"I don't know; Priest and Menagerie don't seem so bad just yet": Ha, ha. Oh, boy, just wait. You'll see what I mean soon enough…

Finally! I've been waiting to get to this point in the story for the last three years. The second scene I've had planned out since before I even finished with Princess of the Blacks. …In hindsight, I might have had a little too much fun writing all this.

Disclaimer: Since Voldemort wouldn't know that the Vanishing Cabinet had been moved to the Room of Requirement after Montague was freed from within and a 'proper' Pureblood would never deign to speak with a house-elf as an equal, was it ever explained just how Draco Malfoy knew to look for it in the Room in book 6? If not, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.

Chapter 14
The Labyrinth

Touching the letter stuffed in her pocket, Jen glanced over at her companion. "You're sure about this?"

"I honor my debts," the gravely voice replied. Peering back at her with misty eyes, the Bloody Baron continued, "I pledged you one favor for what you did to help Cuthbert, and I shall deliver. If you require a place in which to ply your dark crafts in secrecy, I shall guide you to it."

She frowned and followed the Slytherin house ghost. The previous year, she had met with the council formed by the four house ghosts – and what a surprise that had been, considering no one else knew that such a council existed in the first place – and had liberated Cuthbert Binns, the spectral History professor whom Dolores Umbridge had replaced, from his ties to the living world via the expedient route of just killing him a second time. Since she refused on principle to work for anyone for free, she had bargained with the ghosts for her recompense, namely a favor from the council as a whole, another from the Bloody Baron individually, and an interview with the assumed-mute Grey Lady. The conversation with Ravenclaw house's ghost and their founder's daughter had gone fantastically, but she had hoped to keep her favors in reserve for when she really needed them.

Unfortunately, the damn Turk had made that an impossibility.

Priest had sent her a letter almost a week before informing her that after their moderately successful ambush on the white wizard on Halloween night, he had disappeared yet again, and now even splanchomancy was giving nonsensical results. Considering the older black mage had told her that form of divination was extremely difficult to truly retard, this news was unwelcome, indeed. For the next few days, she had been worried that that might be the end of it. She could admit the truth to herself: Priest and Menagerie both had far more experience dealing with white mages in general and this one in particular than she did, along with a plethora of clairvoyant divination techniques more advanced than her own scrying. What advantage did she have that her senior allies did not?

It was only when she sat down to continue her studies for the Dark Arts Proficiency Exam that she found the solution. If divination would not work to find the Turk, they needed to try a manner of searching other than divination. They needed to put another pair of eyes in the town, a pair that could wander around without being noticed by the Muggles and could report back to them about what it found.

A pair of eyes that was not necessarily of the mortal plane.

Black witch and spirit stopped in front of an abandoned stretch of corridor on the seventh floor, the emptiness broken only by a single, non-animated portrait of a wizard surrounded by a group of trolls wearing tutus. Abandoned to the eyes, that was; through her sonar, Jen could feel a ripple in the middle of the wall, as if there were something that wanted to come into reality but was being held back. "There are two methods by which to access this room," the Bloody Baron explained. "The first is to pace before this portrait three times whilst thinking of that which you need. The room will transfigure itself into a form that best fits your desires. The second is to use a password, which calls forth the true, but far less protean, form of the room."

"And what is that password?" she challenged.

"Gwybodaeth ddiddiwedd."

She pursed her lips as the wall warped and bulged outwards, finally revealing the arched door that had been hiding behind the stones. For all that she had lived most of her life in Cardiff and Avryporth, she was far more fluent in Haitian Creole than she was in Welsh, but she had picked up a few words here and there from the older witches and wizards who came to Elsie for help. "Endless knowledge?"

"Correct. The Lady Ravenclaw believed that learning was a never-ending road, that knowledge merely birthed yet more knowledge. She designed her study with this in mind."

"Ravenclaw's study?" she repeated in shock. Surely she had misheard him.

"Indeed. Did you think my master's Chamber was the only hidden area inside Hogwarts? Each Founder had their own private place, somewhere where they might be alone with their personal research and experiments." The ghost shook his head and rattled out a sigh. "Sadly, with the passing of time they have all been forgotten. The Chamber was rejected as myth and now is inaccessible, the Study has been claimed by the house-elves as an infinite storage room, Helga's Tower in the Forest has collapsed, and Gryffindor's Armory was looked upon as a mere curiosity and emptied of all its treasures supposedly in the name of 'protecting the students'. The last personal effects of the four greatest wizards and witches of all time, treated like rubbish."

That was sad, even to Jen's mind, and she could only imagine what it would be like to someone who had lived and trained under the Founders. If she discovered that someone had destroyed the legacy of House Black, ghost or not, she would do whatever necessary to make that person's life a living hell. "'Greatest wizards and witches of all time'?" she echoed, hoping to lighten the Bloody Baron's understandably dark mood. It was the least she could do considering the lost history he had revealed. "Greater even than Merlin? That's quite a claim."

"Merlin's grand experiment failed upon the death of its first king, not thirty years after its inception. But Hogwarts?" He waved a translucent hand around the corridor. "A thousand years, and still it thrives. Yes, the Founders were far more impressive than Merlin."

She had little to say to that, and so they stood in silence for a long moment before the Bloody Baron turned his back to her and began drifting away. "My debt to you now is paid. I bid you adieu."

Ignoring the curt goodbye, Jen grabbed the handle of the door and pushed. No point standing around when there was work to do and time was constantly slipping past.

If Ravenclaw's study was any indication, the woman who founded the house of the intelligent had fantastic tastes. Tiles of polished slate made up the floor, and on three edges of the wide-open space were rows of bookshelves. There were hundreds of books here; not as many as the school's library possessed, nowhere close, but as many or maybe a few more than were inside the library at Grimmauld Place. And unlike the Blacks' or Hogwarts's libraries, these books had belonged to one of the Founders. Even if she found only one or two journals that the woman had written personally, it would still be a rare and incredible find.

She sighed as she tore her eyes from the shelves and dropped her satchel onto the ground. She was not here to gawk like a tourist. Pulling a few sticks of chalk from a pocket, she guided them with her magic to draw out a large, lopsided, eight-pointed star on the floor. For her Evocation to work, she needed to 'aim' her signal toward the correct neighboring plane, and as with many things, symbols were one of the easiest methods. Once the summoning sigil was complete, she added a complicated design around it that looked almost like a piece of Celtic knotwork. These were the barriers that would protect her should she mess up her call and accidentally bring forth something more dangerous than she could deal with, and while they would not last long, it should delay the creature for a few necessary seconds.

While her magic was tracing the design in her mind, her hands had been busy, too. On her right hand was a roughly written symbol that, while laid out in ink on flesh rather than imprinted in clay, looked a great deal like the cuneiform character for 'slave-owner'. That similarity was furthered by the string of symbols that ran halfway down that arm. This was her greatest defense if something went terribly wrong: the dominion seal, which would grant her total control over her summoned creature. It would not last long, especially if she somehow managed to Evoke a truly powerful entity, but all she really needed it for was to force the creature to return to its place of origin, preferably quickly enough that it could not break free from her grasp and rend her to pieces.

Now that she thought about it, perhaps Evocation was not as wonderful a field of magic as she first thought.

All that said, however, she was hoping not to need to resort to any of her contingency plans. Those were only if things went wrong. If everything went how she expected, she would not have to resort to anything; she would Evoke her creature, tell it what she wanted, and it would agree to her terms. Everything nice and neat and nonfatal.

Looking over the drawing one last time, she pulled her pocket watch from her pocket and checked the time. The sigil would direct her call to the appropriate plane, and the aria she planned to recite would determine which species answered her call, but it was the position of the planets that would select the individual, or at least a small group of individuals. As time passed, the pool of candidates would change, and the risk of summoning something whose personality ran counter to her intentions increased tremendously. That was the entire reason she was off by herself on a Sunday evening when she could be spending her time with her friends or fingering her girlfriend into a satiated puddle. With the type of creature she was inviting to the castle, even a small mistake should not be too bad, but an easily corrected mistake was still a waste of time.

Watch returned to its pocket, she carefully stepped into the sigil and set down a small jar of honey and a full-grown mandrake. The humanoid root squirmed and tried to scream, but the heavy cotton stitches she had used to tie its mouth closed kept it from unleashing its lethal cry. Jen left the circle, checked her script once more, and sang in a low, soft voice.

"Under shrub and through the thistle,
Where the winds all sing and whistle,
I bid you hence, to see your face
And show to you a bright new race.

"By the sixth house—"

A flash of golden light and grasping shadow exploded from a point above the sigil, and Jen shouted in surprise when a blast of winter wind accompanied it. This was wrong, and extremely so; the realm she had aimed for was said to dwell in eternal summer! Pointing her palm at the middle of the space, she watched as the steam issuing from the sublimating ice that coated the floor slowly began to clear. The seconds ticked by, and the symbols painted on her skin started to tingle and then burn from the magic running through them. She had one shot at dominating whatever had come for her, but thanks to the open bridge between worlds, she could not feel the space around the sigil with her sonar. She would have to use her eyes, but the longer she waited, the greater the chance whatever this was would break through her defenses.

"Put that away, girl, before you embarrass yourself."

"…the hell?" Still, her hand fell from its guarding position, and the wasted seal flaked off her skin. She knew that voice, knew it almost as well as her own, and even if she could have forgotten the voice in such a short time, the accent was distinctive. "Elsie?"

The smoke finally cleared to reveal the form of her old mentor. Honestly, had Elsie walked up to her on the street, Jen would have spotted nothing amiss; she was a small woman, back stooped with age, and only through her sonar would Jen have any hint that the Haitian witch was one of the most despicable examples of humanity she had ever met, herself included. Over her 170 years of life, the elder black witch had amassed a body count that undoubtedly numbered into the thousands. And yet, for all her cruelty, Elsie still smirked at her old pupil. "Hello, Jen. However did you heal your eyes?"

"With the help of a renowned Potions Master. He was impressed with my Thickening Solution," she answered, shocked at the strange turn this conversation had taken from the very start. "Now, a better question; how are you here? The last I knew, you were… well, torn apart and rotting away in the blink of an eye."

The old woman glanced away momentarily, a telling sign of her discomfort if there ever was one. "The Baron noticed you performing this calling and took the opportunity to… send you a message."

"If he wanted to tell me something, I'd expect him to yank me into his realm while I dreamed like the last few times," she retorted.

Shuddering, Elsie disparagingly muttered, "After everything I taught you, to think you would speak so casually of conversing with the Baron. You have become a fool in my absence."

"A fool?" Jen repeated mockingly. "No. He just likes me more than he does you. I never attempted to betray Death by splitting my soul, after all. Maybe if you had listened when I told you you were being a bloody moron, you'd still be alive yourself. You were the one who told me what happens to those who earn the Baron's wrath. Whatever torments he has subjected you to in the four years since are of your own making.

"But that is all irrelevant," she said with a shake of her head. If someone had asked her how she thought a reunion between her and Elsie would go, this would not have been her expectation, but she supposed it should not be that great a surprise. As her mentor's actions had proved, there were some fundamental differences between them that were far more evident now than there had been when she was still just the student. "What I want to know is how he hijacked my Evocation. It was not aimed anywhere near the Labyrinth."

"He used the shreds of his own magic that were present in the summoning to take control." At her surprised expression – the Baron's magic? She had not used any black magic in this! – Elsie gave her a superior smirk that rapidly faded, the dark-skinned woman's face paling dramatically. "We may have been born as nothing more than unremarkable humans, but we both are Death's creatures now. His power runs through you always, trickling in from the connection to your Death Focus as well as from the mark you bear."

The fingers of Jen's right hand found her left wrist and laid themselves on top of the scar she had carved into her flesh with her dagger over many years of practicing Voodoo. During her most recent ritual, when she brought together the soul jars Voldemort had created in an attempt to live forever, she had borne the Baron's mantle for the second time in her life and had cut herself far deeper than she ever would have had her mind been free of external influence. The last vestiges of that cruel power had healed the wound, but in return its ends were now capped by the flower-like designs that projected off the Baron's veve.

She knew her scar was unusual, but not that it served as a second connection to Death!

"So only the Baron can take control of my Evocations. That's comforting." She was only being a little sarcastic; compared to the other possibilities, among them that any Power could send her a beastie or two, it really was a bit of a relief. "You said he sent you to me with a message. What is it?"

Elsie gave her a cold glance. "Because you have entertained him so thoroughly, he has granted your voice weight with the beasts that lurk in the shadows of his realm. Hellhounds, nightmares, camazotz; all will come at your command, though that is no guarantee that they will serve you. You have the authority to call upon them, but show weakness but a little and they will turn on you."

Hellhounds, nightmares, and camazotz? She would need to do some reading to know exactly what those beasts were, though with hellhounds, she had a guess. The first thing her mind leapt to was cŵn annwn, but she knew those red-eared, white-furred hounds belonged to Perchta. More likely, they were the omens of death the witches of Britain knew as Grim. That… opened a number of interesting possibilities. "And you? Can I summon you for a chat whenever I want?"

"No. The Baron has permitted me this single trip back to this world for the sole reason that even with his magic threaded through your summoning, the Pact between the Powers prevents him from making the journey himself. Should you try to summon me, you would lose that favor you are so proud of yourself for earning." Elsie raised her chin defiantly, as if she were taunting Jen to try just that.

Not that she was going to take such obvious bait. "Earning the Baron's favor at only sixteen? I have every right to be proud of myself. It is more than I think you ever accomplished." Raising her hand to forestall Elsie's rebuttal, she demanded, "Is there anything else to your message, or was that all you had to say?"

Scowling at her, Elsie ground out, "That was all. You are fortunate that I am forbidden from acting of my own accord here, girl, or I would break these bindings and choke the life out of you for your arrogance."

"What can I say? All my worst traits, I learned from you." Jen shook her head. "I still have things to do, and unlike you, I have limited time in which to do them. Go away, Elsie. I will see you again when I die, I'm sure, but if I have my way, that won't be for a good century yet."

The elder black witch opened her mouth to respond, but a freezing wind roared between them and whipped away her words. Jen had to avert her eyes to protect them from the unnatural cold, and when it ended, the sigil was once again empty.

Thankfully, her enticements were still where she had left them, and while she was surprised there was no frost covering them, she was not going to look askance at good fortune. Her window of opportunity was starting to close, however, so forcing her musings on the Baron's latest 'gift' to the back of her mind, she quickly painted the dominion seal over her arm and tried her aria once again.

"Under shrub and through the thistle,
Where the winds all sing and whistle,
I bid you hence, to see your face
And show to you a bright new race.

"By the sixth house I bind you near,
Under sun and moon, Venus, Mars,
Merc'ry and Pluto, serve you here.
The ninth house is where you excel,
Uranus, Neptune both do tell.

"Come to me. I command you run.
A contract forged 'tween one and one.
True it is, pooka e'er seek fun."

Again there came the burst of gold and black, but this time the light from crossing between realms was fainter. Blinking away the purple spots dotting her vision, she stared with excitement at the black, lop-eared bunny that sat inside the circle snuffling at the mandrake.

It had worked.

Someone who did not know all the details of Evocation might have been surprised by her glee, but this was no earthly rabbit. It was a pooka, a mischievous but generally benign shapeshifter that was often erroneously classified as a species of fae. Because of their peaceful natures, a pooka was not the obvious choice of creature to conjure up when she could have called forth an imp or a minor qarin to aid her in her hunt for the Turk, but it was also far less likely to go on a random spree of violence should it grow bored. Furthermore, had her summoning only mostly worked, it likely would have brought forth a different type of creature with a similar demeanor, and for some reason that no one had ever been able to explain conclusively, violence and cruelty often went hand-in-hand with a resistance to domination.

The bunny turned its face to her, displaying the patch of bluish-grey fur around its left eye, and a soft whisper could be just barely heard beside Jen's ear. He is curious. He wants to know why I've summoned him here.

Her eyes widened as she repeated that thought in her mind. There was no way she would know what gender this pooka was, nor could she know what it wanted when it was in the form of a rabbit. Now that she focused on 'her' thought, she could hear a difference in the 'sound' of the voice, a flatness that her mental voice did not have. It was almost as though someone had recorded her speech and picked out individual words from which to create a new sentence.

She was tempted to slam down the defenses she had created to ward off Delacour's Allure, but eventually she mastered the urge. There was no guarantee that a mental shield against emotional manipulation would work on the pooka's magic the same way they had against the Lilin tricks Blaise and Stella Zabini had both used against her, and even if it did, it would leave her with no way to communicate effectively with this being. Steeling herself, she said, "I need your help. I have a little trick I want to play on somebody."

That caught the pooka's attention. Dragging its focus away from the struggling mandrake, it rose onto its hind legs and stared at her.

"There's a man who played a trick on me, and I want to return the favor." Waving her hand, she created a full-scale illusion of the Turk, and on the other side she conjured a larger copy of his head at eye-level with the rabbit. Thank the Baron he did not wear a mask, which meant his entire face was on display. "Unfortunately, I don't know where he lives. The town, yes, but there are lots of houses there, and I want to get him back before he forgets what he did. That's a long way from here, though. Do you think you could find him?"

Of course he can find this man, 'she' thought to herself. All he needs is a place to start looking. He has been dragged to this world enough that he's developed ways of finding people.

"Excellent." Two more illusions appeared, these showing first London in relation to its neighbors and then a street-level view the general area around the Leaky Cauldron. Of all the places in London, this was one of the areas she could visualize best. She could have shown Grimmauld Place, but if he could be tracked, she would prefer the trail lead somewhere public rather than her home. "Is this enough, or do you need me to get more detail?"

Rather than answer, the pooka crouched next to the mandrake and opened its mouth wide. And then wider, to the point that much of the leporine neck was torn to reveal rough ridges of grey flesh. A multitude of whip-like tongues reached out and wrapped around the animate root, and though it squirmed as best it could, the mandrake slowly slid down the pooka's gullet in a single piece. Jen could only stare in shock even as the pooka did the same to the jar of honey and hopped over to sit next to her left foot, the protective knotwork worthless now that he had accepted her contract.

Swallowing slightly, Jen started thinking of how she could get this creature as far away from her as possible as soon as possible. Before she could pick the pooka up, however, the stones next to him shifted and began to crumble, a perfectly circular hole opening up and growing until there was enough space for two of the shapeshifter to squeeze through. The rabbit gave her a nod of appreciation and leapt into the tunnel, and as soon as he was out of sight, the hole shrank to nothingness.

"Well," she said after taking a moment to regain her wits, "that's filled my weirdness quota for the day." A wave of her hand vanished the chalk drawing, another did the same to her unused seal, and then, throwing the strap of her bag over her shoulder, she pulled the door open only to stare at the night sky waiting for her.

When closing the door and opening it once again did not change the scene, she sighed and stepped outside onto the top of what she now recognized as the Astronomy Tower. A single lantern burned in the middle of the platform, yielding just enough light to make out the details of the stone floor and trapdoor leading down into the castle just below it. Without warning, the door between Ravenclaw's study and the tower slammed shut, and Jen's hand slipped through the handle as the door fell apart into mist.

"I apologize for the surprise," a smooth woman's voice said. The black mage whirled around, magic pulsing angrily in her nerves, and her eyes landed on a glowing ripple that drifted in the air. That ripple curled up on itself and colors began spreading from it, and in a few seconds, there stood before her something strange. Not a person, for no living being was translucent like this, but the presence of color precluded the possibility that the woman in front of her was a ghost. Green dress, human-looking skin? Even with the white hair, there was no way she could be mistaken for a shade. "This was simply a most excellent opportunity in which to speak with you, and I was loath to let it slip from my grasp."

"Who are you?"

The only reaction the strange spirit-woman gave her was a small smile. "True, we have never met in person, but if you think back, you should recognize my voice."

Narrowing her eyes, Jen cautiously tried to place the voice. Now that it had been mentioned, it was vaguely familiar. Female, cultured, non-human, affiliated with Hogwarts… Oh. "You're the one the Sorting Hat called 'Lady Hogwarts', aren't you?"

The specter shared a small sigh. "Some do call me such, yes. But that is not my name." Dropping into a deep curtsy, she purred, "It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Scion Black. I am Portia Slytherin, the spirit of this castle and school."

"The pleasure is mine. Jennifer Black, though my friends call me Jen," she replied, returning the curtsy. Hogwarts – Portia – smiled at her, and she had to ask, "When you call yourself 'Slytherin', I take it that you are not implying that Salazar sired a human daughter whose soul he bound to the castle."

"No, not at all. Truly, I am the… brainchild," Portia said with a grin, "of all four of this school's founders, but it was Salazar who crafted the runes and the wards, who turned an otherwise unremarkable manor house into a place of life and magic. It was his desires and will that made up the majority of the seed that eventually sprouted to create me, and so it is he whom I choose to name my father."

"That eventually created you? If you weren't around during the Founders' time, how do you know Salazar did all you claim he did?"

"How do you know when to make your heart beat? How do you know how to move your arms and legs? How do you know how to keep your balance and not fall flat on your face when you take each step?" She shook her head. "I know things about the early years of this school's existence that, were I human, I should not, and I know that I know them, but ask me not how I know them, for I do not have an answer."

That, to Jen's disappointment, put an end to that line of questioning. A moment of silence fell between them, and then the disembodied intelligence turned to gaze out at the Forbidden Forest. "I am sure you have questions regarding why I wish to speak privately with you like this."

"A couple had crossed my mind," she answered, though she really did not feel like she had been given much time in which to start wondering things. Between the Study, Elsie, the pooka, and now Portia, the back of her mind was fully occupied thinking about how much she really needed a drink right now.

"This world grows strange and frightening," the spirit of Hogwarts murmured. "The centaurs whisper of dark portents, an ominous conjunction of Mars and Pluto. The foul Acromantulas that slow-witted groundskeeper allowed to colonize my forest become restless, threatening to creep ever closer and endanger the lives of the students. Heroes drown in their own egos and blindly walk down the same path they claim to abhor. I fear for my students and my staff, Jennifer Black; I fear that the slathering beast named War will crash through those meager gates and hunt down all those who depend on my walls to protect them. My powers, though great in their own ways, are limited in scope, and I can do nothing to the enemy who is invited into my walls, which some here seem determined to do.

"And yet," she continued, turning to face Jen, "almost appropriately, it is in these strange times that I find a strange woman. A servant of the darkness who opposes another agent of darkness; a witch who kills to protect and protects so she might kill again. I know not to whom I should turn, in whom I should trust. Traditionally I would rely on my headmaster, but Albus Dumbledore I would have gladly destroyed by my own will were I permitted for what he did to my students, and Griselda Marchbanks is a peacemaker, not a warrior."

"Please tell me you aren't looking at me for that job," pleaded Jen. "Like you said, I'm a serial killer. I murder other people for personal power. That alone—"

Portia raised a long, thin finger. "And yet it was only when you realized an incubus had awoken and begun to prey on his fellows that you arranged his death. You removed a piece of evil from within one of my secret places. You drowned the streets of Hogsmeade with blood to save the least of my children. Only your brother has accomplished tasks on a similar scale in recent years, and I am leery of trusting him in a scenario such as this. A hero he might be, but he refuses to do all that is necessary to protect my students for fear of defiling his moral character. You, however, have proved you will not hesitate to stain your blade red."

"You would place your sheep in the care of a wolf? Don't you know that would just be leading them to the slaughter?" she tried again. She was not a gentle shepherd, no matter that she had a habit of looking out for children she deemed 'hers'. Anyone who would trust her with the safety of another was a fool; even she herself would not trust her not to sacrifice others if doing so would give her some advantage!

"I held the king of serpents in my belly for centuries in preparation for a time when I would have to slaughter all those who attacked me and mine. One of my parents was a sell-sword whose temper made him a fright both on the battlefield and in the tavern. Heroes and villains both I have watched grow up inside my halls, and both equally I helped achieve their desires. I have stared into the abyss and watched monsters be born and grow into their full depravity, and it is for this reason that I can state with all confidence that monsters, for all the evil within them, may yet defend those they find worthy of their attention." The ghostly woman took a step toward Jen, then another, until she was within arm's reach. The incorporeal hand that passed through her shoulder was warm, quite unlike the cold of a ghost's touch, and Portia glared at the offending appendage for a moment before returning her gaze to Jen. "Fate named you as a protector, and despite everything else that has happened to you, you still carry the weight of that destiny within your very soul. Deny it all you wish, but the only one who will be deceived by your words is you, and I believe even you know I speak the truth of this.

"But I do not request that you behave contrary to your nature, Jennifer Black. You are no self-sacrificing shield, nor are you a chivalrous sword. You are the scythe of the harvest, the reaper's blade. All I ask is that you carry out your master's will and usher in the winter so that spring may finally visit this land anew."

To their side, the trapdoor set into the floor was flung open, and Portia gave her one more small smile before fading into nothingness.

"So this is where you've been all afternoon!" Morag declared, Padma following at her heels. "We've been looking all over for you. You just up and disapp— Jen, are you okay? You're pale as a ghost."

That startled a too-high laugh out of her, and both her housemates stared at her worriedly. "It's been… very strange," she finally admitted, flicking a finger behind her back to dispel the charm she had cast upon herself to keep anyone from following her while she was performing her illegal Evocation. If only she had left it off; she might have avoided the very uncomfortable conversation she had been forced into. "Let's just… go. Somewhere. I think I've had enough alone time for a while."

Jen lay wide awake and staring up at the ceiling. It was only natural that she could not sleep, she supposed, not after a day like today. Elsie's taunts, the pooka's disturbing unnaturalness, Portia's… everything. She had spent the entire evening doing her best to distract herself from the weighty revelations dumped upon her: reading a few chapters of a novel, chatting with her friends about the most tedious of topics, shagging her girlfriend until Luna was literally begging for her to stop. And yet, here she lay at just after three in the morning. Her mind would not shut up.

Gently rolling the svelte blonde off from on top of her, she stood from their shared bed and silently walked across the room and into the hall toward the sixth-year girls' bath. There had to be something that would let her drift off, and if a warm bath did not do the trick, it would at least wash away the sweat and secretions that had dried onto her skin. As the tub filled with soapy water, she found herself looking down at her arms, more specifically at her left wrist and the scar that would forever proclaim her servitude to Death.

Perhaps it was the fatigue talking, but she could not help the feeling that the recent gift of the Baron's was far more than it seemed. Access to and authority over all the beasts of his realm? Did he know of some new disaster building on the horizon, something where she would need his creatures? Or was this a reward for standing against the Turk, or maybe even another gift for taking care of Voldemort's soul jars? She had no clue, and it was not as if she could just go ask him.

Or maybe she could.

Her eyes widened and the haze of sleep left her brain as she considered that thought. It… wasn't impossible, necessarily. The Labyrinth was not a land where normal humans could safely walk, but she was not normal, was she? She had journeyed not one, nor two, but three different times to the Baron's realm, and each one she had survived. Elsie had even been kind enough to explain the reason why: by swearing her soul to Baron Samedi when she was seven years old, she had become something different from the garden-variety human. It was why she had been able to grab Binns's arm the previous year and also likely why Portia thought they would be able to touch one another.

She was a creature of Death, and she had with her a conduit to his power.

Still looking down at her left wrist, she examined her Death-blessed scar with new eyes. Her scar was enough for the Baron to take control of her Evocation, but did that mean it was also enough for her to follow that invisible thread of power back 'home' to the Labyrinth? There was only one way to find out.

Jen shut off the water and stepped into the tub before her caution, and probably her common sense, could warn her off the idea. She would not be moving bodily to that plane between life and afterlife; only her mind, her soul, would jump realms, and so long as she kept her body from drowning while she was elsewhere, she should have no problems returning. She had done it before with no ill effects, after all, and if this worked, it would be nice to have a way to open communications with her patron Power on her own terms rather than just waiting for him to contact her.

Leaning her head back against the side of the tub, she focused all her attention on her scar. There had to be some hint about how to do this, something obvious she was missing. Sadly, the warm water was lulling her into the sleep that had previously eluded her, and she felt her eyelids flutter closed almost against her will. Oh, well. At least something good had come from her—

—By the Baron, that was cold!

Jen's eyes shot open again, the sudden disappearance of her sonar waking her up almost as much as the unexpected change in temperature. Her vision, however, did little to let her know what was going on, but between the swirling mists that hid the world around her and the lack of her sixth and primary sense, she knew where she was. Throwing one arm up in celebration, she let out a single loud laugh.

She had done it! She was standing inside the Labyrinth!

Okay, Jen, so you made it to the Baron's world, she thought. Now what?

Hoping against hope, she tried to dredge up the magic to cast a locator spell, but to her utter lack of surprise, she did not feel even the vaguest stirrings of power within her body. Maybe it was because she had no core, or maybe because this was not the mortal world, but she had already mostly known from her missing sonar that she would not be able to spell-sling her way out of this. If she wanted to find her patron and talk to him, especially in light of his boon, she would need to find him the old-fashioned way. Without any idea of where she should look first or even where she was in this world, she started walking straight ahead. Maybe she would find a landmark, maybe even an area that was not so full of fog…

Or maybe a large crowd of people.

Not fifty feet from where she had arrived walked a long line of people, their varied facial features revealing them to be from all over the globe. None of them wore a single stitch of clothing, but neither did they seem to notice their nudity. In fact, she realized as she continued watching them, they also did not look right; they were all a little on the grey side, their skin tones reminiscent of corpses, a fact that made perfect sense after a moment's consideration. Stepping closer to the edges of the convoy, she reached out and tapped a short Asian man on the shoulder. He did not notice her touch, nor did the Arabian woman, nor the Nordic boy. Not one of them responded to her or even looked her way. Even when she shoved one man into his neighbor, the pair merely stumbled for a moment before resuming their unthinking walk as though she had not interfered in the first place.

A high-pitched, nasal voice broke the silence. "They are incredibly boring, are they not?" Jen turned around to watch the male figure walking through the mists toward her, a black suit with ragged edges hanging off his stretched-out frame and a top hat of the same color hiding the upper half of his grey head. She bowed her head at the approach of Baron Samedi, but he ignored her deference and came to a halt beside her. A dark-skinned hand plucked the ever-present cigar from his mouth and ground the smoldering tip against the face of a passing woman, but even when he pulled his hand away to reveal her burnt eyeball, she did nothing. "Animals at least have some instincts they can rely on, but humans? Nothing."

"But it's humans you choose to be your avatars," she cautiously reminded him. "Why?"

The Baron gave her a small half-smirk, the corner of his mouth curling where it sat immediately adjacent to his ear, and took a few long strides away before he waved his left hand with its cigar to indicate she should follow. "It is a foolish thing to wander around here," he warned once she caught up with him. "The uninitiated rarely notice where this realm stops and Guinea begins until they have already stepped through, and no living human may cross freely back once they enter the Afterlife. Still," he continued in an almost condescending voice, "you did well enough for your first time traversing the realms. Few of my servants ever think to try such a thing. It makes me wonder just what it could be that motivated you to do so. I am sure it was not just to see me, though arriving here in the nude would cause some to wonder."

"I've been naked every other time you pulled me here."

"But on those occasions, you were not quite so wet when you laid eyes on me as you are now."

She crossed her arms under her breasts and tried her hardest not to glare at the manifestation of Death, the few drops of water still lingering on her skin from the bath slowly trailing downwards. Taking a mental step back, she focused on the question he had asked. Curiosity and having nothing better to do, though they were the honest answers, were also not the best answers she could give, the Baron's ability to listen to her every thought be damned. "Two reasons. First, thank you." He stopped and twisted his head around to look at her while she bowed at her waist until she was nearly perpendicular. "I greatly appreciate the authority you have granted me over the creatures of this realm. I give you my word that your gift will not be squandered."

"It had better not be." She stood straight only to find him walking once more. "And the second reason?"

"The last time we spoke, you talked about how there were only thirteen active Powers, not fourteen, and that one of the Light was… mostly dead?" The Baron puffed patiently on his cigar. "What did you mean by that?"

The Baron muttered, "I did say it was a tale for another time, and this is another time, I suppose. Very well. You know the names of your greatest enemies, do you not?"

"Tiferet and Holda, Marduk, Ma'at, the Seelie Queen, Aatxe, and…" She trailed off warily. All the Powers had an opposite – 'rival' was far too weak a word – whom they could not stand, and she did not know that she wanted to tempt her patron's ire by voicing the name of the Unending Wheel. Still, he was the one who had bid her speak, and she would comply. "And Enoch."

"Enoch," he agreed with a soft snarl. "A thief and a worthless imitator, trapped going through the same motions again and again without pause because he was too idiotic to think of something new. And more self-absorbed and self-righteous than any of the rest. I would gladly have laid waste to him and any servants he chose, Pact or no Pact, and I did so on more than one occasion and thereby shattered the shackles that keep our war from laying waste to your world." He chuckled, his voice momentarily losing the nasal inflection she was used to and changing into something far more forbidding. "I expect some of them still do not realize that those wars, and the extinctions of innumerable species our battles precipitated, only increased my influence on the mortal plane at the expense of their own, but that is neither here nor there.

"When the ancestors of modern man were just beginning to leave the trees and walk upon the ground, Enoch finally had an original idea. He thought to go down to those advanced apes and take a more 'hands-on' approach to guiding their development. What his end goal was, whether he planned to use them to supplement his own power or even elevate them far enough that they might have worth as fighters against us, I do not know, nor am I convinced that he had a specific plan in mind. For him to descend to your world without inciting yet another skirmish, however, he knew he would have to change from who he was for him to have any possibility to succeed. But as I have already said, he abhorred change of any kind and was truly incapable of it. To sidestep that deficiency, he reached out to one of his allies, Titania, and asked for her assistance in the matter. She agreed, and he departed, thinking the matter all but over.

"What he could not expect was that Titania is a far more pragmatic individual than he was. The faery courts were still in the midst of repopulating their ranks, the greatest fighters on both sides slaughtered when a three-way scuffle involving Holda, Gaueko, and Aatxe found its way into the middle of the pitched battle going on between the armies, and neither Seelie nor Unseelie wished to fight anew while their ranks were stretched so thin. She knew that, should she help him attain what he wanted, it would be the signal to start yet another campaign. Instead she moved in secret and did the unthinkable: she called for parley with Perchta."

"Perchta?" Jen repeated in confusion. As engaging as this story was, she was struggling to wrap her head around that. Light meeting with Dark? The Wild Hunt was a dangerous force to fight, that was widely accepted, but why would the Seelie Queen make a deal with the Hunt's mistress? "What use would Titania have for her brand of necromancy? I don't think ghosts would do much good in that situation."

The Baron blew out a long stream of smoke. "Perchta's skills lie in the manipulation of spirits generally, no matter that her servants prefer the spirits of other humans. That was why Titania needed her help. Faery magic is excellent for permanently changing the essence of all things, but even for a Queen, Enoch was too strong for her to betray him alone. When the time came, Titania invited him into her realm and changed him into a spiritual form, and it was then that Perchta leapt out of hiding and butchered him. 108 pieces she carved out, and before he could restore himself, Titania further mangled him beyond all recognition. So violent was her attack that he lost his own sense of self, and then she banished his scraps to the mortal world as she had previously pledged."

"Why didn't she just kill him then?" asked Jen. "If she had him vulnerable like that—"

"Beyond the fact that I doubt any of us can be truly obliterated? Neither Titania nor Mab are capable of destruction in such a direct manner. Had she left the task solely to Perchta, he would have reformed, but once she bound him in fire and flesh, he was no longer a pure spirit that Perchta could harm. Since he had agreed to the bargain she offered, however, she could twist the wording of her vow to its utmost limit and lock away the vast majority of his power.

"With the entity known as Enoch no longer truly in existence, his realm began to crumble, but not before the pair looted the remains. Titania stole the bedrock beneath his demesne and later changed it into a perpetual battleground that only those of fae nature may enter, thereby preventing all others from ever again interfering in her constant war with Mab. Perchta, however, took his maps and his saber, the tools he had used to carve hidden paths in the thicket between Guinea and the mortal realm. It is how she grants her servants the ability to recall the spirits of humans who have already passed into the Afterlife."

That was… wow. Shaking herself from her shock, she muttered, "I should just be glad that I've never run into any of Enoch's fragments, then, I suppose."

"Mm. You already have, actually."

"Already have? What do you mea— The Seelie Queen bound Enoch in fire and flesh." She let out a long sigh when Death just nodded. "She turned him into bloody phoenixes?!"

"Why did you think their song effected you so much more strongly than it did the abomination? Enoch is as dead as it is possible to make him, but his power is still in direct opposition to my own, and it is for that reason that it is so repulsive to you." He chuckled lightly. "No, what should bring you joy is that phoenixes are incapable of granting mortals white magic, else you would have spent the last two years in the hands of our enemy. The former lord of your school exemplifies the behavior Enoch would undoubtedly have sought out."

Jen grumbled, "And there isn't a way to kill off all those blasted birds forever, is there?"

"Unfortunately, there is not. 108 there were, are, and will be. Never 107; never 109." Tapping the brim of his hat with one finger, he continued thoughtfully, "That said, there is a time when they can be 'killed', by a certain definition of the word. From the time a phoenix molts until it regains its plumage thirteen days later, it cannot be reborn by its own fire. Should you destroy it within that timeframe, it will be reborn where that particular fragment first landed, but while it will retain its name and its personality, all the memories it has acquired over its life will be lost forever. Depending on one's perspective, it could be said that that specific phoenix is dead and it has merely been replaced by another sharing the same name and traits." Death smirked at her displeased scowl. "No matter the form, Enoch is a most persistent annoyance."

"Is that what the Veil is for?" she wondered aloud. "So your avatars could kill a phoenix and chuck the chick through it into another world or something?"

"Veil?"

Looking at the Baron's tilted head, she felt her hopes of discovering the truth behind the Unspeakables' so-called greatest mystery wither and die. "It's an artefact I saw once. An arch, unsupported by any columns, with a veil hanging down to the floor. Living things can go in, but nothing comes back out. It was once called the Well of Mímir, and now the Veil of Death. I know it was made with black magic, and due to the name, I had wondered… Were you really not the one whose power created it?"

"Ah, that. No, I had no hand in its crafting. I think I do know who it was who did, but…" He smirked at her and shook his head. "But no, if you wish to learn that bit of history, you will have to do the work yourself. I do believe you find the story interesting if it is what I presume it to be.

"Now that you have had your curiosity assuaged, I believe it is time for you to return to the realm of your birth. Your soul may dwell in this place, but your body can only survive so long without you within it." She nodded in understanding, but before she could try focusing on her body to make the return trip herself, the mists around them crashed into her and shoved her backwards into the void—

"Ah!" she shrieked as she leapt from the bath. She was freezing! And that was not just a turn of phrase, she realized when she looked at the ring of ice that had started growing where the water met the sides of the tub. Her teeth chattered while she wrapped herself snuggly in a towel and pulled the chain to drain the water, and it was only once she had left the room, crossed the hall, and was back in her dorm that she began to regain any warmth. Crawling back under the sheets, towel and all, she pulled Luna close and drank greedily of the blonde's body heat.

Note to self: the next time I try that, take a blanket.

On the one hand, the Room of Requirement is too useful a resource not to include; on the other, it gets boring reading about Harry finding out about it via the house-elves in story after story. Hopefully the first scene found a balance between familiar and new.

I have now named all fourteen Light and Dark Powers in-story, and from there, it should be easy to figure out who is rivals with whom.

Silently Watches out.