Harry Rotter

The Girl Mystic & the Muddle
Harry, Box, and the Business of Saving Everything

I wrote the following skit for a bit of fun, that’s all… But so many people, both adults and children, asked me to publish it, I felt obliged to do so. Who am I to say no to such desperate pleas?

Harry is a girl – and a mischievous one at that! Her real name is Harriet, but she insists that everyone calls her Harry. When Harry loses her Magical Marbles she enlists the help of her cousin, Box Privet, to retrieve them. At her behest, Box, who is a wizard with all things electronic, melds magic and electronics to make Harry an electro-magical wand . Pandemonium ensues…

Chapter One

No, Our Best China’s in There!

Mr and Mrs Privet, of number five Dorsley Drive, were anything but normal. Only a few weeks earlier they had been perfectly ordinary people — dull, even — but now they were as loopy as a basket of frogs from the local lunatic asylum.

On the outside, Mr Privet looked respectable enough: tall, bald, and thin as a broom handle. But beneath that polished exterior he was a bubbling stew of nervous tics, peculiar habits, and peptic ulcers — a man teetering permanently on the brink of a good shriek. His wife, Mrs Privet, was the opposite in shape but identical in madness: a large, round woman suffering from the dreadful affliction of hearing voices in her head. These voices  came at all hours, shouting, whispering, singing hymns or demanding jam. Often she would sit bolt upright in bed and scream so loudly that her husband shook for half an hour afterward. It was, by any reasonable standard, a dreadful state of affairs.

Still, the Privets did their best to live as normally as possible. Each morning they rose, brewed tea, and pretended the previous night hadn’t happened. But hardly a day went by without one or the other succumbing to a fit of lunacy that would make ordinary folk throw up their hands and flee.

Before I continue, you must meet their son — Box Privet. (Yes, Box.)
He was the veritable apple of their eyes, though he shared his father’s unfortunate physique: tall, bony, and  the colour of unpolished chalk. Schoolchildren teased him endlessly, but Box didn’t care. His heart belonged to a higher calling — electronics. In his small upstairs bedroom, armed with soldering iron, pliers, and tweezers, he spent hour after glorious hour bringing his strange inventions to life. He was happiest when surrounded by wires, resistors, and the faint smell of singed carpet. It was a lonely life, but he adored it.

As I said, the Privets had once been among the happiest families in their estate of mock-Elizabethan houses. But now they lived in fear for their very lives. Their cheerful, ordinary existence was in  tatters — a shattered teapot of former contentment. And all because of one thing.
A secret.
A big one.

You see, the Privets had been hiding something — or rather, someone.
A girl.
Their niece.
Her name was Harry Rotter.

Well, officially she’d been baptised Harriet, but she refused to answer to anything but Harry. It suited           her — bold, bossy, and thoroughly bad. She was the cruellest, nastiest child you could ever have the misfortune to meet. With her flowing golden hair and innocent, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile, she looked like an angel. But underneath she was all horns and spite. A bully through and through.

While she’d been safely locked away at her “special” boarding school — a gloomy institution called Hagswords — life for the Privets had been blissfully peaceful. But the moment she escaped from that high-security establishment and turned up at their door, everything changed.

“Excuse me, please,” said Harry sweetly when Mrs Privet opened the door. “I’m your only niece. Would you be so kind as to put me up for a few days?”

“It’s young Harriet, isn’t it?” said Mrs Privet, patting her nervously on the head. “Are you on a school break?”

Ignoring the question and resisting the urge to kick her aunt in the shins, Harry replied, “I prefer to be called Harry, if that’s all right with you.”

“Yes, yes, that’s fine,” said Mrs Privet, glancing up and down the empty road before ushering her niece inside. “Go into the front room, dear.”
A startled cat shot past Harry and vanished into the garden.

The room, Harry thought, looked exactly like Hagswords — far too much stained glass and carved oak for  comfort.

“Sit down and make yourself comfortable,” said Mrs Privet. “I’ll fetch you some lemonade. You must be parched after your travelling. Then I’ll tell your uncle the… good news.”

Leaving Harry to examine the furniture, she opened a small door beneath the stairs leading down to the cellar, which served as Mr Privet’s private den. “Dear,” she called softly, “we have a visitor.”

“Who is it?” came the muffled reply from below.

“It’s your niece.”

BANG!
A hollow thud echoed up the stairwell, followed by groaning.

“Did you hear me, darling?”

More mumbling. Then, cautiously, “Are you sure it’s our niece — that niece?”

“Yes, dear. It’s young Harriet. I mean Harry. Harry Rotter.”

“Harriet or Harry? You should at least know the gender!”

“She’s a girl — she just likes the name Harry.”

“I don’t know if I know anything anymore,” muttered Mr Privet as he climbed the narrow steps. “Having to deal with your unusual relations…” He emerged puffing and red-faced. “Where is she, then?”

“I put her in the front room.”

“Our best china’s in there!” he shouted, and charged down the hallway like a man pursued by elephants. He  burst into the room just in time to see Harry delicately inspecting one of their finest hand-painted cups.

“That’s an heirloom,” he stammered, eyeing her canvas shoulder bag. “Not worth a penny, mind you.”

“Not worth anything?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No — worthless!”

“In that case, may I have it as a keepsake?”

Mr Privet nearly swallowed his tongue. “We… we can’t give it away,” he blurted. “We promised your grandmother, on her deathbed, that we’d always treasure it.”

Harry studied his sweating face for signs of deceit. “All right,” she said at last. “It was just a thought.” Then,  looking around the room, she added, “Still, there must be something in all this rubbish you don’t want.”

“No, no, everything’s spoken for,” squeaked Mr Privet, clutching the mantelpiece as if it might defend him. “So tell me, uh, what brings you here?”

“I told your wife already,” said Harry cheerfully. “I’ll be staying for a few days.”

Mr Privet made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. At that moment Mrs Privet entered,  carrying a tray with a tall glass of lemonade. She smiled at them both, quite unaware of the terror spreading through her husband’s veins.

“Everything all right?” she asked brightly.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

Meet the Son

Over the next few days, Harry settled into number five Dorsley Drive as if she’d lived there all her life.  Unfortunately, the same could not be said for her relationship with Mr and Mrs Privet’s beloved son, Box.

From the very first moment she clapped eyes on his bespectacled, wisp-thin frame, Harry took an instant dislike to him. Box, for his part, returned the feeling with equal enthusiasm.  But poor Box was no match for his cousin’s steely cunning and tireless determination to make his life a complete and utter misery.

This clash of personalities placed terrible strain upon the already-fragile household. Mr and Mrs Privet prided themselves on being open-minded, modern parents — tolerant of “challenging behaviour” and fond of quoting child-rearing books. They tried their best to overlook Harry’s monstrous acts of mischief, but each day brought new horrors.

She tripped Box down the stairs.
She salted his porridge.
She removed all the fuses from his beloved gadgets and gizmos.

And that was only Tuesday.

In time, Box took to avoiding Harry altogether. If he saw her walking toward him in the street, he’d dash into  the nearest shop and hide among the tins of custard. If there were no shops nearby, he’d sprint up the nearest garden path and hammer frantically on the door until someone took pity on him.

At home, he became a recluse. He spent nearly all his waking hours in his bedroom, where he installed bolts, chains, padlocks, and even a homemade alarm system. Each night the house echoed with the sound of bang, bang, bang as Box secured himself inside his fortress before diving under the covers.

Harry, meanwhile, required no such defences. Who would dare to enter her room without permission? She  had the run of the house and made full use of it. Yet she, too, began spending more and more time in her room — though for far darker reasons than her trembling cousin.

Harry had plans.

It had been several days since her escape from Hagswords, the boarding school for mysticism and magic,  and she knew her freedom wouldn’t last forever. She had left behind a cunning decoy — a mannequin, enchanted to resemble her — but even the cleverest trick could not last indefinitely. Sooner or later, the teachers would realise their mistake and start searching.

For a time she considered casting a spell of concealment over number five Dorsley Drive, but with all the daily comings and goings, she decided it would be pointless. The only way to be truly safe, she reasoned, would  be to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the house altogether.
She smiled to herself in the dim lamplight.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “That might not be such a bad idea…”

Meanwhile, somewhere across the landing — bang, bang, bang! — Box was locking himself in again for the  night.

Later, Harry lay in bed reading by candlelight. The book she held was old and cracked, stolen from the  forbidden section of the Hagswords library. Its pages whispered faintly as she turned them.
“They’re so stupid at that school,” she hissed under her breath. “They call it a school for mysticism and magic — more like a school for cowardice and compromise! Too frightened to offend the Muddles, too soft to wield  real power.” Her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Well, I’ll show them. I’ll show everyone — even the Muddles — what I can do.”

She read long into the night.

Next morning, Box leapt from bed at dawn, determined to complete his morning routine before his cousin  awoke. He performed his ablutions with military precision, swallowed his breakfast in record time, and planned to slip out to school unseen.

Quietly he unbolted his bedroom door, inch by inch. The final latch clicked. He peeked into the hall.

“Hello,” said a voice less than three inches from his nose.

Box froze. Harry stood there smiling sweetly, her eyes as cold as marbles.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“I—I—” Box stammered, incapable of speech. Then he slammed the door shut.

Knock knock.

“Box, it’s me, Harry,” she cooed through the wood. “Are you coming out today?”

Box said nothing. He was already considering whether it might be safer to climb out the window and take his  chances with gravity.

“Is that you, Box?” called Mrs Privet from the bottom of the stairs.

“No,” Harry answered cheerfully. “It’s me.”

“Oh! Up early, dear?” said Mrs Privet, startled. She bustled back to the kitchen to begin the morning fry-up Harry demanded each day. Then she poked her head out again. “Would you like to go somewhere nice  today? The zoo, perhaps?”

Harry paused. She had lost all track of time — it was Saturday already. Her mind whirred like clockwork.  “Yes,” she said at last. “I’d love to. But only if Box comes too.”

At the breakfast table, Mr Privet lowered his newspaper and stared bleakly at his wife.

“Now,” he said quietly, “why on earth did you have to go and say that?”

Chapter Three

A Visit to the Zoo

It was a grand day for a drive — the first time in her entire life that Harry Rotter had actually been invited on a family outing. Mr Privet was at the wheel, of course, driving slowly. He always drove slowly, insisting that cars  lasted longer if treated gently, as though they might one day thank him for it.

Harry stared dreamily out of the window, enjoying the novelty of it all: the hum of the engine, the soft chatter of her aunt, the feeling — just for a moment — of belonging. She almost allowed herself to think kindly of people, even the Muddles. But only for a moment. Then she came to her senses. Sentimentality, she reminded  herself, was a disease.

Box had been dragged along under protest. His parents had refused to let him stay at home “playing with his gadgets” while they suffered through the day. Misery, in their household, was a family affair.

When they reached the zoo, Mr Privet parked with exaggerated care. He claimed tyres lasted years longer if  you parked properly — though no one else had ever tested the theory. Together, the not-so-happy family approached the entrance.

“Two adults and two children, please,” said Mrs Privet, handing over a five-pound note to the spotty attendant.

“Isn’t she paying for herself?” whispered Mr Privet. “You said her side of the family was loaded.”

“Hush,” snapped Mrs Privet, forcing a smile while praying that Harry hadn’t heard.

It was a fine Saturday, yet the zoo was surprisingly quiet, leaving the Privets and Harry to roam almost alone  among the enclosures.

“Where are you going?” asked Mrs Privet, catching her son trying to slink away.

“I was just—” he began.

“You’ll stay right here with us,” she said firmly. “Harry especially asked for you to come.”

“I know,” muttered Box. “That’s what worries me.”

From crocodiles to buffalo, from elephants to chimpanzees, from parrots to moorhens and everything in  between, they trudged through the zoo’s paths. But Box couldn’t shake the feeling that his cousin was planning something — something horrid. Unfortunately, he was absolutely right.

They were in the reptile house when Harry made her move.

Box was standing by a glass enclosure, peering at a particularly large snake, when he heard the faint click of a lock behind him.

“What are you doing?” he cried, seeing Harry swing open the heavy glass door — a door that had been  locked with both a bolt and a padlock.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she said sweetly, giving him a push inside and slamming the door shut.

“Let me out!” Box shouted, pounding the glass.

The snake, delighted by the unexpected company, began to slither toward him.

“LET ME OUT!” Box yelled again, hammering wildly on the partition.

At the far end of the room, Mr and Mrs Privet were admiring an albino tree snake, blissfully unaware of their  beloved son’s impending doom.

“Well?” said Harry, folding her arms, watching Box with cool amusement.

“Well what?” he screeched, his eyes fixed on the approaching reptile.

“Are you going to help me?”

“Help you with what?” he wailed.

“All in good time,” she said, smirking. The power was delicious — like eating ice cream on a sunny day.

The snake was inches away now, tasting the air with its forked tongue. Box screamed, “Okay! OKAY! I’ll help you! Just get me out of here!”

Satisfied, Harry drew her wand. “Open Ses Me,” she said, waving it casually.

With a pop, Box found himself standing safely on the outside of the glass, shaking violently. The snake’s jaws snapped shut on empty air.

“H-how did you do that?” he gasped.

“Do what?” said Harry, slipping the wand back into her pocket.

“That thing! The… the thingamajig!”

Ignoring him, she said, “Come on. I need your help.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, genius. Unless you’d rather go back in there with your new friend.”

Having no desire to test her threat, Box followed her meekly out of the reptile house.

“Here, eat this,” said Harry a little later, handing him an ice cream cone she’d bought at a nearby kiosk.

Box eyed it suspiciously. “Is it… safe?”

“It’s ice cream,” said Harry. “If you’re that worried, we can swap.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he said quickly, taking a tentative lick. “Thanks.”

That made twice in one day that Harry had shown him a scrap of kindness. Box was confused — and, if truth be told, slightly hopeful.

They wandered toward a quieter corner of the zoo, where the paths were shaded by tall trees and the air  smelled of damp leaves. Then Harry spoke.

“Box,” she began, “you’re good with electrical things, aren’t you?”

He nodded cautiously.

“Good. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no knowledge of such matters — nor the slightest interest.”

He nodded again, unsure what to say.

“I want you to make me something. Something electrical.”

Now she had his attention. “What do you want me to make?”

Harry hesitated, weighing her words. Then she reached into her pocket and withdrew the wand.

Box’s eyes widened. “A wand! I knew it! Just like the ones Dad sometimes talks about!”

“Tell everyone, why don’t you?” hissed Harry. “Honestly, you Muddles are hopeless.”

“Sorry,” he said meekly. Then, unable to resist, he asked, “Can I touch it?”

“No, you cannot.”

Box looked crushed.

“You can touch it later,” she said, relenting slightly. “For now, just look.”

Box gazed at the polished brown wood in awe. “I can hardly believe it,” he whispered. “A real magical wand…”

“Now that you’ve had your look,” said Harry briskly, tucking it away again, “can we return to the matter at hand?”

“Yes, yes, please go on,” he said eagerly.

Harry explained her idea carefully — enough for him to grasp the practical parts, but not enough for him to  understand her real intentions.

“So you see, Box,” she concluded, “I want you to build a wand that combines the magic of mine with the…  technological wisdom of the Muddles.” She grimaced at the word. “I hate saying that. ‘Wisdom’ and  ‘Muddle’ in the same sentence.”

Box frowned, deep in thought. Technically, it was possible — just barely. But how could he merge the  electrical and the magical? He chewed his lip, considering.

At last he said, slowly, “I think I can do it.”

Harry smiled. For the first time, it was genuine — and, to Box’s surprise, rather beautiful.

“It won’t be easy,” he added hastily. “Not by any stretch of the imagination—”

“But you can do it?” she interrupted, still smiling.

“Yes, but—”

“That’s all that matters.” And, quite out of character, Harry leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

Box turned bright red. “I—I’d better go find Mum and Dad,” he mumbled.

“Of course,” said Harry sweetly. “You do that.”

As he scurried away, Harry watched him go, smiling to herself.
The plan, she thought, was working perfectly.

Chapter Four

Secrecy, at Any Cost

Next morning, Harry tapped softly on Box’s bedroom door and whispered, “Box, are you awake?”

A muffled voice replied, “Hmm… what is it?”

“I said, are you awake?”

“What time is it?” Box grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“Half past six.”

“Half past—six?” he croaked, sitting bolt upright. “You’re joking.”
He reached for his glasses and peered at his watch. To his horror, it really was six thirty.

“Yes,” said Harry, a little louder now, “I’m sure of it. Now are you getting up, or do I have to send for that  snake?”

That did the trick. Box leapt from bed, dragged on his dressing gown and slippers, and began unbolting his  door. Bang, bang, bang went the bolts as they slid back into their daytime position. The door creaked open to reveal his bleary, frightened face.

“What’s the problem?” he yawned.

“There’s no problem,” said Harry brightly. “We have work to do.”

“But it’s Sunday,” he protested. “I always have a lie-in on Sundays.”

“Not anymore, you don’t,” said Harry. “Not until the job’s done.”

“But we don’t even have the supplies,” he tried again. “The electrical shop’s closed till tomorrow!”

“Then we’ll plan today,” said Harry firmly. “Now stop whining.”

He hesitated. “I suppose you might really have that snake somewhere, mightn’t you?”

“You never know,” she said sweetly.

That settled it. “All right,” he sighed. “But I’m having breakfast first.”

“Good idea. I’ll see you downstairs.”

And with that, she thundered down the stairs two at a time.

Box scratched his head. “What have I done,” he muttered, “to deserve a cousin like her?”

When he reached the kitchen, Harry was waiting beside a plate.
“There you are,” she said, pointing.

Box peered at it. “What’s that supposed to be?”

“A fry-up, of course,” she said, pushing it toward him. “Eat up. It’ll keep you going.”

It smelled wonderful, which was peculiar, because he hadn’t heard any cooking. But he knew better than to  ask questions that might be deemed “Muddlish.”

“And keep the noise down,” Harry warned. “We don’t want to wake the old cronies.”

“The… old cronies?” he asked. Then, laughing, “Oh — you mean Mum and Dad. Funny, I used to call them  that once.”

“You did?” she said, smiling faintly.

“Yep. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” Harry muttered, wondering how many other silly Muddles lived on Dorsley Drive.

When he’d finished his surprisingly tasty breakfast, Box asked, “So, what’s first on the agenda?”

Harry leaned close. “Secrecy,” she whispered.

“Pardon?”

“I said secrecy!” she repeated. “You must keep everything we do a secret from your parents!”

Box swallowed hard. “Everything?”
He’d never kept a secret from them in his life.

“Yes, everything,” she insisted. “And not just them — everyone you know. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said nervously, “but it won’t be easy—”

“Nothing worth doing ever is,” said Harry briskly, and marched out the door.

“Where are we going?” Box called, following her down the garden path.

“Somewhere private.”

Harry led him to the park. It was early enough that the gates were still locked, so she simply climbed over. Box followed, tearing his dressing gown in the process.

“Sit,” she ordered, choosing a damp patch of grass.

“Here? It’s wet—”

“SIT.”

He sat.

From her pocket she produced a small notepad and pen she’d just bought at the newsagent. For the next ten minutes she scribbled furiously, muttering to herself as she wrote. Bored, Box watched sparrows hop closer,  hoping for crumbs that never came.

At last Harry tore out a couple of pages and handed them over. “Here. Read that and tell me what you think.”

Box scanned the two pages. Then, without a word, he held out his hand for the pen. Harry gave it to him,  curious.

He began writing. Quickly. Intensely. Line after line, page after page. Occasionally he glanced at Harry’s  scribbles, then went back to his own. Fifteen pages later, he stopped — exhausted but triumphant — and added two more with a list of materials.

“There,” he said, handing it back. “Now you take a look.”

Harry flipped through the pages, frowning at the indecipherable sketches and numbers. “It might as well be  double Dutch,” she said, “but I trust you, cousin. Let’s get started.”

Box grinned — he loved a challenge. Then his grin faded. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Harry.

“Money,” he said. “That lot will cost a fortune.”

“Leave money to me,” said Harry coolly. “You just focus on the work.”

Next morning, Monday, they set off for town.

“I can’t imagine what’s got into those two,” said Mrs Privet, pulling back the curtain as she watched them  board the bus. “One day they’re mortal enemies, the next they’re best friends.”

At the kitchen table, Mr Privet peered into the remains of his son’s breakfast. “Any more where that came from?” he asked hopefully.

Town was busy — far too busy for Harry’s liking. “There are so many Muddles here,” she muttered darkly,  dodging a youth on a motor scooter. “Which way?”

“This way,” said Box, pointing up a steep hill.

“Why couldn’t they build the shop at the bottom?” she grumbled, panting as they climbed. Then, realising the answer, she added, “Ah yes — Muddles.”

At the top stood a dusty old electrical supplier. The bell above the door jingled as they entered, and an elderly man behind the counter peered at them over the rim of grimy spectacles.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I certainly hope so,” said Harry.

Box handed over their long list.

The man squinted. “Hmm… unusual mixture of items. What did you say you were making?”

“We didn’t,” snapped Harry.

“We’re making a transmitter,” Box blurted quickly. “For school.”

“A transmitter, eh?” said the old man, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. Harry wondered how he’d  managed to see through them at all.

“You really need a licence for that,” he warned.

“We know,” said Box smoothly, “but it’s just an experiment — temporary.”

“Hmm.” The man fetched a battered order book and began writing. “All right then.”

He disappeared into the back of the shop. For twenty minutes there was silence, broken only by faint thumps and the occasional cough. Box studied the faded posters on the wall. Harry stared out the window, bored stiff.

At last the man returned, puffing and panting, carrying two cardboard boxes bulging with electrical parts. He  plonked them on the counter. A cloud of dust rose. Harry coughed.

“There you are,” he said proudly. “Everything you wanted. Some of it’s been sitting back there for years —  thought I’d never sell the stuff! Just goes to show, doesn’t it?”

“Thanks,” said Box. “How much?”

“Ah, yes.” The man rummaged in a box. “Here we are.” He handed over the bill.

Box turned pale. “We can’t possibly—”

“I’ll take that,” said Harry, snatching it. She glanced at the total without flinching, opened her shoulder bag,  and pulled out a small purse.

“There you are,” she said, placing three golden coins on the counter. “Keep the change.”

The man blinked. “Are you sure? These are worth far more than—”

But Harry was already at the door. “Come on, cousin,” she said, gesturing for Box to carry the boxes.

He staggered under their weight as they left the shop. “Where did you get those coins?” he asked breathlessly.

Harry smiled a secret smile. “Let’s just say,” she murmured, “the past can be very… profitable.”

 

 

Chapter Five

The Hybrid New Wand

It was decided (by Harry) that the new hybrid wand would be assembled in Box’s bedroom, which  conveniently contained a workbench and an immodest quantity of tools. Harry might have worried about Laurel and Holly discovering what they were up to, if not for the small fortress Box had made of his door: bolts, locks, chains, and a notice that said KEEP OUT in very firm pencil. Once inside, clack went the locks; the Privets hadn’t a hope of seeing a thing.

“What can they be doing up there?” Holly wondered one evening, listening to the clinks and zzzts from  overhead.

“You told me they were making a radio,” Laurel said, turning a page of his newspaper.

“Yes, I did.”

“I see wholesale fruit and veg are up again,” he grumbled, giving the children no further thought whatsoever.

Holly said nothing, but she listened hard, the way mothers do when instinct and dread are arm-in-arm.

“Laurel, did you hear me?” she tried. “Prices up again!”

“That’s nice, dear. I’m thrilled,” she replied to herself, and Laurel turned another page to an article about owls dive-bombing children in the park. “World’s gone barking mad,” he muttered.

For a week, Harry and Box scarcely left that cramped room. Box, at the bench, soldering and sketching; Harry, wand in hand, explaining, translating, and generally bullying the laws of nature into cooperation. The task  was to transfer her wand’s powers into a new electro-magical chassis. Sparks flew. Smoke curled. Odd lights pulsed. Once, the wallpaper sang.

Near the end, something unexpected happened. The old wand, which Box had assured her would neatly  dwindle to nothing, began to shrink… then stopped. Matchstick-sized, it refused to vanish, no matter what coaxing, cursing, or cleverness they applied.

“It’s done,” Box panted at last, setting down a humming, rather handsome steel rod. “Mostly.”

Harry eyed the matchstick. “Mostly,” she agreed.

They crept downstairs, soot-smudged and triumphant.

“The only thing left is to test it,” Harry whispered.

“Now?” Box begged.

“Later,” said Harry. “When no one’s here.”

“It’s lovely to see you both out of that stuffy room,” Holly said as they entered the kitchen. “How’s the radio  coming along?”

“The radio?” Box blinked.

“All finished,” Harry said quickly, elbowing him in the ribs hard enough to water his eyes. “Any lemonade?”

Holly poured two glasses. “Into the dining room with you. Dinner’s nearly ready.” She called through, “Laurel, Harry and Box have finished their radio!”

“About time,” came the reply. “With the hours they’ve put in, they could have made a bomb.”

Heavy footsteps mounted the stairs.

“Dinner is almost ready!” Holly warned.

“Just going for a piddle,” Laurel called back. “Down in a jiff.”

He did go for a piddle. He also went to peep at the brand-new “radio”.

“Here we are,” Holly said to the children, setting down two heroic slabs of shepherd’s pie. “Your favourite, Box.”

Famished, Box fell on his plate like a happy wolf. Harry prodded hers distractedly, eyes on the ceiling.  Something was wrong.

“Don’t you like it, Harry?” Holly asked.

Box nudged Harry this time.

“Hmm? What?”

“Your dinner, dear.”

“Delicious,” Harry said, calmly holding up a spotless plate.

Holly’s jaw dropped. “How did you—?”

“Upstairs,” Harry hissed to Box. “I think we left the door unlocked.”

“Can’t I finish—?”

“You have.”

“I haven’t!” he protested. “I’ve barely—”
“Look at your plate, dummy.”

Box stared. His plate was shiningly clean.

“But I didn’t eat it,” he moaned. “I’m still starving!”

“Have you forgotten your father?” Harry snapped. “Muddles and their food.”

On the landing, Laurel had already spotted the bedroom door ajar. He eased it open and peered in. No radio. Just the bench—and a peculiar steel rod lying there as innocently as a butter knife.

He slipped inside on tiptoe. The floorboard squeaked. He froze. No one came. He went on.

He picked up the rod and gave it a speculative wave. “Hmm. Doesn’t look like a radio,” he murmured. He  noticed little buttons at one end. “On/off? Stations?” He pressed the first. A click. Nothing obvious.

“I wish I knew what was going on around here,” Laurel sighed—at which moment, unhelpfully, he did. His mind filled at once with a blistering, perfect understanding of what  the children had been building, and for how long, and why the wallpaper had been singing the previous afternoon. He laughed nervously. “Pull yourself together, Laurel, or it’s the loony bin for you.”

Feeling emboldened, he flourished the rod like a conductor’s baton. Music burst into the room. He stopped.  The music stopped.

“Aha,” he said. “Radio after all. Just needed to warm up.”

He pressed the second button.

A gout of flame roared from the wand, searing the wallpaper into instant toast.

“No, no!” Laurel cried, swivelling wildly. The wardrobe caught next.

From below came a cry and the thunder of feet. Harry and Box flew up the stairs. The bedroom door was  flung open, and a river of heat blasted into the landing.

“Well,” Harry said, almost pleased, “at least we know it works.”

“My room!” Box howled, unable to see for the smoke.

Holly arrived and burst into tears. “Laurel! What have you done? Laurel!”

Harry hesitated for the first time in her life, shocked by the sheer Muddleness of it all.

Box did not. “Point it out the window!” he shouted.

“What?” Laurel coughed.

“Out. The. Window!”

“But it’s shut!”

“Doesn’t matter—DO IT!”

Laurel aimed. The flames shattered the glass into a million glittering pieces that rained onto the path below.

Box and Harry plunged through the doorway. Laurel, black with soot, still gripped the wand, shooting fire into  the sky like a very anxious dragon.

“Help!” he cried. “It’s gone berserk! I only wanted to change the station!”

“Harry will stop it,” Box said stoutly. “Your department, cousin.”

“It does seem a pity,” Harry mused, “to waste such a splendid flame.”

“HARRY!”

“Oh, very well.” She muttered words that did not belong in a suburban house and flicked two neat gestures.  The fire vanished with a hiss.

Laurel, trembling, set the ‘radio’ on the bench. A little ember licked at a scrap of paper; he licked his fingers  and pinched it out. “I only wanted to change the station,” he murmured. “Just the rotten station.”

“Holly?” he called weakly.

“I’m here,” she said, stepping into the ruin. She saw the scorched walls, the charred wardrobe, the demolished window—then she saw her husband, black as a chimney sweep—and burst into fresh tears.

“It’s all right,” Laurel said, guiding her away. “It’s not that bad. Wrong station, that’s all. Silly mistake.”

They tottered to their room and closed the door on the memory.

“Phew,” Harry said, winking at Box. “That was close.”

“Close?” Box spluttered. “We could have been burned to a crisp!”

“Might have,” Harry said, stung by his lack of faith. “But weren’t.”

With a few more murmured words and the newly tested wand, she put everything back as it had been: wallpaper un-toasted, wardrobe un-charred, window un-shattered, right down to a cobweb in the ceiling corner.

By morning there was nothing to suggest catastrophe at all. Laurel and Holly decided, quietly and with great  relief, that it had been a very bad dream. After all, how could it be otherwise, when there wasn’t the slightest sign of damage anywhere?

 

 

Chapter Six

Are You Coming?

A week to the day, in the small hours before dawn, Box woke to a soft tap at his bedroom door.

“Who’s there?” he whispered, fumbling for his glasses.

“It’s me. Harry.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk.”

“Can’t it wait till morning?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Silence.

“I said, why not?”

“Let me in.”

By now Box knew that when Harry had something on her mind, resistance only made it worse. He climbed out of his warm bed, unbolted the door—bang, bang, bang—and let her in, then dove back under the covers.

“Well?” he yawned. “What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait?”

Uncharacteristically, Harry searched for the right words. “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving? When?”

“Today.” A beat. “And I wanted to ask… if you’d consider coming with me.”

“Me? Why? Where are you going?”

“To Hagswords.”

“Hagswords?” He sat bolt upright. “You escaped from there. I never thought you’d go back.”

“It’s only a matter of time before they find me,” she said carefully. “If I take the initiative—if I go first—I might still have a chance to find it.”

“To find what?”

“Something I left behind.”

“And you must go back for it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s that important?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Clue?”

“No.”

Silence swelled. Mr and Mrs Privet’s snoring from the next room could be plainly heard, like two contented  hippos.

For all that he knew her selfish streak and secret plans, Box had grown used to Harry in a peculiar way. And  he very much wanted to see what the electro-magical wand could really do.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll come. But I’m not doing anything illegal. Clear?”

Harry nodded, smiling. For the first time in her life, she was oddly happy to have someone—yes, even a tall, wisp-thin Muddle like Box.

“Can’t we say goodbye?” Box asked a few minutes later, one leg already out the window and onto the trellis  that held the white, flowering rambling rose.

“No. I told you—the less your parents know, the safer they’ll be. Now hurry. I’ve a bad feeling…”

Halfway down, he pricked his finger on a thorn and sucked it. “A bad feeling? What sort of bad feeling?”

“I can’t explain,” she said, following him. “Something I learned at Hagswords.” She gave a dry little laugh. “At least I learned one useful thing.” Then, impatient: “Go on—what’s the hold-up?”

Box pointed east, hands shaking. “Carpets.”

High in the brightening sky, two shapes approached fast. They looked exactly like flying carpets.

“Drat,” Harry hissed. “They’ve found me.”

They dropped the last few feet, rolling into the shrubbery: Harry under the vast leaves of the Gunnera, Box  under the equally enormous rhubarb (his father maintained rhubarb was a criminally undervalued flowering plant with magnificent white blooms, no matter what the neighbours said). From their  leafy hideouts they watched the carpets and their cross-legged riders sweep overhead.

“They didn’t stop,” Box whispered.

Harry wriggled over, joining him beneath the rhubarb canopy. “That means they haven’t fixed my position. We still have a chance.” She looked at him, strangely gentle. “You should go back in. It’s me they’re after. Go.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Box said fiercely. “We’re in this together.”

“They could return any moment.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “Is there anything we can do to get away?”

Harry unfastened her shoulder bag and rummaged.

“Use the new wand?” Box breathed.

“No. That would be like ringing a bell.” She kept searching. “Ah.” She pulled out a bulky bundle tied with brown string.

“How did you get that in your bag?” Box blurted.

Harry ignored him and undid the string. She shook the bundle out onto the grass. It was a carpet—very old, threadbare in places, and exquisitely patterned.

Box gaped. “Is that… really—? No, it can’t be.”

Harry smiled.

“It is?”

She nodded.

“A real flying carpet?”

The carpet smelled agreeably musty.

“Let’s go,” Box urged.

Harry didn’t move. She watched the sky. Timing would be everything.

Alas, plans seldom obey their makers. Before they could launch, the two carpets returned and began circling.

“They’re on to us,” Harry murmured.

“You must’ve really annoyed them back at school,” Box said. “All this just for you.”

Harry ignored that.

One carpet, with a bearded rider, kept circling as lookout; the other, bearing two robed men, drifted down and  landed neatly under the horse chestnut tree. The men strode across the lawn toward the house.

“What are they doing?” Box whispered.

Harry said nothing.

“Where are they going?”

“Inside.”

“You mean—to Mum and Dad?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Almost in tears, he whispered, “What do they want with them?”

“They’re in there. That’s why.”

“But they don’t know anything!”

“Shh—they’ll hear you.”

Inside, Laurel and Holly slept on, blissfully unaware. That ended when someone kicked in their back door.

“Did you hear something, Laurel?” Holly said, sitting up, ears cocked.

“No. Go to sleep,” Laurel mumbled.

Holly lay back, trusting him. Clump, clump, clump. Heavy footsteps crossed the polished floorboards.  Something crashed—something television-sized.

“Laurel,” she hissed, jabbing him again, “there’s someone downstairs!”

“I told you—no one there. Sleep.”

“LAUREL. GET. UP!”

He got up. Slippers, dressing gown, door opened—then slammed again. A bearded man in long robes stood outside, wielding a very small stick in a very  threatening way.

“I say,” Laurel protested, eyeing the stick. “That’s not cricket.”

The man shoved Laurel back into the room, where he stumbled onto the bed and his wife.

“My,” Holly said, eyes brightening, “and it’s not even Sunday.”

“Stop that,” Laurel said sternly. “We have a problem.”

Holly opened her eyes properly, saw the bearded man, and screamed.

Outside, Box flinched. “They’ve got Mum and Dad! I’m going up—”

The circling carpet dipped, turning toward them.

“Now see what you’ve done,” Harry hissed.

“What I’ve done?”

There were no further screams; the intruders had gagged the Privets and tied them fast. Laurel, who had long since decided wands were terrible for one’s health, glowered helplessly at the little stick and loathed it with all his heart.

Harry tracked the descending carpet. “We’ve a minute at best. We go now.” She dragged the carpet out from under the rhubarb onto open lawn.

“We can’t just leave them,” Box said, frantic. “We must do something!”

Harry considered. “All right. I suppose we can spare a flick—since we’re leaving.” The lookout carpet was dropping fast.

“Use it then! Use it!”

“On you get,” she said, seating herself cross-legged. It was a tight squeeze. Box’s long legs had to fold like deckchairs.

“Now what?” he whispered. The house was ominously quiet.

“Just a few words,” Harry breathed.

“Say them!”

She drew the new electro-magical wand, gave it a small left-right-left flourish, and murmured, “Loosen up the cords that tie; free those souls from binds so tight.”

“That’s it?” Box said, deflated. “No flames, floods, or pestilence? Just… words?”

“It’s best that way,” said Harry primly. Then, with another flick: “Up, up, and away.”

The threadbare carpet quivered, trembled, juddered—and shot forward straight at the smashed back door.

“What are you doing?” Box yelled.

“Hold on! It’s been a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Like… never?” she admitted.

Above, the lookout carpet peeled off in pursuit.

They blasted through the caved-in doorway, skimmed the kitchen at treetop speed, tore down the hallway, and burst through the front door,  reducing it to toothpicks.

“Back inside!” Box cried, seeing the pursuer gaining.

Harry yanked the carpet into a hair-pin turn. They whipped through the debris-strewn sitting room, the pursuer hard on their tail, its rider—now brandishing a sword—red with fury.

Harry veered right into the front room. This, tragically, was the sanctuary of Holly’s hand-painted, fine bone china. The two carpets swooped and wheeled in a cramped, porcelain-lined dogfight, causing more destruction in seconds than the intruders had achieved in minutes. With growing confidence, Harry slotted them through the doorway again just as their pursuer smacked squarely into the  display cabinet, annihilating the china and, mercifully, knocking himself out.

“Upstairs!” Harry cried, and the carpet surged up. Box clutched the fringe and whimpered.

They hit the landing, smashed through Laurel and Holly’s bedroom door, and cannoned neatly into the two  robed men inside, knocking them senseless.

“Dad! Are you all right?” Box shouted, seeing Laurel already spitting out a gag and fumbling at his cords.

Giggling, Laurel said, “Hmm—another of Harry’s radios exploding, is it? Dangerous things, radios. Hee, hee.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Box whispered.

“Shock,” Harry said briskly. “Seen it before. Hagswords.”

Laurel tottered to Holly and worked at her knots. “Come on, dear,” he said dreamily. “I think the vicar’s coming to tea, and you promised him your special scones. Hee, hee.”

Holly said nothing. She sat on the floor, eyes glazed, listening to the voices she’d lived with for years. They were very soothing now. Everything would be all right—so long as she kept listening.

 

Chapter Seven

A Train to Catch

 

Box didn’t like leaving his parents, but he knew that if they were ever to return to anything resembling their  quiet old life, he had to go. Harry had already “dispatched” the robed intruders to a place where, she claimed, they’d be safely contained until everything was sorted. Box decided—for the sake of his nerves as much as theirs—not to ask where “there” was.

High above the clouds, the moth-eaten carpet skimmed along at a glorious clip. Box looked back and watched his house shrink to a dot, regret nibbling at him. If only Harry had never escaped from that school…

For an hour they said nothing. The carpet hummed. Thoughts clattered. Somewhere inside Harry, a plan clicked forward another notch.

When the carpet began to slow, Box tapped Harry’s shoulder. “What’s happening?”

She didn’t answer. Jaw set, eyes forward, she sat cross-legged like a small, determined statue.

The carpet dipped; the world swelled. Trees grew into forests; roads braided into rivers of light.

“Careful,” Harry murmured, “or you’ll fall off.”

“Are we landing?”

She nodded—just as London rose beneath them like an enormous clockwork map.

“Why here?” Box spluttered. “Why the middle of—?”

Harry pointed. “Euston.”

“A railway station?” he squinted.

“We have a train to catch.”

They slipped through a discreet opening in the roof and kissed down onto the concourse as if this sort of thing happened at Euston every day. No one looked twice.

Harry folded the carpet briskly and slid it into her bag. Box blinked at the bustle and their… unconventional  arrival. “Why stop? Why not fly all the way? And where are you going?”

She strode off without replying.

“Well?” he tried again, trotting after her.

Harry wheeled. “Must I narrate every last detail?” That settled the matter. Box buttoned his questions and  followed.

Under the great clock she veered right to a ticket window. From her purse she produced another gold coin and slid it across. “Two platform tickets, please. Keep the change.”

The clerk stared, slipped the coin into a pocket with priestly reverence, and paid for their tickets from her own purse. “There you are. Have a nice day.”

“Platform thirteen,” Harry said, already moving. At the barrier, a kindly old attendant clipped their pasteboard  and grinned. “What have we here—two train spotters?”

“Something like that,” said Harry.

“The board says ‘Argyle,’” Box noted. “And we’ve only got platform tickets.”

Harry was fifty paces ahead. He hurried after her, calling “Harry!”—but she was at the far end now, still marching.

“HARRY, WHAT ARE YOU—” He broke off. She stepped clean off the end of the platform and vanished.

Box skidded to the edge, heart thundering. Nothing. Just sooty air and the far-off tick of iron and time.

“Did you see her?” he begged an ancient porter shuffling past.

“See who?” said the man, cucumber-cool.

“A girl—Harry.”

“Funny name for a girl,” the porter observed, and drifted on. “I sees nuthin’. I keeps to meself. Don’t get into  trouble that way.”

Box paced, brain in knots. In the end, with no better idea, he decided to do as Harry had done. He took a  breath, clenched every available muscle, and stepped off.

He did not fall. The world rolled like a clock hand. He swivelled neatly and found himself standing—upright and perfectly un-upside-down—on a second platform directly beneath the first, where everything agreed with itself and thus felt normal.

Up above, the porter blinked and muttered, “Saw nuthin’. Nothin’ at all,” and went on not seeing it.

“You took your time,” Harry said, hands on hips, displeasure doing star jumps.

“I—” Box began.

“No ifs or buts. We have a train to catch.”

Only then did he see her: a gleaming blue locomotive sitting in full, glorious steam. His heart stopped. “That’s Mallard,” he whispered. “Fastest steam engine ever built.”

Harry was already at the second carriage. “Are you moving, or shall I go without you?”

“Coming!” He ran a fingertip along the streamlined casing, almost reverent, then clambered aboard.

Inside was a film set come to life—panelled walls, stained-glass screens, cut mirrors etched like frost. “Wow,” Box breathed.

“What are you doing?” Harry said crisply as he hovered over a Queen Anne chair.

“Er—coming.” She led him to seats half-hidden by a stained-glass topper. He sank into a deep, upholstered armchair and sighed.

“If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I’d be here,” he said, “on a train headed by Mallard, in—where are we, anyway?—I’d have called them barking. But here I am. And I’m not barking. Am I?”

“We’re in England,” Harry said.

“Yes, but not my England.”

“We all live in a world,” she said vaguely, “the view of which is often clouded… by eyes that see differently.  This”—she gestured—“is how we see it.”

“We?”

“Mystics and magicians.”

“Oh. And me—I’m a…?”

“Muddle.”

“Right. And that means…?”

“You’re very good at what you do best,” Harry said sweetly. “Getting in a muddle.”

He gave her a wounded look. She did not notice.

The carriage shuddered, rocked, and the platform clock nodded right on time. Voices rose. Box peered over  the screen; everyone wore clothes from another century.

“Hungry?” Harry asked when the train finally slid forward.

“I could eat a horse,” Box said—just as a horse clopped past the window. He blanched.

“Careful what you wish for,” Harry said. “Follow me.”

They stepped through to the next carriage—Art Deco perfection. Every passenger matched it. No one gave them a glance. Through again: the buffet car, all silverware and clinking glass. A waiter with two noses glided over.

“A table for two, madam?”

“Yes. By the window, if possible.”

Box stared. Two noses. Working independently. He couldn’t help it—he grinned. Harry ignored him.

Once seated, the waiter’s twin sniffers twitched in harmony. “Have you chosen, madam?”

Harry ordered. “My friend will have the same.”

“That’s not fair,” Box protested softly. “I don’t even know what you—”

“Pray it isn’t snake,” she said dryly.

He gazed out at rolling countryside and promised himself, as he always did, that one day he’d buy a small  place and live a quiet life among hedgerows and mist.

The two-nosed waiter returned with a trolley and began unloading dish after dish. Box’s eyes widened. “All this for us?”

Harry nodded. The waiter leaned in and did a thorough, professional sniffing.

“What’s he doing?” Box whispered, trying not to laugh.

“Smelling,” said Harry.

“But I was only joking—”

“I told you: be careful what you wish for.”

It was not snake. It was extraordinary. When Box finished, he drained a cut-glass tumbler of ice-cold water with noisy gratitude.

“Was everything satisfactory, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Perfect,” Box beamed. “Best meal I’ve ever had.”

The waiter smiled peculiarly. And kept smiling. Box, unnerved, dug in his pockets and spilled a fistful of coins onto the trolley. “Er—thank you.”

Both noses twitched. The smile vanished. “I have never been so insulted,” the waiter hissed. He pinched one coin like it might give him a rash. “Muddle money.”

Box shrank.

“Give him this,” Harry murmured, passing over two gold coins. The waiter bit each, restored to good humour,  and glided away.

“Lesson learned?” Harry said, Cheshire-wide.

Box nodded weakly. “Yes.”

They returned to their seats to find two cloudy white drinks waiting. “Complimentary,” said Harry.

“What is it?”

“Taste,” she said.

He hesitated. “You first.”

She tossed hers back. He followed, and a million bright bubbles popped on his tongue—mango, chocolate, vanilla, something like childhood.

“Fantastic,” he gasped. “What is it?”

“Fizzing Fruit Juice,” Harry said. “Local speciality.”

An attendant with, mercifully, only one nose stopped by to confirm their bliss. Box let Harry handle the niceties. Then, “How long till Hagswords?”

“Eighteen hours,” Harry said, gaze fixed on the window.

“Eighteen—? Where are we going, Timbuktu?”

She didn’t answer.

“What are you looking at?”

“Owls,” she whispered.

“Owls? What owls—” He followed her finger and saw them: dozens, then hundreds, winging toward the train in dark, silent waves.

“Crikey,” he breathed. “What do they want?”

“Me,” Harry said, voice gone flat. “They want me.”

 

Chapter Eight

Owls, Familiars and Necromancers

 

The two cousins pressed their faces to the windowpane, watching as the dark shapes of owls swept nearer  through the night. The birds moved with uncanny speed, gliding alongside the racing train as though the wind itself were their ally.

“How can they fly so fast?” Box whispered, awe and fear wrestling inside him.

“Owls are Familiars,” Harry murmured.

“Familiars?”

“Yes. Familiar Spirits—controlled by Necromancers.”

“As in… wizards?”

Harry nodded grimly, her reflection sharp in the glass. Box decided not to press the point. It already felt as if  his nerves were hanging by one last thread.

Outside, the sky was thick with wings. The owls were almost upon them now, yet the other passengers sat  calmly chatting, drinking tea, and leafing through newspapers as if nothing unusual were happening.

“Why aren’t they reacting?” Box hissed. “Anyone would think they can’t see them!”

“They can’t,” said Harry. “Those owls are marked for us—for me, really. That’s why only we can see them.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Denial won’t help,” she said flatly. “Watch.”

The owls hit the windows.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
One after another, they threw themselves at the glass with suicidal fury, beaks striking like hammer blows,  talons scraping. Each impact rang through the carriage like the tolling of a bell.

“We can’t just sit here!” Box cried. “Do something!”

With a sly smile, Harry drew her wand. “Just because we can’t make them go away doesn’t mean we can’t  deal with them. Let’s see what this little beauty is capable of, shall we?”

Box’s heart jumped. He had nearly forgotten the wand they’d built together. “Yes! Go on—use it!”

A couple in the next section peered over the glass divider.
“Sorry!” Box said quickly. “Bit of a coughing fit!”
The couple returned to their conversation.

Outside, several owls struck the window at once. A spiderweb crack crept across the pane.

Box spoke quietly but firmly. “I think you’ll find the third button quite useful.”

Harry waved the wand from left to right and murmured, “Abracadabra.”

The window vanished.

A burst of freezing wind tore through the carriage. Papers flew. Box grabbed the armrests to stay in his seat.

Then Harry pressed the third button and repeated the word. A flare of blinding blue light erupted from the  wand, slicing through the night. The beam swept across the sky like a lighthouse, striking every owl within a hundred yards. The Familiars dropped, one by one, limp as stones.

“Wow,” breathed Box, stunned. “That’s impressive!”

Harry allowed herself a faint, tired smile. Then the last owl—one the wand had missed—burst through the open space with a shriek. It clawed at her hair, her face, its talons flashing.

Harry screamed, dropping the wand. Without it, she was defenceless.

Box snatched it from the floor and pressed the second button.

A tongue of flame roared out—just as it had for his father—and engulfed both bird and cousin. Harry cried out. The owl shrieked louder, a burst of feathers and smoke,  before collapsing to the floor, charred to a crisp.

“Are you all right?” Box gasped, horrified at his own heroics.

“Y-yes,” Harry panted, singed and furious. She gave the blackened remains a kick. Then she reclaimed the wand and muttered, “Arbadacarba.”
The window reappeared. Her burns and scratches faded from sight.

“Do you think we’ve seen the last of them?” Box asked.

“Hardly,” Harry said. “That was only the beginning.”

Box looked out at the passing landscape—half-familiar hills and ghostly hedgerows. His mind returned to the words Harry spoke when using the wand. “I’ve  been thinking—”

“A Muddle, thinking?” she teased.

He ignored her. “Those words you say—aren’t they a bit… corny?”

“Corny?” she repeated icily.

“Yes! ‘Abracadabra’? Every second-rate magician says that on television.”

“Just because they use it,” said Harry, “doesn’t make it less powerful. Have you ever wondered where those  words came from?”

“No,” he admitted meekly.

“I’ll tell you. Though it may do little good—you being a Muddle and all.” She lifted her chin. “Those ‘corny’ words have been handed down for centuries. I may despise Hagswords and its masters, but even I respect the power of language.”

“Oh,” said Box, suitably chastened.

“And if you’d like a demonstration,” she added coolly, “I’ll oblige.”

“Yes, please,” he said at once.

Harry tapped the table with her wand. “Hey presto.”

The table vanished.

Box’s mouth dropped open. “Wow, I see what you mean!”

“Do you?” She arched an eyebrow. Then she reversed the spell: “Otserp yeh.”
The table reappeared, gleaming as before.

“Brilliant!” Box said. “And you didn’t even press any buttons!”

“No—none,” Harry said, pleased despite herself.

Then, with mock innocence, she pointed the wand at his face and murmured, “Hocus Pocus.”

Box blinked. “Nothing happened.”

“Are you sure?”

He glanced around. Nothing seemed different. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Look in the window,” she said.

He turned—and leapt back with a yelp.
He had two noses.

“Get rid of them!” he bellowed. “GET RID OF THEM!”

The couple peered over again. Box ducked below the divider. “All right, Harry, I get it! Just put it back—one nose, please!”

Laughing, she waved her wand. “Sucop Sucoh.”

Box slowly checked the window again. His face, blessedly, was back to normal. “Thanks,” he muttered.

“Pardon?”

“I said thanks, all right?”

Harry’s frosty manner softened a touch. “Accepted.”

They fell into silence—Harry plotting, Box pretending not to worry. Dusk slid into night. Box shifted and squirmed in his armchair,  trying to find comfort for the long journey ahead. Propping his feet on the table, he closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Harry asked.

“Trying to sleep.”

“Not here.” She stood. “Come on—we have a sleeping compartment.”

“Really?” He opened one eye.

Without answering, she swept off through the connecting door. In his scramble to follow, Box toppled out o  the chair and banged his head on the table. “Ow!” Rubbing the lump, he hurried after her.

The next carriage was even finer than the last, all brass and mahogany. Then the buffet—empty now, chairs stacked, lamps dimmed. Beyond it, Harry stopped and opened a door. “This is us.”

Inside were two bunks, tidy and inviting. Box climbed to the top, kicked off his shoes, and fell instantly asleep.
Below, Harry lay awake, eyes on the ceiling, wand within reach.

When Box awoke, the train was still rattling through the ink-black night. “Are you awake?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Harry murmured. “Quietly.”

“Can I ask something?”

“Go on.”

“Those Necro—what were they called again?”

“Necromancers.”

“Right. Why do they want you so badly? Dead or alive?”

Silence. Then Harry said, “Necromancer is just a fancier word for wizard.”

“I know that,” Box said patiently, “but why are they after you?”

Another pause. Then: “Because I left something behind.”

“What was it?”

“It’s none of your concern,” she said coldly. “Go back to sleep.”

He tried again, but she ignored him utterly.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Harry said, prodding him in the ribs. “We’ve arrived.”

“Mmm—what?” Box mumbled.

“It’s five-thirty.”

“Five-thirty! I need more sleep.”

“No, you don’t. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

“At six in the morning?”

“I did tell you. Can’t you Muddles remember anything?” She opened the compartment door. “I’ll see you in the buffet car.”

The door banged behind her.

Box sat up, yawned, and promptly forgot he was in the top bunk.
He rolled off and hit the floor with a thud.

“Argh!” he groaned. “What else can happen to me?”

 

Chapter Nine

Hagswords Bound

 

Breakfast on the train had been magnificent — smoked kippers that flaked at the touch of a fork, warm bread with curls of golden butter, and endless cups of steaming tea poured by the same two-nosed waiter from the night before. He stood beside their table now, bowing slightly.
“Was everything to your satisfaction?”

“Yes, it was wonderful,” Box assured him, still working on his third slice of bread.

The waiter gave Harry that same peculiar smile — the one that had unnerved Box the previous evening.  Unfazed, Harry handed him two gold coins. “Thank you. Perhaps we’ll see you again soon.”

The waiter’s two noses twitched approvingly. He pocketed the coins, cleared the table, and glided away,  humming a tune that smelled faintly of lavender and coal dust.

Outside, dawn was clawing its way over the horizon. The landscape had changed; the train was now high in  the hills, the trees replaced by scrub, gorse, and clusters of strange blue shrubs that glowed faintly in the morning light.

“What are those?” Box asked, pressing his nose to the glass.

“What are what?”

“The shrubs—oh, they’re gone.” He blinked. The hillside had vanished behind a wall of station platforms and grey stone.  “Never mind.”

The brakes hissed. The train slowed, shuddered, and stopped.

Harry leapt down from the carriage with enviable agility. Box followed with all the caution of a man stepping off a cliff. A blast of steam erupted beneath him and he jumped half a foot in the air.
Harry laughed. “You’re hopeless.”

The guard waved his green flag, the whistle sounded, and Mallard steamed away into the mist. The platform was suddenly quiet — eerily so. No chatter, no footsteps, not even a pigeon’s coo.

“Are we the only ones?” Box asked.

“It looks like it,” said Harry. “But Hagswords was never exactly popular.”

“Wasn’t it?” he asked faintly, hoping she wouldn’t elaborate.

They left the platform. Box looked around in confusion. “Where is everyone? No porters, no staff…”

“They’re here,” said Harry. Then, with a glance at his puzzled expression, she added, “You just have to look  properly.”

He tried. He squinted, concentrated, and nearly gave himself a headache. “Sorry, I don’t see anyone.”

“Then try looking for those who aren’t living,” she said simply. “We’re not in your world now.”

Swallowing hard, Box looked again. And this time—he saw them.
An elderly man in a tattered uniform approached, tipping his cap. “Good morning, sir. Can I be of assistance?”

Before Box could reply, another figure appeared — stately, silver-haired, translucent. “Mr Spectre,” he said, “everything all right?”

“Yes, sir,” said the first. “Just helping these souls on their way.”

“Good. We’ve too many lost ones wandering as it is.” The stationmaster drifted away to his office, from which  faint, melancholy music began to play.

Box’s voice trembled. “What sort of a place is this?”

Producing their tickets, Harry said coolly, “Please clip them so we may be on our way.”

The ghostly collector peered at the paper. “Ah, from Muddleland. A strange time to be heading to Hagswords — term started weeks ago.”

Harry’s expression darkened. “The tickets.”

Chastened, the man clipped them and stepped aside. “Safe travels,” he said, his voice fading like mist.

As they crossed the station yard, Box glanced back and froze. Faces — pale, unblinking faces — were  pressed against every window of the old building, watching.
“Harry, you’ll never believe what I just saw—Harry?”
She was already halfway down the road.

“Wait for me!” he yelled, running after her.

When he caught up, panting, he asked, “How far is it to Hagswords?”

Harry pointed toward a distant mountain, its peak capped with a ring of thunderclouds. “That far.”

Box’s shoulders slumped. Then, brightening: “What about the flying carpet?”

Harry stopped dead, turned slowly, and regarded him as though he were a particularly dense pebble.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No,” he mumbled. “I just thought—”

“You weren’t thinking,” she snapped. Then, softening, she sighed. “All right, maybe I was harsh. Come on —  I’ll explain as we go.”

They walked. For an hour they talked more than they ever had before. Box told her about his love of circuits  and electricity, how he dreamed of combining science with magic. Harry listened, almost kindly, then spoke of her life at Hagswords — of strict teachers, endless rules, and the moment she decided never to be controlled again. For the first time, Box began to understand her. Beneath the stubbornness and arrogance was a girl who had learned to fight because she’d been left with no other choice.

“Well, that’s enough sentiment,” she said briskly. “We can’t use the carpet — too easy to spot from above.”

“But if they know we were on the train,” Box asked, “why not send more owls?”

Harry glanced up. “Careful what you say.”

He ducked instinctively. “They’re coming?”

“No,” she laughed. “You got away with it this time.”

A rumble of wheels interrupted them. A cart approached, drawn by six enormous shire horses, their hooves  thudding like drums. “Quick!” said Harry. “Thumb up!”

“Like hitchhiking?”

“Exactly.”

The driver pulled up, glasses slipping down his nose. “Whoa there! Morning!”

“Good morning,” said Harry sweetly. “Are you heading anywhere near Hagswords?”

“Students, eh? Bit late in the term,” he said, removing his spectacles and squinting at them. “Can’t see a thing through these. Don’t know why I bother wearing ’em.”

“May I see them?” asked Harry, smiling.

He handed them over. “They’re beyond fixing. Scratched to blazes.”

“Leave that to me,” she said. Whispering, “Erotser selcatceps,” she tapped the lenses with her wand.
“Try them now.”

The man perched them on his nose — and gasped. “Clear as crystal! Well, bless my soul! Hop aboard, both  of you — free ride to school!”

They climbed into the cart, settling among the bales of hay. The shire horses plodded forward at a stately  pace. It was peaceful, if slow. The driver, enchanted by his newly perfect vision, barely spoke, too busy marvelling at every stone wall and hedge he hadn’t seen properly in decades.
After an hour of monotony, Harry and Box dozed off in the straw.

When Box awoke, the cart was jolting violently. The horses were galloping far too fast. Something was wrong.
“Harry!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

“Up here!” she yelled back.

Scrambling forward, he saw her on the driver’s bench, wrestling with the reins. The old man lay crumpled at  her feet, his face scratched and bleeding.

“What happened?” Box gasped.

Harry looked skyward.
The answer was there.
Dozens of owls, black shapes against the pale morning, were diving toward them.

“I said it before,” Box yelled, “and I’ll say it again—you must have really angered someone!”

The Familiars attacked in waves, slashing, pecking, hurling themselves at the cart. A huge owl smashed into Box’s chest, nearly knocking him backward. Harry grabbed him just in time.

“Hold the reins!” she cried. “I’ve got an idea!”

Another owl swooped, talons raking his shoulder. Harry yanked open her bag and pulled out the worn flying carpet. She spread it over the old man’s body at her feet.
“Step on it!”

Box obeyed instantly.

“Up, up and away!” she screamed.

The carpet shuddered, trembled—and soared. It ripped free from the cart, carrying them skyward in a wild, dizzying rush. Below, the shire horses bolted in terror. The cart overturned, splintering on the road.

The owls followed.

Harry urged the carpet higher, faster. Box looked down and wished he hadn’t. The swarm descended upon  the cart, upon the driver and the horses, until all that remained were feathers and smoke.

He turned away, sickened. Neither of them spoke.

In silence, they flew on toward the dark mountain of Hagswords.

 

Chapter Ten

Subterfuge and Some Berries

 

“Down—slowly down,” Harry murmured, and the carpet drifted to a halt in a scrubby hollow a good distance from Hagswords.

“Why are we stopping here?” Box asked, thinking more of his aching feet than their peril.

Harry answered him with a look, folded the carpet with maddening neatness, and stowed it. For a long while  she studied the school. Perched on a lonely, knife-edged hill, Hagswords looked less like a school than a fortress that had mislaid its moat.

“We have to get in without being seen,” she said at last.

“That sounds difficult. Impossible, even,” Box groaned, eyeing the sheer slope.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Harry said absently, still watching the walls.

Box winced at the picture that painted. “What’s the plan, then?”

“We wait for dark,” Harry said, settling behind a boulder. “Only then is it safe to make the first move.” She  closed her eyes and rested.

Day hung stubbornly on. Box sat, too, and drifted into a doze crammed with owls, blood-spattered faces, smoking carpets—and an especially awful version of himself covered in noses. He woke yelling, “No more noses! No, no—no more noses!”

“Wake up. It was a dream,” said Harry.

“It felt real.”

“It wasn’t,” she said, final as a door click.

He checked the sky. “Past six, I’d guess—and my stomach agrees.”

“Let’s see what we can find,” said Harry, rising to scout the rocks. “Ah.” She knelt beside a blue shrub wedged in a crack of stone.

“That’s what I asked you about on the train,” Box said. “What are they?”

“Rub-a-Dubs,” she replied, mischievous smile engaged.

“What sort of name is—”

“A silly one,” she said. “After you taste them, you won’t care.” She plucked a handful of berries—bright blue with neat orange stripes—and offered them.

Box inspected them with suspicion. “They’re safe?”

“As safe as most things in life.”

“Not very reassuring,” he muttered, but he chose one and set it on his tongue. A pleasant blackberry note…  then a detonation of fire. His eyes watered. “It’s burning me! Water! Water!”

Harry laughed and offered more berries.

“Are you mad?” he spluttered. “I’m not eating another—”

“That’s the only way to reach the next stage,” she said.

“Next stage? The first one is killing me!”

“Refuse and you’ll burn for an hour. Or more.”

“And if I eat another?”

“Untold pleasure,” she said softly.

He froze. “Untold pleasure?”

She nodded.

“It isn’t a drug?”

“Of course not,” she said, stung.

“Then—fine.” He popped a second berry.

“Wow,” he breathed. “Oh—wow.”

“Burning gone?” Harry asked.

“Gone!” he grinned. “Replaced by… I don’t even have the words.” He ate another. And another.

When at last he stopped, rosy and blissful, he said, “I’ll fetch a few more. Want some?”

“No. And you’ve had enough. No more.”

“Why not? There are loads left.” He scratched his calf. “Ow. Itchy.”

Harry smiled.

“What?” He ripped at his collar, then his shirt. A violent itch raced across his chest. “Oh. That’s why they’re  called Rub-a-Dubs. Side-effects! Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Would you have listened?”

He said nothing, just scratched and scratched until the itch skulked away.

“That was a rotten joke,” he muttered.

“Who’s laughing?” Harry said. Then, briskly, “Still hungry?”

“No. Perfectly full, actually.” He glanced at his bare wrist. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“It will,” Harry said. “And owls prefer it that way.”

Night finally poured over the hillside like ink. Neither cousin quite trusted the other’s judgment, but necessity  breeds cooperation. A thin sliver of moon shouldered up over the rim of the world.

“Come on,” Harry whispered. “Time to go.”

They slipped from the boulder’s shadow. Box stubbed his toe on a rock and swallowed a yelp. As they  climbed, the school bulked larger, its wall looming like a cliff.

“What do we do when we get there?” he whispered. “We can’t just knock and ask to be let in.”

Harry, who disliked unnecessary words, made none.

Sometimes Box thought he heard wings, but nothing showed. At the base of the wall he exhaled shakily.  “Phew. I thought we’d never make it.”

“Getting here is one thing,” Harry said. “Getting in—unseen—is another.” She fingered the clasp of her bag.

“The carpet?” Box guessed.

“Out of the question,” she said. “Unless you want every owl in the county on our tail.”

“Then what?”

She drew out a small glass sphere alive with faint, wandering lights. “This.”

Box stared, entranced. “What is it?”

“A Philosopher’s Marble.”

“A philosopher’s what?”

“Marble,” she said, as if speaking to a slow radio. He reached for it. She slapped his hand lightly.

“Can I—?”

“No. Dangerous, especially for you.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Never you mind. What matters is what it can do.”

They found a shallow alcove in the wall. Harry cupped the Marble in both hands. It began to glow—softly, then fiercely, until its light washed the stones in a pearly radiance.

“Wow,” Box whispered, edging away. “But what is it doing?”

“Try using that Muddle brain?” she murmured.

He swallowed the retort. “Can it get us inside?”

“Of course. The trick is doing it without notice. Keep watch.”

He peered both ways. “All clear. All systems are—” He caught her look. “Forget I said that.”

“Already forgotten,” she said, lowering her voice to a chant:
“Crioninous crionan shraholarman skryolamb,
let us into the school select,
scryoumeno scry— It’s done.”

“What language is—”

“Shh. Watch.”

At first he thought nothing had happened. Then came a low, grinding moan, stone on stone. The glow dimmed. A massive block slid inward, leaving a neat, person-sized gap.

Harry slipped through, checked both ways, then beckoned.

Inside, water dripped somewhere in the dark. The Marble gave one last glow; the wall sealed itself behind them with a muffled thud. Harry pocketed it, drew the wand, and pressed a base button. The tip blossomed with  clean, white light.

Box couldn’t help a small, proud smile: magic and electrics, humming together.

They stood in a damp, chill undercroft—more dungeon than basement. The air smelled of old stone, old water, and old secrets.

“Where now?” Box whispered.

Harry tilted her chin toward a shadowed stair curling upward into the dark. “Up,” she said.

 

Chapter Eleven

Owl, Owls, and Yet More Owls!

 

Because she had once been a student at Hagswords—escaped or not—Harry knew the shortcuts. She found a mouldy door sunk into a corner and eased it open to a spiral stair.

“It’s awfully rusty,” Box muttered.

“Keep close,” Harry said, ignoring the rust and starting up.

He shadowed her to a narrow landing. Box swiped a low cobweb away and made a face. “What a dismal  place. I’d pick my grammar school at Gunnersbury over this dump any day.”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” said Harry. “Listen. Past this door we’re inside the school proper.”

“Classrooms?”

“Something like that. Most students should be in their Houserooms. That doesn’t mean we relax.”

“You can depend on me,” Box whispered. “No relaxing. No dropping anything. Not even my guard.”

Harry pressed a finger to her lips and turned the handle. The door creaked. Dim light seeped in. She kept her wand glowing.

“It’s much nicer in here,” Box breathed, stepping into a grand vestibule striped with polished stone and hung  with paintings. “These must be worth a fortune!”

“Remember what I said,” Harry replied. “Appearances.”

Box, heedless, drifted up the broad stair, entranced. Portraits, landscapes, wildlife, still life—each more vivid than the last. “They’re so lifelike,” he whispered. His fingers brushed a bowl of fruit; an apple  felt cool and round beneath his touch. He tugged it free, rubbed it on his sleeve, and took a bite. “You won’t believe what I just—”

“I will,” said Harry. “Everything we do has consequences, including stealing from paintings.”

“What do you—”

“Look again.”

Box glanced up. His jaw dropped. “They’re looking at me! Harry, the people, even the animals—they’re all staring! Make them stop!”

“Only you can.”

“How?”

“Make amends.”

“Amends? How?”

“Ask.”

Box faced the gallery, cheeks hot. “I’m sorry I took the apple. When I felt it was real I couldn’t resist. How can I make it up to you?”

The painted faces studied him. At last a knight in armour astride a destrier spoke. “To make amends is no  easy matter. In my day you would have met me in a joust.”

“L—lances?” Box stammered.

“And perhaps to the death.”

“T—to the d—death?”

The knight sighed. “Times have changed. No jousting. Now we settle for a promise.”

“A promise?”

“That when your quest is over and you return home, you will do all in your power to integrate these spirited  paintings of Hagswords into the outside world.”

Box flushed. “I’m a Muddle. Are you sure you want to be integrated into a Muddle world?”

A lively argument erupted across frames—human voices, animal murmurs. At last the knight said, “Yes. If that is the price, so be it. Muddles and Mystics have been apart too long.”

“Then I promise,” Box said, relieved and a little proud. The faces softened; the gallery returned to its painted poise.

“You think you got off lightly,” Harry murmured. “Time will tell. Come on.”

As they moved on, Box asked, “How did he know I was on a quest?”

“The paintings know everything that happens at Hagswords,” said Harry.

What followed felt to Box like a royal tour and a maze combined. Up wide staircases and through stately halls, down into paneled chambers, up again into rooms grander still. Hagswords was far bigger on the inside. After a while Box couldn’t help asking, “Are you lost?”

Harry’s look could have curdled butter. He did not repeat the question.

He kept his distance from every frame they passed. The paintings were brilliant, yes; they were also watching.

“Where exactly did you leave it?” he tried.

If she told him the truth, he might guess too much. “In a study room,” she lied.

“Hmm.” He did not sound convinced. “Any shortcuts?”

“Questions,” she snapped. “Always questions.”

Footsteps sounded at the end of a corridor. Harry doused the wand and yanked Box behind a colossal statue. Voices approached—heated, close.

“Who are they?” Box breathed.

“Shh.”

The steps halted almost beside them. For a heartbeat, both cousins were sure they were discovered. Then  the voices resumed, clear as bells.

“And it goes without saying, that dreadful child Harry Rotter must be stopped,” said a man.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” said a woman. “The future of the school depends on it.”

“We know she is on her way, but the owls failed to stop her,” the man said.

“They were excellent at intelligence,” the woman replied. “I hear she has an accomplice. A Muddle, by all  accounts.”

“A Muddle? A hindrance more than a help.”

Box clenched his fists and resisted the urge to leap out and punch the speaker on his very proper nose.

“She may already be here,” the woman went on. “Skulking. Listening.” She leaned toward the statue as if it  might whisper.

“What is she up to?” the man asked. “First she can’t leave fast enough. Now she’s blazing a trail back.”

“She was always a free thinker.”

“A renegade.”

“Call it what you like; she is coming. What puzzles me is why.” A pause. “It is almost as if she has forgotten  something.”

“Her senses,” the man muttered, though worry tinged his voice. “Are the remaining owls on duty?”

“Every last one,” the woman said, stepping away at last. “If she gets near Hagswords she’ll be in for the fright of her young life.”

Their footsteps dwindled and vanished.

“Phew,” Box whispered, wiping sweat from his brow.

“Too close,” said Harry. “We hurry.”

“I’m with you,” he said—and set off in the same direction as the voices.

“Box.”

He turned. “Yes?”

“This way.”

“Oh. Stretching my legs.”

Now Harry took every shortcut she knew. Through classrooms with stained glass like small cathedrals, along moth-eaten passages that delivered them into chambers grander than the last, until they stood before a door as tall as a house and twice as stubborn.

“This is where I left it,” said Harry.

“Here?”

“Here.”

Box tried the handle. Locked. “Cliché or not, how do we get in?”

Harry lifted the electro-magical wand and smiled. “Like this.”

Box stepped well back. Harry knelt, held the wand in both hands, and whispered, “Open Ses Me.”

“That’s it?”

“Less is more.” She turned the handle. The door swung inward.

A sharp foreboding prickled Box’s neck. Harry strode in as if she owned the room. “Come on,” she said. “And close the door. There’s a dreadful draught.”

Draughts can be made by many things. Hundreds of white wings beating in unison is one of them.

As the door clicked shut, Box glanced up. The ceiling seethed. “Run, Harry! Run!”

“Out! Quick!” Harry cried.

They wrenched at the handle. It would not move.

“Locked?” Box gasped.

Harry said nothing. She dragged and dragged on the iron latch.

“Use your wand!” Box shouted. “Use it!”

She tried, but the first wave of owls hit like a storm, beaks and claws slashing. She could barely raise an arm  to ward them off.

“Buttons!” Box yelled. “Any—just press!”

Harry stabbed at a switch. Luck—or habit—chose the second. Fire poured from the wand in a roaring sheet. Owls shrieked, flashed, and fell like burning paper. The room filled with the stench of scorched feathers and death.

“I hope that’s the last,” Box whispered.

“The time for whispering has passed,” Harry said, staring up. Above the ceiling a new sound began: booted  feet thundering to arms.

“Get what you came for and go!” Box cried. “Before the whole school is on us!”

Harry crossed to a carved cabinet and snapped the lock. Box saw, and stared. “Breaking in? I thought you  said it was a study room open to all!”

“Will you ever grow up?”

“What did you say?”

“I said, grow up,” she hissed. “Even a Muddle should have worked it out. This is Tumbledown’s private study.”

Box wiped blood from a fresh cut along his cheek. “I am a Muddle, and proud of it. I trusted you. If that makes me stupid in your book, then so be it. That is only your opinion.”

“Yes,” Harry said slowly, tasting each word, “and mine is the one that matters to me.” She reached into the cabinet and drew out a black felt pouch, cinched with a gold cord. “Now move.” She flicked the wand at the door;  it sprang open.

“Why didn’t you do that before?”

“Oh, do grow up.”

They hurried out. As Box glanced back, Harry slipped a hand into her bag, palmed the Philosopher’s Marble, and slid it into the black pouch before tucking it safely away.

Box saw none of it. He had no choice but to follow his troublesome, devious cousin if either of them hoped to escape Hagswords alive.

 

Chapter Twelve

A Time for Truth (Captured!)

 

At first Box thought they were simply retracing their steps through the warren of halls and hidden passages.  Then Harry cut left where they ought to have gone right, slipped through an ironwork screen, and pushed open a fireproofed door.

They stepped into a room that made Box’s heart lift.

It was bright where the rest of Hagswords was dim, clean where everything else was dusty. Benches ran in  ordered rows, each cluttered with oscilloscopes, soldering stations, coils, crystals, armatures, and little brass cages wired with filaments that hummed faintly in the air. The place felt, impossibly, like his bedroom grown up: an electrical experimentation lab to shame all others.

Box wanted to ask why such a room existed in a school of mysticism and magic, but he could already hear the answer—something about his “Muddlesome stupidity”—so he kept quiet and looked. He looked hard enough to start understanding.

Harry, by contrast, knew exactly where she was and why. She set down her bag, drew out the black felt pouch, loosened the gold cord, and peered inside.

Outside, Hagswords boiled. Boots pounded down corridors; doors slammed; orders snapped and were argued with; somewhere a gong was struck again and again. Yet no one tried the door to this room. It was as if the place wore its own silence.

Box circled the benches, reading the story of the room in scorch marks and pencilled notes, in diagrams of  runes cross-hatched with circuit traces. Satisfied, he glanced over just in time to see Harry cup both hands beneath the mouth of the pouch and pour out a glittering spill of glass.

“Philosopher’s Marbles,” he breathed, unable to stop himself. “You took more.”

“Yes,” Harry said, almost purring. “And you’ve no idea what that entails, do you?”

He met her eyes. “I do,” he said—slowly, carefully. “I most certainly do.”

Harry blinked. “How?”

Box smiled. “I’ll tell you—on one condition.”

She arched a brow. “Name it.”

“No more secrets between us. From now on.”

A long pause, full of yard-long thoughts. At last she said, very softly, “All right. No more secrets. But you may not like what you hear.”

“Try me.”

She cinched the pouch shut again, nodded at a stool, and began. “You think you’ve worked it out, but you’re  skimming the surface. Those marbles”—she tapped the pouch—“do not belong to the cosy syllabus of Mysticism and Magic Hagswords likes to parade. They are outside it.”

“I can see that,” Box said, gesturing to the benches. “Whoever runs this room is doing what we did to your  wand—melding electronics with magic.”

Harry searched his face for how much he truly understood.

“That’s why you stole the first one,” he went on. “You sensed it was different.”

“I was drawn to it,” she said simply. “Yes, I stole it. I would have stolen them all.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Luck and timing,” she said. “Tumbledown left his door ajar. I looked in. The pouch sat on his desk. I had time for one snatch and run. Later, when I studied it, I knew—there was more than magic in it. I combed the library. Nothing. Not a single mention of marbles.” She tapped  her bag, drew out a dust-grimed book, and handed it over. “Until I found this—here.”

Box opened it. The text wriggled and rearranged itself, then settled into characters he still could not read.  “What language?”

“Arcanum. The private tongue of mystics and wizards,” Harry said. “You won’t understand it. What matters is  the knowledge inside: forbidden, long-forsaken methods for melding circuits and spellwork.” She shook the book gently. “And more—the full instructions for crafting the Philosopher’s Marbles.”

Box was, for once, speechless.

“I staked out this room,” Harry said. “Only one person ever came. Tumbledown. This is his lab. He set it up.”

Box’s mind raced. “So he charmed them—the marbles?”

“Who else? Philosopher’s Marbles. He’s the Alchemist. The Philosopher.” She smiled without warmth. “Hurray for the Muddle,” she added when he worked it out a beat later.

“But why?” Box asked. “Why make them? And… why do you want them?”

“Why does any despot do anything?” Harry replied. “Power. Control.”

“And you?” His voice thinned. “Is it the same for you?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” she snapped. “Do you know what this place is? Once you’re enrolled—usually against your will—you do not leave. Not until you’ve passed every trial and swallowed every lesson. Until you’re domesticated.  Until you serve. All under the benevolent eye of Albert J. Tumbledown.”

“That makes you as bad as him,” Box said quietly.

“As bad? No.” She hesitated. “Not always good, either. But not him.”

“I wonder,” Box murmured.

“Wonder away,” she said. “You were right: he charmed them here, in secret. That’s why he wants me silenced—and why I must control them before he does.”

Box stared at the pouch, at the lab benches humming faintly. In his head the scales tipped back and forth:  despot versus renegade; the devil he knew against the devil he didn’t. At last he said, “All right. I’ll help—for now. We get safe from him first. Then we talk about what comes next. What’s the plan to get out?”

“No hurry,” said Harry. “He veiled this room himself. A concealment charm. No one can find us.”

“He can remove it.”

“He could,” she allowed. “But then everyone would know what he’s been up to. He won’t risk—”

Something hit the door like a battering ram.

“Who’s that?” Box squeaked. “Father Christmas?”

For the first time in a long while, fear showed in Harry’s eyes. “Who else? Albert J. Tumbledown.”

Another impact. The door shuddered in its frame. A third blow sent it clanging to the floor. And there he was:  a broad man with clashing red hair and beard, crimson robes shimmering like heat, eyes bright and cold.

“Seize her,” he said. “And her bag. And the wand.”

Two burly teachers surged in. One pinned Harry’s arms; the other stripped her bag and wand and passed them up. Harry growled, low and furious.

Tumbledown plucked the pouch from the bag. “Ah. The Philosopher’s Marbles, I presume?” He peered inside, smiling. “All present? How very industrious.” He tied the pouch to his belt with a practised motion.

Despite his fear, Box let out a tiny, involuntary laugh. Tumbledown, indeed—he had just tumbled down the door.

“I said it was foolhardy to bring a Muddle,” Tumbledown remarked to the tall, hawk-eyed woman at his shoulder. “This proves it. The imbecile is laughing.”

For the second time that night Box had to fight the urge to rearrange a senior wizard’s nose.

The corridor behind them was crammed. Every student in Hagswords had gathered, necks stretched, eyes  bright, whispering, Is that her? Harry Rotter?

Professor McGonagain stepped forward, lips pursed into something that might once have been duty. “Well,  Harry,” she said crisply. “What have you to say for yourself?”

Harry said nothing. She stared at them the way a cornered fox stares at hounds.

“And you, boy,” McGonagain snapped, turning her gaze on Box. “Muddle. What on earth are we to do with you?”

 

Chapter Thirteen

What a Fine Mess!

 

“What a fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Harry groaned as the dungeon door slammed and the bolt scraped home.

“Me?” Box spluttered. “I never had a day’s trouble in my life before you turned up!”

“Never?”

“Well… apart from kids at school teasing me about being tall and thin.” His voice dwindled.

“Perhaps it is better like this,” Harry said. “Everything out in the open. At least we know what we are up against.”

“Up against?” Box stared at the slime-dark wall. “Our backs are against it. Clear enough for you?”

“Like up the creek with no paddle?” Harry chuckled.

“I do not know what has you so happy,” Box shot back. “We are locked in a dungeon. Your wand, your bag,  the Philosopher’s Marbles, all gone. And if that were not enough, Tumbledown and McGonagain are planning what to do with us. So if you still find it funny, go on and laugh.”

She did. Then, lightly, “By the way, it is McGonagain, not Goneagain.”

Box glared. “Arrgh.” He retreated to a corner, sat, and buried his head in his hands.

“That is no way to behave,” Harry chided. “Do you want to get out or not?”

He looked up. She was smiling, and in her fingers lay something no bigger than a matchstick.

“What are you going to do, set fire to the place?”

“Burn? No. Magic? Perhaps.”

He blinked, then laughed with relief. “Your old wand. You genius.”

“I already knew that,” she said.

Ten long minutes passed. Harry did nothing but listen at the door.

“Well?” Box whispered. “What are you waiting for?”

“Patience.” Her ear was pressed so firmly to the wood it might have grown there.

“What are you listening to?” Box asked.

“Listening for,” she murmured. “If someone is out there, it matters. If no one is, it does not. Now kindly be  quiet.”

They waited another five minutes. At last she raised her hand. “They have gone.”

“Are you sure you do not want to wait another hour?” Box muttered.

Harry ignored him. She flicked the stub of wand. “Open Ses Me.”

The door creaked obediently ajar.

Harry slipped into the passage and glanced back. Box was still in the cell, peering out.

“What is the matter with you?” she hissed.

“I was thinking.”

“A Muddle thinking? You jest.”

Box ignored it. “Are you really going to use those marbles for yourself?”

“Yes,” Harry said, cold and plain. “I told you.”

“Then I am staying here.”

Her jaw dropped. “Very well. Stay with your precious morals.”

“Gladly.”

“Good.” She turned and was gone.

The corridor swallowed her. Box stood in the doorway, alone with damp stone and the steady drip somewhere in the dark. Drip, drip, drip.

Time blurred. A minute, an hour. Then the passage lights flickered and died. Invisible fingers grabbed his arm and yanked. “Stop! What are you doing?” he cried, stumbling as he was dragged at a bruising pace through  blackness. When he thought his shoulder would tear free, a wash of light opened ahead. The pull ceased. Harry stood there, wand stub in hand.

“You could have broken my arm,” he hissed, rubbing it. “How did you even do that?”

“The last time you shouted like that,” Harry said, “you alerted the whole school. Do you want to try again?”

“No. Sorry.” He scowled. “I told you I wanted to stay. Why not leave me?”

“Do you want to go back?”

“No. Not really.” He lifted his chin. “But I still do not agree with your plans for the marbles.”

“Can we deal with the problem in front of us and argue about philosophy later?”

“Yes,” he sighed.

“The way I see it, we have problems enough,” said Harry. “No need to make more.”

“Where are we?”

“Beneath the Great Hall,” she said. “I would wager Tumbledown has withdrawn there to reassess.”

“I thought we were the ones losing.”

“Lose, win. Only words.” Her mind seemed elsewhere, far back. “It depends where you are standing.”

“There is a difference,” Box muttered.

“It is all perspective.” She turned a corner and stopped, finger to lips. Above them, set in the ceiling, was a  round iron hatch.

“Not a sound,” she breathed.

They climbed the rickety ladder bolted to the wall. At the top Harry eased the hatch a finger’s width. Light  spilled over her hair. She peered across the hall.

Less than six paces away, Albert J. Tumbledown sat on an oversized chair like a king on a throne, red beard  and robe clashing horribly. At his right, McGonagain perched on a lesser chair, every inch the consort. Teachers lined the flanks. Beyond them stood every pupil in Hagswords, shoulder to shoulder, faces slack and eyes unfocused. It was a court and a congregation, all in one.

Harry lowered the hatch and signalled Box down. “Worse than I imagined,” she whispered.

“What did you see?”

“Everyone. And all of them under his control. Even Wan Measly and Miocene d’Anger. I tried to catch their  eyes. Nothing. We are in trouble.”

“There is no need to panic,” Box whispered back. “You still have your wand.”

“A matchstick,” she said. “I need the new one. It is not up there. Nor the marbles.”

“Listen,” said Box. “Your friends. Can you trust them?”

“That is a question,” Harry said. “They were hardly close to begin with. But if we could reach them, perhaps.”

“If we could reason with them, get them onside?”

“If we could get through,” she said. “Yes. But how?”

“Leave that to me,” said Box.

“Say that again.”

“We give up.”

Harry stared. “I thought that is what you said. I still do not see how it helps.”

“It is simple. We surrender and get taken inside the circle. Then we strike from within. We tell Tumbledown we escaped our cell using this.” He lifted a slim penlike object he had kept hidden.

“What is it?”

“A nothing. Something I made in my workshop. Well, bedroom.”

“A nothing?”

“A laser.”

“Those already exist,” Harry said dryly.

“This one is different. The beam is multidirectional.” Box turned the barrel in his fingers. “Watch. I will show  you. Cover your eyes.”

He thumbed a switch. The device hummed. Light burst from every seam, a blinding star in his palm. Even with her hand up, Harry flinched.

“Wow,” she said, blinking away spots. “I wish I had invented that.”

“It would be useful if the battery lasted longer. It only gets a few goes.”

A slow smile crept over Harry’s face as her sight returned. “A few goes will be enough.”

 

Chapter Fourteen

Surrender

 

It was settled: they would surrender. Harry disliked the plan on principle, but with nothing better to hand—and Box’s curious laser good for perhaps three flashes—she agreed. The little device had sparked an idea that might tilt the odds, if only a fraction. Even so, she  thought attacking from within felt rash and half-baked. With a bit of improvisation, and the laser as misdirection, she meant to pad it out into something that might actually work.

Harry shoved the hatch aside, hauled herself up, and stepped into the Great Hall.

Gasps rippled across the room.

More followed when Box clambered after her and straightened on the polished boards.

“What have we here?” Tumbledown purred, stroking his red beard as if it were a spoiled cat. “A thief?”

Harry turned theatrically, searching the air behind her.

“So she fancies herself a comedian.” His voice was soft, his eyes locked on hers. “From what I have seen, her jokes are no better than her studies.”

The glazed pupils laughed on cue.

“And the Muddle,” he went on, peering at Box, “an abysmally thin specimen.”

“At least I do not smell like a moth-eaten beard,” Box blurted. “Phew.”

“This one is the comedian, Harry,” Tumbledown said. “Muddles are so entertaining.”

“I will knock your block off,” Box shouted and lunged.

“Spirited,” said Professor McGonagain, “but directionless.”

Two burly teachers caught Box before he made it three steps.

“What did you hope to achieve,” Tumbledown asked Harry, “rising from the floor so theatrically?”

“A good entrance,” she said with a shrug.

“Hmm.”

“All jesting aside,” Harry said, “we wish to surrender.”

The word surprised him. For a beat, he had no reply.

McGonagain’s elbow found his ribs. She flicked her gaze to the children. Every eye tracked the moment like  spectators in a Roman ring. Winning mattered, yes. But to be seen winning mattered more.

“Seize her,” he snapped.

Two more teachers took Harry by the arms.

“Harry!” Box cried, struggling in his captors’ grip.

She ignored him.

“What is wrong with the Muddle?” McGonagain asked.

“He is a Muddle,” Tumbledown said. “That is what is wrong.”

He returned his attention to Harry. “Your surrender raises a question. How did you escape your cell?”

“Easily,” she said. “I used my wand.”

“No, Harry, do not tell them!” Box thrashed.

She ignored him again. “I had a second wand,” she said mildly. “Would you like to see it?”

Suspicion prickled the air, but the lure of a second wand was too great. “Yes, child,” Tumbledown said  smoothly. “Show me.” He nodded, and her captors released her.

“Thank you. As I said, I used my other wand…”

All eyes fixed on her. She slid her hand into her jacket pocket and rummaged as if feeling for something small.

“It must be tiny,” McGonagain murmured.

“It is,” Harry said. “Rather like those little sticks the carpet men carried.”

“Ah,” said the Professor, scenting a rat.

Harry drew out her closed fist and slowly unfurled it to reveal a slim silver pen.

“What is that?” McGonagain demanded, pointing with a bony finger.

“My wand,” Harry said innocently.

“Do you mock us?” Tumbledown’s curiosity darkened to anger.

“No.”

Curiosity kills more than cats. Warnings tugged at him—Harry might try something; the Professor had said as much—but the urge to see overrode his caution.

“Closer,” he said, crooking a finger. “Show me.”

Harry beckoned him nearer instead, as if she meant to reveal a secret engraving. He obliged, eyes bright.

“Take that, you old coot,” she said, flipping the switch and covering her face.

The hall exploded in white. The laser’s multidirectional flash washed over Tumbledown, McGonagain,  teachers, and pupils alike. Eyes clamped shut too late. Cries rose around the room.

Harry thrust the pen back into Box’s palm. “Thank heavens you covered your eyes. Come on. Wan. Miocene. Now.”

“W… what is happening?” Wan spluttered as they dragged him free.

“Who is that?” Miocene gasped, clawing at the air.

“Friends,” Harry said. “Truly,” Box added. “The blindness is temporary. Come with us.”

They slipped from the hall in the confusion and hurried through passages to the electrical workshop. By the  time they reached it, the worst of the glare had faded.

“Where are we?” Wan asked, blinking at machines and benches.

“What sort of place is this?” Miocene asked, patting her wild hair. “Why take us from Hagswords?”

“You are still in Hagswords,” Harry said, enjoying their disbelief.

“No,” Miocene said. “Impossible.”

“It is true,” Box said. “Please believe us.”

“And you?” Wan squinted at him. “You are not a pupil. I would remember someone as skinny as you.”

“I am Box Privet. Harry’s cousin.”

“Oh,” Wan sniffed. “A Muddle.”

“We will have none of that,” Harry said, for once on Box’s side.

They told their story in a rush—from the stolen marble to the hatch in the floor—and what little plan they had.

“So now you know,” Harry finished.

Wan rubbed his face. “Not quite. We were… not ourselves.”

“Half asleep,” Miocene said. “I can hardly remember anything for ages.”

Harry tapped the stump of her old wand on her palm. “I can help with that.”

“Un-zonk them?” Box asked.

“We shall see.” She lifted the wand. “Free their minds, their hopes and thoughts. Free their vision and their  sense. Return them to the hour before, unshackle souls from dull pretence.”

It was done. Wan’s eyes widened.

“I can think,” he breathed. “I had forgotten what it felt like.”

“And I remember what we went along with,” Miocene whispered. “What none of us questioned.”

“There will be time for guilt later,” Harry said, surprised it had worked so cleanly and keeping quiet about that  fact.

“How do you know Tumbledown will not find us?” Wan asked, prowling the room.

“Lightning,” Harry said.

“Pardon?”

“It does not strike the same place twice.”

Box bit his tongue and said nothing.

“Do you have a plan?” Miocene asked. “For the marbles. For after.”

“A plan? Of course.” Harry’s words stumbled. “First we keep them safe. Out of Tumbledown’s hands.”

“And then?” Miocene pressed.

Box cut in gently. “Are you up to it, Miocene? We will need you both.”

“Of course,” she said hotly. “Are you?”

Harry smiled. She saw what Box had done and let it stand.

They outlined the roles. Wan and Miocene asked quick questions, caught up fast, and nodded.

“Do you understand?” Box asked at the door.

“Yes,” they said together.

“Depend on me,” Wan added.

“And me,” said Miocene, not to be outdone.

Harry peered into the corridor. “Clear. Let’s move.”

Miocene and Wan went first, Box behind, and Harry slipped after them, leading her small, mismatched band  toward whatever waited next.

 

Chapter Fifteen

Beguiling Tactics

 

Harry had no intention of risking any of them being seen, not even for a heartbeat before they were ready.  She opened a concealed door hidden behind a dusty tapestry of an especially cross-looking witch and led the way through a narrow passageway that twisted and turned like a corkscrew.

The air inside was thick with age. Each breath tasted faintly of chalk and candle smoke. Box, bringing up the  rear, kept brushing cobwebs from his nose and wishing—just once—that adventure smelt more like freshly baked biscuits.

“Keep close,” Harry whispered. “These passages have a way of rearranging themselves when you’re not  paying attention.”

“That’s comforting,” muttered Box, already losing track of which direction was up.

After what felt like an eternity of tip-toeing in the dark, Miocene whispered, “Are we nearly there?”

“It’s not far now,” Harry replied in the distracted tone of someone whose mind was busy counting turns and  steps.

“OW!” cried Wan, stubbing his toe on something solid. “That hurt!”

“Shush,” Harry warned sharply. “Walls have ears.”

“They do?” said Miocene, shrinking away from the wall beside her.

“They certainly do in this place,” Box muttered. “And probably opinions as well.”

Another turn, another stretch of darkness. Then Wan said, “My sense of direction tells me our objective lies to the right—so why are we going left?”

Box blinked in the darkness. “You still have a sense of direction? I lost mine three corridors ago.”

“Trust me,” said Harry. “Two more minutes.”

Exactly two minutes later, she stopped and whispered, “Here.”

They bumped to a halt behind her.

“Where’s ‘here’?” Box asked.

“Stand still,” said Harry. “I’m looking for the catch.” Her fingers felt along the cold stone. “It’s around here  somewhere…”

Wan, growing more confident by the minute, stepped forward. “May I?”

Harry stepped aside. “Be my guest.”

A few moments later, there was a click! and the section of wall slid open with a reluctant groan.

“Nicely done,” said Harry, rather surprised.

“Beginner’s luck,” Wan said, pleased with himself.

They stepped out into a dimly lit foyer. Box recognised it instantly—the grand staircase lined with magnificent paintings, each one more lifelike than the next. The air smelled  faintly of varnish and candle wax.

“Near the main stairway,” Harry whispered. “And yes, Box—those paintings.”

He swallowed. “You’re sure it’s safe?”

“As long as we stick to the plan.”

Box nodded, straightened his shoulders, and whispered, “Right then. Let’s do it.”

“Go,” Harry said.

On cue, Box began to climb the staircase. Miocene slipped off along the left-hand side of the foyer, while Wan moved along the right. Harry herself took up position at the base of the  stairs, wand ready.

The knight in shining armour, the same one Box had spoken to before, stirred in his frame as Box approached. His horse tossed its head, and the knight leaned forward.

“So,” he said, voice echoing faintly as if across time. “You have returned, Sir Box. Has your quest ended so soon?”

“No,” said Box, bowing awkwardly. “But I need your help—and the help of everyone here.”

The knight removed his helmet, revealing a kindly, weather-worn face. “Our help? Whatever for?”

Box explained hurriedly: Harry’s plan, the danger of Tumbledown, the marbles, everything. The knight listened gravely, his silver armour glinting in the flickering light.

When Box finished, the knight stroked his beard thoughtfully. “It is a noble request. You ask us to risk our…  paint.”

“And possibly your frames,” Box added, “but we’ll patch them up afterwards, I promise.”

The knight chuckled. “We have spoken,” he said at last.

“You have?” Box blinked, for he had seen no sign of conversation.

“Yes. We are many, but our thoughts are one.” He lifted his lance and saluted. “We will stand with you.”

“Thank you, Lord…?”

“Catchyfoe,” said the knight, smiling. “Lord Catchyfoe of the Canvas Realm.”

“Well met, Lord Catchyfoe. I’m Box. Just Box.”

“Sir Box,” the knight corrected gently. “You have earned the title.”

Box flushed scarlet. “Thank you, my lord.”

At that moment, Harry signalled from below: it was time. Box returned the signal, and Harry passed it on to  Miocene. She nodded in reply. But when Harry looked for Wan, he was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?” she hissed.

“Gone,” Miocene replied grimly. “Typical Blytherin.”

Harry bit her lip. “We go ahead without him. There’s no time.”

A faint rumble began—distant at first, then swelling. The walls trembled as the paintings quivered and bulged.

“They’re coming!” Harry shouted.

And come they did.

From every frame poured a torrent of figures—people and animals, bursting from the canvas like water through a breached dam. Lords and ladies, knights  and servants, farmers and jesters, lions and leopards, unicorns, griffons, and even a few astonished cows—all surged into life.

The noise was deafening.

Box and Miocene ducked as a golden eagle swooped overhead, followed by a procession of goats in lace  collars. A troop of monkeys raced along the banister, chattering excitedly, while a gentleman in powdered   wig attempted to calm a frightened zebra.

“Guide them!” Harry cried. “Guide them down to the Great Hall!”

Miocene tried. So did Box. But guiding several hundred newly freed portraits was rather like trying to organise a thunderstorm.

The thunder reached its climax as the mob crashed through the ornate doors of the Great Hall.

WHAM! BAM! CRASH!

The great doors shattered into splinters.

Inside, Albert J. Tumbledown stood frozen in disbelief as an entire menagerie of painted souls—long dead but newly alive—stormed around him in a whirl of feathers, fur and finery.

Professor McGonagain recovered first. “Form ranks!” she shrieked to the students. “Protect the Head!”

But it was chaos. Even her best spells fizzled in the confusion. The hall filled with roaring lions, stamping  hooves, neighing horses, and the astonished shrieks of young wizards who found themselves dodging 17th-century duchesses.

Meanwhile, far from the pandemonium, Harry, Box, and Miocene slipped away unnoticed through a side  corridor, running full tilt toward their true goal: the Alchemist’s private study.

“Do you think that ruckus will buy us enough time?” Box asked, breathless.

“It had better,” Harry replied, taking a sharp left. “We’ve only got minutes before he realises what’s happening.”

This time she didn’t bother with secret routes; they would only slow her down. The shortest path was the most dangerous—and the most direct.

They turned another corner, only to find their way barred.

Standing there, arms folded and expression smug, was Wan Measly.

“So,” he said, voice dripping with triumph, “you finally made it.”

Harry froze. Miocene stopped beside her, fury already blazing. Box groaned.

“Oh, splendid,” he muttered. “The return of the missing Measly.”

Wan smirked. “You didn’t really think I’d miss all the fun, did you?”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Step aside, Wan.”

“Why should I?” he sneered. “Tumbledown knows everything. He knows about your silly paintings and your  pathetic little rebellion. He knows you’re coming for the marbles. And he knows I’ll be the one to stop you.”

“Traitor!” Miocene spat.

“Realist,” Wan corrected. “Why side with a lost cause when you can serve the winning team?”

“Because,” said Box, surprising himself, “some teams aren’t worth winning for.”

Wan gave a mocking little bow. “Touching. But it’s over. The Head’s men are coming. Hand over whatever you’ve stolen, and maybe he’ll—”

He never finished the sentence.

Harry’s wand shot up, and a dazzling burst of light filled the corridor. Wan staggered back, blinking furiously.

“Run!” Harry shouted.

They bolted past him, down the final stretch of corridor, toward the great carved door that guarded  Tumbledown’s study. Behind them Wan’s angry shouts echoed, soon joined by others—teachers, perhaps, or worse.

Harry slammed her palm against the door. “Open Ses Me!”

The lock clicked. The door swung open.

“Inside!” she cried.

They tumbled through, slamming it behind them.

For a moment, all three stood still, catching their breath. The study was exactly as it had been: dark wood, the scent of alchemy in the air, and on the desk—the pouch.

“There it is,” Box breathed. “The Philosopher’s Marbles.”

Harry smiled grimly. “And now, my dear cousin,” she said, “the real beguiling begins.”

Chapter Sixteen

A Traitor!

 

“You’re not getting past me,” said Wan. “You’re not getting into his study room.”

“Wan, what on earth are you doing?” Miocene asked, hoping she might talk some sense into the wayward  boy.

“Don’t patronise me,” he snapped, one hand edging toward his jacket pocket.

“What can you possibly mean?” she pressed.

“I said don’t patronise me—and I won’t say it again.” His fingers inched closer.

“Calm down,” said Box. “We are all friends here.”

“Friends? Hah!” Wan laughed. “The Muddle is making merry. Oh, what a stupid, stupid Muddle you really are.”

Harry, though silent, took everything in, etching every word onto her mind. Then, thoughtfully, carefully, she  said, “Wan, I won’t beat around the bush.”

He eyed her intently, suspiciously, his hand hovering at his pocket.

“I knew it was only a matter of time until you betrayed us,” she said.

“You did? How?”

“You were comfortable. Too comfortable. You knew too much back there in those passageways.”

“You suspected?”

“Of course,” she said. “What do you take me for—a Muddle?” Her demeanour hardened. “We must pass—you know that. Whether our progress is easy or difficult is up to you. But rest assured, we will pass.”

“That is a matter of opinion, ‘girl mystic’,” he replied smugly. “And don’t you forget it is entirely up to you to  forget about the Philosopher’s Marbles and leave Hagswords. Nothing more will be said. You can trust me.”

“Trust?” Harry laughed, cold and brief. “You’ve no inkling of its meaning. How could you, when you side with  that—man?”

Wan’s fingers slipped into his jacket pocket. “That man, Albert J. Tumbledown, has promised me something  no one else could—or would.”

“And what might that be?” Harry asked contemptuously.

“POWER,” Wan hissed. “I trust that.” He ripped out a wand and sent a bolt of sparkling red lightning straight at Harry.

“DUCK!” Box shouted.

Harry dropped; the red streak screamed past. Miocene ducked too; she had no wish to be fried, no matter the colour.

Wan, intent on serving both Tumbledown and dear Blytherin House, fired again—this time a vivid green flare roaring toward them.

“DUCK!” they all cried, diving as the deadly light ripped through the air.

Harry had seen enough. She drew the stub of her old wand and leveled it.

“What d’you call that?” Wan jeered. “A matchstick?”

Smiling, Harry said, “My second wand, of course.”

Wan’s jaw sagged. “Second wand? I thought you were joking when you told Tumbledown and McGonagain—”

“That only shows how wrong you can be,” said Harry, and she loosed a volley of blue lightning down the  corridor.

Wan shrieked—more with surprise than strategy—and failed to duck. The blue flash struck him square in the chest and hurled him to the floor.

Leaning over, Miocene asked, “He’s not dead, is he?”

“No, he isn’t. I’m sorry to say,” Harry replied, hard as flint.

“Oh,” said Miocene, at a loss for words at Harry’s starkness.

Harry stepped over the motionless traitor and led them the last few yards to Tumbledown’s study. She lifted  the little wand and said, “Open Ses Me.” The door creaked inward.

She scanned the ceiling for owls. “Come in,” she said. “It’s safe.”

Box entered hesitantly, also looking up.

“I already did that,” said Harry, with a disapproving glance. She turned. “Miocene, are you coming?”

“I—I don’t think so,” Miocene stammered, pressure rising in her chest. “I’ll j-just stand guard out here at the door, if that’s all right?”

“That’s fine,” Harry said, then to Box: “He hid my bag and wand in here. Let’s find them.”

They ransacked the room—shelves, drawers, alcoves, mouldings—but found nothing.

“Stop,” Harry cried. “It’s useless searching like this.”

“Stop?” Box said. “You said they were here. Why stop looking?”

“Because they’re hidden,” said Harry.

“I know that,” said Box. “That’s why we’re searching.”

“Hidden by magic,” Harry clarified.

“Oh—by magic,” Box repeated, pretending he understood.

“Tumbledown concealed them. I’ll have to reveal them.” She raised the stub, and this time didn’t wave it. In  Arcanum, she chanted softly, “Crioninous crionan, shrahomanza skryomaz, reveal my bag and electro-magical wand. Scryoumanzo scrymanz—It’s done.”

“I can’t see them,” Box said, feeling foolish.

“Look again,” said Harry, “with the same eyes that saw the station personnel.”

He tried—and then he saw: her bag and wand perched high atop a cupboard in the corner.

“That’s amazing,” he breathed. “I’d never have thought of that.”

“That’s why I’m the girl mystic around here,” Harry said, satisfied.

Outside the doorway, Miocene began to cry. “I’ll never be a proper mystic like you,” she sobbed. “I might as  well give up now.”

Showing feeling wasn’t Harry’s strongest suit, but she felt a sudden bond. She stepped to the door and  hugged Miocene. “You will get there. I can see that you will. Believe me—it will happen.”

“Y-you can?” Miocene sniffed, calming.

“Yes,” Harry said. “One day you’ll be one of the greatest girl mystics ever.”

Miocene wiped her eyes, squared her shoulders, and strode down the corridor with her head held high.

“That was a nice thing to say,” Box whispered.

“Nice?”

“Yes—even if it was a white lie.”

“A lie? Who said anything about lies?”

“You mean it wasn’t?”

Harry only smiled. “You’ll have to wait and see. Now get me my bag and wand.”

Box climbed the cupboard and retrieved them. “There you are.”

Harry and Box left the room and followed Miocene down the corridor. Wan still lay unconscious.

“What about him?” Box asked.

“He deserves worse,” Harry said coolly. “Leave him. He’ll be out for a while.”

They stepped over Wan and moved on, newly liberated items in hand. Harry examined her wand—intact, responsive. Her bag was sound; the magical carpet lay folded inside.

“Now all we have to do,” she said, “is find those marbles.”

“Small word,” said Box.

“Small word?”

“Yes—small word, big problem.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Harry. “But don’t forget—we have Miocene, the girl mystic, to help us.”

Box thought that a nice touch. Perhaps his terrible cousin wasn’t so terrible after all.

Chapter Seventeen

Laughing Larry

Regrouping somewhere Harry promised was absolutely safe, the band of three set about planning the next—and, hopefully, last—part of their quest.

“I’m not at all happy in here,” said Miocene. “The toilets are one thing, and the boys’ toilet yet another—but this one?”

“What’s wrong with the boys’ toilet?” Box asked, missing the point entirely.

“Nothing, if you happen to be a boy,” she said. “But I’m not.” She threw up her hands. “And this one!”

“Hmm,” Box mumbled, still puzzled. He turned to his cousin. “Tell me again, Harry—why are we here?”

“Because it’s safe,” she said, also raising her hands for emphasis.

“Can you clarify why it’s so safe?”

Raising her eyes this time, Harry said, “We are safe in here, in this toilet that nobody ever visits, because  Laughing Larry—the ghost of the boys’ toilet—has scared everyone away.”

“Laughing Larry?” Box glanced nervously over his shoulder. “What sort of name is that?”

“A happy one?” Harry replied, dry as dust.

“A happy one?” Box muttered, deciding she wasn’t taking him seriously.

“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Well, I…”

“Go on, Miocene,” Harry cut in. “You tell him.”

“Me?” Miocene pointed at herself, surprised.

“Yes. It’ll sound better coming from you.”

“Well,” she said, “I can only tell you what I’ve heard. I don’t know how much is real or made up—boys, you know?” She beckoned Box closer. “According to legend, the spirit of a dead pupil—Laughing Larry—resides in this particular convenience.”

“For real?” Box said, looking over his shoulder again, certain he felt a touch on it.

“As real as you or me,” Miocene said.

“Then where is he?”

“Let me finish the story first.”

“Sorry.”

“Laughing Larry was a student of Hagswords—and a good one, some say the best there has ever been,” Miocene went on. “He excelled at everything; a boy mystic who might have brought our world to a new age of learning and enlightenment.”

“What happened to land him in here?” Box asked, eyeing the dusty room with growing distaste.

“That has been debated for ages.”

“Well?”

“All I can tell you is what I’ve been told, and how much is true is anyone’s guess.”

“Yes?”

“Larry—Laughing Larry—went mad.”

“Mad?” Box said, peering over his shoulder for a third time.

“Yes. That’s the one part I’m certain of.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he appears here regularly, and believe me—he is most certainly mad.”

“If you ask me, it’s all a load of codswallop.” Just then he felt something on his shoulder. He turned and all but jumped out of his skin.

Floating inches from his face was Laughing Larry himself.

“Ha, ha!” cried the spectre. “So you don’t believe I’m real? Ha, ha!”

“Get it away!” Box yelped, scrambling behind Harry. “Get it away!”

The ghost had no intention of going. He laughed harder and sang at the top of his spectral lungs:

I am Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry today,
I am Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry hey hey!
You may think I’m not too serious, and I might even agree,
But I’m still Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry—hee hee.

“H-He’s bonkers,” Box whispered from behind Harry. “Absolutely barmy.”

“I did warn you,” said Miocene, a small, satisfied smile appearing.

For several minutes Laughing Larry behaved precisely like Laughing Larry—flying with the greatest of ease, looping and swooping all over the grimy interior, laughing and warbling without end. Box, still sheltered behind his cousin, wondered when the display—and the relentless cackling—would stop. It didn’t.

At last, defeated, Box raised his hands. “All right, you’ve made your point. I believe you’re real, and I believe  you’re Laughing Larry. Now please stop.”

He stopped. Drifting to the floor, Larry beamed. “If I were able, I’d shake your hand.” He reached out, but his  own hand slid through Box’s. “See? It’s crazy. Absolutely crazy!”

Ignoring the question of his sanity, Harry fixed the ghost with an icy stare. “May Miocene proceed?”

“Sorry, Harry,” Larry said. “Please go on, my dear. I’m all ears.” His ears promptly grew to preposterous size. Harry’s stare turned glacial. “Sorry again,” Larry giggled. “I don’t get many visitors. I can get carried away.” He twitched, but settled.

Miocene resumed. “Larry was… distracted.”

“Distracted by what?” Box asked.

“By an all-pervading power of evil,” she whispered. “So strong that Larry was helpless against it.”

“What was it?”

“He. It was a he,” Miocene said, barely audible.

“He—who?”

“Holdavort. A man called Holdavort.”

Box, now thoroughly puzzled, kept silent.

“No one knew where he came from,” Miocene went on. “He was evil personified—so evil that devils, tangible and intangible, gave him a wide berth. They fled our land.”

“Where did they go?” Box asked, heart pounding.

“To Muddleland.”

“To Muddleland? You mean Earth? Are you sure?”

“Yes. And they are still there. That’s why you Muddles—no insult intended—fear the dark.”

“The devils?”

“Devils must keep to the darkness. The light would be their undoing.”

“It’s getting frightfully heavy,” Box murmured, wiping his brow.

“That’s why poor Larry”—she gestured to the ghost; he smiled nervously—“lost the plot, and why he’s still here.”

“You mean the devils put him here?”

“No, no,” she said, annoyed. “It was Holdavort who did it.”

“Oh.”

“While the devils fled, Larry tried to fight. That was his downfall.”

“So Holdavort killed him?”

“He killed him,” Miocene said, “and not content with that, he seized Larry’s spirit before it could return to the  Summerland—banishing it to this toilet as a warning never to cross him.”

“What’s the Summerland?” Box asked, embarrassed by his ignorance.

“Heaven, in your reckoning,” she said, “though to us it is more than that.”

“Then why is Larry so… silly?”

“Escapism,” she said. “A diversion. The only way he could bear his never-ending punishment.”

Larry fidgeted with his fingers and gave Box a sheepish grin.

“If all that’s true,” Box said, “what happened to Holdavort?”

“If only he had been merely a person,” Miocene said, worry creeping in. “He was so much more. He’s been  gone for some time, but we all know, deep down, that one day he will return. And we fear it.”

“If he was all-powerful, how was he defeated?” Box asked.

Miocene nodded toward Harry.

“Go away,” said Box, incredulous. “No! I don’t believe it. She could never—no!”

Harry, who considered herself above such Muddly vanity, nevertheless felt tempted to educate him with her  fist. She refrained. Heroes do.

Once he’d accepted—grudgingly—that his troublesome cousin might, in fact, be a hero, Box burned with curiosity. “Tell me, Harry—when did this happen? When you, you know, thrashed him?”

“I did not thrash Holdavort,” she said sharply. “Don’t make light of it. I was almost killed.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m getting used to your Muddling ways. But try to think before you blurt out silly things.”

“I’ll try,” he said, small as a mouse.

“That said,” Harry continued, “I’ll tell you what happened.”

“Thanks. I’m all ears,” Box said.

“Ears? Did someone say ears?” Larry’s ears started to swell again.

“Not now,” Miocene scolded. “Harry is speaking.”

“Sorry,” Larry said. His ears snapped back.

“It was during my first year,” Harry began. “Though I’d been here since I was a baby—left on the steps—I was as green as any first-year. I had no affection for those in charge. I kept to myself and did my own thing.”

Larry giggled. “I remember!”

Another glacial stare froze him mid-chuckle.

“I explored,” Harry said. “Everywhere they said was out of bounds was in bounds to me. That’s how I ended  up here, one dreary Sunday afternoon.”

“I knew it,” Larry whispered, delighted.

Harry ignored him. “At first, nothing. After some rather boring minutes, Larry showed up, and we got on splendidly.”

Larry clapped and swooped, unable to contain himself.

“Weren’t you afraid to be alone with a ghost?” Box asked.

“Why? What harm can a ghost do?”

“I don’t know,” Box muttered. “What then?”

“Then he showed up,” Harry whispered.

“He—who?”

“Holdavort. Who else? Father Christmas?” she snapped.

“I was only asking.”

“Sorry. It’s still a sore topic.” She fell silent. Box drifted, poked a dust-furred basin, and turned a tap. It screeched. A cloud of fine dust puffed out. He coughed and hurried back.

“Finished?” Harry asked, hands on hips.

“You frightened me,” he said. “I thought we were taking a break.” It was a lie, and a poor one.

“As I said,” Harry went on, “Holdavort appeared. I had no idea who he was. He might have been Jack the  Ripper—or the Pope—for all I knew. He made straight for Larry as if I wasn’t there.”

Larry’s grin faded.

“When he reached Larry, he attacked him with a vengeance,” Harry said. “It spooked me. How could he touch a ghost? I shouted, ‘Leave him alone, you big bully!’ That’s when he turned on me, and I saw the red glow of  his piggy eyes. It sent shivers down my spine.”

The tap Box had meddled with began to drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

“He came closer and closer,” Harry said, “until I could smell his breath. Raw fish and silage.” She pulled a  face. “He demanded my name. I told him I was Harry Rotter, and that I wouldn’t be intimidated. I don’t know where the courage came from, but it came.”

“And then?” Box asked.

“He threatened to do to me what he’d done to Larry, and more, unless I bowed down and grovelled. I didn’t  grovel.”

“What do you take me for?” She caught herself and looked away. “I took out my wand and challenged him to a duel.”

“Really?” Box breathed.

“Really. After that, it’s all a blur. I remember energising my wand to block his first strike. I remember hurling my best at him and knocking him to the floor. Can you believe it? He actually fell from my first strike.”

“I can now,” Box said. “Go on.”

“He was a hard nut. He came at me again and again. Some blows found their mark and burned.” She rolled up her sleeve and showed the scar. “That’s how I got this.”

“I thought it was a tattoo,” he said, awed.

“If only,” she said. “Anyway, as I said, it’s a blur. From what I was told later, I must have fought him for ages. No one saw me until morning, when they found me unconscious.”

“How come?”

“I must have blacked out. I woke in the school hospital with Nurse Winterbottom looming over me, brandishing a spoonful of castor oil. ‘Ah, so you are awake,’ she said. ‘Now get this down you; it’ll do you good.’ It was horrible. Yuk.”

Larry started laughing again.

“And Holdavort?” Box asked. “What about him?”

“He hasn’t been seen since. Not a sign.”

“But you beat him,” Box said, triumphant. “You really beat him!” He hugged her.

“Stop,” Harry said, wriggling free. “Maybe I won a battle, but the war is far from won.”

“You won the battle,” Box insisted. “It’s fantastic.”

Laughing Larry spun about, cackling more wildly than ever.

Harry straightened. “Come on. We’ve a plan to make—and a war to win.”

Chapter Eighteen

Horrid

“Where has everyone from out of the paintings gone?” Box asked, as they left the boys’ toilet (and Larry) and started down the deserted corridor.

“Look,” said Harry, pointing.

A harvest scene lay serene in its gilt frame. Farmers and oxen had returned to their stances; a child held a frozen loaf; a dog pointed eternally at stubble. This time, not one painted eye followed Box.

“Hmm,” he said. “Curious.”

“Satisfied?” said Harry.

“Yeh… I suppose so.” He scratched his head. Miocene, anxious to keep them moving, nodded toward a side lobby.

“This way to the Great Hall.”

“Again?” Box groaned.

“I’m afraid so,” said Harry. “If Hagswords has taught me anything, it’s that the old coot is consistent. He’ll be there.”

“Him being there isn’t my worry,” Box muttered. “It’s what he’s been doing while we were gone.”

They went on in silence. With each painting they passed—each face dutifully fixed inward—Box’s unease grew. Miocene felt a cold tremor as her mind leapt to Wan: still lying unconscious in the corridor, or already whispering to Tumbledown and McGonagain? Harry said nothing; her thoughts kept circling the  same bright centre: the marbles.

“The Great Hall is there,” Miocene whispered at last, pointing across a tiled lobby.

Where the magnificent doors had been stood a hasty barricade: rough planks hammered hard across the  opening.

“They’re expecting us,” Box said, smiling nervously.

“They’re barring our way,” Miocene said.

“Not barring,” said Harry. “Slowing. Just long enough, methinks.”

She slipped the stub of her old wand from her pocket and held it out to Box.

“Me?” he said, startled. “How do I use it?”

“You’ll learn,” said Harry, unfastening her shoulder bag and drawing out the electro-magical wand. Miocene produced her own garish pink wand and tried not to blush at it.

“So we attack?” Box said. “With three wands we might have a chance.”

“Attack?” Harry’s eyebrow climbed. “Not quite there yet, cousin.”

“Pardon?”

“You persist in thinking aggressively. Remember—whatever you sow, you reap.”

“Pardon?” Box said again, helpless.

“If you think attack, the Mystic Law will reflect it back. Let him strike first. Then his power empowers us.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. It’s what happened with Holdavort. Now—how to start? With you, of course.”

“With me? Why me?”

“Because you are the weakest.”

“I’m as strong as an ox!”

“An ox, perhaps,” Harry said, “but not a mystic.”

“So… I walk up and call him out? And when he appears we wait for the first blow?”

“Yes. Go.”

Miocene gave Box a worried look. He squared his narrow shoulders and crossed the lobby, clutching the  wand stump like a butter knife.

“Is he all right?” Miocene whispered.

“He is,” said Harry. “Unfortunately, that’s normal.”

Box pressed his face close to the slats. He could just make out shadows moving within.

“Hey, you old coot!” he shouted.

“What did he call him?” Miocene gasped.

Harry’s mouth twitched. “He’s learning.”

“Hey, Tumbledown! I’m talking to you! Or are you afraid to show yourself?”

Silence.

“Tumbledown, I think you’re hiding behind a woman’s skirt! That’s it—you’re hiding behind Professor McGonagain’s skirt, you old buzzard!”

The barricade exploded. Planks flew like spears. The shock threw Box backwards. Before he’d fully risen, a  bolt of raw force screamed through the opening and flung him like brushwood.

“He’ll be killed!” Miocene cried.

“We can help him now,” said Harry, and ran.

“Wait for me!”

Harry hauled Box up. “You all right?”

“I think so,” he wheezed. “Who did that?”

“Our old friend,” said Harry. “You rattled his cage.”

“I did get a bit carried away…”

“Ready?” Harry asked. Both Box and Miocene nodded.

They stepped through the ragged gape into the Great Hall.

It was empty.

“I thought you said he’d be here,” Box grumbled.

“He is,” said Harry.

“Where?”

“Somewhere.”

“This place is spooky,” Box muttered.

“Not everyone has gone,” boomed a voice.

“W-who said that?” Miocene stammered.

“You might well ask,” the voice replied. “Considering I will be the last thing you ever see.”

“Show yourself!” Harry shouted. “Or are you as frightened as Tumbledown and his Missis?”

Box spluttered a laugh at the picture of the two in wedding robes, then caught Harry’s look and fell silent.

Air thickened. Light bent. A gigantic man, twenty feet tall if an inch, coalesced in front of them: sandals, a  beard like a haystack, and a coat so bright they had to shade their eyes.

“So,” he boomed, “yous thinks I am frightened—of pipsqueaks?”

The children said nothing.

“Has the cat gots yours tongues?” He chuckled greatly. Tears ran into his beard. “Stops. I must be                 a-speaking. My name is Horrid.”

“Horrid?” said Miocene. “What sort of name is that?”

“A nasty, grimy one,” said Horrid, suddenly cold. “Now I am telling yous I do not be a-liking yous.”

“Why?” Box asked. “Why don’t you like us?”

“Because I am told not to be liking yous,” he said, scratching his beard.

“Do you always do everything you’re told?” Miocene asked, braver now.

“Yes. Always. I do not wants to be a-hurting yous, but I must be. That is the way.”

“By whose orders?” Harry said, sharp at last.

Horrid turned and roared with laughter. “So this is the pipsqueak who makes the commotions and the  mayhems!” He drew his wand—a monstrous thing over three feet long. Harry levelled her own. Miocene and Box did likewise.

“I so enjoys a good fight,” said Horrid. With a lazy arc he cast down a glittering veil of sparklies around Miocene. She stared, entranced—until the bright dust tightened like a net.

“Harry!” Box cried. “Do something!”

“Muddle boy is to be learning,” said Horrid. He flicked his wand again. Another shower fell upon Box,  humming as it sank to his shoulders and cinched.

“Harry!” Box yelled. “Harry!”

Harry was already moving—only not in the way they expected. She lowered her wand and shut her eyes.

Quietly, in Arcanum, she began to chant.

“Crioninous crionan… skryolamb, receive not ours, but return what comes, unwilled.”

Horrid blinked. “What is this? A lullaby?”

The sparklies stopped tightening. For a heartbeat they hovered as if considering the request. Then they  changed direction.

Box gasped as his shimmering bonds peeled away and hissed back across the stones like reversed rain.

“No,” Horrid said, baffled. “No—no—no—”

The net tried to climb back up his body. He slashed at it furiously and blew it apart. His coat dimmed, as if the very brilliance had cost him something.

“Again,” said Harry, eyes still closed. “Scryoumano scrymanz—reflectus.”

Horrid sent a spear of green fire. It split neatly about Harry as if it had hit an invisible stone and sheared away into the walls. Scorch marks wrote black runes on the marble.

He roared and swept his wand in a wide, savage circle. A storm of force churned across the floor—tables skidded, banners tore, dust rose.

Miocene, still half-bound, found her voice. “Harry—my arm—”

Harry opened her eyes and lifted the electro-magical wand. She didn’t aim at Miocene, or Horrid. She aimed between.

“Crioninous crionan—divide and know thyself,” she whispered.

The storm split down the middle, shearing around them like water around a rock. The remainder of Miocene’s net lost coherence and fell into glimmering sand.

“Up,” said Harry. “With me.”

Miocene tore free, panting. Box shook loose the last glittery threads.

Horrid’s chest heaved. The brightness of his coat guttered like a candle in a draught.

“You cannot be a-doing this,” he said, but there was doubt in it.

Harry lifted her chin. “You’ve struck first, Horrid. That has consequences.”

“So I strikes again,” he snarled, and slammed his wand to the floor.

The stones rippled. A ring of jagged spires burst up, hemming the children in. The gaps between them filled  with a thick, oily dark. Things moved in that dark—thin, whispering shapes with the smell of cold cellars and drowned matches.

Box swore under his breath. “He brought the dark.”

“Then we light it,” said Harry. “Box?”

He understood. He dug in his pocket and produced the little device—the multidirectional laser. Its charge had survived one blinding of the Great Hall, and then some. How many  pulses were left? Two?

“Eyes,” he warned. “Cover them.”

Horrid bellowed triumph. “Yous blind yourselves! Good! I will—”

Box thumbed the switch.

Light blew outward, blooming up the spires, under the banners, across the oiled dark, through it. The  whispering shapes jerked and winked out like moths in a bell jar.

Horrid screamed. It was not a giant’s roar but a startled cry, as if someone had stepped on a toe the size of a cartwheel. His outline shivered. For a moment, you could see through him—see pillars and balcony railings and a smear of old banners where his coat should be.

“An illusion,” Miocene breathed. “Or a projection.”

“Not only that,” Harry said softly. “He’s anchored.”

Horrid clutched at his brightness and dragged it back about him like a cloak. “Enough toys,” he growled. “We  finish now.”

“Agreed,” said Harry.

She raised the electro-magical wand and changed her tone. Gone was the deflection cadence; this was lower, steadier, almost  conversational, as if she were negotiating with the building itself.

“Arcanum: house that held me, halls that know me. Show me the hand behind the hand.”

At first nothing. Then the banners lifted in a wind that wasn’t there. The floor trembled. From somewhere  under the dais came the clink of metal on stone, faint but insistent, the way a key wants to be found.

Horrid froze. His eyes—if his shadows could be called eyes—flicked left.

“There,” said Harry.

Horrid roared and hurled a braid of lightning. Harry snapped her wand down, not at him, but into the crack  between the nearest stones.

“Open Ses Me.”

The flagstone jumped. A thin seam yawned wide. From the gap a pale glow pulsed—soft, familiar, multicoloured, like bottled dawn.

“The marbles,” Box whispered.

Horrid lunged. He could not reach the crack—the circle of spires had turned aside his own storm and would not let him pass—but he could bring the ceiling down. He thrust his wand upward.

“Down,” Harry said. All three dropped as a chandelier crashed where they’d been standing. Glass rang like  hail.

Miocene scrambled, thrust her garish wand into the seam and levered. “Help me!” she cried.

Box jammed the stubby wand in beside hers and heaved. The stone pried up, reluctantly, like a tooth with two roots. Horrid’s next blast shrieked across the dais and broke a pillar into powder. The Hall groaned.

“Now, Harry!” Miocene shouted.

Harry thrust her hand into the cavity. Her fingers closed on the black felt pouch. She felt the cool roundness  within.

Horrid screamed. He surged. His size doubled, tripled—the coat flared so bright it hurt to look. The spires of stone bent inward.

“Reflectus,” Harry said calmly, and with her other hand she raised the pouch high.

Light flooded through the felt as if it were thin skin. Inside the bag, a dozen marbles kindled, each with its own weather: a squall of stars, a ring of quiet rain, a tiny aurora folding and unfolding like silk.

Horrid stumbled. His edges fluttered like torn paper. For the second time, they saw the truth of him—a cage of runes held together by will.

“Who holds you?” Harry asked.

Horrid’s voice came not from his mouth but from everywhere in the hall. “I am not to be a-telling.”

“You just did,” said Miocene. “You’re not a who—you’re a what.”

Harry’s eyes were on the back wall now, not on the giant at all. “Behind the hand,” she said, and walked  toward the dais, the pouch lifted, the wand steady.

Horrid reeled backward with each step she took, as if her approach pulled a tide away from his beach. He  flung a final bolt. It flashed toward her—and smacked into the pouch, where one marble drank it whole and glowed faintly red, like a coal satisfied with supper.

Harry stopped at the dais and tapped the panel that had always looked like carved oak but was not. “Open.”

It sighed and slid aside. Behind it yawned a narrow passage steeped in candle smoke. On a hook by the  threshold hung a crimson robe; the hem was singed.

“Well,” said Harry. “He ran.”

“Tumbledown,” Miocene breathed.

“And McGonagain?” Box asked.

“Likely ahead of him, tidying,” Harry said. “They left their toy to delay us.”

Horrid swayed. “I… am to be… obeying…”

“You’re dismissed,” Harry said, almost kindly. “Go back to where you were made.”

For a moment the giant looked almost grateful. Then he sighed like a bellows letting go and folded to nothing, coat and all, leaving only a smell of warm dust and wet stone.

Silence held. The Hall settled. The shattered chandelier lay like fallen stars at their feet.

Box let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “We did it.”

“We did a part,” said Harry. She tucked the pouch safely inside her bag and tightened the cord. “Now we see what else he’s hidden—and why he wanted these so badly.”

“And if the paintings will help again,” Miocene added, glancing at the walls.

“They’ve done enough for now,” Harry said. She looked into the narrow passage beyond the dais. Candlelight breathed in it like a sleeping lung. Somewhere ahead, deeper than the Hall, a door shut softly.

Harry lifted her wand. “Come on,” she said. “The horrid bit is over.”

“Was that a joke?” Box asked.

“Possibly,” said Harry, and led them into the dark.

Chapter Nineteen

To Fight a Giant

“Crioninous crionan shrahfularmo skryfulamd, attack this Horrid giant right now, scryfularmo scry— it’s done.”

Harry lowered her wand and waited for the summoned wrath to arrive.

Nothing happened.

She frowned, shook the wand as if it were a stubborn torch, and muttered, “Stupid Muddle technology. What  was I thinking, trusting a hybrid at a time like this.”

Up above, Horrid twirled his three-foot staff, delighted. “The pipsqueak is so funnys,” he boomed. “Almost a pity to be a-snuffing her out.”

He circled his wand; a ring of hard white light drifted from it like a halo turned cruel, floating toward Harry.

“Harry—watch out!” Box cried, straining against the glittering snare that still cinched his arms.

Harry didn’t look up. She had already pivoted. If chanting failed, she would try buttons. “Work,” she hissed at  the wand. She pressed the fourth.

“Mal for rino, mal for ram,” she whispered, “create another giant—bone and breath, blood and teeth—to fight, protect, unseat this heap.”

She pressed again.

A milky blue stream spilled from the wand, pattering onto the stones and pooling at Harry’s boots.

“The pipsqueak is making waters,” Horrid roared, wiping tears of laughter on his sleeve.

Box threw a helpless look at Miocene—she was still trapped, too—then back to the growing puddle. The liquid thickened and rose, smoothing itself into shoulders, arms, a  massive chest. It swelled and kept swelling until a giant of blue stood eye to eye with Horrid.

“Wow,” Box breathed.

“So yous think you can outsmart me?” Horrid growled, swinging his wand toward the newcomer.

The blue giant turned away, as if to run.

“He’s runnings away!” Horrid howled in triumph.

He wasn’t. He stooped, swept one wide hand through the air, and the tightening ring around Harry shredded  like sugar glass. With his other hand he plucked the glittering bonds from Miocene and Box and crushed them to harmless dust.

“Hurray!” Box whooped. “Miocene—are you okay?”

She nodded, rubbing her wrists. “You?”

“Fine. Much better.”

Harry pointed past them. “Now it’s you against him, Horrid. If you’re up to it.”

“I’ll be a-dealing with yous, little one,” Horrid snarled, “after I am finishing this blue toy.”

He hurled a fusillade of lightning. It sank into the blue giant’s body and passed through it with a sleepy glow.

“Hah? How can that be?” Horrid gasped.

“It can—and it will be the end of you, you nasty old thing,” Miocene shouted. “Go on, Harry!”

Harry didn’t grandstand. She guided. Minute tilts of her wand, quick murmurs, subtle pushes—her creation moved as if it were a thought given weight. The blue giant slipped past Horrid’s strikes, absorbed his blasts, waded through his wind, and answered with slow, unstoppable force.

At the last, the blue giant seized Horrid by the shoulders and drew him into its own body. The bright coat, the great beard, the booming voice—everything sank into the soft gleam and was gone. A single satisfied belch bubbled up, then the giant sagged  into a placid puddle.

“Phew,” Box said, patting Harry’s shoulder. “Some fight.”

“Is he… really gone?” Miocene asked, staring at the blue plate on the floor.

“He’s gone,” said Harry, and for once she allowed herself a grin.

They looked around. Without pupils, banners, or bustle, the Great Hall felt cavernous.

“I’ve never seen it empty,” Miocene whispered. “Harry—where is everyone?”

They had forgotten the children in the rush of battle. The silence made that failure obvious.

“What do you think Tumbledown has done?” Miocene asked.

“And where’s McGonagain?” Box added, scanning the galleries.

Harry’s expression tightened. “Like I said before. Slowing tactics.”

“To buy time?” Box said.

“Yes,” said Harry. “But only to a point.”

“A point?” Miocene pressed.

Harry drew a breath. “You might as well hear it now. The marbles were never the whole of it. I intend to take  Hagswords.”

“You can’t be serious,” Box said.

Harry nodded.

“What about Tumbledown?” Miocene asked.

“Do you really think he should remain in control?”

“Well, no,” Miocene admitted, flushing. “I’m just… confused. Does he know?”

“Of course. Why else all this theatre?”

“And when you’re in control?” Miocene said softly. “What then?”

“Close it,” Harry said without a pause.

“Close it?” Miocene choked. “Why?”

“Fewer distractions.”

“Fewer everything, if you ask me,” Miocene shot back. “Where do we go? Where do any of us go?”

“That is not my problem,” Harry said, and let the words fall cold.

Miocene could only stare at her.

Box decided to shelve the argument for when they weren’t standing in a war zone. “Any idea where  Tumbledown actually is?”

“I might,” said Harry.

“And?”

She pointed to a dark mahogany plaque at the far end of the hall.

“That’s just the House Captains list,” Miocene said.

They moved closer. Names swam in gold script down the varnished board. Someone had scrubbed at a  corner until the letters were half-wounded.

“All I see are names,” Box said, taking off his glasses to polish them.

“Look,” Harry said, pushing between them. She tapped the scoured patch. “There.”

Miocene squinted. “Redbrick Fortune, Blytheryn Hole cartoon—no, that can’t be right…”

“Almost,” Harry said. “Frederick Fortitude, Blytherin House Captain, 1842 to 1845.”

Miocene’s eyes widened. “That… rings a bell.”

“It should,” said Harry. “Frederick Lawrence Fortitude was Larry’s great-great-grandfather.”

“What?” Box and Miocene said together.

“And the hand that tried to erase it wasn’t Albert J. Tumbledown,” Harry went on, “but Alfred K. Tumbledown—Albert’s great-great-grandfather. The man behind Holdavort’s rise. The man who ordered Larry killed and his soul bound.”

Box’s gaze snapped to Harry. “So Tumbledown is in the boys’ toilet.”

“Yes,” said Harry. “He’s after Larry.” She lifted her bag, checked the cord of the marble pouch, and headed for the door. “Come on. We have a ghost to save.”

 

Chapter Twenty

To Face Their Foe

On the way to the boys’ toilet, Harry laid it out for Miocene and Box. “We’ve boxed him in,” she said. “And we all know what a cornered rat does. It lashes out—hard.”

Miocene swallowed. Box kept pace, listening.

“He wants rid of anything that ties him to the past,” Harry went on. “That’s why he tried to scrape the plaque  clean—and why he still wants rid of Laughing Larry.”

“I don’t quite understand why,” Miocene admitted, wincing at her own question. “After all this time, what  difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference to Larry,” Harry said, and let that be the answer.

“Will he be expecting us?” Box asked.

“You can bet your bottom dollar.”

“Will Professor McGonagain be with him?” Miocene said.

“I’m sure of it.”

“And the pupils?” Box added, remembering them.

Harry had, for once, not. Would they be there? She didn’t know, but she refused to show it. “I’d imagine so.”

They reached the door. Harry lifted a hand: stop.

“What is it?” Box whispered.

“Do you hear something?” Miocene asked, leaning in.

Harry didn’t answer. She stood, weighing the hush behind the timber. Then, crisp and low: “Wands ready.”

They were already out, clutched tight, trained on the panels.

“It’s awfully quiet,” Box murmured.

“I can’t hear Laughing Larry,” Miocene said.

“It’s too quiet,” Harry replied. “Back!”

The door blew off its hinges before the word was cold, a blast that hurled all three across the corridor.

“Who did that?” Box groaned, rubbing his elbow.

“Whom do you think?” Harry snapped, temper slipping back into its grooves.

Then they heard them—the pupils. A roar of feet and voices surged from within. Children poured out of the toilet in a tidal panic,  shrieking, stumbling, sprinting for freedom.

“We’ll be flattened!” Miocene cried.

“That’s the point,” Harry growled. She flicked her electro-magical wand. “Mal for ramlos, mal for rot—dispel the danger that we’ve got. Transport us through without a harm, inside that room to face that arm.”

At once, their edges wavered. Colour thinned. The stampede rushed through them as if they were ghosts  themselves.

“They went right through us,” Box said, staring at his own near-transparent hands.

Miocene reached for his shoulder; her palm passed cleanly through. “This is… very weird.”

The second half of Harry’s spell took hold. They slid, slick as smoke, through the shattered doorway and into  the boys’ toilet, rematerialising on the cracked tiles without the twitch of a toe.

“Now that,” Box breathed, “is an entrance.”

“You might think it impressive, Muddle,” said Albert J. Tumbledown, “but it’s nothing at all.”

He stood with Professor McGonagain at his shoulder, as if presiding over a throne room rather than a lavatory. “So,” he croaked, “we meet again.”

McGonagain said nothing, but her eyes sat on the three raised wands like a hawk on a field-mouse.

“What have you done to Laughing Larry?” Miocene demanded, scanning the cubicles, the cracked mirrors, the dripping taps.

“Him?” Tumbledown sneered. “Why concern yourself with one who’s been dead so very long? How long has  he been dead, anyway?”

“Too long,” Harry shot back. “Far too long.”

Tumbledown lowered his voice. “Let us cut to the quick. The girl mystic. The girl hypocrite.”

Harry’s fingers tightened on her wand.

“Did I touch a nerve?” His smile sharpened. “She pretends to honour, this one, but did she tell you she is a thief?”

Miocene and Box both nodded. She had.

“Hm.” He affected surprise. “Honesty at last.”

Harry levelled her wand. “What have you done with Laughing Larry?”

“You may brandish that trinket all you please,” Tumbledown said, patting the pouch of marbles at his belt. “I  do not make the same mistake twice. If there’s to be a fight, you’ll cast the first stone this time.”

“Having the Philosopher’s Marbles doesn’t make you invincible,” Harry said.

He smiled again. Harry didn’t blink.

“We only want to know if Larry is all right,” Miocene tried, the olive branch in her voice.

“Is that all?” Tumbledown asked, almost pleasantly.

“Yes,” Miocene lied.

“The girl’s a liar,” McGonagain murmured. “And not even a competent one.”

Box raised a hand. “May I say something?”

“The Muddle would like to speak,” the professor cooed, dripping scorn.

“I’ve no time for your foolishness,” Tumbledown said, flapping a hand as if to send away a fly.

Box didn’t budge. “So you don’t want to hear about Harry’s new wand?”

“Do not try our patience,” McGonagain hissed. “You heard him.”

“In that case,” Box said, folding his arms, “you’ll have to learn the hard way—when Harry defeats you.”

“Give him a taste of your anger,” McGonagain urged.

“Let him speak,” Tumbledown said.

The professor bristled. “He’s a Muddle.”

“I said, let him speak.”

Box had expected to be swatted aside. His words tripped for a beat. “I—I thought you might like to know… I built Harry’s wand.”

“You?” Tumbledown stroked his beard. “A Muddle?”

“Yes.”

“And why tell me this?”

“In hopes that, knowing what you’re up against, you might resolve this amicably.”

“When I had it earlier,” Tumbledown said, “I judged it a toy. Perhaps I was mistaken. Go on.”

“I made it in my bedroom,” Box said, a flicker of pride escaping.

“You must dismiss this child,” McGonagain snapped. “He’s an imbecile.”

Tumbledown lifted a finger. Silence.

Box pressed on. “From Harry’s original wand.”

Tumbledown glanced at Harry. “True?”

“It is,” she said. “For whatever good it does you.”

“So, only the two wands?” he said, as if bored.

“One, two—they’re only numbers,” Harry replied.

His eyes drifted over the three points aimed his way. “And you, Muddle, hold only a remnant.”

“It’s a remnant,” Box conceded, “but it packs a wallop.”

“Still a remnant,” Tumbledown mused.

Feeling the tide turn, Box tried to pivot. “As goodwill, will you tell us where Larry is?”

“Perhaps, if I were inclined.”

“And—are you?”

“I might be,” he said silkily, “if you were to offer a gesture first.”

“Me?” Box asked.

“Any of you,” Tumbledown said. “A small gesture might sway me—assuming I know what you seek.”

“Don’t,” Miocene whispered. “It’s a trap.”

Tumbledown turned, honey-sweet. “And you, Harry? What say you?”

“What sort of gesture?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Merely show me your new wand.”

“Absolutely not,” she snapped, clutching it tighter.

“A pity,” he sighed. “And Miocene so dearly wanted to know what became of—what was his name?”

“Laughing Larry!” Miocene burst out. Fury pried her patience open. She raised her wand.

“No, Miocene—don’t!” Harry cried.

Too late. Miocene had already begun. “Ondo-os-equalo, ondo-os-equant, seize the pouch and marbles now, ondo-os—it’s done.”

Harry shut her eyes. “What have you done…”

Tumbledown smiled. The first strike—against him—had been offered. He plucked a marble from the pouch with dainty fingers. “Ah. The first. Pretty thing.”

Miocene trembled, horror dawning.

“You chanted, did you not?” Tumbledown asked her, looking theatrically around. “Did I miss it?”

“You know her words are nothing against those marbles,” Box spat.

“Quite possibly,” Tumbledown said. “Professor?”

“She’ll never be a proper mystic,” McGonagain said crisply. “Her manner is wrong.”

“Her manner may be wrong,” Harry shot back, “but her heart is right. She will be a mystic—and a great one, perhaps the greatest.”

Tumbledown ignored both of them, turning the marble until colours braided and broke within. He whispered  into it.

“The gesture?” Harry said, gambling.

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“You wanted goodwill.”

“So I did,” he murmured, eyes back on the glass.

“Well?”

“Unfortunately, things have changed.”

“Changed?”

“Goodwill gestures have fallen down my list.”

Harry raised her wand.

“You can try,” he said mildly. “Do you fancy your chances against every last marble?”

“No,” Harry said. “I don’t.”

She turned as if to leave—then whipped round. Smoke, fire, and razor-edged lightning tore from her wand in a brutal fan. Miocene seized the opening and hurled a beam of her own. Box, fumbling, finally coaxed his stub into life and flung his bolts too.

Not a hair of Tumbledown’s beard singed. The marble shrouded him; the attacks rebounded sevenfold.

“Jump!” Harry shouted.

They did. The returning fury screamed under their feet and chewed a canyon through the far wall.

“If you were Irish,” Tumbledown said dryly, “I’d call it luck. As you’re not, it must be a fluke. You won’t be so  fortunate again.”

“Harry,” Miocene whispered, shaking, “what do we do?”

Box might have asked the same, but he saw things in a different light—a laser light. He slipped the pen from his pocket. “One more go?” He clicked. Please, battery.

“What—?” McGonagain began.

“Hm?” Tumbledown frowned at her half-cry.

The wide-angle flare burst out. For the second time the old man and his vice-principal were blinded.

But Tumbledown would not stop. He clenched the marble. “Be away with you!”

White heat fanned out—wildly, miles off target.

“Is that all you’ve got, you old fart?” Box called, pouring salt into the wound.

“What are you doing, Albert?” McGonagain snapped, blinking tears.

“Be silent,” he snarled. “I cannot see.”

“Nor can I.”

“I said silent!”

He shoved two marbles into one fist, drew two more to the other. “Muddle,” he said softly, “if that truly is your  name—try this.”

He whispered: “Go, and find your true mark.”

His hands glowed red. The air screamed.

Box thumbed the laser. Dead. Again. Dead. Still dead.

“Duck!” Harry cried, and ripped a bolt at Tumbledown. It hit square. He staggered, fell, and the four marbles  skittered free. His misfire ripped a trench through the ceiling and left it groaning.

“What’s happening, Albert?” McGonagain cried. “Albert!”

He struggled upright. Miocene hit him full in the chest. “Take that—for lying!”

Box followed, gritting his teeth. “And this!”

Harry added her weight. The three beams braided and held. Tumbledown’s shield buckled—but the marbles’ field kept him alive, barely. As his power slipped, the veil he’d thrown up—behind which Larry had been bound—began to crack. Hairline splits laced the far wall. The partition between seen and unseen thinned to gauze.

“Look!” Miocene gasped. “It’s the devil!”

“And all his minions,” Box breathed.

Harry felt the floor tilt—cold, certain knowledge. The banishment had been anchored to the Gates of Hades themselves. And those  gates—under the strain of failing marbles, failing man—were yawning open, ready to disgorge everything they held.

Chapter Twenty-One

At Hell’s Gates

The gates of Hell were opening, and if no one stopped them, Laughing Larry would not be the only soul  slipping free.

The first thing through the crack was Larry himself. He shot into the air, giddy with release, and sang, “I am  Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry, hey hey!”

“Not now, Larry,” Harry snapped.

The ghost fluttered down beside Miocene, affronted. “What has ruffled her feathers?”

“Quiet,” Miocene whispered. “Do you not see what is happening?”

“I am mad,” Larry said matter-of-factly. “It makes seeing things as they are rather difficult.” He winked. “You can try to explain.”

Miocene barely began before the gates groaned wider. The hinges of the world complained. The seam split. What lay behind it uncurled and tasted the light.

“Harry!” Miocene cried. “They are open!”

Harry knew. She was already moving, already thinking. She lifted her electro-magical wand and chanted, fast and clear, “Ral fay malnap, ral fay mann, scry ro fearnus, scry fornum. Close  these doors, these gates to Hell, the road to darkness, the place they fell.”

All three stared into the cracked portal, hoping to see it mend, hoping the threat would fold shut like a book.

Behind them, Tumbledown and McGonagain blinked through their returning sight, tried to hide from what they had helped loose. “Do something!” McGonagain hissed, shoving Tumbledown toward the breach.

He fumbled at the pouch. Fingers that could command a school could not find a cord.

“Hurry!” she urged, eyes jumping between his hands and the figures forming in the gap.

They were forming. Shapes. Heat. Old hatred learning to walk. The first of the beasts pressed a talon into the world and grinned without a face.

“Harry, your chant is not working!” Miocene shouted. “The doors are still opening!”

She was right. The hinges protested, then gave a little more.

“What can we do?” Box asked, voice thin. “What about our wands? Can Miocene and I help?”

“No. It is too late for mere wands,” Harry said, and let the failed chant fall from her mouth.

“Then we are lost,” Miocene whispered.

McGonagain’s eyes tore from the pouch to Harry. “Are we? Is it over?”

“What is it to you?” Box growled. “You are as guilty as he is.”

Tumbledown stilled and listened.

Harry pressed her palm to her temple, forced her fear to heel, and raised a finger. “We might still have a  chance.”

Box seized it like a rope. “Do you mean it?”

“What must be done?” McGonagain asked, voice very small.

“Mind your own business,” Box snapped. “We do not need you. Or him.”

“But we do,” Harry said gently. “All of you, listen.”

She told them her plan. When she finished, Box scratched his head, Miocene stood pale and uncertain,  McGonagain twisted between duty and disdain, and Tumbledown looked at Harry as if he had misjudged her twice.

“Well?” Harry said to him. “What do you think?”

He stroked his beard. “It is a long shot.”

“But a real one?”

“If I am honest, our chances are slim. Desperately slim.”

Harry swallowed.

The first beast was almost fully through. Tumbledown watched its shoulder clear and nodded. “But what else do we have?”

“Nothing,” Harry said.

They agreed to work together until the gates were sealed.

“I do not wish to be the herald of doom,” Box said, pointing at the creature. “But that thing has no plans to  cooperate.”

“Roles,” Harry said. “Do you all understand?”

Miocene nodded. Box nodded. McGonagain sniffed, then gave the smallest dip of her head.

“As Principal,” Tumbledown announced, “I will begin.”

No one argued. McGonagain opened her mouth to try, then shut it as he lifted a hand.

He stooped and gathered the four marbles that had fallen in the chaos and passed them to Harry. Then he  reached into the pouch again and brought out four more, two in each hand.

“Miocene, are you ready?”

“I am.” Her knuckles were white on her wand.

“Box?”

“Yes.” He did not take his eyes off the beast.

“Professor?”

“Pardon?” She had been staring at the crack.

“I asked if you are ready.”

“Without a defense? No.”

Tumbledown reached into the pouch, drew out a single marble, and held it to her.

She turned the glass in her fingers, the colours slipping and settling. “Thank you.”

Lastly, the old man looked to Harry. “Are you well?”

“I am.” She flicked her eyes toward the beast. It had eyes like burnt coals.

Tumbledown clenched the marbles and spoke in Arcanum. “Oparius oparum, diarlarius darlarum, send this  beast a-packing, back to whence it came. Oparius oparum, oparius opalarum.”

The thing kept coming.

“Is that it?” Box said before he could stop himself.

“Yes, Muddle,” McGonagain said, sharp as a pin. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Box shut his mouth. Miocene stepped in front of him. “Leave him alone. What has he done to you?”

“Been born,” she said.

Tumbledown ignored them all. He lifted his hands again. “Oparius oparum, diarlarius darlarum, smite these  beasts in number. Smite them one, smite them two, smite them three. Oparius oparum, oparius opalarum.”

The air changed. The tiles hummed. The gate shuddered and began, inch by inch, to grind shut. The shadows behind the seam paled.

The lone beast already free lunged for Tumbledown. “Back!” Harry cried, slamming a button on her wand.  Water roared from the tip in a focused torrent and hammered straight into the creature’s maw. It dropped the old man and reeled, howling, and skulked toward the back of the room.

Miocene hauled Tumbledown to his feet. “Are you all right?”

“I will see to him,” McGonagain said, fussing.

“Leave me,” he barked. “Have you lost your senses? This is life and death.”

“Life and death?” she faltered, torn cleanly in two.

“Yes. Leave me be.”

She folded into silence.

“Harry?” he called. “It is working, is it not?”

“It is,” she said, pointing.

The doors ground shut, three quarters, seven eighths, then with a bang like iron in winter they slammed home.

“They are closed,” Miocene cheered, clapping once, twice. “Really closed.”

Closed, yes. But half-seen still, like frost on glass. Harry felt a thread of doubt pull at her sleeve. It had happened too easily. It did  not feel finished.

“Is it over?” Box asked, stumpy wand still raised.

“It appears so,” Harry said.

“And the beast?” Miocene asked, pointing to the rear. “The one that ran?”

“It is gone,” Harry said.

“I am glad.” Miocene slid her wand away and let her shoulders drop.

In the quiet, McGonagain toyed with the lone marble in her palm. Her eyes had that small, bright look they had when she was marking essays and deciding futures. She lifted the glass to her lips and whispered, “Marble,  hear me. McGonagain calls. Restore the beast within these walls, so Albert and I may go on alone, to claim our birthright with the Philosopher’s stones.”

Above them, Laughing Larry shot to the ceiling. He began to circle, singing in a high, frightened voice, “I know that I am mad and I know that I was sad, but who would have thought I would see something this very, very  bad?”

He kept singing it, over and over, while the air at the back of the room began, ever so slightly, to ripple.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Demon-Beast Resurrected

Miocene’s eyes traced the frantic loop-the-loops of the spirit. “What’s wrong, Larry?”

Larry didn’t answer. He only kept singing the same line over and over, circling the ceiling as if tethered to it by a string of nonsense:

“I know that I’m mad and I know that I was sad,
but who would have thought I’d see something so very, very bad?”

“Larry, you have to tell us what you mean!” Box called up, hoping the ghost might listen to him of all people.

The ghost raced on, singing.

Harry’s patience snapped. “Larry, this is no way to behave—mad or not!” She tracked him with her eyes; he tracked her back with sudden interest. “If you truly want a  chance at sanity, tell me what frightened you.”

“Spooked—ha!” Larry dived low, grinning. “Most apt, most apt indeed.”

Box leaned to Miocene. “Why did she say that?”

Miocene shrugged helplessly.

Larry skimmed past Harry’s nose again.

“LARRY!” Harry barked. “LAST chance.”

The ghost abandoned his rhyme. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked as Harry drew her wand and began following his flight with the tip.

Ignoring him, Harry murmured, “Crioninous crionan, shraholarman skryolamb—”

“Stop! Stop!” Larry yelped. “Whatever you’re doing—please don’t. I am mad, you know. One cannot expect me to act sensible on command.”

“Hmm.” Harry narrowed her eyes. “From where I’m standing you look quite sane.”

“I am—at the moment,” he confessed, and kept safely to the ceiling. “I’ll tell you what I meant, only don’t Arcanum  me.”

Harry lowered the wand. “Go on.”

Softly, Larry said, “The demon-beast is still with us.”

No one spoke. The room seemed to draw a breath.

Larry pointed both hands—one toward the shadowed rear of the room, the other at McGonagain. “It’s there. And she did it.”

McGonagain flinched. “I did it for you, Albert,” she blurted, voice breaking. “For you and me—and the Philosopher’s Marbles!”

“Have you taken leave of your senses, woman?” Tumbledown roared. “Do you understand the danger you’ve put us in?”

She sobbed, “I did it for you.”

But the growl from the darkness swallowed any reply.

Harry lifted her wand. “Ready?”

Box shoved his glasses up and gripped his stumpy wand. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” He jerked his chin at the  Professor. “And her?”

“Leave her,” Harry said. “She’s going nowhere. Miocene?”

“All set.” Miocene’s fluorescent pink wand shimmered in her fist.

“Tumbledown?”

The old man clutched four marbles—two to a hand. “Ready. Let’s be done.”

They moved as one toward the rear, every step measured. The beast struck first.

Darkness lunged. Box flung himself left, Miocene darted right, and Tumbledown staggered back out of claw-range. Only Harry held her ground.

“Have I missed something?” she asked the empty air, now the sole barrier between them and the thing from  Hades.

Embarrassed silence. Then the beast set its ember-black eyes on her.

Harry whistled.

Box blinked. “Miocene, what is she doing?”

“No idea,” Miocene breathed. “They never taught us whistling at Hagswords.”

Box risked a glance at Tumbledown. The old man’s hands had crept up in shocked recognition.

Harry kept on—clear, calm, winding notes; a tune so oddly beautiful it untied the knot in her listeners’ chests. They forgot the beast, forgot the fear, forgot to breathe. Five long minutes later, the tune cut off like a thread snipped clean.

Box started. “Wha—?”

Miocene yawned. “What’s happening?”

Tumbledown, also yawning, stretched, blinking like a man who’d dozed standing up.

The beast lay at Harry’s boots, fast asleep.

“That appears to have done the trick,” she whispered, finger to lips.

“What did you do?” Box scrubbed his hair, baffled and delighted in one go.

“A little bit of magic,” Harry said, winking.

“A little bit—more like a lot,” he said, edging close to tap the creature. It rumbled in its sleep. Box jumped back. “Will it stay asleep?”

“As long as we need.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Harry tapped the side of her nose. “Let’s say an old book had a useful page or two.”

“Oh. You could have said.”

She tapped her nose again and smiled. “I can’t tell you everything, can I?”

Miocene, bolder now, stepped near without touching. “So… what next?”

“We get rid of it,” Harry said, flourishing her wand.

“Just like that?” Box asked. The beast grumbled; he skipped back again.

Harry laughed once. “Nothing worthwhile is just like that, Box. To return the beast and seal the gates for good, we use everything we have. Listen.”

They took their places. Wands rose: Harry’s electro-magical, Miocene’s pink flare, Box’s stubborn stump. Tumbledown lifted four marbles—two in each hand—and nodded.

Together, the words flowed:

“Crioninous crionates, shraholarman skryolait,
return the beast and reseal the gates.
Crioninous crionocked—forever closed, forever locked.”

The beast jerked awake. It struck for the easiest prey—Tumbledown—raked his cheek and sent him sprawling. Marbles flew like bright hail.

Instead of pinning him, it wheeled and charged Box.

“BOX!” Miocene screamed.

The beast turned toward her voice.

She screamed again—then hit the wall and crumpled, knocked out cold.

“Repeat it!” Harry cried. “Again! We must repeat it!”

They forced the words out over the roar:

“Crioninous crionates, shraholarman skryolait—
return the beast, reseal the gates—
forever closed and forever locked—Crioninous crionocked!”

The demon snarled, flinching under the weight of the Arcanum.

“Your wand!” Harry shouted. “Use it!”

Two beams—Harry’s focused torrent and Box’s jagged bolts—lashed the creature.

“Tumbledown, the marbles!” Harry screamed. “Now!”

The old man groaned, fingers searching blindly across the tiles. “I… I think I’m ready.” He fought his beard  back into order and dragged himself upright.

“What’s wrong with him?” Harry hissed.

“Concussion,” Box panted. “Saw it once when Dad clobbered his head on the loft beam.”

“He has far more hair than your father,” Harry said through her teeth.

“He’s also older,” Box muttered, and worried suddenly for his parents.

“I am ready,” Tumbledown said at last. He wrenched six marbles free and clenched three per hand.

“That reminds me,” Harry said, digging in her pocket. She produced the four earlier marbles. “We need  everything.”

Larry rose, quivering with excitement. “I am Laughing Lar—”

“I’m warning you, Larry,” Harry said without looking.

He subsided to the corner and sat on the air like a stool.

“Miocene will have to wait,” Harry said curtly. “Box, Tumbledown—ready?”

“Ready,” Box said, stumpy wand shaking, pride and terror in equal measure.

“Yes,” said Tumbledown, steady now.

Harry slammed three buttons at once. “Do it!”

What followed was thunder made of light. Harry’s wand carved a spear of power through the air; Tumbledown’s six marbles answered with a lattice of brilliant force. Box, copying what felt right, whipped the stump in tight arcs; lightning, flame and a white-hot flare sprang from it and slammed into the beast.

“Wow!” Harry shouted over the din. “Where did you learn that?”

Box blew across the smoking tip like a cowboy and tried not to grin. “Got lucky.”

The beast was not finished. It swelled, blistered—then spat burning spheres like tears made of fire.

Undaunted, all three returned the volley. The room blazed. The creature convulsed, tore at itself, and burst  apart—smoke, cinder, nothing. The last seam of the gate thinned, thinned again, and faded like frost in sunlight.

“Is it over?” Box asked, as if saying it might break it.

“Is it?” Tumbledown murmured, hand drifting to his unruly beard.

Harry wanted to say yes—wanted to put a ribbon on the moment and be done. But the thin thread tugged again at the back of her mind, the feeling that a door somewhere was only mostly closed. She lowered her wand.

“I hope so,” she said.

“You hope so?” Box echoed, deflated. “You hope so?”

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

A Most Unfortunate Turn of Events

“Is she okay, Harry?” Box asked, as Harry knelt beside Miocene and checked her over.

“She’s a bit knocked about,” Harry said, brushing dust from Miocene’s hair, “but it’s only a nasty bump.”

Box exhaled in relief. “Look—she’s coming round.”

Miocene blinked at them, unfocused. “What are you staring at?”

“A very lucky girl,” said Harry. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Miocene insisted. “Help me up.”

Harry and Box lifted her. She swayed, steadied, and touched the swelling on her brow with a wince. “Where  did that beast-thing go?”

“Gone,” Box said, unable to hide his pride. “We beat it.”

“How?”

“The power of three,” Harry answered, pricking Box’s little bubble with a pin of fact.

“So… what now?” Miocene asked.

Before Harry could speak, a voice behind them cut in. “Now you face us—and lose.”

They turned. Wan Measly stood shoulder to shoulder with Professor McGonagain. They looked pleased with  themselves. Too pleased.

“Wan, are you all right?” Miocene blurted, guilt pinching her voice. “We left you in the corridor—”

“How did you get in here?” Box demanded.

“Never you mind, Muddle,” the Professor said with withering sweetness.

Miocene’s hand patted empty pockets. “My wand… where—what do you want?”

Wan’s eyes gleamed. “What do we want?” He angled his head toward McGonagain, savouring the moment. “Revenge. And Tumbledown.”

The old man stiffened. Useful allies or not, it embarrassed him that his hopes rode on a boy and a woman.

“Fat chance,” Harry said flatly.

“A fat chance?” Wan purred.

“Yes.” Harry drew her wand and let it sway, slow and deliberate.

Wan produced four marbles and a plain brown wand, aping her motion. “Think you’re up to it?”

Harry’s eyes hardened. She pulled four marbles from her pocket. “I’ll always be ready for scum like you.”

“In that case,” said McGonagain, “it is fortunate I have this.” She held up the lone Philosopher’s Marble  Tumbledown had given her—and, with relish, her own dreary grey wand.

“Harry isn’t alone,” Miocene said, trying to sound braver than she felt.

“How gallant,” the Professor mocked. “Would you like your wand back?”

Miocene swallowed. “You have it?”

“No,” the Professor said airily. She pointed at Wan. “He does.”

Wan smiled and raised two wands—his dull stick and Miocene’s garish pink—both aimed squarely at her.

“In case you’ve forgotten,” Box said, lifting his stumpy wand, “I’m still here.”

“And so you are,” McGonagain replied, already dismissing him with her eyes.

Box didn’t bother with more talk. He flicked the stump. A swirl of bright sparklies spun from the tip and drifted around the Professor like glittering snow.

“So he is playing,” McGonagain murmured, amused.

“I am not playing,” Box said, and flicked again. A small cloud puffed into being above her head and began to  rain.

“More games,” the Professor sniffed, turning back toward Tumbledown.

That was her mistake.

The “rain” was no rain at all. Mixed with Box’s sparklies, it made glue—thick, gleaming, absurdly strong. McGonagain took one step and found her shoes part of the floor.

“Wan! Help me!” she cried, tugging to no avail as the glittering paste crept up her ankles. “Wan, hurry! Do you hear me?”

Wan heard. He also saw two wands and four marbles aimed at his future. Cowardice won. He lowered his  own wand and marbles. “I can’t help you, Professor. I’m sorry.”

“Albert!” she cried, rounding on Tumbledown. “Save me!”

The Principal lingered at the edge of things, weighing outcomes. He did not move. Only the smallest nod—toward the hand where she clutched the marble.

Panic had made her forget both wand and marble. The nod jogged memory. McGonagain tapped the glass  with her wand and hissed, “Falsify my beam, my brain, my foe—renew my aims, my dreams, my goals.”

She tapped again and let out a piercing cry.

Her marble flared—soft at first, then blinding. The glue hissed and vanished. In a breath she stood free, smiling like a cat who’d  found the cream.

“Now,” she said, “let us tidy this up.” She tapped the marble once more. “Remove their wands—their means to kill—and return the marbles. Heed my will.”

The glow leapt. Harry’s wand tore itself from her grip; Box’s stump snapped from his palm. Both skittered  across the floor and settled obediently at McGonagain’s feet.

“That’s better,” she purred. “Wan, come here.”

He obeyed. She held out a hand. “The marbles.”

Wan surrendered all four. McGonagain added them to her own and, with triumphant ceremony, presented the five to Tumbledown. “Yours, Albert. As is right.”

He slipped them back into his pouch.

Then—confounding all of them—he turned to Harry.

“Harry, child,” Tumbledown said, voice gone strangely gentle. “Come closer. I have something to ask of you…”

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bosom Buddies

“Why?” McGonagain cried out, her voice shrill with disbelief. “Why speak with her?”

“HUSH, WOMAN!” Tumbledown thundered. Then, in a softer, almost kindly tone, he said, “Harry—please, come closer.”

Harry hesitated. “It’s a trick,” Box whispered urgently. “It has to be.”

“Be careful,” Miocene murmured, edging nearer to him.

McGonagain and Wan Measly watched the exchange with unease. Something in Tumbledown’s tone—too calm, too reasonable—made them both uneasy.

“Harry,” said Tumbledown, his words slow, deliberate, “it need not be like this…”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like we were enemies,” he said smoothly. “We have worked together already, have we not? You must admit—it went well.”

Harry narrowed her eyes. “Hmm. Yes… I suppose it did. Considering how ancient you are.”

Tumbledown gave a dry, forced laugh. “Ah, humour—another good sign. You remind me of myself. You are destined, child, for greatness—far beyond anyone in this miserable place.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Box growled. “He’s playing you.”

Harry ignored him. “And what, exactly, do you have in mind?”

The old man smiled. “Ah, you are interested. That’s very good. I propose an alliance—between you and me. Together, there is nothing we cannot do.” He leaned closer. “And, to show my good faith, I shall help you defeat them.” He nodded toward McGonagain and Wan.

“Albert!” McGonagain gasped, clutching her chest. “You can’t mean that!”

Wan, standing beside her, was visibly shaking; all his earlier swagger had vanished.

Harry asked coolly, “And what do you intend to do with them?”

“I will do,” said Tumbledown, “whatever you wish me to do.”

There was a pause. Harry considered this, weighing it.
Miocene broke first. “Don’t do it, Harry! Please don’t!”

Box stood mute, struggling to believe what he was hearing. Surely Harry—his cousin, the troublesome girl mystic—would never side with him?

Tumbledown stroked his beard. “Well?” he said softly. “I am waiting.”

“I’m still thinking about it,” Harry replied.

“As long as that is all you are thinking of,” he said sharply, tapping the pouch of marbles on his belt—a quiet reminder of who held the power.

Box whispered, “She won’t like that. She won’t like being told what to do…”

But Harry’s expression did not flicker. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “exactly what you can do with them.”

“Yes, child?” said Tumbledown, leaning forward eagerly. “What is it?”

“You can let me deal with them.”

“You?” he repeated, surprised and amused.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve wanted to get even with that old bag for ages. And as for that miserable little Measly—” she glared at Wan “—I know exactly what I’d like to do with him.”

Tumbledown studied her for several long moments, his old eyes gleaming with appraisal. Then, slowly, he  nodded. “Very well,” he said. “It’s a deal.” Extending his wrinkled hand, he said, “Shall we shake on it?”

Harry gazed at his hand for a long moment—then, with sudden force, seized it and shook. “It’s a deal,” she said.

Box’s heart sank. Miocene’s nearly broke.

“Albert!” McGonagain cried, trembling. “What are you doing?”

“Wan,” she hissed desperately, pushing the boy forward, “go to Miocene—talk to her! Make her see reason. Perhaps she can talk sense into Harry!”

Wan crept forward. “Miocene…” he began.

“Get away from me, you traitor!” she shouted, shaking with anger. “Get away!”

“Don’t you dare come back here,” McGonagain hissed after him, “until you’ve done as I said!”

Caught between the two furious females, Wan froze, helpless, miserable.

Tumbledown folded his hands behind his back. “We’ve wasted enough time,” he said. Pointing to the  Professor and the boy, he added, “Finish them, Harry—by whatever means you prefer. But make it good.”

Harry smiled faintly. “Oh, I intend to.”

The old man nodded, satisfaction glinting in his eyes. He could see it now—the girl mystic’s hunger for power, her ambition. She was, at last, becoming his creation.

Harry turned to McGonagain and Wan. “Any last requests?”

“Don’t do it, Harry!” Miocene pleaded. “Show them mercy!”

Harry ignored her. “Well?” she asked again. “Any last requests?”

“Please don’t!” Wan sobbed, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry—please forgive me!”

“Don’t be such a wimp!” McGonagain snapped. “She won’t hurt us. The so-called girl mystic—ha!—she has no guts at all!”

Harry’s eyes flashed. “No guts, have I?” she said, raising her wand. “We’ll see who has no guts.”

She began to chant in Arcanum.

“Harry, no!” cried the ghost, Laughing Larry, hovering anxiously in the corner. “Don’t do it!”

She ignored him.

“NO!” Larry screamed again. “DON’T DO IT, HARRY!”

But she already had. Wan Measly vanished in a puff of thick grey smoke.

Turning her gaze to McGonagain, Harry said coldly, “That only leaves you.”

The Professor swallowed hard. “Harry, child—perhaps I was… mistaken. Perhaps we can start anew? Forget all this foolishness?”

Harry’s lips curled. “What makes you think I’d believe anything you say?”

“Because,” the Professor stammered, “one day—you’ll look back on this and realise what a terrible mistake it was.”

Harry scoffed. “You call that an answer? Box’s cat could’ve done better.” She raised her wand and whispered another spell.

A second puff of smoke—larger this time. McGonagain was gone.

In the corner, Larry twitched, then gave a small, uneasy laugh.

Harry slid her wand back into her belt and dusted her hands as if wiping off dirt. “That showed her,” she said  with grim satisfaction.

Box and Miocene stood rooted to the spot, stunned. They could hardly believe what they had just seen: that  Harry—Harry, their Harry—had destroyed two living people, however despicable.

Tumbledown stroked his beard, studying her as one might a fine invention. “Excellent,” he said at last. “A little theatrical—but you are young. That’s to be expected.” His eyes gleamed. “Yes… we shall have a very interesting time  together, you and I.”

Harry gave him a small, unreadable smile.

Chapter Twenty-Five

To Have Designs on the Marbles…

“Shall I dispose of these two?” Tumbledown asked, flicking a hand toward Miocene and Box as if they were  crumbs on a sleeve.

“No,” said Harry. “I have something more… imaginative in mind for them than simple removal.”

Tumbledown’s eyes brightened. “I am intrigued.”

“For now,” Harry went on, “I want them close. Where we can keep an eye on them.”

“I trust you are being perfectly honest with me,” he said, one brow lifting.

“As honest as I have ever been,” Harry replied, lifting her own.

Apparently satisfied, Tumbledown slipped a marble from his pouch and rolled it in his palm. A silvery skein  flew out and wrapped Miocene and Box from shoulders to shoes, pinning them fast.

“What are you doing?” Harry snapped.

“Only securing them,” he said mildly. “We would not want them scampering about.”

“When I get my hands on you—” Box began.

Tumbledown’s marble shimmered again and a soft clap sealed their mouths. Silence dropped like a curtain.

“Now,” the old man said, tucking the marble away, “to discuss our plans.”

“Have I missed something?” Harry asked, displeasure sharpening her voice.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said—have I missed something?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said, and—for once—he meant it.

“If I said ‘Philosopher’s Marbles’, would that jog your memory?”

He patted the pouch at his belt. “What about them?”

“That,” Harry said, nodding to his hand. “Exactly that.”

Understanding dawned, but agreement did not. “I thought we had an understanding,” he said smoothly.  “Partners. A team. Are you telling me you have designs on these?” His fingers drummed upon the pouch.

“You know very well I want them,” Harry hissed. “I wanted them from the first moment I saw them.”

“That is impossible,” he replied. “Ridiculous. A non-runner.”

“Non-runner?” Harry scoffed. “Bah. Humbug.”

Gagged and bound, Miocene and Box exchanged a glance: a pinch of hope, a bucketful of fear.

In the corner, Laughing Larry watched the far wall as if it were a stage about to reveal its last act.

Silence stretched taut as wire. Neither moved. Two stubborn wills, nose to nose.

“Well then,” Harry said at last, drawing her wand. “Is it to be you against me?”

“It is your decision, child. This is not the partnership I envisioned.”

“A partnership?” Harry flared. “If it were a partnership, why keep the Marbles to yourself?”

“I did give you some earlier,” he protested.

“A convenient gesture. Useful to you at the time.”

A flicker—something like sadness—crossed Tumbledown’s face. “A pity,” he murmured. “I had hoped you might be the child I never had. To follow in my footsteps. To inherit my work… when I am gone.”

For a heartbeat, the words hooked something soft in Harry. Her guard dipped.

Tumbledown moved like a striking adder. Four marbles flashed in his hands—when had he palmed them?—and a vicious surge tore across the room.

Duck! Box screamed inside his skull, but the spell pinned his voice.

Harry had no warning. The blast took her full in the chest, hurled her backwards and smashed her head  against a washbasin. Porcelain shattered. Blood sheeted scarlet through her hair and down her collar as she crumpled.

“Such a disappointment,” Tumbledown said, standing over her. He prodded her with the toe of his shoe. “The  famed girl mystic. Troublesome, they called her. Overrated, I should say.”

He turned from Harry’s still body to the others, gloating. “As for you two, I believe the phrase was ‘something  dastardly’…”

He laughed—a harsh, frayed sound—and loosened their bindings just enough to make them stumble forward. The gags remained. They hobbled  down the passage with him at their backs like a shepherd driving lambs to market.

At the shattered doors of the Great Hall he halted. “In you go.”

They shuffled beneath the high vaults and broken lintel. Above, behind the marble balustrade, the pupils—every last child—stood packed shoulder to shoulder, staring down in utter silence.

“I do so love an audience,” Tumbledown chuckled.

How did he get them up there? Box and Miocene screamed inwardly, but their mouths could form no sound.

Back in the boys’ toilets, Laughing Larry knelt beside Harry, hands passing uselessly through her shoulder.  “Harry, wake up. Harry, please.” He had seen what Tumbledown had not: the faintest pulse in her throat. She was breathing.

In the Hall, Tumbledown sank onto the central chair as if it were a throne. “You wonder what I have planned,” he said. “Patience. All will soon be revealed.”

Harry groaned. The ghost shot upward. “Harry! Listen!”

She tried. Her skull throbbed; her vision swam. “What… happened?”

“You were flung into that basin,” said Larry, pointing to the porcelain rubble.

“Who did it?”

“Tumbledown, of course!”

“Tumbledown who?” she mumbled.

“Concussion,” Larry sighed. “You have it.”

“Is there an epidemic?” she muttered, feeling the dried blood. “Box’s father had it. And… what was the name  you said?”

“Tumbledown.”

“Yes, that one,” she murmured. “Did he catch it?”

Larry groaned. “Oh, for pity’s sake.”

Down in the Hall, Tumbledown clucked his tongue. “Such a shame you cannot answer. Allow me.” He rolled a marble; the bindings slackened; the gag charm fell away.

“When I get my hands on—” Box roared.

The marble flicked, and silence snapped back over them. Tumbledown wagged a finger. “Respect your elders.”

Above Harry, the ghost hovered fretfully. “You have a frightful crack,” he said, peering at her scalp.

Harry, fogged and hurting, found a button on her wand by feel and whispered, “Brionius briunum, save my brain, mend my skull.”

The wand chimed. A matronly nurse shimmered into being, all starch and briskness. “What have we here?”  She bent over Harry’s head. Larry, astonished, burst into giggles. The nurse skewered him with a look so stern he forgot how to laugh.

“You have lost a great deal of blood,” she said, efficient hands assessing, soothing, sealing. “We shall have you shipshape.”

In the Hall, Tumbledown released the gags once more. “Be civilised this time,” he warned.

“Are you all right?” Box blurted to Miocene, rubbing his wrists.

“I am. But Harry—she is not… dead?” Miocene whispered.

Tumbledown loosened the pouch string and tipped the Marbles into his lap. Rivers of colour pooled across his robe. He cupped them, counting, counting again. His face soured.

“There are twenty-one,” he snarled. “Two are missing!”

“That is all we ever saw,” Miocene said quickly. “Truly.”

“She is telling the truth,” Box added. “Ask Harry when she comes back.”

“When she returns?” Tumbledown tasted the phrase and smiled thinly. “Unlikely.” He rose with the Marbles  cupped like an offering. “Enough talk. Time for action.” He looked at them almost fondly. “Regrettable, but loose ends must be tidied.”

“Loose ends?” Box spat. “Is that all we are to you?”

“Of course. You are nothing in the larger design.”

“The ‘larger design’,” Box muttered, white with fury. “Looks a bit moth-eaten from here.”

Tumbledown turned away before the provocation could snag him and began to chant:

“Crionow, the time is now.
Crionere, the hour is here.
Crionarbles, Philosopher’s Marbles—
marbles and master be as one.
Criomalldark, criomalldark, criomalldark—
it is done.”

Miocene and Box braced for agony. Nothing happened.

Box nudged her. “What was all that?”

“No idea,” she whispered. “But I am glad nothing exploded.”

Tumbledown’s eyes glittered. To the naked gaze, nothing had changed. But something deep and delicate had shifted, like a lock picking open somewhere far beneath the floor.

Back in the toilets, the nurse patted Harry’s hair into place and began to fade. “Thank you,” Larry breathed.

“Thanks,” Harry echoed faintly. Her clothes were clean; the blood was gone. “Was that Nurse Winterbottom?”

“No,” Larry said. “You summoned… someone else.”

Harry looked around. “Where is my wand?”

“Tumbledown took it.”

“The Principal?” She frowned. “Why would he—”

“If you want it back,” Larry said, “you will have to help your friends.”

“My… friends?” Harry said slowly. “I do not have any friends. I prefer my own company.”

“I think the nurse left a tad early,” Larry muttered.

Harry stood, and the fog cleared a fraction. She opened the door. “Larry. You are coming with me.”

“I cannot!” he squeaked. “I was banished here by Holdavort!”

“Then we shall un-banish you,” Harry said. “Come on.”

The ghost trembled, then nodded and followed. “Where?”

“The Great Hall,” Harry said. “The old coot is predictable. He will be there.”

On the dais, Tumbledown cradled twenty-one Marbles, face lifted in rapture. To Box and Miocene, the air seemed the same. To Tumbledown, the world had just tilted, infinitesimally, towards him. It did not look different.

It would.

Chapter Twenty-Six

An Appointment with Destiny

Harry burst through the ruined doorway with Laughing Larry whirling at her shoulder like a loose firework.

“Where are they?” she snapped.

“Over there,” Larry said, pointing a translucent hand toward Miocene and Box.

“Are you both all right?”

“We’re fine,” Miocene said. “But are you? We were so worried.”

“I’ll survive,” Harry replied, and left it at that.

“She had help from a nurse,” Larry added proudly.

“A nurse?” Box blinked.

“Yes,” said Larry. “And a good one.”

“Cosy chat later,” Harry cut in. She jerked her chin toward the centre of the hall. “The old coot is up to  something.”

He was. Tumbledown stood as still as sculpture, more monument than man.

“Is he ill?” Box asked.

“The likes of him don’t fall ill,” Harry muttered.

“Then what’s happening to him?” Miocene whispered.

“Look!” Larry cried.

Before their eyes the Alchemist—would-be Philosopher, sometime headmaster—began to grow wings. Red ones.

“That’s… odd,” Box managed.

“Odd or not, it’s happening,” Harry breathed.

The wings swelled and kept swelling. For a heartbeat a softness flickered across Harry’s face. “One thing’s  certain,” she said. “He’s not turning into an angel.”

While the transformation bought them a few precious moments, Harry moved—quick as thought, quiet as breath. A handful of low Arcanum syllables, a neat flick of her wrist, and three wands zipped into her hands like homing swifts.

“How did you do that?” Box gaped.

“The girl mystic does it again,” Miocene said, clutching her bright pink wand as if it were a lifeline.

“Well, how?” Box asked Harry once more.

Harry winked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Even with his stumpy wand back, Box found himself wishing—again—for a Philosopher’s Marble or two.

“As if I didn’t hear that,” Harry said dryly. “Where are the marbles?”

“Tumbledown was holding them,” Box said, “just before he went all statue and started sprouting wings.”

Harry stepped close to the frozen figure and searched. The hands were still cupped, palms up; the marbles  were nowhere.

“No luck?” Miocene asked.

“None. I can’t see what he’s done with them,” Harry said.

“Oh—he said two were missing,” Box added.

Tumbledown’s eyes snapped open. Red light burned inside them. Miocene and Box lurched back. Harry did  not.

“What is she doing?” Miocene hissed. “Has she lost her marbles?”

“She’s my cousin,” Box whispered. “She could be up to anything.”

She was. Even as Tumbledown swelled and his skin darkened to a sickly crimson, Harry’s mind clicked up a  gear.

“You should have stayed down when you had the chance,” said Tumbledown—calm, quiet, menacing. His wings beat, and he lifted clear of the floor.

“What’s he doing?” Box asked.

“Can he even hear us?” Miocene whispered. “He looks dreadfully off-colour.”

“Off-colour?” Harry snorted. “He’s turned blood red. That’s as off-colour as it gets.”

“We need to focus,” Box said.

“For what good it will do,” a voice boomed from above.

Box pointed. “Was that him?”

Harry said nothing.

The pupils lining the balcony said nothing.

“His voice sounds different,” Miocene murmured.

“And so it should,” the voice rolled back.

It wasn’t only wings and voice. The robes were changing too—hardening into a leather-like carapace the same lurid red, studded with twenty-one gleaming points. Light pulsed from each, bright enough to wash the rafters.

“They look familiar,” Miocene said.

“They are the Philosopher’s Marbles,” Harry said without a tremor.

“They are?” Miocene breathed.

Harry nodded.

The thing that had been Tumbledown turned its burning gaze to Box and Miocene. “He promised you  something dastardly,” the voice said. “And who am I to deny you?”

“What do you mean he?” Box demanded.

The red eyes stared. The voice did not answer.

“Well?” Box said again. “Cat got your tongue?”

“You will have more than cats to worry about,” the voice replied, colder now.

“Cats shmats,” Box muttered.

“Very well,” said the voice, almost amused. “I will oblige you. It will be the last thing you hear. I am more than a man—more than Tumbledown.”

“More?” Miocene whispered to Harry.

Harry kept her counsel.

“I am—HOLDAVORT,” the voice declared.

Larry reeled so hard he nearly left his skin. He shot upward and began tearing around the vault like a comet,  singing at top speed:

“I am Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry today,
I am Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry hey hey!
You may think I’m not too serious—and I might even agree—
But I’m still Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry hee-hee.”

When, at last, the song ran out of breath, the winged figure fixed him with a feral stare. “I will deal with you  next,” Holdavort said.

Larry squeaked and arrowed through the wrecked doors, gone in a flash.

“Any last requests?” Holdavort asked Miocene and Box, almost politely.

“Are you really Holdavort?” Miocene dared. “I thought you were more legend than fact.”

He laughed—the same cracked, delighted laugh Tumbledown had used.

“Harry,” Box whispered, “is it really him?”

“He looks different,” Harry said. “But I would know those piggy eyes anywhere.”

“I thought you defeated him,” Box said.

“A battle,” the voice boomed. “Only a battle. The war was never won. And I am not so accommodating this  time. But first things first—” He indicated Miocene and Box. “You two die now.”

“LEAVE THEM,” Harry spat. “FACE ME—if you dare.”

Holdavort laughed again, horrible and familiar. Two of the embedded marbles flared; twin blades of blood-red light slashed toward the children—then winked out as if pinched by invisible fingers.

“What?” Holdavort roared.

Harry lifted her wand. “I told you,” she said. “Try me first.”

“Did you save us?” Miocene asked, breathless.

Harry raised the wand a fraction higher.

“I’ll be fine,” Box said through his teeth, “when he’s gone.”

“Have it your way,” said Holdavort—and vanished.

“Where did he go?” Box asked, scratching his head.

“Not far,” Harry said. She hauled open the stair-door to the balcony. “Well? Come on.”

They climbed. A wave of cheers met them at the top—so loud Miocene flinched, certain it would call the monster back. It did not. Yet.

“Are you all right?” she asked a pimply boy crushed against the rail.

“Fine,” he said. “We don’t know how we got up here. The door wouldn’t open. Was it Tumbledown?”

Miocene nodded.

“Are you going to finish him?” another boy asked.

“Give him one for me,” said a third, swinging his fist.

A girl tugged Harry’s sleeve. “Do watch out,” she whispered. “Something terrible is coming.”

“It is,” Harry said. “Which is why we do this together.”

The pimply boy raised a hand. “Didn’t you finish him before? Why do you need us now?”

Harry disliked questions at the best of times. Still, a hundred faces stared, waiting. “When you are as old as I am, you’ll understand,” she said airily.

He opened his mouth—I’m only a year younger—but Harry had already pointed at Box. “Next question.”

Caught off guard, Box coughed. “What are you going to do, Harry?”

“What am I going to do?” Harry echoed. “Yes. That is the question.” She lifted her wand so all could see. “I  had hoped to use this to pry the Philosopher’s Marbles loose for my own… purposes. Things have changed. The marbles are part of what Tumbledown became.”

“Holdavort,” someone breathed.

“Yes. Holdavort.”

“But you beat him,” the pimply boy persisted.

“I did,” Harry said. “If only I could remember how. He is more now.”

“What do we do?” another voice asked.

“Put bluntly,” Harry said, “we finish him.”

“How?”

“How?” Harry repeated. “I don’t even know if it can be done, given… all this.” She let the truth hang. “But it  must be tried.”

“You must stop him,” a girl whispered. “You must.”

Harry moved on. She could not promise what she did not know how to give. “I can’t answer everyone,” she  said as hands shot up. “But I can promise I will do everything in my power to rid Hagswords of Holdavort.”

The balcony roared.

“And when I call,” she added, “everyone helps. Including the person who booed.”

Another cheer, louder.

Box tugged her aside. “So—you’re going to make everything right?”

“It appears so,” she said, perfectly poker-faced.

“How?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do not get above your station. You are still a Muddle.”

Box, remembering past scorch-marks, backed off. “Only asking.”

“And I am only telling,” Harry said. “Now—there’s something I need you to do. Quietly.”

She drew him a little way off and spoke in low, quick phrases. By the time she finished, Box was scratching  his head, wondering if perhaps the missing ghost was not the only mad one.

“Are you sure they’re there?” he asked.

“Yes. And keep your voice down. It’s a secret.”

Out between worlds, Holdavort coiled like a storm. “Not this time,” he hissed. “This time I finish her before she can blink.”

“Where’s Box going?” Miocene asked, watching him slip through the stair door.

“On an errand,” Harry said.

“An errand?”

“Nothing you need worry about. Where’s your wand?”

Miocene brandished the fluorescent pink. “Here.”

“I never liked that colour,” Harry muttered.

“It’s pink. It’s my favourite.”

A knot of classmates pushed close. “Are you going to finish him?” asked Tommy Sutton. “I hope there’s loads of blood.”

“Where’s McGonagain?” said Sylvia Slark. “I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“She’s gone,” Harry said.

“Gone? Where?”

“We have larger problems than the old coot’s fancy women. Off you go.”

Giggling, Sylvia vanished back into the crowd.

A heavyset boy frowned at Harry. “It’s your fault.”

Harry touched her chest. “Mine? I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”

“We all knew what you were doing when you nicked that first marble,” he said stubbornly. “You wanted the lot. And—”

A sharp crack of light snapped from Harry’s wand to his shoes. His hems smoked. He yelped, scrambled backward and disappeared behind taller pupils.

“Harry!” Miocene cried. “What on earth are you doing?”

“He’s a creep,” Harry muttered. “And a fat one.”

Down below, Box trotted into a dim corridor and stopped. “Right then left? Or left then right?” He had no idea. A painting caught his eye: an old knight on a powerful horse. Closer now, he squinted. “I’m sure this is the  same painting… only the rider was nearer the front before.” He scratched his head. “And why is it here?”

The old man in the painting turned in his saddle and smiled. “So we meet again, Sir Box. May I presume your quest is concluded?”

“It is you!” Box cried, delighted. Then his face fell. “No, my lord. Far from concluded.”

“I am sorry to hear it, Sir Knight,” said Lord Catchyfoe, guiding his horse closer until the frame seemed to  swell. “Does a fellow knight require assistance?”

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Destiny’s Child

“It’s no problem, no problem at all,” Lord Catchyfoe said, offering Box a gauntleted hand.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Box asked, peering up at the painted frame, uncertain.

“Yes, of course,” the knight insisted. “Come on, throw your leg up. If what you’ve told me is correct, we’ve no  time to waste.”

As the old man pulled, Box wrestled one knee over the ornate moulding. With a last heave he tumbled across the gilded edge and into the picture. “Wow,” he breathed. “It’s not at all how I imagined.”

“And so it should be,” Lord Catchyfoe replied. “It is a painting, after all—and an extremely fine one at that. Now, follow me. I know the shortcuts between canvases; I’ll have you there in no time.”

They slipped from frame to frame at astonishing speed. Meadows unrolled beneath them where cows grazed  in warm sun; far-off savannahs where lean shapes stalked; old harvests where men and women pitched hay with laughing faces. Then harsher vistas: battlefields and black banners, suffering painted with such truth it made Box’s eyes sting.

“Almost there,” said the lord as he stepped into a particularly large canvas: an old bearded man in a black  robe spangled with stars and planets, so many they could scarcely be counted. In the wizard’s hand was a small black pouch.

“Is that Merlin?” Box whispered, already sure.

Lord Catchyfoe nodded. “We’ve no time to linger. Perhaps later.”

“I’d love to,” Box said, catching a glimpse of the old man’s fingers parting the pouch strings.

They stepped out onto dark floorboards.

“Where are we?” Box asked.

“What was once the inner sanctum of Necromanter.”

“Necro—who?”

“Necromanter,” the lord said again. “A necromantic sorcerer; perhaps the greatest who ever lived.”

“But…?”

“I know,” the old man smiled. “You want more. This is not your destiny—or is it?” he added, maddeningly.

“Are we nearly there?” Box tried instead.

“Your destination?” Lord Catchyfoe opened a narrow door. “Follow and see.”

Box expected a draughty corridor. Instead, he stepped into the Lythyndoor girls’ dormitory. “How did you do  that?”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” the lord  murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Time presses. Retrieve what you came for.”

Box hurried down the aisle between two rows of tubular steel beds. “She said hers is the last on the left.” And so it was: Harry’s bed, undecorated, no pink frills like the others. Only a single poster taped above the pillow: The Circus of Grotesques — It Will Change Your Life Forever.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he muttered, gooseflesh rising.

“Have you got it?” the lord urged.

Box dropped to his knees and wriggled under the bed. Dust thick as felt, cobwebs draping his hair. “Give me a minute… it’s dreadfully grim down here.” He found the loose board Harry had mentioned and levered at it  with his stumpy wand.

Snap.

The wand split cleanly in two.

“Drat,” he hissed.

“Everything all right?” called the knight.

Box crawled out, webbed and powdered, and held up two bright marbles, pure as frozen rainbows. In his other palm lay the sad halves of his wand. “Depends what you call all right.”

Lord Catchyfoe barely glanced at the wand. His eyes shone for the marbles. “My, you have been busy.” He  opened the door again. “Come—we must be away.”

—

Meanwhile, in the Great Hall, Holdavort returned with a vengeance. Thunder shuddered the rafters; lances of  light split the air. Miocene shrieked.

“What do I do?” she cried, but Harry was too busy holding the line to answer.

“My wand—I have to help!” Miocene gasped. She raised the garish pink and, hands shaking, snatched at the tatters of a  chant. “Fantastichi fantastichidd, hear my voice, my plea, my id. Smite this abomination—don’t let it be, fantasticnif fantasticniv!”

Nothing happened.

Holdavort landed with a crunch of sucking air and laughed in Harry’s face. “So the girl mystic struggles.   Disappointing. I thought you were made of sterner stuff.”

“I defeated you before,” Harry shot back, “and I’ll do it again.”

“Luck,” he sneered. “Plain luck.”

Harry, for a heartbeat, wondered if it had been.

“It was more than luck!” Miocene screamed—and the creature’s red eyes snapped to her. His breath hit her like a wall: raw fish and silage. She fought down a retch.

His attack came like a hammer—but in the instant it struck, Miocene’s halting Arcanum kicked to life. Her wild words met his in a sun-bright bloom. The two forces cancelled, vanished into a hard white hush.

Holdavort’s smile curdled. He hurled again and again; one crimson stroke found her cleanly, tore through her and sent her reeling. She screamed, dropped the wand. It spun over the balcony rail and fell out of sight.

Box burst through the lower doorway. “Miocene!” he yelled. “What’s he done to you?”

“The stupid Muddle returns,” Holdavort boomed, delighted. “I’d imagined you had fled. No—too little wit for that. Be it on your head. Now you die.”

“Two!” Harry cried, leaping from the balcony and landing at Box’s side. “You face two of us. Don’t forget it.”

Holdavort’s grin widened. “Two against one? Good. I dislike easy work.”

“Three!” Laughing Larry whooped, arrowing in with a bulging sack. “Three against one is better odds, hee-hee!”

“A crazed ghost is no threat,” Holdavort roared, convulsed with laughter. “None at all.”

“In that case you won’t feel this,” Larry sniggered, swooping above to upend the bag. Silverware—plates and knives, forks and spoons—rained through Holdavort’s body like fog through trees. Larry winced, retreated to the rafters, and struck up his song at top volume in the hope sheer nuisance might count as strategy.

“Here—take these,” Box panted, thrusting two marbles into Harry’s free hand.

“Just in time,” Harry said, closing her fingers round them. She glanced at his split wand. “And that?”

“It had a bit of an accident,” Box muttered.

Harry scooped up Miocene’s fallen wand as it clattered against a pillar and bounced back within reach. “Use  this.”

Box accepted it, eyeing the pink with deep suspicion.

Holdavort’s gaze sharpened. “So you had the other two marbles after all.”

“Yes,” Harry said, twirling them. “Insurance.”

He laughed. “Insurance? Against me?”

The twenty-one marbles embedded in the leathern carapace flared crimson.

And then, unexpectedly, he offered a palm. “The old man offered you alliance. So will I. Return the two marbles. Stand with me. This is your last chance.”

Harry bared her teeth. “You can take your offer to hell.” She pressed a button; her wand spat a roaring sheet  of flame.

Wings thundered. Holdavort vaulted skyward—dropping something small as he rose. From above, the studded marbles fired down twenty-one shafts of condensed red fury.

“Duck!” Harry and Box shouted together—and ducked. “Duck!” Again. “Duck!” A third time. Nineteen volleys they dodged, breath burning in their throats, until endurance itself began to fray.

“I can’t keep this up,” Box gasped. “I’m done.”

“So am I,” Harry said. “We need a distraction.”

“Hell will freeze first,” Box groaned.

“If only Larry were better at—”

Above them Larry streaked and sang and would not be shot. “I am Laughing Larry, Laughing Larry today—” Mid-verse he saw it: a glint below. He stooped like a falcon and snatched at the shine.

Back to the ceiling he whipped, opened his hand, and squeaked with delight. “Hee-hee! I was right!”

Another screaming bolt tore for the children. “Jump!” they cried together and threw themselves clear.

Holdavort changed tack. Wings pumping, he drove straight at them. No time to shout duck now—he hit like a cart at full tilt. Harry and Box went down hard, world ringing.

Larry stooped again—straight at Holdavort.

Wham.

The red-skinned thing crashed to the floor and howled, a raw animal sound.

“Hee-hee,” Larry panted. “It worked. It actually worked!”

“What did you do?” Box said, blinking.

“It worked!” Larry laughed, dizzy with glee.

“We can see that,” Harry snapped. “But what?”

Larry landed beside them and opened his hand. “This.”

“It’s only a nail,” Box said, baffled.

“No, no,” Larry insisted, thrusting it closer. “Look.”

Box squinted. Still a nail.

Harry slid in, eyes on Holdavort even as she plucked the thing from Larry’s palm. “Ah. A stroke of luck,” she  murmured. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I’m a bit mad?” Larry offered.

“What is it?” Box asked.

“You may not love the explanation,” Harry said, still watching their enemy.

Holdavort staggered up, voice a furnace-blast. “So the ghost has found my Disk.”

“Try me,” Box shot back to Harry.

“All right. Larry found a Harrovian Nail.”

“Disk or nail? It can’t be both.”

“It looks like a nail, but it’s called a disk,” Harry said crisply. “Don’t ask me why. What matters is what it does.” She lifted it. “These are capable of many things, one of which is inflicting excruciating pain.”

“And it was just lying there?”

“Dropped,” Harry said. “You heard him.”

“Yes,” Holdavort snarled, eyes tightening. “And I want it back.”

“There’s no more time,” Harry said. “Box—pink wand ready. And take the marbles.” She pressed both into his palm. “I’m going to try my luck with this  nail—er—disk.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Final Showdown?

Whilst Harry sprinted along the far side of the Great Hall, the Harrovian Disc clenched white-knuckled in her fist—and all their hopes with it—Laughing Larry circled high above, careful to keep as much air as possible between himself and Holdavort.

Down on the floor, Box weighed the two marbles in his palm and grimaced at the garishly pink wand. “I wish  she’d tell me the other half of the plan,” he muttered. With Harry, that was usually wishful thinking.

“So, Muddle—left to your own devices,” Holdavort purred, looming. “How brave of the girl mystic.”

“Alone, shmlone,” Box shot back.

The twenty-one marbles fused into Holdavort’s carapace flared blue-hot. “No last requests this time.” He loosed a storm: twenty-one lances of cobalt light shrieking for Box.

“That’s what you think!” Box dove and, in the same motion, hurled both marbles with a window-smasher’s accuracy. Mid-flight they swerved, skirting Holdavort as if he stank, then whipped back to body-shield Box. The blue barrage unraveled harmlessly.

“How can this be?” Holdavort roared. “Marble against marble?”

“I think I’m getting the hang of this magical malarkey,” Box laughed, catching the returning glass and, on  impulse, cracked a shot from the pink wand. The blast staggered Holdavort.

On the far side, veiled by pillars, Harry stopped and whispered a braid of Arcanum and plain speech: “With  this nail, this Harrovian disc, I call on its powers: a cristatic mind-shift to lend me a hand at this time of appeal—cristosis, cristopholous, cristaecis—so be it.”

If she’d told Box, he would have begged her not to. The floor shuddered, the air groaned. With a cracking,  creaking ululation the gates of Hades yawned open, and things that should never see light began to squeeze through.

Above, Larry’s song faltered. “I am Laugh—” then rose again, thin with nerves.

Box, circling to see what Harry was about, came face to face with the widening breach and the slithering  shapes within. His stomach dropped. “Harry! What have you done?”

She only smiled—a distant, vacant smile that did nothing to help his nerves.

Holdavort shook off Box’s hit and turned, delighted. “So you reopened the gates. Good. After I’ve had my fun, they’ll claim you and that stupid Muddle forever.”

Harry clenched the Disc and charged. She drove her head into his ribs—the Disc howled like a struck wire—and Holdavort screamed. She backed off, sprinted, rammed him again. Another scream, raw and animal.

“Harry, what are you doing?” Box called, rattled by her odd, faraway look. “He’ll adapt, he always—”

“Not if they have their say,” she said, nodding at the beasts heaving out of the rift.

“You can’t seriously think they’ll help us.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Have you anything better?”

Box’s hands fell. “Well… no.”

“Then listen.”

He listened. The plan was mad. It was also the only one they had.

“I’m ready,” he said, eyeing the beasts now fully free and crowding forward. “Please start soon.”

Holdavort recovered first. A red glare bucked across the floor and knocked both children skidding. He laughed hugely and sent a second wave—closer now, the finishing stroke.

He was so busy admiring himself he forgot the door he’d left ajar. That was the opening Harry needed.

“Now, Box!” she shouted. “Exactly as I told you—now!”

He planted his feet—pink wand in one hand, two marbles spinning in the other—and let the words come. To his astonishment they came clean: “Crionates… shraholarman… skryolait…” The sound thickened the air. The beasts wavered. They turned.

“It’s working,” Box breathed. “It’s actually working.”

“Mind on the job,” Harry snapped. “Seconds, that’s all we’ll get.”

Mesmerised, the demon-things shuffled into a hunting crescent—around Holdavort. He never noticed until their breath cooled the plates at his back.

“HOLDAVORT!” Harry called, drawing his eye.

“Beg me to stop?” he sneered, and spat a curdled beam.

“Box!” Harry cried.

He heard too late. The strike hit and flung him boneless across the floor.

Holdavort’s grin came back. “So. Another falls. That leaves you and me.”

“You, me—” Harry pointed past him “—and them.”

He turned just in time to be buried in claw and shadow.

Harry’s knees went weak with relief—and then with guilt. Miocene lay slumped over the balcony rail. Box was a crumple on the boards. This is what the marbles had cost, this long chase after power. She bit her lip hard enough to taste iron.

And then the marbles in Holdavort’s hide burned white. He detonated hatred. The beasts flew like chaff. “You  insult me,” he hissed, and with a lazy flick sent the surviving horrors up the stairwell.

“No!” Harry screamed. “Leave them!”

“Oh, but I won’t.” He flexed his fingers. The balcony door tore free in a splintering kick of force.

Harry charged again, Disc raised. Holdavort lifted a hand and froze her mid-stride, fingers still tight around the iron.

“You keep underestimating me.” He crooked a finger. The Disc wrenched from her grip, sailed to his palm, and, as she watched, he squeezed it to glittering dust.

The beasts reached the stairs.

“Remember what I told you!” Harry yelled to the children penned above. “Remember!”

A thousand little chins set. A thousand wands came up.

Harry had expected panic. What she got was fury. They held the stair in a storm of sparks and light; the air  filled with chants and smoke and boiling colour, and the beasts, surprised to be unwelcome, faltered, buckled, broke.

Pain speared Harry’s chest. Holdavort had been watching for the moment her guard dipped. The blow punched the breath out of her and she folded to the boards without a sound.

“Does it end so quietly?” Holdavort mused, staring down at her stillness. “No fanfare. No applause. Only—silence.”

Silence. The word bothered him. He looked up. Every pupil on the balcony stood unblinking, wands lowered,  faces blank, eyes cold. No beasts. No screaming. Only the soft scrape of settling dust.

“What became of them?” he demanded.

The children said nothing.

“It matters not,” he snapped. “Tools, that was all.” His wings beat; he rose to balcony height—and found no fallen girl draped over the rail. He snarled. “What trick is this?”

No one answered. He wheeled, pointed down. “Then look—look there!”

On the floor lay Harry, motionless.

And beside Harry stood Harry—upright, alive—looking up at him with a small, sharp smile.

“No,” Holdavort whispered. “Not again. You did this before. Not again. You cannot have remembered.”

The standing Harry lifted gently, like breath through a curtain, while the body on the floor thinned, paled, faded to nothing. She rose until her eyes were level with his.

“What’s wrong?” she said lightly. “Cat got your tongue?”

Larry drifted down a little, rapt.

“You… but…,” Holdavort stammered.

“But what?” Harry said, hands on hips.

“I thought you’d forgotten.”

“See what thinking does? It makes you careless.” Her voice hardened. “You thought I’d never remember the  toilet, the first fight. I do now. I remember everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” she said, rolling up a sleeve. “Especially how I got this.” The mark Box had once called a tattoo  glared on her forearm.

“A mere mark,” Holdavort sniffed.

“A mere mark?” Her wand flashed, the Hall boomed, and Holdavort’s body shot across the space to crater the far wall. His laugh was gone. Fear took its place.

“What’s wrong?” Harry called. “Not so funny when it’s your mind in fog, is it?”

He tore free and surged back, then—strangely—lifted his hands. “A truce?”

“A truce?” Harry snarled and hit him again. Stone rained from the vaults.

He beat back to her, battered, breathing hard. “You are like me,” he said thickly.

“Like you?” Harry readied another strike.

“That is why I did it. I clouded your mind after you defeated me. A small spell, tricky, but necessary. I had to  stop you using the marbles. You were obsessed.”

“Obsessed?” Her lip curled. “I hadn’t even seen them.”

“But you had,” he said. “You had every last one. That is how you beat me. I barely escaped. As the fog took  you, I sent them away—somewhere Tumbledown would find them.”

“Why him?”

“He was safe. While he held them and you forgot, I could return later to reclaim them.”

“And the book I found?”

He chuckled. “Bait. Smoke. A nudge to keep you circling the truth without touching it.”

Harry remembered the tug she’d felt in Tumbledown’s office, how the marbles had hummed in her bones. “I  was a fool.”

“You forgot,” he said simply.

“If that’s true, why do I still have this power without the marbles?”

“Because you are their Keeper,” Holdavort said, almost reverent. “Their true Keeper. Chosen long ago—in another turning.”

Memory unspooled. Faces. Rooms. A weight of glass in her hands like a tame galaxy. The world snapped into focus.

She wanted the marbles back.

She wanted them now.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A Collision of Interests and
A Deception Leading to…

“So this is how it ends?” Holdavort asked. “Two of us fighting for the same prize.”

“You said it,” Harry replied.

“I did,” he murmured. “You had no need to.”

They hovered before the balcony, level with a hundred unblinking pupils. Harry gripped her electro-magical wand in one hand and the last two Philosopher’s Marbles in the other. Holdavort, her mortal enemy,  wore the rest set into that hard, leathery robe like malignant stars. Neither gave an inch. The silence had weight.

From the rafters the forgotten voice piped up. “Well,” Laughing Larry said, “if you two are not the mad ones  here, then I must be almost cured.”

It was nothing more than a silly line, yet it nicked the moment’s skin. The stalemate tore. And then everything happened at once.

The fight that followed was not a duel so much as a storm. Spells cracked. Stone split. Heat rolled through the Great Hall, then smoke. Light carved the air into shards; sound hammered the ribs. Blood, sweat, dust, splinters, and glittering glass rained together. When sense returned, the Hall was a ruin. Fire licked along beams.  The stained glass lay shattered. The roof wore gaping holes as if the night had taken bites from it. Still the balcony and the children upon it stood untouched, as if some old courtesy held.

Larry, who had made a brief retreat to his favourite corner in the toilets, fluttered back to the balcony rail and  bit his ghostly knuckles.

Holdavort shot through a hole to the roof and perched on the ridge tiles. Harry followed, streaking into the cold air until the moon sat beneath her boots. She dropped fast, landing ten feet from him, panting, wand up,  marbles ready.

“Give me the marbles,” she said. “We call it a day.”

“So now you offer terms,” he said softly. “My, what a climb down for the famous girl mystic.”

“I am their Keeper,” Harry said. “You named me so.”

“I did,” he said, “before I scented victory.”

He struck. The sky roared. Light washed the moon pale. Harry lost footing and slid. Tiles rattled. She caught  herself, then slipped again. Exhaustion dragged at her; levitation would have been easy an hour ago. Now she was only a girl and the roof was steep.

“Wait,” Holdavort said suddenly. “I wish you well.” His robe flared green at two points. An olive glow lifted her  clear of the gutter and set her back on the ridge with surprising gentleness.

“Thanks,” Harry said, suspicious in spite of herself.

“Do not mention it,” he said, smiling. “And allow me to toast your victory.”

A vial appeared in his hand, lapis-blue. Two little glasses followed as if poured from the night. He filled both. “An elixir,” he said. He drank and  smashed his glass on the tiles.

Harry stared into hers. Tired as she was, his voice slid easily into the soft parts of her thoughts. She raised the glass. “To my victory,” she said, and threw it back. Her empty glass shattered like ice.

The world veiled. Roof and sky blurred. Something tore, like cloth in a giant’s fists, and pulled back to show  another country stitched behind the one she knew.

“Well?” Holdavort asked mildly. “Do you like it?”

Harry could not speak. The meadow that opened out ahead glowed with a light that was not day. Cottages  dozed under deep eaves, gardens flowed in easy color, hedges hummed with hidden bees. Trees shouldered the sky. Laughter drifted like music from far paths. Children ran. Rivers made silver loops. It was beautiful enough to ache.

“The drink,” Harry said at last. “You added something.”

“A touch of Arcanum,” he said, pleased with himself.

“You added Arcanum to an elixir,” Harry whispered. “Do you even know what you made?”

“Of course,” he said. “The Elixir of Life. And we drank it.”

“You are mad.”

“Calm yourself,” he said. “Hear me out.”

“Talk,” Harry said, folding her arms.

“The Elixir is the door,” he said. “Immortality lies through it. This is Summerland.”

Harry looked again and felt her own heart betray her. Summerland was stunning, and if ever a place seemed  like a promise kept, this was it.

“If this is truly Summerland,” she said, “then we died.”

He laughed. “No poison. No death. We are as far from death as it is possible to be.”

“Then why bring me here?”

“An olive branch,” he said. “You are destined for this.”

Every sense warned her he was not telling the whole story. But she had nothing solid to pin that feeling to,  and immortality was a curious perfume. “And the marbles?” she asked.

“Ah,” he said. “The marbles.”

“You spoke of giving them to me.”

“In time,” he said. “After we present them.”

“Present them to whom?”

“To Summerland,” he said. “Then immortality.”

Her suspicion sharpened. She could not prove the lie, yet it walked beside his words. “All right,” she said.  “Show me.”

He led her down a lane that had not existed a moment before. They passed thatched roofs, beds of flowers  spilling over stones, orchards drowsing with fruit. A family laughed on a blanket under a tree; a dog thumped its tail. Every scene winked at a life Harry had not been offered. Her steps slowed. Her chest hurt in an old way.

They stopped at a field gate. “Here,” Holdavort said. “We make the offering inside.”

“In a field?” Harry asked. Her mind had cleared a little with walking, and her eyes, at last, narrowed. “How do  you know any of this?”

“How is unimportant,” he said smoothly, and opened the gate.

From within, the field felt smaller than it had looked, as if the edges had drawn in. At the far end stood a  simple altar. Holdavort knelt at the foot of the steps and stilled his beating wings. “Kneel,” he said.

Harry knelt. She felt very small beside him. She still had her wand, and in her fist the two rescued marbles  clicked together with a tiny sound. Vulnerable or not, she would not let them go lightly.

Fifteen long minutes passed. Her knees throbbed.

“What are we waiting for?” she asked.

“That,” Holdavort said.

A shape gathered on the altar. It rounded as if blown from glass. “A football?” Harry blurted. “Are we playing  soccer?”

Holdavort spoke toward the altar in a low, ceremonial tone. “We offer these marbles, the full set of twenty-three.”

“To whom?” Harry whispered.

“Infinity.”

“Oh,” she said, duly chastened.

The twenty-one gems that studded his robe loosened and drifted up like bright fish. He turned to her. “Now yours.”

Harry’s doubts pricked at her, yet immortality’s light still lay on her skin. She opened her palm. Her two  followed the rest.

“Is that it?” she asked. “Are we immortal?”

Holdavort’s posture changed. The soft manner dropped like a veil off a face. He surged up the steps, stood  tall, and watched as every single marble—twenty-three bright hearts—slid off the altar and sank into his robe. “I have them,” he shouted. “I have all the Philosopher’s Marbles!”

Harry’s stomach turned to lead. “It was a sham,” she said. “A cheap trick.”

“Yes,” he said gently. “You might call it that.”

The field winked out. The altar and the gate vanished. Roof and cold night crashed back. Harry wobbled on  the ridge, tiles slick beneath her boots.

“Now that the charade is over,” Holdavort said, comfortably himself again, “let me put you out of your misery.”

A streak of pink cut the dark. “She may be miserable,” Miocene called, bursting through a hole in the roof, “but she is not beaten.”

“Miocene,” Harry gasped. “You are flying.”

“Yes,” Miocene said, eyes bright. “It turns out I am hard to finish.” She tipped her wand. “And you look like you could use a hand.”

A head popped up through the ragged roofline. “Would another help?” Box called.

“Box!” Harry cried. “You are all right?”

“I am, mostly. A bit sore.” He hauled himself onto the ridge and gave the broken halves of his wand a  sheepish waggle.

“So,” Holdavort said. “Together again. Nine lives between you.” The marbles in his chest flared white. “United  in life and soon united in death.”

Hopelessness tugged at the edges of Harry’s mind. She wouldn’t let it in. “Holdavort,” she shouted,  “Tumbledown, whatever you are, I dare you to fight me alone.”

Arrogance clouded his caution. “As you wish. It will be quick.”

“That is fine by me,” she said, and Miocene and Box glanced at each other in alarm.

“Do not fret,” Harry said across the tiles. “Not everything can be picture perfect.”

Sir Box? he thought, blinking. Then he remembered the old knight and could not help a grin.

Holdavort’s strike came, a scythe of killing light. It never found her. The roof exploded with movement as  people and beasts poured from the paintings at Box’s summons: bowmen from battlefields, knights from hunting scenes, washerwomen from riversides, foxes mid-leap, cows mid-chew, a small legion of saints and sinners in cracked pigment. They hurled themselves between Harry and the blow. They saved her. Many of them broke, and this time there would be no painter’s hand to mend them.

“Down,” Harry cried, seizing the opening. “All of you. To the ground.”

Holdavort cackled. “You think I fear chaos?”

Harry did not answer him. She whispered to the wand, almost the very words she had used before. “With this wand, this electrical trick, I call on its powers, a cristatic mind shift to lend me a hand at this time of appeal. Cristosis. Cristopholous. Cristaecis. So be it.”

The gates of Hades tore free of their moorings in the world and unfolded at ground level like iron flowers. The pupils filed down from the balcony, pale but steady, wands gripped white.

“So,” Holdavort said. “You moved the gates. To what end? The beasts are gone. They were nothing.”

“Then you will not object to finishing this inside,” Harry said. “Loser to the Pit.”

Even he hesitated. Pride won. “Agreed,” he said. “Inside the gates. Loser to Hell.”

The marbles glowed like a furnace banked behind his ribs. Harry felt the ache of loss for the two she had  handed away. She stood a little straighter. If she was truly the Keeper, then they were not lost. Not forever.

“Ready?” she said.

Miocene’s jaw set. “Ready.”

Box lifted both broken halves of his wand and nodded. Somewhere high above, a ghost drew in a breath and began to sing.

 

Chapter Thirty

A Debacle!

It was a strange sight indeed: the gates of Hades slung wide, Harry and Holdavort standing within, and  outside them Miocene, Box, a crush of pupils, and a jostling crowd of painted folk and beasts, all watching with bated breath.

“At least we’re on the ground,” Box said. “I was getting light-headed up there.” A section of roof gave way with a crash. “Just in time by the look of it.” He glanced back at  the pupils. “And everyone made it down. Good.” Miocene hardly heard him. Her eyes were fixed on the two figures framed by the hell-lit threshold.

“What makes you think you can win, famous girl mystic?” Holdavort asked.

“What makes you think you can?” Harry replied, light as a shrug.

“I have all the marbles.”

He did. Every last one burned in his red, leathery robes. Yet even monsters have heels of clay. Harry felt it like a spark catching tinder. The idea bloomed and she laughed. It was such a bright, reckless laugh that  Holdavort blinked, as if the girl had finally, truly lost her own marbles.

“Come on then,” Harry said, still laughing. “Or can’t you decide how to finish me?”

“How I finish you is no concern of yours,” Holdavort said. “Only that you die.”

But Harry had already begun to move. She ran quick circles within the iron posts, ducking in and out, a blur at his ankles. His wings snagged on the gate as he twisted to follow.

“Keep still and fight,” he snarled.

“What’s wrong?” she called, slipping between his legs and popping up behind him. “Too slow?”

“You call this fighting,” he roared, snatching at air, “skittering like a frightened rat?”

“There is more than one way to skin a cat,” she said.

“Cats,” he spat. “You are as moronic as your Muddling cousin.”

A few hours earlier Box might have swung at him for that. Now he stood very still and said nothing at all.

While she ran, Harry tried to catch Miocene’s eye. Miocene saw, elbowed Box, and whispered, “She’s ready.”

Box lifted both stump-halves of his wand in reply. He called the pupils closer with a swirl of his hand. Wands came up, a bristling  hedge around the gate. Pride moved through the children like a current.

Everything now rested with Harry. She had kicked this sorry business into motion with her hunger for the  marbles. If there was to be an end, she must make it.

She kept circling. Holdavort’s eyes struggled to track her. His hands swept wider. His balance faltered. When he wobbled, just slightly, Harry flashed a signal toward Miocene and Box.

“Hurry,” Miocene cried. “Hurry!” She raised her wand. Box already had his shards aimed, and a hundred  pupils leveled theirs.

“On my mark,” Miocene said. They waited for Harry to dart clear of a particularly savage swipe. “Now!” she  shouted. “Now, now, now!”

Light leapt. A chorus of force struck Holdavort, not to kill, only to tip the scales. He staggered. Dizzy from the  circling, off-balance from the shove, he pitched backward.

Harry did not hesitate. Her electro-magical wand cracked like thunder, and with the weight of her new-found power behind it the blow sent Holdavort tumbling through the threshold into Hades.

He vanished.

Was that possible? Dared they hope?

Harry did not. She turned to the last part of her plan, the sealing. A huge red hand shot from the glare,  clamped her ankle, and dragged.

Miocene screamed. She fired her pink wand until it sang. Box blasted with both little stubs. The pupils poured everything they had into that hand. Goodness burned through knotted sinew. With a howl Holdavort let go.  Harry crawled, scraped and bruised, away from the gate as the red limb slipped back into the dark.

“Quick,” she gasped. “We seal it. With me.”

They raised their voices together, fast and sure.

“Crioninous crionates shraholarman skryolait,
return the beast, Holdavort, and reseal the gates.
Crioninous crionocked, forever closed, forever locked.
This must be done, never to be unlocked.”

The iron groaned. The hinges cried like old trees in a gale. The gates slammed. The sound rolled through the shattered Hall and out into the night. Then the whole black architecture thinned and faded and was gone.

“Will it hold this time?” Miocene asked softly.

“Will it, Harry?” Box said. “You opened them before easily enough.”

Harry nodded. “Yes. This time they will remain closed. We sealed them together. Forever.”

Chapter Thirty-One

A Little Bit More Deception…

The world had been saved. Holdavort was gone—vanished forever—and everyone rejoiced.
But amid the laughter and the dancing and the jubilant cries, there was sorrow too.

Hagswords—the proud old school of mysticism and magic—was a ruin, a blackened shell where only ashes whispered. The grand staircases had collapsed into heaps of  rubble. Not a single stick of furniture survived. And worst of all, the exquisite, enchanted paintings—those living canvases that had once smiled, winked, and sung—were gone, consumed entirely by the fire.

“What will happen to you and the others, the ones from the paintings?” Miocene asked Lord Catchyfoe, who  stood surveying the smouldering wreckage. His once-sparkling armour was blackened with soot and streaked with sorrow.

The old knight smiled faintly, his visor hanging slightly askew.
“Sir Box has it all in hand,” he said with a sage nod.

“I have?” Box blinked. Then, remembering, he straightened up. “Ah, yes. Quite right. I will see to it, my Lord.”

“You will?” Miocene asked, raising an eyebrow. “And since when did you become a ‘Sir’?”

“It’s a long story,” Box said airily. “I’ll fill you in later.”

At that moment, the teachers began to emerge from the trees and shadows, their robes torn, their faces pale with shame. Harry turned to face them, wand at the ready, her eyes narrowed.

“Please,” begged Mrs Versakili, a thin woman with limbs like twigs. “Please let us explain.”

“What do you want?” Harry asked coolly, her wand tip glowing faintly pink.

“We—we wish to apologise,” Mrs Versakili said, her voice trembling. “We were under a spell. We didn’t know what  we were doing.”

“Is that why you abandoned the children?” Harry demanded. She sounded older than her years, the tone of a headmistress chastising naughty staff.

“We ran away after the stampede came from the paintings,” said Mr Moriarty, the portly teacher with the  goatee. “We were terrified!”

Harry lowered her wand slowly. Their words had the ring of truth. “All right,” she said at last. “I believe you.  Since you’re here, perhaps you can help us find somewhere for the children to sleep.”

Everyone was exhausted—children, teachers, ghosts, and even the painted folk now flickering faintly in and out of existence. They curled up on the grass beneath the thin sliver of moon, and for the first time in many nights, they all slept peacefully.

Box awoke with a start the next morning. He stretched, rubbed his eyes, and saw Harry talking quietly with  Laughing Larry near the ruins.

“Larry!” he called. “I was wondering where you’d disappeared to!”

The ghost gave him a brief wave and went straight back to whispering with Harry.

“Humph,” Box muttered. “I think I preferred him when he was mad.”

Miocene stirred beside him, yawning. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s those two,” Box said. “Harry and Larry. They’re up to something.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve no idea,” he admitted. “But I can smell it. Something’s going on.”

They watched as Harry and the ghost slipped quietly into the ruins.

“Come on,” Box whispered. “Let’s follow them.”

Miocene sighed. “Spying on Harry? This feels wrong.”

“Then it must be important,” Box said with a grin.

They crept after the pair through the wreckage, crunching softly over broken glass and scorched stone.

“I think they’re heading for the toilets,” Box whispered.

“The toilets? Oh, lovely,” Miocene murmured.

Harry stopped suddenly and looked over her shoulder. The two spies dived behind a fallen beam.

“Do you think she saw us?” Miocene asked.

“No,” Box whispered, peering out. “We’re safe. Look—she’s gone through that doorway.”

Inside, the air smelled of ash and old magic. “Where are they?” Miocene whispered.

“There—in the corner,” Box replied. “Isn’t that where Larry spent most of the fight?”

“Yes,” Miocene said. “But what could they be looking for?”

They crouched behind a crumbling wall and watched as Harry, following Larry’s spectral pointing, prised a  loose stone from the wall. It fell to the floor with a dull thud.

“She’s pulling something out,” Box breathed.

Harry reached into the cavity and drew out two tiny figures.

Miocene squinted. “What on earth—?”

“Let’s ask her,” Box said, standing up. His boots crunched loudly on the floor.

“Hey, wait!” Miocene hissed, hurrying after him.

Harry turned, calm as ever. “So, you decided to show yourselves,” she said.

Box flushed. “I—we wanted to know what you were doing.”

“It’s all right,” Harry said, smirking. “We were going to tell you anyway, after we made sure they were safe.”

“They?” Miocene asked.

“These,” said Harry, holding out her palms.

Box gasped. “It can’t be!”

But it was—Professor McGonagain and Wan Measly, reduced to the size of teacup dolls, waving their tiny arms in panic.

“Is that—?” Box stammered.

“It is,” Harry said proudly. “Perfectly preserved and perfectly harmless.”

“Would someone please explain?” Miocene demanded.

Larry floated forward, beaming. “Ah, yes. Allow me. You see, Harry isn’t all bad—”

“Larry…” Harry warned.

“Back during the chaos,” the ghost continued, “when things were at their worst, she had the foresight to spare these two. Instead of destroying them, she shrank them to a safe size and tucked them away—temporarily.”

Miocene’s eyes widened. “That’s why you stayed in the corner—to protect them!”

“Indeed,” Larry said, puffing up. “And it got rather hairy at times, if I do say so myself!”

Box grinned. “Hairy enough to hide them inside the wall?”

“Exactly!” Larry said. “A neat little hiding spot until things calmed down.”

“But how could you touch the wall?” Miocene asked. “You’re a ghost.”

Larry winked. “Ah, a magician never reveals all his secrets.”

Harry crouched down, placing the tiny pair on the ground. “Right then,” she said, raising her wand. “Time to  restore you.”

With a swirl of pink light, the two figures grew and grew until they were full-sized once more.

Professor McGonagain immediately clasped her hands. “Oh, thank you, Miss Rotter! Thank you for your  mercy! I swear I’ll never forget it.”

Wan Measly wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry, Miocene,” he said. “For everything. I was horrid, I know. But I’ve  changed—really, I have. Do you think… do you think we could ever be friends again?”

Miocene folded her arms, studying him. “Perhaps,” she said at last. “But respect has to be earned.”

Wan smiled through his tears. “Then I’ll earn it. You’ll see.”

Harry clapped her hands. “Good! Now that everyone’s forgiven and reformed—how about breakfast?”

And for once, everyone agreed that was the most sensible magic she had ever performed.

 

Chapter Thirty-Two

Home Again

Much later, when the last embers were stamped out and a sort of order began to reassert itself, Lord  Catchyfoe and his companions took charge of rebuilding Hagswords, the teachers gratefully falling in line, and the pupils—battle-tired and starry-eyed—were sent home for an unexpected holiday.

“Well then, old cousin,” Harry said, dusting ash from her sleeves, “I think it’s time we got you home.”

Home. In all the excitement, Box had quite forgotten about home and his beleaguered parents. “Do you think  they’ll be any better?”

Harry opened her shoulder bag, unfolded the threadbare magic carpet, and sat cross-legged upon it. “Get on,” she said. “Let’s go see.”

Tears pricked Miocene’s eyes. The girl mystic who had grown so bravely, so quickly, and who had come to like Box rather a lot, asked, “Will you be back?”

The carpet lifted gently. “Will we, Harry?” Box called.

“You never did tell us how you learned to fly, Miocene,” Harry said. “And I did mention I fancied that top job at Hagswords. So who knows?”

“Harry! You can’t be serious,” Box spluttered.

“Nah,” she laughed. “I’d be bored stiff.” She looked to Miocene. “Do you want us again?”

“Yes, of course,” Miocene said, voice rising as they drifted higher. “I’ll explain everything. Especially the flying.”

Box waved until Miocene was a pink dot and then nothing at all.

The journey was long, but Box loved every second, high above fields and steeples, and he did not even  complain when they dropped to the station to show their tickets to the inspector before taking off again. It was Harry’s world, and though he had peeped behind a few curtains, he knew there were still many he might never lift. He found that he could live with that. He had even grown rather fond of his troublesome cousin.

Harry brought the carpet in smooth as silk, settling beneath the walnut tree in the Privets’ front garden—a far cry from her first wobbly landing only days ago. The tree was in full leaf, birds busy with their morning  gossip, the sky so blue it felt freshly painted. Even the front door had been replaced, a neat white PVC rectangle where the scuffed brown wood used to be.

Harry folded the carpet and slipped it away. “It’s awfully quiet,” she murmured.

“It’s a quiet road,” Box said. “Always was.” He led her round to the back. Another new white PVC door. “White doors must be in,” he said. The garden was prim and proper: washing on the line, lawn cropped, borders  weeded. Normal, painfully normal. It worried him.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked. “Didn’t you say this is what you wanted?”

“I said it looked normal.” Box frowned. “Were my parents anything like normal when we left?”

Harry sniffed. “As normal as any Muddle adults I’ve met.”

“HARRY.”

“All right,” she conceded. “They were as mad as two hatters. Happy?”

“Thank you,” he said, vindicated, and tried the back-door handle. It turned. He nudged. The kitchen was empty and spotless. He ran through the rooms. Empty.  Upstairs. Empty. His heart hammered. “Where on earth are they? And why is everything so tidy?”

“Perhaps they went for a drive,” Harry said.

“What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“Nah. Dad never drives on Wednesdays. Says there are too many midweek nutters.”

“You’re joking.”

Box shook his head, then gave up and put the kettle on. “A nice cup of tea makes anything better. That’s  Mum.”

Harry gave him a look that said she was seeing the Privets in him more than ever.

“Here,” Box said, handing her a mug.

“I don’t usually drink tea,” she began, then took it anyway. Box collapsed into his favourite armchair with a  blissful sigh.

Harry sipped, made a face, and set the mug down with care.

“What’s wrong with it?” Box asked.

“Nothing. Not thirsty.”

He beamed, gulped his own. Harry cocked her head. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Something outside.” She stood, listening. “Close the curtains.”

“If I do that I can’t see my tea,” Box protested.

“Close them,” Harry hissed. He obeyed.

He peered through a thin gap. The garden basked in innocence, except for two figures lurking under the horse chestnut tree. “Come on,” he whispered, opening the door. “Let’s see.”

Harry followed, wand out. “Don’t say a word,” she breathed.

“Put that away,” Box said. “You won’t need it.”

He ducked beneath a low branch. “Holly! It’s Harry and Box,” Mr Privet sang, grinning from ear to ear.

Mrs Privet didn’t hear. She was bent over something at the base of the tree. At the second call she looked up, squealed with joy, and ran to Box. “Where have you been? Look at you—skin and bone! Have you eaten?”

“Exploring,” Box said, deciding it sounded safer than the truth.

“Exploring!” she cried to her husband. “Our boy is growing up. Whatever next?”

“Saving the world from madmen,” Harry muttered.

“And Harry—our favourite niece,” Mrs Privet trilled, turning to crush her in a hug.

Inside again, with talk of tea and adventures, Mr Privet coughed delicately. “Holly, have you forgotten  something?”

She was already at the door, too busy being delighted to listen.

Box eyed his father. “What were you doing under there?”

“Oh, nothing,” Mr Privet said, shuffling aside, very much like a man hiding a hippopotamus. “See that?” he  blurted, then faltered. “Nothing.”

Harry tapped her foot. “Have you forgotten something?”

Mr Privet patted his pockets. “Don’t think so, Harry. Kind of you to ask.” He bent and lifted a familiar bundle.  “Unless you mean this.”

Harry stared. “My carpet.”

“I found it under the tree,” Mr Privet said, proud as punch. “At first I thought it a rug, but it’s more than that.  Want to see what I can do?”

“No,” Harry said a little too quickly.

But he was already unrolling it on the lawn. “Come on, Harry. You won’t believe this.” He patted the weave  and sat cross-legged. “Hop on. Or shall Box have all the fun?”

“That sounds an excellent idea,” Harry said dryly. “Box can—”

“Go on,” Box grinned. “Humour him.”

Harry stepped on with the expression of a cat approaching a bath. “Buckle up,” Mr Privet crowed, and the  carpet shot skyward.

Wind tore at their hair. “Well?” Mr Privet shouted. “Never seen anything like this, have you?”

“In truth,” Harry said through gritted teeth, “I have never endured anything remotely similar.”

“Let’s see what she can really do!” He tipped the nose. The carpet plunged. “Yippee!”

Harry squeezed her eyes shut and prayed. One inch from the lawn, the carpet stopped. She rolled off and  hugged the ground.

“I’m thinking of selling the car,” Mr Privet mused, petting the carpet. “No tax, no insurance, and the maintenance is only a ball of wool.” He poked a finger through a hole.

“Stop. Stop!” Harry cried. “You’re mad.”

He blinked. “Was it something I said? Or are you airsick?”

“Stop,” Harry repeated, then looked round wildly. “Box? Box!”

“Here we are, love,” Mrs Privet said, arriving with tea on a tray. “Do you like the cup? Best set. Could only find the one. No idea where the rest went.”

Harry sipped with saintly patience. Mr Privet daintily bit a fig roll, then brightened. “Harry, about that radio of  yours.”

“Radio?” she echoed.

“The one you and Box made upstairs,” he said. “I’ve decided it must have been atmospheric interference that caused my trouble. I’m ready to have another go.”

Harry drew her wand from the bag and held it up. “Is this what you mean?”

“That’s the one,” he said, reaching.

“Let me show you how to use it,” Harry said sweetly. “Which button is on, which is tuning, that sort of thing.”

She pressed a button and murmured under her breath. The wand hummed and played a jaunty little tune.

“Holly,” Mr Privet beamed, “Young Harry has done it! Knew she would.”

“That’s nice, dear,” said Mrs Privet, who clearly preferred biscuits to breakthroughs.

“May I?” Mr Privet said, leaning closer.

“Not quite yet,” Harry said. “One more thing to show you—”

He snatched it. “I’ll manage.” He jabbed at the buttons with growing panic.

“Careful,” Harry warned.

“Harry,” Box whispered, “this will be a disaster. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“That’s the lesson,” Harry murmured back. “He needs to learn.”

“He might blow himself up.”

Before she could snatch it back, a gout of flame whooshed from the wand’s tip, and Mr Privet yelped, thrusting it out the open window. “Yes, Harry, thank you, a hand would be lovely. These atmospheric disturbances!”

Harry soothed the wand and the atmosphere both. “Another go?” she asked, very innocent. “I’m sure it will be fine this time.”

“No,” Mr Privet said, pushing it away. “I’ll stick with the radiogram. Never once spat fire.”

Harry set her empty cup down. “Well, I think that’s me,” she said lightly.

“You’re going?” Box blinked.

“I only came to lie low. You knew that.”

“But it’s over now,” he said softly. “Where will you go?”

She shrugged. “Anywhere.” Her eyes twinkled. “Besides, you’ve promises to keep.”

“The people and animals from the paintings,” Box said. “I told them I’d help.”

“That’s your department,” Harry said. “You’ll think of a way to fold them into this Muddle world. You’ll probably  love it.” She stood and waved to the Privets. “Thank you for the tea.”

In the garden she unfolded the carpet and sat. She dipped a hand into her bag and lifted something small and bright.

Box’s jaw dropped. “Where did you get that?”

“Pulled it from Holdavort’s robe when he tried to drag me into Hades,” she said, wickedly pleased. “Seems  fair. I am the Keeper, after all.”

She flicked the wand. The carpet hovered.

“So that’s it?” Box asked. “You fly off and vanish over the horizon?”

“I suppose so. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you want to come.”

“Me?” He glanced toward the kitchen. Through the window his parents swayed arm in arm, singing Tiptoe  Through the Tulips in full, tuneless commitment.

“All right,” he said. “On condition we come back to check on them. And the painted folk.”

“Deal,” Harry said. “Climb aboard, Sir Box.”

He grinned at the secret title and folded himself cross-legged, hands gripping the frayed edge. Harry nodded to the sky.

“Up, up and away.”

The carpet rose, circled the little house under the walnut tree, and then, gathering speed, streaked into the  bright blue morning until it was only a dash upon the horizon.

THE END?