Castle Bek stood among wooded hills that shone red and gold under a late autumn sky. Fallen leaves swirled about the castle courtyard as Cammy stepped out of the rental car, pulling her jacket about her.
"Come on, you lot," she said to the others in the car. "There's work to be about."
Harry was already half-out of his seatbelt. He swung his door open and stepped out, shrugging his long coat more comfortably about his shoulders as he did so, and looked round.
A late afternoon sun shed golden light across the castle's weather-beaten stones. Across the courtyard, the door to the great hall stood open. A rusty sign written in German with large black letters hung above the lintel.
Harry froze. For a moment, it seemed to him as if the sun dimmed, and a shadow fell across the yard for a few moments. The sounds of mad, frightened gibbering brushed across the edge of his consciousness, and fell silent.
"My God," he whispered. He looked round. Ron was trying to help Hermione out of the car. She raised a questioning eyebrow at his outstretched arm, before stepping easily out of the vehicle, elbowing him gently in the ribs as she walked past him.
Ginny came up behind him. "Harry?" she asked.
He started. "Ginny! I-it's all right. I'm fine, really." He placed his hand over hers and smiled at her.
Cammy led them down a narrow passage between the hall and the walls of the castle compound. "The Count doesn't live in the castle proper. Back when the Soviets took over the place they converted it into a mental hospital. He came back here from Canada when the Wall fell and took up residence in that tower." She pointed to a tall pile of stone, rising up from the rear of the old hall. "Come on. His door's this way."
The door swung open as they approached. The man holding the door seemed young, though something about the way he carried himself suggested, like some of the older teachers at Hogwarts, manners learned in more genteel times. Red eyes scanned the group. Bone white eyebrows, invisible against equally pale skin, rose.
The man was an albino.
"May I help you?" he asked.
Cammy stepped forward. "Count von Bek?"
The man nodded. "I am Ulrik von Bek. And might I ask whom it is I have the honor of addressing?"
"Cammy White." She handed him a card embossed with a strange device that flashed in the sun—a man with a question mark in place of his head. "I'm with the League."
"Indeed? I had not expected to hear from your…employers since the end of the Second World War. Though perhaps I should have expected a visit, considering the events of the past week." He stepped back from the door. "Well," he said. "Today appears to be a day for visitors concerned for my loss. Come in. Perhaps one of you can shed light on whatever happened here."
As they filed into the small antechamber, the Count closed the door behind them. "I do seem to remember you, Ms. White. You took part in that prize-fighting tournament in South-East Asia, as I recall. The one that started the current vogue for such things."
Cammy coloured. "Y-yes. The Street Fighter tournament. I entered as a representative of the British government."
The Count nodded. "Indeed. Some of the stories told of that event seem hardly credible. Then again, Ms. White, people such as yourself deal in the impossible, don't you?" He turned to regard the others. "And your companions?"
The British agent indicated Harry with an outstretched arm. "This is Harry Potter, late of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hermione Granger. And Ron and Ginny Weasley. Also former students of that school."
The Count shook hands with all of them. "So. The famous Harry Potter." It was Harry's turn to colour. "We've heard much of you and your adventures, Mr. Potter."
Harry's eyes widened in surprise. "You have? But—"
"But what happened to the vaunted secrecy that your Wizarding World so cherishes as its only defence against the…'Muggles'?" Von Bek shook his head. "Mr. Potter, for those of us who make it our business to deal with the strange, such things as your magical society, hiding all its wonder and its strange joys amidst the mundane, are our business."
The nobleman turned to lead them up the stairs. "Come this way. I left the others upstairs inspecting my library. Perhaps you'd like to meet them. Or inspect my library for yourselves, as well. Or perhaps you'd like to do both. I have a suspicion that you'll find at least one group of my visitors today extremely interesting."
Reaching the first floor landing, the Count led them down a short hallway. Opening the door at the end, he ushered the group through, admitting them into a round, airy room. Bright light streamed in from large windows a quarter of the way around the outer walls.
Heavy shelves lined the walls. Some still held books—large, leather-bound tomes many pages thick, smelling of dust and old parchment. Others had been ransacked, the contents lying spilled upon the floor in a profusion of loose pages and broken spines.
There were three people in the room. Two men stood by either side of one of the windows, watching a bookish-looking girl leaf through scattered sheets of paper with an intense expression on her face. The men looked up as the group entered the room.
"Allow me to introduce my other guests," said the Count, picking his way across the paper-strewn floor. "Mr. Carl Corey is here at my request." He indicated the taller of the two. The man nodded. He was darkly handsome, with black hair and piercing grey eyes. A glint of light upon his lapel caught Harry's attention, and he looked at it.
A tiny silver pin, cast in the shape of a rose, winked at him in the afternoon sun. Harry's gaze rose to lock for a few brief moments with Corey's. He froze. The hideous babbling that had echoed in his head as he looked towards the tower rose anew, each inhuman syllable sending a jolt of panic through his consciousness.
He saw Corey's eyes widen, too. Then, they narrowed. Suddenly, the gibbering rose in pitch and tempo, climbing to an incoherent shriek before fading away, almost as abruptly as it had come.
"That's something very interesting you're carrying in there, Mr. Potter," he said quietly.
Harry stared. "How?" he began.
The corner of the the tall man's mouth twitched upwards. "I know these sorts of things, in my way." The humour vanished. "Perhaps, Mr. Potter, we need to discuss this later."
Harry looked up sharply. For a few moments, the two men stared at each other, Harry's gaze questioning, Corey's even and open. For just the briefest of moments, something flickered in Corey's eyes—something very old. Harry shuddered. By a supreme effort of will, he restrained himself from stumbling backwards. He nodded at the other man, briefly.
A strained silence followed. Awkwardly, Harry turned away, looking towards the other man in the room. He was tall as well, though slender and good-looking in a bookish way where Corey was rugged, intelligent eyes glinting behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
"Nakajima?" Harry looked round. Cammy was staring coolly at the man. The fingers of her left hand caressed the knuckles of her left. "They didn't tell us the Library was getting involved in this."
Nakajima raised an eyebrow. "We weren't informed that the League was involving itself either. I wonder—what interest does the League have in a parcel of stolen books?"
Ron leaned in to whisper in Harry's ear. "Y'know, Harry, I think they know each other from somewhere."
Hermione leaned in to add her own commentary. "I don't know, but I think they could be from the British Library." The other two looked at her uncomprehendingly, and she tsk-ed in annoyance. "You know, the big round building in the Museum courtyard?" Her tone was scathing.
"But why?" Harry began. He was beginning to wonder how many players there were in this whole mess.
Hermione shook her head. "We're looking for stolen books, remember. I think—there were some reports I read. The Library's very concerned about stolen books too." All three—and Ginny, who had been hovering at the edge of the little circle listening, turned to regard Nakajima.
The slender man nodded once to Cammy, as if signifying the end of their conversation, before turning to Harry and his friends.
"And you'd be the League's apprentice adventurers, wouldn't you?" he asked. "There's always a need for people like us. That's why organisations like ours always have their eyes out for new blood." The corner of his lip twitched upwards. "There's great adventures in the offing, young adventurers. Greater than any us old hands can lay claim to." He bowed. "Donny Nakajima. Special Agent Paper for the British Library." A slender hand indicated the young woman kneeling on the floor, who was now looking up curiously at the new arrivals, several sheets of trodden paper still in her hands. "And my apprentice. Ms. Yomiko Readman."
The girl on the floor smiled, shyly and waved.
Corey cleared his throat. "Now that introductions are made, I'm curious to know what, if anything, your apprentice has found, Nakajima. If you don't mind."
The Count raised an eyebrow, then nodded. "Well. Indeed. Have you found anything, then, Ms. Readman?"
Yomiko looked up at her mentor. Nakajima shrugged, then nodded. "Well, you heard the man, Yomiko-chan. Tell us what you've found."
She blushed. "I-I'm sorry, Donny-sensei. The papers saw the thieves coming in, but they were wearing masks and robes. I couldn't see their faces."
Harry exchanged glances with Ron, Hermione and Ginny. Could it be? Nervously he cleared his throat.
"Um, these men—were they carrying anything? How did they get in?"
The apprentice agent bit her lip, and looked once more at Donny Nakajima.
Harry caught the small, almost imperceptible nod that Nakajima sent his apprentice's way. Once more, Yomiko coloured.
"They used something to open the lock on the window. It made a sort of flash. I-I couldn't get a close look at it. It was something long."
Harry looked round at his friends once again. Slowly, he reached into his jacket pocket. "Was it something like this?" he asked, bringing out his wand. Behind him, he heard Ginny gasp. He went over to a desk by the wall. A key had been left in the keyhole of the drawer. He turned the key and pulled it out, placing it on the desk. Then, he pointed the wand at the lock. "Alohomora," he said.
There was a flash, and a click, and the lock opened. "Was it anything like this, Ms. Readman?"
Her eyes lit up. "Yes! It was like that! Um—" She lapsed into silence again. Nakajima placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Hermione had been looking at the books still on the shelves. "Old magic," she whispered to herself. She turned to the Count. "Uh, sir, exactly what sorts of books were taken?"
"Copies of several treatises dating to some centuries after the fall of Atlantis. A catalogue of various…ancestral spirits known to the ancients. Texts on the binding and summoning of these entities."
Ron scratched his head. "I don't see that Voldemort would want anything with these books that he hasn't already got," he said, dubiously.
Von Bek's eyebrow's rose. "Ah? So it was he who broke in here, then?"
"It was probably only a group of his henchmen, sir," said Harry.
The nobleman smiled. "I understand that, yes. As to what he may have wanted with these texts…these books deal with beings far more primal—and far older—than even the Fallen. With whom, by the way, even your Dark Lord has more sense than to deal. No—it is possible that he feels he would, with the aid of these books, be far more able to control these creatures—and retain possession of his own soul—than he would making a bargain with the Fallen."
Into the silence that followed, Ron spoke. "J-just what kind of 'spirits' are you talking about?"
"There is a school of thought," von Bek replied, after a short pause, "that says they are the prototypes upon which the Creator based the spirits of the first Men."
"But how would he get power from that?" Hermione blurted.
"Well." There was another pause, a longer one this time. "You understand that the connections are very tenuous, and many may not agree with my assessment—there are too many cultural blind spots ingrained in many of my colleagues, and myself as well, if I'm honest." He took a deep breath. "It's an article of the Christian faith that Man is born in rebellion against his Creator. And given the stated goals and intentions of your Lord Voldemort—what better being to summon and bind to his will than the soul of one whose rebellion was old long before the Morningstar fell?"
Harry looked at him. The Count's words seemed an impossibility, and yet—for a moment, as his mind finally processed the meaning of the Count's last sentence, something rose in him, a distant, atavistic terror, and even as it faded, he wondered where it had come from.
And buried deep within his quaking mind, the alien seed that slumbered fitfully stirred once more, and an inaudible, inhuman whimper echoed through Harry's consciousness, and died away.
Lucius
"Lucius."
Lucius Malfoy did his best not to show his unease at the sound of his Lord's voice. The Dark Lord Voldemort had always been, in his estimation, a greater man in vision, if not stature, than the masses. A much greater man. Lucius had recognised that, when the Dark Lord's message first begun making its way through the Wizarding World. Being pure of blood that dated back to the magi of Etruria and the proud Republic of Rome, Lucius had understood the rightness of that message.
What Lucius understood even better, however, was how much more easy it was to traverse the path to greatness at the side of the already great. He was, after all, a son of Slytherin.
The thought flashed through his mind as he bowed to his master upon his throne. What happens to the one who becomes more than great?
The Dark Lord Voldemort, before his discorporation at the hands of a babe in arms, had been a commanding figure. In the years before his catastrophic attack upon the Potter home, his hair had started to go grey at the temples, combining with the aquiline, patrician features he'd been born with to add the air of an elder statesman to his already immense charisma. Even then, however, there had been something about him that unnerved those not familiar with him.
It had been whispered to Lucius that the strange unease that Voldemort spread in his wake had been the psychic residue of whatever unnatural arts the Dark Lord had acquired during his decades-long sojourn in the Orient. The thought had fascinated him.
He could see, now, what his master's arts had done to his soul. That visage would not inspire or enchant the weak of will to do his bidding now.
It would, Lucius thought, as he suppressed an excited shiver, do well to inspire fear. He schooled his features to calm. As much as power such as this, embraced by a will such as that of the Dark Lord Voldemort, fascinated him, it would not do, he reminded himself, to approach it with anything but respect.
"My Lord?" He bowed before his master.
Unblinking, ophidian eyes stared down at him. Slowly, transparent membranes crept across their surfaces before retracting out of sight. "Your son," he said, "is a fool, Lucius."
"My Lord, has he done anything to displease you?"
Bony hands reached down to where a massive cobra grovelled at the Dark Lord's feet. The creature tried to slink away. Voldemort's hands darted down, quicker even than the swiftest of his pets, and caught the cobra behind its head. "I required a book, Lucius," he said, lifting the terrified animal into his lap. "I sent your son for it. He was to have sent them back by portkey once he acquired them." Bony fingers rapped the serpent gently at the base of its skull. Lucius saw the muscles beneath the animal's skin twitch, as if in pain. The snake did not move, as if held by a fear greater even than death. "He found the book," the Dark Lord continued. "And it was sent back to me. The problem, Lucius, was that he found the wrong book!" Voldemort raised his hand and slammed it down upon the cover of a large tome resting on a table at his side.
Lucius tried very hard not to sweat. "I gave him clear instructions, My Lord. It would be impossible for him not to have mistaken the book for anything else."
Voldemort chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. "A copy, Lucius—your son made away with a cheap copy, created using one of those accursed methods the Muggles so like to use. It has as much mystical power contained within it as a rock does."
"My most humble apologies, My Lord." Lucius bowed, again. "My son is often…overconfident, I'm afraid. Shall I instruct him to return and retrieve the original for you?"
The Dark Lord raised a hand. "No need. I have already instructed him myself. More clearly, this time. I rather doubt he will be making any such mistakes, now."
"I-if you say so, My Lord." This time, Lucius found himself unable to keep the uneasiness from showing. The Dark Lord leaned forward, his expression intent.
"Lucius, Lucius," he chided his subordinate. "Am I detecting fear in your voice? How long have you known me, now—has it really been thirty-five years?"
"Thirty-seven, My Lord."
Voldemort leaned back. "Ah, yes. That was when you had your duel with that fool Zatara. He was a danger to us, both in ability and in ideas."
"Indeed, My Lord. A pity it could not have ended more permanently."
"A pity, indeed," agreed Voldemort. He was growing more jocose. "Still, we no longer have interference from him and his ilk. Our plans proceed apace."
"They do, My Lord." Lucius paused. "I have learned that our enemies have recruited the Potter boy into their ranks."
Voldemort's brows rose. "Well. They seek him as a pawn, perhaps?" He paused, then shook his head. "No. Our opponents are too sentimental for that. The boy does have potential, after all. A pity he will never realise it."
"Indeed, My Lord." The snake was still motionless in Voldemort's arms, save for the occasional nervous twitch as the Dark Lord stroked it. Lucius' gaze wandered once more to the animal, noting again its size.
"I have him tamed well, Lucius," said Voldemort, noticing his henchman's interest. "He has an interesting history, though a long one. Perhaps I have told it to you?"
"I…cannot recall if you have, My Lord." Something tinkled in Lucius' coat. He reached inside and withdrew a pocketwatch. "I…fear I cannot stay, My Lord," he said, clicking the timepiece open and reading the dial. "I am expected to meet our allies in Los Angeles within the half-hour."
Voldemort waved a hand. "Go, then. Perhaps I shall tell you the tale of this new pet of mine when you return, eh?"
Lucius bowed. "I look forward to it, My Lord." He turned and strode back up the hall with the frightened hissing of Voldemort's new pet echoing in his ears.
He had just reached the door when the tone of the hissing changed, bringing him up short. Quickly, he glanced back to where his Lord sat. The snake was on the ground now, attempting to curl up on the dais as far away as it could from Voldemort's chair. On the back of the chair, Nagini, the Dark Lord's other serpent and his familiar, uncoiled langorously about her master's shoulders.
Lucius looked back at the strange tableau for a few seconds. Had he just heard words in the hissing of the snake? He turned round and shook his head. It had probably been his imagination, he decided.
"Once…was a man…" Lucius whipped around. The scene behind him was as he had left it before, except…
The new snake was staring at him. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, Lucius thought, but it seemed to him as he stood there that the eyes of the snake were human, and filled with almost unbearable pain. Then, the moment passed, and he quickly turned and went out the door.
It had probably just been his imagination, after all.
Draco
Draco stared angrily up the hill at the castle he had broken into several nights ago with Crabbe and Goyle. The Dark Lord's stinging rebuke echoed in his mind. The lights were on in the tower windows, he noticed. Beside him, Crabbe and Goyle waited, ready for his command. Turning, he nodded. The three wizards began to climb the slope below the castle walls.
Draco fixed the tower window in his mind. The Muggle would be home, now. Draco looked forward to meeting him. He would make the man pay for fooling him like that.
Clenching his jaw and balling his hands into fists in determination, Draco Malfoy trudged up and onward. Yes, the man would pay.
