Chapter 13 'I eat boys.'

High up on the parapet of the Astronomy Tower, Professor Coronal Wislet scanned the dazzling heavens through a scope. He was alone in the sky. Yesterday the scarlet train arrived from London and decanted its volume of youthful minds into Hogsmeade—vintage 1864. It would soon be Monday, but now it was the smudge between days, when clocks and calendars lost their grip. The air was cold; his leg ached. Orion flexed his bow at Gemini and fired off a falling star.

At the opposite end of the castle the house elves stirred. Sleepily they donned their tea towel togas and shuffled into the mess, where breakfast had been cooked by the volunteer midnight shift. They were all descendants of the original thirteen Helga Hufflepuff had delivered into the safety of the cellar. In the morning they take small beer and biscuits. Chores are assigned. The masses of students had returned from holiday, which meant there was luggage to stow, rooms to ready, feasts to prepare. Their break, if it was a break, was over. The low-ceilinged kitchen awaited, its drawers full of quarter-sized utensils, its cauldrons cast in Merlin's day.

The castle itself does not wake, because it does not sleep. There is never no one looking, but when the people have left, different beings slip out. Doors no one's ever tried come open on their own. Rugs inch nearer each other to gossip and giggle and conjugate. Even some of the paintings have ghosts: figures obscured over time by light and dust, submerged into the oils. A country maiden in a shadowy piece on the fourth-floor thinks: What became of my friend who paid me a visit? A noble scratches his frowning brow: Did not my son once live here with me?

Medieval beasts fluttered, crawled and slid through the corridors—or so at any rate imagined Rancorous Carpe, alone with his pet snake in the Caretaker's room—#234, next the Entrance Hall. Nights were hard on Carpe. They'd reduced him over the years like a gamy piece of meat in a stock pot to a tough, sinewy thing. It was a relief to hear Sir Nicholas humming as he wafted through the air outside his door. 6:29.

Nick liked to be there when the students gushed into the Great Hall after breaks and holidays, to rally the little Gryffindors especially. He was always a people person, had only become more so since his death on All Hallow's Eve, the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue. 45 blows from a dull axe was enough to part him from the spark of life (if not to sever the head clean), but was yet insufficient to drive him from society. If not for the fact that he floated above them, lacked corporeal mass, and couldn't look around too wildly lest the hinge of his neck fall open, it was possible to believe he was one of them: their freshness, their enthusiasm, the wonderful noise their shoes made slapping along the flagstones—it was worth never completely dying for. 'Tally-ho, my lovelies! How'd Christmas treat you? Oh how I long to feel the cold again! Or anything at all! Onward to our repast, and glory!'

From silence, voice populated the Great Hall, like a forest of birds welcoming day. Then birds were there too: a sky's worth of owls tumbling in, bombing letters and packages onto the gathered witches and wizards to be. Tardy presents. The occasional Howler. Bad news rained on the family Black.

Phineas, breaking fast this morning at the Slytherin table rather than at Shambhala, opened a letter addressed in his father Cygnis's assured, swooping hand. His mother, who'd been alive—imperiously so, censoriously—two days ago, holding court in the parlor of 12 Grimmauld Place, is dead. From what? How? The letter doesn't say. Pity you chose to spend so little time with her over the Holiday, his father wrote. Do let Elladora know.

Across the table his sister and Kendra Canard were, as ever, conjoined. Behind their hands they exchanged, snorted, assayed. They hardly touched their food, but seemed to derive sustenance enough from mere proximity. Phineas thought: She still has a mother. Around them the banquet thrived: serving trays blinked into existence as needed, piled with that which was most recently craved. Teapots whizzed about unsupervised, tipping clean steaming water into freshly emptied cups. At the head of the room the faculty settled in at their own pace, doing pleasantries, tucking napkins into their collars, breathing on spoons. Phineas reached across the table to his sister and cleared his throat.

Later, at the foot of the main stair, an awkward moment: Aedion Muldoon and Dermot O'Nicklefoot converged. The requisite tension burbled up. 'Dion,' Dermot sniffed, bidding the Gryffindor head lead the way. 'Dermot,' Muldoon acknowledged the Ravenclaw head, commenced up the stairs. This sort of thing was never planned for, but it will always happen. They weren't squabbling adolescents: could affect polite conversation, had mastered connotation. How is your shamefully large and uncontrollable Irish family? Muldoon could inquire, And what's it feel like to come home to an empty house?

Oh marvelous, thanks, O'Nicklefoot could reply; how are the drooling sycophants with whom you insulate yourself from loneliness?

Isn't it unfortunate you got in the way and ruined my chances with the beautiful Smila Perch? they could each think, parting ways collegially at the third floor.

Today Dion would be showing children rictumsempra, the tickling charm. Dermot received over Christmas a rare winter batch of moondew from a cousin in Cork; he was thinking of taking a class of youngsters through Draught of the Living Death first thing back from holiday. That'll be funny, he thought.

The castle reacquainted itself to busyness. Staircases heaved into motion. Guarding Gryffindor Tower from within the confines of her elaborate gilt frame, the Fat Lady gargled and daintily spat, repeated to herself, under her breath, Milliphuttism, Milliphuttism. The senior Ravenclaw prefect conferred with the bronze eagle knocker on its common room's door. (I have seas with no waters and coasts with no sand, towns without people and mountains without land. What am I?) 'You're a map,' said the girl, 'but you'd better accept globe, too.' Gravely, the eagle nodded. After the Great Hall emptied into classrooms, tiny figures in togas ascended to tidy up.

Priscilla Pontefract passed a quiet day in the Hospital Wing. Professor Wislet visited to receive his weekly wiggenweld infusion (for the leg). She made a note to see Professor O'Nicklefoot, as her store was getting low. In late morning Flora Verdue arrived with a Slytherin complaining of stomachache. The girl was convinced she'd ingested a tendril of Devil's Snare, but Verdue shook her head: Not possible. She doubled over, perhaps too dramatically. Nurse and Professor shared a look. It wasn't easy: being teenaged, Slytherin, and a girl. Pontefract gave her some chocolate, found her a private corner and kept an eye on—but not too close. Nehemiah Tombs paid his customary visit at luncheon. They had tea and sandwiches under the biggest window in the wing, above snowy Scotland and a Black Lake still as ink. They exchanged Christmas gifts. The ritual was interrupted by the day's only real emergency: a second-year Quidditch hopeful took a spill from a broomstick and broke both his legs. 'In January,' she said. 'Honestly, Mr Tombs, can you imagine choosingto be up on a broomstick in January?'

'Do you know, Pris,' the librarian said, 'I believe it happens every year.' He was already handing her the bottle of Skele-Gro she kept ever to hand.

The Slytherin girl recovered hours later—the very moment classes adjourned. Still at the boy's side, mopping his brow while fresh bone spanned and knit in his legs, Pontefract nodded her goodbye. She returned to the book the librarian gave her, a biography of the famous healer Phyllida Spore. Behind her, through the corridors, classrooms emptied into common rooms. She didn't mark the stamping passage of a man still fresh with winter on him, but why would she? Every day at Hogwarts it was something new. 'Nurse,' the boy said, grimacing, 'will I ever walk again?'

'George, it is my earnest desire that walk is all you ever do again.'

The boy grinned. She saw that his gums were still bleeding a bit. She turned the page.

Darby was in a terrible rush. A single apparation got him to Hogsmeade but he hadn't made such a leap in years, and he wasn't as young as he once was. A stabilizing drink was required. This he quaffed at the Three Broomsticks while scribbling a note to the Headmaster. 'Won't ya even sit, Inspector?' said Euphemia Styx, bellying up to him and stroking his sideburns. 'Over there by the winder, maybe? It's good for me business to show a handsome, famous man at his repose…'

'Oh, Effie, please. Fetch us an owl, won't you?'

Brood: Meet me in your office in half an hour. - L. Darby

It needn't take him that long but he wanted some time to think.

After a moment's reflection he decided, to Effie's chagrin, on a still darker corner of the tavern, where he sat and wrote another letter.

୫

The gargoyle didn't care who occupied the secret office. It had stood guard for scores of them. It only wanted to eat, and only ate a given word. 'Brotherhood,' said Darby. Its beak opened like a clamshell, the eagle receded flowing into the wall, the wall eroded into a spiral staircase the Inspector climbed up.

He'd beaten Brood to the office so had it to himself for a moment—truly to himself. The portraits of bygone Headmasters and Headmistresses had come down, grouchily redistributed to the offices of faculty members, laboratories, lounges and classrooms. McKinnon's masses of unreturned books had been gathered in by a bittersweet Nehemiah Tombs. Sundry fauna and flora, magical and otherwise, evidently lost at some point during her 8-year term in office, had been discovered and reintegrated into the wild. Brood liked his rooms spare: it was the aesthetic of a particular kind of Auror, Darby knew, one who must be prepared at any moment to drop everything and vacate a place forever. Because the vampires have smoked you out, and the sister of the man you put in Azkaban has an unforgiving personality and lots of friends, and a rumor reaches you that the dark wizard you've been hunting all your life was spotted the next county over…

The January moon was a waning crescent. It didn't do much but Hogwarts had its own light and combined they sheeted palely through the office's sizable window near the oaken desk. It was a chill and stony interior, if large and multileveled. Put Darby vaguely in mind of one of the better dungeons—where you might imprison a princess, say. He'd read that, as a young lass, the Princess Elizabeth had been confined by her sister Mary to the Tower of London. That sort of thing. At least there were candles.

He went around lighting them one by one, and as he fired that nearest the entry he illuminated Rupert Brood, standing like a wraith, soily eyes directed at him under wilding eyebrows, pate smooth as a cue ball.

'Good night,' Darby exclaimed, jumping back. 'But you gave me a jolt, Headmaster!'

Brood was ensconced in his robe, Ravenclaw blue and bronze and now styled with the especial flair and pips of his office, into which he stepped with bare feet. 'Apologies, Inspector. One gets into the habit of entering unseen.'

'Not at all. It's nothing to what I've just come from.'

'Some ado at the Three Broomsticks?' Brood's robes flowed as he strode up to his desk. Off the look on Darby's face he said, 'Only I smelled firewhisky. Please sit down, Inspector.'

'What a fine keen snoot you have, Headmaster. Yes I, I did stop in, briefly. To send you an owl and steady my nerves.' He settled into an austere wooden chair opposite Brood. 'You did get my owl?'

The Headmaster nodded.

Darby took a breath. The chair creaked. He started at the beginning.

'Of course you know I've had my eye on the seventh-year kleptomaniac—the aptly named Miss Pilf. Once I established she'd beaten the train here first day of term rather than take it, completely contrary to her history, well, she seemed too likely a candidate to ignore.'

'You refer to the Case of the Missing Wych Elm, Inspector, or…?'

'I do.' The Inspector collected his pipe and absently knocked it against his shoe. 'Just as atypical as her bypassing the train was her decision to stay at Hogwarts over holiday. Every previous year, without exception, she'd gone home. Ergo, I decided to stick around and engage in some old-fashioned police work.' He packed the pipe. 'I tailed her this morning as she and a fellow student I've not yet identified paid an extremely early morning call to Ollivanders in Hogsmeade. Do you mind?'

Brood signaled his assent. 'To Ollivander's, you don't say?'

Darby lit, puffed and smiled. 'It is as I suspected all along, Headmaster. I knew he had the motive. It only remained to be discovered how he'd forged his opportunity. Now I have it. But that's just the beginning. Waiting outside, I saw a strange old man walk into a tree.'

'You amaze me, Inspector.'

'A birch, I think. Walked smack into it, then spoke to it for a moment. I should clarify: it is not my testimony that the tree spoke back.' Darby smoked and relaxed. He was never more comfortable than when recounting tails of his exploits. 'Miss Pilf and her companion exited Ollivanders and walked past him obliviously. He however was pointedly aware of them. Stood stock-still, he did, rather like someone who's just had his bell rung. Then he proceeded into Ollivanders.'

'Were the kleptomaniac and her companion enriched?'

'Indeed they were. And if I accurately registered the tone of their discussion, enriched by no small amount. That case is as good as solved. We have but to ram down the doors and give the premises a thorough searching. I'm quite certain evidence of the elm will be revealed. We may even catch them sap-handed.'

Brood indicated his indulgence for the wordplay. 'They've a Barker on hire, do they not? An aged crone, I believe?'

'Right you are, Headmaster. And on that subject, permit me to entice you with this further tidbit from my adventure: the elm is the least of their problems. You see, it occurred to me that the old chap wasn't showing up on accident. The fact that he appeared to have an affinity for trees and to know who Miss Pilf was, or what she represented, well it seemed to me this was worth waiting to watch unfold. Perhaps Ollivanders wasn't the end destination for the purloined elm; perhaps there were more links to the chain. I waited. They were in there perhaps a quarter of an hour. When they finally did come out, it was together, and their first attempt through the door didn't work because it was locked. I heard it bang against the sill. Whatever they'd discussed they wanted no one barging in.'

'What a fine keen sense of hearing you have, Inspector.'

'Ah—I was very close. I have a trick for going unseen by a few people at a time. Immediately they walked to Bruin Joey's and hired the southbound coach.'

'Which you somehow contrived to be on.'

Darby twinkled. 'I contrived to drive it. As soon as it was clear where they were going, I stole into the rear of the building and bought the driver off. Mr Blakeney, I believe he's called. Blakeney gave me the coach's itinerary, some advice, and a Sultan's share of fabric to cloak myself with. Had I known how cold it was going to be, I'd have asked for twice as much! Ever taken the coach, Headmaster?'

'In fact I came to town in it last year, Inspector. In it, mind. Not on.'

Darby gave him the point. 'But for a brush with frostbite here and there, the trip was uneventful. Thestrals, you know, essentially fly themselves. I had mainly to fortify the disillusionment charms keeping us safe. Dicey magic, actually, with numb fingers. There's a reason those coaches cost so much.'

'I will see you're reimbursed for paying off the driver. How far did you go with them?'

'As far as Stonehenge. That's where we got off. In Hogsmeade I'd told Blakeney, "Find out what their destination is and meet the coach there." We'd trade places, you see. I didn't need to know: my quarry would guide me; but in order to keep up appearances, it was necessary the coach complete its circuit.'

'Fine planning, Inspector.'

How Darby savored a compliment! He closed his eyes, sat back, mouthed his pipe. 'At Stonehenge they parted ways. The old chap disapparated and our Gerry descended. You've been to the tavern there, Headmaster? I ingratiated myself with rather an unsavory crowd playing cards round a table in our Gerry's vicinity. I have a trick for ingratiating myself to small groups of people at a time, you see. It helps if they aren't too nosy. In this instance, I was doubly grateful to've happened upon a gang of mumchance cardsharps: their quiet helped me overhear the conversation our Gerry had through the floo.'

'Do tell.'

'The Barker you mentioned. Goes by Briar. I don't know her proper name—not sure anyone does. Not sure she does. The record on her is: there is no record. That's who our Gerry reaches out to in the Stoned Henge.'

'Of course she'd have had to do with the elm caper,' Brood tried.

'Almost by necessity. Imagine my surprise when it didn't come up.'

'What did he say?'

'He said I'm in Salisbury with a friend. He's going after the Executioner's Tree cupboard. What in bloody hell should I do?'

The mild smile on Brood's face froze. 'The what?'

'The Executioner's Tree cupboard. You're familiar with the Executioner's Tree?'

Brood sat back. 'How did she answer?'

Darby frowned. 'I'm afraid I heard nothing she said. I suspect she takes precautions when communicating through unknown floos, as it were.'

'Then how do you know it was she he contacted?'

'It is a deduction based on subsequent events.'

'By all means, Inspector, don't tarry.' Brood stood and walked to the window.

Darby's pipe had gone out. He ignited a match on the sole of his boot and relit it. Puffed. He was aware he'd hooked his audience. 'Our Gerry wasn't long consulting the fire. He took a moment with his ale. Ordered another. Picked his nails. Finished the second, got a third. Looked at the fire. Finished the third. Went to the bar. Called over Tomahawk Tom and had a word. Tomahawk Tom, that's-'

'The barkeep. I know.' Brood hadn't budged from the window.

'A bit later a new bloke comes in and Tom gives our Gerry a signal. Our Gerry goes over and buys the new bloke a round, appears honored to do so.'

'What kind of bloke, Inspector?'

'The servile kind. Keeps glancing at my gang. A minute later they're joined by an old fellow.'

'The one that speaks to birches?'

'Different fellow entirely. He takes a chair; the three fall into discussion. Our Gerry approaches my gang's table and extends a card to the leader. Says he wants to buy Munificent Barnes's debt with a line of credit at Ollivanders.'

Behind his back Brood held his left wrist in his right hand. 'Barnes is the one that's glancing?'

'The servant, yes. The poker captain accepts our Gerry's card. We have a deal. A moment later Barnes joins the game. Our Gerry and the old fellow depart. I need to get after them, of course, but first I learn two things about Munificent Barnes. He is Squamous Malfoy's butler, and he is the worst poker player I have ever encountered in my entire life.'

'Malfoy,' Brood turned. 'What's he got to do with this?'

'Nothing. My surmise is that he made a gift of the cupboard to a wealthy Muggle. This was the information Barnes sold our Gerry.'

'Did you get the Muggle's name?'

'Eventually, but not off Barnes. I followed the quarry to the train station in Salisbury. The cashier was freshly the victim of a confundus charm. They waited outside, I in. They bought two tickets to Blackwine, I one.'

'Moses Jones,' Brood said.

Darby nearly fell out of his chair. 'That's a leap! And believe me, I know what I'm talking about! How'd you get there so fast?'

'It isn't a long list: Muggles who know us and are interested in our artifacts. And Jones is an earl. That sort of rank is candy to Malfoys.'

'Well, very impressive just the same. Fine work, Headmaster.'

'Did they find him? But of course they wouldn't, would they. Not over Christmas.'

Darby was brought up short while knocking empty his pipe. 'They found his son, in something of a state.'

'Drunk?'

'At the very least drunk. Firing a pistol. Singing. Offending women.'

'That's Hugo for you.'

Darby didn't realize how clearly suspicion showed on his face. He was thinking: Why is Rupert Brood so familiar with this family of Shropshire Muggles? He said, 'Not anymore.'

Brood's eyes flicked to him. 'What do you mean?'

The inspector tucked the pipe back into his breast pocket. 'Shall I go ahead

and skip to the end, then?' Brood shrugged, as if he were not particularly invested. He turned again to face the window.

'The old fellow wasn't old. He was Linus Lovegood. He did a spell on the cupboard that knocked him out and erased whatever magic he'd used to disguise himself. After he lost consciousness, our Gerry summoned Briar through the floo. Listen to this, Rupert. She shot your man Hugo with his own revolver, then put the revolver in Lovegood's hand. Finally, she and our Gerry hightailed it through the fire—with the cupboard. She must have meant to draw attention from the cupboard's theft by framing Lovegood for the murder. Moments later, and I do mean moments—I had no time to act—Muggle constables arrived. It was everything I could do to get away unseen.'

When, at last, Brood took a deep breath and sighed it out, Darby realized he'd been holding it.

Very slowly, the Headmaster said, 'That. Is not. Good.' He spun, crossed his arms, tapped his finger on his triceps. 'How did you leave it, Inspector?'

'It was a crime scene. I left at once.'

'You came here directly?'

'By way of the Three Broomsticks, yes.'

'You told no one, alerted no one.'

'You're the first. On my honor.'

Brood considered it. 'Will you permit me to probe your mind?'

'Rupert?'

'Forgive me. It's—I simply must be sure you've told me everything.'

'You can be sure. My memory is my best virtue. And it's only been today, after all. Why they're both probably lying there now. The thing is fresh.'

But Brood's wand was in hand: a buff, virtually uncut length of silver lime, as spare as his taste in rooms but undeniably a beauty. He came round the desk. His eyes had enlarged and there was a hunter's caution in his movements. Darby could smell him.

A bead of sweat plunged down his back. He swallowed. 'I'll defend myself,' he said.

'Forgive me, Inspector.' The wand came up.

In the time it took him to suck an urgent breath, to raise his hands No, a curtain was thrown from a window to Darby's mind and the window opened. A heatless white light poured in, a radiance that retrieved, that called him forth, that received him and comprehended him as it touched.

His eyes were open. In a sense he knew he was in the Headmaster's office, a physical being in a room with another; he knew Rupert Brood had sliced into him with legilimency; that it was a spell like any other and could in theory be resisted. He'd seen it deployed, seen it resisted—but it was his first experience of the thing itself, and he couldn't conceive of a defense. In the time it took him to fall slack into the creaky chair, he was sure the light had always been in his mind.

In the radiance the Legilimens was a dark blur. His bare feet padded through Darby's brain, Darby's day. The first grip of thestral reins in his gloved hands. Effie's unspeakable perfume. The boy staring up at him in shock. The high whistling silence above Scotland. Barnes telegraphing every emotion. Snow falling from a tree. Stink of brandy spilled on a rug. Three queens and a pair of nines. How she held the knut, trying it in each compartment. A letter dashed off in a shadowy booth. Men's voices singing the next car over. The gunshot, the head's bounce, the curl of smoke loitering in the wound. His brain was windchimes, Brood the wind. Drool formed on his lower lip.

The light's going was intolerable; sense drawn from him; air pulled out of the room he was in. As it went he was a shambles. With no one to read him, he meant nothing, made no sense. He was undone. Tears trickled out—how long had it been since he'd cried? No matter. Nothing mattered. Being unoccupied, unshared, was too much to bear. Brood had to help him to his feet, help him down the stairs, help him to the Hospital Wing.

'Nurse Pontefract,' he heard distantly, 'how lucky we are you're still here. I'm afraid the Inspector is in need of some care. Now listen close, I have some experience with this…'

୫

In a tiny bay on the coast a canoe floated. It wasn't lashed to anything: no wharfs here, no quays, just weathered shoreline crumbling, grassy, into the mixing sea. Soft breezes pushed the canoe, little currents lapped. It ambled, became stuck, was unstuck, encountered its surrounds as the laws of motion dictated. How far was it? Lovegood imagined taking up a stone, about bludger-sized, and throwing it as hard as possible. It would land on ground, he thought, but could make the bay rolling. The canoe was a throw and a roll distant. Were someone to ask, that's what he'd say.

Practicing conversations before they find you was always a good idea, he remembered. If he asks this, I will say this. But maybe this would be better… If I am asked, how far do you suppose that bay is? I will tell them: it is a throw and a roll.

It could happen, too. People were about. He'd seen them. In simple brown trousers and blousy shirts of white cotton. Those were the men. Simple brown dresses for the women, made of the same hardy stuff. Stolid-looking boots of creased black leather. The women wore proper witchy hats, tall and pointy and broad-brimmed. Everyone moved slower than seemed right, and at a distance their faces appeared strangely detailed. A couple of them passed even now, at their ease, walking right to left on the grass between Lovegood and the ambling canoe. He could see something of the man's nose; also something of the woman's, beneath the dipping brim of her hat. He felt his own. He could think of nothing else that was exactly like his nose.

He heard footsteps on dry grass—close and getting closer. He was pressing gently on his nostrils with his forefinger and thumb when they stopped. An old man had arrived at what Lovegood now realized was his tent, occluding almost perfectly his entire view of the world. He recognized the alarmed, baggy green eyes; the sparse white hairs coming off his head in all directions; and of course the lady's pink boot—column of hearts, fake rubies, et cetera. On his other foot he wore one of those nice black leather ones.

'Tuttle,' he said to his visitor. 'Nice to see you again. Did you lose your slipper?'

Tuttle's eyes widened more. 'The boy's awake!' He ran off.

Lovegood thought, I should have asked him how much a bludger weighs. He'd have known. The Stalwarts had made such a lot of noise about Rooney Tuttle's Quidditch years. But now he was gone. Lovegood sighed. At least the world was back. The sky was the very palest blue there was. Enormous formations of cloud scudded along. Enough water up there, he thought, were you to put it all in a glass, you couldn't ever lift it, and you'd never finish drinking it. Yet there it hung, without benefit of wings! He heard a bird, then the constant wash of the sea. More footsteps. The bird again. The canoe tapped on the back of his eyes, nosed his memory, nudged into the network of sodden leaves in his head.

The woman wasn't as tall as Rooney Tuttle: Lovegood could still see clouds and sky above her head. Speaking of interesting blues: he couldn't decide what her eyes were. The blue nearest green? Maybe the other way around? Maybe her mother had been an extraordinary magician who'd given birth to a child with hazel eyes then sculpted all the umbers out and scattered in cornflower instead. They were a very good size, and atop them was a good-sized forehead, pale and tall. Her hair was thick, messy, windblown, chestnut with flecks of gray. So many colors!

She wore her age well, but wore it. Her neck wasn't what it used to be—anyone could see that. Her mouth had an interesting elasticity to it—so did everyone's of course, but hers had more. Even so, he could tell: it used to be more elastic. The wide full lips fuller and wider. But she was not unattractive. In fact, except for the eyes and interesting mouth, she was not anything, un- or otherwise. She fit her space and your eyes saw and flowed past her before tripping and going back, because of the eyes and the mouth that once was more. Then, the longer you looked at her, the more life came out.

'Hello!' he said. 'I almost didn't recognize you. It's my first time seeing your face.'

She hadn't seen this coming. She squinted. 'No one's recognized me for years.'

Lovegood nodded: that was the voice, all right, sandy and guarded. 'You're Ann Susurro,' he said. 'It doesn't make any sense, but it's clear as day.'

She made a noise, involuntarily; her hands came up to cover her nose and mouth; she began to cry. She came to him, sat down, took his hands in hers. They felt ordinary, if something as weird and lively as a hand could ever be described as ordinary. Warm and as soft as paper. She didn't mind the tears or try to check them. Lovegood saw that it was a very special thing: to be recognized for the first time in a long time.

She fished into the front pouch of her hardy brown dress and removed a lined and folded sheet. 'Does this mean you've seen all of them?'

It was a page from one of the Shambhala archives—the blank one upon which he'd recorded the names of the Secret Chiefs from her time.

'Yes. I must have made this note down in the cellar, in Yorkshire. Ever since lignis incantatum I've had memory issues. Actually, not ever since. Even before it. But what happened before was still the result of what I did later. I remember being surprised when Eve asked what I was doing down there, then surprised again later to find this in my pocket. But to answer your question, yes and no. I saw them, only not their faces. Trees have a hard time with faces. Except for Oliverus. Him I saw last week. He's a ghost now, called Finbar. He's got a very handsome nose.'

She looked at him and wiped her face with the back of her hand. The wistful smile that had lost some elasticity during his speech she wiped away too. 'I think, Linus Lovegood, you may be a touch mad.'

'It does sound that way, doesn't it?'

She sat forward on her haunches, touched his head, examined him from different angles. 'When Rupert Brood told me about you, he described a deeply sane if shy boy with green eyes and brown hair. What am I to make of you now? Brown-eyed, grey-haired, mad.'

He put his hand in his hair. 'The grey is a disguise.'

Sighing, she shook her head. 'No, it isn't.'

'Oh.' His hair did feel different.

'There will be no disguises between us, Lovegood. I can see we were made for each other. Can you see that too?'

'I don't understand what I see. How are you alive? First they burned you, then even later, when they found you in the desert, you were dead.'

He'd shocked her again. 'Who found me in the desert? When?'

Lovegood looked up. He saw Gerry on the portico: We are…representatives of the Malfoy estate. 'Yamuna,' he said. '1623.' Take that, Binns. Who needs notes?

'Yamuna,' said Susurro. 'Who or what is Yamuna?'

'A graphomaniac.'

She leaned back on her hands and considered him. 'Maybe Tuttle can make sense of you.'

He was still there, standing in the tent flap. 'I tol' ya' the lad was nosin' round 'bout yer, didn't I, Sus? Heard 'em in there sayin' Sus this, Sus that, and so on.'

A grin broke out on Lovegood's face. 'That's when you smashed through the door with your cart!'

Tuttle, blushing with pride, pretended he had a hat, pretended to remove it, pretended to wring the hat self-consciously at his waist. 'Indade, yer honor, Sir Justlinus. Wait 'til I tell ol' Brodie. Murdo said, he said, "Rooney, in a basilisk's eye some Squeaky Chief's caught the scent of our Sus." Bet him a whole heap of money, I did. Or,' he put his hat back on and scratched his temple, 'or should have. Can't recall which.'

Lovegood thought, I will see a man with no left leg and no left eye, and I will say, Hello, Brodie.

'To tell you the truth,' he said, 'I don't even know what a graphomaniac is.'

'Feel up to walking?' he was asked by the twice dead, nearly 4oo-year old woman.

He opened his palms to her and she lifted him up. His muscles were kinked, his back tight, but in a way it wasn't as bad as the first time. In another way it was worse: there was a general numbness. It was possible to imagine that he didn't hurt as bad because there wasn't as much of him to hurt. At any rate, no sense worrying. The tuning fork deep in his soul was humming. He felt neighborly with death, as though it were a place he could see right next to him. A kinship. Stepping out of the tent, the triangle of the world—scudding clouds, meandering canoe, crumbling shoreline—opened up vastly. Salted air cool on his skin, warm sunshine. The sky sliding off in every direction forever, dwarfing the little isle.

'Where are we?'

'Fort Island,' said Ann Susurro. 'Come, we'll circle the world together.'

She set the pace. There were lots more tents like his, though he couldn't have known that. His had been situated on the perimeter of a village of them. One starts out in a pocket, catches a glimpse of the world and thinks: Ah, all for me!

There were wooden structures, too. And ruins. He said, 'Is Rupert Brood a friend of yours?'

'Let's say an ally. Rupert doesn't make friends.'

'Poor man.'

They went up a brief, grassy slope and found themselves at the brink of the sea. Susurro gave him a sidelong glance. 'I confess I hadn't thought you'd be this interesting.'

'Not as interesting as you. Would you explain things to me?'

'What do you want to know?'

From here his vision spanned the island. In the distance a long causeway connected to a larger land mass. 'Well, I already asked how you're still alive, but you avoided that. And then you told me Brood's your ally, which begs the question: What's your project? But I think I know that too.'

'Do you?'

'You're opposed to the International Statute of Secrecy. You think we should live openly with Muggles. You believe we're angels.'

She laughed happily and began walking again. He followed.

୫

'What do you know about King Arthur's time?' she asked.

Tuttle had peeled off, perhaps to inquire of Murdo Brodie as to whether any money was owed him. Alone they walked the border of the island. It was an elemental place: sea and sky, air and rock. Lovegood felt intensely comfortable in it.

'The usual,' he said. 'Excalibur. The table round. Gwynevere and Lancelot and that. Of course Merlin.'

'Merlin. Doesn't Slytherin claim him?'

'Well, he was Slytherin. They say Salazar taught him personally.'

'Because Salazar taught when Hogwarts was first formed.'

'Yes.'

'Which was when?'

'The late 10th century,' Lovegood said. It astonished, to think years once came in less than four digits. '993,' he clarified.

'I see. So King Arthur must have come after that, for Merlin to have aided him…?'

Lovegood hated correcting other people's errors, but it was one of those things you had to do. Better to bear the pain of correction once than repeat an error and look the fool over and over. 'Actually,' he said. 'Arthur and them came long before Hogwarts. About five centuries, I believe.'

Susurro was silent. The sting of correction was acute. Lovegood let the silence work its palliative magic.

They did a steady pace along the shore. Fishermen dotted the waters, their wooden boats bobbing. Inland, children sat upon benches in rows, an adult standing before them elaborately spellcasting. Weather sprung from the tip of his wand: a busy, noisome cone of winds and rains, snowfall and lightning. The actual sun peaked out between shouldering clouds.

He stopped. 'Hang on.'

'It's a paradox most of us can't recognize,' Susurro said carefully. 'Really, I think a spot of brain damage probably helps.'

'Wait,' Lovegood said again.

'Unless Merlin was five-hundred years old as a first year…' Susurro said.

'But,' he tried.

Merlin was dead by the time Hogwarts was founded. How had he never seen it before?

Now he was the one who started walking, and she the one who followed.

'Say you're Nightless Day, and today you're going to destroy a religion. It's a lot of work, a hell of a job, but you're extremely powerful and well-connected. There's much to undo, but most of it can be repurposed. Temples are just buildings after all; books flammable; flesh mortal. Memory erodes all by itself, and you can help it along. You've practiced that.'

'London,' said Lovegood. 'After Vandal.'

'Back then you stood up in front of the Wizard's Council and said, if I can do a person I can do a town full of them. If I can do a city, I can do a country full of cities. Scale isn't real. And you made it rain for thirteen days, and when the rain had dried Brindlestick was gone. But you still have one problem left. Where do you put gods? Where do you put gods that exist as much in Muggle mythology as our own? If you can't erase them, and you can't afford people to ever suspect, ever again, that they could possibly have been on the side of divine good, where do you put them?'

Lovegood laughed. It was so obvious, now.

You put them in Slytherin.

୫

'Only he's dead,' Lovegood pointed out. 'I've seen his grave. Seems an ungodlike thing to have: a grave. Doesn't it?'

'A tree is not a grave,' Susurro replied. 'A monument, not a grave. But it's true, you're right: how does a god die? And the answer is, Merlin was a halfblood. He was Nephilim: sired by an angel on a Muggle woman.'

'That's convenient.'

'That's history. Four thinks two and two is convenient.'

Lovegood felt the equation in his knees, in his back. They'd reached a round fort made of white stones. They stood, admiring it. It was situated on the island's apex and had a compass's vantage of the sea. Windows in the stones were spaced at precise intervals for cannonry. 'Fort Island,' he said.

'From a Muggle conflict in the 1600s. Its real name is St. Michael's Isle.'

Michael's Isle had a nice ring to it. He pointed toward the larger mass to which the causeway joined. 'That's the Isle of Man?'

She nodded. Her eyes at this range were intense. 'When the Earl of Derby came to build the fort, he found a hole in the ground. Right here. It had the best view and a bit of foundation still, so he planted his fort on it. Do you know what used to be here?'

'Yes,' said Lovegood. 'Shambhala House was here.' He walked on.

୫

'How did Day know you murdered deMille?'

'I didn't murder deMille.'

'You imperiused him somehow. I think it was your wand. He'd gotten it off you, then he said yes one time and you had him. You made him do it. And let us not forget—'

'I broke his neck.'

'—you broke his neck, yes, that's what I was about to say.'

'I only broke it after he was already asphyxiating. It was a mercy. I didn't ask to be ambushed. And in hindsight, it was a mistake. So was the horse. I was afraid…if Day got hold of the horse…well, if anyone could figure out what it had seen… But it was a mistake. I only made it look less like a suicide.'

'So how did he know?'

She sighed. 'I've wondered that ever since. My only remaining theory is: he didn't.'

'He was guessing. He uprooted Shambhala and flew it across the Irish Sea on a guess.'

'Gambling, more. He used the murder charge as a pretext to torture a confession out of me. I didn't burn for poor Rybel, you know.'

'Why?'

'You can't understand how much we hated each other. In one stroke he buried me and everything I represented. It was worth it to him. Brindlestick was the last challenge to his control of Wizardry.'

'Not Castlemore?'

'Castlemore was a pawn on a board. My mistake was being seen moving him. You might've inherited a very different world.'

'Five instead of four,' said Lovegood. 'But you didn't fight Day when you had the chance.'

She laughed. 'I'd done nothing but fight him. My whole life to that point had been fighting Nightless Day! Since we were first years at Hogwarts… But there was no confronting him the year I burned. He wasn't like us. You saw what he did to Jon Jonson. You could only hope to get around him somehow. Our entire plan depended on getting around him. deMille ruined everything.'

They walked in silence for a moment. Inland, families and couples were picnicking. Lovegood wasn't sure he was ever going to be conventionally hungry again. He realized he was wearing the hardy brown trousers when he slipped his hands into their pockets. 'He didn't kill Jonson,' he mentioned.

'Excuse me?'

'It was Miles Moriona he killed.'

For a full minute, perhaps, it was just the send of the water, the murmur of picnickers perhaps a half-throw distant, the whistle of the northern air, their four booted feet walking.

The sting of correction was acute.

୫

Another ruin: an ancient chapel, reduced to the sketch of one in stone. Already the sky was bluer. It bluely broadcast through what would have been the lone window on the tallest wall. Lovegood paused, but Susurro pushed him along. Inside, on the wild ground, a bald and grizzly wizard prayed on his knees before a towering and moving but silent image of Merlin painted onto the high wall. On the interior, the blue window opened in the middle of his brow.

Lovegood tapped himself there. 'Third eye,' he said, winking.

'What the—'

The grizzled penitent clambered to his feet, limped over and accosted Lovegood.

'Just who do you think you are, interruptin' a wizard at prayer?'

His was an extraordinary face: wall-eyed, scarred as a map and tattooed with drunken audacity; his breath was atrocious. His finger was like a hammer on Lovegood's chest.

Susurro put her hand there. 'This is Linus Lovegood, he's with me. Linus, this is—'

'No, wait, I've practiced!' said Lovegood. 'Hello, Brodie.'

The man stepped back. Susurro laughed. 'You don't know Murdo Brodie. You can't. He's been here—'

'35 years,' Lovegood interrupted. 'Isn't that right? Or is it 36, now? Since the explosion at the Three Broomsticks, isn't that so?'

The man was speechless. He said, 'Sus…?'

'I told the Inspector you could have survived. I can't remember how I figured it out, but I guess I did. Here's what I want to know: Did you set out to kill Fenton Pennyboil, or was it an accident?'

His swarthy face went swarthier. His right eye glossed. His strong dark scarred and dimpled chin quivered. ''Twas an accident, on my honor. We was all set to make a trade. A baby Ridgeback for a quart of Sus's medicine. It was hard luck, that's all. The little dragon musta burped, is all I can figure. And we none of us knew how explosive the, the,' he was looking at Susurro, running into something he couldn't penetrate. ''Twas Tuttle's fault if it was anyone's. He arranged things. He was our man at Hogwarts then. He should've known if anyone did.'

Lovegood watched Susurro help the weeping Murdo Brodie out of the chapel.

The painting portrayed Merlin as a young man. He had fiery red eyes, curly white-blonde hair, the furze of a curly, white-blonde beard. He was sitting in the very middle of an unrealistically symmetrical oak, whittling a wand from one of its branches. Below him and at depth a battle raged between factions of Dark Age Muggles. Men and women, mostly naked, hacked at each other with axes, hurled hatchets, poked holes with blades. It was magical work so everything moved on the crumbly chapel walls, tufted with grasses and alive with bees. For a moment, Lovegood was entranced by Merlin's red eyes.

He remembered his wand, felt for it, didn't find it, and experienced a little rupture of sadness. Those days were over, it seemed.

'Was this the original chapel of St. Michael?'

Susurro nodded. 'Built in the eleven-hundreds. And before that, it was a different chapel, for different gods. That's how religions work.'

'That's how everything works, isn't it?' He looked down from the entrancing Merlin. 'How did I get here?'

'A good friend of ours helped you escape Muggle justice.'

'Oh dear. Did I get caught up in Muggle justice?'

'They think you shot a man over a girl's honor. Our friend's son, as a matter of fact.'

'Doesn't sound like me.'

'We thought the same thing.'

Lovegood's memory of the events leading up to Epping Forest was unstructured. 'Which one was Saint Michael?' he asked.

'The one who visits you at death and decides which direction you'll go. Shall we?'

Lovegood closed his eyes. He was on the high grass that used to be a chapel floor, and before that a different chapel's floor, and that was now still another chapel's floor. Given all the action transpiring perpetually on the wall before him, it was strange that he heard nothing. No clang of metal, no wet thud of pierced bodies, no scrape of whittled branch. His neighbor Death had seen him and was coming over, undoubtedly to embark on a conversation that would take awhile. He said, 'Tell me about Brindlestick.'

୫

The chapel was behind them, but to Lovegood it failed to recede. He felt it on his back. Did the warring Muggles clash when no one was there? Did Merlin carve his wand? The answer is: No one ever wasn't there, because on Earth, the quick were everywhere a minority; the dead blanket the land… The chapel was never empty.

'For instance, why was it called the fifth house? If it was just one of five, any of them could've been called the fifth house. Or were they all ranked at one point?'

'Bridgit wasn't there at the beginning. She joined at the millennium, in the year 1000, after the first class graduated. The founders decided they'd missed something. They had gallantry, fairness, wisdom and striving, but they lacked belief, lacked endurance. Bridgit had both. She was the high priestess of Merlin and a master of wandcraft. "Heart in the wood, head in the clouds." She once went a year without eating.'

Lovegood recoiled. 'Why?'

'Just to prove it could be done. To prove that, for us, magic is enough. That the world—this world—is a trap.'

There was no masking from a cat lover the feel of one plunging into the shin. A full-body shiver scaled Lovegood from the soles of his feet. An orange Manx, with its Manx taillessness, looked up at him with pellucid, indicting eyes. Meowed.

If this is a trap, he thought, let me be trapped.

'They're everywhere,' she said a minute later. 'If you stop to pet each one, we'll be out here forever.'

The sun was behind her head now, from his angle. Its rays connived to squeeze tears from him. He said, 'I think I'll never see Portia again.'

୫

Their circumambulation of the island visibly neared its end. They passed the causeway without much remark, because he was preoccupied with his neighbor and Portia and the friends he'd left behind. He identified his tent, alone out there on the perimeter. Tent of the outlier. The recluse. The degenerate. They got closer with every step.

'How have you lived so long? Tell me the truth: is it the wand?'

She brought it out. For the first time, he saw it clear. He'd never seen one longer: a foot and a half if it was an inch, and truly brindled: striped and splotched and peppered all the way down in a swirling pattern of coal and rust.

How curved it was! Lovegood laughed, delighted. 'What's the core?'

'You say you saw Merlin's grave?'

'Gerry showed me. Next to the great oak.'

'That's appropriate. Legend says Merlin's wand was English oak, but legend's wrong. It was yew, like this. And yew wands become yew trees when they're planted. The Brindlesticks—I did mention they were masters of wandlore—Bridgit was a prodigy of the craft. Legend has it one of her ancestors met him—met Merlin himself—when he was on death's door. That this Brindlestick got something off of him, and that it lives right here, in the Brindled Stick: a strand of Merlin's beard.'

Lovegood gasped. 'But legend's wrong?'

She shook her head, put away the wand, stopped walking.

He looked at the tiny bay. In the water, the canoe dawdled, idly nestled a spill of rock. Lovegood was closer now to the canoe than he was before. He was perhaps a roll distant. He saw that it was scrimshawed all over. Not merely a vessel, but an object of buoyant art.

'Is the muskrat involved?' he asked Susurro.

She squinted at him. 'What's a muskrat?'

He sighed. The canoe knocked stupidly against the rocks. He put his hands in his pockets and glared at her. I asked you a question, the glare said. How are you still alive?

She sighed. 'I'm a witch, Lovegood. I eat boys.'

୫

'This is where it will happen,' she said. 'On the open water.' He could only just barely see the island—a line of garbled text at the bottom of the page. The sun was a tyrant the clouds retreated from. The folding water shimmered and glared. Lovegood thought, What season is it? She wasn't looking at him but out at the waters, as if at tomorrow, or yesterday.

He said, 'Will you do it now?'

Then he said, 'Let me say something.'

It was harder to concentrate with the brindled stick pointed at him, but in another way it was easier. His entire life dropped into the palm of his hand. If it were any bigger, he'd have no clue how to handle it.

The small, fickle breeze gently tossed her hair.

He said, 'You're not immortal, Ann Susurro. Even you don't know your whole story. I saw you slip the wand to Bryn Poole when Day came to arrest you.'

Goodness, she was standing? She was standing, on the scrimshawed canoe, laughing behind her long curving wand. But not an evil laugh. Not a cackle. Lovegood willed himself to go ahead and say something. He willed his emotions to surge.

Was he too far gone for that?

He said, 'Rupert Brood and Moses Jones aren't your only friends, are they? Who else will help you reveal wizardry to the Muggles?'

It was bludger-sized, or maybe a bit smaller, he thought. He wished now he'd asked Tuttle what one weighed. He imagined throwing it anyway.

Now she was crying again. She said, 'Forgive me, Linus Lovegood.'

He realized: you can throw anything away, no matter its weight, if you're not concerned with the instant after it leaves your hand. Weight only comes from the future. He said, 'Forgive who?'

He saw her mouth open. Light spilled from the brindled wand.

Light incandesced Lovegood.

His fist opened; the ball was swallowed up by the sea.

୫

Nearby, an owl in a barn on Scarlett Point shivered from sleep. It shruffed and yawned. It whattled and blinked. There was a letter tied to its leg.

The air smelled of mouse, but deep instruction controlled.

She'd traversed the Irish Sea before. The sky pulled at her.

She skittered into flight, clawed into the air and burst over the sparkling waves.

She charged into the blue, its grand orange fissure, the sun setting.

Up here she could see the world's curve. Everything curving towards, curving away.

Her destination is ½ Main Street, Hogsmeade, Shambhala.

She is a motion in the darkling sky, an agent of what comes next.

End

To Be Continued...

in...

Magda Coyne & the Fittest Witch