Chapter 13 - One tale ends another adventure begins by Maeryn Lamonte – Copyright © 2021

-oOo-
The portal from Fareway opened into a forested and hilly land named Tara Româneasča by the locals. The place lay under the military rule of a distant empire and suffered from it. I made my way towards the nearest governing city which I found to be under the control of a young prince named Vlad Draculea.

I was drawn to the name as you might imagine. It was well known in the wizarding world that the mundanes believed dragons to be the stuff of legend, so to hear of someone with a draconic appellation piqued my interest. It seemed the title had been granted to the boy’s father for his opposition to the empire forces, a deed which resulted in young Vlad being held hostage, along with his younger brother, by the Ottoman emperor against the continued good behaviour of his father.

Vlad returned to his homeland after his father and older brother were murdered and fought to regain his father’s seat of governance in the land. He had claimed it for the second time when first I met him and, finding myself to be quite taken by him, I presented myself with an offer of service.

He glanced at my letter of reference and accepted me into his court without further consideration. Mundane world or no, you cannot live in the vicinity of a portal to a magical kingdom and remain entirely ignorant of its existence. For all that more than a century had passed since the last official contact between Vlad’s people and the Kingdom of Fareway, unofficially sufficient trade continued that the land of my birth remained less hidden than King Laramy would have liked.

It came as no surprise that his principal interest in me was to learn what I knew of magic. Being a nuisance maker since my early years had meant I learned almost nothing of the arcane arts. In effect I knew little more than what I had learned from Ulric, but this I shared with the prince, and he saw value in it, for who but a leader would most gain from the adoration of his people?

My vow did nothing to forbid my talking of Ulrich’s most recent recipe for the golden potion. Vlad instructed me to prepare him a draught, at which I was forced to confess that I possessed all the ingredients necessary but for the skin of a venomous snake found only in the far-off continent of Africa. Fareway possessed more than one portal into the mundane world, and it was through one such that these creatures were hunted. It took only very little research to discover their habitat lay beyond the reach of the prince.

And so I told him there existed a forgotten potion capable of achieving much the same if not greater effect. I explained I had been ensorcelled never to speak or to write of what I knew, but that I stood at the brink of recreating it. I told him of the risk since I had not yet perfected the formula, but he was a man of courage as much as of action and he bade me prepare the elixir to the best of my ability.

And thus did I make my most educated guess as to which of the six lost ingredients I should include, perhaps being somewhat persuaded to use those that were easiest to find. My formulation produced a flask of golden substance that seemed of good colour and appearance.

The potion granted Prince Vlad a powerfully magnetic charisma that was in no wise the like of that I had seen from Ulric’s potion. Fearful of what I might discover, I looked for other changes and soon observed more than I cared to find.

The prince developed within himself a thirst for blood uncommon to man. He went shortly afterwards into battle against the Ottoman Turks and left over a thousand of his enemies dying, impaled upon spears. His notoriety grew and he his people revered him just as his enemies feared him.

He seemed content enough with the change, and I remained by his side a while, hoping the effects of the potion would lapse, but they never did.

In time I left his service and went my own way, heading towards the North and West. News of Vlad’s excesses on the battlefield haunt me still, and I found no small measure of relief in hearing of his death some years later.

For my next experiment, I chose both my ingredients and my subject with greater care, or so I thought. Here was a man exiled, like myself, from Fareway. A man possessed of some magic but no great ambition. I told him of my own efforts — as much as the vow would permit me — and he assented to trying one of my concoctions.

Once more the potion appeared right in its colour, and once more I hoped I had created a true draught, but the instant he drank it I saw the light of madness appear in the man’s eyes. Not a deranged madness, but one of calculation and cunning. It seemed the potion I created for him erased his affability and drew from deep within him some fell purpose. It was by his choice that we parted company.

It was not until many years later I heard of his excesses. The man’s name was Ekrisdis, and though it shames me greatly to admit my part in his making, I feel history will tell enough of him and I need mention nothing more here than to confess that part.

I travelled across many countries, meandering north and south until I reached its western limit. Here I took passage on a small ship bound for an island kingdom — a place called Britain, ruled by a child king grown to mature years. He seemed a weak ruler and in need of some assistance, so I offered him the benefits of my third attempt at making the potion and so affected his mind that he spent a year in a stupor following my ministrations. I am fortunate that I came to him in secret, for had it been known that I had so poisoned the king, I may have found my head parted from my body.

My vow prevents me writing in detail what variations I tried and why, but suffice to say that I did so with reasons I felt were valid and true. After my third failure I changed my approach, choosing less notable individuals for my trials. I found a way of keeping track of my experiments. Assigning a letter within my mind to each ingredient, I was able to keep note of the combinations of letters I tried without awakening the magic that bound me.

My failures continued, but none so notable as those first three. My attempts spaced out, separated by months and more than once by over a year. In part this was due to my remorse at the harm caused by my potions although this never grew so great that I felt inclined to cease my trials altogether. Mainly though the delays came by reason of the scarcity of many of the ingredients I needed. I ran out of fairy wings at one time and unicorn hair at another, but Britain was possessed of its own magical heritage and, though we lived in an age where such pursuits were persecuted, I found the means to replenish my stocks, albeit at some considerable cost to my purse. Other materials proved harder to find since I was unable to utter aloud what I sought, but find them I did, and so my research continued.

With each failure the vow weighed on me more heavily, but my intent behind each new attempt was in no way malicious, and so it spared me time and again. I mourned the harm I was causing and yet could not find it in me to desist. I have no mastery of numbers and could not tell you how many ways it is possible to combine three of six ingredients, but my list of essays grew improbably long.

I began to wonder if I had misread or miswritten one or more of the ingredients and as I approached my middle years I grew more despairing of ever reaching my goal. The king’s parting gift afforded me a modest income beyond paying for the rarer of the ingredients I needed, but I could feel a lightening in the purse and worried at how much longer it might support me.

Winter came once more and I chanced upon a poor fellow down on his luck with a starving family. It had been my practice for some time to choose my test subjects from among the needy that even in the event of an unfortunate outcome, the families might benefit to some degree. I paid them enough from my much-diminished purse that they might live well for a month and in return he agreed to trying my latest preparation in full awareness of the risk.

Dreading the outcome, I handed him the flask of sparkling golden liquid and watched with growing delight as his emaciated form filled out and his pox-ridden face cleared and altered until there stood before me a strapping fellow of such fine looks, I felt drawn to him myself.

If I had thus found the combination that improved a man, then all that should be required was to make up the base mixture and to switch out the ingredients I had used for his potion and to replace them with those I had left to one side. Surely that would prepare the draught I had sought for so very long.

I had sufficient in my stores to make up two portions and I mixed them forthwith. The first I offered to the man’s wife with two reasons in mind. My less altruistic side still felt a need for the potion to be tested before I should try it. The better part of me recognised in the nature of man a tendency to turn from what he has the moment he feels he may achieve better, and it seemed well, with this man now the most handsome in the village, that his wife should become the most beautiful. She drank it down in something of a daze, and became abruptly slimmer, fairer of skin and more youthful in appearance, just as I had hoped.

I cannot fully express the depths of satisfaction and relief I gained in seeing my concoctions acting as intended. An overwhelming desire filled me to partake of my own flask, but common sense prevailed. To bring fairness and health to a person, even for a short while, might be taken as a miracle, but seemingly to transform myself from a man into a woman might invite a visit from the witch hunter, and while I knew of witches who took pleasure in baiting the fellow, I had no desire to come under his scrutiny.

To the young couple I bade them good fortune, warned them that their newfound fair looks would likely not last beyond the month and to cherish them while they remained. I then withdrew from their village with my own hopes for the future renewed.

I took time to acquire sufficient ingredients — especially those that were hardest come by — to make potion enough for many years to come. I then took myself further west, settling at last in the great port of Bristol. There I purchased all the accoutrement of a well to do lady of middling years and paid a deposit upon an apartment of modest means — certainly far better appointed than the rooms I had enjoyed as King Laramy’s fool — in the name of Arabella Lowell, taking my mother’s family name for my own.

Locked behind the doors of my new home, I disrobed and drank down my golden draft. The change was instantaneous as it had been the previous time, and Arabella gazed back at me from the looking glass. Perhaps a little older than in my memories, but no less beautiful, her body no less lithe. No amount of wishing could make the transformation complete though, and I still bore that which declared my body to be male despite all appearance to the contrary.

I dressed, sensing a coming home as each garment settled into place. Dressing in this new land was no chore needing the assistance of another, though I missed the companionship I shared with my king when we had lived as women side by side. When I felt myself complete, I departed my rooms for a short promenade.

There was a stench to the place that pervades all cities without magic to help ease the processes of nature, but there was a vibrancy also. Within my quarter I felt safe to walk about unaccompanied and within a very short time settled into a routine of exchanging nods and smiles with others of my station as we walked about the place enjoying the air as much as the prevailing miasma would permit.

During my first promenade I became aware of a practice – adopted by the men as much as the women – of carrying a kerchief dipped in perfume. Held to the nose it disguised the unpleasant odour of the place well enough that it faded from the mind’s grasp within a very short time.

A fair face counts for much, even in a woman of maturing years, and it was not long before my door was beset with suitors. As before in the king’s castle, I felt a growing excitement within me that others should show me such attention, and my spirits soared in consequence. It brought evident complications to life, for how might I present myself as a woman to so many interested men when under my skirts I was more like them than any might care to discover?

I took care to inform any who made to court me that, however they might be drawn to my looks, I would never be in a position to entertain them in my bed chambers — an unfortunate birth defect as a child, I explained, for such in my mind it truly was. This helped to winnow out the true kernels from the chaff and before long there remained only two or three suitors determined to remain by me regardless.

In truth I would have been content to live my life as a spinster, but life is harder for an unmarried woman than for one who possesses a family, and so I entertained these die-hards. One in particular captured my heart, for he was gentle of spirit and possessed a broad range of interests that kept our conversations entertaining — I hope as much for him as for me. In time he confessed to me that he was, in his own way, different from those around us. From an early age he had found himself drawn to men and not to women. During his childhood he had become infatuated with one companion after another but had never found voice to speak of his attraction for fear that it might not be returned, or worse, that it might reach the ears of his parents and cause him to bring disgrace to the family.

Now turned adult, he was under pressure to find himself a wife, and one so fair as I would surely win him favour in the eyes of his parents. That I had no more desire to share a bed with him than he with me added to my allure, and before long he proposed marriage which I duly accepted.

To the world we are a respectable and attractive couple who, unable to have children of our own, have taken in the orphaned daughter’s of my husband’s young sister. Between us we make a happy family and live out the course of our lives as contented as any might be in this blighted world.

Of all the joys my happily-ever-after has brought me, perhaps the most unexpected is that which I find in my children, Eloise and Sophia. Adopted they may be, but they could not be more my own had I birthed them myself, nor could I love them less.

“My girls,” I told them this night, as I tucked them into their beds. “For all that you are of this mundane world, I can think of nothing magical that could bring me more delight.”

“What is mundane?” asked Eloise. She is not far off her fifth birthday and filled with an insatiable curiosity.

“Muggles,” says Sophie in an attempt to repeat my own words back to me. Her two-year-old mind has quite a prodigious vocabulary which she expands with each new day, though her mouth yet lacks the dexterity to speak much of it well.

“Muggles indeed, my little one,” I laugh back to her, then answering Eloise’s confusion, I say “You, my girls – or muggles as your sister puts it – are mundane. Though you possess no magic in any real sense, still you bring an enchantment all your own into this world.”

And so ends my story. Perhaps not the stuff of legends. No great evil vanquished, and as unlikely a challenge faced and overcome as any you might find. Perhaps romance of a sort at its end, though I feel sure that many who hear this tale may not believe I deserve the contentment my loving family has brought me.

In pursuit of my own happiness I caused great harm. I am full aware of this and feel the weight of it bearing down on me each day. I cannot regret my actions for I believe the outcome was very much for the best. If any regret remains to me, it is that only I have gained from this and I would have my discoveries known to the world, for of a certainty there are other folk such as myself.

My vow forbids me to speak of what I know, and yet I would encourage any who read these words and find themselves inclined to seek a similar outcome, the way exists and is there to be found. It is my earnest desire that you discover it for yourself with less pain than its search caused me, and where words may not be written plainly, I entreat you to seek the meaning behind the words.

I comfort myself with the hope that one day others will benefit from that which I sought so long and hard to achieve. Please do not give up. The answer lies within your grasp and you are closer to it than you may believe.

Lori turned a few more pages, but the writing was at an end. Apart from the torn page and senseless scribble later in the book, all the other pages were blank.

She lay back on her pillows and stared at the ceiling. Her mind was whirling with all she’d read and she had no way of making sense of it.

“Let it go.” Her mother’s voice came to her from years ago. “It all makes a pattern which you’ll see if you leave it be. If you hold onto it, you’ll twist it out of shape and you won’t see what’s there.”

So she let the words swirl around inside her head. If there was a pattern she couldn’t see it, but certain sections of what she’d read stood out from the rest. She slipped out of bed and went in search of Madam Pomfrey.

“What are you doing out of bed?” asked the ageing nurse, her head bowed over a pile of parchments.

“I wondered if I might have something to write on,” Lori said. “And to write with.”

Madam Pomfrey huffed gently then reached into a desk drawer. “Here. Parchment, clipboard, pencil. Saves you from the risk of spilling ink on my sheets.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll thank me by getting back into bed. You need rest.”

Lori complied. She allowed the words to swim about her again and made notes as the different sections once more came to visit her. There were those cryptic notes she’d been reading just as Anneka came to visit. There was the name Arabella had assumed at the last, and the place she’d settled. There was the quite surprising discovery that it had been Randolph’s experiments that had produced Ekrisdis along with a number of other notable monsters in the world. She added bits here and there where she felt them rise to the surface. Eventually the maelstrom subsided and she put the pencil and paper to one side, next to the book and McGonagall’s glasses.

She felt tired and closed her eyes…

-oOo-

“Hi,” a voice said quietly, uncertainly. A familiar voice.

Lori opened her eyes to find a very self-conscious Hortensia Skunk looking down at her.

“Hey.” Lori gave her a tired smile and stretched.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I can come back.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m glad you came.”

“Really? Even after I let your other cloak…”

“McGonagall told me about it, and Raphael’s threat. You did the right thing Hortensia. I mean it’s just a cloak after all. Way less important than a person.”

“So you’re not mad?”

“Not in the slightest. Morgana is all right, isn’t she?”

“Oh yeah, she’s fine. I, er, I brought you something to eat.”

Lori sat up and accepted the tray. Bangers and mash with peas and gravy. Her hunger growled inside her and she reached for her knife and fork. “Didn’t you bring anything for yourself?”

“Oh, no. I was going to eat later. I er…”

“Have a date with Morgana?”

She smiled. “Maybe. I didn’t know if you wanted company though.”

“You have to be kidding! I only have the one book, and I just finished reading it.”

“Oh yeah, that reminds me. Sorry about this, but your brother left these at our dorm for me to pass on to you. It’s catchup work from, well, from pretty much everyone.” She laughed apologetically and lifted a stack of books and papers out of her bag.

Lori, mouth full of sausage, pointed at the chair next to her bed. Hortensia deposited the work and looked around uncertainly.

“Sit on the bed,” Lori managed around a rather overfilled mouth. “Tell me what’s been going on since I ended up in here.”

“Er, well Lily Potter and Hugo Weasley got caught trying to sneak out to Hogsmeade a couple of days ago.”

“What? How?”

“Well, from what I heard, Lily’s been pestering James for information about the secret passages around Hogwarts since she got here. The word is he got fed up and told her about the passage behind the statue of the witch with the hump.”

“But everybody knows about that one, even the teachers.”

“Apparently not Lily. And the teachers have hexed it now. If anyone uses the password near the statue, it screams.

“Which is what Hugo and Lily did, which led to them being caught and now they have detention in the kitchens for a week. I heard Hugo grumbling about it earlier. Apparently they have to make butterbeer. Gallons and gallons of butterbeer. He was saying the smell of it is so sickly he may never want to drink it again. He was even talking about asking McGonagall if he could switch his detention to cleaning the owlery!”

“That James Potter needs to be brought down a peg or two. I wish someone would teach him a lesson.”

“Ask and your wish will be granted.” Hortensia’s smile was growing by the minute. “He’s suspected of breaking up a packet of canary creams and mixing them in with the feed Hagrid’s been giving to that litter of firecrabs he’s been raising.”

“What did that do?” Lori almost choked on a mouthful of sausage. It felt so good to have something silly to laugh at again.

“I don’t know. Hagrid won’t show anyone. He has them shut away in his hut with him. All I do know is that every ten to fifteen minutes there’s a loud bang from the hut and this cloud of yellow feathers appears out of his chimney. If you open our dorm window, you can just about hear them going off. I don’t think Hagrid’s slept for a week.”

“Why do they think it was James?”

“Well, you know he’s the main source of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes products in the school? His uncle keeps sending him samples by way of advertising, and he keeps boasting he gets really good discount. He’s having to keep a really low profile at the moment, ‘cos Hagrid is not his usual laid-back self.

“And word has it he doesn’t have his invisibility cloak any more. You know, he spent most of the first term bragging about it and showing it off? Now one of my friends in Gryffindor tells me his dad came in and took it back after the fog cleared.”

The conversation and laughter went on for a while until Madam Pomphrey appeared out of her office and told Hortensia that Lori needed her rest.

“I should go anyway,” Hortensia said, picking up Lori’s dinner tray. “I don’t want to keep a certain someone waiting. You know how it is?”

“Well, come back soon. I really needed this, H. Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for understanding. I’m lucky to have a friend like you.”

“That makes two of us then. If you see Lysander, ask him to come see me again. I mean I know he was here this morning, but I want to know if he has any news about my mum and dad.”

“Sure, if I see him. Only, apart from when he dropped that stuff off earlier,” Hortensia pointed at the pile of homework, “I haven’t seen him at all today.”

Hortensia departed leaving Lori with an empty room, a read journal and a stack of work. She riffled through the pile until she found her history of magic textbook and settled back into bed.

In their last lesson, they’d learnt about Azkaban. She found the chapter and turned to the next one. A lilac envelope fell out. She opened it and pulled out a matching sheet of paper with a short note penned in a precise cursive script. Lysander’s less tidy scrawl filled the page above, below and on the back. She started with what her brother had to say.

“Hi Sis,

“I’m guessing this’ll be the first book you open. Hoping so in any case because I need your help.

I got this owl while I was collecting your catchup work this morning. You should read it now before going on to the rest of what I’ve written.”

She scanned down to the original contents of the note.

“We have your parents,” it said. “You have until midnight to retrieve the Bloodstone and its box and bring them to the top of the Astronomy Tower. It is currently being held at the Ministry for Magic where a way in has been prepared for you. If you prove as resourceful as your sister and make it in time to hand the stone over, then your mother and father will be released tomorrow morning. If not, or if you tell anyone what you are doing, you will never see them again.”

It was unsigned. Lori felt her blood freeze in her veins. She turned to the rest of Lysander’s note.

“I’ve told the owl to wait for me in the owlery while I write a reply, but I’m not going after the Bloodstone. I don’t trust them, so I’m going to try following the owl and see if it’ll take me to where they’re holding Mum and Dad. You remember what we saw at Miss Mitchell’s funeral? You remember where Mum took us our first day here? I’m going to grab some raw meat from the kitchen and see if I can get one to let me ride it.

“You remember Mum talked about using them once to get to the Ministry? They’re quick, so I guess they’ll be your best bet too. I need you to pretend to be me and go after what they want. I don’t know how closely they’ll be watching, and I don’t think we can afford to take any risks. If you don’t hear from me or the ’rents by midnight, you’ll have to be ready to do what they want.”

The clock struck the third quarter after seven. She had a little over four hours and not a moment to lose.

Climbing out of bed, she picked up her wand and the earring Lysander had returned to her from table beside her bed. The necklace still hung around her neck. She slipped on her dressing gown and slippers, stuffed the note in her pocket and tiptoed toward the door. It was open a crack and the two aurors still stood on either side looking around them. There was only one way she had a chance of getting past them. Grasping the earring between finger and thumb, she said quietly enough that the aurors wouldn’t hear her, “My brother is most assuredly the best.”

She vanished. What she’d been able to see of her arms was no longer there. She yanked the door open and ran out between the two men. She heard a cry behind her but couldn’t afford to look back. She ran at full speed towards Ravenclaw tower.

-oOo-

“I am the beginning of eternity,” the eagle’s head door knocker said as she approached, “the end of time and space, the beginning of every end and the end of every place. What am I?”

“That’s not the same riddle as last time,” Lori said, not a little petulantly. Neither dressing gown nor slippers were warm enough to shield her from the evening chill.

“If the riddle did not change,” the knocker said, “you would not learn.”

There was no-one around to answer the riddle for her, not that they’d be inclined to let her in if they were. They might if they suspected she were Lysander, but the pink dressing gown and frilly white nightdress wouldn’t help her persuade anyone of that. She cudgelled her brain and tried to think about the riddle.

It wasn’t just her that had problems with the riddles apparently, The walls and balustrades either side of the door were covered in scratches and scribblings. One of them showed a full transcription of the riddle the door had spoken. She stared at it.

This was a let-your-mind-wander problem, which is what she did. Unconsciously she began repeating the verse in her head. Equally unconsciously she followed the written words, mentally underlining the beginnings of some and the endings of others. She snapped back into the world.

“E,” she said. “It’s the letter e.”

“Well reasoned again,” the knocker said, and the door swung open.

The inside of the Ravenclaw common room was far from empty. About two dozen pairs of eyes swung round to look at her. She mustered her best impression of Lysander’s voice — her own had been similar not so long ago — and said, “Don’t ask.” She rushed up the stairs towards where she remembered her brother appearing on her previous visit and pushed her way into what she desperately hoped was her brother’s dormitory.

“What the h…”

“Don’t ask,” she repeated for the room’s occupants. “There are times I hate having a sister.”

“Lye?”

Lori headed for the only unoccupied bed and pulled open the wardrobe next to it. She recognised some of Lysander’s things for non-uniform days. For now she grabbed one of his uniforms and stripped out of her nightwear.

Oddly, it felt wrong putting on her brother’s clothes, sort of embarrassing and disturbing — how she imagined he must have felt when he’d put on her skirt before teaching the Patronus lesson. Even more oddly, they felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar to her now.

“Where have you been?” One of Lye’s dorm mates asked. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

“What happened to your hair?”

“Oh yeah, that.” Lori stuffed the excess down the back of her collar. It wasn’t perfect, but she might get away with it in poor light. “Look guys,” she jammed her feet into a pair of her brother’s shoes and grabbed one of his cloaks from inside the wardrobe. “Explanations will have to wait. I have things to do. Cover for me, okay?”

There were nods all round. Lori didn’t sense the same supportive vibe she had from her Hufflepuff friends — more of a loose camaraderie with an underlying competitiveness. She could hear the cogs grinding in their brains and knew full well there would be a ton of speculation following her departure. She left before suspicion had a chance to take root and made it out of the common room door before anyone followed her with more questions.

Next stop was the kitchens for some raw meat, then from there out across the covered bridge towards the edge of the forbidden forest. Halfway across, she heard a yell from behind her.

“Lysander!” Professor Longbottom called from the end of the bridge.

She turned and looked back trusting to the darkness to keep her hidden.

“Have you seen your sister?”

Lori shrugged.

“She ran out of the infirmary. Let us know if you find her. Where are you going by the way?”

“Owlery,” Lori called back in her best imitation of her brother. “Want to see if I’ve had any replies to some of the owls I sent earlier.”

“Okay, but make sure you’re back before curfew.”

Lori waved then turned back to continue crossing. A sudden explosion ahead and to the left of her made her jump. A flare of red illuminated a small cloud of feathers above the chimney on Hagrid’s hut. She smiled. At least she wouldn’t have to talk her way past the ground’s keeper. The path her mother had shown them was somewhere to the right of the owlery. She took her bearings from the explosion’s brief illumination and pressed on.

Despite her worries about finding the place in the dark, she made her way to the clearing her mother had shown them easily enough. It was a gloomy place a hundred or so yards beyond the tree line, and this time it wasn’t empty.

In the light of her wand, a couple of dozen vaguely horse-shaped creatures stood watching her. Vaguely horse shaped in as much as they had a head and four legs, otherwise they were quite different.

“Most people find them scary,” her mum had said while feeding a sliver of meat apparently to mid-air, “but that’s not right. It’s more that they’re misunderstood, a bit like death. Their actually quite friendly if you take the time to get to know them.”

Lori took out one of her scraps of meat and tossed it to the nearest one, which snatched it out of the air and gulped it down.

“I need to get to the Ministry of Magic,” she told it. “Can you help me?”

It tossed its skull-like head and swung it towards its emaciated body. An invitation of sorts? Lori stepped forward, offering a second scrap of meat from her hand. The creature’s bony mouth picked up the morsel with considerable care before gulping it down. It then nudged her gently towards its withers.

It barely looked like it had the strength to hold itself up, let alone carry a passenger, yet her mum had said that some of her friends had ridden two up. Climbing onto its back ahead of the large, leathery wings proved something of an acrobatic challenge, but she managed it and, no sooner was she settled than the beast reared and leapt almost straight up.

Lori’s first instinct was to throw her arms around its neck, but as it flew straight and strong, stroking the air with effortless beats of its wings and climbing steadily, she realised she felt entirely safe.

The sky above her held a scattering of stars. Beneath her, apart from the rapidly receding lights of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, there was nothing to be seen. This was no unicorn ride, but from the speed with which Hogwarts disappeared behind them and the bitterness of the wind whipping past, she gauged it had to be faster. The light of the distant villages drifted past hundreds of feet below at a seemingly leisurely pace. She huddled in her brother’s cloak, longing for the warmth of the one Maledicta had stolen back, and clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering. For all the discomfort, the journey seemed barely to have started when a bright orange glow ahead heralded the approach to London and they began their descent.

They landed in a narrow alley with barely enough space to accommodate the thestral’s wingspan. It was a dingy and unwelcoming place — deliberately so — but incongruously without the unsavoury smells usually associated with such locales.

An old telephone box stood against one of the walls, glass cracked in several pains, the paint faded almost to orange, bubbled and pealing in places. Lori pulled open the door and stepped inside.

The glass was so streaked with grime, she could barely see through it. The handset rested in its cradle, but was otherwise unconnected, the cord hanging uselessly to the ground where it terminated in a tangle of wires.

She had no idea what to do next. In one of her mum’s stories, Harry had lifted the receiver and dialled a number he’d learnt from Arthur Weasley some days earlier. What was it? She looked at the buttons which had letters as well as numbers. 62442, that was it. It spelt out magic, but the number would have been changed a hundred times over since then, surely…

She picked up the handset and punched in the numbers anyway.

Nothing happened.

“Er, hello?” she said into the handset, but nothing continued to happen.

Lori replaced the handset and looked around the cramped space searching for a clue, but nothing presented itself. The note had said the way had been prepared, so what was she to do? An inscription on the dial read, ‘Dial zero for the operator,’ and it seemed worth a try. Feeling a little foolish, she lifted the receiver a second time and dialled the single digit.

Nothing happened yet again.

She held the receiver to her ear. “Er, hello?” she ventured. “I’d, er, I’d like to go into the Ministry of Magic, please.”

Again, nothing happened, then after several seconds a voice — so quiet it could almost have been imagined — said, “Name?”

She shifted her feet, felt the course material of her brother’s trousers rub against her legs. It served to remind her what she was wearing, who she was pretending to be.

“Er, Lysander. Lysander Scamander.”

Yet again nothing happened for several seconds, then abruptly the floor began to shift, sinking slowly below the level of the pavement. Lori quickly replaced the receiver on its cradle before it moved beyond her reach, then settled back to wait as she was carried slowly down a long vertical shaft.

At the bottom, a doorway opened onto a vast atrium leading at one end to an array of corridors lined with fireplaces, most of which were currently cold. In the other direction, the ruin of an immense statue stood over a fountain spilling a constant stream of water over the cracked and broken stone.

The place was empty. Apart from the gentle gurgle of water, it was silent.

Hello?” Lori called out quietly, hearing nothing in response but her own echo.

She began to explore. Surely the person who had let her in was somewhere at the very least. The place was so vast though. Aware of how easily she could become lost, she deliberately remained in sight of the entrance she had used. She tried squeezing her earring and felt a gentle tug across the atrium and down. At least using the invisibility charm hadn’t nullified the finding charm. It might help her find what she was looking for but, how would she find her way back?

A small table stood beside the elevator with a potted plant on it. She pushed the earring into the soil and tried squeezing her pendant. This time she felt drawn in both directions. This could work.

Following the more distant pull, she crossed the atrium where she came across an information board listing the names of all the departments in gold leaf. One in particular stood out by the line scratched into the wood underneath it. Department of Mysterious Artefacts it read. Lori reached out a finger and touched it briefly.

A paper aeroplane appeared out of nowhere. On its wings were written the words ‘Follow me’. It hovered by the board — specifically by the label Lori had touched — and waited.

Lori shrugged. “Lead the way,” she said, and the plane began to move at an easy walking pace.

Lori followed it into a lift where it hovered near a bank of buttons, its nose pointing at the number eleven. Lori pushed it and waited as nothing happened. It took her a while to realise with such old-fashioned elevators, the doors had to be pulled closed manually. She did so and pushed the number eleven again.

The sides of the lift were transparent, allowing Lori to look out over floor after floor of empty corridors. The Ministry was supposed to run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Where was everyone? The way had been prepared, the note had said, but the Order of Purity had little enough power without the Bloodstone. How could they pull off something like this?

Left out of the lift, more lefts, more rights. She was lost long before her guide slowed to a halt outside a certain door, a name plate on it declaring it to be the Department of Mysterious Artefacts.

“How do I get back?” she asked the paper craft, but its job done, it headed for a nearby wastepaper bin and shredded itself into confetti.

“Well, that was helpful,” she said to no-one in particular. With nothing else to do, she twisted the knob and leaned on the door.

Another empty room, or so it seemed. The lighting was dim, reduced for night-time it seemed. It was enough to see by though, and she could make out several doors into other rooms. She squeezed her pendant which pulled her in one particular direction. On the other side a crystal chalice sat on a plinth in the middle of the room, surrounded by more doors. The magical tug pulled her to a new door. She was more than a dozen doors deep into the maze when she eventually opened a door to find a familiar object on display in the centre of the room.

The stone box that held the bloodstone stood on a pedestal in the middle of the room. It was closed, but nothing surrounded it, or nothing seemed to be there in any case.

She reached out for it.

“Hello Lori,” said a voice from behind her. “Or should that be Lorcan given the way you’re dressed?”