"I had not expected him to make a full recruitment pitch right from the start," admitted Percy, after I'd finished summarizing my conversation with Malfoy. Percy, Penny, Oliver, and I were around a table out in the Three Broomsticks' common room. "I wonder why he abandoned his usual tactic of slow patronage to build a dependent relationship first."

Penny suggested, "Maybe he didn't think a few small favors would make much difference to someone who already has a relationship with Dumbledore? Risking the hard sell to lock down your loyalty before you had months more at Hogwarts to find out that his political faction is called 'the Dark' for more than just Dumbledore's faction."

Percy nodded, "Makes sense to me. In particular, Gryffindor that go into politics are almost always on the side of the Light, when it comes to Wizengamot votes. Perhaps he attempted a slow play with some of our housemates before and it never worked."

Oliver hadn't really said much while the two prefects had been helping me work out the political side of the conversation that had mostly gone over my head in the moment. Especially once I'd mentioned my mother's fae connection, he'd quieted up. He finally asked, "The fair folk are real?"

Penny answered, "Well, there are obviously the fairies, pixies, doxies, leprechauns, imps and the like that are covered in defense and magical creatures classes. But I was curious about that, too. I've heard about the fair folk in stories, but we haven't covered them in school."

I considered how to explain, since I'd left out any mention of my godmother to the three, including when summarizing my conversation with Lucius. Finally, I explained, "Like Malfoy mentioned, dealing with the aes sidhe—the people of the mounds, or the fair folk—is strongly discouraged. It was only recently that I figured out that… one of my tutors wasn't supposed to be telling me as much as she did about them.

"As I understand it, wizards basically figured out how to lock them out of our world centuries ago, because they were so dangerous. The tiniest ones, like the fairies, can still slip through. A bunch of magical creatures are actually native to the lands of the fae as well. But there's always a worry that wizards will figure out how to contact the more powerful ones. They really like to make deals that usually wind up being way worse for you than you think. And contacting them in that way might make it possible for them to slip through as well. Or at least they'll trick you into doing something bad for humans as your part of the deal."

"So they don't teach us about them because the fewer people that know, the fewer that can risk letting them back into our world?" asked the Ravenclaw prefect, clearly annoyed. "I can see why your mother didn't agree with that. Security through obscurity never works."

Percy asked, "How sure are you that this is real, and not some folklore your tutor sold you on?"

"If it's fake, it's not just his tutor that believed it," Oliver interjected. "My mother seemed to believe something similar. I thought it was folklore too. But it would make sense. There's even a faerie mound right outside of Hogsmeade she showed me a few times."

"Really?" asked Penny, excited. "Then as proper empiricists, we should go take a look!"

Percy didn't exactly seem sold, but he was never going to pass up a chance to go take a long walk with Penny, so the four of us left the inn and headed in the way Oliver suggested. "If I remember it right, it's a left off the road as soon as you can see the Shrieking Shack."

Oliver's memories proved accurate. We'd only been walking for a minute into the treeline next to the road out of town before we found a clearing with a large mound dominating it. Lifted off the ground by a foot-high ring of stones, the dome was several yards across and covered in oddly-even green grass. A classic fairy ring of mushrooms crowned the hill, poking out of the grass. The whole thing seemed out of place amid the forest that was dipping quickly toward winter. It wasn't even covered with the fallen leaves that blanketed the rest of the wood, and the temperature warmed subtly close to the mound.

"I don't suppose the villagers keep this mowed?" I asked. The points on the grass just seemed to indicate that it grew to a few inches and then stopped, rather than being kept even by groundskeepers. Oliver shook his head and the four of us spread out around the mound, damp fallen leaves squelching under our boots. Through unspoken agreement, no one had gone clambering on the hill yet.

Percy and Penny quickly found old runes carved into the stones and started trying to work out their purpose, while Oliver seemed to be having an almost religious experience. We'd spread out around the hill, as well, so I was the only one that noticed a flicker of motion back toward town, like someone in dark clothing moving behind a tree. I fancied I would have heard the subtle pop of someone apparating away from that hiding place if it weren't for the instantaneous crack of incoming apparition. A dark-robed figure appeared at the top of the hill, centered in the ring of mushrooms.

To his credit, Oliver was in a guard stance almost instantly with his wand out. Percy was distracted by Penny, who shrieked and kicked backwards from where they were stooped over, reading the stones. It was all the bookish Weasley could do to catch her from falling into the leaves. But both of them would have been dead if it had been an enemy appearing.

Admittedly, I had a moment of fight-or-flight before I recognized the feminine silhouette and familiar black hair curling out of the shadowed hood. I'd also seen her wear that cloak before when she was trying to be sneaky. So I either scared or impressed the hell out of my classmates when I just said, "Hello, Godmother."

"Oh, Harry, not even an 'avaunt, hooded shade!' for my troubles?" snarked Bellatrix. "It's classic for situations like this. When your mother first came here, she had better words."

"I guess you'd know, since you were right there with her," I rejoined. "Hogsmeade weekends start third year, right? Did you find it together when you were 13, or did it take you longer?"

"Lucius wouldn't have told you," she whined, her voice pitching into the annoying baby talk she sometimes did. "Could it be… yearbooks?" I gave her a slight nod to admit how she'd been found out. "But you haven't mentioned to your friends… no diagnostic spells!" she shrieked, noticing Penny waving her wand. I was probably the only one that could hear my godmother's hissed, "Expelliarmus!" as she wandlessly cast at the Ravenclaw girl.

The wave of disarming magic was impressive, but probably wouldn't have been strong enough had Penny been at all prepared. However, her wand was dragged from her hand with a surprised squeak and flew into Bellatrix's hand.

"Hmm, walnut," my godmother said, examining the wand in her gloved hand. "I knew of another smart girl with such a wand. It's good for Harry to have smart friends." She threw the wand back Penny's way for her to catch. "Turn it on me again and I'll break all your fingers."

Seeing Oliver tensing trying to decide whether that was a prelude to a fight, I tried to get the madwoman to the point she'd followed us out of town to make. "Is there something I can do for you today, godmother?"

"Since you're not trailing Lucius but you're here, I assume he mentioned your mother's interest in the fae but did not secure your allegiance?" I nodded, and she giggled madly. "He fancies himself a better salesman than he is. Let's have a lesson, since you've made the trip, then." Over her shoulder, careful to not reveal her face from within the depths of her hood, she snapped out, "Smart girl! How does magical translocation work?"

"Well…" Penny began, then frowned, "I don't think I've ever seen the theory explained. Maybe they don't teach the theory until they teach us to apparate?"

"You don't find that suspicious?" Bellatrix asked, in a slight sing song. "Harry's mother certainly did. Harry, can you work it out?"

I thought I saw where she was going with this. "Does it use the Nevernever somehow? I know the faerie realm doesn't map directly to ours."

"Exactly. Oh, you're a student at Hogwarts now! Ten points to… oh… Gryffindor. I never thought I'd be saying that." The others had started to drop their guard as the cloaked madwoman on the hill seemed to be giving a lesson instead of attacking them. Little did they realize how quickly she could turn a lecture into an attack. But, for now, she continued to explain, "Before they raised the wall between the worlds, wizards would tear gates into the Nevernever and walk the ways within. Much faster than even riding, if you could figure out correspondences between points.

"These old hill forts are called raths, and they were bound with ancient spells to be stable connections between here and there. It also made it easier to open a way. They used to be all over, a travel network nearly two millennia before the floo." She turned slowly away from me to take in the others, who were having just the weirdest but most engaging history lesson they'd ever had at Hogwarts. The two prefects were rapt from the lecture, while Oliver still seemed to think she was some faerie creature and not just a dangerously deranged dark witch.

Percy couldn't help but contribute to a classroom discussion, even if the classroom was a faerie mound in the middle of the woods. "The veil! It blocks travel into this other world but retains the magic of these ways?"

Bellatrix giggled, "With the hair it must be a Weasley! Those aren't usually so sharp. Be careful you make sure he only cuts the ones you want him to cut, Harry. But, yes, you've gotten it. They didn't just wall off the Nevernever, they made sure that it could serve as a road as well. Apparition. Portkeys. The Floo. All of it is just tapping into a much bigger spell and letting you use the ways without even knowing where they go.

"And if that wall came tumbling down… no more teleporting witches and wizards." That pronouncement was threatening enough that it stopped several questions that Percy and Penny were clearly winding up to ask. She finally stopped her slow turning to fix me with a very pointed stare, "But, until that happens, raths still make an excellent apparition point for going long distances."

And with that last piece of advice, she proved it by apparating away.