The Circle sprang into action as soon as they heard the clock in the corridor strike seven. As they tidied away the snacks, games, and books they had brought to while away the long hours of waiting, they reviewed the plan one final time. Get into the Department of Mysteries. Get the prophecies. Figure out, somehow, how the Ministry was stealing Luna and Cressida's prophecies in the first place. Then figure out a way, somehow, to stop it, somehow. Get out. Hide in the canteen again til morning, then make their escape from the Ministry and return to the Circle. It sounded simple in the abstract because they hadn't the faintest idea how they were going to accomplish any of it. It was more a list of goals than a plan, really, but they didn't have any other options. So it would have to do.

Infiltrating the Ministry itself had been easy enough, so easy that Luna had to pretend to be working on the plan for a few weeks. For she knew none of the others would agree to come if they knew Luna had insider knowledge courtesy of Narcissa Malfoy. It was Narcissa who had told Luna about the abandoned staff canteen and kitchen on the seventh level of the Ministry of Magic. The old canteen had been shut down several years before in a round of austerity budget cuts, and had sat vacant ever since. It was Narcissa who told Luna that the door was barely locked, and that the Ministry security officers never included it in their daily rounds. That bit had been easy enough to feign; Luna pretended to find a reference to the old canteen in some book or other and asked Mr. Weasley about the security measures.

After that, getting in was as easy as pairing each of the girls with a responsible-looking adult and trickling into the Ministry throughout the day, feigning tagging along on errands and other Ministry business. One by one they made their way to the canteen, where they holed up for the rest of the day. The girls held their breath every time they heard footsteps in the hallway, then dissolved into fits of silent giggles, overwhelmed by nerves and the thrill of hiding just under the Ministry's nose. Throughout the day, people kept patting Luna on the back, praising her for devising such a foolproof plan. Luna smiled and nodded, but her good humor ebbed away with the sun, and now that the Ministry was officially closed for the day, she grew impatient. Her eyes kept darting to her watch, and she snapped at the other girls to stop dawdling as they packed up their improvised camp and nest of blankets and pillows.

There was a clatter and a deep croaking noise. They all jumped, and a few of the girls shrieked.

"Sorry, sorry, just me," Tonks said, stooping to scoop up the food she had knocked off a table. The stray Chocolate Frog she had let loose jumped a few times before collapsing limply in a corner.

The others were all on edge after that, holding their wands tight and peering at the windows and doors, treading lightly as if expecting some kind of alarm to start blaring. Only Luna seemed unfazed, assembling an array of ingredients, her blood knife, and an old stone bowl from her bag.

She had planned the mission for this day in particular because her aunt told her that the battery of security enchantments, anti-intruder charms, and magical alarms at the Ministry of Magic would be disabled just for today, on this one night. However hard she tried, Luna could not manage to devise a believable story for how she could have possibly discovered such a thing on her own, so she had not told the others that they didn't need to worry about Ministry traps or ambushes.

"Here, each of you give me a few drops of your blood," she said, holding out the stone bowl, which they often used for communal spellwork at the Circle.

One by one, the bowl filled with thin trickles of blood: Cressida, Lavender, Eudora, Ginny, Tonks, Padma, Parvati, Luna. Luna got the ingredients she had spread on the table and crushed them with a pestle, grinding them into the blood. With her eyes closed, she cast about for the right words. What would she say if she was actually trying to do this spell for real?

"Let us pass through the Ministry safely without trace. Let us avoid traps, alarms, curses, and other magic that would do us harm or make our presence known." She heard the others' gasps, and knew that something must have happened. One breath, two. Years of her mothers' tutelage had taught her the importance of dramatic timing.

When she finally opened her eyes, Luna saw that they were enveloped in a faint lilac mist. A flicker of curiosity sparked inside her mind. It was a half-baked, insincere attempt to cobble together a spell, but would it work? If Narcissa was to be believed, it wouldn't need to.

Their trek to the ninth level proved uneventful. By the time they were standing in front of the plain black door to the Department of Mysteries, they were emboldened enough to speak in hushed whispers.

"Is it locked?"

Luna's hand trembled as she reached for the knob and half-twisted it. It was unlocked. She feigned jiggling it anyway.

"It's locked," she said without turning around to face the others.

"We'll see what the Ministry has to say about our ancient and sacred magic! The blood of women has stained the soil of this land since before Merlin, before the Ministry was a thought in anyone's mind, before Britain was Britain!" Cressida's natural vibrato was amplified as her voice echoed in the narrow corridor. Even Luna had to admit that it was an impressive performance.

"Yeah, yeah, Mum, hang on," she said, retrieving her blood knife again. The cut from a few minutes ago was still fresh, and it only took a gentle prod with the tip of the blade to reopen it. The doorknob glowed and made a faint sizzling noise as the drops of Luna's blood fell on it.

This time Luna allowed the knob to turn all the way. The door swung open. A chilly draft blew out from the darkness beyond.

Luna glanced at her watch. They had a little less than three hours.

Narcissa had told her one last thing, although she had implied it rather than speaking it aloud: the magical security was going to be disabled tonight to allow agents of the Dark Lord to roam the halls of the Ministry for their own nefarious purposes. They would arrive at ten o'clock.

Getting in had been nothing, but the others didn't realize that getting out was another matter entirely.


The room was pitch black. They lit the tips of their wands, little pinpricks of light that shifted as they moved about the room, creating a kaleidoscope of brief glimpses of a sort of round atrium with stone walls and sleek wooden doors leading off in all directions. As they stood taking in their surroundings, the room began to move, the walls twisting and the doors whirling by like they were on one of those teacup rides at the Muggle fairs Mr. Weasley loved so much. Padma had to stoop with her head between her knees to stop herself being sick.

They were fully disoriented by the time the room stopped spinning. The doors were identical and none of them were marked in any way, so now they did not even know which door they had come through, let alone which led to the Hall of Prophecy. That was the point, of course. Luna couldn't help admiring the cleverness of the scheme. It was so simple yet so effective. There had to be an equally elegant solution.

"Did you bring your runes, Luna, love?" Cressida asked.

"No, and that would take too long anyway. Lav, pick a door. Quick, before they start shifting again."

"Er, that one, I suppose," Lavender pointed, "But how will we know…?"

"Depingo purpura!" A purple blob of paint flew out of Luna's wand and splatted against the door.

"We'll try this one first and mark them as we go."

"Ah," Lavender said, wiping a few flecks of paint from her face.

"Well done, you! That's clever," Tonks ruffled Luna's hair.

Ginny led the charge as they barrelled over the threshold and fell into...nothingness. There was a chorus of screams that quickly turned to squeals of delight. Luna's heart leapt into her throat, her limbs flailing in a terrifying free fall. But then there was the oddest feeling of weightlessness. She was floating!

"Woah, what is this place?" They must have been in a very large room, because Parvati's voice sounded far away and echoed like they were standing in the chapel at the Circle. Luna's eyes were still screwed shut, but Parvati sounded curious rather than scared, so Luna risked a peek. It was lucky she did, because she was inches from crashing headlong into Jupiter.

They had stepped out of the Ministry of Magic and into a galaxy in miniature. Thousands, millions, perhaps billions of stars were suspended in thin air like so many tiny holes punctured in the fabric of the universe. A blisteringly bright sun blazed at the center of it all, orbited by planets and moons and asteroids. They must have been many orders of magnitude smaller than their real life counterparts, but Luna had never felt so small and insignificant in her entire life. She loved it. What was Luna Lovegood in the grand scheme of the universe? A speck on a tiny island on an Earth swimming in a sea of planets. Less than that. A mote of stardust.

"A massive orrery. Aviva would love this, can you imagine?" Mrs. Brown called from somewhere near Mars.

"Look! Look at me! If you sort of shift your body and really paddle your arms, you can fly!" Parvati whooped, pretending to throw a quaffle between a couple of asteroids.

The others soon joined her in cruising from planet to planet, but in Luna's opinion it could hardly be called flying. It was more like trying to swim through treacle than anything else.

"Has anyone seen any prophecies?" Cressida's voice sounded thin and strained. This was just like her, refusing to enjoy even an ounce of fun. Luna knew her dad would love it. He'd say it reminded him of her room at home.

"Reckon not," Tonks said, rapping her fingers against the craggy surface of Mercury. It didn't sound hollow, and none of them had seen any evidence of doors or hidden compartments on any of the celestial bodies, nowhere to secret away thousands and thousands of prophecies.

"Then maybe we should get going. We have a lot of doors to get through," Mrs. Brown said, using her feet to kick off from the moon and propel herself towards the door. Luna stole a glance at her watch and saw that she was right; they had already wasted nearly half an hour in the space room. It took several more minutes for everyone to navigate through the maze of planets, moons, and asteroids, and even longer to rescue Tonks, who somehow got her wand stuck in a crater of the moon.

By the time they were all back in the atrium and Parvati was selecting another door, the diversions of the space room were long forgotten and Luna was worrying in earnest. If they were going to complete their mission and get out of the Department of Mysteries before ten o'clock, they would have to be more cautious and move much more quickly.

The second door into another dark room, but it was a different kind of darkness to the atrium. This darkness was grayer rather than true black, and Luna could see vague, swirling shapes deeper in the room.

"I'll go in first. Don't follow me until I say it's alright," Luna said.

"No fair! Why do you get to have all the fun?" Ginny protested.

"Want me to come in with you?" Tonks asked, wiping moondust from her wand.

"Listen, we don't have time to all get distracted or Morgana forbid, lost or hurt."

"Are you saying it's my fault for going into that first room too fast? Cause I had no idea…"

"I'm not saying that, Ginny. Just wait a minute, okay? If I need help you can barge in and rescue me. Deal?"

"Fine. Deal," Ginny smiled and shoved Luna playfully towards the door.

Luna extended a probing leg into the darkness beyond. There was a floor, at least. With one last glance at Ginny and the others, she plunged forth into the darkness.

As Luna walked further into the room, bursts of light began floating like dust motes through the air. They were mostly green and purple, the colors Luna saw most often dancing on the inside of her eyelids when she closed her eyes. It's a good thing Ginny didn't come in after all, she would be so bored by this, Luna thought with a rueful smile.

Suddenly Ginny appeared before her. This was a much younger Ginny, with bruises and scrapes on her freckled knees and elbows. She must have been young enough that Mrs. Weasley was still forcing her hair into neat braids every morning.

"C'mon, Luna!" Ginny said, reaching her hand out towards Luna.

"Ginny! What's happening?"

"My mum said I could play outside until dark. Let's go to the rowan tree!" Ginny said, giggling and running away. When Luna followed her, their rowan tree loomed out of the darkness. Ginny was already nestled high in its boughs, sharpening a stick she must have found somewhere into a toy sword.

"Ginny?" Luna said again, but Ginny apparently could not hear her. Luna reached out to touch the tree, but there was nothing but wisps of smoke hovering in thin air. Was this a dream? Her mother would probably try to tell her it was a prophecy, but it didn't feel like any prophecy Luna had ever had before.

Now the purple and green smoke in the air danced and coalesced into an apparition of Cressida, wearing her favorite robes and sitting at her loom.

"Luna, stop dawdling and come over here," she said.

"Mum? Can you hear me?"

"Have you changed your mind about that hair of yours? No offense, love, but you look more like a skunk queen than a raven queen. It's an easy enough charm. I've done it before, you know."

"No, and we must have had this conversation a thousand times. Don't you remember?"

"Would you pass me the yarn, love? I was talking to Mrs. Patil the other day and she said she's found this lovely merino wool that changes colors! Can you imagine? But one has to wonder whether the sheep themselves have been charmed, which would be just ghastly, of course. Maybe I should ask Xeno to look into it, write a feature…"

Cressida kept gabbing, apparently having a one-sided conversation with some version of Luna who was no longer there. Unless...

"Mum? How old do you think I am?"

Cressida did not answer, of course. But she had mentioned Xenophilius as if nothing was wrong, and when Luna looked more closely at the loom, she saw that her mother was weaving that horrid family tapestry. It was a little more than half-finished. This is a memory. I'm reliving a memory in my mind. But how will I find the door?

Her mother and the loom disappeared into a swirl of wispy color, and a new apparition appeared in front of her: a door. But it wasn't the door that led back to the Department of Mysteries atrium. It was her father's office door.

"Luna? Is that you out there?" Xenophilius's voice called to her. For the first time since she entered the room, Luna was frightened. She felt a strong pull to walk through the door, to see her father again. She had not heard his voice in months, but it sounded exactly as she remembered it. Because this is all in your head. The room is using your memories to trap you here. If you walk through the door, you don't know where it will lead. You might never find your way out.

I need to get out of here.

She tried to wrack her brain for any kernels of Mrs. Brown's and Tonks's Defense Against the Dark Arts knowledge that might help her. But that just made ghostly apparitions of her cousin and Lavender's mother appear in place of her father's office door, Tonks teaching her about shield charms and Mrs. Brown running drills.

"No, no, stop! I need to find the way out!" Panic was rising in Luna's throat like bile. She turned and ran in a random direction, hoping that by some stroke of luck she'd stumble upon the door she needed. Instead, she tripped over her own feet and fell. Her breathing grew fast and shallow as she began to weep. Her left knee and right hand stung from the fall. She was going to drown in her own thoughts, choke on her own memories.

No, Luna told herself. The more tangled and emotional she allowed her thoughts to become, the more populated the room would become with the ghosts of her memories, and the harder it would be to get out. First she needed to calm down. Then she needed to think. The room seemed to be linked to her memories somehow. But not just memories, the thoughts themselves. The memories were changing based on her own train of thought. Just like Narcissa had taught her in Occlumency.

Narcissa Malfoy appeared before her, her hands crossed primly in front of her.

"Close your eyes, Luna. Listen to your breath. Clear your mind."

Luna took a shaky breath in through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. She imagined each of the memories dissolving one by one: Ginny, her mum, the door, Tonks, Mrs. Brown. She tried to make her mind a vast, dark space.

She cracked one eye open, then the other. The way out had appeared, a few paces away. Luna sprinted through the door and slammed it shut behind her, before more of her memories could come alive and trap her there.

The others fussed over her, demanding to know what had happened. Luna knew that she couldn't possibly explain, particularly the part about Occlumency. And when she checked her watch she saw that it was already nearly a quarter past eight.

"It was a sort of memory room. Pretty boring. I'll tell you later. Let's get moving, we still have ten more doors to go."

Luna pointed her wand at the black door and marked it with a streak of bright scarlet.


They got lucky on their third try. The shelves of prophecies stretched for what seemed like miles in all directions, even up and up towards a ceiling that was so remote it might as well have been the open sky.

"Woah," Lavender breathed, reaching towards a prophecy on a nearby shelf, her fingertips coming within millimeters of the cloudy glass orb before Luna stopped her.

"Remember, the book said the only people who can touch a prophecy is the Seer who made the prophecy and the people the prophecy is about. Otherwise you'll go mad," Luna said.

They soon figured out that the orbs were arranged according to the Seer who had made the prophecy. Beneath each orb was a label which listed the name of the Seer, the people the prophecies were about, and the date it had been made. Most of the labels were so old that the spidery handwriting was faded and the parchment was curling with age.

They split up and set to work skimming the labels. Luna let herself drift away from the others, getting lost in the maze of prophecies, a sea of names. She had never heard of most of these people before, but she recognized a few surnames, including a Black ancestor or two. A deep silence fell, pierced only by the soft patter of Luna's feet on the cold marble floors. She wondered if all of these prophecies had come true, or if even a fraction of them had. She wondered how many lives had been changed by these prophecies, how many ruined. If each of these prophecies is a secret, think of everything the Ministry knows.

A crackling burst of sparks pierced the darkness, soaring into the air like a flare. Luna rushed to find the source and sure enough, Tonks had found rows and rows of Cressida's prophecies. Padma and Parvati found Luna's own prophecies a few minutes later, tucked into a little nook. Seeing her name among the scores of strangers' names was surreal, like she had found her own name in a history book, or her own headstone in a cemetery.

Luna had not realized just how many prophecies she had made in her short 13 years of life, and her shelves paled in comparison to her mother's. She wondered how they were going to carry them all, even though they had come prepared with hefty bags enchanted with undetectable extension charms.

"Remember, we're especially looking for the prophecy I made about Luna on 31 October 1981," Cressida chided them. That was the prophecy about Luna being the raven queen.

They worked in silence. Luna and Cressida were each stationed in front of their shelves, while the others moved between them hunting for prophecies that had their own names written on them.

"Mrs. Lovegood, you've missed a whole bunch. Look here, Druella Black, 1962, Narcissa Black, 1977," Lavender read from the labels.

"Oh, no, I'm not bothering with those, dear," Cressida said, barely glancing over her shoulder as she moved onto a different section.

By nine o'clock, they had taken as many prophecies as they could. There was a brief bout of merriment as they congratulated themselves on finding the prophecies. But it was only an incomplete victory so far; they had not yet found the raven queen prophecy nor figured out how to actually stop the Ministry from collecting their prophecies in the future. They had an hour until the Death Eaters arrived.

"We just need to check the other rooms. We'll go one by one, be real methodical like," Ginny said.

"We should split up," Luna said. There were still nine doors they hadn't checked but maybe, just maybe, if they were quick and lucky...

"No! I didn't like sending you into that other room by yourself, and you were in there a long while, it probably wasn't very much faster. It will be safer if we all stick together, anyway," Tonks said.

"We haven't got time!" Luna shouted. Her voice echoed and bounced off the shelves, making some of the orbs tremble.

"Luna, what's going on?" Lavender asked. A worried crease settled between her eyebrows.

"Look, there's not time to explain, but we need to be out by ten o'clock. The earlier the better."

"You've Seen something," Lavender said.

"What?" Luna snapped.

"Haven't you?" The pitch of Lavender's voice crept higher and higher.

"Er...yes," Luna said, slipping into the lie like a warm bath.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Cressida gripped Luna's shoulder.

"Well, I didn't understand what it meant at first! But the important thing is I saw someone coming, and in the background I could hear a clock striking ten. We need to be out by then. They can't find us here."

Her words sent a ripple of panic through the others. They agreed that there was no time to waste. They needed to split up.


There was an urgent briskness now, all sense of curiosity and wonder at the marvels of the Department of Mysteries gone. Luna barely stopped to consider the room she and Lavender entered next. She noticed that there was an eerie green glow, but her eyes were combing every corner for any sign of a prophecy or something that looked like it might be used to collect prophecies. They did not know what they were looking for; it could be a contraption, or a powerful magical artifact, or…

"A tank."

The odd green light was emanating from a tank tucked into a corner, and inside were wrinkly, pinkish creatures with tentacles. They weren't quite floating, but seemed to be gently pulsing as if they were treading water.

"Up close they look like…" Luna began.

"D'you think those are human brains?" Lavender whispered in horror.

Luna drew closer to the tank. One of the brains was swimming to the edge of the tank, its tentacles pressing right up against the glass.

"Is this how they do it? They're somehow channeling the prophecies through the brains? Is that what you're there for?" Luna whispered to the brain, pressing her nose against the glass. Was it beckoning her or warning her? Perhaps it did not realize she was there at all.

"Don't get so close! It could be cursed," Lavender grabbed Luna by the wrist and pulled her several paces backwards.

"Okay, so if this is how they do it, how are they getting the prophecies out? How do they put them in the orbs? There must be something in here, some other sign…" Luna's eyes strayed towards a small, old-fashioned desk in the corner. A hefty, opal-colored opaque sphere sat atop it. It might be a crystal ball, or a prophecy, or whatever the prophecy orbs were before they became vessels for prophecies.

Luna let go of Lavender's hand and approached the desk, but upon closer examination it was just a paperweight with a tiny Ministry of Magic emblem in the center. There was a neat stack of papers beneath it. Luna picked up the top page and began reading.

G. Greengrass, 2 October 1995

Testing of mass memory modification charms continues. Tests reveal that crowds of up to 50 people can effectively be Obliviated with a single memory charm. Although this is not yet effective enough to prevent the logistical difficulties of large multi-Obliviation events like the third task of the Triwizard Tournament, preliminary results are promising.

The efficacy of the procedure depends largely on the skill of the caster and the strength of the measures used to amplify the charm. On the occasions when they work, runes and sigils appear to be the most effective, but simple amplification charms are more consistent in their efficacy.

"Large multi-Obliviation events like the third Triwizard Tournament task? What the…?" Luna read the report once more, but still did not understand what the tournament had to do with anything. She folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket, then grabbed another from the stack.

T. Gibbon, 17 September 1995

Experiments into the nature of magical heredity and ability continue. Muggleborn test subjects have been found to be inferior at complex wand-based magic in 62% of cases when compared to a control group of pureblood witches and wizards.

Tests to restore Muggleborn witches and wizards to appropriate levels of magical ability have been less successful. Even after their wands are confiscated and destroyed, Muggleborns still display some magical ability. However, results suggest that they may be more vulnerable to the effects of magical exhaustion. After casting complex spells for several hours at a time, they were less successful at casting even simple spells compared to their pureblood counterparts. This suggests future avenues for restoring them to their natural state and returning them to their communities of origin.

"What!?" Luna's eyes were scanning the words almost faster than she could comprehend them. She began opening the drawers of the desk, plucking papers at random, half-reading them, and throwing them over her shoulder. Until she found one that stopped her in her tracks.

A. Rookwood, 18 April 1977

The experiment confirmed the hypothesis that a properly administered Imperius Curse can be effective for months, and indeed, with adequate supervision and enforcement, indefinitely. If a close study is made of the habits and mannerisms of the subject before they are neutralized, they are able to conduct their Ministry business undetected by their close colleagues and even their families.

Attached is a list of staff who have been prioritized for the procedure.

Luna scanned the list, but she already knew that the name she was looking for would be there. Julius Brown. Lavender's father.

"Oh my God. Lav, you have to see this." Luna said.

"Lavender?" There was a dark shadow at the back of the room that had not been there before. As she approached, she saw Lavender's blood knife on the ground, drenched in fresh blood. A streak of crimson was smeared on one of the stones. A hidden door, a sacrifice to open it.

The room had a cage, and inside the cage were people. There were at least three or four of them all huddled together at the front, their faces pressed against the bars. Lavender was kneeling before them. She sobbed as she poked the lock with her blood-soaked wand.

"I can't get them out," Lavender cried, "Go and find the others! Now!"

Luna did as she was told.

The prisoners wept in relief as Mrs. Brown and Tonks cast a battery of spells at the cage. Their hands reached through the bars to graze the skin of their saviors and their raspy voices chattered, longing to tell their story. They were Muggleborns, subjected to the Ministry's attempts to strip them of their magic. There had been more of them, but the others had not survived. Luna shot a grim glance at the tank of brains.

While Tonks and Eudora worked, the others argued in furious whispers.

"We have to get them out tonight. But how?"

"We can get them to the canteen, but they can't just walk out and take the lift tomorrow morning! What if they're missed first thing in the morning? They'll be looking for them."

What Luna did not say was that their disappearance might be noticed before then, if the Death Eaters were coming for a midnight round of torture disguised as experiments. She stole a glance at her watch. They had less than half an hour until the Death Eaters were due to arrive.

"Let's just get them to the canteen now. We can work out the rest later."

The plan only got slightly more elegant after they made it to the canteen, new companions in tow. There was a flurry of disillusionment charms and then they settled into the shadows for a sleepless night. There were no snacks and books this time, just tense waiting, ears strained for the slightest sound. How long would it take them to notice the prisoners were missing? And would they think to check the canteen?

At one point around three o'clock, they heard footsteps loping down the corridor at a brisk walk. Whoever it was stopped for a moment outside the door of the canteen. Luna held her breath. She heard the clock ticking somewhere along the corridor. Then the footsteps moved on. It took them a long time to calm down after that, and they all jumped the next time the clock struck the hour.

When dawn finally broke, it was Tonks who had the idea to charm the Muggleborns' appearances. Nothing too noticeable, just some tweaks to their hair and eye color, reshaping their noses, hiding birthmarks. Enough to throw off any guards or Unspeakables who might have been given photographs or descriptions of the escapees. Tonks herself changed her own appearance several times, shepherding them in small groups to the lifts on the eighth floor in various disguises. Luna gripped her mother's hand as they passed the security desk in the atrium and bit the inside of her cheek until it bled.

It was late morning by the time they all made it back to the Circle. When the last group arrived all in one piece, there were shouts of jubilation and sobs of relief. Luna collapsed to her knees, dug her fingers deep into the soil, and filled her lungs with the sweet, fresh air of home. It had been a night of miracles upon miracles. They had survived, their pouches were filled with prophecies, and they had new evidence of the Ministry's horrifying crimes. They had even managed to rescue the Muggleborns and escape without encountering a single Death Eater. It felt like a victory, even though they had not accomplished half of what they set out to achieve. It took them a long time to even think of the raven queen prophecy at all. None of them had found it.


AN: Thanks so much for reading! I'm having a burst of creative energy right now so am currently 2 chapters ahead and hope to keep to a regular update schedule until the end of the fic. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapter - it's more action-packed than usual and it's a very important chapter I've been planning from the beginning, so I hope I managed to pull it off!

Also, this might sound odd, but I was wondering if there would be any interest in a Discord server to talk about Forgotten Circle? Things are going to get a lot plottier, complex, and fast-paced very soon and I'd love to engage more with readers and hear a bit more about what you think so far, theories, etc. Let me know what you think!

Finally, I just wanted to let my FFN readers know that I do post this story under the same username on AO3. I know a lot of people have been having concerns about FFN lately, so if you want to move over to reading on AO3 you totally can! To be honest ever since the security breach I have had my doubts about continuing to post on FFN, but I know I have a few dedicated readers so I'm going to continue at least until the end of this fic.