Harry yawned and rubbed his eyes. The lids were lead-heavy and glued themselves back together.

He felt around with his fingers and met a hard and coarse surface.

Taking a deep breath, he heaved himself up a little and rested his palms on the ground behind his back, shaking his head and blinking the sleep from his eyes.

He lay in a stone passageway. It extended through the rock, lit by flaming torches along the walls, and forked into three paths.

'H – Harry?' said a voice behind him.

'I'm here,' he answered, his head whirling around. 'That you, Logan?'

A murky figure sat up, barely illuminated by the flares in the tunnel.

'I expect as much,' Logan groaned. 'Can't be sure these days. Where are we?'

'A tunnel, it seems. There's no way back, though. Only walls. Don't really see how we got through.'

'Local custom,' Logan shrugged, having got to his feet. He was about to say something when instead he gasped. 'My God! I just remembered Ms Bellatrix – what a horrid fate!'

Harry stood up. 'Yes. Absolutely dreadful. And I don't even know who she was.'

Logan wavered a second before he continued:

'This might sound frightfully untoward given the circumstances, but … Do you think she – I mean, was she … real?'

'What can I tell you?' Harry said, empathy in his voice. 'I really don't know.'

'Yeah.'

They moved closer to the torches. Logan shuddered and zipped the cardigan to his neck.

'Wherever this is, it's cold.'

'A bit,' Harry said, rubbing his hands together. 'Hmm … there are tracks on the ground.'

'Tracks?'

'Like small train-tracks. Only missing a cart. What does the book say? Still words or is it boats again?'

Logan let out a defeated croak, but pulled up his cardigan and shirt – he drew a sharp breath at the cold hitting his stomach – and hauled the book from his person. He leafed through it and squinted under the flaming light.

'Uh, let's see, let's see … Words, yes. It's the Teddy story … Um … nothing out of the ordinary … Oh! Here's something. A … a tree.'

Harry went over to look. On the novel's centre spread was an engraving of an oak.

'I am so sick of trees,' Logan groused.

'You're not alone, I can guarantee that much. But look!'

Among the oak's branches crawled an engraved spider. It made its way through the forks in the tree and to the top – and disappeared. But then it poked its head out from behind the tree's foot and climbed the oak anew. It disappeared at the top and arose at the bottom, and so the untiring creature repeated the course again and again.

'It's taking the same route every time,' said Logan.

'As though it chose forks on a train-track!'

'Yes,' Logan agreed. Then he muttered: 'Nevertheless: one cart short.'

'Right.'

Harry gazed through the tunnel, and his eyebrows arched in a 'What if?' sort of expression. Shrugging to himself, he put thumb and forefinger to his mouth and gave a loud whistle. A rumble resounded from the passage, growing louder: a minecart was running towards them.

'Worth a try, I thought,' Harry said, smiling at Logan's baffled face as the rectangular iron-bucket-on-wheels pulled up next to them.

Logan hesitated. 'I don't intend to complain, but if the book wants us to follow a certain path … how are we going to steer this thing?'

'There's a lever here,' said Harry. An iron rod stuck up at the wagon's front. He pulled and pushed, but it refused to budge. 'Damn. Nothing about this in the book?'

'No, it's – oh. Something's written below the drawing now. "Use your head", it says.'

Harry raised an eyebrow and mechanically touched his forehead.

'So,' he pondered, 'we'll have to be a little smarter about this.'

A muffled pounding noise came from above. Like a football rolling through pipes, something tumbled down towards the ceiling. Harry and Logan looked up and flattened their backs to the walls in anticipation. The rumble intensified.

A hatch opened in the ceiling like a gasping jaw. Through the opening fell indeed something ball-shaped. With a thick wock, it perched atop the iron shaft: a severed head.

Logan and Harry gasped. The head had a skinny, old face, sallow and waxen in death; it was bald and lacked eyebrows, but had a long, white beard. The eyelids hung low. Protruding from the temples were a pair of sizable, thin ears.

'– or, why not use an actual head?' Harry said, revulsion in his face.

'This can't be sanitary,' said Logan, also a tad queasy. 'Say what you will about that massive tomb, but those bones were spotless.'

'You're not the height of hygiene yourself, you muppet,' the head grunted. Its eyes were open, big as golf balls, the pupils moving around their sockets like wasps in a glass.

Logan fell over backwards and Harry barely contained his laughter.

'It's – it's – it's alive,' Logan stammered. 'The damned head is alive!'

'Then at least we'd complete each other,' the head spat, 'since you're evidently dead from the neck up. And I do have a name, you know.'

Harry strained to keep his tone serious, saying: 'We're sorry for our lack of social graces. I'm Harry – this is Logan. And with whom do we have the pleasure of speaking?'

'My name is Autopompos,' said the head, his chin jutting out.

'Auto-Pompous?'

'Maybe! Don't ask me to pronounce it, it just came to me. You can call me George if it's all the same to you.'

'Why George?' Logan inquired.

'Because it just came to me!' the head barked, its stumpy neck shaking. 'Are you deaf?'

'Very well,' said Harry, 'we won't inquire further about your name. As I said: I'm Harry, this is Lo–'

'And I'm Sebastian, how do you do?'

'– er – okay. Well, a short while ago, we escaped some kind of monster and now we find ourselves here, with a whole underground mine to traverse.'

The head nodded and hummed therapeutically.

'And so you came to me. A wise decision. Or foolish, don't ask me. But I can take you anywhere you want in these caves. Or past the first few forks – who knows? Simply tell me left, right or middle. Hop in!'

'Oh! Okay, thank you,' said Harry, and he and Logan climbed into the wagon, splaying the book open at the cart's fore.

With a rattle, the cart started moving and the rod, with the head on top, extended like a telescope an extra five feet in the air.

'All aboard and off we go!' the head declared from its elevated post as they chugged along at a leisurely pace.

Logan scanned the illustration. 'The spider goes to the left at the first fork.'

'Left, please!' Harry called up the rod.

'Right you are,' the head replied.

The cart changed tracks and accelerated, cruising to the left in a broad curve. As the rails straightened, Autopompos bellowed in a tour-guide manner:

'Intriguing altitude variation, up ahead!'

Logan frowned at Harry. 'Does that mean what it sounds like?'

Only yards in front of them, the tracks sloped down at a steep angle.

'I dare say it does,' Harry gulped.

The cart plunged.

Cold air rushed through their hair as they hurtled down the tunnel, the torch flames whipping past on each side.

'Wheeeeee!' the head cheered, its beard fluttering behind it like a masthead pennon. The pages in the novel flapped and Logan struggled to keep it in place as though calming a startled pigeon.

After plummeting for five seconds, the tracks evened out and the vehicle reduced its speed. Harry and Logan breathed a relieved 'Phew!'.

Poking their heads up from the cart, a remarkable sight met their eyes. They were travelling through a dim hall the size of a cathedral, with towering structures looming in the weak light.

Autopompos's words trumpeted from high up on the pole:

'Accessing contemplative gallery brimming with noteworthy relics of the past! Or, wasteful rubbish erected by poor sods ruled by a long-dead windbag, it's hard to tell!'

On either side, bases of monuments in marble, bronze and gold were exposed by murky torch light. Statues and icons, pillars and obelisks. Steles and columns. Their width implied their colossal stature, stretching through the gloom like clouded peaks.

In front of each monument, stone slabs had been erected, chiselled with names and years, honouring dynasties long dead and forgotten.

'Wasteful's the word, all right,' said Logan. 'No one fears death as much as an aging king.'

Harry pulled back from one of the slabs. 'Death?'

'It's a comfort to know you'll be remembered once you're gone, isn't it? Simply have your face carved in stone, have some scribe record your deeds in a positive light, sign with your name, and hocus pocus: your memory lives on in the heads of a million others.'

'I never knew dead people felt comfort.'

Logan cackled. 'They don't, of course.'

'Then what good is marble once you're actually dead?'

'Indeed. Yet, his greatest hope is not memorials, but progeny.'

'Because …?'

'Because with offspring, he creates life in his own image. Not marble. The greater the resemblance, the better. If at least some likeness is preserved through generations, he'll never truly die.'

'Which is only fear speaking?'

'Quite so. Evidently, he has no qualms about passing on his fears to sons, daughters and grandchildren. Or abuse those who are unlike him. And so, in praise of purity, his astronomical ego echoes through history.'

'I agree, but as we've learned, it doesn't have to lead down that path. Redemption is a possibility.'

'Of course! At least up to a certain point. Once the rot has taken hold on the inside, there's nothing anyone can do.'

The wagon followed the tracks in a curve to the right, gliding past heaps of emeralds, gold coins, pearls, diamonds and rubies. Then the slant of the cart bent upwards. Blazing torches lined the walls again as they ascended a tunnel piercing through hewn rock. In the manner of a station guard, the decapitated head proclaimed:

'Now would be an appropriate occasion to choose which way to go!'

'Oh, shite,' said Logan and returned to the book. 'Er … first, we took a left … then we plunged down, then straight, then right … We should go right again.'

Harry yelled on command. 'Right, please!'

'Right,' said Autopompos as the shaft compressed, placing the head just above the wagon's rim.

A stone block moved in the right-hand wall, revealing a slim passageway. They neared the opening.

With a sudden jerk, the cart zoomed into the tunnel. The severed head's merry laughter rang as the walls swished past a couple of inches from Harry and Logan's temples. The rattling wagon lunged through dark, twisting curves – up, down, left, right in bewildering sequence.

When the vehicle slowed, Logan and Harry – appropriately tumble-dryer dishevelled – peeked up from the rim. They were still in a confined tunnel, but further ahead, in the left wall, a vivid, apple-green light was glowing.

The cart moved up next to what turned out to be a diorama enclosed by a fence. A pair of six-foot playing cards duelled each other on an emerald floor and by the spectacle stood a shining plaque, inscribed with the words:

That's Three-Card Brag! You've got to make some sacrifices!

'What does that allude to?' said Harry.

'I really don't know,' Logan muttered. Autopompos sat quiet at the cart's bow, whites and greens shining on his milky scalp.

They passed the diorama, only to end up next to another, carved out in the wall on the right. A ghastly blue sheen poured over a castle chamber. The life-size wax sculpture of a young lady stood wearing a blue silk dress with puffs of white chemise along its sleeves. Her posture and troubled face expressed her struggle getting past a doorway next to her: a spear, twice as long as the door was wide, bored through her bodice and out her back.

The metal plate in front read,

There are gaps where it vanishes from view; but always it resurfaces.

'Do you know anything about this?' Harry said, tapping the head.

'I don't like looking at them,' it grumbled, 'I think they're icky. So would you kindly leave me alone – and don't bloody tap me, you catapult!'

Logan glanced at Harry.

'I think he just called you a tosser.'

The minecart rattled on, past the impaled lady, and took a turn. The next scene displayed a prisoner in shackles. Harry read out the plaque:

The greater good.

He turned to Logan, but Logan sat looking straight ahead, scratching his ear. Another wax figure scenario passed by. A tall, pallid and gaunt man straddled a girl on the floor, red stains soaking his frilled shirt.

Ravenous, they ate and drank,

read the tablet.

Next, a scene with a boy deep in concentration, reading a book. A bundle of dog-eared tomes lay on the floor. Sightseeing with Sea Serpents, Roaming with Rougarous and Journeys with Jarveys among them. The plaque stated:

There he was, white and scared-looking, with at least ten others.

They passed a dozen more dioramas. Harry inspected each, reading the plaques to himself, while Logan sat with his arms folded and legs crossed, staring up at the ceiling, occasionally stroking his chin. Autopompos kept his eyes shut tight during the whole ordeal.

'I-is it over?' the head wavered. They were penetrating a length of tunnel evenly lined by torches.

'Yes, yes, they're gone,' Harry said.

'Oh, lovely!' said Autopompos, bouncing on the cylinder. 'That means we're about to pass into the Inescapable Lava Lake of Certain Death.'

'The what?' Logan yelped.

Autopompos tittered. 'Kidding. Only more tunnels.'

'Don't – don't do that!'

'Now, now,' the head chuckled, 'a joke among friends. "Lava Lake of Certain Death" – haw-haw-haw! Brilliant! Was somewhat of a prodigy in my youth, you know. Anyway, additional divides up ahead. Chop-chop!'

Logan grouched as he consulted the oak engraving in the book, then said:

'Middle.'

'"Middle, please", if you don't mind.'

'You – I –' Logan fumed, 'I'll stick your sodding head in a –'

'All right, all right, all right,' Autopompos snapped, then grumbled to himself, 'No manners, no sense of humour – what are some people even for?'

A tunnel split in five presented itself and the cart pushed on through the middle fork at increased speed. Harry wheeled around to the noise of clashing steel: for a second, cutting blades swung over the tracks next to them.

'Which way?' the head reiterated. A new divide, split in three, materialised in an instant.

'Er – um,' Logan began, his nose in the book, 'looks like, er –'

'Last orders! What'll it be?'

'– er, right – I mean left!'

'Right-o!' said Autopompos, and they veered to the left. The wagon rattled like bullets in a kettle and icy winds swept past. A burst of fire lit up a passage on the right. 'Pick a route!'

Another fork, six ways.

'I – I don't –'

'Come on, you plonker!' the head scolded him as the divide came closer. 'Don't know your lefts and rights?'

'Second from the left!' Logan shouted. The cart did as instructed and squealed on the rails in a sharp curve.

A four-way fork came hurtling towards them.

'Second from the right!'

'Well done!' Harry cheered. 'You've got this!'

'Got it memorised now!'

More divides shot past. 'Middle fork!' – 'Third from the left!' – 'Rightmost!' Logan directed, avoiding tunnels with spike-covered walls, cascades of molten lava and whirling blades.

At last, the tracks pierced through a long passage with decorations lining the walls. Logan wiped sweat from his forehead and closed the book.

'Amazing!' Harry exclaimed, patting Logan on the shoulders. 'Unbeliev– I mean, obviously I believed in you, but I wouldn't have thought anyone could've done that.'

'I'm pretty amazed, myself,' Logan panted. 'I was certain we'd snuff it.'

Harry chortled. 'Could've fooled me. You looked perfectly unflappable when y–'

He paused.

'Logan,' he said, the wind rushing through his hair. 'Another one.'

Ahead of them, the tracks split up and bored into a left and a right tunnel.

'For heaven's sake!' Logan whimpered and thumbed the book pages. 'It's – uh – God, I've lost it! I'm not sure where we are!'

'We're probably at the last fork! Which way does the spider go the moment before it disappears at the top?'

'There's no spider, it vanished completely! It stopped appearing way back!'

The cart hurtled forwards, rattling and thundering against the rails. Harry seized Logan by the arm and shouted in a rapid but firm voice:

'Listen! I believe there's a reason you've managed this far. Trust your instincts! Choose one!'

Logan stared at the oncoming divide, both tunnels dark and menacing with a solid rock wall between them.

'Instinct, instinct …' Logan trembled. 'M-maybe … le– No, n-not …'

His voice faltered, drowned out by the rattling and the wind, as the wall grew larger and larger. Harry pressed his hand on Logan's shoulder.

'Left!' Logan shrieked. 'Left!'

The cart screeched as it turned, leaning on its right wheels before it smacked back into position. Charging through the left passage, Harry and Logan held each other like children as freezing air stung their eyes and the wagon thundered through the darkness.

After a few gruelling moments, the cart's rumble softened. The wind tearing at their hair calmed and Harry's fringe dangled back over his brow.

Announced by a glimmer of light, an oblong chamber manifested itself.

'You did it!' Harry yelled.

They hugged and roared with elation, their voices echoing down the chamber like gleeful spirits.

'Oh, life!' Logan wheezed. 'Beautiful, sweet life.'

They took in the sights. Countless, minuscule tiles in motley colours coated the walls, making up an ornate mosaic. On the left, the profile of a great snake's head overlaid half the surface. Its open jaws reached for the tail of a serpent skeleton covering the other half. On the right wall, a procession of wizards stood neatly aligned, their heights undulating up and down across the composition.

The mosaic was illuminated by an intense glow coming from further down the tracks. Logan and Harry leaned over the rim and squinted: in the distance, the rails were consumed by a dark hole, and circling the hole was a wide ring of green fire.

Autopompos pivoted around to face them.

'Now,' he said in a smooth murmur, 'we'll experience something so exciting that you'd better hold on.'

From the wagon's sides, a dozen arms popped out, the vehicle simulating a dead tarantula's upturned body. Harry and Logan had hardly the opportunity to react before the hands seized them. The book hit the iron bucket's bottom with a resounding blong.

'Hey!' Logan protested, incapable of moving an inch. The head paid no attention and, in a funfair showman's tenor, said:

'Riddle time! Answer correctly before we reach the Burning Gate, or suffer an excessively painful death!'

'What?' Logan exclaimed. 'You can't do this!'

'Go on and ask us, then, please!' Harry shouted.

Autopompos cleared his severed throat and now spoke with the severity of a wigged High Court judge, stressing every other syllable:

'The riddle is as follows: Why are you, Logan, and you, Harry, such absolute, despicable maggots?'

Logan and Harry stared at each other as Autopompos rotated forwards again.

'W-what do you mean?' Harry blurted.

'Tick-tock, tick-tock,' the head teased as the tunnel mouth and its furious fire got closer.

'Um – um,' Harry began, 'I'm a maggot because I – I – I am actually a horribly bad individual!'

He nodded at Logan to follow.

'Uh, yes!' said Logan. 'I'm also bad. Vile and corrupt!'

'Thank you ever so much for defining what a maggot is,' said the head. 'But the jury would like to know exactly what makes you one. You each have a na-a-a-a-asty secret hiding in your hearts, don't you deny it!'

'I – I –' Logan stuttered, fighting the vice-like grips keeping him in place, 'I suppose I'm not consistently as attentive towards others as I should.'

'And I'm often hopeless at keeping in touch with friends,' said Harry. 'It genuinely bothers me!'

The head gave no reply. Only the pasty scalp's rear glared back at them.

'Did you hear us?' Logan called.

No reaction. The cart maintained its easy pace towards the passage, its wheels rumbling on the rails.

'I – I'm lazy!' Harry wailed. 'I know I could do so much more, but I don't!'

'Some – some of my readers I simply … loathe! I can't stand them!'

The severed head stayed mute.

'I'm still an impulsive brat!' said Harry. 'I do the same selfish things when no one's watching!'

He stared ahead of him as though unable to comprehend what was happening.

'Is this it?' he whispered.

They were mere seconds from the tunnel hole, the sweat on their faces reflecting the flames. Harry's face twitched with disgust.

'This is my reward?' he shouted, horror in his eyes and hatred in his voice. 'For all my sacrifices? Burnt to nothing? Is it? Burnt to nothing!'

The fire blazed less than a yard from their quivering bodies. Harry bellowed:

'I hate myself!'

'I don't want to die!' Logan cried.

'I don't want to live!'

The ring of fire rushed and hissed around them as they pinched their eyes shut. Harry moaned through his teeth and Logan howled with despair. They were bathing in green light.

'… it's over … let go …'

A voice from nowhere and everywhere permeated the light, which was turning brighter, like a green meadow drowning in sunlight.

'… that's right, Harry … just let go, now …'

The world was infinite whiteness. Not a sound. Not a movement. Up or down, left or right – none existed. No place to hang on to, no point from where the seconds ticked. There was nothing. Just white.

Until a darkness descended.

And there was a down. A rumble grated from somewhere underneath.

Harry blinked. His eyes were filled with dark, grey uniformity, yet it was a something. He slowly rotated his head.

'What the devil …?'

Behind him, a circle of light was shrinking. His eyes grew more accustomed to the obscurity by the second as shapes and sounds awoke around him. The form of a tunnel, tracks on the ground.

'Did – did we pass?' he whispered. 'Logan!'

'W-w-w-w-what?' Logan panted.

'We're alive!'

'We're alive,' Logan repeated. 'We're alive?'

'Yes!' Harry laughed.

Logan gaped and craned his neck.

'Why are we still held down?' he whined, nodding at the claw-like hands holding his arms and legs.

'Oi, head!' Harry shouted. 'Sebastian! … George? … Auto-Pompous!'

A soft grunt came from the fore.

'W-what?' the head mumbled in a hoarse voice. 'Oh, fell asleep for a moment then.'

'So, d-did we get it right? Could you release us, please?'

'Er – where are we? Ah, yes – this place. I know the area quite well. My, we should be past the Burning Gate, no less.'

'Yes, about those flames – did we answer correctly? Seeing as we're somehow alive?'

The head swivelled about and regarded Harry with confused, sleepy eyes.

'Oh, that thing,' it yawned as the cart-limbs loosened their grips and withdrew. 'That was only a bit of entertainment I made up. The Burning Gate won't kill you – how droll! Haw-haw-haw. Moving on!'

Harry slumped down in the wagon with a groan as the cart gained speed. Logan, however, stood up, boiling red in the face.

'You swine!' he screamed at the head, his words bouncing on the walls. 'You cad!' He took a step back, aiming, and thrust his fist at the head. Just then, the cart veered left and Logan missed by a demeaning margin. The head zipped up the pole to a safer distance.

'You snivelling twit!' Logan raged just as they went by a crack in the wall where a mountain troll sat picking its nose, bemused by the passing insult.

Logan held on to the metal bar and reached for the head's beard that swayed in the air. 'I should gouge your bloody eyes out!'

'Ungrateful!' retorted Autopompos and stretched even further up, while Harry tried to make sure Logan did not fall off. 'Here I am, thinking my inferiors might appreciate my efforts! That at least a smidgeon of gratitude would spring from my sweat and tears. But how am I rewarded for my labour? How?'

Again, Logan punched at the head, but it dodged to the side, bending the rod like a supple flagpole.

'Haw-haw-haw!' Autopompos chuckled. 'Look at him go!'

'Logan! It's not worth it, you'll fall off!'

The head went on cackling. 'Yes, pay attention to your slightly less moronic friend!'

It eluded another blow and zipped up again, hovering a foot below the rough ceiling. Logan shivered with anger and nerves, purple in the face and hyperventilating.

Then he froze. His eyes fixed straight across the rails.

'Th-there's someone lying on the tracks! Stop the cart!'

'Nice try, lil' urchin,' Autopompos sneered. 'Not happening!'

Kra-bump!

The collision hurled the cart in the air. With a swift, scraping sound followed by a fwoosh, the entire head caught fire, and the cart's wheels found the tracks again.

'Aaarrrghhh!' Autopompos cried, the voice shrill and distorted. 'No-no-no, shit-shit-shit, ow-ow-ow!'

Logan fell back into the speeding vehicle. The flames twinkled yellow and orange in his and Harry's startled eyes as the head zoomed like a torch through the tunnels. In-between screams, it made valiant attempts at huffing and puffing at the shifty tail of fire.

'Argh! This is extremely uncomfortable! Argh! Terribly unsafe! Argh! Smells funny! This is so – un – urgh …'

The remnants of its jaw slackened and the head sat motionless on the cylinder, smaller flames still hopping and crawling up the charred skin. The cart slowed considerably, and to the sound of wheels on rails and Logan and Harry's panting, it rolled down gently sloping tracks and a bright area came towards them.

With a tink, the minecart stopped and stood still.

Harry and Logan squinted at their surroundings. The cart had halted at a buffer stop. Instead of more tunnels, a corridor with glazed, white tiles stretched into the distance. Above the concrete floor, strip lights extended like a broken road marking line. The walls glinted in their pale, fluorescent-green light, accenting a block of partially removed graffiti.

They climbed out of the wagon on trembling legs, Logan clutching the book in his hand.

'I – I believe we did it,' he said, gazing down the passage. At its end, an escalator ascended to the surface. Hints of sunlight brushed the steps.

'Was someone on the tracks?' said Harry.

Logan's eyes widened. 'Didn't you see it?'

'I only felt it.'

'Well, it resembled a person! I think. We must go back!'

'We'll never find it, Logan. I don't know how many forks we've passed since, but in that maze we'll likely end up the same way.'

'Yeah,' Logan mumbled, his chin pressed down.

Harry considered the head atop the pole. Sooty, beardless and disfigured, it passed for a burnt out match, with thin smoke rising from the tip.

'Can't say I miss the bloke,' Harry sighed.

'Talking heads always annoyed me.'

Harry chuckled weakly and Logan gave a little smile as he peered into the tunnel they came from. A shade of melancholy crossed his face. His gaze dropped, he glanced at Harry, then looked down again.

'No,' said Harry. 'I did not mean the things I yelled back there. It just seemed like no matter what I offered, it wasn't enough. So, I improvised some complete rubbish. I could have said anything at that point.'

Logan grinned and flushed. 'O-of course!' he blurted. 'I'm sorry. I didn't intend to give the impression I had anything like that in mind. Heck, who knows what else we'd come up with if they'd let us, eh?'

'Of course.'

They faced the tiled passage again. A barrier blocked their way.

'What now?' Harry scoffed. 'Where did that come from?'

'Looks like an old ticket barrier, but … huge.'

A turnstile stretched from floor to ceiling, its horizontal bars intersecting like metal fingers. On either side, a tight fence of steel beams obstructed the passage.

'Do we have anything that would pass for a ticket, then?' Harry said.

'The book probably has something useful to impart,' said Logan and skimmed the novel. 'Huh, it's full of … anchors. To go with the boats from before, I suspect.'

'And on the last page? Anything written?'

'Hmm … yes.' Logan's eyes narrowed and he read aloud:

'Don the veil and pass the cloak,

Honour every word you spoke.

Tell the tale that hushed the scholars –

That's the ticket: show your colours.

Leave your precious world behind,

Birth and act repaid in kind.

Cite an issue valid still:

Wh–'

A freezing gust came from the tunnel behind them, flipping the book's pages and catching the turnstile, spinning it like a pinwheel. Logan and Harry turned their heads to the tunnel: from its shadows came a drawling murmur.

With a final moan, the wind dissipated and a tall shadow expanded on the concrete – in the turnstile's place stood a cracked stone archway. Hanging from it, ragged and ancient, was a black curtain and the steel beams were transformed into jagged spears sticking up from the ground.

Logan finished the verse:

'Who's the key that cuts the quill?'

He stared at the page. Then at the archway. He stood fixed, his gaze far off, searching for something. Finally, he closed his eyes and sighed, lowering the book and nodding.

'We interpreted the other verse all wrong, then,' he said, and turned to Harry. 'The rhyme was never "spill".'

Harry shrugged as he said:

'Doesn't make a difference, though, does it? We were still right – obviously so, since we made it through the armoire. And … and now I only need to perform one final sacrifice.'

'It does make a difference!' Logan insisted, shaking the book at Harry. 'A tremendous difference!'

Harry exhaled with some annoyance. 'How? It's all about my blood. Can't we get this over with?'

'Quills, in a figurative sense, have very little to do with you, Harry. But they have all the more to do with me.'

His brow contracting, Harry put his hands on his hips and blinked at the floor as though expecting an escape route to pop on the concrete.

'All right,' he said, 'let's assume it's about you. How do you … how do you explain the reed-blowing goat-man?'

'Simple,' said Logan, his lips curling. 'I am the goat-man!'

Harry's face twisted in confusion, but he did not speak. Logan went on:

'Guess what people used to write with? Before they cut feathers to make quills?'

'How am I supposed to kn– Oh. Reeds?'

'Yes! And the signs have been everywhere, if we only wanted to see them. Remember the thing that killed Ms Bellatrix?'

'With the cannon blasting the window?'

'Even "cannon"! It's originally from a word meaning "reed"!'

'S – So?'

'So,' Logan said, pacing on the concrete, 'reeds, quills, pens, keyboards – those are my instruments that I live and breathe through. Like the legend's half-goat inventor, producing my witching tones. Until my hands bleed, come to that.'

'But it's all figurative drivel! You said so yourself. There's no logic to it.'

'You know very well it makes perfect sense. If the hoof-'n'-crab lady's wishes are anything to go by, we'll pass this obstacle by paying with our bones – well, my bones, to be exact.'

'No, this place is madness,' Harry hissed, his eyes darting over walls and ceiling. 'This whole game is getting absurd! Someone's pulling our leg!'

'It can feel like that sometimes. But drivel or not, we don't make the rules here. And if we read them properly, this is where I take my leave.'

'No, that's not true! It can be interpreted in a lot of ways, Logan, the book is –'

'It's all right, Harry,' Logan said, his forehead wrinkling. 'I can't sit penning stories about heroes in my writing room all day, while fleeing the real monster. No, it's time for me to stop running. To make a legitimate sacrifice.'

'But I can't let you sacrifice yourself for my sake! If you walk through that archway you will actually die, Logan!'

'I know. I – I won't pretend I'm not a little nervous. But I'll gladly do it for someone close to me. Now, I do realise you've only known me for a day, but you have been on my mind for so, so long! I've followed you in the words I've written, and today I've seen you in the flesh.' He took a deep breath. 'This extraordinary moment is the only proper one to assert something I've been sitting on for some time: the real deal is every bit as magical as the one I imagined. Harry, I cannot think of a better person to die for.'

'I – I don't know what to say, Logan. I –'

'Here. Take the book. Might come in handy.'

Harry held it in his hands.

'Thank you, Logan.'

Logan gave a trembling smile. He turned from Harry and walked towards the pointed entrance and the fluttering curtain. Faint whispers came from the other side.

He paused an inch in front of the veil. As it swayed, the whispers became more agitated, murmuring louder. Logan spun around, shaking from head to foot. His lips quivered, his wet, fidgety eyes unable to find any point of rest. A tear ran down his cheek.

'Logan …' Harry whispered, his face twisting with concern.

Staring into nothing, Logan gave no sign of seeing or hearing him.

'Logan, listen to me. You –'

A gasp rattled in Logan's throat as he pushed himself back and fell through the archway. The curtain flapped and fluttered, with Logan disappearing behind it.

Harry stood petrified. The veil fell back again and hung still but for faint twitches scattered over the fabric. The whispers from the other side had gone quiet. Harry glanced at the book in his hands and rubbed the cover with his thumb.

Crackling sounds pierced the silence. The fissures in the stone arch cut longer and deeper, and the tattered curtain moved restlessly – and ripped from the frame. It floated down in a meandering pattern, swaying back and forth, and when it came to rest behind the portal, it covered the shape of a supine body.

From the fissures, thin streaks of gravel poured down. The stone popped and snapped, and, with a sighing rustle, the archway collapsed into dust. Harry wheeled around from the dust cloud, and he coughed for a full minute before the air cleared.

Harry turned again. Illuminated by the strip lights, the veiled shape lay peeking up from a spread-out heap of grey sand. The spears on each side had shrunk into withered ferns.

Crack!

One of the fluorescent lamps burnt out, leaving a drab patch beneath it. In response, something was moving at the shrouded body's head: a silvery vapour, steadily rising. Arms and legs formed as it grew, and a scalp surfaced: floating over the remains was the semi-transparent form of a man.

Its head turned and looked at Harry, the translucent eyes taking him in.

'H – H-Harry?' it said.

His face grimacing with horror and pity, Harry's tense hands threatened to crumple the book to pieces.

'Why am I still here?' said the pearly shadow. 'Did – did something go wrong?'

When no answer came, the wraith's lips trembled and it bellowed in a choking voice that rang horribly in the passage:

'Harry, please, say something! W-why am I still here?'

It stared in dismay at its own glassy hands. It buried its eyes in them, then clawed at its cheeks and screamed:

'I was supposed to wake up!'

The novel in Harry's hands shook. Despite his grip, it wrenched itself from his hold with a testy jolt and it flopped down on the ground between him and the spectre.

The book opened to a spread. Along its inner margins, ink bled on the pages, branching through the paper fibres.

The ghost shuddered. 'W-w-what is that?'

A growl boomed out of the tunnel exit and through the passage. As if in reply, a cackle came from above the escalator and a strong wind thundered back across the corridor. While merely blowing through the ghost's body, it pushed Harry off his feet and threw him to one side. His torso made a dent in a tile and he lay light-headed beside it.

The archway dust spun around in the gust. Laid bare, the veil and the corpse lifted from the ground with a jerk, as if brought to life. The fabric flittered about like a humongous bat and the dead body moved in a swift rag-doll dance towards the buffer stop. The body plunged, head first, into the minecart, the legs sticking up in a V-shape, with the veil getting caught between them. The fabric swelled like a sail and the cart hurtled into the tunnel, swayed on the tracks and disappeared into the maze.

On the ground by the spectre, the pages in the novel flapped from side to side. A flat, raspy voice as from an old gramophone travelled in the wind, preaching fragments of a song:

'… come … stir m– –auldron … … boil yo– … –rong love … –eep you warm –night …'

As the dissonant music whirled from end to end in the corridor, the ghost began to distort and twist, getting slowly sucked up by the book.

'No!' it shrieked and attempted to pull away, its eyes wide with shock. 'Don't! Harry! I'll do anything!'

In the hopeless effort of someone slipping down an icy road, the spectre pushed towards the escalator while the book reigned in more and more of its prey. Arms and hair and ears strained into strings, like a long, silver sweater being tugged off its wearer.

Disappearing in between the pages, a last, furious gurgle left the phantom's warped jaws:

'Thishhh … can'tchh … bhee … rhheeeaa-a-al …'

With a short, whooshing sound the whole apparition shot straight into the book. The pages ceased thrashing and the covers snapped shut. The wind died in an instant, and in the ensuing silence, the dust settled.

Harry gulped and hauled himself from the ground, his back twinging from the impact. Over on the floor, the Teddy Baker lay intact. Harry's eyebrows contracted and he limped towards it to the rhythm of his strained wheezing.

Slumping down beside it, he grabbed the piece of fiction by the spine and turned it in his palm. Smudged though it was after the ashes raining down, it otherwise appeared hot off the presses and never once leafed through. It sported the usual cover: a bewildered, young Teddy in front of a submarine, his hair brown, his eyes grey. He was no longer heavily built, however, but quite slender.

Harry took a deep breath. He put his thumbs on either side of the fore-edge, its block of pages tightly packed, and opened the copy at a random spread.

The two pages were blank. Blank, save for a dot on the right-hand page. The following spread showed the exact same thing, except the dot was somewhat larger. On the next, it was larger still.

Harry riffled through the book. The expanding dot morphed into the figure of a person, standing alone in the snowy landscape of paper fibre. Further in, the man had grown to reveal clearer features: the engraving displayed Logan in his familiar cardigan and white shirt, his jeans slightly covering the shining shoes. He stood in a rigid posture, looking straight ahead.

Harry's fingers barely managed to turn the leaves without ripping them. The pictures took up entire pages, zooming in on Logan's face. Imperfections in the skin were delicately engraved, but his countenance projected no emotion, nothing of the personality found in the man.

'Are you there, Logan?' Harry whispered at the picture. 'Somewhere inside?'

The pages passed over Logan's lips, nose, left cheek. The eye grew, the paper edges cutting its corners. Dilating across the sheet, the iris loomed like a planet shattered by a black crater, the pupil stretching its circular mouth – toothless, gumless, tongueless – to swallow the world.

Only a dozen pages left. Harry turned them like dried petals on his fingertips. Each left-hand verso page blank and dull, each recto an increasingly pitch-dark nothing. Blank, black, blank, black.

The last leaf of paper, glued to the back cover, was different. Against the inky background, white lines surged in long ripples, forming sharp flames, filling the page like a packed forest of spikes and halberds.

Harry squeezed the back cover for more pages, but there was nothing. The novel was finished.

Struggling to get up, he rose from the concrete, book in hand. On the floor ahead of him lay slight specks of dust, but nothing else. Remnants of something scraped from existence.

Harry looked at the cover. Teddy's features had changed considerably now. His hair had turned a light blond and his face was pointed. Standing with a flaming torch in his hand, the eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy had madness and exhaustion in his eyes, and the spiral-marked cheek was pale as death.

'Oh, this is not good,' Harry fretted. 'This is not good.'

He delved into the book again, from the beginning. The first leaf featured the same white-on-black engraving of a fire. The second page was identical. Third page, fourth page, fifth page – all permeated with flames. Harry pressed his thumb to the chunk of pages and flicked it in rapid succession. As an animated sequence, the fire burned through every page in the copy.

Harry panted and dropped the book like a brick.

'I – I can't help you,' he groaned at the volume.

His eyes shifted to the sunbeams coming from fifty yards ahead.

'There's no help possible.'

The novel shook on the ground. It bounced up with a nervous convulsion and hovered like an osprey before Harry, beating its covers.

He gaped at it and held out his hand. The covers fluttered with indignation and the winged book flew away from him, soared in an arc along the glazed tiles and lingered beneath a strip light. Shadows and reflections hopped to its flapping beat.

With a swish, the book plummeted in a curve and swept past Harry. It burst through the wall to a deafening crash and flew into an expansive blackness, leaving a man-sized hole behind.

Harry walked up to the breach where splintered tiles lay glinting on the concrete. He leaned his neck past the edge. A train horn blasted from far away, resounding in the darkness for miles in every direction.

He backed out, but halted his movement. He bent over the void again, the beams from the strip lights peering through the hole and getting entangled in floating dust. Far down there, a metallic belt reflected them.

A draught caught Harry's fringe, which played over his brow. Inclining his body further in, his eyes fixed on the gleam and a whisper echoed from below:

'Be brave … like my mother …'

He gasped and pushed himself back, stumbling onto the floor, broken tiles tinkling. The wind moaned and whistled through the gap in the wall, dust moving in uneasy twirls at the opening.

Harry rose on his palms. With a crease between his eyebrows, he glared at the jagged hole.

'No,' he said, shaking his head at the darkness, 'not going to happen.'

Both feet on the ground, Harry brushed off his sleeves. He pivoted on his heel and marched straight across the tiled passage, the concrete crunching under his shoes and the lights on the ceiling casting their pale glow on his bobbing hair. Another train horn sounded from somewhere, but he did not look back.

He stepped into the sunlight and onto the moving stairway. As he ascended and the beams from above stung in his eyes, he examined his left hand. His mouth curled. The gash in the palm was a dried, red line, sprinkled with dirt.

The light dimmed and Harry looked up. He was at the top of the escalator, but not a hint of sunlight showed. Instead, a couple of feet in front of him, was a wooden panel door.

'Password?' came an earthy voice.

Harry's eyes darted up and down. One of the panels was carved like a face: a pair of curved eyebrows over deeply set eyes and wide, angled lips jutting from the wood. There was nothing, however, resembling a nose.

'Password?' it repeated, its mouth moving in the door.

'Passw– ? I don't know!' Harry fretted. 'I was never given any password!'

The wooden face breathed out heavily, its tightened lips pattering.

''Twas ever thus,' it said. 'Seriously, though, after such an intense adventure you must have learned something. No?'

'Probably,' Harry shrugged impatiently, 'but it's a bit early to know what exactly. And I doubt it lends itself very well to passwords.'

The face smiled across the panel. 'You'd be surprised. Look, you don't want to stand out here forever, and I certainly don't itch for being stuck listening to your futile guesswork all day. So, I'll give you a hint.'

'Why not simply let me through?'

'Let – let you th– ?' the face spluttered, spitting sawdust in the air. 'Want me to write your exams, as well? While changing your diapers? It's not allowed! You have to struggle at least a little.'

'Obviously.'

'Listen up, punk,' the face snapped. 'The hint is … Slughorn.'

'Slughorn? Okay, uh' – Harry shifted his weight to one foot and scratched the back of his head – 'Professor Slughorn was my Potions master. Temporarily. Awarded me a bottle of Felix Felicis. So the password is maybe … Luck?'

'No, no, think! Make associations!'

'I did!'

'Well, make the right ones! These are advanced matters, mark you. Slughorn was hiding a dark secret, wasn't he?'

'Yes?'

'And there are certain beings that enjoy spending time in places hidden and dark.'

Harry rolled his eyes. 'More wordplay. Wonderful.'

'Isn't it great? Now, make an effort.'

'Hides in the dark, you say? Let's see … hardly Dementors … nor Thestrals, really … Perhaps something entirely imaginary? Can't think of anything as hidden and obscure as that. So … a Crumple-Horned Snorkack?'

The face frowned as if being spat upon.

'I was referring,' it said, 'to the common bedbug. Those bloodsucking things crawling out of your mattress, nibbling your skin while you're asleep?'

'Fancy that.'

'Could you, I wonder, name another creature that would let your blood at night?'

'A vampire?'

'Heh-heh,' said face with an impish grin, 'Dolores Umbridge, more like.'

'Oh. Heh. You're not wrong.' Harry glanced at his right hand before the face on the door continued:

'So, getting the hang of it? Good. We'll move on: Prior to your torture sessions with Professor Umbridge, she attempted to have you convicted of underage sorcery. Didn't go according to plan, obviously, but the event showcased her fundamental nature: highly judgemental. Mental is, of course, the diagnosis given to people who would willingly traverse the Forbidden Forest to a lair full of gigantic, hungry spiders. Black and hairy, they are – much like Doxys, in fact, those little buggers infesting draperies and whatnot. Really, I think you should have been taught about them already in your second year at Hogwarts, because another annoying pest introduced that term was …?'

'Ah, Gilderoy Lockh-'

'Dobby the house-elf, exactly.'

'Hey!'

'Ah, Dobby. Small as a baby, suddenly sitting in your room one day. Speaking of babysitting – Rubeus Hagrid was certainly in much need of it throughout your school years. But someone who actually got rid of a hag, by slashing the Fat Lady's portrait, was Sirius Black. I'm looking for another example of such deceased father figures. A person who, like the Fat Lady, also happened to have his portrait ruined.'

'D – Dumbledore.'

'Correct! Sad story. But he didn't die in vain, the old coot. Don't forget all the valuable things he taught you!'

Harry glared at the door. 'I'll never forget!'

'And the opposite of never is ...?'

'Always.'

The lock clicked open and the face flattened into the wood, leaving Harry in silence.

Harry scoffed at the smooth panel. He became more thoughtful, however, as his eyes wandered down to the door handle and he clutched it firmly.

'Please,' he whispered as he closed his eyes, his pulse thumping in his ears. 'Please, please, please.'

His lungs filled.

Thrusting air from his nose, he pressed the handle down and walked through.