Chapter 8
Up in the attic back home, Phileas was playing the games he, his brother, and Rebecca used to play together. Only Hazel had an added advantage they could never have dreamed of. The attic was set up as half storage and half playroom. In it, Hazel had an enchanted carpetbag that produced any costume or prop she asked for. The costumes came in the right sizes, too, for her and him.
After being a knight for a good part of the morning, the black cat was made into a black dragon. Then Hazel switched the time to something closer to the present, and they played at piracy. In this game, Manfred showed up, taking over as captain. The boy was bossy, but knew more pirate stories than Hazel.
With her brother's appearance, Hazel stopped talking directly to him. Apparently, her ability to talk to him was going to be kept a secret. Phileas tested Manfred's ability to hear him a few times. "That is a mainmast, not center mast," he corrected. The boy paid no heed and continued in his mistake.
With Manfred at the helm, they attacked a sea serpent/Phileas and trapped him in a sea cave/under a bushel basket. The children stole his treasure and hid it in a different cavern.
This was where the game became questionable. The hidden cavern was on the storage side of the attic. Mrs. Wendell had a large cache of costume jewelry in a box, which the children had used for the treasure. At least, Phileas hoped they were costume pieces the way the children were roughly handling them.
He tried to tell Hazel to leave the jewelry alone. She gave him a sour look and told the cat he was trapped, out of the game, and couldn't protect the treasure anymore.
While they had their backs turned, busy with their booty, the black tomcat pushed the basket over. He snuck over to inspect the jewelry after it was in its new hiding place. Most of it was in silver settings on silver chains. There were a few gold pieces, but most of the necklaces and bracelets were nothing of value Phileas could identify, just polished decorative rocks and crystals.
Hazel pulled out a little delicate thing on a silver chain wrapped in tissue paper. It was a bit too delicate. She broke the main pendant off, playing with it. Picking the broken piece up, an idea came to her. The girl picked up a silver bracelet that had no charms and had Manfred attach the broken pendant onto it.
Hazel gave the bracelet to him as a present. "Since you are so devoted to your duty as protector of the treasure," she said, "you should be rewarded."
Phileas backed away. "Thank you, my lady, but I don't wear lady's jewelry,"
Manfred, fully in the game's spirit, grabbed him from behind and held him still while Hazel locked her present around his neck. When done, she picked him up and carried him to a mirror to see his reflection.
It was the first look Phileas had of himself. He was a good-sized tom with a shiny black coat and white feet. His whiskers were very white, and he had a white patch under his chin where his cravat had been. The silver bracelet around his neck settled just above the patch, letting the round pendant hang down into the middle like an ornamental pin. The stone in the pendant was black, like an onyx, with iridescent speckles like mother-of-pearl.
Phileas said, "If your mother takes exception to this, you are going to be in deep trouble."
Almost immediately, the children's mother called them down to dinner. Hazel stayed back for a moment, thinking about his warning. She fingered his new collar again and picked Phileas up to carry downstairs.
In the kitchen, she put him down on the floor. "Mommy, I found a bracelet in the attic and gave it to Phil for a collar. Is it all right?"
Distracted in the food's serving, Mrs. Wendell looked down at the black cat. "Is that what you are calling him?"
She put the dish she was holding on the table and knelt beside the cat. She fingered the bracelet at the back of his neck to identify it, and let it go. "That one is fine," she said, and went after another dish. "You can get out another to give to the other if you like. What are you calling her? Where is she, by the way? I haven't seen her all day."
"Becca is on a mission," Hazel said.
That got an amused smile from her mother, but no other response.
Breakfast done with, the ginger and white cat wandered the streets of the enclosed neighborhood. The little people they saw the night before with oversized heads and pointed ears were called trolls. She heard a woman identify them as she commented on their meticulous nature. It seemed the trolls ran the bank, the accounting house, and several other such businesses.
The Spell Caster's Hall was found again shortly after ten. Trolls ran in and out there, too. The cat stood outside, wondering if she should chance going in.
The two wizards who had passed sentence on her walked out together. The tall old man with the beard was the one she needed most. Mrs. Pool said he was the only one who could change them back. She followed him as closely as it could.
The two men headed down the street to the secondhand robe shop. They didn't enter it, but went to the alley gate and through it, shutting the door behind them. Rebecca jumped on a stack of boxes and leaped to the top of the gate. Walking the top edge of the fence with the grace only a cat could have, she settled behind a drainpipe on the wall, watching and listening to the two men in the alley.
"That is how they got across," Malfoy said, pointing up to the plank spanning the alley. "The trolls found it here late last night. There is no access to the roof nearby, so they couldn't get it down themselves."
"How long do you think it will take Leach and Morgan to get the building back with Fogg gone missing? We should have questioned them more. Maybe we should have made the man sign over the building before transforming him. I went to the pet shop to get him back early this morning, but he and the woman had already been sold."
"It is too late for that now," Gryffindor said. "We will have to deal with the situation as we can. Now, let me levitate the walkway down."
Just as the old wizard was pulling his wand out of his sleeve, a noise rattled on the rooftop. Everyone in the alley looked up as Passepartout's head looked over the roof edge. He was a welcome sight to Rebecca, but a nuisance to the two wizards.
"Good day, sir," Marcus Gryffindor said, hailing him as he hid his wand. "Is there some reason for the walk across the alley?"
Passepartout pleaded ignorance. "I just thinking to ask you. This is not yours?"
"No, it isn't. Could you please remove it?" Gryffindor said. "No doubt a chimney sweep left it behind after his work."
Passepartout pulled the planking back to his side of the alley. "All done! I getting rid of pesky planking."
"Very good, sir," Gryffindor said, smiling back. He waved, and he and Malfoy left the street by the gate, passing Rebecca without noticing her.
"We will need to do something about security," Malfoy growled. "We can't have muggles wandering in on the roofs again. Come with me. I have a plan that should take care of it."
The men left the alleyway back into the street, followed by a small shadow. They took a fire escape up to a roofline at the intersection of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley to a narrow widow's walk on the corner building.
The building was a different meeting hall, brick with a clay tile roof. The widow's walk had a narrow balcony and walkway that circled the roofline.
The eavesdropping cat placed herself on the outside of the handrail on the clay roof tiles to listen. Her upper fur coloring blended almost perfectly.
"The enchantment set up to hide Diagon Alley from sight was a good idea in its time," Malfoy said, looking out over the district. "But it is fading efforts to renew it don't seem to work well anymore. I propose a new security enchantment. We need a true barrier against trespassers, not just an illusion to hide us. I want to set up gate stones with this as the central point for its controller. We can set the perimeter stones along rooflines just outside the district. For added security, we should have the entrances tied into it, too. Once finished, no non-magic creature will get in."
"Ambitious," Gryffindor said of it. "I like it, except that we allow non-magic visitors occasionally. Also, what about the animals? Your proposal would keep them out, too, and we need the owls to have free access to deliver the mails."
"Owls deliver mail here!" Rebecca was both amused and astounded.
"De-spell stones could be given to visitors," Malfoy offered. "Although my objection to that practice is well known to you."
Gryffindor sighed. Bernard Malfoy was from an old family of wizards. They didn't like muggles or non-magics of their own kind. He especially didn't like them having access to the hidden districts.
"Now, now," Gryffindor said. "Our numbers are not great. An occasional marriage to a Muggle isn't a bad thing. We have made several powerful and loyal allies over the centuries that way. The ministry of magic was started at the behest of one such alliance. Through it, our efforts to keep all magic people and creatures hidden from the non-magics have worked very well."
"I won't argue the point of keeping our dwindling numbers pure," Malfoy said, sour-faced. "Only a few families seem to understand that need anymore. De-spell stones will be given to the muggles, and I suppose the enchantment could be tuned to act against humans only. The mails will get through whether there are any pure witches and wizards left to accept them or not. As de-spell stones are so expensive and difficult to get, there will be few. Muggles will have to make appointments to visit."
"Make up the proposal and map out the implementation," Gryffindor said. "I see no reason for the council not to agree. You must have to have a plan about what happens to any Muggle that gets caught in the gate."
"I had thought to increase in the rat population," Malfoy said with a mischievous smile.
Gryffindor chuckled, but shook his head. "Something less drastic, I think. Perhaps a triggering of the purging reflex…?"
Malfoy laughed. "Now that is inspired. Send them running off to another more urgent errand, so to speak. I will work on that."
"You do that," the ginger and white cat thought. "If all your security is combined and controlled in one place, it will be more easily threatened."