The Toxicologist

The Fifth House

The House of Miracles

Transmute matter. Exclusively a gift of the Fifth House, Alchemists are born with the inherent ability to sense the magic present in all living plants, and even the deep minerals of the world, providing them unusual insight into their properties. Sensitive to residual world magic, it is rare that a child born with alchemical ability is ignorant of their House to come, even if they were orphaned at a young age. When the Alchemist’s primary power awakens they gain the ability to manipulate the structure of residual magic, and masters of this House are able to transfigure one material to another. The magical bank is overseen and managed by the Alchemist’s Guild.

Members of the Fifth House are known as Alchemists or Thaumaturges

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

For the third time that day Harry sighed, heavy under a sort of strained anguish.

“I so hope Draco exists.”

Ron made a bitter sound. It was Friday night, but he was still clicking at his computer, glumly now, chin in hand, his red hair and freckles aglow in the light of the monitor. Ron was having as little luck as Harry.

“Yeah,” said Ron mournfully. “This'll be a really tricky case if he's imaginary.”

Ron’s mouse moved a touch, but barely. He’d been staring at the same archives for six hours. “It’s like standing in front of the fridge,” said Ron wistfully. “Staring into it, hoping something will appear.”

“Know the feeling,” said Harry. “I think we’re going to have to talk to his friends.”

“Eurgh.”

Distantly, all the way from reception, the bell over the front door tinkled. They both tensed and looked at each other. Ron whispered, “I wish Dung would take it away. It was better before, when we didn’t know.”

Harry nodded grimly. They were simpler times. “Come on, she has been fired, after all.”

Ron saved his work nervously and shut down his computer. “Did you remember to bring clothes?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, shaking the bag that he’d grabbed from beneath his desk.

“I forgot,” said Ron.

Harry frowned sympathetically. “She’ll kill you.”

“Why does she go to all these posh places now!” Ron said. “It’s not right. It’s not Hermione.”

Harry was a little embarrassed. He thought Hermione looked rather nice in all her ‘posh’ stuff. “If we stop at a shop you could buy a shirt?” he offered. “We have to drop her off anyway. Just run while she’s showering.”

Ron looked hopeful. He nodded once, set his jaw, and stood forcefully. 

Outside in reception Hermione was talking with Lavender, which was a terrible idea. Halfway up the corridor they heard Lavender say, “I think it’s really inspirational — job seeking instead of a hen party. Very sensible when you’re unemployed.”

Harry and Ron shared a look and bolted to meet them.

“Pardon? I have a hen party!” snarled Hermione.

“You do?” said Ron, astonished, skidding to a halt. Harry could have hit him.

Teddy was suspiciously quiet, hiding like a coward behind frontdesk, deep behind his Mac, his handsome head bowed very low. He was frowning intensely, as though at some impossible mathematical equation.

“You know I do,” whirled Hermione, turning to them. “We do. Tonight, in fact.”

Lavender blinked. Teddy looked up.

“I thought we were having… dinner?” said Harry, looking at Hermione with his face turned slightly, his eyebrows raising.

“We were never having dinner,” said Hermione. “You’ve just forgotten, that’s all, silly you. It’s the hen party tonight.”

“We’re hens?” said Ron, aghast, struggling to accommodate his new transformation.

“Yes,” said Hermione primly, forcefully, staring Ron down, before she turned to smile at Lavender. “So I hope you enjoy your night, certainly, we will.”

Outside they found a clear sky full of pigeons preparing to roost, and a warm end of day.

Ron cried, “Why’d you tell her that?”

“Because I deserve a hen party!” said Hermione, just as shrill. “God knows, after everything. We were going out anyway. I’ll just cancel the reservation. We’re in London!” As if to emphasise, Hermione spread her arms wide. “Might as well enjoy it! We never go out. Out , out, I mean. It’s always work work work.”

Wisely, neither of them spoke. Work work work was all Hermione, not them. Harry could move into workaholic mode when he was midway through a case he cared about, but not so much Ron.

All the same they dropped Hermione off at her flat, her swanky flat that neither Harry nor Ron had known about for location. 

“Bloody hell,” said Ron, as he switched on his indicator light. The steps leading up to her concierged front door were wide and white and clean. Flower baskets hung front either side of an imposing black door, wider and shinier than a door needed to be. “Didn’t know you were in Mayfair.”

Hermione looked uncomfortable. “Well it doesn’t matter now, does it? I’ve handed in my notice. Shall we meet in town?”

“If that’s all right,” said Harry. “We gotta stop at a shop.”

“I’ll text you both, just in case one of you doesn’t see.”

The sun was setting. Harry and Ron got cash out of a machine. People were beginning to spill out of pubs and into the street, chatting over drinks after work, as Friday night kicked off. Harry could smell food everywhere. With crossed legs a pair of women were laughing riotously from the Ivy cafe, sitting on the veranda, sipping at cocktails in huge gin glasses.

“Oh, shit,” said Harry. He turned to look at Ron. “Drinking. Your car’s in the short stay.”

Ron snorted. “It’s Hermione, though. We won’t be drinking.”

“It’s a hen party,” frowned Harry. “Bachelorettes sorta do that.”

“Yeah, but not Hermione. I mean we’re her bachelorettes. How likely is it that ‘mione’s gonna expect us to drink.”

“We drink,” said Harry in surprise.

“Yeah but… not with her.”

Harry thought of all the things recently she’d been through, and of Hermione crying, the job loss. They both looked at each other, and the reality of it dawned on Ron, too.

Harry was certain. “She said outout,” he intoned.

“What’s out out?” squeaked Ron.

“Drinking and — even clubbing. Properly out. Messy out.”

“No, Harry,” said Ron slowly, his eyes going wide. He was shaking his head. “No.”

“It is, though.” Harry inhaled deeply and released the breath. “You know it is.”

Ron considered what lay ahead of them, reaching out in front of the night like a road unknown. Resolutely, he said, “I’ll move the car.”

They stood outside a Wetherspoons pub.

“They call it Spoons,” said Ron. 

“Spoons,” said Harry, with forced cheer, casually nodding or bopping his head to an absent tune. “Cool. Looks good!”

People were staring at them. 

“Dunno,” said Ron. “This is the place with the chip people.”

“With the what?”

“There’s a Facebook group called ‘Wetherspoons Paltry Chip Count’. Muggles post pictures of how few chips they get on the plate. They line them up.”

There was an old lady smoking outside, wearing black fishnet stockings. A group of balding gentlemen in their fifties were drinking pints on the other side of the door, elbowing each other about a gaggle of young girls on the opposite side of the road.

“It should be… cheap, then?” said Harry cautiously, trying for optimism. He pulled his attention away from the men.

“Oh. It will be,” muttered Ron. The balding men looked at them, taking in their clothes, Harry in his Armani jumper staring up at the pub’s name like a plonker. Ron’s red head shrugged even deeper into his shoulders. “Let's go in.”

“Sure,” Harry agreed in relief — he’d been woozy all day and wanted to splash his face. “I need the loo.”

But two steps forward, they were jumped.

She came out of nowhere. A woman, who Harry would have been hard pressed not to have noticed before — where did she even come from? — ambushed them. Stinking under so many levels of jackets and layers, she looked like a homeless person, but much worse, with cracked black teeth and damp oiled hair. Beneath the rabid ecosystem of her clothing she was quite skinny.

“Danger awaits you this night!” cried the woman. She pointed a gnarled finger at Harry, right beneath his nose. Harry went cross eyed in surprise, immediately halting. “Danger is in your future, your immediate future!”

“All right Mildred?” called one of the balding men. “She’s all right. She giving you trouble, lads?”

“Er, we’re okay,” stuttered Harry, his heart pounding. “I think,” he tried to edge around her. “Excuse me.”

Mildred continued to shake her finger at them, her eyes fevered and wild. Ron stumbled over his own feet, hitting the glass door with his shoulder. After a few waltzing steps Harry managed to pass her.

“Bloody hell,” said Ron. “Muggles are just like us, sometimes. Looks just like Trelawney, if she lived in Knockturn Alley — and then died there.” Ron cast his attention around the pub. “All right, let’s do this. Harry, you go to the loo, I’ll get the table.”

Ron the General spoke with such authority that it calmed and energised Harry instantly. Yes, a plan.

“All right! Back in a mo.”

Inside the men’s toilet Harry went to splash his face. It was one of those push taps, annoyingly, whose plunger came up really fast if you weren’t pressing it. Bent over the sink with his hands cupped, Harry tried to catch the cold water before the stream ended, having to work his elbow into the equation.

The men’s toilet smelt poorly. He tried especially hard to numb his nose to it, to not take in anything, but even then, a prickle of awareness alerted Harry. He was no longer alone. 

Something moved, but where he could not quite tell. It did not feel human. Its presence was barely noticeable — flirting on the edge of his awareness. It could have been outside on the street, or as close as in a cubicle behind him. Harry had never been able to sense a dead thing before now, or at least not like this, and he couldn’t tell what it was he was even feeling, not exactly. His life without pills was new and fresh and unwanted. He’d no practice in it.

What he did know was that there was something dead focussing on him. Following him. Tracking him.

The thought of unknown company filled Harry with a wash of dread. Cool air passed over the back of his neck, and Harry stopped what he was doing. The tap shut off.

He stood there, bent over, his hands draining of water. He couldn’t hear anything shift or move, just the distant noise of the pub.

Harry looked up — achingly slow, eyes dragging up — to the mirror.

Nothing. Just his face. Just the loo’s cubicle, the urinals to his right, the hand drier to his left. Harry’s own unsettled expression.

He could feel his heart beating. Harry twisted his head around to look at the toilets himself, without the mirror. Bits of wet loo roll were abandoned in strips on the ground. The door of the toilet behind him was half open, but vacant. There were two other cubicles, one wide open, one locked with a paper “Out of Working Order” sign stuck to it.

Conclusively, nothing. Harry shook off his hands a couple times, and looked back at the mirror.

He inhaled so sharply it got stuck in his throat. In the reflection was Harry’s head, but entirely upside down. It was all bent and pulled, at such an angle, his neck rubbery and shiny, stretched to support the drop. His wild mess of hair was all the way down by his chest, and above it, his mouth was open wide in a pained scream, his shrimp pink tongue sticking out.

Harry fell backwards. He fell right into the door of the cubicle and almost onto the ground. His breathing was rapid fire, coming out in gasps. 

Skidding slightly on the damp mucky ground, Harry surged out of the bathroom, slamming the door open in his haste. It hit the wall on the other side.

“You’re seeing things,” he commanded angrily. “It’s the pills. It’s not real.”

All the way out he could feel that same something, dogging his steps. 

In the pub he tried to look normal, patting his hands down on his trousers. From Harry’s wild eyes to the nervous jerking, a few people looked up at him. But mostly, they ignored him. The pub was packed.

Ron was guarded a small table in the back. He looked outrageously guilty, hunched over a line of shot glasses, all four of them, full of a dangerously translucent looking liquid.

“We doing shots?” said Harry, his eyebrows climbing into his hairline. “Why are there four?”

Ron was fidgeting nervously. “Bit of liquid courage you know, I thought — before she gets here.”

“What?” said Harry. “We’re starting without Hermione?”

“I mean, nothing mental!” said Ron quickly. “Just a few shots. Didn’t you see her text? She’s straightening her hair.”

Oh. That would take ages. Harry sat down and eyed the shots suspiciously. “This better not be Sambuca.”

“It’s Vodka.”

“Why are there four?”

“It’s just the deal. Also the queue was long,” said Ron.

“Two? Each!”

“Don’t make me go it alone, Harry.”

Harry fingered the base of the closest shot glass, turning it warily around in the low light. “On three?”

“One! Two!”

They threw back their heads. Harry scrunched up his eyes and died. Ron coughed low from his chest. His eyes were watering.

A server was looking over at them. Had been ever since Harry had sat down. Harry could feel the man’s eyes on him. After they finished their shots, Harry watched as the man he wove his way towards them, trying to be discreet about it. Harry was hyper-aware suddenly, of all the space behind him, of how exposed his shoulders and neck were.

The man appeared, so suddenly that Harry banged his knee into the tables. But he — he winked at Harry — he was definitely looking at them — and from a circular black tray he bequeathed another two shots, shots they hadn’t even ordered, bright neon in colour.

“Harry van Hellsing,” the waiter uttered, ducking his head so he could say so covertly, trying not to smirk. As he set the second pair of shots in front of Ron he said, “Hellsing’s friend. On the house. Just don’t mention it at the bar.”

The waiter glanced over his shoulder, gave them a second smirk and left, hurrying back to the pumps.

Ron stared. He looked at Harry, then at the shots, then Harry again, who himself was looking at the additional booze with horror.

“Waste not, want not?” offered Ron.

Harry pulled forward the shot.

Hermione arrived at their table in a whirl of perfume and shiny straight black hair, her ivory city coat hanging open around a wine red dress. 

Harry, benevolent and warm, smiled cheerily at her. “You look excellent,” he said. “Really, really excellent.”

Hermione looked at Harry for two seconds too long. “Thank you,” she said slowly. She slid a suspicious look at Ron, whose eyebrows were very high. His gaze was idling on her dress. “Are you both quite well?”

“Your hair’s dark,” said Ron.

“Better than well,” said Harry crisply. “Let’s get you a drink. Let’s get you a drink, too,” Harry clapped his hand on Ron’s back. Ron shot him a delayed look of pleasure.

“I could do with a drink,” said Ron.

“I bet you could.”

Harry shot his finger at Hermione, straight out. “What would you like?”

“Oh. Erm. Something fruity is fine. A flavoured cider?”

Harry retracted his finger gun and zipped off.

He was served so much faster than his fellows in the queue, those plebeians in the heaving mosh pit, that same waiter trying not to smile as he opened up one of those ciders from the fridge. Harry returned to their table, high on the feeling, like an emperor, with Hermione’s drink, his own, Ron’s, and four more drinks he’d been gifted with.

“I — er,” said Hermione as the drinks, and four shots, appeared on the table in front of her. “I don’t think I ordered…”

“Didn’t need to,” said Harry jovially. “These are yours. Barman liked your coat.”

“Oh?” Hermione touched her hair, her eyes going to the bar. “Well, I — If you’re sure?”

Ron was throwing a dirty look at the barman, crashingly demoted in esteem.

Hermione picked up the cider. “Harry, could you book a taxi? I’ve got a booth for us booked at the Spire.”

Ron choked. “That’s a Guild dive!”

“Well, yes,” said Hermione, “but it was quite difficult to get a place so I’d appreciate it if you —”

“Hermione, that's Guild ,” cried Ron. “I thought we didn’t do Guild?”

Hermione looked like she wanted the ground to eat her up. Harry had never seen her squirm so bad.

“I — yes, about that. When I said the Guild was questionable and deserved our attention —“

“You said they were neo-Nazi’s! ”

“I did not!”

“Genocidal supremacists! Exclusive totalitarian bigots! You said they were a breeding ground of slippery slopes and blood prejudice!”

“I — well if you’re going to twist everything I say,” said Hermione, flustered. “People’s views can change.”

“Nice of you to mention they had,” said Harry, his good will gone. The internal jazz music stopped. “Given the reason we didn’t do anything with them was because of your vehemence that they were evil.”

Ron was looking at Hermione as if she’d grown a second head. And, to both their amazement, Hermione picked up a radioactive shot, lifted it to her lips, and tossed it back in one gulp.

“Well now you can go to their clubs,” she said. “I’ve joined them.”

Harry’s jaw fell. Ron almost fell off his chair. 

“Joined!”

It could have been Ron; it could have been Harry. They both shouted it at once. A girl with her back to them glanced over her shoulder, her chair wedged at a bustling table. Fortunately the pub was so loud it was hardly a concern.

“What do you expect?” said Hermione, just as flustered. “I’m not exactly rolling in opportunities, now. I met the head of our House and he was — more cordial than I expected. He’s a member of a racial minority, in fact, and so he understands prejudice on a personal level. We spoke.”

Hermione was whisking the straw in her drink so fast that the melting ice had made a little whirlpool.

Harry shook his head. He pulled out his phone, and started searching for a taxi company. 

Ron was flabbergasted. “Wait, no — we aren’t going to a Guild place. There’s no way!”

“Fine!” Hermione said, her face red. She looked around self-consciously. “I know another place. It’s just outside Soho.”

“What’s it called?” said Harry, looking up through his lashes, his face angled towards his phone.

“Guilty Pleasures,” said Hermione nervously.

Harry google mapped it. “Found it,” he said. “Let me call a taxi. What do you guys think, ten minutes?”

Hermione looked down at the sea of drinks in dismay. 

Guilty Pleasures had a peculiar set of security checks that everyone had to go through to get in, and by the time drunk-Harry figured out what was going on, it was too late.

It was more rigorous than a bloody airport! They had to go through a huge machine, individually, like the body scanners he’d seen when you got on an aeroplane. Except this one did Harry the courtesy of puffing at him with pressurised air from fifty thin holes all around the machine. His belt and shoes were passing through a smaller detector in a tray. A bored lady with artful makeup was clicking a screen behind it. Two big security guards let him through, but not before Harry was made to exhale sharply into what he could only assume was a breathalyser. 

Since they let him through, it wasn’t monitoring alcohol.

Hermione slipped her shoes back on. A final lady was holding out a box to everyone, just outside the cloakroom.

“Liquids, silver and crosses,” she smiled. “Please put all liquids, silver and crosses into the box.”

Wearing crinkly clear disposable gloves on her hands, she thrust into Harry’s surprised grasp a thin plastic airport bag, the kind meant for liquids.

Harry stalled, his entire world shrinking down to that bag in his hands. Dazedly, and with building awareness, he looked around. 

Black and red decor; plush velvet chairs; girls in gothic dresses, smokey makeup; boys in makeup; a trance beat pushed out music through the wall, pulsing loudest from a dark chamber beyond — but most of all, most of all , emblazoned upon the neck of the very woman standing in front of him, still waiting for his silver and crosses, was a faded set of puncture marks.

Holy Merlin.

“Hermione,” said Harry slowly, his voice dangerously low.

Hermione caught up and looked between Harry and the lady, who was taking out a bag for Hermione, too. Harry swung his gaze to his old friend, feeling only the weight of their lifetime’s shared interactions stay his tongue. Hermione was even more nervous than she’d been at the pub, aflight with tension. She shot Harry a stubborn look, edged with jittery apprehension.

“I’m in no mood to put up with prejudice tonight!” she declared. A sheen of sweat glistened on her upper lip. Her hair was starting to go a bit frizzy. “Please, Harry. Just for tonight. You owe me.”

“Guys,” slurred Ron, stumbling into Harry’s back. “I think there’s a vampire back there.”

Hermione’s brown eyes were earnest, she was still looking at Harry, but with guarded misery, now trying to hide her disappointment. Harry stared cooly back at her with no expression, his jaw hard. Hermione opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it.

Hermione visibly tucked her shoulders and made herself small. The flimsy material of her dress caught the light. She was breathing heavily, a small insinuation of her breasts against silk. From her tense shoulders to her frizzing hair, and the care with which she’d put on her makeup, Harry suddenly felt like a dumb, giant shambling monster.

He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Fine.”

Hermione looked up. Where there had been guarded dismay and embarrassed disappointment now there was wounded hope.

Hermione launched herself at him and Harry stumbled a little, feeling the warmth of a hug flood him.

“You’ll like it, I promise!”

“I’ll hate it,” said Harry, amused, his mouth twitching. “But I’ve been a prat.”

A tall blonde moved past them with four friends, two of them wearing buttons that said, 'Team Mithras '. It was not a promising start. He double took the third badge, almost hidden where it was, on the literal arse of the girl with the low riding, tight jeans. Just below her belt it was pinned in, and read, ‘Team Voldemort.’

Ron was even slower to catch on as to what kind of club this was, and what kind of evening Hermione had improvised. A flock of girls in little skirts and enormous heels wobbled past, picking their way over the floor like leggy gazelles. One shot Ron a grin, clutching onto her friend’s arm. As she moved her hair away from her sweaty neck a mottled bruise appeared in view, ugly and violent purple. Harry saw it a second before Ron did. Ron's smile froze, and his gaze flicked to it, it stayed on the mark all the way until she vanished through the curtained archway, his mouth open and idling still on the huge set of teeth marks.

"Is that..." Ron started. "Harry, is that –?"

"Oh, do close your mouth, Ron," said Hermione tersely.

"We should have gone to the Guild club," said Ron.

"Well, we didn't. We're here now. This is my hen party and neither of you are going to ruin it!"

“I don’t want to be a hen!” wailed Ron.

Hermione bullied them into the club proper, after they’d stripped off their outer layers and Harry could abandon his jumper. Hermione shot them both astonished looks, her eyes on their – actually nice; yes, thank you for your surprise, Hermione – navy and black shirts. Harry had picked out Ron’s himself.

Through the arch the club was heaving with the bodypulse and beat of a thousand people. Neon lights swung out across the glitter and gloom. It was huge, set over two stories, with a central square gallery looking down, such that from the dancefloor downstairs you could look, and up, to people on the level above, dancing and talking and peering down to the crowd below.

There were cage dancers swinging their wet hair around — people nearby got sprayed, by whatever the hell it was they were soaked with — and an eerily hypnotic aerial dancer was floating across the ceiling, long banners of silk rippling out from her arms as she turned over and bowed her spine. Belatedly, Harry realised that through all the sheer fabric, he could see her nipples.

Ron was staring at the cage dancer in front of him with something akin to total mental shutdown. 

“Oh, it’s enormous,” said Hermione in dismay.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” yelled Harry. 

“Well, yes, I suppose.” Hermione stumbled slightly into him, and when she didn’t immediately correct herself, Harry helped prop her up. “It all seems a bit silly now!” Hermione shouted. “Maybe you’re right! Maybe we should go home!”

“Harry –!” Ron cried. He was being circled by two men wearing glittery hotpants, both topless, one of them whipping tassled nipple stickers around. 

Harry burst out laughing; to which Ron’s betrayed look of horror only made him laugh all the more. Hermione started laughing, too, and eventually, even Ron tried – with an undertone of hysteria. They managed to free him.

A very pretty girl with kohl-rimmed eyes and large doll-like black ringlets — wearing a (surely baking) black pvc catsuit — appeared in front of Hermione. Before any of them knew what she was doing, she had her mouth against hers.

“Bloody hell,” croaked Ron.

It was over before it began, the stranger smiling low, with half-closed eyes. She shouted over the music, “You’re gorgeous!” — before weaving away into a pair of writhing hips.

Hermione’s eyebrows were sky high and her mouth was spasming, her expression unable to settle on any one thing. She looked at Harry, and his dumbfounded shock, to Ron’s nude look of wonder, and she grimace-laughed. Hermione raised her hand to her mouth, her shoulders shaking with a mix of embarrassment and compliment. Someone swung by with a card reader and a tray of shots. 

Hermione pressed her index fingers to her ears. “It’s a bit loud, isn’t it!” she called.

Harry gestured to the floor above. “There’s a place upstairs!”

Holding hands they wove their way through the crowd at a snail’s pace, getting drinks sloshed all over their clothes. Having been encouraged to swipe their cards for another few shots, however, it hardly seemed to matter. 

As they pushed, and got pushed, Harry couldn’t help shake the feeling that he’d had all evening; of being watched. And right now, of being followed.

His mind was sluggish and he couldn’t quite focus; he wasn’t even minding the pushing — it was sort of friendly, all this restrained communal violence, no one minded when Harry stumbled right into a group, for example — but despite all that, the feeling pierced it, like a lance through fog.

It drew his gaze across the club, straight across, as though a certain area possessed a gravity for his attention. 

He searched the jumping, grinding, dancing club goers, being dragged by Hermione’s hand as Ron pulled them both from the front. Neon necklaces and glowing wrist bands; corsets and pvc; the occasional baffled normie (like themselves) but through it all — something deep and abiding called him.

It felt unerringly familiar, like a part of himself was out there, an extension of his own soul lurking somewhere, hidden in the crowd. Harry kept swinging his head up and out, craning to see, tripping over people’s feet, as well as his own.

Then — 

there.

Excitement thickened in his wrists, shins, thighs, the claws of something possessive splitting hot in his belly.

The person was practically a ghost, so much so that it startled him; they passed into view for only a second, one clear snapshot that Harry got of them, moving between the foreground of throbbing bodies and the blank wall behind.

Vivid blue eyes met green. Harry clocked him (or her — an indeterminate surrealism for Harry, who couldn’t tell gender for once) instantly, the ash blond hair so fair it was almost white, a flash of a face whiter still, elfin, but twisted with a focus that bordered on animal. He or she was watching Harry, as if following him through the crowd. Light silvered the high facial bones, the white eyelashes. Harry’s eyes met his stalker for one achingly long, surprised second, within which passed a collective of emotions that Harry hadn’t been aware he’d possessed. Hunger; anticipation; a flood of caution, too; the muscle readiness of an animal preparing to fight another, and beneath it all; desire, a confused sense of ownership. Something in him knew this person, he knew it as mine .

With a single, long, tracking look, the stranger met his gaze, before a giggling girl and her boyfriend came into Harry’s path, and blocked his view.

“Harry! Stop pulling so much!” Hermione yelled. Her face contorted and she gave another tug from her hand.

“Sorry —” called Harry, refocusing on the path ahead, his neck prickling wildly. Although he searched the crowd again, he couldn’t find them. Intoxicated and slow, Harry let himself be pulled along.

Upstairs turned out to be a terrible idea. It wasn’t just a railed walkway up above the floor below; it stretched out in either direction, a labyrinth of dark corridors with their own tiny dance rooms burrowing off them. Some had strip dancers in, others tiny bars, one just a mosh pit. The buildings adjacent to the club must have been interconnected.

The corridors themselves were impassable, gridlocked. They lost each other, thrice, until Hermione took over and tried to guide them to the part of the floor they’d seen from below, the one with the actual railings. Harry found himself pushed up against other people’s bodies, and angrily noted what some men thought that meant for Hermione. He threw his weight into one guy, finding that although there wasn’t quite room to throw a round kick or a knee out, it was astonishingly satisfying to elbow his ribs into a sound box.

They ended up stuck, but at least  in a room that had more women than groping men. And after a couple songs they accepted their fate. Harry even found some pleasure in it again, Hermione swinging her head left and right in drunken mirth and Ron jumping up and down with his hand in the air, pumping a beat.

This time, Harry didn’t feel the stranger until they were upon him.

The room’s colours thudded. Hunger touched Harry, lewdly, and some backroom place of his consciousness was stalling on the idea that he wanted to eat her.

She — he? — stepped behind Harry. He turned right into her. 

A wiry, athletic thing, their features caught the light between the strobes; high cheekbones, pale arched eyebrows and long, white-blond hair that framed a strange face. He or she was beautiful, all sharp angles and aristocratic wealth. Above the pale mouth a pair of cold blue eyes shone, a flash of winter and Alps.

They locked eyes. For a fraction of a second Harry saw surprise; the stranger covered it expertly, but it had been there. He or she was suddenly studying Harry with an intensity that bordered on manic. Harry couldn’t tell what came over him — time even did him this great perverse service of slowing it all down, too, so Harry could watch himself bloody do it, with ample leisure as the stranger leaned in and — Harry was moving to meet them, his whole body alert with an excitement and will of its own. Mine.

The stranger paused, hesitated, as if something wasn’t quite going to plan, but at the same time, the distance vanished and their lips met. Harry’s mouth had sealed over hers and his whole world exploded, as hunger need ache crackled across their mouths. An eerie growl rumbled, deep in Harry’s chest.

She angled her head strangely specifically, and now Harry realised why. He swallowed reflexively, quite in surprise as into his mouth was pushed a mouthful of liquid — alcohol by the taste. Harry sputtered and almost choked, laughing a little as their mouths separated. The possessive animal expanded in his chest.

She, or he or whatever really it didn’t even matter — smiled at him, though with a sober flicker of unease, their arctic eyes flicking over him.

“What’s your name!” Harry called, now just feeling relaxed and drunk. 

The stranger’s lips stretched into a wide smile. They didn’t speak, but just mouthed, “Carrow,” with glittering eyes.

Harry frowned, warning bells going off somewhere in his body, but distantly, so distantly that he didn’t notice Ron being ripped away from him — Hermione out the other side — until he turned and they weren’t there. 

The world swung by in long, violent lines of vertigo and Harry wondered, before he crashed into the wall beside him, what he’d swallowed.

Harry slid down, his world in slow motion, one palm slapping out to catch himself, smearing down the damp wall. “Wait — who — what —“

A second pair of boots appeared in front of him, and Harry blinked up dreamily to see a double image of his attacker. Quite literally.

Pale eyes, two sets, hair the same shade of blonde ash. Only, one of them had their hair braided back, the other wore it loose. 

They clearly weren’t expecting Harry to have the sort of wherewithal to stand, let alone run, skidding over the ground and crashing into the people nearby. Hands reached for him, but the clubbers were shouting over the music in annoyance, and pushing roughly back. One person threw a punch, which Harry thought rather un-neighbourly.

Time was showing a schizophrenic side, the world tripping in a million pixels. He kept thinking that he needed to find Ron and Hermione.

Harry pushed through the corridor packed crowd to various cries of, “Hey!” ; “Fucking hell –”  and even one, “He-llo gorgeous”. He felt like a ragdoll, people shoved at him, he swung this way and that, his arms windmilling. Harry fell through the last group of people, and he stumbled out into cool air. Below him lay the ground level dancefloor, far down. He could feel a vague pain in his gut and, looking down at himself, Harry realised he’d run into the railing. He was almost hanging off it.

Hands came out of nowhere and grasped him. Harry’s stomach somersaulted. Nausea rose, and he was wrenched back.

“Harry!”

Ron’s stark freckles and wide, panicked eyes. Harry blinked, and grabbed for him. “ Ron ! Ron, you’re okay!” He could have kissed him.

“Yeah! But someone grabbed Hermione!”

“Come on!” Harry bellowed.

But even as he said it, Harry’s next steps sent him over. Ron turned to help drag him up, but then Ron faltered. “You all right?”

“M’fine,” mumbled Harry, widening his eyes to see better.

“Mate, you look like the guy from clockwork orange. What’s wrong?”

“We don’t have time,” urged Harry, the mission in his frayed mind like a loop. “Where’s Hermione!”

“Over here, I saw her last,” Ron was turning, but now only partly, his expression full of concern. “Harry, really —”

“I’M FINE. We gotta find Hermione! Where’s the place we —”

This time Harry felt them, clear as anything. His senses screamed at him. 

He spun around just in time to block the arm that had been coming down, presumably on his head. Harry and his stalker had a moment to regard each other again, a suspended second of surprise, and Harry really hoped she was a he as he — one, two, three , slip forward, rip shoulder weight up and, quad tense, step back — he delivered a crunching rear low kick.

The followup hop kick didn't quite work. Harry was out of control, his limbs everywhere, all the appropriate fuses leading to incorrect boxes; when he thought he'd lifted his hand, instead his leg came out. He felt like a ragdoll with his game physics out of whack, glitching out. Nausea rolled him.

But he didn’t stop moving. The sheer chaos of it seemed to be helping something. Not as effective as actually fighting , but the stranger was frowning, looking where his limbs were going, dancing back with astonishment. It was only a moment, but it gave him the advantage. Then Ron cried out and Harry whirled, drunkenly opening his flank.

He was pushed, sent careening, and his back connected with the railing, hard. 

His attacker didn't blink, only appraised Harry with a quizzical eye, inches from his face. And rising between them with sly entry, designed to slip the notice, Harry felt a mage's power rise.

Their House was entirely alien to his own. The blond stranger grasped him at his lapels, and tried to pin him in place. Harry could feel her – him – their power easing over him, trying to find places of entry. Harry shoved forward with all his might, with anything left, and the two of them spun on the railing. He almost managed to get them onto it, but Harry found his back on the metal rod a second time, landing with an agonising crack.

The stalker's muscle groups gathered beneath their black leathers, ripchord tight, flushed with blood. Harry could feel them gather power; they had a knee between Harry's legs, were forcing the dense weight of their body to hold him down, his spine bending back. They weighed easily more than a human ever should. Harry could only wheeze at the elbow over his throat, the forearm forced under his jaw.

Then the world spun and Harry was looking at the club upside down. He could feel them casting. Nausea gripped him, now immense. He couldn't hear Ron anymore.

Harry did the only thing he could think of. 

He pulled at the coffin-sense, the not-quite-there sense, the tinnitus of a place larger and more remote than any individual thing should be. Maybe it was the context that made it easier — another cold handhold railing, his body against it, but this time he was bent back and he was hanging over it, music and lights blinding him.

The space in front of him, and behind him, went syrupy and long. Harry let it stretch away from him, on and on, and felt himself at its centre. Coffins. Dead things. Dogs with their heads on wrong. Crawling creatures and the broken glass jar that had lodged into that child once and chemistry and meat and flies so loud he couldn't hear. Anything he could use in his bank of memories that might bring it forward.

And far away, but growing louder, a great rushing of water.

You go into it, almost, or not quite into, but — but Harry couldn't think, his airway was locking up, his hands still beating at the person's head that was doing literally nothing, ridiculously nothing and what Harry realised was the stranger's life magic was flooding into him, in attack —

You angle yourself, let yourself go all long and stretched, and just —

Harry didn't go in. He didn’t know how to do what his senses were telling him he could. Instead he pulled clumsily, frantically, he pulled at anything, he focussed on willing that cold rushing power to come in and help him, hoping he could force it upon the mage. Harry ripped a hand out diagonally, as if grabbing something, he to drag something of death or necromancy or whatever the hell this was or will it forward and as he did —

the world tore.

Quite literally. One moment Harry’s hand was clutching at the air, the next, he’d taken a fistful of accidental cold invisible fabric and pulled.

The world ripped. Out of nothing, the air just parted, reality unzipped and opening in a ragged hole. Perhaps a metre across, a wide sickle shape or smile in the dark, and Harry had poured all his might into it, a violence of desperation going into how harshly he pulled.

He and his attacker had all of two seconds to look at each other and realise, in nude shock, something had gone very wrong for the both of them. Very wrong.

The water was not lapping, but gushing, rushing, roaring towards them. Out of that rip in worlds came a tsunami, as though Harry had opened a hole right into a river. 

The wave hurled out and hit them, like a constant firehose. His attacker couldn’t find any purchase on the ground at all, as both of them were swept over the railing and onto the crowd below.

Screams went up. A tidal force fell upon the club, a giant pale blue gout of water that never ended. People were swept aside, swept under. Harry lost his stalker in the plummet down, as they both fell through the club’s open air, and Harry felt a crack in his shoulder as he met the crowd side on, a split second ahead of the wave of water.

Whatever drug they’d given him or spiked him with in that alcohol was running havok in his system. Harry choked and coughed and sputtered and struggled to swim. When after an eternity that could have been a moment, strong hands grabbed him out of the flood, and pulled him out, Harry could only be grateful that was no longer going to drown.

Harry passed out.

Harry came to consciousness under sick motion, the room swaying, the dark blotchy shapes around him resolving slowly, in bits and pieces.

Someone stepped back from him, the cool hand which had been on his head leaving a tingle in its wake. The brain fog parted, leaving Harry with just a clean, raging headache, and himself sprawled, on his side, upon the cold floor of an abandoned warehouse. His clothing was soaked.

The first thing he noticed was the sheer, utterly surreal amount of snow leopards hanging out around him — literally, snow leopards — sitting or lying or sprawling about, one so close that Harry could see the spray of its fine white whiskers, the soulful silver of its two large irises, ringed by black.

Harry swallowed. He could hear it all the way down his oesophagus. But the bigcat only yawned and rolled over, its wide back legs relaxed. 

Power slid over his skin. Foreign, strange, and magical. Not only magic; it carried the dual weight of the dead.

This person felt so much older than the stranger who had ambushed him in the club. Now that he was being flooded with the new flavour of power, Harry could rightly say that his stalker must have been a vampire too, as well as a mage. He could feel it, clearly now, the combination of the two things. Vampiric power distorting natural magic. Maybe the pills had dulled his sense of them, before. He’d never been able to sense a vampire. But now he could, they felt distinctly dead. It was the coffin-sense all over again, but muted, mild.

Unlike his attacker from the club, this time the power didn’t feel familiar, and there was none of that — that other stuff. The old power pushed territorially out, into the corners of the room, it flexed and tested the weight of the walls, the curvature of Harry’s spine, it eased over his throat and tightened, willing him awake, and Harry knew, in his gut, that this was an elder.

He’d never felt anything so comparable, not on any vampiric scale. 

Harry pushed up until he could stand on his own. 

His assailant from the club was standing across from him, on the right side of the warehouse. Two of them, he hadn’t been imagining it, identical for appearance. They felt dead, both of the twins. They stood at the ready, in form-fitting long black duelling leathers. Both stared with rapt attention, but not to the head of the room where everyone else was looking — they stared instead at Harry. One watched him with little to no expression, beyond an uncanny frozen interest. The second, more quizzical twin, looked wary, his or her head tilted fractionally, as though Harry were a puzzle they couldn’t quite unriddle.

And Severus Snape, of all damn people, was at the top of the hall, standing in wait beside a spectacularly tense Lucius Malfoy.

Harry found his attention drawn, as under the hands of some inevitable invisible choreographer which gripped his skull and turned, to the person he least wanted to see in the whole world.

Violetta. Elder and Prince.

Harry’s blood ran cold. The elder was tall, easily six foot. Her name didn’t suit her at all; she was indelicate and unsoft, striking, even in her silence, watching Harry with a stillness that came from centuries of forgetting how to display the tells a living person used.

Sweat needled at the back of Harry’s neck. His own magic whipped sluggishly, alcohol slowing his function.

And yet… he could feel the twins standing across from him, like strange stars in the dark that pulled on a little cord to him. Harry had to focus on it, yes, which was very hard to do right now, but under his attention that link sharpened slightly, and Harry realised he could feel a third pulse — from Lucius. He couldn’t feel Snape at all.

A leopard yawned, a wide guttural sound.

“Harry Potter.”

Moonlight caught the edge of the creature’s hair, lifted the auburn and made it deep, spun bright like rubies. She had a low voice, not quite gravelly — not yet — but deeper than any woman Harry had heard. Her hair was pulled back into a loose, careless knot. A simple wool shift, a millennia out of date. A sword lay at her hip, the scabbard hung down from a beautiful thick Celtic belt, gold engraved with silver.

“You take more care with your life than many left today in this country. Tonight as the exception, I was beginning to worry we would not meet. Blessed be the night clubs.”

“What happened?” snapped Harry. “Where are my friends?”

The elder inclined its head, expressionless, and Harry frowned, not all expecting civility.

“Indeed what,” it murmured. “Alecto has storied us the details of your deluge. Guilty Pleasures the discotheque continues to fill with water. The streets are flooding. The Six House has been summoned, and various watermasters called, but the vampiric court of London have shut off and quarantined the area. As for your friends…”

The creature turned her head to indicate a spot behind him. Feeling sick with nerves, dumb with dread, Harry turned.

Hermione stood next to a man Harry didn’t know, but unharmed, in her soaked-through red dress. Her bare arms were wet. Her hair was plastered to her skin, and she was trembling all over.

They made eye contact. Hermione just raised her chin and said nothing. If she was trying to communicate something to him, Harry had no idea what.

“And Ron?” said Harry.

“He will stay with me.”

Harry whipped his head round. “What? Why?”

“I regret that our union here will not only be forced,” said Violetta, “but carrying with it a ticking clock. Your old tutor —“ the dark eyes slide to Severus, “— has provided the context of your acceptance into the House of Alchemists. I am aware that you are no alchemist.”

Harry’s throat had gone dry, and he was hyper aware of the eyes on him, even against the alcohol. “He’s told you that, has he?”

Harry shot a filthy look to his old potions professor, who had only ever been cruel to him and his friends. “He’s a big fan of turning on his own. Bet he relished the opportunity to rat out anything about me to a vampire.”

“Quite,” the elder only agreed, unsteadying Harry again. “As the modern world says, let us cut to the chase. You are a necromancer.”

Harry’s breath stuttered out, and grew shallow. All at once he swung to Snape, feeling both astonishingly betrayed but also confused.

“Don’t look so surprised, Potter,” Snape bit. “Your charade cannot stand up to an actual alchemist. While there are those in the Fifth House who set inescapably low expectations and still somehow fail to achieve them, it cannot escape the notice of even the most ill-witted gnat that you are, by comparison to these dunderheads, more incompetent. I hope my book served you well, for the amount you cheated from it.”

Harry saw red, alcohol and anger rising both. “You fucking bastard!”

Snape’s tone turned bone dry. “Plain as a pikestaff, Mr Potter. As ever, your wit leaves nothing to be desired.”

As if to rub salt into wounds, Snape turned to the vampire and bowed his head in a disturbing show of respect. Harry couldn’t tell if it was real or not. “Your majesty, he belongs to the Twelfth House, as his mother, I confirmed as much in his early schooling career.”

Violetta’s eyes had remained on Harry throughout, but with this new pronouncement she raked her gaze over his body. The look was devoid of classical attraction, but there was something there in it, of a beast intrigued.

“Then you are the saviour we will have, if not the saviour we had wanted.”

Violetta’s eyes glisten, and narrow. A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her lips, and Harry realised suddenly that all the black rogue around her eyes wasn’t makeup. It was a burn, or a scar — or something smudged in so many times that it had stained the skin. It would be attractive if not for how bizarre it was. Her lips too, were inky, but when the elder spoke her teeth were clean, if not white.

“You are to catch a killer, Harry Potter. You are uniquely adapted to the role — to use a term of your science — because this killer is a necromancer, too. Vanishingly rare, your breed. I was not even aware there were others.”

Harry could only stare.

“You have three days. I will release you and your companion, Hermione Granger, who I understand is singularly capable in the realm of rapid research. To hasten your chase, hunter: should you fail me — and this I regret to inform, but I understand the heart for you is the strongest motivator — if you fail this hunt, upon the third night I will slaughter your friend.”

“Take Lucius as a second companion. Go, now, and while you may utilise the mortals as you see fit, muggle and mage alike, do not tarry, do not step off your given path, or I will send pieces of Ronald Weasley back to you in boxes.”

“Your kin will remain with me and mine until the end of his life — or until you find me this murderer.”

“I release you, Harry Potter, of the Twelfth House. Swift be your steps. For your journey begins at dusk.”