Under a Dragon Moon

UNDER A DRAGON MOON

by Wemyss

a Sequel to Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

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Observe, in the streets at twilight, when the day is cloudy, the loveliness and tenderness spread on the faces of men and women.

- Leonardo (attributed)

There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr Gladstone, a Mr Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr Gladstone, a Mr Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences.

- GKC

The day before had been my one-and-twentieth birthday. Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal rights, the keys of an old secretary, in which my father had kept his private papers, had been delivered up to me. As soon as I was left alone, I ordered lights in the chamber where the secretary stood, the first lights that had been there for many a year; for, since my father's death, the room had been left undisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate to be easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to which, bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to light up the gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker shadows into the hollows of the deep-wrought cornice. All the further portions of the room lay shrouded in a mystery whose deepest folds were gathered around the dark oak cabinet which I now approached with a strange mingling of reverence and curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears. Perhaps I was to learn how my father, whose personal history was unknown to me, had woven his web of story; how he had found the world, and how the world had left him. Perhaps I was to find only the records of lands and moneys, how gotten and how secured; coming down from strange men, and through troublous times, to me, who knew little or nothing of them all. To solve my speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering around me as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the secretary; and having found the key that fitted the upper portion, I opened it with some difficulty, drew near it a heavy high-backed chair, and sat down before a multitude of little drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. But the door of a little cupboard in the centre especially attracted my interest, as if there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its key I found.

- George Macdonald

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3. The Clock Gone Wrong and the World Gone Right

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When we sleep, when we dream, we are at once in both realms, and in neither. In all realms, and in none. We are in the marches, the borderlands, the debatable lands between what is and what is not - or is not yet: far from the fields we know.

These are the dreams and some of the days of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, as the crisis of the ages overshadows them, and the world's last night.

But which are whose, now? And which are dreams, and which, days? What is future, present, past? What is true vision, and what, nightmare?

To this question they return no answer. They do not answer it; they do not ask it. They hardly know to ask. They do but dream, and dreams, of course, need not hold coherence, sense, linearity, consistency.

They had failed, once before, failed themselves and their world, failed Albus, failed all. They had failed in their waking lives after coming so near triumph in dreams. Now the too-vast orb of the world's fate was poised, balanced, trembling, upon the merest point of agate, suspended, pendant, pending upon their choices. And they slept. A hundred miles and more from each other, they slept, and met in dreams, and in dreams was decided the future of the world.

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'What is it?'

'An emergency -'

'That much was obvious, thank you -'

'We're needed in Italy, now. Thank God that the hols aren't over yet and Hilary Term hasn't begun, we'll want Hermione, Christ, we want the lot -'

'Draco, please. Obviously this is far graver than when we missed Prize Day and Hermione wouldn't speak to us for weeks. Peaceful weeks, those were.... So do calm yourself. What is the crisis?'

'Justin. Blaise. The. Oh, God, Harry. Someone tried to kill Blaise's mum.'

'Sod packing, then, we'll buy anything we need once we're there. What happened?' Harry was changing robes, swiftly, and making certain he had money and weapons.

'Muggles. A whole village of them. They ... they were going to burn her, Harry. For a witch. Oh, Harry.... The Burning Times are beginning again.'

---------------------------------

'You are British?'

'Well, er, I'm English....' Justin had adopted that bland air of polite diffidence that had served him so well over the years, as it had done for thousands of Englishmen in difficulties over the centuries, at home and abroad.

The local Auror, or whatever the equivalent of that was here - and as Wizards had not fully adjusted to Muggle political upheavals, he might well be a Habsburg Ministry servant rather than an Italian one, for all Justin knew - had been polite enough. Even so, looking about the spare, if not uncomfortable, room, and sensing its wards, Justin recognised that it could as easily become a cell as it was now a holding and interrogation room. Like bloody King Richard in the Emperor's prison, he thought. Past time a minstrel Blondel turned up, really. The whole situation is simply absurd.

That was when he heard the sound of the pipes.

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The House of Black had made their share of canny marriages, often as political as they were monetary: with Welsh families - the Flints, for one - and Irish - the Burkes - and, on no few occasions, with Scots families as well. Blood mattered, to the Blacks, more so even than the uncomfortable fact that the Burkes, the ancient de Burgh line, had descended to shop-keeping. Blood mattered: blood, and the preservation of tenuous alliances in a Wizarding world that was far less firmly politically integrated than is the Muggles's United Kingdom. The Clan MacNeil, which was after all also connected to Minerva's mother's line and to Ernie's Macmillans, Morag's Macdougals, Natalie's McDonalds, and those pure, pute asses the McLaggens, had oft been courted by the Blacks, and their success had found its memorial in Phineas Nigellus's name, however he Latinised it. It had probably amused him, sardonic old bastard as he'd been: Nigellus was at once a Latinisation of 'Neil' and of 'Black', and one of the most famous of the MacNeils of Barra had been Roderick Dhu, Roderick the Black, him who was The MacNeil at the time of Killiecrankie and the '15 and held in wi' the Prince; and that guid man had well kennit that he had never reason to doubt Roderick Dhu, sixteenth Chief of the Clan, whose leal adherence to the Jacobite cause never wavered. Thus, although the surname 'Black' is generally found, in Scotland, amongst septs of the Lamonts and the Macgregors, the House of Black owned themselves MacNeils, in the fashion the English have when they holiday in Scotland, drunk on romance, tartan, and myth.

In Wiltshire and in Dorset, in Devon and in the Summer Country, Draco and Harry lived peaceably amongst their neighbours. They effortlessly bridged the Wizarding and Muggle worlds, sometimes so much so as to involve themselves in difficulties.

Yet whiles, when the Simmer was on the land, or again when the crisp, cool flannels of that season had given way to grey winter's wool, or again when the swifts darted overhead and the banks of may flowered with their scent of sex and turned hedgerows to seeming snowdrifts, or again when berries were ripe and the cornlands thick with golden and autumnal wheat, they would steal away to Scotland, with the children. To Walliston House near Houston in Renfrewshire, mellow in the soft, fat, green land. To Fording Cottage, hard by Turra, ancient Turriff of the Templars, and the fishings there. To snug Wester Duncolm Farm, in Fife, rubescent amidst the gold of the barley that Ogden's insisted upon as the only grain it would deign use in its finest single-malt firewhisky. To the Adam-designed elegance of Cowie House in the auld burgh of Montrose. To the trim, chaste Georgian delicacy of their town house in Elgin, the Garden of Scotland, 'neath the eaves of the Oakwood to the West of that fair royal burgh where Thomas the Rhymer once prophesied. And in due season, they would know there in Alba the booming voice of the great gales sweeping in from o'er the salt and bitter sea, and the cry of gulls, and the crystalline nights when the snow was heavy on the land and the stars impossibly remote above the bitter-burning air; or the gilded and trumpeting glory of the Autumn-tide and them in it, with the clouds aye casting blue-grey shadows on the golden fields the while; or the cloudless Summer and the sudden laving rains that rolled away again to give way to cloudless Summer once more; or the blustering osprey-haunted winds that faded into Spring breezes as gentle as a Gaelic lullaby, and inspired those same songs and half the minstrelsy of Scotland, belike, when the hills robed themselves near in a night with hazy blossoms and colours that seemed as if glimpsed from afar by one strayed near to the borders of Themselves's lands, far from the fields we know.

Sometimes, when at home and with the children safely elsewhere (they had learnt this discretion the hard way), Harry would wear a comfortable pair of old, combed-cotton running shorts, pewter-coloured, as soft as thistledown; and for all Harry's nervous tightening of their drawstring, they had a habit - it was this that taught them discretion - of falling off even Harry's narrow hips, not even magic capable of keeping them in place, which falling invariably seized Draco's libido by the arm and dragged it to the fore. Naked Harry, as Draco was fond of observing, was Good Harry. Very Good Harry. But Draco had come to appreciate kilts as well, and their advantages.... In early years of their Summer Stays in Scotia, they'd thought to honour Ernie - the Blacks being after all directly connected with the Macmillans, as well as through the McNeils - by wearing Macmillan tartan as well as McNeil, indiscriminately, until Ernie, troubled, diffident, and thoroughly shocked, explained The Rules to the daft wee Sassenachs. It was just as well, Draco sometimes thought: in comparison with the MacNeil of Barra tartan, the Macmillan tartan did nothing for his colouring and complexion.

Yet it was not this kilted erotism, nor yet was it the romantic and rose-coloured fantasies that so enrapture the English in Scotland, that drew them back and back to Scotland from their loved West Country, but rather it was that they had grown to manhood in the iron Highland airs and flown its winds like the windcuffer itself, had drunk in its enchantments in their youth, had been nursed in their infancy in magical education at Scotia's beldam dugs. All unknowing in their hours of thoughtless youth had they breathed it in, the ancient wizardry of Alba, all unknowing in five years had they become instinct with the still sad music of it, and it was in them now and ever, a part of them.

In Wiltshire and in Dorset, in Devon and in the Summer Country, Draco and Harry lived peaceably amongst their neighbours. They effortlessly bridged the Wizarding and Muggle worlds, sometimes so much so as to involve themselves in difficulties. Living as they did in that liminal space between the worlds, they were wary even of casual question, and there had been a time, once, when Harry had been stymied by one, and Draco had cut in and answered; and after, they had spoken of it.

'Gordonstoun?'

'Yes, I'm sorry, I though you knew that. That's the standard answer we give Muggles when they ask. Before Gordonstoun, of course, we always claimed the High School of Dundee - and an insistent great-aunt who paid the fees and insisted, in paying, on HSD rather than, oh, Eton, or, in a pinch, Harrow.'

'But what happens if we actually run across an old boy - or girl - from there?'

'Not a problem, darling. They know to keep a still tongue: same arrangement as we had with the other place before that. Gordonstoun's where they send all the Squibs.'

'I thought it's where they sent the Royal Family.'

'As I said: it's where they send all the Squibs.'

It annoyed Draco no end when, thereafter, he would answer, 'Gordonstoun', and find that Harry had been admired for his modesty in answering, 'Oh, a private school in Scotland, nothing spectacular', which was on a level with Justin's father's traditional murmur, that he'd been at a small school near Windsor (or, worse yet, 'near Slough'). Side by indirection, Draco thought it, and was bitter that he'd not thought of it himself.

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In dreams, the immutable laws of logic are suspended. In dreams, contradictions are accepted, questionless, as sounding a silent sense. So it was that in Draco's dreams, shared though they were with Harry, all unknowing and unknown, the dreamt Draco of an imagined future accepted Harry's dream of a trial at a post-War Ministry, yet, in dreams, remembered this future's past differently to Harry's imaginings. The Draco of dreams, the post-War survivor and equivocal hero, recalled rather a Harry whose lightest word, in the teeth of his own desires and of Hermione's fretful worrying over a post-bellum Constitutional Settlement on strictly democratic lines, was law, and the Ministry of the day no more thought of trying those for whom he vouched than they would have done had Harry been a victorious Albus Dumbledore himself.

Rather was it that in, Draco's dreamt memory, Harry was, to his own modest and shy self-deprecating, honoured above all even of the other Victors, and had accepted, if reluctantly, Draco's training in using those advantages: which even Hermione, her pragmatism as ever at war with her ideals, had in the end approved. What Elizabeth Longford had once called 'the acquisitive fairyland of heraldry' had had its part, and the honours heaped on Harry and all the Victors, openly by the Wizarding, and discreetly by the Muggle, world, had become weapons in the struggles of the post-War reformations and reforms.

So it was that, in Draco's dreamt recollections of his future self, that Draco had been the one, after his first panic had passed, to Floo Hermione and see to it that when they descended upon the Continental authorities, as 'the terror of a small Italian town', they did so with visible authority, and all the pomp and pageantry that the British can muster when they list.

He had, admittedly, panicked in the first moments.

'What is it?'

'An emergency -'

'That much was obvious, thank you -'

'We're needed in Italy, now. Thank God that the hols aren't over yet and Hilary Term hasn't begun, we'll want Hermione, Christ, we want the lot -'

'Draco, please. Obviously this is far graver than when we missed Prize Day and Hermione wouldn't speak to us for weeks. Peaceful weeks, those were.... So do calm yourself. What is the crisis?'

'Justin. Blaise. The. Oh, God, Harry. Someone tried to kill Blaise's mum.'

'Sod packing, then, we'll buy anything we need once we're there. What happened?' Harry was changing robes, swiftly, and making certain he had money and weapons.

'Muggles. A whole village of them. They ... they were going to burn her, Harry. For a witch. Oh, Harry.... The Burning Times are beginning again.'

The panic had dissipated, however, answering Harry's calm: Harry was always at his best in a crisis, possibly because crisis was his natural environment, and long familiar to him, and Harry's best included his remarkable capacity to calm and reassure those caught up in crisis with him, simply by the force of his presence. By the time he'd reached Hermione, Draco was ready and able to work with her in ensuring that their arrival in Cavalese was to be impressively managed, overawing any opposition.

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Like bloody King Richard in the Emperor's prison, Justin thought. Past time a minstrel Blondel turned up, really. The whole situation is simply absurd.

That was when he heard the sound of the pipes.

The Lord Lyon, on the advice of the Wizarding World's own Albion King of Arms and the Wizarding College - until his death, John Brooke-Little had served as Albion, which was the true reason he had not been appointed Garter King of Arms despite his manifold qualifications for the post, and the reason also, given the Statute of Secrecy, for the Muggle belief that he lost files through sheer carelessness - the Lord Lyon would, had Harry not cut up rough at such suggestions, have prescribed a pipe banner for Harry's having a personal piper, even as John Brooke-Little had, with the Wizarding officers Wessex Herald and Merlin Pursuivant of Arms standing by to Obliviate Garter Principal of Arms if necessary, seen to Harry's achievement, the honours displayed, his badges, and his pennon.

Even in the interest of using his influence for good, however - that being the blandishment Draco, and even Hermione, always held out to coax Harry into his doing what they wanted - Harry had refused to put on that amount of side; and in fact, it had not been necessary. His magic and that of the other Victors was quite strong enough on its own to carry off most of his purposes, as witness the sound of the pipes at this very moment. Justin was as proudly 'mere English' as had been Good Queen Bess at Tilbury, but he had learnt to recognise these strains immediately. He thought back to two engagements of the War, the first having set up the second. Minerva had taught a favourite spell of hers to Ernie and Morag, and drilled them all in Transfiguration. The Death Eaters and the Dementors had stood off against the Order, until, from their flank and rear, the enemy had been startled by the appearance of hundreds of kilted Hieland warriors and the sound of the pipes, forcing them to turn about and fight. The hundreds of Jocks, the enemy had swiftly found, were Transfigured and animated rocks, but by that time they had learnt in a bitter lesson not to turn their backs on the Order. In the next engagement, the enemy had ignored the pipers and the warrior charge that took them in flank, resolving not to be taken in again; of course, on that occasion, the flank attack had been real, Aurors and Order members and Old DA types led by Ernie and Morag (Ernie had, temporarily, lost a leg that time, although the curse hadn't been so severe as to prevent its being restored), and the enemy had been shattered, reeling in headlong flight.

And so, as he sat, politely and discreetly detained, in an Italian magical gaol, Justin did not need to hear the spell cast, Cantus bellicus Scotiae, to know, in the first bright notes of that wild music, that his fellow Victors were at hand, and rescue here at last.

The standard on the Braes o' Mar
Is up and streaming rarely
The gathering-pipe on Lochnagar
Is sounding loud and sairly;
The Hielan men frae hill and glen
Wi' belted plaids and glittering blades
Wi' bonnets blue and hearts sae true
Are coming late and early.

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The people of Cavalese were used to pageantry. It was a stay and support of the local tourist economy, after all: which is how the current cock-up, indeed, had come about, with the reenactment of the Witch Trials. Yet this was extraordinary, this procession, this Banderal: these were clearly foreigners parading in, with dignity and circumstance fit for an emperor, yet also with a casual and understated confidence that could be worn only, with this pomp, by the British. See, see, Rosa! Maria, Paolo, come and see! Oh surely these are English. See the Sovrastante with the brave standard snapping in the wind, how tall he is, how fiery red his hair. Oh but these are English, do you remember in the war when the Tedeschi, the filthy Germans, left, and the English came in? Just so did they look then. Oh! Look! How fair he is, like moonlight and pearl, like a saint in the church! See them, their standard advanced, the Armigeri in their tabards of arms, such arms, so English, and the jewelled collars made of the letter 'M'! And it is as it was in the war, I could swear I heard the bagpipes from afar ... oh, see them process through, and enter the Town Hall....

Oor Leader's made a noble vow
Tae free his country fairly
Wha wid be a traitor noo
Tae ane we loo sae dearly?
We'll go, we'll go and seek the foe
By land or sea, where e'er they be
And man tae man and in the van
We'll win or die wi' - Harry.

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'Buongiorno.'

The Chief Auror of the district and of the Magnifica Comunità was cautiously polite, and determined to display his careful English. 'Good day to you all. I am Pietro Virgilio Unterperger, and command here. How may I be of service?'

Draco nodded subtly to Ron, who took on the introductions. 'Signor. Ronald Weasley, at your service. May I present the Right Honourable Doctor-Professor Neville Longbottom, OM, MPC, MW, Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Magical Affairs, and Mrs Longbottom, otherwise Luna Lovegood, proprietress of the Quibbler and the Daily Prophet; Mrs Colin Creevey, my sister Ginevra, Chief Unspeakable for the Ministry; my wife, Doctor-Professor Hermione Granger-Weasley; Mr Draco Malfoy; and ... Mr Harry Potter. All are members of the Magical Privy Council and the Wizengamot.'

'And,' added Draco, 'Mr Weasley is a Magical Privy Councillor, invested with the Order of Merlin First Class, and with, as well, the Godric Gryffindor Cross, with Bar.'

'We are honoured by your so distinguished presence,' responded Chief District Auror Unterperger, dryly. He had noted that Signor Malfoy and Signor Potter had carefully not mentioned all their honours. Had he but known it, he was thinking thoughts similar to some of Draco's, about the arrogance of diffidence, reverse snobbery, and what Draco had called 'side by indirection': and Unterperger, unlike Draco, did not think of these things with Slytherin approval. 'May I enquire as to your business here?'

Harry smiled at him, kindly. 'My dear sir, I imagine you well anticipate our answer. We are here to support and care for our old friend Blaise Zabini and his mother, in this trying time, and to ... assist you ... with resolving the matter of our old friend, Justin Finch-Fletchley.'

'The former, of course, is your private right and business, signor. The latter issue is within my jurisdiction, with respect.'

Nev's tone, in reply, was all but a dismissive pat on the shoulder. 'Ah, well, lad, happen it is and happen it isn't. Oor Justin does hold rank as Ambassador Plenipotentiary and is accredited to the International Confederation of Wizards, y'see, just as Blaise is accredited to the International Magical Trading Standards Body and attached to the Ministry's Department of International Magical Cooperation. It's a matter of diplomatic immunity, sithee, no fault to you that no one told you.'

Whatever else he may have been, Unterperger was a sportsman. His best bowling had just been hit for six, and touched up, what was more, with the sort of casual carelessness that is nowadays more associated with Yorkshire's County Ground than with Nev's beloved Lancashire. Yet he remained bland and courteous, and faced the batting calmly. He was a sportsman, all right, so much so that it was hard to credit that he was a foreigner.

'Certainly we do not wish a diplomatic incident, of course, be it detained diplomats or foreign governments marching openly through a Muggle town. We are of course honoured to accommodate your presence here, and you are of course free to come and go as you wish. But even in the face of diplomatic status, I must insist that Signor F-, Fin-, that your colleague -' damn these unpronounceable, barbaric English names! - 'remain within my jurisdiction. So long as one of you is here also in the Comunità, residing, Signor F- - your friend is released into your custody.'

'Perfectly acceptable,' said Harry, with a conspicuous lack of triumph. 'I suppose there's somewhere we can put up?'

'No need,' drawled Draco. 'There's a chalet up the valley that Lucius's side of the family owned. Owns, rather. And I know Blaise's mum has a pied-a-terre hereabouts.'

'The chalet,' said Harry. 'It wouldn't look well to impose on the Zabinis just now.'

'I think you are wise, Signor.' Unterperger was looking at them levelly. 'May I take it that the English Ministry releases my district in advance of any responsibility for protecting the most famous and distinguished Wizards now living?'

Ginny grinned at him. 'Oh, I think we insist on doing just that. After all, Harry and Draco can rather notoriously take care of themselves.'

Unterperger repressed a sigh. The English - how right were the French to call them perfidious - the Englishmen were bad enough, but the good God and all the saints keep him from having to deal with Englishwomen.

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The Aurors had long been a sort of cross between Bow Street Runners and the militia, as called out after the local JP had read the Riot Act to the local Chartists. The dead hand of the lengthy secrecy regime had choked off any breath of innovation in the Wizarding world. Harry and the other Victors of the War had, in the first flush of peace, applied their hard-won knowledge to change this. Neville, particularly, had begun the discipline of forensic magic, by way of forensic herbology and ecomancy, and Hermione, placed thus upon her mettle, had driven herself to develop it: forensic arithmancy with Terry Boot, forensic mediwizardry with Pye and Pomfrey, forensic magizoology with Hagrid and Charlie. Harry and Draco, prompted in part by their experience with Riddle's Horcrux-making, had proven that the doctrine of transference - the principle that every person present at a crime scene leaves behind some trace of himself, both physical and magical, and takes away with him some such trace of the scene - applied to the magical world as to the Muggle, and that some things could not be hidden or erased by the most powerful Scourgify. The Europeans had scoffed, in a manner reminiscent of their Muggle counterparts's long adherence to Bertillonage even after fingerprinting had proved its worth; but in the end, surreptitiously and by night, they had come to beg the new learning of its developers, and of the increasingly experienced SOCAs, the Scene of Crime Aurors.

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'Ah. Madame du Toit. Please, do come in -'

'M Pot-taire.'

Ghastly woman. Gred and Forge weren't exaggerating, she is another Umbridge.

'Now, I understand - good God.'

''Allo, 'Arry.' Smirking prettily now that the glamours had worn off - and how the devil anyone got past him, let alone the Aurors, under a glamour, Harry was damned if knew, but there would be hell to pay - was Gabrielle Delacour. 'I am zo zorree that it was necessar' to use my Veela glamours to come 'ere safely and in secret.'

'Not at all,' said Harry, in rather a strangled voice. His latent heterosexuality was threatening to sit up and take notice, and the last thing he wanted in an important meeting with a representative of the French ministry was to give way to amatory obsession - let alone what Draco would do to him if he knew.

'I s'all be brief, alzough I would have liked vairrrry much to 'ave 'ad ze time to catch up wiz you. But we do not 'ave zat time, I theenk. 'Arry, I must ask you to be ze 'ero once more. Ze Death-Eatairs, zey - zose who escaped - are in my country. Not all of zem, I theenk, but many. Zey are few, I know, but zey are tres dangereuse. And we 'ave been forced at last to admit zat our methods are not enough. It must be done secretly, bose for raisons politique and zo as to catch theem off ze guard, but I must ask, can your Ministry teach us zese new methods, this forensic magic?'

Harry reminded himself that Draco was, by now, no doubt waiting for him at home, and that he was, after all, a Very Powerful Wizard, and this was a diplomatic meeting, and that, after all, this was Only Gabrielle, Fleur's Baby Sister, Much Younger Than He, a former schoolgirl-with-a-crush on the order of the young Ginny Weasley, and, besides, he was gay, damn it, he didn't even like women in that way -

''Arry?'

'What? Oh. Yes. Hrmmph. No need to bat your eyes at me, m'girl, we're glad to help, and I must say it's past time the French ministry decided we might have something to contribute -'

'Oh, 'Arry,' laughed Gabrielle, throatily, 'you are so cute when you try to play ze stodgy British colonel!'

That evening, when a shame-faced Harry recounted every excruciating moment of his meeting, Draco laughed himself sick. Bastard, thought Harry.

________________________________

The sort of berks who persist, not merely in seeing sexual connotations in the most innocuous landscape and built environments, but rather in seeing nothing else save sexual connotations in the most innocuous landscape and built environments, reducing all things to a thrust of the loins: the people who derive the name of the River Kennet from 'cunt' rather than the Roman vicus of Cunetio, now Mildenhall, and attach a wombed and titted significance to Silbury: have, no doubt, their own, moist, thoughts concerning the mill and the ford beside.

More sober etymologists simply accept the fact that there has been a

... little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook ...
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book;

and that the ford above the mill at Twatford Mulliner has been 'Twatford' time out of mind.

Nonetheless, in a world more full of berks than of sober scholars, it had seemed good to Harry and Draco to market their organic - and accordingly dearly-priced - line of wholemeal flour, under a name less likely to startle the conscientiously broad-minded but instinctively puritan mums of Kensington and Notting Hill. Drawing upon and playing about with the local pronunciation of Twatford, they had hit upon a mark ('"marque"' was, Draco maintained, pretentious and non-U) that conveyed perfectly what the grimly-determined searchers for organic foods secretly most desired, a name easily called, easily remembered, freighted with faux-mediævalist associations in the best William Morris style, and insinuating the snob appeal secretly irresistible to their target market: Tabard Mills. The rude hinds of 'Twaaavverd Mulner' long before, would have been approving, amused, in their canny, smocked, moonraking fashion, at this new form of getting it over on the excise-man.

Even as they began selling without the region as 'Tabard Mills', Draco and Harry had realised that, locally, they were far better advised to sell what they milled, and to mill what was brought in for milling under fee, under the Twatford Mulliner name; and later still, Draco had realised that the sort of people who had first enthused over Tabard Mills's product, could be made to pay still more for a line of milled stuff marginally more selective, considerably dearer in price, and dowered with the transgressive name, which could not be condemned due to its great antiquity, of Twatford. The initial and swiftly suppressed wince of urban women of both sexes, followed by the falsely knowing and falsely sophisticated middle-class smile, became itself a selling point. There were times, Draco reflected, that he could well have been the perfect eminence grise to Dave Cameron.

Harry had a superstitious half-belief in such incantatory - and, Draco insisted, quite meaningless or quite silly - names and concepts as 'Fair Trade' certification, and Draco had a Slytherin determination to use any means to levy all that the trade would bear on anything they sold from the Estates, with the result that the Mill and all its product, like the whole of their agricultural product, from cider to lamb, was gleefully made available, at the appropriate tariffs, on several schedules, organic, organic-Fair-Trade, and 'traditional (conventional)' - meaning, neither.

It saddened Draco that they could not further capitalise on their owning an ancient mill by taking on tour groups and running a small shop beside, but it was difficult enough creating and maintaining an illusion of machinery sufficient to fool the local farmers who wanted their corn threshed and the local thatchers who'd contracted for the straw and tended to gather at the mill and socialise with the farmers. There was simply no workable means of running tours of 'an ancient, working mill, children, won't that be exciting' whilst somehow putting a human-like glamour on the house-elves who ran the damned thing.

_________________________

Harry was well aware - it amused him, secretly, and he was wise enough to keep that amusement strictly secret - that Draco was far more 'high maintenance' than was ever any pre-Conquest mill. Harry was well aware, also, that Draco was simply incapable of imagining a life without money, and always wanted yet more, even as he was picky, not to say, snobbish, about the sources of that income. Traditionally, gentlemen were not in trade; but traditionally also, selling off the crops of his extensive acres was very much a gentleman's prerogative, and did not count as 'trade', thank you. Accordingly, Draco could contemplate with equanimity a marketing campaign for, say, spelt, and even the creation of a shop at the Mill, selling flour and Tabard Mills tat and serving cream teas, whilst recoiling from the merest hint that they were involved in commerce. True to his blood, upbringing, and class, Draco had never grasped, could not even conceive, the romance of trade. Indeed, no more could Nev, no more had Sirius, or indeed James Potter, or even, in the main, Albus; only Arthur, dimly, and Aberforth, and Gred and Forge, had done, to anything like the extent to which Harry grasped it. Draco, when they were dragged up to town, to Diagon or the Ministry or something of that sort, could and did listen for hours to, and make incisive comments upon, politics, economics, and indeed philosophy, the old PPE trinity. But Harry possessed the sort of cast of mind that became alert and interested, that wanted to know the practical and hands-on details, when a Dye Urn alley shop foreman spoke or a small shopkeeper in Diagon talked of the ins and outs of his daily trade, or Corner and Carmichael reminisced about the things they saw on their daily Auror's rounds down the docks, policing E division in the Wizarding Docklands, the Fleet Basin and the Isle of Crups.

________________________________

'I assume that Myrtle and the other ghosts were largely responsible for keeping the midges down, at Hogwarts.'

'Why Moaning Myrtle?'

Nev chuckled. 'Clever, lad,' said he to Harry. 'Draco, one of the best botanical controls for midges is ... bog myrtle.'

'Well,' snickered Harry, 'where else would a ghost named Myrtle haunt?'

It was at that point that Draco threw a cress sandwich at Harry's head.

________________________________

'Do you know,' said Narcissa, musingly, 'when the D- - when Vol- - when that appalling tosser thought that Severus was poisoning me, he said a very odd thing. He referred, Harry, darling, to your mother, by way of denigrating my love for my little dragon, here, and when he did, he called her, "Lily Evans Potter", I wonder why? It's an odd thing to have done....'

'Ah,' said Harry, blinking as he always did when his mother's sacrifice was mentioned. 'He does that sort of thing. When he started being clever with acrostics to come up with a false name for himself ... well, you see, he always called himself, "Tom Marvolo Riddle", for his Wizarding grandfather.'

'He truly is a ... he is, truly, not a pureblood, then?'

'Not a bit of it. So I think he was stressing that my mum wasn't, either, by mentioning her maiden name, lest he refer to her as if she were a Potter by blood.'

'What a ghastly little man.'

'So why did Old Mrs Black accept Harry as the Head of Family? I mean, she's a pureblood fanatic, right? Seems dodgy to me, not that I want to be suspicious of good fortune.'

Narcissa looked at Ron, calculatingly, then smiled. 'Very clever, Ronald, and an excellent question. I'm quite certain that I know the answer, but let us ask her.'

________________________________

'Why, Aunt Walburga?' Narcissa put the question to the portrait, which - or who - seemed already markedly more sane and more content.

'Sirius, for all his faults, could not have made an heir who was not worthy, so whatever we thought we knew of Harry's mother must be dismissed. Perhaps one of those who hid after '92 ... or a Squib line long forgotten ... look at Uncle Marius, after all ... but even if she was a - Muggleborn - it does not matter. Come forward, child,' said she, crooking an arthritic finger to Harry.

'Dismiss from your mind all that you have believed you knew of our family's stance on these matters. Yes, we have stood for purity of blood. But it is not as the Malfoys think it, or the Parkinsons, or that abominable half-blood who has dared raise his unworthy hand against our House.

'You are a Black. You are a Potter, and you are a Black, several times over. Do you understand? The world is not divided into purebloods and the rest; it is divided, whatever you care to think, into Blacks and lesser stock, pureblood or not. Any family once worthy to marry into our line must be considered as pure. The -'

'That did Cedrella a lot of good,' snapped Ron.

The old lady's beady eyes sharpened. 'Ah. Cousin Ronald. And a Prewett, as well, I believe, Cousin Lucretia married a Prewett. Did we disown her? We did not. Yet the Prewetts, like the Potters - even Uncle Charlus, and what an ass that man was, it was the Macmillan strain in him, I think, or the Bulstrode, it certainly wasn't his Black blood - the Prewetts are as ... favourable ... in their views of M- ... Muggles as are the Weasleys. The Burkes have fallen from merchant princes to counter-jumpers, but they are Blacks, and that suffices. My brother Alphard was hardly a blood-traitor -'

There were several outraged intakes of breath at that.

'--And yet disinherited he was, you will recall. Cousin Callidora married Harfang Longbottom, you know, and she was not banished from our House. And my son Sirius ... we could not touch him when he took refuge with the Potters, after all: they were the Potters. And his politics were of very little moment at the time, unlike his disobedience and his choice of friends. Now, now: you cannot deny that at least one of his choices was poor, although we were mistaken at the time as to which. Frankly, I am surprised that we were deceived, I cannot imagine how we were taken in by that appalling little rat from Lanarkshire.... Of course Cousin Araminta Meliflua thought that Muggles ought to be hunted, but, then, Muggles have hunted us for quite some time, have they not?

'Do you take the point, yet? The Head of the Family may change, and his politics, his preferences, and thus his commands may change with him. Indeed, they have ever done. Alphard was removed from the Family because he defied the Head of the Family. Callidora married with permission, as did Dorea, not that we could have refused a Potter, as did Cousin Lucretia, my dear sister-in-law. Defy the paterfamilias and you remove yourself from the name and protections of our House; accede to his wishes, and you do not. That, Nymphadora, is why my niece, your mother, was removed from our House.

'But now, of course, that is for Harry to decide; his word is as law unto our House. That is our ancient purity. And surely you heard Phineas Nigellus: this day hath gentled his condition. I was a Black born, as well as a Black by marriage, you stand in the house of my fathers, not of my husband only. Whilst he lived, Orion's word was law, and his views, mine, as Uncle Arcturus's and Great-Uncle Sirius's word was law before Orion's - and after, when he had died and Uncle Arcturus yet lived. Now Harry's word is as law to us, and what his views are, must be mine, do you understand? Such is the principle of our House.'

'And what of Regulus? Tom Riddle, who calls himself "Lord Voldemort", took you in as much as did Peter Pettigrew.' Harry had discernibly taken on the mantle that had been placed upon his shoulders, and spoke to Walburga as the Head of the Family to a dependent.

'You tell me, Harry, that Regulus saw through that vermin at the last. That was a credit to his sense as well as to his conscience - and his principles. I take it that Regulus turned upon the vermin who presumed to demand - demand - allegiance and obedience of a Black. It was right of him to do so; and wise, for if it, truly, became clear that that little shit's methods were not only immoral but damnably effective, so that he was no use as a stalking-horse and could not be controlled to effect the ends and objects of our then Head of Family ... principles are one thing, but anyone who dares raise a hand against the Noble and Most Ancient House - well!'

'Cor,' said Ron.

'I don't quite know,' said Harry, his tone dangerously level, 'if that was more a Slytherin or a Gryffindor attitude - or possibly Hufflepuff, given the family solidarity at issue.'

Shockingly, Walburga laughed: a clean and pleasant laugh, unlike anything they could ever have expected of her.

'Oh, child! We may be Cunning Folk indeed, but you cannot imagine we have all been sorted alike? And as for Gryffindor ... Elladora, Nymphadora, Dorea, Callidora: did you not notice how often the girls on the family have been given names with the "dor-" element? There is no small dollop of Godric in our line, my dear.'

Remus slumped against the wall, and Draco had to catch Harry's arm to steady himself. Ginny, who of all the other Weasleys was most like Fred and George (and her uncles, Fabian and Gideon Prewett), simply laughed, peal upon peal, Walburga laughing with her.

________________________________

'Yes, well,' said Justin, 'rather the sort of thing the Frogs did when they got Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hun in 1918. Re-educatin' the public palate and All That. Fact is, as far as the local nosh goes, one might as well be in Styria, it's all roast pork and sausages and pickled cabbage - "sauerkraut", I believe: bloody Continentals - and boiled potato.'

________________________________

'Ah, yes,' said Arthur, with evident amusement. 'Gryffindors. Hearty but dim, manly but thick, gallant, yes, but rash, bears of little brain. Examples, I suppose, being Minerva, Albus, Fred, George, Hermione, Lupin.... Hagrid spent decades doing illicit magic with his brolly and was never taken up for it, Ron is the youngest Grand Master in the history of Wizarding Chess, Harry beat Riddle: I quite see where one would get the idea that Gryffindors are thick.'

Draco turned an interesting shade of rose. Damask-rose.

'Don't take the piss, Arthur,' said Harry. 'If you mean to convey that this was not an oversight on your part, do so, and don't abuse Draco for his having tried to put the interrogation politely and give you an out.'

Arthur just looked at them, and smiled. 'Harry, really. I've made this point before, although Draco wasn't then present. It is to the benefit of a warrior caste to be regularly underestimated by its opponents and potential opponents. Thus, the Gryffindor stereotype. But it behoves us also not to underestimate those same opponents. Of course my actions were and have been deliberate, and I suggest that you approve them.'

'Arthur. I respect you immensely, which is why I'm extremely alarmed, and not a little disappointed, by this.'

'Uncle Arthur,' said Draco, 'you wrote the decree in question. What possible justification can you put forward for your repeated violations? It's not like you to scoff at the laws - laws you are sworn to uphold, laws you swore to uphold in particular when you were serving as Minister.'

'You read Muggle Studies at Domdaniel, Draco. You tell me. Or did you never hear of Ralph Wigram?'

________________________________

Justin was perfectly right. Regardless of frontiers and political boundaries both Wizarding and Muggle, these lands long debatable between the Eagles of the Legions and the Double-Headed Eagle of the Habsburgs, were fundamentally Austrian. Three families in five spoke the South German dialects withindoors, in the bosom of their kin. The hearty fare and rustic piety of the region was characteristically Austro-Catholic. Beside every footpath one might find a wayside shrine to Christ or His Blessed Mother or some fiercely-loved local saint whom a valley or a village treated as a family member, and these small sites of devotion were more Teutonic than Italian, wood-carven like Black Forest clocks and in much the same style, rustic and rusticated, far from the smooth, marmoreal assertions of the Roman Counter-Reformation and the bronze fluidity of Florence. The very church towers were more slender and square, rising skyward clad in ochre plastering, already adumbrating the archetype that was realised just a few score miles to the North, seeming eager to burst forth into a rotundity of aspect in pumpkin dome or tower-top. The very ochre of the plaster seemed already to tint towards the famously Habsburg colours of Melk Abbey and half Vienna, rather than the cadmium or orpiment of Italy: as if church towers were so many tall glasses of pilsner. And yet in these rather rustic and determinedly unsophisticated churches and public buildings, these Tyrolean farmsteads and valley towns and hamlets, one could feel something in the air, something more than sweet meadows and Alpine wind, cow and sheep and goat, milk and herb and honey. Here, halfway between the marble and brazen glories of triumphal Rome and the clamant assertions of Habsburg Vienna, something had stirred, once, and was stirring yet. The interiors of church and town hall, of town house and farmstead, were rustic, particularistic, homely, and at first seeming, severe. They possessed a local and inward looking charm, a fugal gravity not, in some fundamental way, unlike that of those Dutch churches and interiors that Vermeer so loved to paint: ordered, serene, disinterested in the great world beyond. This was not the world of Bernini, this was not the world at once urbane and ecstatic of Bernini's Cornaro Chapel, in which the metaphysical conceits of Scarlatti and Vivaldi would sound most clearly. And yet the homely joys of hearth and home, of local saint and local market, of home farm and village church-altar, here where Italian and Teuton met and were wed, quickened, if one but listened closely, from fugue to gigue, and there was a quiet joy hinted at that wanted but leisure to burst forth into the dancing delight of the third fugue, the Fugue in C-sharp major, of the First Book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. This was where the Italian and Germanic strains were fused, and so it was here that there was germinated the seed that would bud forth and flower at last in the Vierzehnheilegen Pilgrimage Church, in Neumann's and Fischer's exuberances, in the Borromini-inspired pomp of Fischer von Erlach and Lucas von Hildebrandt, in plaster and gilt, in Carrara marble and gold leaf, in the Rococo joyousness of the Basilica at Ottobeuren, with its polychrome marble and gold and chaste white marble and riot of delicately painted forms that rivalled the best work of Fragonard and of Watteau, in the whole joyousness of a 'more abundant life' that made even church interiors into Honeydukes confectionary, finding the good in Good Friday and the felicity in felix culpa, celebratory, Eucharistic. It was in these tiny hamlets and postage-stamp Alpine meadows, this Austro-Italian Tyrol of droning bows and melodic cowbells and rural churches, that the ideal that would later express itself in Munich and in Salzburg was conceived.

________________________________

'Ralph Wigram, Draco. And Major Sir Desmond Morton. And for that matter, Professor Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell. Have you never encountered their names?'

'No, sorry. What has this to do with -'

'Patience, lads. Wigram was with the Muggles's Foreign Office, Lindemann - "the Prof", as he was always called - was a German-born don at Oxford, and Morton was something on the Muggle Defence Staff. In the 1930s, two successive Prime Ministers, Baldwin and Chamberlain, became committed to the policy of appeasing the German Reich. That policy was overwhelmingly supported in the country at large, by the Crown, and by an insuperable majority of the House of Commons.'

'Like the Fudge Years.'

'Precisely.'

Harry was clearly interested. 'I remember, Remus always says that was the best Muggle parallel to what was happening in our world when people were in denial about the rise of Voldemort - both times. And even I in my cupboard had heard of Churchill.'

'Yes,' said Arthur. 'These were the Wilderness Years for Churchill - a very old family, the Churchills, in the Ottereys. Well. Churchill was out of power, it seemed for good, his open supporters could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and those who did support him were out of office and cut off from power also. Indeed, to side with Churchill and oppose appeasement was a political death sentence under Baldwin and Chamberlain. Those ministries refused to recognise the Nazi threat, but they were not so sanguine about the threat Churchill posed: they even tapped his fellytone, wholly illegally.'

'Good Lord.'

'Well, Draco, they were frightened of him, and they were particularly frightened by his seeming omniscience. They were so committed to denying that the Nazis and their allies were a threat, that they suppressed intelligence showing the gravity of that threat. Yet somehow, Churchill always seemed to have those estimates at his fingers's ends, and would raise them in the House and humiliate the Front Bench. They were convinced - to the point of paranoia - that Churchill had spies in the Civil Service.'

'Like Fudge and Dumbledore and the Order.'

'Oh, absolutely. And they were quite right. Wigram and Morton risked their places, and indeed their liberty, as they would unquestionably have been prosecuted had they been caught, in gathering and feeding information to Churchill.'

'And wouldn't he have been? Churchill, I mean: wasn't he in danger of gaol as well?'

'Probably not, although they should undoubtedly have tried to put him there. But he was a Privy Councillor, and there's a very good argument, Remus tells me, that he should have been entitled to have any such prosecution stopped, on that ground. Indeed, there's an argument to be made that he was entitled by law to the information that the two premiers attempted to burke, and that they were violating the law by - fudging - intelligence to the House, the Privy Council, and so on.'

'And of course, Albus was Chief Warlock in his time....'

'Indeed, Harry. You take the point. Someone was wanted - several someones - to play Wigram and Morton, and I did my bit.'

________________________________

But that elaboration, that complex and canonical complexity, came after, and elsewhere. It was enough that they were there, in the Italian Tyrol, in winter, spare and clear and sharp as its winds, as profound and superficially simple, as complex and unitary and spare, and as compelling, as the First 'Cello Suite of Bach, in G major.

________________________________

'But - improperly charmed and illegal Muggle artefacts in your garden shed, Arthur? Not only when Fudge and Scrimgeour were in power, but even now? And using them yourself, in stark violation of the law?'

'Yes, even now. Your generation have made considerable progress, you know, but the Ministry remains ... well. There is not yet a professional and de-politicised Civil Service. Even now, if less so than before the War, there are those who would leak against the Minister of the day, who are still inclined to the views that animated the Death Eaters, or who are simply venal. And so long as Ministry employees remain a part of the talent pool of aspiring politicians and those seeking to become members of the Moot or Minister for Magic, there are the added temptations for them to act from political venality.

'With respect, my dear young friends, I don't consider the Ministry even now a safe place for certain tempting items, any more than I would have dreamt of leaving hexed Muggle artefacts in Ministry custody before the War, where any passing DE might have scooped them up and made off with them, probably taking them straight to Lucius or straight to Riddle. And even now in peacetime, if not so urgently as in wartime or in the days of Fudge's appeasement, I consider that these things must be investigated, and by some trusted Order member - I don't insist it be me, but no one else was ever interested - and tested out, in the Lindemann manner, as with that Ford Anglia I seem to have lost -' he winked, and it became Harry's turn to blush - 'and I, for my part, would willingly trade its being done by an inexpert but loyal investigator in place of entrusting such secrets to a Ministry boffin of greater competence but less certain loyalty.'

'Arthur?'

'Yes?'

'You're right. The damned things are safer in a shed in the bottom of your garden than in a Ministry lock-up. You may consider yourself authorised to continue secreting them away and testing them yourself, and if you want others to assist, the Order as a whole will give it a push. As far as I am concerned, the matter is closed. Draco? Do you disagree?'

'Not at all, Harry. Save that you forgot to tell Uncle Arthur the most important thing of all. It's important to acknowledge that he was right. Arthur, it's more important still that we say, Thank you.'

'Not at all. Not at all, very kind of you, but unnecessary. If that's settled, then? Right.' Arthur stood, his enthusiasm obvious. 'Now. Who wants to see my newly acquired flying bath mat?'

________________________________

'And all that time, people thought I was the school broom,' Ginny snorted. 'Training broom, perhaps: I dated Harry and he swiftly decided he was bent, ta ever so, I dated Dean and he fled to Seamus's bed, Blaise seemed interested only to turn out gay as a maypole and queerer than a Muggle football in a Quidditch match....'

'And then Colin swept in and married you after we thought all along that he'd the only pash on Harry that was worse than yours. Who'd've thought he was the straight one, eh?'

________________________________

'It's quite all right,' said Justin. 'If all else fails, we can always call on my cousin Heneage, he's rather well-regarded.'

________________________________

'You remember what Alastor always said. I mean, aside from "Constant Vigilance", of course.'

Draco snorted, and mimicked the old Ulsterman. '"Why in Christ's name waad Voldemort attack th' Ministry and end all this confusion?" Or were you thinking of, "There are no stupid questions, but, Christ Jaysus are there a hell of a lot of inquisitive eejits", perhaps?'

'No. "There are pockets of competence even in this organisation. The key is ta find 'em and use 'em into th' ground."'

'Hmph. You know what he'd say to that. "Oh, there's an Auror's College answer: immediate, technically correct, and utterly feckin' useless."'

________________________________

'Draco?'

'Ah. Hermione. There you are, I've had my head in half the hearths in England, trying to fire-call you -'

'Er. Draco ... what is that noise?'

Faintly, but not, if Hermione could hear it, faintly enough, Draco could hear Harry moaning in ecstasy and making rather moist and succulent noises with his mouth.

'DRACO! Is Harry ... I mean ....'

Draco rolled his eyes. 'The rather orgasmic sounds emanating from the other room are all Nev's fault. He and that prize ass, Tilden Toots, sent over a hamper from the Herbologists's Question Time gardens at the college at Up Somborne. Nev's new strain of super-early straw-matoes. Harry's under an organic spell, not an orgasmic one.' He paused, and looked over his shoulder. 'POTTER, YOU PIG, SAVE A FEW FOR ME, DAMN YOU!'

Hermione gulped. She suddenly remembered, quite vividly, popping by unannounced what time Nev had sent over, on approval, his new Chocolate Oranges - which were precisely that, Citrus theobromata hybridus Longbottom -- along with his equally new Vanilla Murcott Honey Tangerines and his experimental Treacle Custard-Apples. She had arrived just as Draco and Harry had passed the stage of teasingly sharing food with one another and gone on to a series of rather complicated lip-locks around a slice of the fruit, progressing rapidly, before she could quite tear herself away and back out of the kitchen unnoticed, to full-on shagging and the innovative use of Chocolate-Orange juice as edible body-paint.

'You're blushing a very fetching shade of pink, my dear English rose,' Draco drawled, knowingly. 'Just wait until you see him with a whitecurrant quill....'

'I'll take your word for it,' said Hermione, not quite as repressively as she'd have wished to have done. 'I believe you were trying to find me, were you not?'

'Ah. Yes. What are you and Cousin Weasel doing Friday next?'

'Leaving the children with Molly and Arthur, apparently, and trotting along to whatever you have planned for us.'

'Cheeky wench. It's the unveiling, as it were, of the new organ. Don't you snigger like that, Granger, Harry and I do have interests other than sex!'

'Again, I'll take your word for it.'

_______________________________

Harry disliked London. Draco disliked London. These were articles of faith.

And yet.... Harry disliked Muggle London because he had come to cherish the countryside and the life of village, hamlet, tiny, jewel-like cathedral city, and slow-moving market town. His idea of 'a day out' had come to be that of spending a day at the Royal Wizarding Agricultural Society's HQ at Bubbenhall Abbey. Harry disliked and distrusted 'London' in its Wizarding guise as well, if by 'London' one meant the ministerial and political Wizarding London, Moot and Ministry, guile and grab. And even now, of course, Grimmauld Place, however cleansed and lightened, however exorcised and now housing the comic spirit incarnate in Remus-and-Tonks, was a place of bittersweet memory.

Draco disliked and feared Muggle London because it was dirty, and noisy, and everything - and everyone - moved bewilderingly quickly, and he couldn't quite see and grasp what was happening around him. Even now, Draco was the least bit afraid of Muggles, knowing and resenting, shamefully, that this was because he even now did not fully understand them, to his own, defensively prickly, embarrassment. He disliked and feared Wizarding London as well, insofar as Wizarding London was Lucius's Wizarding London, a place of bullying and bribes, a metonym for Ministry offices, Knockturn Alley shops, and clandestine mischief.

Yet the Duke of Kent's Steps running down to Merlin Walk, all around the green and ever-flowering glories, charmed and charming, of Mungo's Park, the grave, chaste, Palladian frontages of Mercia Square and the Classical proportions, trim as a Wren's nest, of St Cuthbert's, Mercia Square, the elegant arch of Crutchedfriars Bridge and the mix of Queen Anne and Georgian graces in the houses of Fore Square, satisfied Harry's eye and uplifted his spirit whenever he saw them. They were tonic, grounding the magical weirdness and charm of Diagon Alley and Hedge Row, Purse Lane and Mist Steps, Side Way and Dis Place. And Harry, who had an unending fascination with How Things Work, found an intellectual challenge and interest in the inner life and inward ways of Wizarding London and the Wizarding World, from the merchant banking carried on by the Goldsteins and Zabinis to the industry of Dye Urn Alley to the crowded shipping of the Isle of Crups and the Fleet Basin, down the docklands, where the very names of the narrow and winding ways spoke of the magic and mystery, the romance, of far commerce and voyaging: Dutch Street, Indus Street, Pad Dock, Burr Dock.

And Draco, too, had come to find a fascination in the parts of Wizarding London that he, as a child, and the child of man whose very memory was now damned, had never seen, had never known to exist. The galleries and the theatres and the concert halls, and the jolly, vulgar music halls as well, all the vibrant culture, high and low alike, of Friary Garden, Dreary Lane, and the West Bar. The ever-flowering glories, charmed and charming, of Chiswick - the Royal Herbologic Garden - and its satellite in the country, Balcombe Court. All the effervescent life of peacetime London, after the vanquishing of the long Dark.

And, as well, he and Harry alike cherished the living memorials, now called once more into life and action, of their ancestral world, as it had been before the panic and the Dark and, in truth, all the sad centuries of the long, dire, deadly secrecy regime. Restoration London. The old institutions had, like princesses in an enchanted sleep, been kissed by peace and righteousness, wakened and brought back to life by that kiss. Upping Street was no longer under Fidelius, though properly secure, and its fabled Number Twelve was once more the home and office of successive Ministers. The rule of law was re-established, in justice and in truth, truth mighty above all things and prevailing, and, once past Plea Inn Bar, all along Ess Street and into Inn-Chancery, the lawyers hummed and bustled like a hive of happy, golden bees. The RWCJ stood proud and tall again over its fabled gardens, the Stern Street Magistrates Court briskly handled the jollifications and sleeping-it-offs of Boat Race and Fair, and the Old Donjon, built on the relics of earlier minatory structures at Oldgate, by its very presence and the awful majesty of its high halls and sounding courtrooms, where even in Summer there was coolth, deterred the most solemn crimes, the crimes it was built to try and to assess. From Wynd Row, strait ways led to the halls of exercised power, in this Restoration world. The fascinating legalities that Draco had come to cherish, the liberty that Harry treasured, the power and the glory, the arms that secured peace, the knowledge that directed them: all were once again deployed honestly and fairly, for the common weal, by the common consent, the people's will. Liberty under law, force bridled by freedom's foundation and the ancient laws, in a world made new. The institutional memory of the Wizarding world was restored, and the Moot again sat in due pomp and presence, in the Palace of Thornminster, its Dial Tower looming over all and Long George sounding the hours, its answering Boudicca Tower anchoring the other end of the palace, housing the Moot Records Office and all the history and precedent of Wizardry: history that must be learnt from, lest it be repeated. The great ministers of state had returned to their ancient seats, King John's Gate for the Gnome Office, Kinghorn House for the Scottish Office; Hit Wizards and Hit Wizards Parade; Auroralty House. Daysbridge Barracks and the Ordnance Warren brimmed with quiet confidence, alert, ever ready, power defensive and defending, leashed by law, the watch-Crups of the Constitution. Harry's own hardest-fought ministerial achievement, an honest and accepted excise and scheme of taxation, was represented by Wiltshire House, which also housed the General Records Office alongside the Department of Outlandish Revenue. Its eyes to the heavens, the Nephomantic Office watched cloud and weather and sky for the benefit of all, shipper and farmer and all who depended upon these. Severn Street House and Furness House proclaimed, respectively, the sleepless guard of the Unspeakables and the restoration of honest and open government and of relations with the wider world, and foreign Wizard-dom once more sent its envoys, accredited to the Court of St Aldhelm's. The American ambassador was openhandedly magnificent at the embassy on Square Nore Grove and kept a splendid table at his country seat of Walker House, and the Home Counties - once the scene of Harry's infant misery and later scorched and seared by war in the Great Rebellion - now anew concealed the graces and favours of Hawtreys and Thorneygrove and Chivenoaks.

To Draco, these were reassuring symbols of no mean power, tangible proof of the Light's victory, in the same way that the restoration of Lochiel House, looking down upon a Hogsmeade that was now the administrative capital of Wizarding Scotland, was proof and assurance that good had triumphed and peace been won. What was more, these particular symbols spoke to his interests and attracted his cast of mind.

Yet for Harry, it was the particular and the parochial, the quaint and the quotidian, the mercantile and mundane, that was the best and truest sign and symbol of their victory and of the Restoration: a victory not of half-measures, a victory that was more than a suppression of the Great Rebellion, a victory that had gone on to uproot the strangling vines of the secrecy regime and of hole-and-corner government, bribery, intimidation, and mere influence. Once, amongst their Muggle neighbours at a dinner table or over bridge, Draco had explained that, against all instinct, he had become a Thatcherite rather than a Wet grandee, and Harry had become a Right-libertarian LibDem rather than a man of the Left, because their early years had taught them a distrust of ministerial bungling, governmental interference, and bureaucratic petty tyranny. However it had come about, Harry had embraced Burke's dictum, that, To love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of publick affections. And therefore, when Harry sought to find in Wizarding London the outward and visible sign of their triumph, he sought and found it in the reopened Fortescue's and the refounded Ollivander's, in Madam Malkin's shop front and the shelves of Flourish and Blott. He scented it in the flower stalls and fruit stalls and heard it in the costermongers's cries all along Hedge Row. He breathed it in with the sharp scent of printer's ink and law calf, the crispness of vellum and parchment, on Polygon Alley, hard by the ancient Church of SS Peter & Paul Agonistes, which, abraded by the vulgar tongue of centuries, had given Polygon Alley its name. He found it all along Boyle Row, at Twillfit and at Peeves & Fawkes, at Peakes & Ravenclaw and Scrimgeour Filch Avebury and Figg & Wimple. He found it in the oysters and the mixed grill at Somerton's, in the chops at Timson's in the Mere, in the leather and varnish of Geo Aracobb & Sons, Bootmakers, and in the reverent bustling-about and aromatic lather of a trim and a shave at Jno F Deemster's palatial tonsorial establishment. And, most of all, in chains of office and casual pomp, he saw these monuments of victory embodied in the pitched roof of Livery Hall and the banquets of Burgage House, in the ealdormen pacing gravely along the halls of Corporation Hall, and in the restoration of the proud and ancient guilds, from The Master and Wardens and Brethren of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Mary the Virgin and of St Catherine of the Mistery of Potters and Crockers and of Basketmakers of the Wizarding Realm of the Three Kingdoms, to the Worshipful and Ancient Company of the Art-magical and Mystery of Navigators and Pilots of the Blessed Fraternity of SS Christopher & Brendan. Even in the pop concerts of Brentside Stadium: the Weird Sisters, the Rollright Stones ('You can't always scry what you're wanting ... But sometimes, you scry what you need'): he found the daily, common evidence of victory and peace. Of liberty.

This was what peace looked like, and victory. This was their achievement, the work and reward of all the Victors together. If you sought their monument, look about you.

________________________________

'God damn it,' said Harry. 'God sodding damn it.'

'Harry!' Draco's right eyebrow was raised as high as it could go. 'And you a churchwarden. I'm shocked.'

'Bloody Ministry,' said Harry, ignoring Draco's subtle remonstrance. 'Even when I think we've seen the back of the very last relics of the old secrecy regime, another superannuated regulation pops up to balls things up.'

'The Gnome Office? Or another Elfin Safety reg?'

'Look at this,' cried Harry, waving a form. 'How the devil are we to reconcile these archaic secrecy regs with the transparency and traceability needed to sell organic beef and mutton and veg. and all sorts to Maunder or anyone?'

'Well -'

'Do they think it conduces to Wizarding secrecy to have us living amongst neighbours with no visible means of bleeding support? Come to that, do they think, full stop?'

'But Harry -'

'What possible reason have these hidebound jacks-in-office -'

'HARRY!'

'What?'

'It's a revenue dodge. Most people solve it with a backhander....'

'WHAT?' As swiftly as - aptly enough - a striking snake, Harry was on the hearth, his head thrust into the fire. 'ARTHUR!'

________________________________

'Goat prices held firm today, despite reports that Mr Aberforth Dumbledore has finished his acquisitions for the season.

'And in other commodity news, the price of armadillo bile is set to continue to rise; Mrs Maude Scoggins advised that her new litter are keeping their food down and emetic potions are being consumed as mother's milk, but has denied reports that Old Fred will have to be brought out of retirement. The importation of Texan armadillo bile is still undecided; Professor Severus Snape will include a report on its quality and recommended use in his weekly round-up, "State of the Potion", broadcast as usual at 3.0 am Saturday morning. The Wizengamot have heard complaints under Wizarding Privilege that he has a beneficial relationship with the American Armadillo Association, and use of a Probity Probe has not been ruled out. I'm afraid we are unable to broadcast Professor Snape's reply.'

________________________________

'Have you ever heard of Paul the Secretary?'

'Who?'

Arthur tilted his head to one side. 'Oh, dear. What do they teach them at Hogwarts these days? Harry.... Shortly before Honorius withdrew the Legions from Britannia, a few generations before Vortigern and Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Secretary, Paul, in Londinium, tried to impose a workable taxation scheme on Roman Britain.'

'And?'

'He was, in the most bloodily literal sense, torn limb from limb.'

Draco, sitting beside Harry, laid a hand on Harry's arm, and spoke earnestly. 'Love, it's easy to say, An armed society is a polite society. It may be, so long as everyone understands the rules and courtesies - which is the one problem that still wants addressing in terms of Muggle-borns and Muggle-raised Wizards. Recall when, in our earliest years, I challenged you to a Wizard's duel, and Cousin Weasel had to step in to cover your ignorance of the protocol? An armed society of which most members over the age of 11 years, and effectively all members over the age of 17 years, are lethally armed. The State has no monopoly of power. It's difficult enough to govern....'

'... So, imagine trying to tax it, Harry.' Arthur sighed, and ran his fingers through his remaining hair. 'Certainly it would be dangerous to try to impose direct taxation. I think even you would put yourself in grave danger were you to propose it.

'The Muggles only recently - in George 3d's day - gave over the principle that "the king should live of his own" and replaced the royal estates with the Civil List. In Wizarding terms, after all, that's only a few generations since, now, you know: Albus's father's day. The Ministry is still more hampered. Ministers were once expected to live of their own, as well, to bear all the charges in their entire time in office; when, inevitably, poorer men came to rise, when the civil servants became the pool of prospective ministers, the way was open for bribery. "Donations" on the Lucius method and model. What revenue the Ministry have to hand, derives mostly from excise. It's not solely or, indeed, always primarily for reasons of public safety that imports are regulated - and taxed with duty. It's the mun, really, although of course there are prudential considerations as well: take flying carpets, as an example....'

'But, damn it, Arthur! Surely if the public were made to understand that the alternate choices are taxation, or the continued corruption and bribery of the Ministry -'

Draco snorted. 'The public? Understand? Love, you're barking, these are Wizards. They don't do well with logic. Wherefore Death Eaters, Dark Lords, and the "pureblood" partisans.'

Harry glowered at an unrepentant Draco. 'Arthur? Hasn't Molly a cousin who's a Muggle chartered accountant?'

'Why ... so she does. That's a sort of Arithmancer, isn't it?' Arthur was becoming pink with excitement.

'In a way. They do things called "audits" -'

'"Odd-its"? What's that when it's at home?'

'They examine the records for financial errors, waste, thieving - I'm sure Gringotts have their own auditors as well. Why oughtn't the Ministry be audited? If nothing else, I'm sure there's waste and inefficiency to be found and corrected.'

'Well, I suppose so, Harry, but ... well, I suppose that might be accepted by the Moot, even so, it doesn't really do much for the income side -'

'Have the Ministry any assets?' It was clear that Draco was beginning to Have An Idea.

'What, buildings, land, that sort of thing? Various rights in gift?'

'Yes, Uncle Arthur. That sort of thing, precisely.'

'I imagine so. Well, but, you see ... it's just that it's been so long since we've functioned, really, as we were set up to do. There was the '92, and then all the Lords Spiritual left in a body over the Statute of Secrecy, leaving a Rump Moot, and the secrecy regime became all-consuming, and then there was a succession of emergencies and finally Grindelwald and then Riddle - well, it's a dog's breakfast, actually, and has been for a few hundred years, now.'

'That's IT!' Draco sat bolt-upright. 'We go forward by going back, d'you see? We take back all the Ministry assets that were bestowed on those who paid bribes or corrupted the system, we appoint to the old, disused positions those whom we can trust to manage the Ministry Estates -'

'There's a Ministry Estate that's just been sitting at waste all this time?'

'Harry, my love, don't be an ass, for two centuries the Moot's been unable to agree on anything or anyone thanks to blood factions, blood prejudice, and all that rot! My God, Uncle Arthur -'

'We could even bring back the Guilds, the Livery Companies!'

'YES! Didn't they assume the burdens and costs of most administration in their trades in return for certain privileges, in the old days? That was why the Blacks allowed Burkes into the family, they were merchant princes in those days, not mere counter-jumpers -'

'Are you telling me,' asked Harry, dangerously, 'that the only way to move the Wizarding World into the XXIth Century, is to take it back to the Yorkist Age and the reign of Edward 4th?'

'YES,' they answered him, in a unison that Gred-and-Forge could hardly have rivalled.

'Well, damn it, if we must, let's get it sodding right. Arthur - guilds. Enlighten me.'

'Ah. In order of precedence, the great companies - and thanks to Apparating, of course, they're not strictly a London phenomenon, unlike the Muggle City companies - are the Potters, first - you'd automagically belong to that Company, by patrimony - the Smiths, and the Masons, and then on through the Wandmakers all the way to the Navigators. And there are the professions that aren't strictly guilds or livery companies, the Law Wizards's Society, the Wizarding College of Advocates in Scotland, the Royal College of Healers - Mediwizards do have a livery company, the Healers Company, dedicated to St Kentigern, it's akin to the Muggle distinction between surgeons, FRCS chaps, and GPs, general medicos -'

'--Charlie would properly be a liveryman of the Conservators's Guild of St Francis, wouldn't he, Uncle Arthur?'

'Oh, yes, Draco: if the Guilds are revivified, certainly. And of course there are the Verderers, St Hubert's Company....'

By tea-time, they'd gone far towards setting the world to rights, having prospectively appointed Charlie to be Chief Ranger and Hagrid as Verderer-Royal amongst many other planned appointments to manage, profitably and honestly, the Ministry Estates, having determined what monopolies, wardenships, appanages, and offices should be brought back into Ministry grant, having considered the escheat of estates subject to their holders's attainders for supporting Riddle, and all the rest, as well as planning a general retrenchment and reform of the Ministry, the excise and taxation regime, and the Budget.

________________________________

'Mr Terry Boot, Chief Arithmancer at Boot's Sporting Index, said today that betting on the price of armadillo bile had been suspended, following reports of men wearing checked shirts placing bets in a Northern town before getting back on their horses.

'Latest listening figures for WWN show a marked increase in uptake at 3.0 am on a Saturday morning.'

________________________________

'The fact is,' said Theo, warningly, 'you're so identified - we all are - with the abandonment of the old secrecy regime ... well, you might have taken a hint from what that Italian copper, Unterwhassit, was trying to say to give you the office ... there will be those in the public, you know, who distrust your detachment and neutrality in this investigation with Blaise's mum.'

'Well, they'll damned well have to lump it,' said Harry, crisply, careless of Nott's well-intentioned warning. Like Albus before him, Harry had been so often right for so long about so many things that he had come to disregard such warnings, unwisely if understandably: they all did, the Victors, save for a few cautious Old Slytherins with their ears to the ground. They were absurdly young, all of them, for the positions that the post-War, Restoration world had pressed upon them, but for all their youth, the Victors, flush with victory, had become the British Wizarding Establishment, and had grown a bit careless and casual in the peacetime - and arrogant with it.

________________________________

Salisbury Plain dominates Wiltshire.

As a synecdoche, Salisbury Plain - that is, the defence establishment and all its ancillary postings, from RAF Lyneham to Porton Down - also dominates Wiltshire: its economy, its Society, its mores, its diurnal round: to at least the extent to which the great chalk dominates the landscape.

Far more than in neighbouring Hants or Dorset, or in Oxon or Glos or Berks or Somerset, in Wilts the RAF and, still more so, the Army, have stamped a firm impression upon the Order of Things. There are appropriately ubiquitous Gunners, who until lately have had a Hunt of their own in the county; there are Royal Engineers in plenty, many of whom, in addition to being traditionally 'mad, married, or Methodist' - or all three together - have taken to writing books and, again as is traditional, publishing them pseudonymously, even as did the creator of Bulldog Drummond; there are those whose roles and ranks, whose very names as well as their daily duties, go politely unasked and un-remarked.

Very early after the War, after the putting down of Riddle's Rebellion, the Ministry, in its struggles with the secrecy regime it had inherited, had spent a few months trying to use the Muggle post in lieu of owls, thinking the former might be less noticeable to Muggles so long as the missives were properly charmed not to yield their secrets. The idea had been abandoned after a few months's trial, as unworkable, but that had been time enough for a little harmless mischief to have been done.

Or so Harry and Draco should have seen it, had they chanced to overhear the gossip in the village hen-run, otherwise known as the WI. As has been noted before, the village sub-post-office was a conscientiously quaint one, well-deserving of the prizes it regularly won in competition with other rural sub-POs, but privacy was a foreign commodity there, and the sub-postmistress, old Mrs Bramble, was notoriously a pillar of indiscretion. Letters addressed to Harry and Draco, with the post-nominal letters 'OM' (for, of course, the Order of Merlin), had not gone un-noted or unremarked - even if the Muggles had leapt to the natural conclusion that both were holders of the Order of Merit.

'And not in the civil division, you'll note,' barked Lady Penruddocke-Wyndham-Ludlow-Bruges, relict of Lt-Col Sir Gerald Noel Geoffrey Penruddocke-Wyndham-Ludlow-Bruges, KCB, DSO, MC, and bar, late the Light Infantry, Lady P being the self-consecrated doyenne of village life. 'SAS, I shouldn't at all wonder - certainly explains the insistence on no names, no ranks, and no pack-drill. 'S obvious all the same that both have known what it is to command, and I rather suspect it was at the sharp end, which is after all a young man's job.'

'Although,' old Miss Hiscox mused, 'young Mr Malfoy - if we must continue to use that rather obvious nom de guerre - does have an odd affinity for the colour green....'

'Int Corps, you mean?' Lady P pursed her lips, considering. 'All chiefs and damned few Red Indian braves, that lot, and everyone astonishingly young for rank ... perfectly possible.'

'I chanced to overhear a few scraps of conversation at the Flower Show,' Mrs Clelford offered: of course it was 'by chance' that she'd overheard, as none of the ladies would have dreamt of eavesdropping, 'it was that nice young Harry Potter and his um-"friend"-and-"cousin" Mr Malfoy, speaking with some of their friends from away -'

'The Wesley boy, I suppose, and that donnish long lad from Lancashire?'

'And others of the same stamp, yes, including some terrifically brainy young gel who seems to be married to the Wesley lad and whom they call "Professor" -'

'Int Corps without a doubt, then,' Lady P snorted. Lady P tended to run conversations - and meetings, and committees, and everything else she possibly could run - in the fashion in which she drove her antiquated and dubiously road-worthy shooting brake (always one MoT inspection from enforced retirement): and she drove that as if she were Jackie Stewart at Monte Carlo.

'And,' said Mrs Clelford, blandly triumphant, 'dear Harry mentioned how much he missed flying, and Mr Malfoy commented that it was hardly surprising, as Harry had been the best flyer any of them had ever seen in the air. I did not of course wish to listen in on them -' by which polite fiction, of course, they all knew she meant that she'd been unable to overhear the rest of the conversation - 'but I did hear two other words clearly in the ensuing few moments, despite the curiously muffled noise in the marquee: "wizard" and "prang". Well, if that doesn't say, RAF, I don't know what does.'

'Also entirely possible,' said Lady P, dismissively. She, like any enlightened despot, was a bit nettled to be even incidentally contradicted, if truth be told, and Mrs Clelford was but putting a rod in pickle for her own back. Sooner or later, that sort of challenge and impertinence should be paid for. 'There's no telling what their parent branches or regiments - or RAF equivalents, if either were of that branch, be it Royal Air Regiment counter-insurgency or whatnot - no telling at all what those may have been before they were seconded to wherever it was they were seconded to. Clearly, however, they were officers in no ignoble service, they hold the Queen's commission now as JPs, and they've earned the honours they refuse to discuss. I don't suppose that if we think of Mr Malfoy - entirely amongst ourselves, of course - as something along the lines of a retired, if shockingly youthful, major, and Harry, to whom I note they all defer, as having been, say, a wing commander, we shall be very far wrong.'

________________________________

'"Harm could come to a growing Wizard that way!"'

[SPLASH]

'"He's fallen into the caaaaaaaauldon!"'

'"And dropped the Hexed Snitch in it! Curses! Foiled again by - Tincture of Snape! It's the end of my plans!"'

'"And of this episode of the Gnome Show, and of you - drop the wand, Dyrtflue-Byng, yes, and you, Sebastian-Moron, we're Aurors!"'

'"NO! It's too cruel: Azkaban, for life, without a last dram and a pie! And there was still some brandy in the milk!"'

'"Too late! Our Animagus cat got to it first, didn't you, Headmistress?"'

'"You silly, twisted -"'

[MUSIC UP]

'That was "The Gnome Show", a WWN pensieved production featuring Kieran Broadmoor, Pike Gudgeon, Denzil Rastrick, and the Gobstone Players, with the Grimmstone Graves Stoatshead Quartet, orchestra conducted by Heathcote Barbary, script by Marcus Belby and Fenwick Fancourt ... your announcer is Stewart Ackerley, this programme produced by Otho Oddpick.'

[THEME UP and OUT]

[WWN Studio Presenter Glenda Chittock:] 'Next week, Neddy Seagnome is enlisted by the Ministry to lead an attack on Gnome-Eater HQ, armed with an enchanted laundry skip full of Muggle smalls; that's next week on 'The Gnome Show', in the classic episode, 'But I'm Utter Pants at Planning' ... don't miss the Gnomes, here on the Home Service, every Monday at 7.0.'

________________________________

Hermione had ignored the silly-season reports of renascent Death Eaters; she read only the Curator - or, as it is often called, due to its long tradition of pied type and printer's errors, the Crurota.

---------------------------------

'My dear boy,' said Dumbledore's portrait. The inconvenient competence of the artist had managed to capture that damnable twinkle. 'The happenings in the, ah, savage colonies, really, were of no moment. If you truly wish to understand why it is that the Statute of Secrecy was enacted in 1692, look to the other events of that year. In a sense - I speak, I fear, in riddles, here - in a sense, you will find the answer at Oxford. I suggest,' he smiled, 'the Ashmolean.'

---------------------------------

Excerpts of entries from Wemyss's National Dictionary of Wizarding Biography, Annotated:

Dee, Jno (Dr): Alchemist and potions maker; Divinator Royal; Divinator Imperial; Arithmancer, &c.... Born London to Welsh family 'Du' ('Black'), Welsh cadet line of the House of Black, qv, of Salop, Staffs, and Cheshire.... Hogwarts (Ravnclw); Domdaniel (Merlin)....

Tradescant, Jno (the Elder): Herbologist and simpler; passed as gardener in Muggle world.... Hogwarts (Huff); Domdaniel (Alb Magn)....

Boyle, Robt FRS: Alchemist and potions maker; Healer; Simpler; Arithmancer.... D. (allegedly) 30 December 1691. Hogwarts (Huff); Domdaniel (Thos)....

Ashmole, Elias FRS: Alchemist and potions maker; Healer; Simpler; Arithmancer; Astrologer; Windsor Herald (Muggle) and Merlin Herald (Wizarding); patron of Jno Tradescant (the Elder), qv; founder and benefactor, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxon, qv; 'alchemical son' of Wm Backhouse, qv; received Philosopher's Stone from Backhouse, 1653; inheritor of the papers of and eventual successor to Dr Jno Dee, qv; protégé of Charles 2d, qv; thought by Muggles to have d. 18 May 1692 (removal wholly to Wizarding World w Philosopher's Stone).... Hogwarts (Slyth); Domdaniel (Blaise); Fellow of Paracelsus (Domd)....

Plot, Robt FRS: Alchemist and potions maker; Arithmancer; Herbologist; Astrologer; first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxon, qv; 'alchemical son' of Elias Ashmole FRS, qv; received Philosopher's Stone from Ashmole.... Hogwarts (Gryff); Domdaniel (Godric); Fellow of Paracelsus (Domd).... Left Muggle World, 1690, thought by Muggles to have d. 1695....

Anne, Duchess of York (Ly Anne Hyde): Squib; dau of Edw, e of Clarendon, qv; m James 7th and 2d, qv, d before his accession; mother of Mary 2d, qv, Squib, and of Anne, qv, Squib....

James 7th and 2d, deposed in Muggle Succession 1689: father of Mary 2d, qv, Squib, and of Anne, qv, Squib, by Anne, Duchess of York (Ly Anne Hyde), qv, Squib; father of, inter alia, James 8th and 3d, qv, by Mary (of Modena), Q Consort, qv; natural fa (by Arabella Churchill, qv) of Henrietta Fitzjames, v'ess Galmoye, Jas Fitzames, d of Berwick, Henry Fitzjames, d of Albemarle, and Revd Sr Arabella Fitzjames, qqv; natural fa (by Catherine (Sedley), c'ess of Dorchester, qv), of Catherine Darnley, successively c'ess of Anglesey and d'ess of Buckingham and Normanby, qv....

Mary 2d: Squib; m Wm of Orange (Wm 3d), Squib, qv....

Anne: Squib; ... m Pr George of Denmark, Squib, qv; failed to effect magical cure for scrofula (see Touching for King's / Queen's Evil) notably upon the young (Dr) Samuel Johnson, qv....

Domdaniel, University of: Wizarding University, sharing grounds and buildings w Hogwarts School, qv; closed 1692 attendant upon enactment of Statute of Secrecy, qqv; reopened 2000, subsequent to end of Second Riddle Rebellion, 1997, qqv; constituent colleges Godric; Blaise; Albertus Magnus; Merlin; Thomas Aquinas; Paracelsus, qqv; preserved organisationally during closure by Fellows of Paracelsus, qv, as self-sustaining corporation (note: Paracelsus College is the Wizarding equivalent of All Souls, Oxon, qqv; fellows of Paracelsus continued to be elected during the closure)....

Johnson, Sam(uel) (Dr): ... Hogwarts (Gryff) (did not complete schooling at Hogwarts); Fellow of Paracelsus (Domd)....

Carlos Segundo: Squib; King of Spain, known as 'El Hechizado', Charles 'the Bewitched'.... His afflictions played some role in Continental agreement to the enacting of the Statute of Secrecy, qv, in 1692, the 27th year of his reign....

Glencoe, Massacre of: 13 February 1692 (qv).... One of the events of the Whig - Jacobite Blood Struggle, qv, in which the internal warfare in the Wizarding World spilt over to encompass Muggles, Squibs, and Wizards living amongst Muggles (including members of extended families) prior to the enactment of the Statute of Secrecy, qv, which was in part prompted by these events....

Whig - Jacobite Blood Struggle: The Wizarding component of, and a primary motive force in, the Muggle political struggles known to Muggles as the 'Glorious Revolution' and the Jacobite Risings.... As was true of those earlier examples of Wizarding conflict affecting the Muggle world, the 'Wars of the Roses' and the Great Rebellion (the 'English Civil War' of 1642 - 1645 and the Interregnum), which events the Whig -Jacobite Blood Struggle indeed resembled, the now-discredited issue of 'blood status', qv, was implicated in the causes of the conflict; as was true of the 'Wars of the Roses' in particular (see: The York-Lancaster Wizarding War), the Whig - Jacobite Blood Struggle involved a falling-out within the Royal Family, qv, as well as of factions within the Magical gentry and nobility, over respective claims of blood status and of magical power. The immediate cause of the struggle derived from the unexpected Squib (qv) status of Anne, Duchess of York (Ly Anne Hyde), qv, the consort of the future James 7th and 2d, qv, and of their surviving issue, Mary 2d, qv, Squib, and of Anne, qv, Squib, in conjunction with the death without legitimate issue of Charles 2d, qv, and the marriage of James 7th and 2d to Mary of Modena, qv, who was not a Squib yet was not a 'pureblood' Witch.... James Churchill, d of Marlborough, qv, descended of an old Ottery St Catchpole and Ottery St Mary (qqv) family, and related to the House of Black, qv, threw in his lot with the Blacks and with William of Orange and Mary 2d, qqv.... Amongst the most lasting effects of the Whig - Jacobite Blood Struggle were the Statute of Secrecy of 1692 and, with the loss of immediate Royal patronage after James 7th and 2d's recognition in December of 1691 that his prospects for regaining the Crown were not immediate, the closure of the Wizarding university, Domdaniel, qv, for over three centuries (although its constituent college Paracelsus, qv, continued to elect Fellows of Paracelsus, qv, thus perpetuating itself and preserving the corporate existence of the university until its refounding in 2000, subsequent to the end of Second Riddle Rebellion, 1997, qqv)....

Port Royal (Jamaica) 'Earthquake' of 1692: Reputed 'natural disaster' of 7 June 1692, qv....

Cunning Man (Men / Woman / Women): Wizards and Witches living amongst and amidst Muggle (qv) neighbours; particularly those who chose to do so after and in defiance of the Statute of Secrecy, qv, enacted 1692, qv.... Many cunning folk chose to live amidst Muggles in protest of the Statute of Secrecy and in rejection of the now-exploded concept of 'blood status' (qv).... Often these were Herbologists and Simplers, in many instances, Healers, and, on occasion, Curators of Magical Creatures, who were unwilling to deprive Muggles and Squibs, qv, of their aid, and who disdained the restraints upon their arts, sciences, operations, and research opportunities that were the result of sequestration from the Muggle world.... Of these, not a few passed in the Muggle world, even before the Statute of Secrecy was enacted, as farmers, gardeners, rural labourers, farriers, smiths, veterinary surgeons, clerics, and physicians (see, e.g., John Tradescant (the Elder); Tamsin Blight or Blee; Henry Harries, MB, MRCS, LSA, and John Harries MD, MRCS, of Cwrt-y-cadno, Carmarthenshire, qqv). These were, as their dedication to aiding their Muggle neighbours suggests, politically and philosophically opposed to the 'blood status' precepts reflected in the Statute of Secrecy.... However, other Witches and Wizards who chose to live amongst Muggles, even after and in the teeth of the Statute of Secrecy, were not reconciled to the Statute, to the Political Settlement of 1692, qv, and to the Ministry, qv, for the opposite reason, believing that these did not adequately meet pureblood (qv) concerns and were too liberal towards Muggles and Squibs, qqv. This category of 'cunning folk' (vide the Slytherin motto; see also, Sorting Hat, the) were active and instrumental in stirring up dissension, and were almost always to be found as the accusers in and managers of persecutions and prosecutions for alleged witchcraft, cozening the Muggle populace and Muggle authorities into persecuting innocent Muggles and Squibs for acts they could not, by definition, have committed....

---------------------------------

The throaty sound of a hard 'gh' lingered yet in Scots and Irish speech, but the yogh, the ancient letter that represented that sound, had been merged into the 'Z', even as the old letter thorn had been replaced by 'Y' in Ye Olde Tea Shoppes the breadth of the kingdom over; and save in a few instances, the yogh also had been replaced in the very sound of things by the intruding 'Z', such that Mackenzie was called 'mac-ken-tsy' now, for a' that Menzies bides 'Mingiss' yet.

Long and away before ever these sounds were written in script kenned of mortals, there had been a place of hollows, a shadowed place, a locus of withdrawal. A place hollow and cold, concave to the world, a place that sucked in to itself what it could from the world we know, and kept it. A parasitic space, concave to the world: a leech-place yet none of leech-craft or healing, a remora-land, a fluke's stead. A croft held by demonry, its crop and harvest, souls.

The most basic of terms cognate in the tongues of the West address the most basic of concepts: mother and father, five, God. The Void, the abyss that looks into those who dare look into it, is a basic concept. The Latin is cavus, a hollow, a concavity. The Gaelic is camhan, cabhan, the same as County Cavan in green Ireland. The Roman Wizards were the first to dare record what had afore been spoken of but in whispers in the heather, a Place of Hollowness. An ager, a territory, of the Void. The Gaels had their own cognate terms, and what time Michael Scott the great sorcerer - that man that was of Balwearie nigh to Kirkcaldy and treated as equal with popes and emperors, him that split the Eildon Hills in three down upon the blood-boltered Borders and died and was buried with his great grimoire in his hands, in Melrose Abbey - what time Dread Michael cast the stars, that place had become again but a whispered name of horror, known but to few: the Hollow Lands, the Ager Cavanus in bastardised Latin, of which even the full and malefic name was rarely written, the Ager abbreviated with a yogh, and rough, vulgar tongues to come after taking that yogh as a 'Z'.

The Hollow Lands, the Field of the Void, and they were bound there in search of Answers. They were bound, questing, for Azkaban.

---------------------------------

THE MAGICAL TRANSPORTATION FORECAST ISSUED BY THE NEPH OFFICE, ON BEHALF OF THE OFFSHORE AND COAST-AUROR AGENCY, AT 1130 ON THURSDAY 23 MARCH 2006

THERE ARE WARNINGS OF GALES IN ST ALDHELM SCILLY AND NELSON

THE GENERAL SYNOPSIS AT 0600
LOW CORUNNA 999 EXPECTED NELSON 1003 BY 0600 TOMORROW. LOW SKAFTAROS 1020 EXPECTED BRENDAN 1008 BY SAME TIME

THE AREA FORECASTS FOR THE NEXT 24 HOURS

AZKABAN NORTH KARMOY SOUTH KARMOY
NORTH OR NORTHWEST 4 OR 5, INCREASING 6 AT TIMES. SNOW SHOWERS. GOOD, BUT POOR IN SHOWERS. LIGHT ICING IN AZKABAN WHERE LAST REMNANTS OF DEMENTORS ARE PRESENT

NORSE MORAY TAY LIDISFARNE BEATTY SKAGERRAK HELIGOLAND
NORTH OR NORTHWEST 4 OR 5, INCREASING 6 AT TIMES. WINTRY SHOWERS, BUT FAIR IN TAY AND LINDISFARNE. MODERATE OR GOOD

THE WASH DOWNS
NORTH OR NORTHEAST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 IN SOUTHEAST DOWNS. FAIR. GOOD

FORELAND SELSEY ST ALDHELM SCILLY
EAST OR NORTHEAST 5 TO 7, OCCASIONALLY GALE 8 IN ST ALDHELM AND
SCILLY. RAIN AT TIMES. MAINLY GOOD

NORTH NELSON
EAST BACKING NORTHEAST 5 TO 7, OCCASIONALLY GALE 8 IN NORTH, BECOMING CYCLONIC IN SOUTH. RAIN. MODERATE OR GOOD

SOUTH NELSON
SOUTHWEST 4 VEERING WEST 5 TO 7. SHOWERS. GOOD

SOUTH CORUNNA
WEST OR NORTHWEST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 IN SOUTHEAST, BACKING
SOUTHEAST 6 OR 7 LATER IN SOUTHWEST. RAIN OR SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD

NORTH CORUNNA
NORTHEAST 5 TO 7, BUT CYCLONIC AT FIRST IN NORTHEAST, VEERING
SOUTHEAST 4 OR 5. RAIN OR SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD

CELTIC BIDEFORD CORK
EAST OR NORTHEAST 5 OR 6. RAIN THEN SHOWERS. MAINLY GOOD

MAN
NORTHEAST 4 OR 5 BECOMING VARIABLE 3 OR 4. SHOWERS. GOOD

BANTRY
EAST OR NORTHEAST VEERING SOUTHEAST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 AT FIRST. SHOWERS. GOOD

PUFFIN IONA
NORTHEAST VEERING SOUTHWEST 4 OR 5, INCREASING 6 OR 7 PERHAPS GALE 8 LATER IN NORTH. RAIN LATER. MODERATE OR GOOD

ISLES BRENDAN
NORTH OR NORTHEAST 4 OR 5, VEERING EAST 6 OR 7 PERHAPS GALE 8 LATER IN SOUTH. SNOW SHOWERS. GOOD, BUT POOR IN SHOWERS

PENTLAND TORSHAVN SKAFTAROS
NORTH BACKING NORTHWEST 5 TO 7, PERHAPS GALE 8 LATER IN TORSHAVN AND SKAFTAROS. SNOW SHOWERS. GOOD, OCCASIONALLY POOR IN SHOWERS. LIGHT ICING IN TORSHAVN AND SKAFTAROS

---------------------------------

It amused Harry, when it occurred to him, that not once since they had arrived in Italy, had Draco tried to cause his trousers to slip off by means of a surreptitious charm. Not that they not had sex, of course, but Draco had a habit of trying wandlessly to remove Harry's trousers in a way that seemed accidental. As if Harry weren't aware of that: Harry hadn't survived the War without knowing precisely when any stroke of magic was performed near him, much less upon him. But it made Draco happy to believe that he was slipping something past Harry, and Harry was well aware that a happy Draco, pleased with his own cleverness, was a very amorous Draco - which made for a very happy Harry, so it all worked out, really.

---------------------------------

In the days when Ethelred was king of the English, there lived in the Fens a half-foreign family, and they with an ill name and an ill-favoured son. Long had the Fenlands been part of the Danelaw, and foreign to the folk was as foreign did: Norse and English alike were none so foreign there, and the folk tall and straight, with hair like their own cornlands and eyes like the great North Sea or the sky over it. Foreign, though, in look and mind and deed, were these part-familiar strangers in their midst, dark of hair and cheek and mind and speech. Dark not in the way of the Oldest Ones in the land, the Celts, at that, but more like unto the darkness of the men who had watched those shores before the Saxons came, and faded into echo when the Legions were withdrawn.

And now the Danelaw that had been Guthrum's portion was England again under the ancient crown of him who had tamed Guthrum, Great Alfred, whose successor now held the kingship of a new-united England.

But half a hundred-year had it been since the English had the Danelaw retaken, that had been theirs and been ceded to a stronger, and the peace that had followed was but brief and part-worn. Ethelred that was now king was a man uncertain, and ill-counselled by them that had the advising of him, and the Northmen like wolves of the sea and strand snuffed the scent of uncertainty, and circled ever closer. As well, across the narrow seas beneath the high chalk cliffs, there was a new power rising, and it also boded ill towards the English. When the Saxons had come into the West, Cerdic the conqueror that was king in Wessex thereafter, he who began the line that Alfred adorned and Ethelred now embarrassed, was himself a Briton who had seen the coming Saxon threat and made himself its master at any cost, but the blood of Cerdic the Crafty was now thin in the House of Wessex, and its strength was feeble.

Cunning was not Ethelred, ill-counselled and weak. Cunning and canny and crafty was the King of Scots. The House of Alpin was nearing its ending, though no men knew it, but its last heirs were thrawn and canny as men must be who take and hold a throne by war and murder and the killing of kin. Already, Kenneth 2d, Cináed mac Maíl Choluim, had cast his eyes upon Caithness and the North, and the Strath of the great River Spey, knowing that he and his crown must in the end master the lands of the jarl of Orkney, Sigurd and all Sigurdssons thereafter, or be mastered. It would be left to Malcolm 2d Forranach, Malcolm the Destroyer, to secure Sutherland and Caithness by war and wedlock, Jarl Thorfinn the Mighty being his grandson, his daughter's son by Sigurd Eysteinsson; yet that was but the culmination of the long policy of the mac Alpin kings.

The unsettled times, even in days of putative piece, in the Saxon lands, had caused no small emigration by magical folk. Hengist of Woodcroft was but one of many in his day who found that his neighbours, and, worse still, his lord, were becoming all too interested in his powers as days darkened and uncertainty grew and folk began to demand protection and to look askance at any who declined to provide it.

Yet the Kings of Alba had a use for such as these, as they had found a use for the Britannic refugees from Rome and then from the Saxons, for the Romans and the Romanised refugees from the barbarians, for the Saxons fleeing the fury of the Northmen: as, for one, the long-fathers of Rowena Kentish-maid. English Hengist was granted a fief by the King of Scots in the debatable lands between the king's realm and the holdings of the great Orcadian jarl, amidst the wild Gael, far and far from his Severn-side home near Chepstow, and was encouraged to bring magical folk there to settle and to hold the land. Not for nothing were these Scots kings of the distant begetting of cunning Cináed mac Ailpín, Kenneth 1st, and learned in statecraft after the manner of St Columba: wise as serpents, if not always gentle as doves.

Long ages before Colm Cille, the Dove of the Church, had come to Alba from the land of Erin, or ever the Saxons had taken to the sea from their Teutonic forests or the Northmen taken to the whale-roads, long ere this, far off, in Portingale and Espagne that would be, there dwelt a people whom the Greeks, voyaging, called Saephe and Ophis and Dragani, ere even the Celts came to Iberia; and the Greeks, recording all things as was their ready-minded wont, called the land Ophiussa, the land of serpents: for the folk that dwelt there, the Saephe and Ophis and Dragani, worshipped snakes, the slithering ones, that were in the closest contact with the Earth Goddess and absorbed her wisdom in every belly-scale. Their chthonic goddess was a serpent-maiden, and a dragon of the solstices, and they were a serpentine people in all ways.

To them the Greeks came, and Carthage, and then Rome, terrible with eagles and swift, stabbing swords, and newer and perhaps lighter gods. The serpent-worshippers were pacified and their women given to the conquerors.

Then the Germanic tribes came, an irruption of fury and gore. The Suebi and then the West Goths ruled the land, and mixed their blood with that of the indigenes, and their tongue was spoken in the hot, sun-leached lands even as cognate Germanic tongues were heard in the mists of Britain and the tangled forests of the North and the fiords of the sea-raiders. And the heat of battle and of blood cooled with victory, and Sueve Gallaecia became a Christian land as behoved a province of imperial foederati, even as was its contemporary Honorian foundation, Britannia.

Nor did this change when the Visigoths conquered the Suebi in Galicia and absorbed their lands. Nor, even, did this change when the Eastern Empire, purple with majesty and stiff with pearls and jewellery, iconic, hieratic, solemn, took and briefly held the southern part of Hispania, far from the lands of Portus Cale and the Douro vale and the ancient, secret memory of the snake-worshippers.

On the 19th day of the month named for the great Caesar, Julius, in the Year of Our Lord 711, Roderic the King was defeated and slain at the River Guadalete, thereafter long called the Río de los Muertos. With him fell into eclipse the heritage and traditions of Rome and its Empire and of the Church and the Faith. For the victors were not the dispossessed Vandals and Alans, kin and enemy both to the Visigoths, and like them heirs at however many removes of Caesar and of Constantine and of Constantine's Christ.

In the second century after the Incarnation, a Syrian priestling of Homs in Syria, one Varius Avitus Bassus by name, became briefly, by a series of events no sober historian would dare imagine plausible had they not happened, emperor of Rome. He was the priest of Al-Jebel, the Al' or God of the Mountains, who was now identified, in these sub-Hellenistic days, as an avatar of Helios, of Sol Invictus, of the Sun-God; and, become, improbably, the Emperor of Rome in the Seat of Augustus, taking the name Elagabalus or Heliogabalus, he erected his god upon the Palatine Hill: a black, conical meteorite: around which he danced whilst the Senate were forced to look on.

The crimes and follies of Elagabalus were unique to him: the disordered insobrieties of a spoilt, Levantine youth of seventeen years, unbridled power, and notorious homosexual proclivities so unrestrained that he, the successor of Augustus, proclaimed himself, publicly, the happy wife of his slave-charioteer, and gave out offices to his lovers on the basis of their endowments. His religious excesses, by contrast to his vices, were not unique.

Two centuries before the disaster at the River Guadalete, the tribe of the Quraysh worshipped their goddess, Q're, and held her to be a form of the Tri-Partite Goddess of All, Al'Lat, an Al' of the same sort as the mountain Al', Al-Jebel whose black idol-stone Elagabalus shamefully erected in the Palatine precincts to affront the dignity of better gods than he. The Arabs, like the Syrians of Emessa, Homs, in Roman Syria, worshipped black, meteoric stones, which they believed to house their gods, and they built temples around these stones to shelter them, which enclosures they called ka'bah.

In Roman Syria, Varius Avitus Bassus's god could be identified with the Sun. In the desert, the true desert, the Sun was less god than demonic destroyer, a god, if at all, of terrible aspect, and men betook themselves for mercy to a cooler goddess, the Moon. Al'Lat, the Goddess, the Goddess of the tribes, was three-in-one, maiden, mother, and crone, Q're of the crescent moon, Al'Uzza in her fullness, Al'Menat the waning but potent old moon, mistress of divination, prophecy, and fate. Kore, Isis, Sheba; Alilat in the records of sharp, inquisitive old Herodotus. Her greatest shrine, her ka'bah, her stone that was the desert tribes's omphalos, was at Mecca; it is yet. Its priests were the beni Shayba, the sons of the Old Woman; so are they yet. Around the stone idol, the starkly obvious and unmistakeable vulva of the goddess, her worshippers revolve seven times, for the planets known of old; so they did in the days of Al'Lat, and so do they unto this day, by the idol beside the sacred well. Even so did Inanna, Ishtar, pass the seven gates of the underworld to stand at last before her elder sister Ereshkigal, 'the Goddess', Allatu.

There came in after days to the tribe Quraysh, the hereditary priests of Q're and expositors of the Sacred Word of Q're - which is Qu'ran - a son of the tribe who had heard the Torah of the Jews and the Gospel of the Christians, and took elements of these and mixed them with the worship of Al'Lat and her sacred stone, the axis mundi of the tribes, and under a crescent banner synthesised a religion of his own that gave a masculine ending to the goddess's name; and his syncretic pastiche of a faith ran like fire through the imperfectly Christianised lands of Rome's East and amongst the heretics who did not accept the divinity of the Son as proclaimed by the Patriarch of Constantinople and defined by the ecumene. Under a newer guise the old goddess was restored, and the new faith was a thing at once hidden and blatant, clamantly proclaimed yet slaying any who ventured to look behind its proclamation to its roots and secret well-springs or to assess its history and claims; and where it conquered, it required unquestioning response, submission or embrace, conversion or dhimmitude, and its thinkers and questioners in after years were always its heretics, possessed of ideas and methods alien to the tribal mind, taken from the loot of Greece and Byzantium. It dreaded enquiry, and for good reason; and it dreaded philosophers and Wizards with a peculiar dread, and persecuted them dreadfully.

This was the force that assailed and defeated Roderic and the Visigoths at the Battle of the River Guadalete on 19 July 711; and despite the survival of the remnant Kingdom of the Asturias, and the Iberian determination within seven years's time to begin the long reconquest, Wizards were well advised to flee wherever the banners of Mohammed had triumphed.

Thus it was that one family departed the Peninsula. They were a kinship spread between what is now Spain and what is now Portugal, but they long antedated such concepts. Before the Greeks and the Punic traders and the Romans, they were. Before the Celts, they had been in and of the land. They were of the most ancient stock, that had worshipped the serpent in the dark dawn of man, and they had remained in the land and of it through all changes after, until now. They were called for the small settlement that was the caput of their region, Salazar, in the Ebro watershed. Many of the people of the Asturias, of Portugal and Northwest Spain, fled the Moors; most sought refuge amongst the Franks. But these were Wizards. They could flee further than most. And so, whether by accident, or by an error in Apparating, or by a spell gone wrong, or for reasons of their own, they fled from the shadow of the Cantabrian Mountains, the Cordillera Cantábrica, to the mere and fens and wash of waters in Cantabrigia, Cambridge.

There they were, then, this half-foreign family of Salazar. The Sliders, the neighbours by-named them: Slyþrian. The ill-favoured son of the house, now, some generations later - and in all those generations, the Sliders have remained alien - was named at the font for St Matthew, but the wit of his neighbours calls him 'Maðkur', 'Worm', the Snake.

Ethelred the King, ill-counselled, is losing control of events. In the Summer Country, in Somerset, between Avalon and the Thorn, Godric has found his advice disregarded. He senses evil times ahead. The Scots King has heard of Godric: not always has his advice been disregarded by Ethelred, and it is to him as much as to any of that king's witan that is owed the strong English coinage, the creation of the sheriffry, and the better legacy of Ethelred's reign. The Normans, too, admire Saxon Godric: it is he who will in the end arrange the marriage of Ethelred to Emma of Normandy, whose grand-nephew William will later take the English crown. That same William will bear a line of bastards, the Peverils and Peverills, of infamous memory, and his long descent will include the Gaunts as well, and both those houses will, to the sorrow of all, become entangled in the lineage and legacy of Slider Salazar. But none now foresee this.

Rather, the kings bid for the services of Godric the golden, merry and wise, whom the Normans in their bastard French will name the Gryphon of Gold. Godric is wiser. Through his art, and through his web of acquaintance, Godric is well aware of the magical commons of the realm, and has long since exchanged pledges of friendship and, what is more, exchanged knowledge, with Slider. So also has he done with the Welshwoman of Norse descent, Helga Hvalpuf, Helga Haraldsdottir, daughter of Harald Whale-Spout, Hvalpuf, the Danish Wizard. So also has he done with the Lady Rowena, Claw of the Raven, Spruithean na-Bann, herself descended of Kentish refugees who had long antedated Hengist of Woodcroft's removal to Alba and had as long intermarried with the Scots. Scotland, war-torn and barbaric as it is, will be safer than this realm of England in the years to come, and Godric knows it. It will provide an abiding place for the youth of the Wizarding world, and he and Slider and Whale-spout and the Talon of the Raven will teach them there, far from Viking longship, Norman longsword, and internecine war.

It is sheer misfortune that Salazar Slytherin will find Scotland uncongenial, particularly once he learns that salachar, in the Gaelic, means filth, literally, and, in common usage - especially by gleeful pupils - shit.

---------------------------------

The Scots court and the nobility of the realm had a tradition of Wizardry that ran to time immemorial; it was no accident that long before any union of crowns, long indeed before the modern kingdoms that later became constituent realms of the United Kingdom were fully formed, Hogwarts was located in Scotland, and taught equally the students of the Three Kingdoms, the Principality, and the Isles before ever the Isles became a part of the Kinrick of Scots.

The great earls and the kings, the lords of the Isles and the earl of Orkney, the lairds and the clerical estate, were Christians, neo-Platonists, and Hogwarts Old Boys, time out of mind; and after the so-called reformation, they bided yet in the auld traditions. Archbishop Adamson and Archbishop Sharp, Archbishop Hamilton and the Prior of Whithorn, Bishop Honeyman, the earl of Huntly and the Brahan Seer alike, Hepburns and Gowrie earls and Bothwell lairds, all were of the old profession.

Then came John Knox and the Scottish Taleban.

Hysteria gripped Scotland, at once shared and encouraged by the Reformit Kirk and its puppet-masters. As a weapon against the Roman Catholic Church and its adherents, including many men of might and nobility, as after against Episcopacy and its supporters, accusations of diabolism and witchcraft became common stock in trade, even causing the Lord Lyon King of Arms, William Stewart, to be hanged in 1569 for 'witchcraft and necromancy': all, all political persecution with a dangerous top-dressing of religious fanaticism. The countess of Atholl and the queen of Scots herself were accused of practising the Dark Arts; so too were Lord Herries and the earl of Arran. When the show trial of the 'witches' of North Berwick was held, even a daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, and he a Senator of the College of Justice, was accused, for no better reason than that she was a Catholic body, the whole of the panic and 'trial' being a Presbyterian ploy in any event.

Once James 6th of Scots had managed, with the assistance of the Presbytery, to become James 1st of England as well, he had no further use for the Genevan bigots, and sponsored Episcopacy as a royal prop and support; in turn, the self-righteous and the unco' guid levelled the same false charges of demonry against the Episcopalians, and they continued to do so long as the Stuarts refused to give way to them.

Yet there was also a strong tradition in the Northlands, in Scotland and in Scandinavia alike, of Dark Arts, indeed, and the accusation was thus ready to hand, even before the 'reformation': the Stuart kings were aye quick to bind up accusations of malefic means when accusing kinsmen, rival claimants, and disaffected nobles of seeking treasonable ends. James 6th his ain self, notoriously learned in these dark matters, was born with a caul, and he as much as any goodman or crofter in the kingdom well knew what that implied. The first great witch hunt of his effective reign, as well, was bound up with the storms that long held back his destined queen, Anne of Denmark, from crossing the seas to Scotland, and the Danes and Norwegians blamed their long-feared local Witches and Wizards, whose reputation as storm-raisers and wind-wakers was already ancient in the land. So late as 1670, Lisbet Pedersdatter of Nypan was condemned and burnt as a witch in Trondheim, for no more, it appears, than being a cunning-woman healing her neighbours with simples and prayer; and the lower deck of the Royal Navy credited with the powers of a weather-warlock every Finn living, as late as Bonaparte's march upon Moscow in 1812.

It is against this backdrop of the fearful, the uncanny, and the fanatical that we may view the curious fate of the Revd Robert Kirk, neighbour and kinsman of Rob Roy Macgregor, suspect Episcopalian and Royalist, master of Gaelic lore, incumbent of the parish kirk of Aberfoyle, and himself born thereat when his father was minister - born as the seventh son of Kirk of the kirk, beneath the shadow of the Doon Hill, the Dun of the Sidhe, the Fairy Mound.

In the Year of Grace 1691, this pious clergyman, translator of the Psalms into the Gaelic, completed his magnum opus: The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies; or an Essay on the Nature and Actions of the Subterranean and (for the most part) Invisible People Heretofoir going under the name of Faunes and Fairies, and the lyke, as described by those who have the second sight.

On the 14th May 1692 - that fatal year of the Statute of Secrecy, if 'statute' so corrupt a bargain and so tainted a treaty may be called - that good man Robert Kirk, the minister of Aberfoyle, took his daily, morning stroll upon the skirts of the Fairy Hill. A few hours after, he not returning to the manse, what appeared to be his dead body was found there on the Dun Sidhe. Yet he appeared after to his wife, and again in the body of the kirk before a great assembly of people there for the christening of his after-born son; and the true nature of his fate remains a matter of debate and doubt unto this day.

What is certain is this, that the reverend gentleman wrote more of divination than of elves, and his elves are not of any sort recognised at Hogwarts or Domdaniel. In fact, the persistent fear is that his - apparent - death did not merely coincide with the Statute of Secrecy 1692, but was related to it; and that, put starkly, his long-suppressed manuscript was something far more dangerous to Muggles and Ministry alike than a treatise on magical beings or prophecy: it was political, allegorical, and dangerous accordingly.

---------------------------------

'Don't talk rubbish, Blaise.' Justin was unwontedly curt, severe, and suddenly formidable. 'Or, if you must do, give us your usual line in popish fancies, which are at least nominally Christian. I do not,' he said, in the authentic accents of the East Anglian low-churchman, 'have any particular use for papistical flummery, but even I will admit, indeed, I shall insist, that the numinous does exist, it attaches to certain places and things and themes, and that it is a reflected light upon the people that walketh in darkness, an adumbration and sign preparing the heathen, baptising their imaginations in advance, to see the true light and know the true source of the numinous and the holy. This rot, on the other hand, that finds and ascribes some made-up "pagan" origin to everything from Magna Charta to Morris dances, is intellectually catchpenny, cheap, and, as any serious archaeologist will tell you, false in fact.

'Rubbish, all of it. Now: let's have no more of it.'

---------------------------------

Everyone else had retired for the night, even her suddenly clinging son, when Narcissa had approached Walburga's portrait. Like Ron, she had not been altogether sure if they - if Harry - could rely upon the old woman's apparent change of heart and of allegiance, likely though it was that the engrained belief in following the orders of the Head of Family still bound her.

'Aunt,' said Narcissa, that first night back in Grimmauld Place, 'he's not some romantically nom-de-plumed hero, he's a halfblood named Tom Riddle.'

'MY SIRIUS! MY REGULUS! Merlin, what have we done, encouraging such vermin!'

'Yes, well, the House of Black are going to fix this.'

---------------------------------

'I thought, perhaps, as a symbol of reconciliation, "Marietta Susan - "'

'NO GRANDDAUGHTER OF MINE IS GOING TO BE NAMED "MARY SUE"!'

---------------------------------

'No, no, I'd rather deal with a swingeing Socialist than with a bloody Wet. In truth, I'd rather deal with a Swindon Socialist than with a Wet.' Draco shuddered, delicately, contemplating Swindon and all its works. 'At least sodding Somerset have Bath. The ... BANES ... of our existence is, Pig Town.'---------------------------------

'Where's Harry?'

'Oh, he popped out to the corner shop. Apparently, we're out of corners.'

'Draco -'

'Ah, here he is now. Hullo, love. Did you enjoy your ramble?'

'I feel like a new man. Unfortunately, the shop was out of new men -'

'HARRY!'

'Draco, we're ignoring our guests, and will you stop preening in the mirror?'

'I wanted time to reflect -'

'MALFOY!'

'Hermione?'

'That is it. You two are spending far too much time listening to the wireless.'

'That reminds me, it's almost time for Oliver's show -'

'Oh, God.'

'Not a fan of Through the Wood, Hermione?'

'I wish he'd kept up with Quidditch and never gone into comedy.'

---------------------------------

'Uncle Harry? Uncle Draco?'

'Charlot. What brings the world's most fiercesome Veela-Weasley to our door? Oughtn't you be at Quidditch prac?'

'I quit the house team.'

'Good God, why?'

'Um. How do you ... know?'

'Know what, Charles?'

'If you're, well. Gay.'

'If you stay h- -'

'DRACO!'

'Or if you kiss while you're -'

'MALFOY!'

'Oh, all right, frankly I think he wants cheering up before even he wants information. You're frightened, aren't you, Charlot?'

'Yeah. I mean, even in the Wizarding world - you hear awful things about Muggles, but even here - I mean, there are people who hate you -'

'Hate comes of fear and ignorance, Charl'. And the cure for both is information.'

---------------------------------

'Well, let's look at motives. If there's one thing that could shatter the peace, it would be Muggles turning on us again.'

'But they could have done.'

'Rubbish.'

'They have done.'

'Have they?'

'Look, I know you kipped through every class Binns taught, but you have heard of the Burning Times and the Witch-hunts, haven't you?'

'Draco.... If you were surrounded by angry Muggles, what would you do?'

'Apparate, whilst tossing a few hexes to cover my retreating arse.'

'Are you that much more clever than your ancestors?'

'What - oh. WAIT. But. But.'

'Do you know why Tessa Zabini didn't apparate?'

'"Tessa"? Blaise, why is your mum called -'

'Draco, darling,' said Narcissa. 'You are evading the point, as you do when you're confronted with information that upsets your prejudices. But I will answer. She is called "Tessa" for the same reason that Daphne is called "Queenie", her school bye-name was "Contessa" because of her airs and ambition. Now. Harry. Are you saying what I think you are saying?'

'Cissy, Tessa couldn't apparate away because there were Wizards in the crowd who had charmed the area against Apparition. The same Wizards who, I think it clear, Imperius--ed the Muggles and then Confunded them. They are trying to start a war with the Muggles, and make it seem the Muggles struck first. That's the only possible conclusion.'

'Harry,' said Hermione, slowly, as Draco was still speechless, 'are you suggesting that there were never witch-hunts?'

'I'm suggesting that there were never successful ones. And I am beginning to suspect that Dark Wizards used them to dispose of Muggles accused of being magical, of Squibs, and of enemies - with a sufficient anti-Apparition jinx in place.'

'My God,' breathed Draco. 'You realise what this will mean - politically? The former secrecy regime ... Harry, for years everything, everything, has been predicated on the belief that we had much to fear from Muggles, that they were and had been our enemies, dangerous to us. And now you are saying -'

Ron shrugged. 'What could they do to us?'

'I mean,' said Harry, 'now, okay, they've firearms and bombs and things, but then? When this - this legend - began? What could even a mob of Muggles do to a reasonably competent Wizard - yes, Hermione, or Witch? And the Muggle records are clear, also, that with very rare exceptions, if any, Witches and Wizards, or the people they thought were Witches and Wizards, weren't burnt at all, not in England or Scotland, even when they were put to death.'

'But that means....'

'Hate comes from fear. Why should we ever have feared, and thus hated, Muggles? It was we who were the dangerous ones.'

'This also means,' said Theo, warningly, 'that we here, in this room, are now dangerous - and in danger. I have said before that there are political consequences to your rapprochement with the Muggles, or at least the Muggle-born. But this ... this is revolutionary. And there are those who would stop at nothing to silence your turning their comforting history and comfortable lies on their ear.'

---------------------------------

'Excellent,' said Dumbledore's portrait. 'You will now see, my dear boy, why it was I was content to keep Binns on for so long. Better irrelevant history, abysmally taught and mostly unheeded, than false history. Very well done, all of you.'

---------------------------------

They were a mixed lot, lecturers. They lectured, this mixed lot, to a still more mixed lot of lecturees, who might be anything from Commonwealth subalterns to hard-eyed majors in kilts. The brigadier was very interested in seeing what the latest lecturer - this undergraduate-looking, excitable little bugger, with the Other Ranks accent underlying his light and appallingly enthusiastic tenor - was made of, and was attentive accordingly.

'Good morning, gentlemen. Oh, beg pardon: ladies and gentlemen, of course. 'Seats, please.

'My name's Colin Creevey. I'm what you would call a civilian.'

P'raps you are, you chirpy wee bugger - and don't think that faint stress on the word went unnoticed. But all of us here recognise that look about you. You've been at the sharp end, you have, and the more dangerously the less rank you claimed and the less combat kit you wore when you were out in amongst 'em. I wonder just how many bits of metal and riband you have quietly tucked away at home, with a few scraps of paper, it might be, bearing a signature that looks remarkably like that of Her Maj. You may look a mousey, titchy pipsqueak, Mr Civvy-Street Creevey, but I wonder how many pips you had up on your combat dress, and perhaps a crown as well. If you ever wore one, you soft-voiced little assassin.

'I, well, I am ... a photographer. Boyhood hobby, really. And I'm here to teach you photo-reconnaissance, analysis, intelligence - the whole boiling, really.'

Oh, you're the lambiest little lamb, aren't you, mate. I'd like to see your rank slide when you're in dress state 95. And your medals, on Dining-In nights. But your mob mayn't have those: you're one of the ghosts, you are - aren't you, lad. Oh, of course, my mistake, you're what we would call a civilian. You're no more than a happy, innocent amateur, here to teach art appreciation to the poor dirty buggers of Shrivenham and the DA - I don't think. Just a dewy-eyed boy, loose at the Defence Academy, the Joint Services Command and Staff College, and the CSRC, eh, Mister Creevey? Balls.

'When - well, at my old school, an old friend of our Headmaster's spoke to us a few times, a colonel, a VC, in fact. One of my old school chums, chap from my House, in fact, did some remarkable things. The old colonel used to talk about how, in the Peninsular War, the Special Forces of the day were called, "Picked Men" ... well, Harry, my old housemate, was more than that, God Almighty he was so good that we called him "the Chosen One", never saw a man who could do more. Best flier anyone ever saw, yet even better at ground combat, everything from coordinating and commanding a battalion-sized force, to hand to hand combat. Taught us in the DA - I mean, ah, in our little duelling club - everything we knew, did Harry, and it was a privilege to assist him even in minor ways. I mean, really: I'm by no means a warrior, after all, but I do have an eye. Two of them, actually.'

The DA, you say. Unintentional slip, mere coincidence - I'm very sure. Such a little maid from school, you'd think him - if you were a damned fool, which I am not. A milk-and-water creature, this Creevey, and likely bent with it, you might guess: an uphill gardener, a starfish trooper, a bum bandit, a billyboy, a Ktoi. I think not. I've seen his red-headed spitfire of a wife or girlfriend in his sensible bloody Volvo every morning. Sod me if he's not the quietly dangerous type, one who wants you to underestimate him in hopes you'll be his prey. No names, no pack-drill, but I'd have a bit on, just a flutter, mind, naming just what savage old school he was at, as well. Short odds on its being some freezing bit of Sparta-in-Scotland, or I miss my guess.

'A static picture tells you something. No, I tell a lie, it won't tell you, you'll want to interrogate it.'

God help anyone this sweet-faced youth interrogates. I can see a hard man when he's in front of me.

'A succession of static pictures over time can't help but tell you things even without you ask first. But a moving picture? That's a conversation. People and places both try to keep their countenance, and keep their secrets. But if you are watching - and hidden, unknown - if a place or a person thinks he's unobserved, then, well, you see what happens when ... the mask ... is off. The true face of things.'

And you'd know all about masks, I'll wager, you innocent schoolboy. If this Harry bloke's a harder lad than the mild, stage-curate Mister Creevey, then he damn well frightens me.

'Sometimes, I teach FE classes down the local coll. Nice old ladies of all ages and both sexes, wanting to take better snaps.'

Oh, yes, Mr Quiet Creevey, you are bleeding well one of the clan, you are. You've seen the real thing, for all your air of youthful and well-scrubbed innocence. Vicar wants not to put you in with the other choir-boys, lad, you're deceptive and dangerous.

'Sometimes, my M- - I mean, my - sometimes, people think that capturing a single moment forever frozen in time is to capture truth. Not arf. Get the shot, get the series, get a loop, and watch it over and over until you know it. Truth is the daughter of time, it doesn't come in single moments.'

Just a bit of art appreciation for the WI series of talks, with the local photography anorak, eh, Mister Creevey. You dangerous wee bastard. Oh, you're good, you are. I wonder if the father of that flame-haired wife of yours realised what sort of son-in-law he was taking on, in you.

'The thing to look for, even in a single snap, isn't so much what's there. However interesting, right? What you want to find is what's there that didn't ought to be. And, still more, what isn't there that's meant to be. That's the whole dashed jammy dodger.'

Milk-and-water, fresh-faced Mister Creevey, the parishioner's pal. Never a word that would bring a blush to a maiden aunt's cheek. Just how many unsuspecting enemy buggers have you personally banjoed, I wonder. How much death have you seen, lad? How much have you dealt? Oh, you're a harmless one, all right. We all of us have you sussed.

'Same thing I tell the yummy mummies and the OAPs who want snaps of their last jaunt to the Costa del Butlins. Warfare's just like photography, innit. Killing is just like taking the snap. It's all about framing your shot.'

___________________________

'Heya, Harry! Draco, Nev, Ron.'

'Colin. Ginny, love.'

The brigadier watched from his corner of the pub as the Innocent Mr Creevey and his vixen of a wife greeted some evident old friends - and, judging by the hair, her brother, as well. That's the Harry he mentioned, stood there next the blond public school boy. Christ, he's young. They all are. Far too young - except around the eyes, and the way they stand and move. And excepting always the raw power they exude. Oh, yes, that is certainly the all-perfect and all-powerful Harry of the lecture. And ninety and nine in a hundred would never see the signs of it on him, now, would they.

'Lecturing at Shrivenham, Creevey?' The blond's drawl was affectionately amused. 'Upon my wand, the Muggles have no idea what they're in for.'

Maiwand, eh? Nice to know we here at JSCSC are "the Mughals", I gather. It's almost a respectful reference: new to me, but respectful enough, and less hostile than a good few other names we've been called. Well. Every mess has its own slang, impenetrable to outsiders, and I'm not surprised to hear Maiwand mentioned, several of the regimental forebears of the County regiment have that battle honour.

'They're really nice, Draco! Really.'

And a 'draco', in its day, was the cavalry standard of the Legions's auxiliaries, and the symbol from which the dragon of Wessex derived. Warriors, all of them, even the boffiny one they call Nev. Fighting men always run true to type, in the end. You can always tell one when you spot him.

'I'm sure they are, Colin. Ginny, your father wants to know when you can next stop for a weekend -'

The tall, redheaded man on Harry's left, clearly Ginny's brother, rolled his eyes. 'What he means, is, Mum has the Sunday joint laid-on, already, and it's only Thursday.'

'Harry! You don't mean you were at the Ministry today?'

'No rest for the wicked, Gin.'

'Well, that explains why Draco had to go up to town -'

'Why, you little devil!'

Harry was laughing even harder than the ostensibly outraged blond - Draco, they'd called him.

'Ah, now,' said the one called Nev, who was clearly a proud son of Lancashire, by his voice. 'Tha knows Harry's the only one left who can talk to snakes, why not see what he can do with bureaucrats?'

COBR meeting? And I see Our Mister Creevey's father-in-law is with the Ministry, perhaps he did know what sort of son-in-law he was getting under the sheep's-clothing the wolfish little bastard wears so well.

'And Draco's the lead snake, so -'

The one they called Draco reached over and punched Ginny's tall brother in the arm, which, from the looks of it, was a reasonably good way to break the bones in a man's hand. Both were grinning, however, so it was unlikely there'd been harm done.

Colin, though, was now looking, speculatively and enquiringly, at the brigadier, who nodded. He had noticed, and approved, that no one had asked questions or volunteered details about Colin's lectures or anything else: clearly, these were old soldiers, and knew the score. He didn't mind being introduced.

In answer to the fractional nod of the head, Colin ushered his group towards the brigadier, and made the introductions: his wife, Ginny, her brother, Ron Wesley, if the brigadier heard correctly (and, as a rule, his hearing was very acute indeed), Neville Longbottom, Draco Malvey, Harry Potter.

'Peregrine Heskin-Wentworth. How d'y'do.'

Harry looked at him, weighing him. 'The brigadier? Draco and I know your aunt, in fact, we're on the PCC with her.'

Oh, good Lord. My aunt, the Indomitable Lady P. These are the two Aunt Maud is always on about. Draco Malfoy, not 'Malvey', I really must have my hearing checked, I'll want a deaf-aid next, and that Harry Potter. Well, it simply couldn't not have been, really. The mysterious local OMs, with the background-in-intel stamped all over them. Great God. The mild-mannered Mr Creevey wasn't exaggerating, if a tenth of what Aunt Maud suggests, or hears in the village, is at all true. And I was right, as well: this is his Harry, and he does damn well frighten me. God knows what he's done and seen, and at their ages, too, but it's clearly something that makes my career seem like a parish jumble.

'Ah, yes. I understand that Aunt Maud thinks highly of you both. We'll want to have a chat when I next stop at the Hall.' And I'll get the MoD to second you both to Shrivenham if it requires another penny on the tax.

________________________________

So, thought the Brigadier, that - that, mind you - was Potter. Hero to that innocent and guileless assassin, Mister Colin Civilian Creevey - and there was a lad who'd have a knife in your ribs before you'd quite managed to realise he wasn't a Scout come 'round on bob-a-job day.

The Brigadier tramped down the lane, away from the pub, bound homewards in the placid night. He reflected that men had died and worms had eaten them for less cause than just such a peaceful stroll in their own, intimately-known country. Vast wilderness had its grandeurs, and its charms, and its sweeping brutalities, as well. But it was in such still, peaceable nights, nightingale nights amidst the hedgerows, with the sexual reek of may pouring from every haw and thorn, that a peculiarly nameless and numinous terror lurks: the sudden horror in the country lane.

When mortal men are responsible for such horrors, there comes, in those who witness the aftermath, a coldness down the spine. When there is no explanation - when the old, forgotten suggestions that yet lurk in shadow and sweep suddenly across the timeless downs, assail the mind - there is a shudder in the soul.

Young Harry Potter exhaled that atmosphere of the uncanny and the atavistic in much the way in which the hawthorns's mayflowers exuded the scent of rutting.

No question that he was an accomplished, an honourable, and a humane warrior. That was stamped deep upon him for all who had eyes to see. He would be a fine, if unchancy and unbiddable, indeed risky, subordinate; he was the sort of coolly risk-taking subordinate who, if he lived, would become, as Potter clearly had become, a magnificent - in every sense - commander.

And yet he, and Malfoy, yes, by God, and Longbottom, and Westleigh or whatever his name was, as well, gave the Brigadier pause. Indeed, the Brigadier grimly admitted to himself, they gave him the wind up. Even more than did little Creevey.

They were ghosts. They were of the company of honest warriors, yet also not of it, perhaps but barely in it. They were picked men, they were Pict men, he thought, recalling his Kipling, but Picts not caught as little Allo was between the upper and nether millstones. They were the men of the margins, of the liminal spaces, smoke in the heather, more like sorcerors than soldiers, and he was merely Parnesius, the Captain of the Wall.

Picked men, and Potter, the Chosen One. He'd heard it, and known it for truth in the instant of hearing. Men set apart, sacral, like priests or sacrifices.

His aunt thought the world of Potter and Malfoy. Well, he could respect them. He could trust them. But he would never be quite easy with them. Every soldier lives with death, whether he ever sees it or not. But these were the ghosts, the men who, beyond any Special Forces, beyond any Int Corps wallahs, were intimates, initiates, of death, and familiar with death's secret ways. They were the men who turned up unexpectedly at unexpected deaths ... and had the air of having returned to the scene after a brief absence, of having been in at the death, and having expected it. They were the men who unexpectedly failed to materialise at an expected death - or other planned rendezvous - and who, by not keeping the appointment, evaded deadly ambush.

His aunt, Lady P, thought the world of the lads, the Brigadier reminded himself, as he put his hand to the latch of his safe and welcoming home. She'd a ridiculous feud with the local plods, of course, but even her loathing of DI Maidment was expunged by her charity towards her loved Potter and Malfoy: if they were having a jar down the local with Maidment, then it could only help Maidment, it certainly didn't blacken them in Lady P's eyes, even by so detested an association.

Well, Maidment was no fool. He quite likely liked and perhaps admired Potter and Malfoy, and Wesley and Longbotham and little mousey Creevey. But the Brigadier would have wagered anything you like, as he locked the door behind him to shut out the deceptively quiet night, that Maidment felt something of the same unease around these polite young warriors.

For these were the men, also, whom policemen dealt with through clenched teeth. The men who rang them up, politely, diffidently, with the usual, awful formula, with the courtesy that masked iron necessity and brazen command. Hullo. My name is Harry Potter, of the Ministry of Defence - the Home Office, the Crown Estates, HM Revenue and Customs, the Joint Intelligence Committee - and I should like to speak to a senior officer, please. Thank you. Yes? Thank you, Superintendent - Inspector, Chief Inspector, Chief Constable, Deputy Lord Lieutenant - my name is Harry Potter - Draco Malfoy, Neville Longbottom, Ronald Wellesley, Colin Sodding Creevey - I am employed by the Home Office - the FCO, the MoD, the bloody Cabinet Office - and I am speaking from Cornbury Farm - Wilton House, a council flat in Swindon, the greengrocer's in Poulshott, a copse on West Lavington Down - where I seem to have encountered an unexplained death -- a suspicious circumstance, a curious incident, a fatality - and require assistance. Please send an experienced officer and team, if you would be so kind. My office will notify the appropriate authorities....

Ghosts. And neither soldier nor policeman cared for ghosts, believed in ghosts, dealt willingly with ghosts.

However friendly the ghosts might be.

________________________________

'I'll drive.'

'I think not. I've seen you drive.'

---------------------------------

'Darling, I came as soon as I heard.' Cissy had swept in upon 'Tessa' Zabini, who was with Blaise - and Justin, which would have appalled Signor Unterperger no end - with Harry and Draco standing about supportively, ostensibly to protect the Zabinis from Justin.

'Thank you, Cissy, but I'm quite all right.'

'I was speaking to the boys.'

'O, don't mind me, I was only nearly killed.'

'Yes, darling, but you weren't, were you, whilst darling Justin was actually arrested.'

'I'm surprised that you regard that as noteworthy, Cissy, darling. Thirty years of war and Ministry cockups, both sides the family have experience with arrest and detention, I believe.'

'Hmph. Never bothered me,' said Harry, thinking of his trial before Fudge and Umbridge.

'Yes, well, darling, you're unique,' said Narcissa, all but patting Harry on his head.

---------------------------------

'He's a loner from a Death-Eater family. I say we take everything we have on your Mr Theo Nott and give it to a profiler.'

Seamus, Michael Corner, and Eddie Carmichael stared at the little man from the Austrian ministry, with his Italian robes and American English. Then, without a verbal incantation, they threw him out of Seamus's office.

---------------------------------

Ron's impatience was that of a grandmaster watching the agonising endgame of a match between two complete incompetents.

'Look,' he broke in. 'The worst that happened to Gunhilda Keen was that she missed a match. By 1590 or so, Gunhilda of Gorsemoor'd developed a cure. I dunno what Lucius did, mate, but there's no sodding way your grandfather died naturally of dragon-pox, so stop arguing the pitch, Harry's right.'

'Ron?'

'No, I didn't ask Hermione, Keen played Quidditch, right, mate? So it's in my area of expertise, they didn't make me editor of Wizden's for my looks alone.'

---------------------------------

Signor Unterperger did not at all care for the man from the ministry in Vienna, but the little man was right in one thing: the English were insisting on his cooperation, but unwilling to give any in return. How like them. The younger Theo Nott, Justin of the unpronounceable surname, and Zacharias Smith - was he Romany? With that name he might well be - would be tasked (abominable verb!) to a profiler, trained by the American Federal Bureau of Ensorcellation.

---------------------------------

Justin had been released in such a fashion as to preserve the polite fiction that he was not suspected of attempting to murder his mother-in-law.

Signor Unterperger, in fact, had attempted small-talk. 'At least, signor, we fed you well.'

'What? Oh, yes, jolly nice.'

As they were walking, Disillusioned, towards a safe place for apparating, Hermione asked. 'How was the food, really?'

'Spinach and walnut ravioli. Like eating teabags. Well, I suppose. I don't think I ever used a teabag for tea, let alone - well. And that's the other thing. Bloody Europeans cannot make tea to save their souls, not a man jack of them understands the importance of warming the pot.'

---------------------------------

Ginny laughed. 'Dad's still fascinated by Colin's da and his former work. He keeps asking when he'll get to see the milk actually float, and how do Muggles levitate the bottles without magic?'

---------------------------------

'Oy, you lot! Time for Through the Wood!'

'"Ooooah! Oooah! It's me vertigo! Save me, someone, save me! Ooo, the prospect of me mortality, I'm faintin', the horror of the abyss draws me!"

'"You're three feet off the ground on a slow broom."

'"I'm delicate, I am! Get me off! Quick!"

'"I gather you say that to all the boys...."'

'And here's something else that wants to be got off ... ladies and gentlemen, it's Through the Wood!'

'"Hullo, and welcome to the show. First, I must protest. These constant owls, Howlers, Floo-calls, all asking - in some cases, demanding -- that I return to professional Quidditch, as - and this is absolutely as one Howler put it - "the only man who can save the game": you all of you simply must cease sending these here.

'"They want to be sent to the selectors at the Great Britain Quidditch Board, instead, to the attention of Messrs Gnomefumbler and Gruntfuttock.

'"Now. I hae here the answers to last week's quiz. No. Yes. Only if you're certain you're no allergic to lanolin, and there's someone to hold the yowe. Haddock - with an 'o', please, not an 'i'. Broom polish. Behind the broom-shed or in the changing rooms. And, finally, Only if that measurement was in inches, not metric.'

---------------------------------

'"And now, it's song time. Ye maun keep your seats, we've locked the doors."'

---------------------------------

'"I, Lee Jordan, will portray the Quidditch pitch. Whoosh. Whoosh."'

---------------------------------

'She swept into the room, which needed a much stronger cleaning charm than that.'

---------------------------------

'"Stop faffin' abaht...."'

---------------------------------

'"Dahlia."

'"Rupert."

'"Dahlia."

'"Rupert."

'"Darling."

'"Yes, darling?"

'"Yes, darling."

'"Yes, darling? Yes! Darling!""

---------------------------------

'"I am appalled by the indecency with which the WWN allows to flood our homes. With. Ap-palled. On this very programme, you have allowed your horrid folk singer to use the word, "bossock" - when children might have heard ... if anyone actually listened to the programme."

'"'Bossock'?"

'"Many, many times."'

---------------------------------

'"... Tottering Ted Tankard."

'"Bless. 'Ullo, poppets and gentles. Gladsome it be to see thee all, and well likes me the fair prospect of pledging ye with a firkin of Owld Ganderparts cider, but I must anon troll on to the Great Goose-Nadgering and Badger-Pillocking Faire this Bossock-tide, for that I be called to shrive the turves this very year."

'"Well, we certainly shan't detain you if you really must be off."

'"(I must be a bit off if I'm appearing on this programme, laddie.) I shall travel on soonwith, save that my minstrel's code behoves me first to regale all here with this ancient lamentable ballad, that recounts the heart-stricken tale of two star-crossed lovers. Thusly.

'"Green grew the nadgers, and fair bloomed the possets

When came in the springtide the winter of the soul:

She loved him truly, though he was a mere Mu-uh-uh-ggle;

He found her loathsome, especially her mole.

"Like the grim wurzle-top that binds the cordwangle

Like the taut futtock that gunwales the turves

Her mole dug and rooted and grubbed her drab features

And ferrets sent after it ... lost traction on the curves.

"She slipped him a syllabus and charmed him with gramarye

Her witchcraft she used as a snare and a sport

And though 'e did leave her, the fico at her mammary

Grew to become the wanker, Voldemort."'

'"Thank you for leaving, Tottering Ted. Perhaps now I shan't be wanting that anti-anxiety potion. My regular apothecary, you know, ceased business. Well, he died, actually, which I suppose is sufficient excuse. As it happened, that was last week. Fortunately, I chanced upon an advert in - well, let's leave the name of the publication out of this, I only read it for the adverts -"'

'"And I'm Fleur Weasley -"'

'"--I only read it for the adverts ... and saw that a new apothecary had opened in a bijou shopfront down Knockturn Alley.

'"Hullo, is anyone there?"

'"Oooah, hullo, I'm Lucius, and this is my friend Ginger!"

'"Look, Luce, it's Mr Wood! How bona to vada your dolly old eek, troll right in, heart-face, don't be strange...."

'"So, this is your shop, is it? I might have known, there aren't many Knockturn Alley chemists calling themselves "Bona Doobery", I can't think."

'"Yisss, well, our last venture wasn't just screamingly successful, Mr Wood."

'"Ah, yes, fan-fiction, wasn't it?"

'"That's right, Mr Wood: Bona Slash, Publishers. Not a screaming success, really."

'"Actually, it was the screamin' that did for it -"

'"--Too right, Luce, who knew the feely-ome was underage?"

'"I should have thought the Hogwarts uniform might have tipped you off."

'"Oh, 'e wasn't wearing your actual uniform at the time, Mr Wood -"

'"--So, we took this on."

'"Well, not that it's not nice to catch up on your fakements -"

'"Oooh, 'e's slingin' the polari."

'"Where does he pick it up."

'"Clapham Common, I think -"

'"The point is, I'm here in this shop to give you my custom, not to chat. I need to be serviced."

'"I'll say."

'"I want an anxiety potion."

'"Don't you think you're anxious enough?"

'"I mean, of course, an anti-anxiety potion."

'"Ah, well. We haven't precisely got one, y'see, Mr Wood."

'"It's a standard potion for this sort of shop."

'"Bit naff, really, stocking the sort of things just anyone would sell. No, the thing is, Mr Wood, we - are experimenters."

'"I'm sure."

'"Oooah, bold, i'n' 'e bold, Luce?"

'"Researchers, we are. Voyagers into the unknown, dreamers, creators of new potions -"

'"Tell 'im! Tell 'im, Luce! You tell 'im abaht our new potion!"

'"Oh. Well. We set out to make a potion that would endow anyone with the gift of tongues -"

'"And that can be quite the gift, Mr Wood. Luce's endowments include a very gifted -"

'"So, we worked and we worked, and finally we hit upon it! Adder's bane, snakeroot valerian, and snake's head fritillary stamens!"

'"Sounds like Dark Arts to me. Careful, or you'll have Harry and Draco coming round, and Kingsley with them."

'"Fantabulosa! I'd like to bring Kingsley around -"

'"--And Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy can come round us anytime!"

'"I hope you stock cooling draughts for yourselves, at least. Did it work?'

'"We're not actually altogether certain, Mr Wood."

'"Well, you're not exactly a basket-mouth, are you."

'"Oooooahhhh, I wouldn't say that."

'"Luce! 'E means Parselmouth, don't you, Mr Wood?"

'"Yes, sorry. Basket, parcel, what's the difference."

'"You do 'ave a lot to learn, Mr Wood."

'"Evidently we all do, as you still don't seem able to tell me what your new potion does, or even what it's called."

'"Oh, don't get your wild up, Mr Wood."

'"Well, we was going to call it "Kshssshssshssssss" but...."

'"That's your actual Parseltongue, right there...."

'"But it's still experimental, you might say. What it does do, and we know this from testing it, it ... well, when you come to, the next morning you don't know quite what 'appened the night before, but you can tell you 'ad quite the time."

'"I can get the same effect from a bottle of Ogden's."

'"Oh, Luce tried that once, ended up in the A&E at Mungo's, didn't you, Luce?"

'"Traitor! You promised never to tell. Just for that, you'll not be getting any - or the potion, neither. But you, Mr Wood, I'll vend you a flagonette of the potion at arf-price."

'"And that would be?"

'"Twenty Galleons and two Knuts."

'"Good God!"

'"So I take it you won't be having it."

'"Nanti doing, my boy. Not at that price, but I will give you something gratis. A name for the damned thing."

'"Oh, do tell, Mr Wood."

'"For an untried and unknown potion at forty and four the bottle? Call it Shush Juice."'

---------------------------------

'We present I'm Sorry, I'm Not on the Floo, the counter-hex to panel games.

'At the demi-virginal is Myron Wagtail, and your chairman is Stubby Boardman.'
---------------------------------

'"As I noted, the ever-lovely Ivy is not with us today: she is spending time with a rowing blue who is her new beau. And stroke. And cox. As the lovely Ivy is off this week - more so than usual, really - we are joined by the bounteous Lars ... behind me. Lars tells me that he has decided, at last, to apply to become a naturalised British subject, and has been studying for the new exams and learning about our politics. In this, he has been greatly helped by a young member of the Wizengamot, who is quite gaily showing him the ropes, and some handcuffs, and has even had him to a member's tea and for drinks on the terrace. Lars was fascinated by the history of the Moot and its Muggle counterpart, but was sad that even at a drinks party for politicians, he was unable, though plied with numerous Pyms, to find a really satisfactory Hampden.

"It was good of Lars to join us and stand in for the lovely Ivy; as you know, he is kept very busy with his owning and managing a number of successful and elegant B&Bs; and cottages on the coast between Brighton and Poove. I'm sorry, that's 'Brighton and Hove' ... not that it matters, really.

"Fortunately, Lars was already called here Oop North on business, and was thus available to fill in. For Ivy. As scorer. With his experience in providing ... hospitality for pay, Lars has been approached about a new business, one providing hampers and waypoint catering-on-demand for Wizarding hill-walkers and Apparators in the Pennines. We're very grateful that he has taken the time to assist us during his negotiations for Fell Eating Partners, Ltd...."'

---------------------------------

Dossier (from a cooperating foreign authority) in the files of Signor Unterperger in connexion with the investigation in the matter of Signora Zabini:

Name: Severus Septimus Tiberius Prince Parr Snape

Nationalität: British

Geschlecht: männlich

Blutstatus: Abgefaßter Mischling; Getilgt Halbblut

Gatte/in: keine

Wohnsitz: Yorckschire

Vorbestrafungen: ehemalige Todesser; Spion des Phoenix-Ordens unter den Todesser.

Beweggrund: unklar; mögliche Beteiligung an einem Versuch britischer Behörden, geflüchtete Todesser aus ihren Verstecken zu locken.

---------------------------------

'I quite agree, Harry, m'boy, that more Wizards - and Witches, of course, Hermione, m'gel - want to consider the advantages of becomin' Animagi,' said Slughorn. He was in an unbuttoned mood, the inevitable consequence of his having been fêted publicly, fed on sole nantua and poulet de Bresse, and watered copiously with a white burgundy that had assuredly not been provided by the Ministry cellars, being from Harry's and Draco's own (Corton-Charlemagne, the Coche-Dury '96, as it happened, and God help Harry if Hermione ever learnt that the '96 ran them 4290 Galleons the dozen). 'The purpose of defence, if nothing else, surely the war has taught them that. Even so ... Transfiggerative disguise, you know, does have its merits, no one looks twice at an armchair. In any event, my dear young friends, and all the more at my age, I have always thought it best to leave that branch of study strictly alone - for myself, only for myself. I don't think, really, that my likely form - I don't of course know, you know -' and here Slughorn tapped the side of his nose with a fat finger - 'but, my likely form, as I suspect it to be, would have its disadvantages, you see.'

'Your likely -'

Before Hermione could finish, Sluggers smiled and lightly brushed his moustaches.

'Of course,' said Harry, laughing. 'You're -'

Slughorn beamed at him, and cut him off before he could quite blurt it out. 'Goo goo gajoob,' said he, and winked.

---------------------------------

'Actually, Harry, most - well, most civilised werewolves: not Greyback's deluded lot - do quite like Chinese food, and would prefer to eat at a Chinese restaurant than at, oh, Wilton's or Simpson's or Lindsay House - or our equivalents, Somerton's, Timson's in the Mere, Panmure House. Mind you, I do think Lee Ho Fook's is rather overrated, but, then, I've never been one for the Soho style....'
'Why?'
'Soho? Well -'
'No, Remus, why Chinese restaurants rather than a saddle of mutton or a cut off the joint at those posh places?'
'Chopsticks, Harry. No one hands you silver cutlery at a Chinese restaurant.'

It was little surprise, then, that, whilst Tonks had her hen night at Mela Merlin, Remus was sent off, the night before the wedding, with a raucous do at the Flying Artichoke, also irreverently known as the Take-away of the Dolorous Eats.

---------------------------------

The storm lashed the oak; and in its midst, atop the most exposed twig, facing the blasts of weather, singing with joy that increased with each increase in the violence of the storm, there carolled the fat-bellied, cathedral-voiced bird, that least elusive of the more common magical creatures: the chorister of storms, the gale-cock who sang loudest in the worst of weathers and upon saints's days, the familiar of old churchyards with its markings that so resembled a service-book: the missal thrush.

---------------------------------

'Yes,' said Cissy, 'the usual rule was that a Wizard wasn't allowed to stray, either maritally or politically, until he'd been presented with the customary "heir and a spare". You will note that I never gave Lucius a second son, and I assure you that I saw to it that Mungo's informed him that it was his own ... shortcomings ... that were responsible. Without a second potential heir, even though he was so foolish as to commit himself to a lost cause, he was at least forced to keep my little dragon safe for quite some time.'

---------------------------------

They were far from home, indeed. From the Summer Country, and the great Wiltshire chalk, and the kindly English sun that caused Draco to blush rose-pink, flushed as if he were spread upon their sheets, waiting for Harry: the sun that bit gently on his nape like a lover, like Harry (and Harry, even in attacking Draco's slender column of throat, much less his nipples or his prick, sucked like a Dementor, and to him, Draco would gladly surrender his very soul). Far from London, and the Minister's residence, Upping Street, now restored after long disuse, the Head Goblin at Gringotts its secret-keeper and holder of its keys, a symbol of the restored world and its mending relations with other magical beings. Far from English skies. Far from the children.

But, with a succession of popping noises, home had come, suddenly, to them: not the English sun or skies or air, but home, the children, with Molly and Minerva: the children, suddenly in his arms, and Master Rhys smirking on the periphery of vision, the Prime Mover of this reunion.

'I brocht the bairns,' said Minerva, her eyes belying the sternness of her tone. She as much as Molly had been keeping them, and to them, she was the singer of lullabies and arbiter of sweeties, Minnie o' Shirva of the lullaby, a supernumerary and best-loved gran. From her, long before ever they had known a Scottish summer, and long before they would receive their Hogwarts letters, they had had their first dram of the magic and minstrelsy of Scotland, had been taught the old fairy stories and the metrical Psalms and the Shorter Catechism, and been lulled to sleep by the auld songs, Bidh Clann Ulaidh, Dream Angus, Can Ye Sew Cushions, Minnie o' Shirva's Cradle-Sang, and, indeed, Griogal Cridhe, 'Beloved Gregor', that last a lament by a wife for husband and laird, gorily slain and decapitated - but, there, in Scotland of the Gaels, that is a bairn's lullaby. 'They wanted, even in the Winter, to wait until after Thursday had been, but -'

'Why Thursday - oh. Signor Paniccia and Sons come from Frome with the ice-cream. God, they'll eat that all year, won't they.'

'Never mind,' said Blaise, dropping to one knee to gather the Four in avuncular arms. 'This is the very country of ice-cream. Oh, yes,' said he over their excited clamour, 'why, this, Italia bellissima, this is where the Paniccias are from.'

That settled them, in short order. Harry stooped upon them and gathered them up, laughing, and asked, 'What prompted you to bring them, Molly, Minerva?'

'Best to have them all together, dear,' said Molly, carefully not stating explicitly that she had reached the same conclusion as had Theo: that this investigation was tempting dangerous vengeance.

'And it appears,' said Minerva, warningly, meaningfully, 'that you'll be here a time.'

---------------------------------

END

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