6. Seven gates

A street sloped downwards, bearing first right then left in a broad curve, lined on either side by a sweep of soot-stained houses four or five storeys tall. The light was indistinct under a thick cover of cloud, and the cobbles underfoot were moist and slippery. The street had a musty, enclosed smell. Feeble lights gleamed in a scattering of windows in the dull afternoon.

No one was on the street apart from Hermione. She followed the line of the street at a brisk pace, the sky barely visible over the facades of the houses. She paused at a junction and turned onto a side street, narrower and lined with smaller but equally run-down houses. Towering above them rose the sheer glass flank of a much taller building. The end of the street was shrouded in darkness.

Above a conventional brick-fronted ground floor, the building's upper half soared into the red-grey sky in two great curving wings of opaque glass, held up by a lattice of ironwork. Even from the street it was clear that the building was in disrepair. The green-tinted glass was made even more opaque by the layer of soot and dirt that covered it. The glass itself bore myriad cracks and scars and the iron that overlaid it was rusted and in places had come loose. A sign above the door read Villa Mariposa.

She walked purposefully up to the ornate, stained-glass front door and pushed it open. She stepped into a dimly lit entrance hall with a dirty mosaic floor, wood panelled walls and an industrial-looking girdered ceiling. Crossing the hall, she climbed the broad wooden staircase to the floor above. As she went up she passed into a shaft of pale light, which grew stronger as she continued up the staircase.

The staircase opened out into a vast space lit through its towering walls of glass. Before her was a row of great steel pillars, which supported a central galleried mezzanine running down the centre of the building. On either side of the gallery, the building rose high into the sky, the interior space enclosed in the two great glass wings visible from the street. Signs of decay and disrepair were everywhere, from the shards of fallen panes to the peeling paintwork on the pillars and the pigeon droppings smattered over the floor. It wasn't supposed to look like this. Why does it look like this?

She reached the gallery via a metal spiral staircase that rendered the building's dizzying scale all the more intimidating. She was relieved to step away from the metal-railed gallery into an inner chamber where the mounting sensation of vertigo could be kept at bay. The room she found herself in was an ordinary bedroom, uninhabited and sparsely decorated with old-fashioned furniture. The room was the first in a sequence of interlocking bedrooms, all similar to the first but furnished in different colours and shades. One of them seemed flooded with light from its glass roof. But the light can't be natural. Exotic plants were arranged around the room, as if it was some sort of greenhouse. The air was heavy and humid, so she moved quickly on. The last chamber was lined with oil paintings. Some were of places familiar to her: Hogwarts Castle seen from the shore of the black lake, her parents' house, a sandy beach in a rocky cove that she used to visit with her family as a child. Others depicted places and scenes unknown to her; some of them innocuous, others more menacing: a burning building with flames belching from the roof into the night sky, a dark-haired woman sitting on a bed in a room with paint-peeling walls, her face obscured, apparently contemplating the syringe she held in her hand. The most unsettling of the paintings depicted a vast, unnaturally regular rectangular expanse of grass, surrounded by tall still trees, under an empty red sky. The room wasn't as it should be either. The feeling of unease grew as she realised the room had not been decorated by her hand. I don't want to stay here. The only way out was back through the hothouse. She turned towards the open door behind her. A figure stood in the doorway, dark against the bright light flooding in from the glass room, a tall, slender woman in a long, pale green chiffon dress. The shade around her seemed to dissipate as she stepped into the room. She had long dark hair flecked with grey and piercing green eyes. Her smile had a serene, otherworldly quality about it.

'Hermione, so good to see you again!' Lillian Herrick said rapturously, seizing Hermione by the arm. Hermione tried vaguely to tear herself free, but the grip was quite firm.

'Sorry to have kept you,' she continued, 'but I've just been looking round. It's quite a creation, I must say. Although it could do with a bit of renovation.'

She raised her hand from Hermione's arm and touched her cheek. Again she couldn't prevent the gesture.

'But even if it didn't come out quite right, it's still spectacular.'

'I'm so glad you like it,' Hermione replied in as deadpan a tone as she could muster.

'Do you have any idea what pride a teacher feels when their favourite pupil outshines them?'

'I'm not your pupil,' said Hermione, shivering slightly.

'Yet here you are, inside the circle, following my footsteps. I'm not too proud to tell you that you've mastered them even quicker than I did. And you've done it all on your own, all without the benefits of my … pastoral care, shall we call it?'

'I'm not sure that's what I'd call it.'

'You may outdo me altogether.'

'Well, I think I'd better. Otherwise everyone's going to be in trouble.'

Lillian Herrick smiled.

'You're right to be vigilant,' she said. 'Particularly when everyone else is so complacent. And so focused on what doesn't matter.'

'You wouldn't have had a hand in that, I suppose?'

'Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. But even if I did, it wouldn't have involved much work on my part.'

Hermione shot her a look of bleak, humourless amusement.

'And this assassination attempt?' she asked. 'Was that your handiwork too?'

Lillian stroked Hermione's cheek and twirled a stray lock of her hair around her finger.

'You know I don't put guns in people's hands. Or in this case, wands in wizards' hands.'

Hermione smirked coldly.

'Well, whatever you have or haven't been doing, from now on when you're lurking in the shadows, you'll have to keep a look out for me too.'

'I know,' said Lillian with a giggle of excitement. 'We're going to have all sorts of fun, us girls.' She seemed to scrutinise Hermione even more closely. However probing her gaze was, Hermione refused to look away.

'All those late nights have taken their toll, Hermione,' she said, her eyes suddenly filling with what looked like sadness. 'All that time spent focusing and training the mind. Even a mind as sharp as yours.'

'It'll be worth it in the end.'

'The end?' said Lillian, her face suddenly paler. 'The end will be a sad place indeed. Let's not think about that now. You're still young and beautiful. Try and take better care of yourself, for my sake at least.'

'I'm fine,' Hermione replied.

'You know what the worst part is?' said Lillian, apparently ignoring her reply. 'It's the loneliness.'

'Are you talking about me or you?' said Hermione. Suddenly the urge to look away was overpowering her.

'You know what I mean,' Lillian replied. 'Now you know what it means to be alone. You probably even have some idea of what Harry once went through. Though maybe all that doesn't matter so much to him these days.'

Hermione felt her body go taut.

'He's off limits to you,' she replied coldly.

'He's your territory, is he?' said Lillian, her eyebrow cocked in amusement.

Hermione looked at her in silence, before remarking quietly:

'You won't get to him again. I'll make sure of that.'

Lillian's expression was inscrutable.

'I'm glad you're still loyal to him. You're right to be. Anyway, you know how much I approve of him. Almost as much as you do.'

Hermione forced herself to smile.

'One of the advantages of learning how to use the Seven-Pointed Circle is that I'm much better now at concealing my feelings from those who try and stick their nose in.'

This seemed to amuse Lillian.

'Yes, you're much better at hiding your feelings altogether these days. In fact you're so good you're making him suffer. He may even end up doubting you. Which, I suspect, would be the only thing that could make you suffer more than you already do.'

Hermione smiled again, this time a colder smile.

'But I'm much stronger now. I have so much more capacity to endure suffering, self-inflicted or otherwise.'

'I know you do, Hermione. That's why I'm so proud of you. By the way, I haven't been near him. Out of friendship to you.'

'Friendship?'

Suddenly her face seemed to relax, the smile less rictus-like.

'I understand you can't force these things. I'm not a complete psycho, you know.'

'No?' Hermione replied, almost half-laughing herself.

'In any case, I consider you as quite one of ours anyway.'

'Ours?' said Hermione, catching the inference straight away.

Lillian let go of Hermione and began to walk around her, tracing a vague kind of circle.

'The thing is, Hermione, there has to be more of us, if for nothing else so that we can form a circle.'

'You have followers, do you?' said Hermione.

'I wouldn't call them followers,' replied Lillian, continuing to circle her. 'Fellow travellers at best. You make it sound like a cult. That's not my style at all.'

'Oh well that's something,' Hermione remarked.

'I'd love to have you join of course, but we have a quorum for the moment. Still, if you wanted to try and dislodge one of us and take his or her place, you'd be welcome to try.'

'That would, I suppose, give me a better chance of beating you?' asked Hermione with heavy irony.

Lillian seemed genuinely amused at the idea.

'You know, I suppose it might. Why don't you give it a try?'

'No thanks.'

Lillian shook her head regretfully.

'Maybe later. You don't quite share our outlook on life at the moment.'

'I should hope not.'

'Problem is,' Lillian continued, stopping again in front of Hermione, 'if you don't take things to their logical conclusion, I'm afraid you won't be able to use the gifts properly.'

'I suppose you're going to offer me the benefits of your knowhow in this field,' replied Hermione.

'I will help you a bit,' said Lilian. 'You see, you're only halfway there: you're rather good at inflicting pain on those close to you, but even better at believing in your own innocence, which undoes all the good work that goes before it.'

'Guilt drives it, is that it?' said Hermione without expression.

'Guilt does drive it. And so, when I look around this place, I can still see the joins. But I do like what you've achieved. It's rather … picturesque, isn't it? But not exactly testament to a happy and well-adjusted psyche.'

'You made a few little adjustments though, is that right?' Hermione remarked. 'Just a little touch here and there?'

Lillian glanced around at the paintings on the walls and smiled.

'As your creation isn't completely stable I couldn't resist.'

'In any case,' Hermione replied. 'This is just the beginning.'

'You're right, Hermione,' said Lillian, her eyes suddenly flashing. 'It's time to come out of hiding. Come out into the bright light of the real world. You and all the born witches and wizards.'

So we're back to that.

'You'd better do your worst,' Hermione replied coolly.

'Oh well in that case, let's begin. Are you ready?' said Lilian, suddenly grabbing Hermione by the hand. At that moment the glass walls of the Villa Mariposa faded into darkness. At first the darkness seemed molten, before hardening into the dirty, weatherworn bricks of a narrow alleyway. The experience was much less jarring than apparition, Hermione noted. At the end of the alley was a silent, disused shop front. The shop sign, almost completely obliterated by time, read Leftwich and Co.

'Leftwich's?' Hermione remarked, scrutinising the dank, ancient brickwork and the dilapidated shop front. Leftwich's had been a milliner's shop for witches and wizards that had gone out of business years earlier. She didn't like the fact that Lillian Herrick knew about it. A chink in the wall protecting the magical world. One side faced the outside world, the other the inner world of wizards. There were other places like it here and there. In theory they posed no real danger of discovery. Isaac Edwards had told her about Leftwich's and other such places nearly two years ago. At Leftwich's something went slightly wrong. He took a particular interest in anyone sniffing around old abandoned entrances to the wizarding world. He had told her how he and Argenta had found Harry Potter in front of the disused shop, amnesiac and dishevelled, in the company of a mysterious man who hadn't been seen since. If I paid more attention to what goes on inside wizarding society, he had told her, I might have recovered him right then. But he had no trace of magic on him.

Hermione had even walked down the alley to Leftwich's once. You can't see anything, or even feel anything really, Isaac had told her. But it's there, and for some reason no amount of magic can seal it completely.

'You know this place of course,' said Lillian, who then proceeded to open the shop's boarded up door.

'I know why it interests you,' Hermione replied.

'Oh good. Then step this way.'

They stepped over the threshold into the dark interior of the shop. A dank, dusty odour was everywhere. As Hermione's eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she could make out the decayed remains of the shop interior. She stepped on a soft, felt-like object on the floor and recoiled in shock. Composing herself, she peered down through the gloom at the object.

'It's a pointed hat,' whispered Lillian, 'of the kind wizards once wore …'

Lillian walked gaily to the back of the shop, passing the ancient wooden counter and stopping before a small door in the left-hand corner of the room at the rear. With a smile, Lillian invited Hermione to look through its small, semi-opaque glass pane. A thick layer of dust laid over it and even the glass itself seemed to smell of mildew. She wiped a little of the dust away and looked through. On the other side she could make out the wall of another ancient alleyway, the kind that led off Diagon Alley and round the backs of the shops there.

'It's as simple as that,' Lillian said in a soft voice. 'Looking inside your world.' Hermione turned. She was standing just next to her, her head less than a metre away.

'Really?' said Hermione nonchalantly.

'Don't believe me?'

'I don't make a habit of believing you.'

'I suppose that's wise, in a way at least. But on this occasion, it's the truth. The wall is very thin here. Just an old pane of glass.'

'Why don't you try and break it and see what happens?' Hermione replied.

'Oh I understand that it carries a protecting curse, even after all this time. But that isn't the point, which you must know.'

How can the hole be visible to her? It isn't even visible to me.

'Anyway, why break the glass when you can just do this?' said Lillian, suddenly reaching out in front of Hermione. The next instant the door was open, as if it was the most ordinary of doors. A gasp of surprise leapt out of Hermione's mouth. She smothered it as quickly as she could. This is an illusion. It must be.

'Care to take a look for yourself?' said Lillian softly, gesturing through the open door.

'You didn't really just open the door,' Hermione said firmly.

'Not exactly,' Lillian replied.

'Is this an imagining of what you think is on the other side?' Hermione asked, rather snidely.

Lillian smiled.

'Oh it's a bit more than that.'

A light seemed to shine in from some unseen source. All was silent. Hermione stepped through the opening and out onto the pavement, a shard of glass cracking under her foot. The alleyway quickly turned right, opening out onto a wider street, lined with stone-fronted buildings of indeterminate age. The buildings seemed to have once been shops, but all the shop windows had been boarded up. Some of the buildings showed signs of recent damage, and first and second floor windows were also boarded up. At the end of a terrace a wall had toppled over, leaving a pile of bricks in the street and a gaping hole in the façade. As she approached the row of buildings, she noticed that the entrance to each of them had been sealed with police tape. She stopped before a boarded up door and touched the tape stretched over the entrance. Printed on the tape, over and over, were the words: No entry: danger zone. She lifted the tape and put her hand on the boarded-up door. A sound came from behind the door, something like footsteps mingled with whispered voices. She paused to listen, but the sounds vanished. She stepped away from the door. The street itself seemed to taper off into darkness at either end, and as she walked, each side street she glanced down offered only the same vague blackness. Finally she came across a street where the daylight poured in. She made her way past more boarded-up houses and shop fronts until she reached a kind of gate. In fact it was more an opening in the side of a wall, blasted open by an explosion of some kind, debris still littering the ground all around it. Here also, police tape had been stretched over the opening. She ducked under the tape and went out through the gate. She found herself on a normal London street, with cars and buses passing and pedestrians hurrying past, craning their necks to look into the opening in the wall. At that moment she heard footsteps approaching. She turned to see a policeman running towards her.

'Hey! Get away from here!' he shouted.

'Why, what is it?' Hermione replied, almost in spite of herself.

'What were you doing in there?' said the policeman. 'You can't go in there.'

'Why not?' she asked. The policeman grabbed her by the arm and directed her towards a sign plastered on the wall next to the opening. Her stomach turned over as she read the sign.

Magically contaminated zone, it read. No entry by order of the Witchfinder Office.

Hermione stood in silence for a few moments, trying to remind herself that she was in some kind of hallucination.

'I thought I heard voices from inside,' she said suddenly, almost without thinking.

'Of course you did,' said the policeman. 'Any wizards they caught in there are quarantined inside to protect the public.'

She was about to reply when the scene before her dissolved and she found herself back inside the shop, Lillian Herrick standing next to her again.

'Did you enjoy the show?'

Hermione caught a glimpse of the look of triumph on Lillian's face before she looked away. She couldn't bring herself to answer. Lillian locked her arm in hers and guided her back into the middle of the empty shop.

'You recognised the streets out there of course,' she said.

'Yes, they were done up to look like Diagon Alley,' Hermione replied. She knew there was no point in feigning ignorance.

'What's left of it,' remarked Lillian drily.

'This is what you would like to happen,' said Hermione. 'But it can't come true.'

'You don't believe that. This isn't a fantasy, but a premonition.'

'That means there's still time to change it.'

'Maybe. You'll have to see if you can. This is only the first gate, of course.'

'The first?' Hermione replied, her mind quickly extrapolating from what Lillian was hinting at.

'The most obvious one.'

'So you mean there are others.'

'That's right.'

'And that's the game? Making me try and find them?'

'Actually I'm perfectly willing to give you their locations.'

'What?'

'It would take far too long to send you off trying to find them. Even for you, Hermione. And who would come and help you?'

Hermione looked away for a moment.

'Why make life harder for yourself?' said Hermione, turning back to face her.

'Why give you the chance to put security at the gates, you mean? There are plenty of reasons.'

'Well, you do like a challenge after all.'

'I do like a challenge, but can you gather enough support to place sufficient protection over all the gates?'

'I suppose it depends how many there are.'

'It doesn't just depend on that, as you know.'

It was true. She didn't know of any charm that could patch up random holes in the separation between the magical and non-magical, and she could hardly summon much support among other wizards.

'But I'll give you the number. It's a number I'm particularly fond of.'

'Let me guess: seven.'

She smiled almost modestly.

'What was it you once said?' remarked Hermione. 'For every genuine clue you throw out a dozen false ones.'

'It would be too easy otherwise,' said Lillian, her face closer to Hermione's. 'And I know how much you love a good puzzle. But yes, I've found seven.'

'Seven gates to the wizarding world,' Hermione replied, thinking out loud. 'And I suppose your little circle has seven people in it.'

'That was an easy one to guess, Hermione. You get no extra points for that.'

'And you mean to show me the other gates, the lost ones?'

'Yes. But you'll have to give me something in return.'

'What do you mean?'

'Every time you give me something of yours I'll send one of my messengers to show you the next gate.'

'What is it you want that belongs to me?' said Hermione warily.

'Oh don't worry about that. I'm not asking you to sacrifice your loved ones or anything like that. You should know that's not my style. No, what I'd like in return for access to each gate is a pint of your blood. That seems much more reasonable.'

'A pint of my blood?' repeated Hermione in a deadpan voice.

'Yes. Whenever the urge to know the location of the next gate gets too much, all you have to do is get in contact with me and I'll send someone to collect payment. Once payment has been made, my messenger will show you the gate. But don't worry: it will all be done under the proper conditions: sterilised needles and the like.'

'Why my blood?' said Hermione in the same ironic, almost amused tone. 'What are you going to do with it?'

'Your blood is merely an arbitrary unit of measurement. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with it. You're not one of these people with a fear of needles, I suppose? I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. I know all about giving blood, and there's nothing to it. You regenerate quickly.'

'And how do I know you won't poison me?' Hermione's voice betrayed no emotion.

'Because I'm your protector, Hermione. You have nothing to fear from me. I thought you knew that by now. And more than that, I'm really curious to learn what choices you're going to make. I'm more interested in that than anything. Or almost anything. That's really the best card you hold, Hermione. I don't mind telling you that.'

'If that's the case,' replied Hermione, her voice as low as that of her interlocutor, 'then I'll be keeping it close to my chest.'

They contemplated each other in silence.

'Ok,' said Hermione finally. 'I agree to your bargain.'

Lillian smiled.

'I'm not charging for the first gate by the way. Think of it as a free sample.'

'Maybe I'll work the others out on my own.'

Lillian seemed to laugh silently at this.

'Maybe, Hermione.'

'You won't win this war,' said Hermione.

'What war?' replied Lilian, turning back for a moment. 'This isn't about war; it's just about bringing down walls. That's always a good thing, isn't it? The trumpets will sound and the gates will open.'

'And then what?' Hermione murmured.

Lillian smiled her scintillating smile of triumph.

'Who knows? Everyone will meet in the dance.'

Then she was gone, along with Leftwich's. Hermione was back on the floor of her office, papers still scattered around her. She scrambled up and switched the light on. No sound was coming from down the corridor. From the clock she could see it was some way past midnight.