Chapter 5 'What did the strange mean man?'

…but Lovegood had few rivals when it came to teasing information from the nominally unwilling, and Gerry, so long a politely tolerated outsider in France, had no real interest in withstanding his countryman's fascination. By the time they emerged onto the moonlit grounds of Hogwarts, Lovegood was the beneficiary of a crash masters course in woodlore.

His transit to Shambhala's attic was absorbed wholly into thought, as if he'd apparated directly to the sheetless cot, hands propped beneath head, considering poor N. Day, who had in mind a land washed away, while he himself felt the lift of new continents cleaving the waters of his life. The incident in the forest would mean another letter from himself (brushes with intimacy always did), and that would be embarrassing (they always were), but just at the moment he was a mill spinning in a torrent of fresh memory.

Gerry scampering up a tree, the moon a cracked egg in the crown overhead, his face lit by Nargle-glow: 'Behold, Lovegood, the enigmatic pine!'

Gerry's hand brushing his. Gerry's hand on his back. The way he smelled.

'A mighty beech! Wisest tree!' 'Tempestuous sycamore!' 'Great hornbeam—most committed friend!'

Sampling common English leaves as if they were rare Eastern delicacies; pressing his nose into the fissures of bark and inhaling; placing against his tongue the living green wick of a slashed twig…in the wood Gerry is half lemur, half salesman, wholly vigorous, accents and languages sloshing, a boy-man dangling from limbs, discovered.

Cusplets of sleep insinuated themselves into Lovegood's air flow, just little sips of slumber at first, easily mistaken for reprieves from memory. But then dumplings of nod.

Gerry up there in the pine, demonstrating how to eat magical trees slowly so as not to spook the magic, tucking a broad napkin into his collar and neatly sawing a branch with a dinner knife: Bon appétit; slow ribbons of luminescent sap curling down from the gash…

Is that what you did with the wych elm? Lovegood asked.

Which elm?

The one you and Babba Yegga nicked from Hogwarts.

Oh that elm. But don't you remember, you forgot to ask?

When Gerry swallows, faint kelly green glimmerings work their way down his throat and settle in his gut. 'If you eat a Nargle, does it die?' Lovegood asked.

But Gerry's changed.

He's a fluid being hovering over Lovegood; silver, tinsel-thin hair wafting down and cocooning them both like stage curtains; unblinking eyes with the size and emotional content of billiard balls. This Gerry, in a different voice, said: 'Can't nobody eat Nargles.'

Lovegood gulped air like a man spared a drowning. With a yeowl and a lacerating press of her claws, Portia sprung from his chest to hide under the bed. This violence merged in his mind with the sudden retreat of whatever phantom had visited him, who, he was momentarily convinced, was but a specter broken from dream. Above him the floating white clothes made a macabre sight: Lovegood-sized beings flattened and dismembered…vaguely medieval, like the severed heads cities once planted on spears to discourage vagabonds on the make.

But looking away, he was struck by an apparition visible through the attic's lone window: a presence in the air, flowing like a sheet hung to dry.

He'd always liked ghosts, and that no one mentioned Shambhala's having one made him wonder if he hadn't stumbled onto a find. Unless of course it was some kind of prank—a prospect no acquaintance of Edwin Duck could dismiss out of hand.

But this ghost was the genuine article, as became indisputable when it streamed back into the attic. It poured itself through the wall and flowed into the nearest dark corner. Lovegood sat on the end of his squeaky cot. For a time they studied each other.

A boy, probably no older than Lovegood at the time of death. A Secret Chief, in all likelihood. Stringy hair with ears poking through. Overlarge eyes. A narrow face that disappeared into a nonexistent chin. A long, stately nose. He was somehow rodentine and elegant at once. He clasped his colorless robe to himself like a shield and flickered in the way of ghosts, as if at any moment he might simply go out.

'Can't eat 'em,' he said at last, unprompted.

'Can't eat what?'

The bulbous staring eyes squinted with suspicion. 'Nargles.'

'All right,' said Lovegood. 'Did I talk in my sleep?'

The ghost frowned. ''Tis hard to tell atween the sleepin' and the woke in the dry, but I's asked does a Nargle die when ate. Only you can't eat one.'

Lovegood accepted it. 'My name's Lovegood. What's yours?'

The ghost considered it for a minute, shrugged.

'Are you the Shambhala House ghost?'

'What d'ya mean: ghost?'

Dread flooded Lovegood. How did one explain to the dead that it was dead?

There was usually something off about ghosts. This one's voice occurred partly within Lovegood's own head, and partly as if ricocheting from a corner of the room behind him. Its mouth appeared only incidentally connected to its speech—which is perhaps why it took him a moment to realize the thing was laughing. 'Only foolin'.'

He floated a pace closer and relaxed his grip on the phantasmal robe, which shifted down his body as though a body filled it. 'I'd forgotten that in the dry you call this,' indicating, with a grand ghostly gesture, Lovegood's tiny, cramped confines, 'Shambhala.'

The only person truly in the room couldn't help but crack a smile. 'It's actually only the attic of a house called Shambhala, which is a legendary city in the Far East. Have you been here long?'

The ghost cringed with embarrassment for Lovegood. 'Not so grand at time, am I?'

'What was happening back in your day? Here in the dry? Do you remember?'

The ghost shook its head. 'Remember stays in the dry. It don't swim.'

'Then you recall nothing of your life?'

Thinking, the ghost floated a bit higher, looked to the ceiling. 'Platt,' it intoned. 'Platt is dead.'

Lovegood turned this over. 'Could you mean Yardley Platt, the notorious murderer?'

'Don't know, do I?'

Lovegood wasn't sure exactly, but he thought the infamous dark wizard hadn't died until the 15th or 16th century. If true, he was conversing with a fairly ancient spirit.

'Was a student in this house writing about Yardley Platt? Is that why you recollect it?'

The ghost became impatient. 'Not so grand at recollectin', am I?'

'What should I call you?'

' "Lovegood's" nice!'

'That one's spoken for. What about…Antimouse?'

It tested the idea, then bowed. 'You have paid me a great honor, sir.'

'Are you known? Have you revealed yourself to someone in the dry before?'

'Perhaps. I think…perhaps I have.'

'Who? Can you say?'

'She had the smell I like. You've it too but what she was born with you only borrow. Even so, you can be trusted. Such things are clear from the wet. Hence my comin' out. And there's not often dry folk up here.'

'Who was she?'

Antimouse thinkingly floated around a bit more. 'Made that mark, didn't she?' he said, pointing at the quotation etched into the ceiling. 'Beyond that…? Have ya visited the cellar already?'

'No. Why?'

'You won't like it down there—none in the dry do. And you'll need a candle. But if it's the past you're after, that's your place.'

୫

Lovegood buttoned into a nightshirt and crept downstairs through the sleeping house.

The cellar was accessed via an abbreviated plank door in the kitchen, its white paint so uniformly chipped with age as to appear intentionally distressed. A bygone Chief had inscribed its lintel:

ABANDON ALL LUNCH, YE WHO ENTER HERE

The knob apparatus was both sclerotic with rust and jangly with time; he struggled with it for a duration that flirted with the absurd before it finally relented.

Cellars everywhere presented the same: cool, contourless darks so perfect and still they were easily mistaken for conscious presences. Dormant moisture in every breath. Subterranean silence. He thought of the Muggles buried alive during the plague years, blinking awake in their coffins. They'd have felt their own eyes to know they were open.

Ambient moonlight nosed down the stairwell into the abyss, barely illuminating a few parched steps aging into gnarly old splinter beds. Lovegood incanted lumos: a pearl of amber light blossomed from the end of his wand, revealing a few more steps and texturing the darkness below with hints of looming shapes.

He'd gingerly picked his way down nearly to the floor when the light whooshed out. All at once his balance vacated him and he fell to the bare ground with a whump and an oof. Lightlessness sealed him in. 'Lumos,' he said—but nothing happened.

Nothing happened in him, nothing came from the wand, nothing answered. He climbed awkwardly to his feet and tried several more times with no result. You'll need a candle. He found the bottom step, aimed his wand up towards the kitchen and said: 'Accio candle! Accio torch! Accio light!' But they were just words dropped into the air, plunking to the ground. There wasn't any magic in him.

His foot nudged what seemed to be an empty tin bucket by the bottom step.

A thrill of fear prickled the fine down of his arms and neck, followed by a bloom of nausea.

Lovegood last regurgitated during an especially noxious Potions class in 5th year, but all at once it was upon him. He dropped to his knees, positioned the bucket, parted with a sluice of intolerable matter, then retched dryly for a minute like Portia wheezing hairballs. The ghost was right: he hated it here.

He found the steps again. Between the second and third from the bottom a hot inflow of magic filled him to the gills like a sulfur spring. 'Lumos!' Buttery light slid first down his wand, then the clammy white trembling fist that gripped it, then visible on the crumbly clay cellar wall became a rude vertical line painted in apparent demarcation. Reading floor-to-ceiling on the upstairs-side were the words LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT; and ceiling to floor on the cellar-side: YORKSHIRE.

Lovegood accioed a candle. He heard something repeatedly thumping in the kitchen; a moment later a waxen cylinder slapped into his open left hand. He magically fired the wick, pocketed his wand, took a deep breath, and descended once more into Yorkshire.

Knowing what was coming helped—but only helped. He'd suffered true seasickness several years earlier on holiday with his parents when gale winds had troubled a crossing to Dublin. At first, the sensation of walking across the cellar floor felt no less perilous than had stumbling across that ship's bucking deck to donate some vomit to the churning Irish Sea. The candlelight tripped along with him, washing up onto things Lovegood could try grabbing hold of, like: a scaffolding of rickety shelves stocked with surplus construction materials and candles; a great many chests lying about with candles on them; racks of supremely dated garments encased within skins of dust; corners crammed with mildewed canvases, spent broomsticks, antiquated robes, assorted baubles; matched bookshelves that might have collapsed by now if not for their architectural stuffing of archival record books (candles atop); and a skinny wooden table—festooned with candles—that could've accommodated rival Quidditch teams but for a shortage of chairs.

By the time he'd lit enough candles to see by, his feet were under him such that not every level stretch of five feet represented a Saharan ocean of shifting dunes. But having no magic was like having his sight or hearing cut out. He wasn't all there—not a husk by any means, but a Muggle, or, more precisely, a Squib. You won't like it, Antimouse had foreseen. None in the dry do. No wonder!

Lovegood was seldom fuddled by manual activities. He'd cook, lift things, mount a horse if one was handy. Nedda'd taught him to fence, Carl Linnaeus to garden. But these tasks were leavened by the reality that at any time he could simply utter a few words, swish his wand and return to his book. Knowing how to do things the old-fashioned way felt good—virtuous, even—but the doing rested on a guarantee of easy power, and so could never be essential to a wizard. Absent that power, things even looked different.

Shirts and tables, chests and jars all had a heaviness to them, a rigid thingness, as if rendered in the dream of an adult blinded as a child. The world without magic weighed more. Taxes lurked everywhere, in everything. It was taxing to rise, to walk, to contemplate a lock or the fright that lurks in darkness. If he found something worthwhile, Lovegood decided, he'd take it upstairs for a leisurely inspection.

What, then, was he looking for?

Clues.

About what?

About anything!

About Antimouse.

Who was he, namely? Who was the student to whom he'd revealed himself?

His first task was to figure out how the archives were organized, and what information they contained. He squatted down to survey the bookcases, packed with identical thin volumes of red and brown leather. He got dizzy, tipped back onto his hams, settled on his knees. Unhelpfully, the spines were blank. He took the first one. It wasn't terribly old. No title page or introduction. The archive began directly:

STUDENT: Petronilla Whamm, d. of Hereward

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Two Hundred and Forty Seven

HOUSE:

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT:

STUDENT: Scholastica Whamm, d. of Hereward

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Two Hundred and Forty Seven

HOUSE:

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT:

Flipping through, Lovegood found the rest of the book equally sparse, each entry merely names and dates of admittance. About halfway through the second volume, that changed. Below one Bryn Poole (1554) he found:

STUDENT: Benedict Pennebrygg, s. of Bernard

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty Five

HOUSE: Slytherin

FOCUS: Life immortal

DISSERTATION: Alchemical Conversion of Muggle Soul into Gold

YEAR OF EXIT: One Thousand Five Hundred and Sixty Two

After Pennebrygg each entry contained a full slate of detail. It didn't escape Lovegood's notice that the change occurred in 1555—a year that had become provocatively crowded between the antics of artist Andrew Vandal, the mysterious suicide of Rybel deMille, and the alleged obliviation of London by the Headmaster Nightless Day.

He remembered the class he took with Professor Antiquarius, '1689'. Why not select a single moment in time to study for his graduate project? Call it From False Dawn to Slain Horses. Something like that: risqué, titillating…other adjectives only historians would apply to studies in history…

He set aside the second volume and was disturbed to realize that the longer he spent in the cellar, the worse he felt: the hiss and warp of candleflame seemed to grow in volume; the cellar's dark reaches encroached, became more suggestive of ghoulishness; nausea buffeted his inner middle in waves. He thumbed quickly through the third volume, and midway through the fourth, pausing to close his eyes and steady himself, reopened them to a shocking coincidence.

STUDENT: Antonia Antiquarius, d. of Anton and Gertrude

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty Two

HOUSE: Gryffindor

FOCUS: Bygone Headmasters of Hogwarts

DISSERTATION: 'Greatness Obliviated: Nightless Day & the Attack on Memory'

YEAR OF EXIT: One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty Six

A luxurious shiver fanned out from the center of Lovegood's spine. The teacher whose class was responsible for the primary vector of his life had been a Secret Chief.

The odds were good, too, that she was yet among the living. Thinking back, he recalled a woman unquestionably old (assuming she was 19 in her first year as non-trad and thus a child of 1743, she'd've been 115 by the time Lovegood shuffled into her class). But though shrunken and wiry with time, she was a vivid woman of alert eyes, a boisterous booming-forth of iron hair, and a tendency to pace through every class, mapping the room as if the matter of history were too intense to relate standing still.

A sprint of page turnings and mental computations confirmed that for at least a year or two at the start of her tenure as a non-trad, the House had suffered, as it periodically did, a backlog of tenants, meaning that she might well have been consigned to the attic.

And who likelier to have etched the quotation from N(ightless).D(ay).onto the ceiling there than the author of a dissertation on him?

Lovegood was helpless to resist the allure of repeated events. It's 1762. Young Antonia etches into the ceiling a message to her future student a hundred years hence. I've in mind a land that's washed away. When circumstances squeeze a new Chief upstairs, history coughs itself up.

So efficient were the archives that only the first four contained any records (the fourth's concluding with Josef Yapp, son of Tobias and Edith, 1831, Hufflepuff, Unorthodox Stratagems for the Wily Quaffler). After that a gap precisely the size of one volume suggested that the book of Lovegood's coevals had been relocated—somewhere cloudside of Yorkshire, no doubt. All the rest of the volumes—and there were scores—had been lain in store for the future; his dizziness surged at the visualization of the unwritten days to come, their enormous weight and vast scope of possibilities.

He set the original kitchen candle and all four volumes of the existing archives on the third step (being careful not to incinerate Shambhala's history in the process), blew out all the others, and proceeded gingerly to the steps, pretending courage at the dark to which he'd turned his back.

After attending to the bucket and its contents in the backyard and the kitchen, he returned it to the third step. Then, padding upstairs to the attic, cringing at the creak of every step he'd not yet memorized, he was surprised to find the heavy door of Rupert Brood's room again lined with a seeping orange light.

୫

In the morning the Secret Chiefs stumbled one by one into the dining room, where they discovered a buffet laden and steaming with swiss eggs, hot crumpets, salted kippers, Easterhedge pudding, venison pie, and the usual assortment of marmalades, tea, hot chocolate, and mulled wine. Poppy's reaction was typical: 'Flaming Phoenixes, Linus. When on earth did you wake up?'

'About five,' he said. It was half past nine. 'I've never been the best sleeper.'

Through the window above the buffet, September 3rd's high grey sky controlled the view. Across the Black Lake, Hogwarts was glimpsed now and then through shrouds of fog that were patience itself. All the inhabitants of Shambhala, less one Rupert Brood, were seated and—Lovegood was gratified to note—occasionally prying themselves away from their plates to make conversation.

'Well,' said Magda, forking a crumpet, 'I don't suppose we can expect this every day.'

'It's more a question of way than will, really,' says Lovegood. 'I enjoy spending the small hours in a kitchen. But if we run out of stores…'

'That can't happen.' As yet unhabituated to handmade comestibles, Eve was using her silver to toy with a crumpet in the same way that Portia would prolong the agony of a mole. 'The Shambhala larder is refreshed daily along with Hogwarts'.'

'Then we're in luck.' Lovegood polished off a kipper.

'What's going on?' Duck looked up from his plate. 'Who are you? My Lovegood was an unskilled loner no one ever thought about. Honestly, you must have been so angry with all the cooks…'

Lovegood grinned, blushed, freshened Duck's tea.

Poppy laced honey over her eggs. 'I'm not complaining. I've got something big for you, by the way, Lovegood. You'll never guess what happened to our girl Susurro.'

'It isn't time-travel related, is it?' asked Magda.

'Doubtful. Does your Oozlum bird manifest in flames?'

Magda's head went tilty. 'No?'

'You don't mean…' said Eve.

A fleshy strand of scrambled egg dangled from Poppy's mouth as she nodded. 'Our side,' she said, mouth still full, 'burned a witch.'

'Susurro burned?' asked Lovegood.

'Finished the book last night,' affirmed Poppy. 'At the end, our man Mibu sets sail from the Port of London. 1555. It's starting to rain, and he concludes with a really quite lovely reverie on rain and ashes.'

'Was a reason given?' Lovegood asked. 'For burning her?'

'It isn't very satisfying, but the word he used was "corruption." You'll have to read it.'

'Excuse me,' Eve objected, coloring. 'Witches do not burn other witches.'

'Don't now but did once,' Poppy clarified. 'At least once.'

'Muggles burned Muggles too, you know,' Duck pointed out. 'Religious fervor is extremely combustible—or so I've heard. But it doesn't seem right that English Wizardry would do for a Durmstrang witch—does it?'

'We don't know she was Durmstrang,' Magda noted. 'That's conjecture.'

Eve's eruption was that of a polite volcano appalled by the prospect of spewing any lava. 'Isn't this all conjecture? Has anyone ever heard of a witch-burning that wasn't conducted by Muggles?' When no one answered she turned to Duck. 'Forgive me, Edwin, but it's absolutely galling: You hear for the first time of an unconscionable, alleged practice in our history, with only the flimsiest evidence behind it, and immediately use the actions of inferior beings to justify it!'

Poppy and Duck's objections overlapped: 'The evidence isn't flimsy,' went Poppy. 'Singular—not flimsy.' While Duck grumbled: 'Well I most certainly did not justify it…'

'Actually what if it's all like he said,' Lovegood offered. 'She was a Durmstrang witch and we burned her. What if that's why they hate us?'

'Piffle, Lovegood,' Duck scowled. 'They hate us because they never win the TriWizard. Everyone knows that.'

'Pardon me,' a deep voice announced the presence of a sixth to the dining room. Rupert Brood stood in the entry, resplendent in faculty robes of Ravenclaw navy and bronze, gazing kindly on Eve. 'Did you just call Muggles inferior beings?'

Eve wilted.

Awkwardness infused the silence that followed.

Lovegood half-rose. 'Please help yourself to breakfast, Professor. It's on the buffet.'

Brood acknowledged this nicety with a nod, walked over, ignored everything but the Easterhedge pudding, then sat down at the table between Duck and an empty chair. Before having any he spent a moment focusing one at a time on everyone present. 'Thank you,' he said at last, 'for letting me share your table,' then directed a spoonful into his famous mouth. 'Goodness me,' he said to Lovegood, 'your father taught you well, didn't he?'

Lovegood could have rolled his eyes. Of course Carl Linnaeus had cooked for the famous Rupert Brood, and of course he hadn't shared the experience with his only son. No doubt during some festive Catchpole occasion—the powerful Diggory clan in attendance, to boot.

The Lovegoods were an inveterately private tribe—busy and guarded as beavers. Though that was him, too, he knew: tiptoeing through houses in the night; compiling feasts; raiding cellars; catering to the luminaries of Wizardry.

'Miss Bardot, isn't it?' Brood said to Poppy. 'Any word at all from Charles Pepper? He was your beau, was he not?'

Poppy was suddenly bruisable. 'He was, sir, and none, I'm sad to say.'

Brood did significance well, did moment well. After its proper observance, he moved on. 'Miss Coyne,' he said with warmth, 'how's Gampy?'

Lovegood wouldn't have bet she could light up like that. 'Oh, peppy, sir,' she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. 'So peppy. He's back home now, since MacPhail's election, and he won't be contained! He was for DuPont all the way, sir, as I'm sure you know. So when MacPhail came on it was—' she made a noise and hand gesture like a sweeping broom '—out with the old at the Auror's office.' In an open instant, shame overtook her, 'I suppose you knew that…'

'I'm so glad to hear he's well. "You can't keep Seldin Coyne down," that's what everyone at the office always says.'

Eyes misty, Magda gave undivided attention to her crumpet.

Over the next five or so seconds, Shambhala clocks took turns marking the half hour. Brood engaged his pudding; Duck engaged Brood.

'Ever so sorry,' he said, 'but we haven't been introduced.' He held out his hand. 'Edwin Aurelius Duck, at your service. No one calls me "E.A." as of yet, but I suspect someday they shall. If you wished to get that started, I should be most obliged.'

Amusement nudged Brood's face. He accepted the offered hand.

'Do you happen to know Vito Warwind, sir?'

'In fact I do. Very well.'

Duck managed to appear politely bored with the conversation. 'Vito has very high hopes for me. It's him I must impress more than anyone else should I ever wish to get out of this house and on with my life.'

'I am certain you will justify his faith in the fullness of time, Mr Duck.'

'Or perhaps you could help me blackmail him, sir?'

Brood chuckled. 'If you find a chink in that armor, I'd be most grateful to know.'

Lovegood felt physically in his shoulders the weight of social expectancy then shifting to Eve. He cleared his throat—

—but Eve beat him to it. 'We haven't met,' she said, addressing Brood. 'Eve Allyser-Wren. It occurs to me, sir, that you joined our conversation at a precarious moment.'

Sphinx-faced, Rupert Brood stirred milk into his tea: ping ping ping.

'I did describe Muggles as inferior. A roach is inferior to a mouse, a mouse to a snake, a snake to a Muggle, a Muggle to a Wizard. Do you dispute it, sir?'

Brood frowned. 'And to whom is the Wizard inferior?'

'Why, no one.'

'I applaud your candor, madam. Many of your stripe disguise their feelings on the subject. Are you familiar with the Muggle biologist Darwin?'

'Certainly not.'

Brood smiled—he recognized this species of intransigence. 'He published rather an impressive work a few years ago concerning what he called the "transmutation" of species over time. This process depends on an ingenious device he dubbed Natural Selection. The thinking goes: a trait—a physical characteristic—that lends a creature an advantage on the field of battle lends it a similar advantage reproductively, as the creature possessing it is more likely to survive and spawn. Thus, over time, as the field of battle changes, species adapt to their circumstances.'

'I must confess that I don't keep abreast of the gross part of Muggle society, sir,' said Eve, in a level voice. 'Do they still select mates based on contests of skill?'

'You gest, but it's true—and of our kind, as well. A stroll along the Strand or through the Great Hall at luncheon is different only in setting from a prowl through an African savannah. Blonde hair, blue eyes, wealth, a prestigious wand, style, having distinguished parentage…these are the traits with which you seek to woo each other and best your rivals to insure a future for your progeny.'

'Fascinating, I'm sure, Mr Brood, but how does it bear on our conversation?'

'You use the words "inferiority" and "superiority" to compare species. Darwin would use them to describe characteristics within a species: A longer trunk on an elephant is superior to a shorter trunk because it can reach the fruits of taller trees, therefore imparting an advantage. But one would never declare an elephant inferior to a robin, for whom all fruits are within reach. The robin, being I daresay an inappropriate mate for an elephant, represents no threat to it. They're different beings. Similarly, I would put to you that a species capable of producing a Charlie Darwin is in no wise inferior to a species that can fly about on broomsticks.'

'And yet,' Coyne jumped in, 'are we different species? We can mate. We do. Isn't it possible that magic is—like you said—an adaptation to a changing field?'

Coyne, Lovegood realized, had covered this ground already.

'It's an excellent question,' Brood agreed, 'and one that falls outside my purview. But it's plain to see that, as a culture, we've chosen to act as if we and Mugglekind are separate species. We're self-governing. We segregate educationally. We neither worship, war, cheer, or mourn together. We hide among them.'

'But mudbloods—' Lovegood began.

'Do not use that word in my company,' said Brood.

Lovegood recoiled as if bodily repulsed by the professor's quiet force.

'Yes,' Brood continued, 'we pluck the Muggleborn from their impoverished lives and abscond with them into the—ahem, "superior"—world… There are birds, you know, that secrete the unhatched eggs of their young in the nearby nests of roosting mothers, thereby transferring the burden of paternity. Completely different species, by the way. Brood parasites, they're called. The cuckoo is one. "Here, you raise it." We do the same, then collect once they can read and write, walk and talk, even think just a bit for themselves. Ask your average Muggleborn what sort of relationship he has with his parents. The system produces woe—indeed, it's a chief byproduct. So perhaps we're physically superior to Muggles, as you would have it, madam, and morally equivalent to the cuckoo bird.'

Eve gathered herself up. 'I think flying about on broomsticks does make us superior.'

Brood sighed testily. 'And what do you propose to do with your superiority?'

'Nothing, sir. I simply propose it as fact.'

'What use is a fact that isn't acted on? What use is a table that's never set or a tea kettle left in a pantry? What does it mean that a mouse is inferior to a snake?'

Eve, perhaps sensing a trap, shied from the question. But Poppy had no skin in the game. 'That one is more likely to eat the other,' she answered.

Brood said, 'As with mice and snakes, so too with Muggles and Wizards?'

'That isn't how I meant it,' Eve said.

Brood's smile rang a touch false. 'Then perhaps you meant we in Wizardry enjoy a unique position from which we can help Muggles. Cure their diseases. Douse their wildfires. Interrupt their wars. Perform the sort of miracles Muggledom has long ascribed to angels and gods—whose superiority, as it happens, they never seem to mind accepting.'

Eve auditioned a series of perhaps more heated responses before committing to one. 'Isn't it tragic,' she said, 'that they won't let us?'

'And yet, if they truly are inferior, oughtn't we be able to get around their superstitions? And if we're so superior, haven't we an ethical obligation to try?'

Still stinging from the 'mudblood' rebuke, Lovegood's perception of Brood wasn't at its clearest. He couldn't tell if the questions were rhetorical devices intended to smother Eve, or if they were honestly posed. He also wasn't certain how he'd answer them.

Neither, evidently, was Eve.

At length, Brood returned his attention to his tea and pudding. 'Friends,' he said, in a more relaxed tone, 'I agree that there are worse snakes and better snakes, worse wizards and better. But once we start ranking species, we slide into a treacherous channel of thought.'

'If difficult choices need to be made…' Duck offered.

'Precisely—choices in which the fate of different lifeforms are entangled. A nice ranking, right to hand, could be used to condone any number of barbarities.'

'But how to make those decisions instead?' Magda asked.

'Or avoid them?' Duck laughed.

'The answer to both questions is the same:' said Brood, 'submit to a higher power.'

A vexed silence blew in through the peculiar door of this declaration. In it, the Professor again took deliberate measure of his tablemates, then spooned up a final dollop of pudding and wiped his mouth. 'Thanks again,' he stood. 'I promise not to make a habit of ruining your breakfast peace. Oh—almost forgot—' he withdrew a sealed envelope from his pocket and handed it to Lovegood. 'That interesting, prolific correspondent of yours… Afraid I quite intercepted the owl.' Then he left, shutting the front door behind him, and out whooshed a roomful of tension.

'What's that?' Duck asked. 'What did the strange man mean?'

'Nothing. Just a letter.' Lovegood tucked it upside down beneath his plate—glimpsing only the 'return' address (Forbidden Forest)—and changed the subject as fast as he could. 'I'm surprised he didn't give it to me last night.'

'In talks, were you?' Duck pursued.

'No, but he must have heard me pottering about. I went down to the cellar late and discovered the archive.'

Joy transformed Duck's expression: 'Did you?'

'Oh, bother.' Poppy rummaged through her handbag for a galleon coin and shoved it across the table.

'Well played, Edwin,' Eve said, handing over one of her own.

'What's happening?' asked Magda.

'Have I been lucky for you again, Duck?'

'Oh, you have at that, my good man! My very good man!'

Poppy, smarting from the toll, explained: 'Eddy wagered Lovegood would sniff out the archive within the first week.'

'What's so special about the archive?' Magda asked.

'Nothing, really,' Eve said, distractedly, 'it's what it takes to reach it.'

'Can't do magic down there,' Duck elaborated. 'Correction: don't have magic. It's a bloody terrible feeling. I'd rather the Dementor's kiss.'

'You wouldn't,' Poppy scolded.

'Would,' Duck rejoined. 'At least then it'd be myself I was losing. Down there you're not yourself at all.' He nodded significantly to Magda. 'I call it—' pointing down to the floor '—Muggleton.'

Poppy rolled her eyes. 'He's the only one who calls it that. Please let's keep it that way. Particularly seeing as one of our predecessors gave it a perfectly good name already.'

'Yorkshire,' said Lovegood.

Magda cooed her appreciation.

'Why is that better than Muggleton?' Duck complained. 'When did all Wizardry decide to revile Yorkshire?' Then: 'Ohhhhhh, is this to do with—'

'Don't you dare tell me,' Magda insisted, 'you haven't read Henrietta Hewlitt!'

'Top you off, Duck?' Lovegood said, proffering the kettle.

'I haven't,' Duck flattened a palm over his mug. 'And so what. It's literature for children, best I can tell, and I'm no longer a child. Opportunity lost. C'est la vie.'

Lovegood said, 'Just don't get the idea that he's defensive about it.'

'Defensive? Not in the least. I'm simply a bit wealthier at the moment than my better-read friends. How's that for defensive?'

Henrietta Hewlitt was the protagonist of a series of novels that'd taken Wizardry by storm and obsessed Lovegood during his early years at Hogwarts. Written by a recluse who published under the name Alain Caché, the books told the story of a squib girl born in the fictitious Cornish wizarding town of Fellwater Bridge to the preposterously named Turbid and Hortensia van Toccin.

Turbid and Hortensia were but the latest and most prominent iterations of a haughty old pureblooded wizarding family, rich as Croesus and pathologically uncharitable. As soon as Henrietta's dismal condition is ascertained—at the ripe old age of 7—the family goes to desperate and elaborate lengths to rub her out of history for all time. She is extensively obliviated, as is the seemingly random family of Yorkshire Muggle tenant farmers (the Hewlitts) who emerge from their mental fog having accepted receipt of a mysterious orphaned niece. A tragic tale concerning a hexed blankie is circulated throughout Wizardry. A hoax funeral is thrown at the family plot complete with a coffin weighted with the body of a sacrificial house elf, planted under an outsized headstone (the most expensive thing they ever bought for her) carved with the words Henrietta van Toccin, 1842 - 1849, Beloved Daughter, Live Eternally In Magic.

When Henrietta comes to in the Hewlitt's Yorkshire homestead, she is accompanied by a cloying sensation of wrongness, but is soon enough submerged in work. Occasional glimpses of life at Fellwater Bridge permit the reader to track the van Toccins, who, eerily untroubled by their deeds, go on accreting wealth and power. But mostly the reader remains by Henrietta's side as she acquaints herself to Muggle existence.

She gets to know her 'cousins' and learns how to wash clothes and till the earth. She makes friends and snogs with country boys and has run-ins with the cruel and lordly Montenegro family, whose craggy turreted country estate overlooms the gentle sward 'like news of a tumor shattering the serenity of Sunday tea.'

Rumors of strange goings-on swirl about the castle, and ultimately the connection between the Cornish van Toccins and the Yorkshire Hewlitts is revealed to be less random than initially supposed. A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the narrative: when will Henrietta uncover the truth of her heritage? Will the van Toccins escape the justice they so roundly deserve? What if instead of squib she's a late-bloomer? When and if she becomes powerful, will it be as a creature of van Toccin vengeance or of Hewlitt love?

Duck's hostility to the books, anyone could see, originated from the fact that nearly every other single person he knew grew up on them.

'Lovegood,' he said now, 'I adore you. What a magnificently reliable thing your funny parents wrought. How did you find it—the archive, I mean?'

He lied and told them he'd been unable to sleep, and that staring up at the quotation on the attic ceiling had got him thinking about what other mysteries the house contained. This got him to the cellar. Once there, he elided the intestinally insecure bits, left a good deal of the drama of the Trek Across the Cellar Floor on the cellar floor, and presented a Lovegood sort of queasy but managing, a capable candle shepherd and archive sifter. 'Some queer things I noticed,' he said. 'For starters, the earliest records are horribly scant. Names and dates of entry at most.'

Eve was thawing from her confrontation with Brood. 'That's right,' she said, 'I'd forgotten. They do thicken up at some point, don't they?'

'Mid 16th C,' Lovegood acknowledged.

Poppy nudged him and winked. 'That pesky 16th C again.'

'As I understand it,' Eve said, 'the house flooded and the records were destroyed. They were only reconstituted much later using archives from Hogwarts, which, I gather, weren't as comprehensive.'

Lovegood frowned. 'Another thing was that, once the records did become more complete, a few, not a lot, but a few of the Chiefs, even ones with their areas of focus recorded and titles of projects, had blanks in year of exit. I had a morbid inkling or two about this, but…?' he looked to Eve for clarification.

'No, your fancies were correct, I'm sure,' she said.

'That's a dead Chief,' said Duck.

'Really?' Lovegood was shocked.

'The Buried College,' Poppy whispered.

'I thought that, surely, some of them only failed to achieve their CATs,' Lovegood said, referring to the Completely Arduous Tests non-trads were required to stand for.

'Students that don't stand for their CATs aren't ultimately considered Chiefs,' Eve said. 'They're erased from the archive. The blanks are for the deceased.'

Duck looked at him. 'Anything else need clarifying?'

A push of bronze in the tall silver sky amended the dining room. Looking out, Lovegood saw a Hogwarts no longer embellished with scarves of fog. 'All the ink and handwriting's exactly the same,' he said. 'Is it a magical device at work, like the Hogwarts book and quill of admittance?'

'It is,' Eve replied. 'The current book's in my room—it's an obligation of the Senior Chief, seeing as there's no magic in the cellar. Shall I?' She didn't wait on a response.

In her absence, her presence was more dearly felt. Magda and Poppy addressed their breakfasts. When Lovegood glanced up from the scraps of his venison pie, he saw that Duck was slouching in his chair, drumming his fingers upon the table and hiking an eyebrow at him. 'What's your day look like, Lovegood? Shall we to the library?'

'Can I come?' asked Magda.

Poppy scoffed. 'It isn't theirs, Magda. It doesn't belong to Ravenclaw.'

'No, I know. It's just…'

'Actually,' Poppy pushed her plate away, 'I'm due a visit myself.' She looked round for confirmation. 'Call it a group venture, then?'

'Group venture it is,' Lovegood agreed. He'd been idly considering a morning stroll to Ollivander's, but there was no greater concentration of brains (living or otherwise) that he'd like to pick than at Hogwarts. Additionally, Inspector Darby would be convening his Magical Crimes class that day, and it'd be a crime in its own right were he to allow that relationship to wither on the vine.

'We'll, er,' Duck drummed his fingers, 'we'll tell Eve, will we?'

'Of course,' said Poppy. 'I mean, won't we?'

'We must,' Magda averred, 'right?'

Eve returned moments later with the book and set it open in front of Lovegood, placing into the fold a flawless brown and gray quill. 'It was taken from the wing of an Egyptian vulture,' she explained.

Lovegood cleared his throat. 'Listen, Eve, we're talking about heading over to the library here in a moment. Will you come?'

'Oh, that's all right. All my work is here. Decent of you to ask. Anyway, there you have it. The quill records the students, though of course one never sees it working. Take a look. I try not to, as a rule, since until I've finished,' her laugh came out stiffly, unnaturally, 'I may as well be dead!'

STUDENT: Eve Alysser-Wren, d. of Arthur and Alice

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Nine

HOUSE: Gryffindor

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT:

STUDENT: Poppy Bardot, d. of Etienne and Mathilde

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty One

HOUSE: Hufflepuff

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT:

STUDENT: Edwin Duck, s. of Worldly and Louisa

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Two

HOUSE: Ravenclaw

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT:

STUDENT: Linus Lovegood, s. of Carl Linnaeus and Nedda

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Three

HOUSE: Ravenclaw

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT:

STUDENT: Magda Coyne, d. of Killjoy and Mary

YEAR OF ADMITTAL: One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty Three

HOUSE: Slytherin

FOCUS:

DISSERTATION:

YEAR OF EXIT: