The Toxicologist

The Third House

The House of Chords

Inspires emotion through song and verse. Songweavers are capable of pushing their voice, or a musical instrument, beyond the capabilities of mortal men. Able to inspire nations or break morale, The Third House fly in the drums of ancient battlefields, raise the roof of amphitheatres and comfort mourners at funerals. Uniquely capable of manipulating emotion through their voice, there has been unrest among many an audience as to the House’s power.

Members of the Third House are known as Bards, Troubadours, Lyricists, Silvertongues, Sonneteers, Witchthroats, Songweavers , Dirges, Verse-makers, Parnassians, Laureates and Balladeers

— Magical Minds and Where to Find Them! A Guide for 'Muggles' (Normal Folk). Alice K. Fisher

Harry couldn’t focus on his microscope. This necromancy rubbish was crap, and he was getting more sightings. Some even in broad daylight, such as the dog he’d glimpsed from the bus. They’d pulled over at a light and the German Shepherd had been there, standing at the mouth of a gloomy alley. It stared at Harry and didn’t move, its head twisted on its axis, upside down.

Though the Saviour's office was in London — forcing a rather long commute three times a week, or when Dung needed them in — Harry rented a place in Bath so he could get up to the university. Times like this he wondered why he bothered.

Afternoon sunshine spilled in across the sliding glass doors of the lab. It was a lovely day outside, but the cells in Harry’s suspension were clumping. They’d been clumping all week. And given how poorly he’d slept, he couldn’t be asked.

Harry shoved them onto the incubator rack and even gave them a good shaking for his trouble, but when he looked under the microscope it was still there: a 'tangle' —he couldn't find a better word for it— giant and omelette-shaped. It was forming over and around, and even between, the cells. Harry had seen it a few days ago when it was smaller, but after a few times of passaging, the thing had gotten bigger.

He thawed a fresh batch of HeLa, but they had it too. Eerie under the light, the shifting cluster didn’t look right at all. Semi-transcluent and ghostly it peered up at him from the dish, slowing the rest of the cells down, making it so they didn’t spread so well. His work involved imaging single molecules inside the cells; so with these clusters it was becoming impossible. On top of which Harry was a bit worried about whatever these bleb-like things were. Cells could form extra growths when they were stressed, but he’d redone everything and removed most of the usual suspects for conditions.

"I don't know anything about the muggle side," a bright voice said, just to his right, "but could it be contaminated?"

Harry drew back from his scope. He hadn't checked the pH, he supposed. The media looked fine but it wasn't a terrible idea. Harry felt the beginnings of a laugh bubble up, a short, small sound of breath. Sometimes it was the obvious.

"It could actually. I’ll check where the batch came from. Thanks Neville.”

Harry turned gladly to chat, being so done with this until lunch — but he stopped short. 

The lab was empty, airy and bright. No one was there. Just the long, twinkling aluminium sink, the cheap microscopes that the class had naughtily left out, and Harry himself. Sunlight bounced off of a whiteboard. The stray summer breeze came in through the half open window and lifted a lock of Harry’s hair. Outside the students were on the grass. 

Harry swallowed, and felt his eyes prickle. Emotion slowed his thoughts. Harry dropped his forehead into his hands and smeared his eyes. He shouldn’t have come in. 

He hung there in silence for ten pained minutes, replaying the funeral, debating whether or not he should go home and just mark some papers. He was interrupted by a buzzing.

Inside his bag a little light was flashing. Reaching down from the stool, Harry fished out his phone.

Trafalgar Sq. Church of Eternal Life. Be here ten minutes ago. Nixon.

Well. That solved his dilemma.

The Church of Eternal Life stood just off of Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London, the building formerly known as St Martin-in-the-Fields — an Anglican parish that Voldemort had somehow gotten off the muggles. The costs must have been eye watering; the mediaeval church had been standing for almost a thousand years before its Jacobean restructure. From what Harry knew Voldemort’s flagship church was out west, the one that started it all, but the London branch became the visual icon of the fucker’s followership.

Harry knew it from several films, including Notting Hill and Enigma , and television programmes, Doctor Who and Sherlock . Because of its prominent position it was one of the most famous churches in London.

And right now, impossible to reach. Harry could see the proud steeple across the hot crowd, but between him and the crime scene were thousands of rubbernecking onlookers, curious tourists, protestors, police and media. The square was packed. There was so much noise that he almost covered his ears. People were jumping up and down on the steps of the National Gallery, and on Nelson’s Column too, to get a better look. Selfie sticks were waving.

Harry had never taken up much space even as a teenager (unless he was angry, then all space was his), something he’d tried to fix as an adult. All the same he wished Ron was here, even if he wouldn’t be allowed past the tape. He was even in Saviours today, picking his nose and doing paper. No help. It took Harry twenty minutes just to squeeze past, apologising every other step as he was jostled and elbowed and — one girl actually landed on him, coming down too fast off another bloke’s shoulders.

At the head of the sweating crowd were police. Quite a lot of police. They were stopping eager tourists from getting too close. A row of journalists and flashing cameras marked the demarcated line. Wide yellow tape cordoned off the church, with black labelling “ Police Line Do Not Cross ”.

Harry tried to get someone’s attention, while the journalists on either side of him shouted and pushed him left and right, but the closest officer was only half turned toward them, his eye more on a distant group of civilians beyond the press (who at least knew to stay still). The policeman turned to radioing someone, his chin tucked. Hating how embarrassed it made him, Harry ducked under the tape. The female journalist behind Harry made a noise of surprise. She called, “Excuse me! Sir!”

The policeman with the radio straightened. He intercepted Harry. “Don’t cross this line, please.”

Harry was already offering his warrant card with its constabulary crest. “Nixon called me,” he explained, hot in the face.

The officer didn’t react visibly. Brunette with wolfish grey streaks at his temples and a slash of well-groomed stubble, he took the warrant — about the size of a credit card — his two piercing dark eyes roving over it. Those same eyes flicked to Harry. He ordered, “Wait here.”

Harry waited. Idling on the forbidden side of the tape while the officer spoke into his radio, Harry grew, if it were possible, even more self conscious. Behind him flashed hundreds of lights. He kept his back to it, feeling more exposed than he ever did in a lecture hall.

“All right, go on through.”

Harry jumped slightly, and nodded to the policeman. “Thank you. Just the front?”

“Yes.” The officer’s eyes were on the crowd. “Scene’s right at the back, you’ll find him there.”

Harry nodded, and took several long strides up the newly modelled neoclassical stairs, feeling the crowd vanish behind him. Only when he was inside did Harry release the breath he’d been holding.

Beyond the ornate doors, the modern splendour of the Strand gave way to a chimera of activity. Uniformed attendants and crinkly forensic suits milled between the pews. More flashing lights, but now of private-issued tablets, cameras and larger rolling recording equipment which mapped the nave, the vaulted arches, the galleries above.

The modern activity was all swallowed, somehow - made small by the muffle of the walls, the domed ceiling, the phantom sound of feet and books and candles whispering across a thousand years. Amid the restrained, decidedly proper tones of the Anglican church, were the echoes of something old. 

Harry's skin prickled. Voldemort kept it visibly Christian but Harry realised that he had never asked what his church actually followed. Or what they pretended to follow. There was a golden crucifix upon the altar.

Harry could feel magic. Pagan and dark and old.

Forensic personnel were everywhere, but with no region of the church quite so populous as the far end, where several were even standing on two powered platform lifts, cranked up on industrial scissor lifts so they could reach the body. Beneath the engineered lifts a tall, imposing officer turned to look at Harry. He extricated himself from the people he was talking to.

Harry was still buffering. Beyond him, high up in the air at the head of the church, outlined as if by emphatic blasphemous grace — silhouetted by the enormous arch window — was the body.

It was floating. Suspended like cells on glass, there was nothing to support it in the air. The two aisles of the pews tunnelled in a V perspective towards the mangled form, as though with sly irony, or exhibitionist's pride.

The details of the body were hard to see from back here, mostly because of the light from the window, but the silhouette was clearly pierced. A hole had been punched — straight into the chest cavity — right through the middle; and through the sunken skin shot a beam of radiant light. The ray went all the way to the ground, as though the man were lanced by God Himself.

“You’re late.”

Dominic “Darwin” Nixon suffered no fools. The detective chief superintendent of London’s MET was a firm believer that some people could only contribute to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool. Either by dying, or becoming sterilised via their own actions.  Saying that, he was more sick of killers and peeling their victims off of roads, floors, walls, meathooks and beds. Now in his early fifties Nixon was very good at what he did. Chief Crime Officer, Nixon maintained an abiding hostility toward murderers, who he ranked only one step beneath rapists. 

“I have to get the train,” said Harry. “From Bath .”

“Stop living in Bath."

Nixon led Harry to the foot of the scene, where Hill and Woolfe were arguing over where they should place the body line.

“We don’t need one, it’s floating,” said Peter (literally) Woolfe, crinkling in his jumpsuit. “Just put an arrow up. Might as well be a blob at this point. I don’t know where the chalk’s gone.”

Beth Hill snarled, her black hair thick and drawn into a strict bun that scraped from her temples. She was suited up, tapping at a tablet with touch-based latex. “We don’t drop all the fucking balls when we have a suspended victim, just treat it like a jumpwire case.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Nixon said as he approached, his movements tight and economical, gloved hands collapsed behind his back. Wearing a black wool city coat that Harry thought must be killing him in August, he didn’t step closer than ten feet. Harry stopped where he stopped. “Fetch Potter a viser and scrubs, and we’ll send our tardy aid up. Tell us this is magical, Potter.”

Nixon sounded tired. It obviously was; the body was floating twenty feet in the air above, with no supports. Harry supposed it was for the official record.

“He-ey, Harry!” a friendlier voice called. Arthur Law’s bronze mess of hair was lit by the late afternoon sun, streaming in through the church. Arthur was standing further out, relaxing against a pillar in nondescript blacks. Harry lifted his hand abortively, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were already going up again, toward the victim.

“Nasty, isn’t it?” Woolfe echoed. “Careful — blood.”

Harry’s arms coming out to catch his balance. He put his foot back. Below the body was a thick, dark pool of blood. Less than he’d expect, given the… damage to the figure above.

“We’ve got what we need already,” Woolfe said. “But best not get too much of your own mixed up with ours. This’ll get steam cleaned tonight. The C.E.L want us out as soon as possible.”

Harry looked up. He couldn’t see a face from down here; the head of the body was lolled back, toward the ceiling where there was a sweeping panel of cherubs and clouds. The long line of the neck was broken. The front of the victim’s chest and all of his clothing was blood-drenched, right down to his groin. Wizard robes; in fact not a cassock as Harry had first thought. His feet were dangling, one of his handsome boots missing, leaving a wet blue sock. 

Harry got into forensic scrubs and waited to be cranked up. He was the only one on the lift, although from the other platform two forensics were dabbing the top of the victim’s head with something. By the time Harry’s had reached its max, with a mechanical groan, theirs was coming down. He was to be given space for this one, apparently.

It was missing its face. Nothing was inside the head, Harry was looking across at a scooped-out bowl of broken bone and sausage-like mince, little bits of meaty debris stuck under the flapping remains of a set of tonsils. The fabric of the wizard’s robes were damp, not just with blood. His whole body was soaked through with water, though his hands had dried by now. The rest of his robes hadn’t yet managed to.

Funny thing, vampires didn’t turn to dust when they died. Only the really old ones did that. This might just turn out to be a muggle after all, but…

Harry could hear something. Barely there, it came in on the edge of the church’s hush. It was so faint as to be absent, if he hadn’t strained to listen. In fact the more he strained the louder it became. Water. The lapping of water.

It was louder near the body.

Harry wrapped his hands around the platform’s metal railing, and leaned in. 

Silence closed around him. The rest of the church seemed to vanish, Woolfe’s chatter grew quiet, as if moving further away. Harry felt all the space about him change, in fact space changed, as though now going on forever. He could feel it, the detail of that distance, the tone or echo of infinity. And very, very cold. Harry felt immediately uneasy.

A wet draught blew in. 

This must be the first time he was looking at a body without being on the pills. Harry had never explored the sensation before, not any time he’d felt it as a child. It was the same now as then: the space in front of him, and behind him, was going all syrupy and long. Like it was stretching away from him and he was at the centre. Out of nowhere an image popped into his mind. Of Neville’s corpse in the coffin, he had imagined it for nights since, reduced to the matter of chemistry and meat, crawling creatures between sinew and the eyes going dry.

There was a kind of tinnitus about coffins that was around this body now. And Harry was afraid of it. The coffin-sense. The not-quite-there sense, the tinnitus of a place larger and more remote than any thing should be. But far away, now, adjoined by a lapping of water. You go into it, he thought, something in him thought. Or not quite into, but close. You angle yourself maybe, let yourself go all long and stretched, then just — 

Pain exploded in his head. Harry smacked a hand to his forehead. “Ow .”

“Potter!” Nixon called up. “You all right?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m fine.” Harry opened blinking eyes to squint at the body. Macabre and bloody, but unchanged. A man with the melon of his skull opened open and fed upon.

Back on the ground, Nixon was waiting.

“It’s magical,” said Harry.

Without looking up, Woolfe spun his finger slowly in the air. He said flatly, “Whoo-o.”

“I can hear water,” added Harry. “Just on the edge of my senses. I might need you to get clearance for a magizoologist. I think it’s a magical beast that did this — or water magic, or both. But I don’t know any water mages. I could start in the House of Elements?”

"You hearing nature sounds?” asked Nixon. “That’s not your usual M.O.”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “It can happen for mages when there’s strong residual magic leftover from something. Usually when, erm, it’s their own magic.”

Nixon looked amused. “You kill this guy, Potter?”

“No! I mean,” Harry sputtered. “It matches my magic type. Like a summoner can sense the leftover magic from a particularly strong summons.”

Harry was still so conscious of the body floating behind him, that he almost missed Nixon’s look.

“What?” Harry asked.

“It's ‘Alchemy’ that did this?”

Harry’s spine went stiff. “Err.”

No, Harry supposed. That would be impossible.

The lights in Nixon’s eyes were steady. “We’ll talk later, Potter.”

Harry looked away.

“You’re quiet, though, in general,” Nixon remarked. “You well?”

Harry’s lips were pale and drawn thin. But he nodded, and shot Nixon a smile, or at least tried to. “I’ve seen this before.”

The heavy frown of the detective’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?” He walked with Harry to the front of the church.

“Yeah but — a client, through Saviours. Clearance will be complicated because I didn't accept the case. They’re a vampire, the person who came in. This one could be, too.” Harry gestured with his chin to the body, not quite looking at it.

Nixon was nodding slowly. He slipped out a small notepad from his deep pocket, and flipped it open. “Forensics posited much the same after they got a look at the blood — and the lack of rigour. They’ll confirm after lab. What was your vampire wanting? Did they know this might happen?”

“They’re not mine ,” bit Harry. “And, um, no. ‘It’ had already happened. They wanted me to investigate a string of similar murders.”

“Murders,” said Nixon, in a low tone. “Plural? This guy —” he gestured with the notepad, “others like him?”

Harry looked at the superintendent askance. “Err. I can’t just… can you get that clearance?”

“If it’s just vampires we have it ready to go, Potter.”

“It’s not just vampires,” said Harry, with restless fidgety energy. “I was wracking my head now for how to approach this. Normally I get clearance from the Ministry and then I can share any confidential details of a case from our world.”

“Why would you get your Ministry involved here, with this one? It’s not a mage. You just said your client was a vampire, coming to you about vampire bodies. The guy behind us is probably a vampire.”

Harry sighed. “It involves mages. Although a vampire approached me, they’re also a mage.”

The Ministry was allowed to deal with its own, at least legally, so long as there was no threat to muggles or a risk of a case exposure to muggle society. This was royally exposed.

Harry added, “The people killed were all mages, linked to the Church of Eternal Life. You know, the group who got turned. I bet you’ll find this one’s a vampire. Bet you double that he was a mage before that.”

“Can it be both?” said Nixon. “You’re a mage and then one day you get turned into a vampire?”

“It can be both,” confirmed Harry. “You maintain your core; you can still cast magic. You just… can’t go out at night; or not be a twat.”

“Mage vampires,” Nixon was nodding, with the sort of finality Christ might have suffered at Gethsemane. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I know,” winced Harry. “I’m sorry. It can happen.”

Harry could see the leaps Nixon was making. A murder — the bloke didn’t rip out his own brain — in London, in central London, disrupting muggle traffic, disrupting muggle news; but not involving muggles. Victims who might be both vampires and mages, two groups which did not historically (or actually) get along. This would upset both groups. This would be a storm of legislative red tape, complicating protective bylaws and racial landmines. There was a lot of press outside.

Nixon was silent. For a long time.

“Potter, this church’s leader is missing.”

“Voldemort?”

“Yeah, the life guy.”

That was news to Harry. Voldemort seemed fine in his dreams.

“Oh. Well. He’s… alive. Nominally. I have some correspondence with him.”

“You do?”

“It’s not what it looks like,” said Harry defensively. “He’s only recently a vampire. He also hates them. Just pretends otherwise for views.”

“Where is he then? Being kept out of the spotlight while he breaks in his fangs?”

“Yeah. And his pride.”

“We’re going to have to speak with him.”

“He’d love that.”

Harry knew the elder vampire, Violetta, wanted this silenced. She was claiming the Death Eaters as her own. Her childer, her responsibility, at least before they’d started being murdered. For all intents and purposes they were her progeny, presumably to cover up losing control over Voldemort. Harry was almost certain Violetta was his sire, she must have discovered Voldemort’s weird research. She didn’t want it known that someone could Embrace so many people in her domain without her permission. So she claimed them all and just said she’d Embraced them. But that meant they were hers to protect in the eyes of vampire-kind.

And this wasn’t Oxford. This was London vampire territory.

Someone had just killed, or possibly killed, an elder Prince’s childe — in a rival domain.

“This is gonna go pretty mental,” Harry said. “Mithras will hate this.”

“The Roman Prince?” Nixon said.

“That’s the one. If he hasn’t done this, or ordered someone else to do it, it’s sort of putting on an arse show of his security. For a vampire to get killed here, in the middle of Trafalgar Square…”

And, thought Harry, If it’s one of Violetta’s childer, even worse.

He added, “Those Princes want any excuse lately to go off on one another.”

“I’m aware of that much.” Nixon was rubbing his eyes. “Fannybaws.”

It was rare Nixon’s heritage came through quite so clearly. His accent was usually faint; he’d been living in England for so long now. It thickened when he was stressed, and the half-Scotsman said it so tiredly that Harry laughed.

“Let me get clearance from your Ministry to authorise a warrant for that private case file of yours,” said Nixon. “From Saviours. Just so we can discuss it further.”

“It’s not actually a proper file,” said Harry. “As I rejected the case. But I need something to cross the nondisclosure.”

“Sure.”

“And send me the coroner's report for this?” said Harry.

“I’ll try. You might have to be here to read it, I’ll check if we can even encrypt and send this one.”

Harry nodded. Just as he was about to open his mouth again, Nixon’s phone went. The detective checked it, and said, “Let’s sort this out now, Potter. Can you stay on? I need clearance too, to share something else with you. Can you kill a few hours in London?”

Surprised, Harry said, “Yeah of course. My best mate’s actually around here somewhere.”

“I hope not right outside. We've been told the anti-vamp lot appeared. They’re outside.”

“Oh, bloody hell.”

They were a rowdy lot. Harry was very fond of their movement. 

“Sure, Potter. Get out of here. I’ll see you at the station in a few hours.”

Nixon returned to the body, and the forensics up top. Harry punched into his phone, Done now. Meet near Diagon? Strand entrance?

Then Harry steeled himself and turned towards the door.

The moment he got out of the church and the police let him under the tape, Harry was ambushed.

“Mr Potter! Mr Potter! There’s evidence to suggest that we have a killer from the magical community on our hands, which stands to reason why you are here. Can you comment? The general public are in an outcry and I am sure there are many people who would rest easier at night knowing there’s communication between our forensic department and a magical inquest. Any words?”

She spoke so fast that Harry could barely think. “No comment,” he said. “Wait. How do you know that?”

Lights flashed.

“Mr Potter!” another, shorter male, cried. “It’s known you’re an alchemist. What is the stance of the Alchemist’s Guild? Can magic help us discover what — MR POTTER!”

“Mr Potter!”

There was a sudden lurch, and for one crystal clear, horrifying moment Harry thought a journalist grabbed him. But that journalist was being trampled; Harry was indeed being grabbed, but not by the media. He was pulled into the crowd, rather roughly, and then — he gave a hiccuping yelp of surprise — thrust into the air.

Oh my God. Oh Merlin.  

He was crowd-surfing. Rolling over people, cameras flashing, the brilliant blue sky above. Hands were pushing into him like an army of cats underneath, a hundred little kneading paws, but really strong! Up they pushed him, and up — onto his back, pressing their palms into his shoulders, his hips, thighs. People were even touching his bum. He could see banners and signs rippling overhead. Girls were on shoulders, some of them without their tops on. Red permanent marker loud across their chests: Not my blood.

The protesters took him up and cried out, loud and variously, until one chant bound them all: “Anti-Vamp Man! Anti-Vamp Man!” With fists pumping three times. Harry even heard a group of teenagers call out Death to the Dead! , which worried him a little. But Harry was quickly surfed away from them.

A group of Black Africans were merging in with their own protest, their square billboards on sticks proclaiming Old Testament words but also “God hates Vampires” ; “GOD ALONE ETERNAL LIFE” ; “Say NO to Vampirism!”.

Harry couldn’t see the police anymore. They were at the edge of the crowd, unable to get through. Harry felt a hysterical sort of laugh bubble up. But some of the signs said “BI-SEX EVIL” and “VAMPIRES = GAY”, giving Harry the strangest sense of emotional whiplash.

As he passed over the insane waterbed of hands, he could see the National Gallery flashing in the sun. Colourful stretched banners glinted from the steps. A group of people who looked suspiciously similar to folk Harry had secretly worked with last year were holding up the biggest banner of them all. It blazed, “CRIMINALISE BITING.”

Cameras were thrust into the air, selfie sticks waving like overlong reeds, all capturing the panoramic of Trafalgar Square, uproared in life.

Harry could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket. He was immensely grateful for putting it in the one with a zip.

“HARRY!”

Startled, and with rocking labour, Harry turned to Nelson’s column. Ron was there, one arm windmilling, clinging to the column, his face morphed in horror. He was holding his phone out and mouthing ‘ARE YOU OK!?’

“Yeah!” Harry called, his mouth opening wide, pantomimely nodding. “I’m fine!”

Suddenly, Harry couldn’t stop laughing. Harry felt himself be half lowered — but then wind and a rushing force. He was tossed up, freeflying. They did it again, and again, until he was laughing so hard his face hurt.

When they finally escaped the crowd, the protest moved on to march across Pall Mall and onto Piccadilly. Ron and Harry went the opposite way, and hid in the cool safety of the British Museum.

“Whew,” said Ron. “That was mental! That girl kissed me! Did you see? I think the photographers missed it.”

"They couldn't miss the rest of it, though," said Harry warily. "There'll be pictures everywhere. You know what Hermione will say."

Ron made a noise of disbelief. "What could you do? You were seven feet up!"

"I don't think she'll see it that way. Crowd surfacing’s pretty, err… I don’t know. I should have been frowning, or something."

"She's just wrong for the first time ever," said Ron. "You're not responsible for how people think, mate, whatever she says. One person can't do all that. If they could, you'd have done it already and we wouldn't have bloody vampires wandering around biting people. You're just showing them the way! The people! Like Moses! Giving them the tools to help themselves! I bet it's the wedding. Shouldn't be marrying him. He’s bad for her."

Harry couldn’t see how the two things were linked. "Does Krum like vampires?"

"Doesn't need to. I've seen this before," said Ron wisely. "It's common divide and conquer tactics, Harry. He took a look at you and I, he did, he saw us fighting for human rights. So what does he do? Turns Hermione against people. Against humans ."

"I thought you liked him? I thought you really liked him?”

“Harry, mate… no.” Ron was looking at him like Harry had said they should kill a kitten.

“But what about all those posters and that book you got signed.”

Ron made a disgusted sound. "He's a numptie. A dangerous numptie. Honestly, she shouldn’t even be getting married. It’s not for her. It’s doing her head in."

Harry was looking around. There was a map next to the lady with the audio tours. “Do you wanna go to the House floor?”

“Aw, yeah, that one’s great!” agreed Ron. “Let’s do the machine that moves.”

“I think they got rid of it after the kid broke their arm.”

“I hate children,” said Ron, emphatically.

Through the big atrium of the museum was a cafe to the left, and a gift shop to the right. The sign ahead led into the main museum. In the huge foyer though with its marble floors and hanging skeleton, was a central curving booth, selling glossy leaflets, digital tour devices and a museum booklet you could exchange for your firstborn child. It was even more expensive than the coffee and cake, which cost them a whopping forty quid last visit.

Big walls swept up to an elaborate ceiling with sandstone arches. The huge dragon skeleton hung in the atrium; kids were craning their necks up in awe and calling out to each other.

Harry grinned. One boy was staring up with a profound look of wonder. Next to him, out of view, his slightly older brother raised his hands and started creeping. A thin jet of water that came out of his fingertips, and he squirted the distracted boy. Both of them were dressed eccentrically, as were their parents, in a mishmash of confused Victorian.

Harry’s smile did not quite fall, but it faltered slightly. Behind him Ron was in line, but must have got to the front of the queue because he was haggling with the desk clark, as if he could get a discount from the British Museum. Harry, meanwhile, was gazing at the startled younger boy, with his shock of dark hair. 

In his mind’s eye he saw his father standing him. Harry had come to the museum once as a child, and naturally James had forgotten to bring any muggle money. A lot of places were only just swapping over to accept galleons and the news of legislative changes was constant. Sirius was his usual self, flirting with the lady on the till. He, James and Harry had gone into the gift shop to wait for the others to come out the toilets.

James hoisted a delighted Harry onto his hip, giving his exaggerated story to the woman of how Harry had been born. A great storm, magical interference, etcetera. Meanwhile, Sirius was weaving a very subtle Dominate into her mind. Within a minute, Harry had been given one of the gift shop’s handsome bronze lions, which fit into his two palms. The lady was waving it away as a gift. Nearby, Remus was looking nervous but he did not say, nor do, anything.

Lily jogged over at last, her heels clicking on the marble. Her hair was freshly brushed, and she’d stuffed her coat into the large handbag over her shoulder. “Wow. Really wasn’t expecting it to be so warm. Thanks for waiting. Where’s Peter?”

“Bathroom.”

“Still?” Lily exhaled. “What is he doing in there?”

She must have noticed Sirius elbowing James and sniggering, because Lily said, “What?” 

Of course they said nothing. Sirius said, “What do you think Harry, should we go see the pigeons?” to a cue of Harry squealing.

But Lily’s expression had gone blank. She was looking between her son and the bronze lion in his hands, to the woman behind the till, who was blinking sluggishly and apologising to her next customer and asking for them to repeat what they’d said.

Harry was pulled out of reverie by the child crying.

“Look at the sign!” the mother snapped.

Customers are reminded that All indiscreet magic is prohibited.

“And don’t do that to your brother!”

The water mage child was nursing a bruised ego but was otherwise unharmed; he was tugging his hand away from his mother moodily, and as soon as it was free, he hit his brother. Dad swept in to berate him again and the family headed into the main museum.

“Stingy here aren’t they?” exclaimed Ron. “Hey, you all right?”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “I’m fine. Come on.”

They wasted time in the magic gallery and the House wings, laughing at the taxidermies of unicorns with too-big resin eyes and the line of pink puffskeins that were horrifying in death. There were wax works of famous mages, Ron got especially excited about the ancient pyromancers, who were rigged to shoot fire out of their hands at a black awning, and meant that all the children in a twenty metre radius cried out and scrambled away from the exhibit. Harry supposed that one would be gone next.

The Hall of Elements was really just a lot of special effects of wind tunnels and water sprays and fire gouting out at a safe distance. The earth stand was especially boring. Harry supposed the British Museum didn’t want to make an actual earthquake. A chamber like that would be cool, though. 

At the top of the fake hill they lay back to watch a multimedia presentation of the Houses. It was set to play out across the star-decorated ceiling. It was almost finished, though, and after a loud, music-rich display of The Ninth House — complete with flashing light and storm effects, fog and rain and the cry of wolves through the winter — which had Harry and Ron gesturing animatedly, the tone of the presentation changed.

The last three houses were referred to as “The Shadowed Three”; the houses which were either dead or considered so dark, that their magics were illegal to practice. The Tenth House came on with a constellation scattering of stars that linked up to form a pattern in the dark space: the glowing outline of a person’s head. It lifted starry hands and beneath it more shapes formed: the outline of giant puppet rods. The strings attached to people, little silver figures who began to dance and weave and then cry and fall down on their knees.

Ron’s smile dropped. He turned hesitantly to Harry. “Hey, mate, maybe we should go get some food?”

Harry was staring at the light show. The House of Minds gave way to the next house, the Eleventh House, The House of Ghosts. Made of astral travellers and psychometrers, the scene stylistically showed a person rising from their bed, the dot-to-dot star picture of a man going to sleep and lifting up out of their body. A glow of even softer stars outlined his spirit. 

“Able to project their spirit beyond their body,” the voiceover was saying, “Astralists spend years strengthening the cord that attaches their soul to their physical form, so that they can move beyond it with increasing distance into the astral plane. The nature of this ability is poorly understood, and with so few Astralists left in the world, it has all but died. With it comes the loss of the House’s famed psychometry, the ability to discover facts about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them.”

Neville’s house. The House of Ghosts. The “Dead House” now, since he’d been the last. The stars faded and a fog machine hissed artificial mist across the void. Ron looked across at him worriedly, and then up at the last story. Unlike all the other stories, now the air grew cold, and it was told in a whisper; there were no stars to mark a picture. Into nothingness they fell, hurtling through space, until they came to halt in an endless empty black.

“The House Unmourned. The darkest of arts belong to the Twelfth House. Once lethal with power, the black arts have fallen to the weight of three magical civil wars and a global inquisition, to say nothing of vigilante mages who would still target this House today. Presumed extinct, the Twelfth House lies as silent as the grave, diminished through the years to bedtime stories and cautionary tales — of mages who reached too far, past this world and into the cold-edged things that lie beyond it, in a dimension better left untouched.”

It was more sympathetic than Harry had expected.

He and Ron got up, and explored the rest of the museum, Harry with a weight on his chest that Ron’s forced cheer couldn’t clear. They found themselves in the Astral Chamber, in the less used part of the museum. There were no new exhibits. It felt ghostly, appropriate perhaps. Harry felt a sad, small kinship with the silent displays. 

Ron stuck close, and Harry let his shoulder fall into his as they waited in a queue at the gift shop, Ron nattering about the extendible figures of Merlin and how the whole place was going to the dogs since their removal.

Just as they were leaving the museum, Harry got a text — from Nixon. Something had held him up, and although he’d contact Harry, he should go home. If Harry was being honest with himself, he was quite keen to be out of London. Ron had parked his car in an NCP, so once they’d found the Ford amid the multilevel labyrinth of far better cars, they left. Throughout the whole journey Harry put his head on the window and watched the road tick by.

Back home, Ron begged off on doubling back to Chippenham. He curled up with a contended noise on the sofa, while Harry faffed around to locate the spare duvet.

But suddenly, Ron said, “Hey.”

His voice was so altered, so strange, that Harry dropped the pillow he’d been fixing. “What?”

“Get the lapdog,” said Ron.

“Laptop.”

“There's something on.”

Harry got the laptop from his room, and set it down on the glass coffee table, his white socks pressing into the toe-curling rug. “What channel?”

“I don’t know,” said Ron, the reflection in his eyes catching a video playing out.

“Well what is it?” pressed Harry.

“The protest earlier. Check the news.”

Harry googled it. The flood of results was immediate. He followed the first link to a video on Youtube, noticing it as being published by the country’s primary news broadcast, with more views than they’d ever gotten. Harry turned the screen so Ron could see it too.

Girls burned alive after being 'doused in petrol' then nailed in shed

18,175,114 views • August 28, 2020

8.91M subscribers

See more: Vampire hate crimes on the rise

Full Article Available Online Here

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An 11-year-old girl and her sister, 15, were burned alive after being "doused in petrol" and then nailed inside a shed that was set on fire.

A group of boys are being held in custody for kicking and attempting to stamp to death a teenage girl in a park while she defended her younger sister. The girls were dragged, one unconscious, beyond the park floodlights to be trapped in a shed where they were burned to death.

The girls may have been approached because the older girl wore 'gothic' clothing, according to police.

Brandon Lancaster attacked Sophie Palmer, age 15, as she begged him and five other youths to stop beating her sister.

The two girls who had been crossing the park to avoid protests in town, were walking home from a relative's house to their flat in Twickenham shortly before midnight when they were approached by the group of teenagers.

Sophie spoke with the boys, one witness claiming she 'sounded stressed' as she chatted and even handed out cigarettes to the group. However, the mood changed suddenly when the six teenage boys savagely turned on her sister.

One was heard to shout "it's a fucking leech" and “death to the dead” as the boys, lead by Lancaster, started a melee of violence which began when he took the child's head by her hair, to press a lit cigarette into her eye. Sophie Palmer tried to move in between the boys as they beat the eleven year old Anna with a volley of kicking and punching, eventually driving the child to the ground.

Sophie cried for them to stop as she cradled her sister's head in her lap. Her plea went unheeded as Lancaster stamped on the child’s face, with other boys joining in to kick the side of her head as she lay on the ground.

Sophie was unconscious when she and Anna were dragged to a games shed on the edge of the park. There they were nailed to planks of wood and doused in petrol before being set on fire.

The attackers were reportedly aged 14 to 17, and the horror was watched by girls who allegedly streamed the fire from the park, drawn by screaming that was described 'as so wild I thought it was a cat'. 15 year old Sophie regained consciousness as she was being nailed to the wood. 11 year old Anna was conscious throughout.

Detective Chief Superintendent Dominic Nixon, Senior Investigating Officer at the Metropolitan Police, said it was one of the most violent murders he had come across in his lengthy career.

Both bodies were recovered from inside the burned shed. The girls streaming the fire tried to access it using large sticks and by throwing rocks at the window to break it. They were attacked by the same group of boys who returned after running away, but further help arrived as other teenagers entered the park.

Nixon said early this year that 'hate crime is rising sharply' in Britain. 'We see a trend when serious and particularly grave offences are being committed by children.'

He also highlighted 'an increasing tendency of extremist crimes committed by young people' with a 'sharp increase' in 2019 and 2020 'after the onset of legislative changes made to the vampiric condition which would make it easier to be Embraced.'

It is currently unknown how the boys discovered Anna Palmer’s condition; it is illegal in Britain to Embrace children below the age of 18.

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A sickening silence filled the apartment. Harry’s stomach went down as if from a great rollercoaster. For perhaps a minute neither he nor Ron said a word. Harry’s heart was thudding. His head felt strangely swollen, his tongue too big for his mouth. His head too, felt large, a stupid, big thing. 

“You think they were at the protest?” said Ron at last.

Harry cleared his throat, but he didn’t know what to say. Ron looked at him and then he looked away. 

“Maybe,” said Harry.

Ron nodded idly, his gaze on the laptop.

They both slept badly that night, Harry with dreams of a green light, cutting through a watery dark.

Lucius awoke in his own mind, or in a place beyond his mind; he never could quite tell.

The Dark Lord was barefoot and dark robed, his presence a whisper between the cold slabs of stone.

“I hope you do not mind, Lucius, I took the liberty of fashioning this dream after your family’s graveyard.”

The hairs on the back of Lucius’ neck rose. Above them a silver sky was turning, mottled black with a storm. But he could hear no thunder.

“It’s a particular form of life that we represent on this planet,” said the Dark Lord. “The life of feeling and thought. With a twist, or a tweak, I could remove from you all ability to think and feel. I could render your brain mute and dumb; or your body responsive but disconnected from its faculties, permanently and consciously retarded.”

Voldemort’s white hand rasped over a headstone. It read, ‘Abraxas Malfoy. Jan. 26. 1954 — Jan. 24. 1996. A man without reproach.’

And beneath it, ‘Blessed sleep we all return.’

Lucius fell to his knees. 

Voldemort circled him, moving between the gravestones. The magic here was low, at least the ambience of life, even dreaming Lucius could feel the absence of his affinity, instead: death’s lamplight lit. He hated graveyards. They all did. No safety or anchor for their House’s magic to grasp. The Dark Lord was ever one to cripple his own comfort if it meant discomforting another greater still. He was furious.

Lucius did not speak, he knew better than, but his throat was dry and his magic was all over the place. Humiliating.

“Does this image cheer you, Lucius? Would you like to be a prisoner in your own flesh?”

Lucius’ throat bobbed. Its movement attracted eyes. “No, my Lord,” his breath stuttered.

The air moved, the only tell. Voldemort lunged across the space in a sweep of shadow and cloak. His pale jaw opened and hellish canines erupted out of his gums. They cracked down on cold air, inches from Lucius’ face. Breath fogged around his mouth, about the curl of lips, the thick edge of fangs.

“Then why,” whispered Voldemort; and the words sounded so distinct in the hush, “would you disobey me?”

Over that frozen snarl two hooded, crimson eyes watched Lucius, too bright and too predatory. Vampirism had furnished the Dark Lord with an animal that Lucius had never seen in all his life, drenched in old magic. It sent a thrill — and a jolting hiccup of fear — in a bolt through his body.

“My slippery friend, who is always landing on his feet. Are you still loyal to me, Lucius, or are you just a dog to a different master?

“I am loyal to you my Lord, I swear it.”

“Is that so?” Voldemort murmured.

“Utterly.”

“Then why did you visit Harry Potter?” 

Voldemort snarled it. Spitte actually hit his mouth.

“She demanded it my Lord, in the way these creatures do. They were not idle words, neither, but an empowered command. It is as a mind mage might work, even, these creatures — I could think nothing through it, not even my own name. It pulls from deep in the blood, my Lord.”

“As much as all that?” Voldemort crooned, his dark eyebrows raised in mock sympathy. He lifted an elegant hand and Lucius flinched; but all the Dark Lord did was tap Lucius’ cheek with his finger — on the bone, near to his eye. Crouched in front of him, the kingly train of the Dark Lord’s robes were shifting in an unnatural way, settling about his body like smoke. It pooled on the frost and grass. “Her power so inevitable?”

Voldemort came closer still, his face lit by the strange sky.

“Then you are weak. Learn to resist it."

Until then it had been intimate, like the touch of snow or wings, now his power came down like a condemnation. Magic spread out and cracked, broke a tombstone nearby.

Lucius was shaking. A fine tremor that touched his wrists, hands, the stray lock of hair at his temple. “My Lord, I could not physically resist it. I am as disgusted by the situation as you. I do not want this creature’s blood inside of me. My loyalty is to you. My mind remains a closed door to all of them, so they presume me to be loyal. Perhaps it is... beneficial to have them rely on such false loyalty. I can do you more good out there if they trust me, than I can if I am…” Lucius trailed off.

“In a box?” Voldemort said lightly.

Lucius paled.

Frigid fingers grasped his jaw, and tightened. Voldemort held him for four long, agonised seconds. Lucius stared back with wide blue eyes, controlling his breathing. Eventually, one by one, the cold bones of those fingers lifted, and Voldemort stood.

“No tragedy is inevitable, no fate unconquerable.”

Voldemort walked across a circle of dead grass, a scar where the ground was dry and black. Where his bare feet passed little flowers, violet and white, rose up through the grey ground. Above them the skies swirled, a roiling silver cloudforce and heatless lightning.

“So perhaps…” Voldemort whispered, and the low smile he turned over his shoulder was so unexpected that Lucius startled. “You have a point.”

Lucius had never known such relief. To what point his Lord was referring, he did not ask.

“I have never been content to crouch in the darkness, a captive king with vast spoils on destiny’s throne,” said Voldemort. “But did I not welcome strife? Should no plot nor scheme trap us and snare? Should no storm break upon our roofs? Shall our friends never fail us? Did Christ himself not weep as he was thus betrayed?”

“Perhaps imprisonment flings open the door to wisdom.”

Wisely, Lucius said nothing. Not least because curiosity had captured him. A small, fragile feeling had started up in his chest. A year ago he could not have imagined a situation like the one they were in. The baby had really been thrown out with the bathwater, and all his worldly knowns were gone, cast to a strange sea. Lucius was adrift in its water, water that reached out in all directions, with no shore to swim toward. He could no longer tell what direction was north. 

The Dark Lord of his old life represented their shared knowns; a stable and powerful life with much future. Now Voldemort was in a box, literally, having to speak to Lucius through dreams, exploiting this wretched sire-childe gift where one could enter the childe’s dreams. Voldemort, being the “sire” now, and Lucius the childe, distasteful terms aside, he could exert his will and appear in Lucius unconscious, while he slept the day away. The only silver lining, this private line of communication they discovered, in a sky so black that Lucius was lost.

He had forgotten what it was like. Before power. Before Voldemort had become who he was today, before their group’s rise to lofty heights it was now, before Voldemort slew the previous head of the First House and snatched the mantle out from under him, he’d been himself. Stubborn, clever, with the sort of arrogance rarely seen outside of seven year old boys, and the confidence of someone who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he must succeed. Not would succeed — a strange but distinct difference Lucius had come to see in some people — must succeed. In the marrow of the Dark Lord’s bones was an urge or a guiding star that stripped him (for better and worse) of all other options, bar the one he had set his mind to.

The world moved differently around him. Lucius had seen it in a few rare others. When they had a goal, the immaterial force of their soul was crowned with fire. 

The Dark Lord was the most rebellious man Lucius had ever met, he would not bow to any system of control above him, it was entirely absent of his being. A prodigy and magical entrepreneur, if anyone could see a way through this dark — if anyone could force it — he would. Because he could not abide by anything else.

As Voldemort spoke a feeling of hope in his chest grew, until Lucius was looking up with wide, focussed eyes.

Voldemort had stopped pacing. He was staring up at the shifting skies, his expression serene.

“In the bare and gloomy cell of one’s mind, I find myself thinking in ways I have never thought before. The future puzzles me, yes, but…”

“Experience whispers that this is just the beginning.”