt, eyes lighting up. 'The Chalice would emanate -'

'Let's wait and see what we find.' That was Albus, as ever the source of reason.

'Left again - it's near,' said Rose.

'Look for ripples in the walls,' said Scorpius, 'or subtle changes to what you see. I wouldn't be surprised if we're expecting some sort of illusion hiding a passageway, and those kinds of flickers can be tell-tale signs of -'

Then they rounded the next corner and found, no more than ten metres down the passageway and framed in an arch of stone, a heavy, metal door.

Matt squinted at it. 'Rose?'

'Um,' she said. 'I think we're close. It's getting hard to narrow down, this entire area's suffused in magical energy.'

This section of the Catacombs was different to the passageways they'd marched through for the past half-hour. The masonry above, while worn and old, was nowhere near as old as the rest of the complex. The doorway, too, and the metal door were all made of a different stonework, and Matt cocked his head as his gaze swept across it all. 'This has been worked on,' he said. 'Kerner's excavations, do you think?'

Rose stepped forward, but shrugged. 'Could be. The records implied this section was closed off a hundred years ago, though it's impossible to say if the French opened it up or if Thule Society excavations did.'

Cautiously, Matt padded up to the door. It was wide and thick, the metal rusting at the hinges, but it still looked sturdy. He swished his wand at the large, hefty-looking lock. 'Alohomora.' Nothing happened, and Matt scowled, waving his wand a few more times and muttering under his breath.

'Or,' said Scorpius, leaning forwards, and twisted the handle.

The door opened with a shriek of complaint from the hinges, and Matt gave him a resentful look. 'Well, this is obviously not going to be it,' he said. 'The resting place of the Chalice of Emrys is hardly going to be behind an unlocked door.'

'I agree,' said Scorpius. 'But I also doubt it'd be behind a door you could open with a spell a first year can cast.'

'Guys?' That was Rose, and the two men tore their gazes from one another to the room they'd opened up, illuminated by the light from five wands.

The stone chamber was long and wide, not that dissimilar to the passageway they'd found in Badenheim. Scorpius had to wonder if the similarities in masonry were intentional, for the stone walls - plain in a stark contrast to the halls of skulls behind them - bore archways the like of which the golems had stood in back in Germany. In between the archways were bare plinths, everything simple, plain and empty. The only markings on the stone were on the wall directly in front, which had the Greek cross carved into it, two metres high, and writing directly above.

What drew the eye, though, was the solid sarcophagus resting in the middle.

'Bloody hell,' muttered Matt. 'What is this, a Templar burial site?' His gaze swept across the empty chamber before settling on the sarcophagus, and he took the two steps leading to it in one bound. 'It's got the cross on the lid, yeah... and a name. Reynald de Sablé.'

'Do you know who he is?' said Rose as the four of them followed him in.

'Not a clue. But I'll find out.' Matt's fingers traced the stone lid. 'That's weird. There's a date of birth, 1254, and the hyphen, but then it's blank. No date of death.'

'Maybe they got wiped out before he died,' said Selena.

'Then why does he have a sarcophagus?' Scorpius quirked an eyebrow.

'Maybe they don't know when he died?'

'Traditionally you'd put a question mark.' Matt looked up at them, expression creased. 'Okay, I know this is morbid, but I'm going to make sure there are no enchantments on this and then... open it up.'

Albus sighed, wandering the rest of the broad, bare chamber. 'It's what we're here for.'

'And, gee. A skeleton.' Selena rolled her eyes. 'Not seen, like, a million of those today.'

Rose shrugged, wand drifting about. 'I can't tell anything any more. There's just magic here. Not shaped like a spell, or a ward. It's everywhere. I can't even narrow down where it's coming from.'

'If I were to guess,' said Matt, looking down, 'then it's from this. If there's anything on this sarcophagus, then it's masked by whatever's putting out that signature.' It was with care that he lifted his wand and murmured the incantation for levitation, with reverence that he made the lid slide its way off the sarcophagus and gently lay itself upon the floor. And it was with trepidation that he made his way to the lip of the receptacle, looked down...

...and swore. 'Shit.'

Scorpius raised an eyebrow. 'Nothing?'

'Not even bones. Or rags. It's completely bare. And you don't sound surprised?'

'Of course I'm not surprised.' Scorpius shrugged. 'This was unlocked, there are no magical protections. Anyone could wander in and have a poke. If this was where the Templar golems were, where Kerner excavated, where these Resistance fighters met, then anything of value here is long gone. The Chalice isn't here.'

'Then where the hell is it?' Matt stepped back from the sarcophagus, scowling, and began stalking about the tiny chamber. 'And what the hell's this magic pulsing off the area?'

'What's this writing?' said Albus, nodding up at the inscription on the wall above the giant Templar cross.

Matt stomped over and squinted up at it. 'To... damn it.' He paused for a long moment, lips moving. 'Something about - passing between life and death,' he said, before muttering to himself some more. 'I think it's something along the lines of, "to pass between life and death takes a clear mind".'

'Well,' said Scorpius flatly. 'That's super helpful.' He swept an arm around the broad chamber, expression wry. 'If this is the place, then Kerner took everything of value. Or Thane took everything of value. Either way, let's face it: there's nothing here.'

A/N: Yet another info-dump chapter.

'Dyfed', the region mentioned in the book that Matt and Selena pick up in the library, is an old petty kingdom of Wales which ceased to exist around the tenth century. It roughly corresponds to modern-day Pembrokeshire. In the era the gang are looking to of post-Roman British Isles, Dyfed would be probably the best name to apply to the region. Aessin and Tancred are entirely fictional creations of my own, because not everything in wizarding history is going to relate to something in mythology!

Lord of the Rings, of course, belongs to JRR Tolkien. Matt and Rose are both from households where Muggle literature wouldn't be disregarded, though Matt's a little wrong in his recollection: Amroth is a person in Middle-Earth. But it is also a real place near Tenby, Pembrokeshire.

The Catacombs of Paris are a real place, a real, awesome, intimidating place. The inscription "Arrete! C'est ici l'empire de la Mort" ("Stop - here lies the Empire of Death") Matt reads out is genuine, something anyone can see if they go on the tour. If any of you ever happen to find yourselves in Paris, check them out. They're spooky and fascinating and well worth the time and money. They do genuinely stretch across the city beyond the limits of the tour, and portions were built into the natural caverns which already existed underneath the city, so they do stretch on for huge distances. It's illegal to access them outside of the permitted areas - people have indeed got lost and died down there.

Portions of the French Resistance did hide out in them in WW2, and in the region of Tombe-Issoire, the old caverns that pre-dated the catacombs were used for burials for the Templars of Malta. Germans also did establish an underground bunker below the 14th Arrondissement for their own purposes. Basically, I have had to make up so little history and lore to justify the use of the Catacombs of Paris in this plot. I've just had to inject my own stuff to extant facts.

Libération-Magique are, of course, a fictional group of the French Resistance, a magical contingent. Their name is derived from genuine groups Libération-Nord and Libération-Sud.

Oh. And, er. I've got, like, a book out, 'n shit. Information and links for it in my profile. I appreciate that a science fiction thriller might not be what y'all enjoy from me, so all I'm going to ask is this: If you've liked my fanfic, even if my 'professional' (ha) stuff isn't really your cup of tea, Signal Boost for me? Facebook. Twitter. Getting word out there is always worth it.