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Chapter 2 'We who are unpoliced by the gods…'

In the morning, Lovegood threw on his robe and descended Shambhala House carefully, attentive to details he'd missed the night before. Each storey encompassed a bedroom and a common space and a section of staircase that hugged its interior walls and wound round the building like a spiral in right angles.

He noted the homey aroma of old rugs and linens, the nostril-grazing presence of spice, the mad quilt of wallpapers one saw occasionally between the scaled skin of framed hangings, the squawking of steps underfoot, the distinctive flavor each level leached from its current tenant, the colossal central fireplace—a trunk of masonry that might have been, several centuries of smoke ago, bricks. As for the magically expanded bathrooms on the first and third floors, the cool dark depths beneath ground level, the question of the dumbwaiter's utility and the quantity of doors that lead apparently nowhere, he'd have to find out about those later—maybe while exploring with Portia, who he could only hope would tolerate their new dwelling. For now, he was running late!

Outside, the fog silvered with sun. Dew damped every step. The Black Lake made its presence known behind the house—a subliminal note of vastness that enhanced before extinguishing every noise. The front lawn's impressive oak was just as impressive as he supposed at night. He was quadruple checking the contents of his valise when Duck, still donning his mortarboard, walked round the house between a pair of levitating bicycles.

'Well met, Lovegood.'

'Good morning to you, Duck.'

'Fancy a lift?'

'Eddy, you're a genius!'

Afloat, his face a sail plowing through the wet particularity of the air, vigor plumped his lungs and thrilled to his flesh. Round them Hogsmeade roused itself from the rainy night: sleepy shopkeepers congregated in High Street exchanged pleasantries as their magic did the work of preparing for business inside. Whips of vendors' wands sent innocuous suitcases articulating out into fully-fledged streetside operations half a block long. Stately owls blinked and yawned overhead, talons clutching lantern poles. The first day of September wasn't as big a day for Hogsmeade as it was for eleven-year-olds all across Britain, but it rated.

Duck asked him something. 'Say again?' said Lovegood.

'How'd you sleep?'

He shrugged. 'Was that really Rupert Brood?'

Duck grinned. 'I think so!'

'Isn't he hunting vampires in Vienna?'

Duck laughed. 'He must've found them!'

Brood in Hogwarts was news. To the best of Lovegood's knowledge he'd not been back since his infamous graduation-day spurning of then-Headmistress Lizzie Burke, some thirty years prior. At the time England's most outspoken pure-blood supremacist and an advocate of Muggle servitude, Burke's clashes with her famous student had been breathlessly chronicled by the Daily Prophet—none more so than the ultimate encounter, when, rather than cross the stage to accept his pointy hat from the Headmistress, the matriculating Brood turned to face the assembled throng in the courtyard, said, 'Everything born deserves mercy,' and disapparated.

'How'd he manage it, do you think—disapparating from Hogwarts?' shouted Lovegood.

But passing the Three Broomsticks had distracted Duck. 'Damnit Lovegood,' he said, 'did Euphemia mean the calendar year or the school year?'

୫

A few minutes later, having parted ways with Duck and magically bound his loaner conveyance to a glorious, 80-foot-tall wych elm, Lovegood passed into the shade of the great building amid gangly covens of noisy, berobed, early-arriving youngsters. It was strange: he felt apart from them—or felt he should have felt apart from them—even though nearly every face was perfectly familiar.

There, for instance, cherishing a book in as private a spot as possible was soft, white, shaggy, jet-haired Phineas Black, forcefully forbidding company—even that of his haughty younger sister Elladora and her classmate Kendra Canard, the Red Indian from America no one could stop whispering about the last two years.

They attempted to remain primly ahead of half-threatening advances made by Alonzo St. John's inseparable gang of ne'er-do-wells…

...who were themselves the subject of a sharp study being made by Hogwarts' caretaker Rancorous Carpe. So intent on the gang was Carpe he could be forgiven for failing to note the preternaturally light-fingered 'Baba' Yegga Pilf gentling the wand from the pocket of his overly starched robe…

Oh, Yegga, thought Lovegood. Seven years on and no less criminal than the day she'd first threaded a path through her classmates to the chamber off the Great Hall to await sorting—heavier by half upon reaching the front as she'd been at the back…or so at any rate went the legend.

And this was but a random sampling. The courtyards were chock-a-block with people young and old still at least notionally part of Lovegood's society: a seething mass of colors, spells, singing, exuberant greetings, and magical absurdities of every stripe. Porlis Wilder's head had been inflated again and he was giggling up into altitude; the latest combination of antagonists from Gryffindor and Slytherin were at it already in the middle of a clearing defined by rapt lookers-on; and he was vaguely aware of Professor Perch racing across the grounds after some runaway magical creature or other.

Hogwarts!

Lovegood smiled and reached out to pull open the solid oak door—but it pre-empted him, opening out in a hurry. He experienced a thwock…

…then opened his eyes a moment later to discover himself horizontal. A ring of amused vertical contemporaries surrounded him. A mustachioed, mutton-chopped and bespectacled adult chap in a plaid woolen suit of lapis and sage squatted by his side, examining him.

'Ah, there you are, Lovegood,' he said. 'What a fine hard head you have.'

'Sir?'

Someone gave him a hand up.

Plaid Suit had risen and was already stuffing a pipe. 'You are Linus Lovegood, are you not?' His voice was strong and clear and accustomed to quick responses.

The ringing in Lovegood's head worsened when he nodded. 'Yes,' he managed.

'Of course you are! And these—' signaling with his pipe the gathered contemporaries, '—are rather zealous students of my forthcoming Magical Crimes class. I dare say I found myself engulfed by them in my office and thought it best they accompany us on our brisk walk about the grounds.'

Lovegood squinted through the pain. 'Are we to take a brisk walk about the grounds, sir?'

'As I understand it, Lovegood, our relationship will for the most part transpire in just such exercises.'

'I see.'

Studying him, Lector Darby's gravy eyes glinted, his mustache tilted. His small head, topped with an impish thatch of dark hair, tilted too. He raised his voice. 'Our man Lovegood doesn't seem quite recovered, does he, class? What year is it, my boy?'

'Eh...1863.'

'Who's Minister for Magic?'

'McPhail, sir. Dugold McPhail.'

'Who won last year's League Cup and what was remarkable about them?'

'Gryffindor won it, sir, even though they'd had their clothes charmed off.'

'Naked as sin, as the Muggle says.' The Inspector relaxed his inspection, puffed his pipe, smoothed his mustache. 'I judge Lovegood sufficiently recovered from our contretemps. Come, let us begin. Follow along, everyone, close behind please. I don't mind speaking up but will not abide repeating myself.'

Which was how Lovegood found his first meeting with arguably the single most important person patrolling the perimeter of his future gate-crashed by a bunch of sixth-years. Setting off across the sweeping lawn of Hogwarts under a finally triumphant sun, he tried being inconspicuous about the eye-mashing and yawning jaw motions he employed to combat the aftereffects of the door/head incident.

Inspector Lector Darby (O.M. II) didn't come off as a short fellow. Leading the pack of students in the general direction of the Quidditch pitch, suit coat fluffing out either way in walking wind, pipe held proudly across his chest, he was clearly an energetic and confident captain of his own life. He carried himself as one might who'd been publicly honored by no fewer than three Ministers for Magic.

'Naked as sin,' he repeated, effortlessly contradicting his previous statement, his surprisingly deep voice savoring the syllables. 'It's an interesting concept, sin—one Wizardry doesn't contain a precise correlative for. Who can tell me where the word comes from?'

'The Muggle cult of Christianism, sir,' came a girl's voice from the pack.

'The Christians—' he said christy-ens '—dwell on sin a lot, that's true. But I'm after the etymology of the word itself, which quite precedes the Nazarene tablemaker. Do you know, Lovegood?'

'I don't, sir.'

'When our spear chucking Greek forebears missed, they were said to've sinned. Likewise our Hebrew forebears in archery. To sin was to miss the mark, you see. Muggle society has long been preoccupied with organizing itself around comprehensive sets of rules. Their one-dimensionality lends itself to a certain luxury of moralism. Being by nature so limited—and yet so populous—it's undoubtedly practical that they surrender en masse to widely agreed-upon concepts of right and wrong. We who are unpoliced by gods have it harder, don't we?' He bit down on his pipe, grasped his lapels with either hand and twiddled his thumbs, seeming to have especially enjoyed what he'd just said. Then he withdrew his pipe. 'What do I mean by that?'

Another fresh voice called out from the pack. 'Well, they're weak, sir, and it makes sense for the weak to band together to come up with laws so that the more powerful among them can't take too much advantage, sir.'

'Just so, young man,' Darby agreed.

The voice thickened with encouragement. 'Whereas witches and wizards, sir, we can do anything, so we don't have as much incentive to collaborate, like.'

'Who is speaking, please?'

Lovegood turned and caught blushing a toothy, gawky, decidedly younger Gryffindor. 'Beamish, sir.'

'Oswald, isn't it? Our gifted third-year. Well done, Beamish, you've put it quite plainly, and elegantly framed the enduring paradox of our condition. He who can do anything need submit to no one. How do we in Wizarding society agree on what constitutes a crime, and what doesn't? How do we form consensus around a mark that needs hitting? Have you thought much on this, Lovegood?'

'Can't say I have, sir.'

Darby puffed on his pipe, eyes glinting sidelong at his tutee. 'Say I were to brandish my wand this second, point it at Lovegood and strike him dead with a killing curse. Would you all agree I'd committed a crime?'

He was answered by a general murmur of more-or-less consent.

'I should hope so!' the Inspector laughed. 'But what if I then raised him up no worse for the wear with a resurrection charm?'

Only the galumphing feet of a dozen befuddled students responded this time.

'Of course there's no such thing as a resurrection charm,' Darby continued, 'not as of yet… Who here has heard of Orabella Nuttley? Lovegood?'

'Is she a resurrectionist, sir?'

Darby arched an eyebrow his way, said, 'Anyone?'

'Ministry of Magic witch, wasn't she?' offered an anonymous sixth year.

The Inspector nodded. 'Invented the mending charm in Seventeen-hundred and Fifty-four. Prior to this, if in the heat of an argument I were to, say, cast Lovegood's favorite crystal ball to the ground, smashing it to pieces, I'd have been guilty of an actionable offense. After Nuttley, I'm guilty only of shabby behavior. A hideous brute, to be sure, but Azkaban-bound I am not. With one invention—one quiet stroke of her wand, as easily as repairo—she erased an entire species of crime. Who's to say this will not someday be the fate of murder?'

Lovegood recognized the rhetorical question and stayed mum. His head was coming round just in time to begin grasping how poorly their first interview was going.

'Powerless,' the Inspector continued, 'the Muggle takes comfort in truisms. Noted quitwand Billy Shakespeare once wrote that the deed will out: i.e., the taint of crime cannot be washed away, not for good. Eventually "Lady Justice" will "have her day." Thus is sin in the long run shown to be uniquely vulnerable, exposed: naked. But not so for us. Consider, if you will, the famous emperor-with-no-clothes. A magic-wielder among Muggles could be as nude as he was and they'd never suspect it. Why, they'd mean every compliment they made!'

Lovegood was baffled by this shameless emperor but didn't wish to give Darby any more reasons to doubt his competence. Anyway, Oswald Beamish had another revelation: 'Is that why crimes against Muggles are the easiest to legislate, sir?'

'Tut-tut, Beamish! It is, of course!' But Darby abruptly halted and scowled at the empty Quidditch pitch they'd reached. House flags hung limp from their poles. Birdcall echoed through desolate grandstands. Grimacing, the Inspector smoked. 'But now I see we've reached the site of grievous crimes of my youth that cannot, alas, be wiped away. Let us change tack and advance on the Forest Forbidden. Lovegood,' he cleared his throat, 'why don't you tell us which historical crime you've decided to focus on for your studies.'

'Did you receive my owl, sir, with the candidate cases?'

'Mmm,' Darby was thoughtful round the stem of his pipe. 'Believe I did, yes.'

'Have you had a chance to look them over, sir?'

'Alas, Lovegood, the entire profession's had ample chance to look them over. The Vanishing of Xavier Rastrick, the Ambiguous Gringotts Heist that Probably Never Happened and Anyway Didn't Seem to Affect Anyone of 1742, the Poxing of Eldritch Diggory… I myself looked them over when as a younger and less seasoned historical investigator it occurred to me that I might improve on my elders. It's damned annoying that some mysteries remain mysteries, Lovegood, but you must play the hand you're dealt.'

'Which is what hand, sir?'

'It's a Muggle expression, Lovegood. It means—'

'No, I know that, sir. I meant, what hand have I been dealt?'

This time Darby's sidelong glance smoldered. 'A damned good one, I'd say.'

'And why's that, sir?'

'Because you'll study under the greatest magical forensic historian in the history of Britain! Do you think I had such luck coming up? That anyone ever has? When I solved the Case of the Dodgy Cauldron I had to do everything myself. It wasn't even a field, you understand.'

'So you found your elders less than helpful, sir?'

'I'm quite sure I misheard that.'

Lovegood took a breath. 'I shall be very grateful for your tutelage, sir,' he said. 'What case would you propose I study?'

Darby blinked in a flurry. 'Well, take that one, for instance.'

'Which one, sir?'

'The Dodgy Cauldron.'

'But, you solved it, sir—'

'Who can tell us about the Case of the Dodgy Cauldron?'

The response was unanimous. Smiling, the Inspector called out a student's name at random to explain—although it was abundantly obvious no one needed a refresher.

The case involved an absent-minded potioneer working on an invisibility potion and the Cheshire cat animagus of his demented mother-in-law.

Lovegood grew up reading about the case and could recite its particulars in his sleep. While Darby basked in the account and the Forest Forbidden enlarged on the horizon, he tried tamping down a buzzing surge of irritation. He thought himself a fairly steady person, well capable of dealing with the unexpected, but this morning constitutional was testing him.

'...when really,' the speaker concluded, 'the whole time it was under the mother-in-law!'

The group joyfully exclaimed under the mother-in-law with her, then collectively laughed, sighed, shook hands and gave each other congratulatory claps on the back.

'There, you see, Lovegood?' Darby said.

'See what, sir.'

'Everyone knows what I did but not how I did it. You have the unique opportunity—you alone—to get the inside story. The straight poop right from the horse's mouth, as it were.'

'To…interview you, sir, about your successes…'

'Why not? Of course we needn't limit ourselves to only the relics in my portfolio. I should be happy to take you behind the curtains of the Case of the Sinister Owl or the French Ambassador's Wife or even...but could I?...I could, and damn convention! Even the River that Thought She was a Sturgeon!'

Gasps of envy from all assembled.

Lovegood frowned. 'I should have to publish in some capacity, sir—to prove I'd done the work, I mean.'

'Naturally,' Darby consented. 'I've anticipated this. It's true we'd be roaming in sensitive areas, but a pinch of finesse isn't beyond us. A name changed here and there, some fudging about with dates…suddenly an inconvenient swamp of fact has been landscaped into a lovely garden of allusion.'

'In that case, sir, I imagine we'd be able to attract a much larger audience for the work than just the Hogwarts faculty.'

' "Larger audience," my boy, are you kid—' but an exhilarant Darby stopped in mid-sentence, froze, and studied Lovegood, his expression segueing, in just a few ticks, from the happy cloudless tension of a young man to the mistrustful yet unsurprised slack of an old one. He chomped on his pipe, went 'Hmm…' and started back towards the school. Lovegood, decreasingly sure how to handle himself, maintained his place at the Inspector's side as their tail shifted silently: a vee of compliant geese. He could feel their unhappiness with him, their protectiveness of the great man he'd so callously upset.

Minutes passed walking. The sixth-years talked amongst themselves. A literal chain of Hufflepuffs were dragging Porlis Wilder back to Earth, Rancorous Carpe frantically searched for—probably—his wand, and as the outside excitement dissipated students trickled into the castle. For Lovegood the final moments of he and the Inspector's critical first interview passed in a fairly intolerable silence, until at last, and privately, at the doors, the sixth-years flowing past, Darby knocked his pipe's bowl clean against the heel of his boot and said, 'You do wish to succeed, Lovegood, do you not?'

How to answer such a question? He shook his head in a gestural stammer. 'Of course, sir.'

The Inspector slipped his pipe into his pocket and fixed his gravy eyes on Lovegood. 'Do try and keep that in mind.'

୫

Some sinewy romantic written deep into Lovegood's heart flinched on discovering that the Hogwarts interior didn't look or feel different as a non-trad. The great building still churned: walls and stairs flowed, suits of armor stood poised such that he never felt entirely safe looking away, noiseless ghosts drifted through stone, the odd cat batted at victims too small for the human eye, familiar representations in oil and canvas acknowledged him variously…

The biggest difference was that he found himself in a version of Salazar Slytherin's utopian ideal.

Even after more than three decades of uncheckered operation, scores of purebloods forbade their progeny use of the Hogwarts Express. Most pretended this had something to do with safety—never mind the train's blemishless record; others asserted discomfort with the notion of employing a Muggle transport of any kind; while a few honest bigots owned their bigotry and noisily condemned the train's 'blood democracy.'

The Lovegoods fell among the majority, which meant that Linus had always portkey'd from Catchpole to Kings Cross, brickwalked into Platform 9 ¾, and enjoyed the miscegenous free-for-all on the Muggle-built locomotive up to Hogsmeade. It had been easy, then, to imagine that the universe of Hogwarts only blinked into existence the moment the carriages-without-horses and boats-without-sails arrived with their influx of students: that the agent of creation was sewn somehow into his own vision, all the actors waiting in the wings, nothing to say and none to direct them until he and the rest of his class arrived. Now he saw the evidence against.

If the train cars had seemed sparsely populated from time to time and the train itself less stuffy in general than your common common room, it was because the bigots' kids had been flocking to Hogwarts along different paths—and arriving first. They got head starts on frolicking about the grounds, wasting time, spreading gossip, showing off, snogging in the corners…but they also met with their teachers first and claimed their beds and hatched the eggs of their new conspiracies while the unwashed were still chugging along under magical coal miles and worlds away.

When you get there first, Lovegood thought, what's there is yours. You don't even have to do something as gauche as claim it—the blunt mechanical fact of presence is claim enough. Tromping up staircase after staircase, Lovegood saw people he'd grown up alongside disregarding protocols he'd assumed they operated by year-round. Ravenclaws mingled with Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs with Slytherins, 7th-years with 2nds, everyone convening, relaxed, wherever they happened or wanted to be in the school, regardless of what he'd assumed were inviolable customs. Unwelcome ideas slammed around inside him, forming against his ramparts—until finally he'd run out of stairs.

Lovegood had visited the seventh-floor dozens of times over the years, but only twice to do something other than visit the Headmistress (once with Professor Perch's Magical Creatures class to visit the owlery, and once as an unlikely member of a raiding party of Ravenclaws attempting to prank the Gryffindor common room). By now he had a private relationship with the giant eagle gargoyle that guarded the Headmistress's office, gasping as if with shock at some perpetually alarming presence.

He spoke his code word with a note of regret. The eagle's beak craned open all the way, the gargoyle shifted back into itself and the walls around it dissolved like fluid mortar, reshaping into a spiral staircase he wasted no time ascending. One of the perks of being a non-trad was that the headmistress's office would always be open to him—or so she'd said at the end of the previous term while slyly handing over a scrap of paper with the personal code she'd chosen for him. 'Why "quibble", ma'am?'

'Oh, Lovegood,' she'd rolled her eyes, 'don't pretend it isn't your perfect word…'

Reaching the oaken double doors, Lovegood made to knock—

—but the door swung out and knocked him on the temple. He stumbled backwards and realized with horror that he was going to fall down the stairs. Gravity had him.

Except that in the nick of time the boy who'd triggered the catastrophe ('Mon dieu!') caught Lovegood by the arm, arresting his fall. 'Pardon,' he said, 'please forgive. I had no idea. You must be the room finder?'

'Must I?' said Lovegood, rubbing his head.

'But aren't you?' the boy asked. He had a sweet smell, pale grey eyes, was an inch or so taller than Lovegood, had distinctive features and a prominent nose and closely trimmed sorrel hair.

'Are you?' Lovegood said, inexplicably.

The boy laughed. 'Excusez-moi?'

'No, my fault,' Lovegood brushed himself off for some reason. 'I was crowding the door.' He stepped aside to let the other pass.

'Love-gooooood!' The Headmistress had a special way of singing his name. Gwynevere McKinnon emerged from the dark of her office into the torchlit anteroom at the top of the stairs, a big, buxom witch with robin's egg pince-nez, a large head of turbulent silver hair and crooked, lively features. 'Oh fun—you're meeting each other,' she narrated, green-tea eyes sparkling with mirth behind lenses of unequal size. 'Linus Lovegood, I give you Gervaise Ollivander. My, but don't you look alike! How wonderful! You could be brothers! And you're the same age nearly—but of course Gerry studied at Beauxbatons…'

'Ollivander? As in Ollivanders Ollivander?'

'Oui,' Gervaise made a little bow, 'Gerbold is my father.'

'Clever daddy,' the Headmistress grinned, sort of hugging her hands, 'flinging his children away to exotic lands for their education. Good for you—' she touched Gervaise's nose '—good for business—everybody wins. Gerry's tending to the Hogsmeade branch while daddy's off scavenging for cores. After that he'll be opening up a branch in gay Paris. Why are you here, Lovegood?'

'Do you have a minute, ma'am?'

'For you? Scurry forth, Gerry. Tell your associates—let's see, what should you tell them…? Tell them to be on the lookout for boosted elm. But let's hope it doesn't get that far. It can't be easy to hide such a bloody terrific plant. How is old Briar, by the by?'

Gerry Ollivander shrugged. 'She is the usual way.'

'I don't know how you do it—work in such close proximity with her, I mean. That woman has given me nightmares as far back as I remember. You know I think she's been old for eighty years? Busy day!' She disappeared back inside.

Ollivander nodded his farewell and was halfway down the steps before Lovegood collected himself. 'Adieu!' he said.

To which the other paused, turned, rebutted, 'Au revoir?' and vanished round the corner.

'Come on, Lovegood, don't just stand there!'

She was already involved with a document at the imperious desk that dominated her office's raised northwest quadrant. Bright, mote-rich light fell through the windows overlooking the Black Lake. Lovegood picked his way through the multitudes of bookstacks that had accrued to the Headmistress over her seven years in the post and took a seat opposite her. As always, the myriad portraits of McKinnon's predecessors—their attentiveness on a spectrum from scientific inquiry to afternoon naps—weirded him out. Also his seat cushion was squirming.

Lovegood went 'Yip!' and jumped to his feet.

'Mind Sir Crawlsalot,' said the Headmistress, scribbling on a scroll of parchment. 'He's been a'roving.'

A writhing flobberworm the length of Lovegood's arm unspooled itself over the edge of the chair and essedits way under the big desk. He sat again—cautiously. The Headmistress addressed him without a pause in her writing.

'How's Portia?'

'Gets in today, ma'am.'

'Must've been awful for you two, this time apart…'

'Duck got me all liquored up, ma'am.'

'Such a good friend…' She looked up, ' "Androgynous"...y or i?'

'That's a y, ma'am.'

She grunted. 'Be with you in one shake, Lovegood.'

Her desk overflowed with wastepaper, quill stands, pots of ink, desiccated apple cores, the occasional critter scurrying unseen, newsprint, scrolls and books in every conceivable state of undress…

She peeked up. 'Three lsin belligerent?'

'Two, ma'am.'

'Two, two...always two…'

A tiny motion on the wall snared Lovegood's attention. In the portrait, a pair of men sat over a chess match nearing its endgame. White, asleep, snored patiently into his beard. Black had gotten something in his eye.

'Eh, Lovegood…'

'Ma'am.'

'Is "cross-eyed" one word, two words, or hyphenated?'

'I believe hyphenated, ma'am.'

She made the mark emphatically. 'Everyone likes a nice hyphen, Lovegood.'

'That they do, ma'am.'

Finally she reached the bottom of her scroll, reading as she wrote: ' "Yours...most...fondly… Gwyn." There.' She licked her lips, rolled up the parchment, dove into the mess for her seal apparatus, pressed one on, crossed to a window, muscled it open, draped her arm out holding the letter, and raised her eyebrow to Lovegood.

'Do you ever read the Prophet, Lovegood?'

'Only if I'm made to, ma'am.'

She nodded her sympathy. 'The columnist Reggie Roundsman has it in his head that I, at a recent soiree or some such, said simply the worst things about one of the governors.'

'One of the governors, ma'am?'

'The BOG, Lovegood. The Hogwarts' Board of Governors: the panel of divines at whose pleasure I serve…' She looked up and away, contemplatively. 'I have serious doubts about it myself.'

From a dark corner of the office there came abruptly the sound of a throat clearing. Lovegood turned and saw the Sorting Hat perched on a little table. If it was possible for a hat to look as though it had just woken up, this one did.

'You have doubts about what he said you said, ma'am?' Lovegood asked.

The Headmistress stuck out her lower lip. 'One has so many conversations with so many different people in the course of a day…'

From the dark corner came the sound of gargling.

Then sudden fluttering wingbeats signaled the arrival just outside her office of a long-eared owl with marbled caramel plumage and staring eyes of warm honey.

'There you are, Arielle. What kept you? Listen closely, this is for Morris Longbottom alone.' She leveled a stern finger at the owl. 'Don't dawdle.'

That done, she clapped the window closed, returned to her desk, added her feet to its crisis and shot Lovegood a look that said, Now.

While they both pretended not to hear, the Sorting Hat tested its voice with long, gravelly, strenuous and warbling exercises.

'Met Inspector Darby this morning, ma'am.'

'Oh no. You weren't awful to him, were you?'

'If I might, ma'am, he wants a biographer more than a student.'

'You were! Lovegood, you frightful little man…'

'Was hoping for some advice, ma'am.'

'O.K.,' she squeezed her eyes shut. 'Always keep an extra pair of socks nearby, just in case. How's that?'

'About how to deal with my situation, ma'am.'

She studied him, her wide mouth sour and thoughtful. 'You're going to like him eventually, Lovegood. Lector and I were in the same class here, did you know that?'

'Were you in the same house, ma'am?'

'Oh, naughty naughty!' she smiled. 'Don't be tactical, Lovegood. A headmistress never tells, don't you know. But I mean it: the two of you are going to be chuckaboos. We're in the same class too—you and I—in a way. Came up together, didn't we? I've always had a special place in my heart for the first class from my first year in charge. So I like you, and you like me, and I like Lector, and Lector likes me, therefore you will like each other. That's just the geometry of it, and there's no getting around geometry.'

'He wants me to write about his famous cases.'

She stood. 'What you must remember about Lector is, he's a mudblood.' She clasped her hands behind her back and began slowly perambulating. 'Always feel they've so much to prove, mudbloods. It's your fault, Lovegood—not consciously, of course—but people like you make people like him nervous. Make 'em feel short. You'll need to be patient with him.'

'He's got an Order of Merlin! I haven't even got a second pair of trousers!'

'Well, first off, that's ludicrous. About the trousers. I'll send to Nedda about that. And second, it doesn't have to make sense. It's just a thing. I hope someday it isn't, but for now it is.' She took a breath and a smile started up. 'You know, he's probably more annoyed it's an O.M. second class than he is happy he got one in the first place.' She laughed. 'Oh you just know how that "second class"eats at him…' Her laugh unwound into a long, happy sigh. 'Not everyone is alike, Lovegood. That's what makes society colorful.'

'Could you talk to him for me, ma'am?'

'Absolutely not. That you'd even ask me is… Now listen to me, Lovegood: you're going to work wonders with Lector Darby. I'm sure of it. And learning to work with difficult people is at least as important a skill as whatever else you ultimately derive from your coursework, isn't it?'

'That's not a particular strength of Lovegoods, ma'am.'

'Yes, well,' she laughed, 'that's true.' She sat back down and regarded him. 'But it doesn't matter. You'll just have to be a little better than your family for a few years. Who knows, it may even stick.'

'Couldn't you advise me, ma'am?'

'And broadcast our love to all Hogwarts? Certainly not. Wouldn't be at all proper. No, you'll have to figure it out. I know you can. I have the utmost confidence in you.'

The Sorting Hat grabbed their attention with a particularly raucous throat-clearing. 'Shall I do a practice one?' it said.

Oh gather round you fresh-faced few

Come hear the sacred song

About the four who did of yore

Much right, and little wrong.

For starters there was Salazar,

A seer atop his game.

He hated fakes and spoke with snakes

And Slytherin was his name.

From Wales they had old Hufflepuff,

A witch who'd toil for hours

And never wane: nor sleet nor rain

Could dampen Helga's powers.

Similarly, prideful Godric,

Was known to wax and roar.

Nobody's fool, he loved a duel,

But what else is a Gryffindor for?

At last our Scottish heroine—

Smarter you never saw!

I'm sure you'll see, it had to be

Rowena Ravenclaw.

So grab my brim and don't be grim,

I give you more than shade,

For once I've put you in your group

You'll surely make the grade!

The humans in the room stood and clapped. 'Huzzah!' they said. 'Well done!'

The hat basked in their applause and stood straighter on its little table. 'I am ready,' it declared, 'to go on.'

'Oh my, look at the time. Exit Lovegood!' McKinnon whisked him towards the door. 'Be gone! Shoo! I haven't even started my welcoming address yet. Out with you! Away!'

He was just leaving when she beckoned him wait and scurried over with an expression of self-reproof. 'Lovegood, I'm sorry, I haven't been much help, have I? Listen, depending on how savagely you treated poor Lector today, you might go about your work by yourself for a while.'

'But working on what, ma'am?'

'Whatever you wanted to do to begin with! Isn't that what you were going to do anyway? It isn't as if you really require oversight… Just give our friend some space and come at it again later.' Her eyes widened. 'Lovegood, are you collecting bruises?'

But she shut the door before he could respond.

At the foot of the steps he encountered a scruffy ginger wizard in an apron. 'Blimey,' this one said, bowled over by the suddenly materializing staircase, 'so that's why they call me the roomfind! This'd be the Headmistress's office, then?'

Lovegood confirmed it. 'Out of curiosity, what's a roomfind?'

'As for that, your honor, your Professor Fludd, on leaving, apparently his quarters here at school went and hid themselves—in protest like, I gather. I gather your man Fludd's been something of a fixture, your honor? Only the new fellow what's come to take his place, can't find the place to take! So he's off in Hogsmeade bumpin' some bloke out of a bed, and I'm in sickels for as long as they'll have me. Cut my teeth in ships and inns, your honor, but I reckon I can find anyone's room or room for anyone. The Headmistress's man Robards and me, we go back.'

'You know Robards?' Lovegood asked. 'The Headmistress's man' was something of a legend among those in or near her inner circle: seldom seen, even seldomer heard, one of those figures to whom rumor easily attached. Opinions diverged as to the precise nature of his relationship to the widowed McKinnon: was he a paramour; a man-of-business; a secret brother? All everyone agreed on was that she entrusted delicate tasks to him and that there was something special about the way he talked.

'Fortunately-unfortunately, your honor,' the roomfind verified. 'Man'll eat your lunch at wandball but toss ya a gig at least. It ought to be his, your honor—given his condition—but my name's Hushe. With an e.'

'I'm Lovegood.'

Hushe tipped an invisible hat and whistled up the steps.

Minutes later Lovegood trekked across the grounds again, splinched by doubts: about Hogwarts; the Inspector; his graduate studies…about, in short, his past, present and future. He cast his eyes up at the sky and said quietly, aloud, 'At least Hushe is on the case.' Then he looked out at the Black Lake, which in a matter of hours would be crowded with first-years, approaching they-knew-not-exactly-what…approaching something, he saw now, about which their thoughts would evolve continuously for years. You thought you'd docked to something solid, but it was all water.

When he got there, Lovegood found neither his levitating bicycle nor the majestic old wych elm to which he'd bound it, but he did find a great big hole right there in the ground where they both had been.

୫

'You seem yourself again,' he said to Magda later. On the bench behind Shambhala they ate fresh figs and watched the sun seep down into the Black Lake.

'Seriously, Linus, if you could've seen my dreams…'

'Traveled a bit, did you?'

'You've no idea.'

'Only would that you had the language to describe it…?'

'Pain!' Magda said, laughing. 'It's all gone! At some point midday I found myself being understood and, oh, such sadness…'

'You remember nothing?'

'I remember everything and nothing. All the events, none of the internal monologue. It's as if I watched myself in a play but retained no memory of the story and had lost all the lines. Does that make sense?'

'Kono sekai no soto de?'

'What's that?' she grabbed his arm. 'Is that something I said?'

'Many times, with feeling.'

Magda was glum. She drew Lovegood's attention to a complex black kanji that had stuck to the nape of her neck: an inscrutable whorl of clean lines, swoops and forks.

'Did you draw that on?'

She shook her head. 'It just…remained, when all the others fell back into the book.' They were quiet for a moment, then Magda harrumphed. 'What about you, Linus? Nice day and all?'

'Interesting day.'

'That business at the front door, when you got home?'

'You were very diplomatic.'

'Seemed a bit jumpy?'

'Doors are terrifically dangerous, you know.'

'Whoa! Hey!' The voice was Poppy's. They both twisted in the bench to see her running at them, holding aloft the ancient book. 'I can read it!'

There wasn't much room but Poppy tucked in between them regardless, all elbows, legs and adrenaline. 'Look!' She flipped to the first page. 'It's called Beyond this World, by—' she sounded it out, '—Mi-bu U-ji-aki! Mibu Ujiaki!'

Lovegood peered in. Sure enough, the kanji had rearranged themselves into the alphabet they knew. It was clumsy—the writing of a five-year-old—but it was English. Poppy turned the page. 'I only just happened to look. Last night it was still untranslated. This morning too! But see? "In the year of the Christian's god One Thousand Five Hundred Fifty Three I set foot in Londontown…" ' She flipped through faster. 'It's like it took that long for one of our spells to work—or several of them, maybe all of them. Look: "The wizard Andrew Vandal was akin to a ronin—a masterless samurai. Or, his master was Art, which is a most puzzling master." Can you believe it?'

'Well played, Poppy!' Magda exclaimed.

' "Well played,' " Poppy scoffed. 'It was probably you who did it! "Immersus totalus…" Who are you? Where'd you learn that? Look!' she cackled. ' "It was not surprising when the authorities suspected him of deMille's murder…" ' Voiceless with euphoria, the abbreviated gap in her front teeth on display, Poppy crowed mutely at the sky before exploding: 'He was suspected of murder!'

She leapt up and ran back towards the house. 'Eddy! Eddy, you won't believe it!'

'Is Duck here?' Lovegood asked.

And there on the road under the oak he saw a figure float up on a bicycle. He untwisted to again face the lake. Magda frowned at her wand.

'I must get it fixed, Linus,' she said. 'Is it all right I call you that?'

'My name? I don't mind.'

'I mean, we've known each other forever, sort of, but, I'm not sure I've ever called you…your name. Your first name.'

'I like the way you say it. Shall I start calling you Magda?'

She seemed to ford some river of her inner life. 'Why not? That's us sorted,' she said, perhaps daring to be happy.

'Cheers,' said Lovegood.

Magda sighed and refocused on her wand. 'The spell backfired. I wasn't supposed to turn Japanese or get a tattoo… It's been getting worse for years. I've half a mind to take it to Ollivanders.' She glanced at him, exhaled a huffy breath at the lake, twiddled her feet a bit. 'Would you come?'

Lovegood felt his eyebrows go up. 'To Ollivanders?'

'Yes.'

'Tomorrow?'

'Are you busy?'

He popped another fig into his mouth. 'I can think of nothing I would rather do.'

Magda beamed.

'Yoo-hoo, Lovegood!' Duck's voice sliced across the yard. 'Delivery!'

He jumped to his feet. 'Portia!'

Duck had arrived just ahead of a magically-transported pallet from Catchpole. Lovegood ignored the enormous trunk and the portmanteau and the dressing case and unstrapped directly a small perforated wooden box housing an old bone-thin yowling Siamese that, the moment she was liberated, scaled him and crouched around his neck, issuing what amounted to basically one long, weak, but uninterrupted meow. Lovegood nuzzled her face with his nose.

'That's love right there, that is,' said Duck. 'Cheers, Eve! That time?'

'Any minute,' came Eve's voice from the house's abbreviated porch.

'Champagne ready?'

'And five flutes!'

Lovegood shoulder-shimmied Portia into a slow tumble that plunged her into his arms, then walked out to the road just to move, tickling her little meowing chin. Evening shadows played across the lawn. To his right and down the way a bit Hogsmeade Station awaited its moment. Portia's voice was high, crackly, and continuous.

'Eddy,' he heard Poppy whisper, 'is the cat always so…?'

He smiled to himself and hitched Portia up for easier kisses. 'At least I know how wonderful you are, old girl.'

And then a sound that'd been lurking behind the feline haranguing marched unmistakably to the fore: a train's whistle tooting, louder and louder each time. Looking up from Portia's fragrant head he saw churning columns of black smoke bending through a darkening sky.

He'd never heard that train whistle from this side, before. What an eager symbol it was for the madness the scarlet locomotive conveyed.

Duck elaborately doffed his mortarboard in the direction of the station, bowing such that his forelock blessed the lawn. 'Enter Hogwarts!' he bellowed.

A cork popped and sailed free of a bottle.