'Come on, Lucas, wake up!' Greg knocked on the door of the spare bedroom at 11, Manaton Close, calling into the morning half-light.

'No...' the other boy mumbled. 'Go away, Kevin.'

'Lukie?' Greg knocked again. 'It's not Kevin, it's Greg. You alright?'

'What?' This time the other boy's eyes blinked slowly open. 'Oh,' he smiled, weakly. 'Yeah.'

'Don't worry about Kevin,' Greg shook his head. 'That tosser's not going to bother you this week.'

Lucas nodded.

'Come on then!' Greg laughed. 'It's Christmas day. We can't start without you!'

'Me...?' Lucas rubbed his eyes.

'Who else did you think I meant?'

The redheaded boy laughed, pushing himself out of the bed and grabbing a plain white t-shirt from the top of a chest of drawers.

'Happy Christmas, Mum, Dad!' Greg announced as he burst into the Bennetts' front room.

'And a Happy Christmas to you too, Greg,' Elaine Bennett echoed, embracing her only son, 'and Lucas, of course,' she smiled.

'Happy Christmas, Mrs Bennett,' Lucas replied, quietly.

'Let's start with yours, Lucas,' Greg suggested, enthusiastically, picking up a present from a pile behind him. 'This is from me,' he explained.

'Thanks,' Lucas began to unwrap the gift. 'Get the most out of your broomstick,' he read the cover of a book. '101 tips for faster flying.'

'I was gonna get you Flying for Dummies,' Greg joked, 'but the first page told you which end of the broom was which, and I thought you could just about manage that already.'

Lucas smiled. 'Thanks, Greg.' He put the book down by his side, reaching for another parcel. 'This is for you.'

'Cool,' Greg began to pull off the wrapping paper off another book. 'Magic for Muggle-borns: what every wizard should know.'

'I couldn't think of what to get you...' Lucas blushed as he watched his friend examine the hardback.

'It's okay, mate,' Greg looked up, noticing his friend's concerned face. 'This is great. Thank you.' He reached an arm around the other boy's shoulders.

'I'm afraid there's nothing magical from us,' Joseph Bennett, Greg's father, a thin man with fine greying hair, explained as he picked out two presents for the boys. 'You're always going on about how cold it is up there!' He grinned as his son unwrapped a thick winter coat. 'Suitable for the arctic, it says, so that should do you for Scotland.'

'Thanks, Dad.'

'Wow,' Lucas interrupted, opening his own present, revealing a smart fleece jacket. 'Thank you...' he stuttered, uncertain how to react.

'That's alright, Lucas,' Elaine answered the eleven-year-old. 'I'm glad you like it.'

'It's brilliant,' he smiled. 'This is the best Christmas ever.'

'Wait for Mum's Christmas Dinner, then,' Greg laughed. 'It's going to get even better!'

'Well, Lucas,' Joseph Bennett turned to his son's friend the following evening, as the three of them got off a noisy, single-deck bus that had rattled along Chudleigh's main street. 'Still the best Christmas ever?'

'Yes,' the boy answered, emphatically.

'For me as well,' Greg added with a wide grin, 'especially after that – 4-0, against Aldershot! Did you see Challinor's goal?' The blond boy did his best to recreate Exeter's third goal of the afternoon, skipping around a lamppost before striking an imaginary football high and hard beyond a forlorn goalkeeper.

'Maybe that'll be you one day, Greg,' the man ruffled his son's hair. 'Not sure your name fits Amarillo quite so well, though,' he smiled as the boys took up the terrace chant.

'Cha-la-la-la-la, la-li-nor, Cha-la-la-la-la, la-li-nor, Cha-la-la-la-la, la-li-nor, Jonny C will score for me!' Lucas couldn't stop himself from giggling as Greg's voice grew louder, attracting a few bemused stares from locals as they walked past a whitewashed pub called the Highwayman's Haunt.

'Mr Bennett,' the redhead enquired, 'what's a highwayman?'

'Oh,' the man started to answer, 'a long story, Lucas.' He paused. 'What do you know about British history?'

'A bit,' Lucas tensed, biting his lip as he wondered how to answer.

'Do you know about Elizabethan times?' Greg's father continued, 'the sixteenth century?'

'A bit,' the boy repeated himself. 'That was before the Statute of Secrecy, so some things kind of overlap,' he explained.

'Good,' Joseph began. 'Well, back then we didn't have proper roads, or cars, or any of this like you see today.' He gestured loosely to the street around them as they walked along. 'If you wanted to get anywhere, you had to go in a horse-drawn carriage, down narrow, uneven forest tracks – or highways. Of course,' the man added, 'we didn't have any streetlights, either, so it was pitch black overnight, except for any candles or lanterns you had on your carriage.'

'Now, they were quite good for helping you to see,' Joseph continued, 'but they were even better for helping other people to see you – and when that person was a highwayman, and he had a gun, and you didn't, then that really wasn't good news.'

Lucas nodded his understanding. 'Were there lots of highwaymen around here?'

'They say so,' Mr Bennett replied, 'but there were more up on the moor.' He angled his head toward the west of the town, where the boys knew that the granite masses of Dartmoor rose up into the heart of Devon. 'There are a lot of stories about the moor, though, stories that can't be real...' he tailed off, looking back down at the two children. 'Or could they?'

'Theo!' Greg called excitedly along the platform at Paddington station as he sighted his best friend, waiting beside the famous statue of the eponymous bear.

'Hey, Greg,' the other boy smiled back, flicking the fringe of his blond hair, which was long at the start of the holidays and clearly hadn't been cut since, away from his eyes. 'Hi, Luc.'

'Not getting it cut, then?' Greg laughed

'No!' Theo ducked away as the other blond reached out to disturb the strands that now dipped beyond the bottom of his ears. 'Come on,' he beckoned, 'we've got to get to the underground.'

'Underground?' Lucas asked, his voice uncertain.

'Yeah,' Greg nodded, 'just another train,' he explained. 'Use it in your homework!' He hurried after Theo as his friend nipped through the staircases and corridors that led down to the subway stations. 'Did you have a good holiday?'

'Yes,' he smiled, glancing over his shoulder as the boys passed through a ticket barrier. 'I've got some photos at home; I'll show you when we get back. What about you?'

'Good, thanks,' Greg answered, following Theo as they wound through the tunnels approaching the platform edge. 'We found out some really weird stuff when we were researching Neal's project, too. Tell you later.'

The boys kept up their idle chatter as the tube train clattered its short journey through the centre of the city towards Theo's suburban home, discussing their holiday and reminding one another of the things they were looking forward to the most ahead of their return to school.

'This is ours,' Theo indicated the white fronting of a particular Georgian town house, a few moments after the boys had emerged into the chilly London air. 'We're back,' he announced into the entrance hall, pushing the front door open. 'Come on,' he turned to his friends, 'let's go upstairs.'

'I wish we could levitate our trunks,' Lucas muttered, helping his friends to lift Greg's case up the stairwell.

Theo nodded his agreement. 'Particularly as we're on the top floor.'

'What?' Greg blinked, disbelieving.

'Just think of it like Quidditch training,' Theo shrugged.

'When have we ever had Quidditch training like this?' Greg answered back. 'It's not rugby, you know, Theo!'

'Whatever!' The other boy stuck his tongue out, letting the trunk drop to the floor as they reached the topmost landing. 'It's easier on the way down.' The three children repeated their task, heaving Lucas' case to the top of the stairs, before Theo led them through into his own bedroom.

'Think I'll take this off now,' Greg unzipped the thick jacket his parents had bought him for Christmas, and laid it on top of his trunk.

'Yeah,' Lucas agreed, removing his own fleece, 'way too hot.'

'Here's my holiday pictures,' Theo reached for a laptop computer, waiting for it to load its contents. 'We went to Cape Town,' he set the computer onto his bed, unfastening his coat and revealing his sunbrowned arms.

'Can tell you haven't been in England!' Greg laughed, comparing his own paler skin with his friend's.

'I think my back's browner than that!' Theo smiled, pulling his t-shirt over his head. 'Yeah!'

'Oh, piss off,' Greg rolled his eyes, 'and put your shirt back on. It's bloody January!'

Theo grinned impishly, before following his friend's instructions as he clicked through his computer's menu screens. 'This is Table Mountain,' he introduced a picture of a slate grey peak that towered above the city in its shadow, 'and this is Newlands rugby ground. I did a rugby course there...'

Greg and Lucas did their best to retain interested expressions as they watched Theo scroll through the roll of pictures, ranging from rugby pitches and swimming pools to safari parks and penguin-filled beaches. 'So that was my holiday,' he concluded.

'Cool,' Greg nodded, glancing mischievously at Lucas. 'Not quite Wistman's Wood, though, is it?'

Lucas laughed as Theo sat up, affronted. 'What?' he stuttered. 'Whose wood?'

'Wistman's Wood,' the redhead repeated. 'Home, so the stories go, to the Wild Hunt.'

Theo pushed the lid of his laptop shut. 'The Wild Hunt? Is that like the Headless Hunt?'

Lucas shrugged. 'I don't know,' he shook his head, 'but listen to what we found out.' He pushed himself up from his friend's bed, unfastening his travelling trunk and lifting out a neat ring binder.

'I got him using muggle stuff,' Greg grinned as the other boy opened up the folder and began to read.

'The Wild Hunt,' he began, 'is found in stories of mythology and folklore across Britain and Northern Europe. Whilst the exact nature of the huntsmen differs from region to region, a handful of key similarities link each legend: giant black dogs, leaders with no compassion for their prey, and ranks that would chase to the ends of the earth.'

'Is this part of Neal's project?' Theo asked, and Greg nodded quickly as he took over his friend's narration. 'My Dad was talking about different stories that he'd heard about Dartmoor. He told us stories he'd heard as a little boy, stories that he'd been convinced couldn't have been true: but now that he knew about the magical world, now he wasn't so sure.'

'There were lots of stories about the Hunt,' Lucas continued, 'ambushing travellers, foretelling death... and they all kept leading back to Wistman's Wood.'

'So we did the first thing we could think of,' Greg noticed Theo's eyes stare grimly back at him as he spoke. 'Me, Luc, Matt and Dad – we went to the wood to see what it was like for ourselves.'

'Did you see anything...?'

'No,' Lucas shook his head, 'and I'm glad we didn't, now we've read all the stories,' he shuddered. 'We could feel it, though – all of us, even Greg's Dad. There was something strange about the place, something in the air that made you nervous every time you went round a new corner or came to a fork in the road.'

'You know when you walk into a classroom after the seventh-years have been in there?' Greg continued. 'When you can tell someone's done some powerful magic, but you just don't know what. This was the same. Matt said it was something like a magical signature.'

'That's not all, though,' Lucas took on the narrative before Theo had a chance to ask any further questions. 'We were looking up the Hunt, trying to find out more about it, and there's lots of stories, but there was one name, one name that kept coming up...' he tailed off, staring at Theo as he discovered he could no longer find the words with which he wanted to continue.

'Who?' Theo stared back.

Greg took a deep breath. 'Tregeagle.'

'Crap.'

'Yeah,' Greg smiled, slowly. 'I guess you could put it like that.'

'But...' Theo shook his head. 'Our Tregeagle?'

'It must be some relation,' Lucas answered. 'Even the muggle stories agree that Jan Tregeagle was a real person, a lawyer in the 17th century – selfish, greedy, arrogant. Classic Slytherin,' the boy sighed. 'There's a story that he was sent to hell, but returned to a courtroom to give evidence against someone who owed money. Then the jury agreed that they couldn't send him back to hell, so they gave him tasks to do that would keep him busy – but safe from the Wild Hunt – forever.'

Theo nodded, digesting his friends' stories. 'He was definitely a wizard...?'

Greg nodded. 'Yes.'

'Muggles can't come back as ghosts,' Lucas explained. 'He must have been a wizard. So Professor Tregeagle must be descended from him.'

'And so must Joshua,' Greg concluded.

'Joshua?' Theo gazed at the other blond boy.

'Yes,' Greg shrugged, nonplussed by his friend's reaction. 'Joshua Tregeagle. Gryffindor, in our year. One of Dawlish's mates. How else do you think he gets such good marks in Defence, but not in anything else? How do you think he knew about my detention with Slughorn?'

Theo sighed, nodding as he recognised the truth in his friend's observations.

'You can figure out what's made Tregeagle find out so much about Dark magic, though, can't you?' Lucas asked, rhetorically. 'If you know that the hounds of hell once chased your great-great-great grandfather to the end of the earth and back, you'd want to know how to cover yourself, wouldn't you?'

'I'd want to know more than how to cover myself,' Theo reflected. 'I'd want to know how to take them out, once and for all.' He shook his head. 'God, if you've found all that out, what am I going to do for my project?'

Greg glanced quickly to Lucas, and the two boys shared a thin smirk. 'Don't worry about that,' he grinned, lifting the front of the folder to reveal a cover that listed all three of the boys' names.

'But...'

'You're doing the illustrations,' Greg answered his friend's question before it could even be asked.

'Oh,' Theo laughed, 'cool. You don't fancy doing the other work as well, do you? I'll illustrate that, too,' he grinned.

'No chance, mate,' Greg laughed. 'We've hardly started the rest, anyway,' he explained. 'We spent all our time trying to find out about Tregeagle.'

'Oh well.' Theo shrugged, amiably. 'It was worth a try, I suppose.' He smiled. 'Which one are we going to start with first, then?'