The Toxicologist

The Seventh House

The House of Silence

Anti-magic / Revocation Magic. Able to rend magical defences or tear apart wards, this House has been uniquely loathed and admired over its long history, depending on the era or threat present to a land. As the hardest branch of magic to master, most members of this House can do little more than snuff out a small spell. Even this has great value to a magical government - perhaps why the Seventh House still sees its place among mages. Such “Void Masters” are in the possessive employ of the Minitry of Magic.

There are those who reject this branch of “magic” outright, claiming Silencers, Revokers, Void Masters and the like all lack the very thing that defines a mage. Unless a Silencer is particularly gifted, young mages of this House fade into obscurity, or even join the ranks of muggles, preferring to risk a foreign life than face the harassment of their inter-House peers, leaving the magical world behind.

Members of the Seventh House are known as Revokers, Silencers, Destroyers, Bond Breakers, Void Masters, Scrappers, Abolitionists

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

"The entrance is practically famous," said Hermione apologetically, as they stealthed through Green Park. Still too early for joggers the park slumbered, but a lamplight turned off above Harry.  

She pointed. Harry’s gaze followed along her finger to a black metalwork fence at first hidden by the trees. A gothic gate lurked under a chestnut tree, conkers lay motionless. 

Hermione delved into her clutch purse, and unearthed a brass key decorated by a purple tassel. Harry cast it a look, appalled he could lose his phone to a dragon but she preserved herself, her heels and her bag.

With a whine, the gate creaked in. Harry stepped over the bottom rail onto recently swept stone.

He stood in a square courtyard, bisected by paths that ran its length. Between the paths rose stone effigies—twenty or more full-length nobles lying down in the same position, gripping a sword or an item of their station. Their weathered faces were carved from centuries-old stone. Floral offerings lay at their feet, white lilies and pink funeral roses in bowls cut from the same stone.

Why are we in a… 

Draped in the attire of their time, each stone man or woman lay cold, carved into the lid of a sarcophagus. The setting felt eerily familiar, yet wholly out of place. They were standing in a graveyard. 

“There it is,” said Hermione.

Harry stared nervously into the courtyard. Directly ahead loomed a mausoleum hunched in the gothic style of the country. Pointed arches, ribbed vaults, gargoyles peered down from the buttress. Harry could have been walking through a scene from The Phantom of the Opera. 

"The Summoner's Guild is in... a crypt?" Harry's voice betrayed his disbelief.

"Only technically," said Hermione. "It's not a vampire thing, I promise."

"It's a tomb."

“It's a museum. Although the entrance is in a crypt, yes. The levels go terribly far down.”

A conker split underfoot, and Harry flinched. He drifted past one kingly figure, his Renaissance curls frozen and trapped under a crown.

Hermione halted at a door grown over by ivy. Upon the rotted wood a notice was fixed.

Important Guild Advisory

Attention to All Guild Members and Visitors

In adherence to the Guild's commitment to safety and well-being, we strongly advise against entering the Summoner's Guild premises after dusk. Recent incidents have underscored the potential risks associated with nighttime visits, including the possible presence of an unknown creature and heightened security measures.

For your own protection and the security of the Guild, kindly refrain from accessing the Guild after sunset. We appreciate your cooperation in maintaining a secure and harmonious environment within our esteemed establishment.

Guild Administration

Harry’s breath hitched. 

“It’s just a hoax,” said Hermione. “ Look . That’s why it’s not signed by the curator. See how ambiguous the wording is — it’s obviously pretend.”

Hermione had to square her feet to wrench the door back.  Inside, autumn leaf curls lifted; burned-out candles lined the walls; a beetle scurried away.

Harry’s eyes went wide. “Are you sure this is the entrance?”

Hermione pulled the door some more. “It just gets — stuck in the mornings,” she grunted, “before anyone’s had a chance to open it. Oh, Harry. Come along, now.”

Harry peered into the crypt. Caskets and urns hugged the walls. An ominous hole dominated the centre — carved into the depression a coffin would ordinarily go. Into that dark hole steps descended.

Harry could still smell the damp earth from the park, and hear the call of early birds. He felt keen to go back.

“Harry, close the door.”

They descended the stone staircase. Harry couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that they were crossing a threshold into another realm. The eerie quality of the night settled around him, like a mist. Just a few hours earlier, he, Ron, and Hermione had been doing shots. Now he was descending a stairway into Guild territory. 

The stairs curved gradually. Along the way alcoves emerged. Most of the stone holes housed clay vases, statues, but also some expensive stuff, too —like that lion bust— how were they not magnets for thieves? Nothing had been touched.

Harry's trepidation intensified. He couldn't place the light; he could see everything clearly, but there shone no visible enchantment, no sconce fixings or hanging bulbs.

"How many steps are there?" he said tensely.

Hermione dithered, oddly anxious, and did not immediately answer him. Harry paused to let her adjust her shoes. She mumbled something.

“What?”

“I said: six hundred and sixty six.”

You have got to be joking. “The number of the devil?”

"Our archmage has a sense of humour."

Harry’s shoulders went tight. They passed one alcove that was entirely empty. “What do you mean? These steps are old. He couldn't have been alive when they were built. You mean he just says there are six-six-six steps?”

“I mean he's also very old. No, Harry, not like that. He's not a vampire. Shulgi —along with the rest of the Inner Council of the Guild— are all long-lived. They have ways of prolonging their lives. Everyone uses each other's services. Didn't you wonder how Grindlewald looks so young? It's Life Magic. Or... it used to be. I'm not sure what methods they employ now, especially with the changes in leadership within the First House. I don’t even know if Voldemort still holds the title of archmage.”

That whole House has been a mess for a decade.

No wonder the Guild had archaic practices. Its archmages were all ancient.

Dumbledore’s well over a century, a voice reminded him. Yes. But Dumbledore didn't use Life Magic to keep himself looking young, like some vanity thing.

No, said the guilty voice in his head, he just spent his life's work and magnum opus discovering the Philosopher's Stone. And then keeps it hidden from everyone. Isn't that stone meant to cure all degenerative conditions? A bit of powder shaved off from the flat cut of the crystal could cure all illnesses — physical, mental, even of the soul. If we studied its effect…

Harry dismissed his inner debate about Flamel and Dumbledore hoarding the stone. There had to be a reason, right? Corruption, perhaps?

Mid-descent, Harry froze. Above them, the door to the mausoleum had slammed. Had he left it open? No, he distinctly remembered closing it. Someone had entered.

For a heartbeat Hermione met his gaze, before scanning up the stairs.

“It's just a summoner,” she said uncertainly.

They stood for over a minute. No one came down. 

The air hung stale and uninterrupted, but Harry couldn’t shake the thought that they’d been followed.

At last, the stairs ended, and they rounded the last turn.

They passed under an archway, a huge doorway cut into the stairwell — and out, into a clean, modern space. Hermione’s heels clicked onto a polished wooden floor. The first thing that struck Harry was the scent.  Filtered air, carefully ventilated to preserve a stable environment. Wood and glass cleaner, and the unmistakable reek of formaldehyde used to preserve the fur on animal pelts.

Harry had never before stepped foot in a museum after dark. He didn’t know what he had expected, and was completely taken aback. Of… course. When he and Ron visited a museum it was always in the daytime, and light flooded the exhibits. At the British Museum, sunshine poured in through the massive windows and glass dome ceiling.

Here it was startlingly dim, a world murkily transformed. Before him stretched a long, deep canyon of tall glass cabinets, resembling icebergs in their sheer size and uniformity, extending endlessly.

The only lights were the jewel uplighters embedded into the skirting, and they shone subtly, like the tread-lighting in a dark cinema.

“It's bright during the day,” whispered Hermione. “They enchant the underground lights to protect the exhibits, but they still slowly damage the coating on the creatures. So at night they switch to low-service beams.”

This was no art gallery; nothing hung from the walls. The main attraction dominated the centre of the hall: towering glass cabinets split the room into three aisles, fixed at regular intervals so foot traffic could pass between them. The place must be a hive in the day.

Harry passed the first cabinet and stumbled to a halt. Gazing up, and then up, Harry gaped, his throat locking up.

Above him hung a horse and rider.  The horse’s powerfully articulated joints could have been posed to rear, or to gallop, its tail streaming out like a banner. It had not; it just stood there silent, its head hung low, as if waiting, behind the sheen of glass.

Thin wires and rods supported the limp of its tail, the flint hooves secured by a metal framework. The only magic deemed crucial enough to penetrate the glass pulsed translucently over the exposed muscle of the horse's flesh. And indeed, muscle it was.

As a chill travelled down Harry's chest, settling in his stomach, he realized he was not looking at the soft texture of a pelt. He was looking at the horse’s exposed musculature, its skin peeled clean off, revealing flesh that should have been purpled, bruised, and bloody—once. Now, the oxidized body was preserved and mottled brown, knotted in dead pinks.

The human riding it was wrong, all wrong. He had also been flayed. Both human and horse rode skinless. The man’s head was too big for his thin neck, and lolled under the weight, down onto his chest. Empty eye sockets looked ahead through the glass. His arms hung thin, and long. At the end of those too-slender forearms were not hands with fingers, but curving scythes. His metacarpals just ended, tiny wrists bloating into curving sickle claws.

Harry stumbled back in revulsion. “What the hell is that?”

“A summons, of course.”

Hermione had to stop, because Harry had not moved. Harry whipped his head to stare at her, his jaw slack. “You've got to be joking. That's a summon?” said Harry, appalled.

“They’re often misunderstood,” she defended, looking flustered.

“Misunderstood. They’re horrible .”

“No it's not,” said Hermione hotly, scowling.

“Hermione, look at it. With your eyes.”

“They're not like things from our world!”

"What are you smoking? This is just like two things from our world," urged Harry. "Except horrible."

The light caught the knot of steak-raw meat in the rider’s thigh. Harry realised something looking at it. The rider hadn’t been pinned and fixed like the horse using metal or wires, just…

“They're glued together,” Harry said slowly. He shook his head, back and forth. The horse and rider were glued in ways beyond what was needed to keep the taxidermy upright. The penis of the rider had been removed, and he’d been welded at the groin, all the way down his long thighs, even his ankles. Why would someone do that? A horror fetish? Just leave the horse alone.

"They're not glued. This is one creature. Look."

Harry followed her pointed finger with a feeling of dread, to a gold plaque.

The Nuckelavee

– Scottish Myth; Tier Five Summon –

A skinless horse joined permanently with its skinless rider. The Nuckelavee has a huge head, very long arms, and razor claws. It is known to abduct people and drag them into the sea. Its breath can kill crops.

Harry’s arms pressed tight to his body.

“Great,” said Harry. “I'll never sleep again.”

“Well if you're going to just be nasty about every summon you see.”

“Only the horrible ones!”

Which, by the look of it, as Harry peered down the line, was all of them. Hundreds of cabinets carved from mahogany, and behind their tall glass displays pranced the taxidermied and anatomical echoes of another world.

The resin-eyed creatures were huge or small, skinny or tall, with winged skeletons that rattled or purred, a sea of enchanted wax or stuffed animals of impossible colour. And all of them could easily star in their own horror movie.

Harry walked twice around the first case. “How is it a Scottish myth if you summon it from another dimension?”

Hermione touched her hair self-consciously. “If the summoning group isn’t capable —in rare instances— of controlling the summon, it escapes, and kills them.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. “These things escape into our world? Just come into the countryside? You guys have been —”

“Only for a short while!” said Hermione, more flustered. “The force of their world pulls them back. They can’t stay anchored here. The Hunting Grounds has its own kind of gravity—it's constantly tugging at them. That’s why summoners reserve so much power, always more than you need for the actual summoning; we’re continually drained the longer the high summon remains in our world. If the summoner gets tired, or injured, the creature has a window of time before it gets pulled back. It’s not a long window, though,” she added hastily.

Long enough for local peasants to be slaughtered, thought Harry, and rumours to run riot. He felt nauseous. How many people had this thing killed, or those like it? He crossed his arms and shivered, wrinkling his nose.

The atrium opened out into a lounge with chairs in the middle. Ahead, two tunnel-like halls extended into the museum proper.

Hermione wobbled out of her shoes. “Meet here in ten minutes? We can cover more ground if we split up.”

“Split the party?” gaped Harry.

Hermione wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I'm not going to listen to you commentate the whole way.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry quickly. “I'll shut up.”

“Harry . You’ll be fine. We're not in a horror film. We're at the Guild.”

That didn't reassure him any. Harry knew nothing about the Guild. For all he knew, they stuffed Dementors into cabinets that came alive after dark.

“Let’s find a porter,” said Hermione. 

Harry looked apprehensively at the two tunnels.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" he offered.

Hermione sighed sharply and stalked down the right path. Harry's heart sank. He had wanted right.

Thinking of devils and Dementors and six-six-six, Harry took the left hand path.

He walked down a dim corridor with a polished wooden floor, flanked on both sides by mounted horse skeletons. Or, not quite horses; nstead of hooves, they sported velociraptor claws, otherwise were blessedly unremarkable. Harry imagined a lone security guard patrolling, his steps echoing as he made his rounds, keys swinging. Where was the guard?

Calm down already. The creatures are dead. They’re only taxidermies. They can’t move.

He ducked into a parallel hall, and on impulse took a small, low passage. Harry found himself slowing down.

This deep in, and he couldn't see the exhibits until he was practically upon them. Harry wondered how far he'd come. Did the archmage's office lie deeper still? Important places were often high up; but when your Guild lay in a crypt, did that equate to deeper down? Should he be looking for stairs?

The silence hung differently here. Denser, all-encompassing. Harry could hear nothing but his own footsteps on the wooden parquet.

A new corridor fed into a hall similar to the entrance.

It was as dark and deserted as the rest of the museum, but with fewer displays. Only one stretched the entire length of the hall: a continuous, tall glass block that allowed viewing from either side. It spanned the room in an exhibit of an East African savannah.

The trees and bushes glimmered in the dim light. Belatedly, Harry realised he'd only seen documentaries of Africa in the daytime. The exhibit was lit from below by pale orange light.

Stuffed and positioned in various poses among the trees was the same creature: an enormous one-eyed hyena, identified by the sign as the Nandi Bear. Legends from East Africa spoke of its tree-climbing abilities and its penchant for ambushing prey to devour their brains. In reality, it was classified as a Tier Five summon. Harry pondered the criteria that distinguished summon tiers. Was it based on their potential danger or the difficulty of summoning them?

Harry hated how hyenas laughed.

He made a mental note to inform Hermione about the exhibit for their research; anything related to brains could prove valuable. He hurried away from the Nandi Bears, escaping their golden fur and their resin black eyes.

Ahead of him the hall forked. After a moment's hesitation Harry chose the right-hand passage.

Harry was beginning to worry. He had no idea how long he'd been walking, and he did not want to press on indefinitely.

He retraced his steps, or at least he thought he did. Except now: he stepped onto carpet. The material absorbing his footsteps was soft and yielded under his boots. Harry could hear nothing in the silence except that: his feet on the thick carpet.

I didn’t come this way.

On both sides of the hall, displays were dedicated to an underwater panther, something called a Mishepishu, or "Great Lynx".

To Harry, it looked like an amalgamation of creatures, a lynx or cougar crowned in deer antlers. Each of them looked slightly different.

Feeling like he'd hit a dead end, Harry was about to retreat when he noticed a faint light around a hidden bend. Not a dead end at all. Almost hidden by the waterpanther display, a narrow walkway curved to his right, easily missed.

Before he could investigate, Harry froze.

His footsteps were being carefully matched.

The sound was so subtle, he almost missed it. Harry came to a stop.

The footsteps ceased.

Harry's pulse quickened. He ducked behind the display, adrenaline tightening his muscles, ready to bolt. His thighs tingled.

Past the waterpanthers strung up in their poses of diving and swimming, the carpet stretched on. Deeper into the gloom he could see very little. Nothing disturbed the shadows. But he could not have imagined it. After the footsteps, he’d heard a last movement: a catch, as of a claw on fabric.

Harry palmed the wall, cold under his hot hand. He kept straining and hearing nothing. A minute passed… another.

"Hermione?" he whispered hesitantly, unable to raise his voice in the silence and gloom.

No response. Harry shouldn't have been expecting it. His mind was playing tricks.

He'd find a well-lit exit soon. Not everyone could come down those stairs. There had to be disabled summoners, or old people. Although, Hogwarts had no disabled access. Remember those stairs?

He peeked around the corner, and almost sighed. Nothing. 

Harry slipped into the narrow space by the wall, the hidden passage he had noticed earlier, and cautiously moved towards the light.

He found himself in a large, octagonal room. The low-ceilinged gallery was devoted to the concept of Western greed; to creatures who offered wealth and power but brought about terrifying ruin. He’d come in the back.

No animals here. No taxidermies, no stuffed horrors. Glass ringed the space, but behind these cases loomed effigies in wood and stone, bronze and gold. Thank Merlin.

As Harry passed through the room, a tiny figurine caught his eye. Lit by a white spotlight. It sat alone on a plinth in the centre of the room. Harry paused.

The figurine stood, glossy black and made of wood, carved with breathtaking skill. Harry baffled at the intricate detail—the individual hairs framing the creature's head, the lank bob around its peculiar face. 

The face itself was shaped like a horse but contorted into an expression of pain and distress. The strained expression slid down, jaw open, to a long snaking neck that appeared agonizingly extended. The neck was cobra high, bent back, and fixed to a body that slouched lizard-like, or aquatic. It reminded him of something out of an Asian anime, a Studio Ghibli horror.

Downward, Harry’s eyes settled on the plaque.

MAMLAMBO.

~ African Myth; Tier 8 Summon ~

Crafted from ebony, this carving depicts the Mamlambo, a mythical creature in Zulu folklore. This savage demi-god was much feared by the indigenous tribes of the region. It was said Mamlambo could be summoned by the Ithunzi Clan, a name meaning "shadow of light" or "the shadow people". Few relics have ever been found of this tribe, and beyond trace reference in African legend, nothing is known about the Ithunzi, or their mysterious "demon".

According to folklore, the Mamlambo mutilated its victims by consuming their faces and brains, earning it the ominous moniker "the Brain Sucker".

20 meters (65.62 feet) long, with the head of a horse, the lower body of a fish, short legs, and the neck of a snake, the demon was said to shine at night from behind a blinding green light.

Harry felt sensitive to the tiniest brush of air. If this was tier eight, what was tier ten?

Fucking Cthulu.

Who would even think of putting legs on a snake? And what kind of creature had hair like that? Upon closer inspection, Harry realised the mane wasn't carved at all—it was threaded with real human hair. 

He looked closer, repulsed and fascinated at once by the distended human-horse head that suspended from the long neck, its pained head bobbing in the dark. Why do so many summons eat brains?

In a breath, Harry froze. All his inner alarms went off at once. His every instinct screamed at him to stay perfectly still. One minute ticked away, then two.

It came again—the sound that had paralysed him.

The light, almost inaudible step of a clawed foot on the carpet's fibres.

It had to be close... very close. Right behind him: the movement of hot breath.

A prickle of sensation: the hairs lifted on his arms and the back of his neck. 

Harry bolted. He turned the corner of the room and practically stumbled out, sprinting as fast as he could. He heard a noise behind him, but he was flying, running unchecked through the dark.

Completely out of breath and with a stitch in his side, Harry came to a large room that was darker than the rest. He collapsed behind a cabinet. His bladder felt loose; tears stung. Hidden in the pitch black he held his position, heart drumming painfully against his chest.

He could barely see the cabinets here, but he could hear clearly.

Above the sound of his own thumping heart silence reigned; no movement, no activity. He could hear nothing.

You never heard anything in the first place, thought Harry angrily.

He felt clumsy and stupid, trembling all over, shaking along his legs and arms. Harry poked his head up. 

You are freaked out and imagining everything.

All the same… Harry wasn't about to go back the way he came. He stood shakily. His bare arms were goosebumped, and he hoped Hermione existed in his jumper somewhere safe, talking to the archmage. What he wouldn’t give to be with him right now.

Then, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Harry’s body seized up, and cast a hesitant look to the right.

Dark. Dark enough to obscure its outline. But he wasn’t imagining it. There: a shadow, black on black, or possibly white on black, a pale thing sliding sinuously over the cabinets behind him.

Fueled by terror, Harry streaked down the hall at breakneck pace.

The outline of a door appeared up ahead, glowing at its edges. Without slowing Harry threw himself into it. The doors slammed open, and light rushed him.

He lunged with a sob, and cast around. Harry jammed a rolling table against the door. Locked the trolly’s hinge, and the wheels with it. Then he staggered back, looking crazed.

What the fuck was that?

His chest aching, breath stuttering, Harry cried. His stitch burned.

He backed away from the doors and let light wash over him. He could hear voices. Relief hit him like a truck, washed tingles all over. He couldn’t stop gasping.

He should kiss the floor; the lovely parquet was back. No more carpet. 

Here the chairs and the waiting area, the two tunnels. Left and right, where Hermione had gone. The front atrium.

Harry took Hermione’s tunnel at speed. He jogged down, ignoring all the exhibits, his reflection bobbing past their glassy tombs. Hermione was nowhere to be found. But he could hear voices. The tunnel did not lead into more corridors or eerie halls; it opened into a marble foyer. As Harry raced over the cream floor cracked with gold veins, he looked up with a shiver of surprise.

The opulence continued up to the vaulted ceilings, to the stone arches, the sweeping domes.

Harry looked behind; nothing had followed him in. The big round tunnel led all the way back to the chairs.

Voices emanated from above. An enormous staircase led up; to a walkway of Corinthian columns. The square balcony overlooked the foyer below, where Harry stood, craning his neck. 

By the stairs three wooden plinths huddled, marked for repair. The only creature in the foyer stood on one of these stands, like a toy cat on a massive coffee mat.

It looked very finished to not be behind glass. Harry frowned. No plaque provided a description. Harry could hear the voices getting closer though, so he veered over to wait by the stairs.

He shot a sideways glance at the creature, his curiosity piqued. Why can’t they all look like this? The sleek coat appeared so real that Harry half-expected it to blink back at him. A lioness, although the strangest lion he’d ever seen. Harry had seen a white lion in a zoo, once, but never close enough to touch. She was sitting down politely.

Two gas-blue eyes held his, and he marvelled at the subtle play of light on her fur. Harry learned forward, his lips parting.

“Hello, girl,” he said. It was not quite a lioness, but nor was it a jaguar, her large bone structure caught between the two. No spots or rosettes, just pure unblemished white. The fur felt incredibly soft and tangible beneath his fingertips.

Harry blinked. Something dimpled her pelt, a ridge just over her shoulders. Harry's gaze followed the line of fur as it rippled back over two protruding structures, his eyebrows rising higher, and higher.

At first the appendages were continuous with her fur, so that the lion’s beautiful pelt encased each like a sheath: a long tentacle. Two of them. As thick as Harry's arm. The velvet white skin was broken up every six inches by a circling ring of tougher, pink flesh, ribbed for support. They looked prehensile, the muscles thickest at the beast's shoulders. The lashing tentacles tapered down to wicked ends, where they exploded into scythes of bone. A pair of lethal sickle daggers, in moon white.

Harry’s lips pressed together in a grimace. Okay. It was horrible, but also beautiful.

The whipping extensions hung over the plinth and trailed onto the marble. Easily three metres long —given the cat was as long as that itself— Harry imagined that the tentacles would stretch just past the end of the lion’s tail, if she stood up. Sitting though, tail curled around her big white paws, fixed in a soft tuft of fur crowning the tip, like a unicorn.

Harry blinked; there was a plaque, after all, bolted to the side of the plinth. I suppose that’s why you’re here, some plonker put your sign on wrong.

As he leaned in, Harry felt a current of air pass over his mouth, reminiscent of a living being’s breath. He jerked back, but the glassy eyes just stared at him.

Flickercat

~ No Native Myth; Level 8 Summon ~

Also known as the “Rift Lion” or “Phase Beast”, this elusive summon possesses the extraordinary ability to move between dimensions. A unique and alarming gift, the Flickercat continually teleports out of summoning circles, rendering traditional binding methods ineffective.

Its slashing appendages can reave bone, and its intelligence makes for a formidable force, capable of outsmarting even the prepared coven who attempts to bind it to their will.

Wax and resin representation curated by the Summoner's Guild, in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast. Please do not touch.

This… did not look like wax.

Harry pushed his tongue into his cheek. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t locate any joints or seams. The pale pink nostrils fixed open, dilated. 

“What in Merlin’s name do you think you are doing?” said a horrified voice, followed by a strange beeping.

Harry spun around, caught off guard by the severity of the woman coming at him. He was being ambushed by a de-aged pensioner. Silver grey hair fringed a youngish face, puffed up in a Granny bob. Old lady heels pinched her narrow feet, pearls cinched her throat and a lilac cardigan fell off one bony white shoulder. She looked very much like an old woman trapped in the body of a slighter young woman. 

Harry double took. She was dragging a black wheelie bag, and swinging what looked like a church censer. The kind he’d seen bishops swing from a chain and plume out incense. It continued to emit the high beeping sound. 

It was then that Harry noticed he had unconsciously wandered past a discreet rope, cordoning off a section of the marble.

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t realise —”

“Visitors are not permitted past this point, nor at this hour,” she hurried forward, waving the censer. “This is not a pub crawl! What are you doing?”

“Just looking at the cat…” Harry gestured. He turned around. His eyes widened.

The cat was gone. The plinth was bare. No lioness. Just an empty wooden platform, like the plinths on either side of it, awaiting an exhibit.

“Wait —it was white— I swear it was just here,” he cast around wildly.

The woman’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed the vacant space. A moment of uneasy silence; her expression shifted from condescending to resolved. She dropped the censer to the marble with a clank, and thrust her hand into the wheelie bag.

“Er, what is that doing?” said Harry nervously.

The beeping was getting quicker; the censor was now emitting smoke.

The woman’s lips thinned as she took in his dishevelled appearance.

“Exhibits do not make unannounced exits. A few less drinks would serve you well, you filthy young man. Now hold still.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. “Whoa, whoa. I’m not some drunk! And-what-are-you-doing?”

She squared her weight and withdrew a device from the wheelie bag, massive, handheld, like a Ghost Buster. What the fuck is that? She held the bazooka like she was going to hit a trigger, like she was going to suck him up. “Leave before I call security! Nobody needs your sort here; the House of Summons is an ancient and respected sanctum for the living!”

“The living? Wait a second; I’m just looking for my friend!”

“I very much doubt that — no, not that way either!”

Harry stumbled the other direction, raising his palms in surrender. Christ. He retreated through the rope, his eyes glued to the ballistic, hoisted in both her hands. She hunkered on her knees, her old lady heels spread so she could handle its weight.

“I’ve seen garden gnomes with a better sense of direction. What part of ‘keep out’ do you find confounding?”

“I’m sorry. The sign’s barely obvious,” Harry rushed to explain, now seeing the wooden stand. “I got distracted by the cat. What are you holding? Why is the other thing beeping?”

“There is no cat display,” the woman said sharply, ignoring his other questions. The smoke spurting out of the censer was now red. “Who are you? What is your registration tier?”

Harry faltered. His thoughts froze. “Uh. I — um.”

“You are a member of the Guild, I sincerely hope?” 

She pulled a lever with her index finger and third, and something in the ballistic clicked. A low whirring sound, which got higher and higher; a dark hole on the shooting end, facing Harry, started to glow red.

“I’m not but my friend is,” Harry stuttered, eyes wide on the firing end. He threw her a wild look, his heart pounding. “Look. I’m sorry for walking around out of hours. We really need to see — we just hoped we could see the archmage.”

“The archmage?” Her eyes widened; a gasp escaped her as if the mere mention were sacrilegious. The censer shook wildly from the floor. “No one just ‘hopes’ to see the archmage. Such requests without due process are met with an unequivocal ‘no’.”

“What are you doing with that?”

She lifted the nozzle. She clicked something new. “No one sees our archmage without the proper channels,” she intoned slowly, “and you, my friend, are far from those channels.”

“That’s fine! I don’t —”

The gun hissed. The gun whined. With a boom it shot. Harry dived. He soared clear through the air. He didn’t make the marble.

Midair, he was caught, like a cartoon in a net. Lead balls swung round and round, cinching closed a net around his body. Wait, not a net — a cage, a cage of many parts. It pulled him tight, it turned him onto his back, it clamped him in a rigid line. 

“What the fuck?” Harry cried out. Animated legs sprung out beneath him, twelve bronze bath claws, and centipede-scuttled him to the insane woman. Harry lurched and jerked and bucked and still could not move. “Please! Let me go! It’s an emergency, that’s why we —”

“An emergency?” She inhaled hard through her nostrils. “As I’m sure you understand, the security of the Guild remains paramount, regardless of your personal circumstances. You will now be dispatched to the below.”

“The below? ”

She spoke, slow and enunciated, as if she were speaking to a simpleton. Above the high aquiline nose the woman peered down at Harry, her sharp chin raised and her watery blue eyes narrowed. “No better place for the damned.”

“I’m not damned! I’m a fucking —”

“Giselle,” a voice dropped, echoing into the vastness. “We are dealing with enough vampires this month without your brand of hallway predation.”

Since Harry was lying like a tinned soldier (or someone in a coffin), he could only tilt his head, stretching the column of his throat, to look behind.

The man passing through the columns above suited the museum in the way of an exhibit. He was beautiful. His features were hard to place, or out of time; dusky skin might have once been Mediterranean, even Egyptian, but was now so white and washed out, to experiments or something else, that he looked quite ghostly. High bones framed a royal face. His dark hair was pulled back; Harry couldn’t see how long.

Beneath the sleeveless surcoat which hung all the way to the ground, and pooled over the marble in a black train, his chest gleamed bare. Lethal-looking runes decorated his skin, painted in gold. Harry flushed. He couldn’t see his nipples —the surcoat left a gap a hand’s width— but duelling leathers clad an athletic form, from the gauntlets buckled to his forearms and knuckles, to the leather boots encased in actual metal plate, matte black.

… Did they battle the demons?

He had to be the archmage. Even before the man spoke Harry felt him; magic ambushed his periphery like a dark host. The air around the tall stranger was hot, warmer than the rest of the museum, and ever so slightly undulant.

Relief coursed through Harry. This night had been so long. For once, he was welcoming of the next time he slept, Voldemort be damned.

The archmage approached with none of the tension that radiated from the young grandma. Harry blinked. He stared at the man closely. More Deja Vu?

It was the strangest feeling: for one blistering second Harry knew him. 

Like a shimmying or vacillating flame, the half memory came and went, one moment the reason Harry couldn’t know him, the next being the reason he couldn’t not.

Where have I seen him? Television, maybe.

The feeling went as quick as it came, leaving Harry with nothing but a sense of disorientation. The bizarre fog around the night thickened.

“Harry!” Hermione called.

She was trailing after the archmage, her eyes glued to Harry. Hermione’s hand fluttered shakily by her chest, her back tight and clenched.

Harry tested the restraints. “I’m fine.” I think.

“My lord,” said ‘Giselle’ in a breathless, flirtatious tone, tottling over to him.

The young pensioner’s demeanour had dropped, reinventing itself under a guise of simpering innocence. The change was startling; Harry didn’t know people could do that so quickly, let alone so blatantly. All the starker when she shot Harry a veiled look of warning from under it, her eyes as cold as ever.

Harry was flooded with an immense rush of dislike, rare for someone he’d only just met — who wasn’t a vampire. 

“He is one of them,” she hushed in that breathy, girly voice. “Trespassing, like the last. I was showing the creature out.”

“That won’t be necessary,” came the low, rich murmur. Her composure cracked with a flicker of unease. The archmage only added, “I was looking for a distraction to my thoughts. It seems I’ve found two.”

As he neared Harry his amber eyes remained distant, but then, almost imperceptibly, something shifted. The archmage’s dark eyebrows lowered. His gaze, once disinterested, zeroed in on Harry.

In the span of a heartbeat the man’s bearing transformed. The boredom evaporated. His relaxed shoulders tensed, and a glint of curiosity sparked in his eyes. The pupils dilated wildly. 

Despite his efforts to maintain a neutral expression, beneath the surface, Harry panicked.

Could an archmage sense stuff? Could you discern another mage’s House if you were powerful enough? Dumbledore always seemed to be able to do things others couldn’t; or perhaps Harry attributed more to his beloved headmaster than was warranted. 

But Harry had never come across an archmage. 

Giselle filled with unruly energy. “But — my lord!”

Harry was close enough to see the archmage twitch, a movement in his fingers. The device unhinged, to Giselle’s bugged eyes, it opened right up. Harry sprang out. He stumbled away at once, his eyes on the hateful contraption.

He flinched as the cage folded itself up in a series of technological blips. It scuttled over to the wheely bag and jumped in. 

“Forgive our curator,” drawled the archmage. “Our halls have become quite the thoroughfare late at night. We do not traditionally permit vampires on site, not without prior notice.”

Giselle’s nostrils flared, a righteous inhale lifting her chest.

“Vampires?” said Harry, shocked. “I’m no vampire.”

“He’s not,” said Hermione urgently, hovering a step behind. “I eat lunch with him all the time and he lectures during the day. Not that that…” she trailed off. “Actually… why are you catching vampires?”

A blank look settled on her face. Hermione’s gaze lingered on the open metal man-cage, its stubby bathtub legs.

“Why shouldn’t we?” snapped Giselle, spitting facts. Her purple lipsticked lips pursed. Harry felt oddly guilty. He didn’t exactly disagree.

The archmage scanned Harry’s body before fixing Giselle with a look. Harry shifted uncomfortably, unsure how best to show that he wasn’t undead. 

Thankfully the archmage said, “Perhaps it is wrong?”

“Wrong?” echoed Giselle in disbelief, searching her master’s expression. “It registers soul patterns; it cannot be wrong! These summons don’t —“

“Well it is. The young man is clearly breathing.”

“Actually,” Harry said. “Vampires breathe. But I’m not one,” he hurried to say. “I agree with hoovering them up. What was that thing?”

Now that he wasn’t body-locked in it, Harry found the whole event rather funny. He needed sleep.

“He is called Kilbac,” said the archmage. “A tier two summon. The incense pot is just a pot.”

The censer ceased bleeping.

“Neither,” added the archmage, “are very welcoming to a guest."

Giselle soured. I bet she’s middle management.

“People don't come here after dark,” said Giselle accusingly, staring at Harry. “Not without a rotten motive.”

“And yet,” uttered the archmage, looking directly into Harry’s eye, “the miracle persists.” He broke his gaze to smile at his assistant, a gleam in his eye. “Aren't you curious as to his?”

“No.”

The archmage tsk ed. “I find the best conversations spring out of the most unlikely encounters. I think our guests should join us for conversation.”

“The board told me nothing about conversation with unregistered guests.”

“What do your manners tell you, Giselle?”

There came a subtle shift, a stutter in the ether. The air around the archmage cooled noticeably.   

Giselle spasmed, her breathing turned shallow. “I'll ready your office.”

“No need, I'm on my way now. What are you?”

Harry startled; the archmage was looking at him.

“An alchemist, sir.”

A sound of mild interest. “You together?”

Hermione inhaled sharply. “Oh, no, we're not —”

“We're friends,” said Harry quickly.

“I did not mean romantically. You the summoner? I don’t know you. Sorry for interrupting you upstairs.”

A flush had risen into Hermione’s cheeks. She kept touching her hair strangely.

“Hermione Granger, I just joined. We spoke last week. For six hours.”

“Ah. I recall. Where's your familiar, what is it?”

“He’s a water Kith, and takes the form of a platypus. He’s, um, currently in storage.”

“May I see your ring?”

“Oh. Of course. Sorry. It's not been embossed yet I haven't —”

A tiny light, and the archmage nodded, dropped her hand, stepped away from her.

“What's your name?”

“Harry.” A pause, and then, "Potter.”

“Potter?” the man speared him a look, examining Harry through those sharp honey-coloured eyes. “You may call me Shulgi, if it suits you. Tell me about alchemy, Harry.”

He sauntered away down a corridor. Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then hurried to catch up. Giselle muttered something dark behind them. Harry spared her a smile, pirouetting around to wave goodbye.

Moving into the museum with its leader felt so much better than travelling alone. As they journeyed down to a level buried deeper underground, Harry reeled off the most recent paper Slughorn had let him co-author.

“Slughorn?” muttered Shulgi. They reached a door decorated by a frosted glass panel, featuring the emblem of the Summoner’s Guild. “I know of him. The collector of people high and never low. You were his student? You look too old to be his lover.”

“Yes, I went — What? No, I'm not — what do you mean too old ?”

They followed the archmage’s robes into his office, Harry trying not to step on them. A thick braid hung against the archmage’s spine, all the way to his tailbone, where the hair lashed under a band of tan leather. What men had such long hair?

It looked just like an archeologist’s office, complete with a Jenga pile of stone slabs perched in the corner, stacked precariously on top of each other, brush kit on the mat. A sturdy desk claimed the centre cluttered with maps, magnifying glasses, and notes. Harry looked up. Draped above him, the skeletal remains of a juvenile dragon dangled from the ceiling, suspended by ropes and cables.

Circling the room, twelve display tables hugged the walls like altars, each decorated a unique colour and design.

It took Harry a moment to realise what they were: a tribute to the Houses. 

Harry peeped at the closest, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting towards the table in interest.

For the First House, the table bore a gold plaque that read ‘ I: The House of Life.’

Antique medical tools and instruments littered the display, showcasing the evolution of healing practices. Upon a three-tiered rack, illuminated manuscripts revealed spreads of healing rituals and herbal remedies. Traditional healer robes hung from the back wall in shades of cream, gold and white, worn by life mages throughout history.

A huge crystal ball dominated the table, set into a three-clawed black stand. Each table had one such globe, all the way up the row, swirling a differently coloured vapour.

“Touch it,” said Shulgi rascally, catching Harry’s eye. “Channel magic to your dominant hand.” 

Hesitant, Harry complied. 

Within the glass the swirling yellow and white vapour condensed. An image began to form. In fact a burst of images, through the light. Detonating under the glass: an ancient Inquisition, Harry saw people marching, carrying torches, horses ridden in long lines  — life mages with the Church; crows pecked at a field as black smoke rose, and then fields upon fields of iron crucifixes, bodies impaled on their — Harry jerked his hand back.

The archmage watched him intently. “A dark history, that one.” 

The next table lay cluttered as full of books and materials, but arranged differently. Its crystal ball swirled violet. A wide purple tapestry draped the table’s front, the emblem for the House of Summon stitched black on its centre. 

Harry’s voice came out small. “You’ve got one for every House.”

Because there, most of all, right before his eyes, on the opposite side of the room, spread the last display: The Twelfth House.

He daren’t actually go over to it, and appear too interested. Harry stared at the last table, its heavy black tapestry, his eyes gone dull, his facial muscles slack. He’d forgotten what he was about to say. 

“Of course,” said Shulgi indignantly —as though this wasn’t huge, as though it didn't lump a knot in Harry’s throat— “Wise is he who looks ahead, but wiser still who looks behind. Under my tenure, summoners must learn the duty of a scholar: to know history, to learn from it, to never erase it.”

Harry could just about spy the white funeral flowers piled in a shallow blue bowl; and the decorated skulls. Eight skulls had been arranged in a circle surrounding the bowl of flowers — each shimmering under paint. The chalky bone hemispheres had been embellished in gold filigree, and covered in so many patterns.

A mercurial vortex swirled in the twelfth ball, black as night. 

Shulgi poured himself a glass of wine from a decanter, or tried to, and had to pause to unbuckle one leather bracer. “The study of a thing is not a practice of the thing, after all; knowledge of the demonic is the only safeguard we have against a demon. From knowledge a summoner may perform an exorcism and unsummon the beast.”

“Oh,” said Harry, wetting his lip. “Yeah. Obviously, we need to keep people protected.”

The archmage followed Harry’s attention, to the swirling globe of the Twelfth House. His gaze gentled. 

Dark robes whispered past. Shulgi dropped his bracer on a bench and activated the twelfth globe, his fingers parting from it electrically, like touching a neon plasma ball.

The ball did not change; instead, mist rose into the air. 

It obscured the ceiling, the hanging skeleton, and spread along the roof in a darkening cloud. A cool wind blew down, ruffling Harry’s hair. The cloud swelled, until a fog stretched right across the ceiling, a queer shifting void or maelstrom, stormcloud cold and lit up by flashes of light.

From that darkness rose the most incredible lightshow Harry had ever beheld. 

Pleasure curled in his gut. Through the charged cloudforce, pale constellations appeared like pins. The density of the fog thickened until the ceiling was black; and into that void sprung a galaxy of stars.

A feeling accompanied it: Harry had backed as if onto a sheer drop. All behind him — emptiness he could feel, and the cold personality of nothingness.

Yes, but also: a sense of something immense, lying just beyond his understanding of himself, and his sense of the darkness. There was a tinnitus about the room. Unlit hollows pooled beneath the tables. And above: the spinning stars and boundary of creation. Harry could feel an unseen territory, a place between the stars, somehow behind the stars, a rich invisible thing that tugged him, and called.

The energy dissipated. From his trance standing there, Harry returned to himself with heavy eyelids.

“That was beautiful,” said Hermione in awe, her voice soft. “The way the temples were built, the detail to those funeral processions. You captured Mesopotamia perfectly.”

Harry blinked. What the hell had she seen?

“And,” said Hermione carefully, “I’m glad you kept this exhibit complete. I know it’s a private tribute but — I don’t think the Twelfth House should be erased.”

The archmage lifted his glass. “Quite. Damning the tool is like strapping a seahorse to a plough. No magic is inherently evil, necromancy or otherwise. No House bittered by sin — nor those born under her star.”

Harry was speechless. He came from a mother who did not ask for favours, or press for friendship. And Harry's father, well. A brief silence followed the name James Potter, always, in any civilised conversation.

But he felt a tickle, high in the back of his throat. Same as when Dumbledore stood up for him, when the headmaster talked about mind magic to everyone in the Great Hall, after Theodore Nott had spread the word that Harry was evil. Hermione approached him the same day, when they were eleven. She became his first friend.

“The Ministry says death magic is inherently abusive,” said Harry, an ember of hope trapped in his throat. “That it can't ever be used for good.”

“Yes,” said Shulgi exasperatedly, swirling his wine. “They make a desert and call it progress.”

Hermione shook her head in thanks. Harry took a glass absently, but blurted, “Don’t you believe all the Ministry’s evidence, about how necromancy corrupts the soul?”

“Do you believe it?”

“No.”

“Then do not speak against the sun, Harry. Humans come into this world absent from omen.

“Magic is a tool, a force, a kaleidoscopic rush of potential. From the beginning, long before the flood, magic ran rich with honey and venom. A soul can be nourished with light or nourished with darkness. Unlike our plants, it can thrive in both.

“A babe born to the Twelfth House is no more a criminal than a babe born to the First, or the Second. It has as much right to the breath of its magic.”

Harry’s thoughts had gone quite still. He stared at the archmage, his expression wiped clear.

He felt all his history collapsing in on itself like a star: the density of name-calling, the whispers and isolation, the awful press, the court summoning his father, The Worst Day that followed; the fear from people he thought loved him; and that was just mind magic. 

Shulgi waved his hand and the crystal ball cleared. Harry was left speechless in the starless office, a catch in his chest and his life compressed to a confused ball in his throat because the archmage just went onto say, easily: “There is no matter evil, no element cruel, only energy: nothing more and nothing less than the most vivid, wild forces of our universe.”

Harry took a step back. He gave a slow, deliberate shake of his head. He could feel Hermione looking at him, but Harry had eyes only for the arch summoner, trying to still his visible shakiness. His nerve endings were all tingling. 

He knew his House and Second House had been allies through antiquity, right up till the Inquisition when the Twelfth House was destroyed. But intellectually knowing that summoners liked necromancers, not just on a historical scale, but in the room here, having one of them —in fact the summoner— respecting the dead House of his allies, it made Harry want to laugh hysterically.

Imagine if other people thought this way. 

“So you think they shouldn’t have all been killed?” he asked, masking the emotion in his tone, like he was talking to a client.

The House of Death was no more; all the known necromancers of the Twelfth House had been systematically purged in the middle era. Widespread genocide. Like Hermione with her magic, Lily’s power came out of nowhere. As far as Harry knew, he was the last. No new necromancers in five hundred years.

Shulgi met his gaze unwaveringly, as he unbuckled his other bracer. “We do not know if the Twelfth House fell justly on rotten floorboards, on rancid earth; we know that men came and tore down its walls, set light to its sheets and upended its altars, scattering their candles to the night. Causa latet, vis est notissima ; that is, the cause is hidden, but the result is well known.

“What I know: is that necromancers once sat at the bedside of the terminally ill, these grave men with their dead. People would beg. Kings and vagabonds cried for a Priest of the Twelfth to sit a while with their child, their wife, their father, sometimes their pet, to open wide the gate of death and make safe their passage. Now those gates swing open, unmanned.”

Harry’s heart almost refused. Unbid, an image of his mother’s funeral, the empty casket because the force of it destroyed her body; all that unchecked, wild magic, the extraordinary tangle of blood vessels, the weight of bone and skin as she warped and cried out.

And even then, a pained, self-disgusted part of Harry wanted so badly to believe it wasn’t evil or too deadly to use, that it wasn't wrong. A deficit, silly part of himself that craved to do magic as easily as Ron or Hermione. 

Starting the pills had been part desperate measure, part Harry closing the door on his own magic, exiting at last with calculated gentleness.

His heart gave another unhappy heave and Harry found himself saying, "Do other people know this? Why would so many Houses have killed necromancers, if it's true about priests and sitting?"

“Oh, Harry. A raven does not pick out the eye of another raven. War has guided the Houses from cradle to grave — and humans condemn what they do not understand.”

“Couldn’t we tell them?” urged Harry, his tone fracturing. “Things have changed. We’ve got everything now, television, internet, mass media! The Guild could tell people.”

“The Guild is forbidden from doing so by the Ministry. It is not only a matter of understanding. Humans condemn, also, what they cannot control. And above all: uncontrolled are the magics of the End.”

Dumbledore had said once with sad eyes, Death or destruction is not always just.

“But I agree with you,” said Shulgi, seeing how stressed Harry had become. “We have done far greater damage to our world by slaughtering the Twelfth House, than any trauma or ill a mage of death could.”

Harry suddenly wondered if the House of Summons came under attack, by the Ministry, by politics, by oppressing laws. 

Looking at the tension in Shulgi’s body, the lash of energy whenever Harry had said ‘Ministry’ — he knew that it did.

“Now, why are you here?” 

The archmage swept around the floor to his desk. He did not sit, and given there were no chairs in front of his table, neither did Harry or Hermione. Shulgi rifled through a stack of papers set for processing. He looked at them expectantly.

Hermione looked at Harry. “We wanted to ask a question about gravity,” she said. “Would you know if any of the other Houses have magic that affects it?”

Shulgi lifted an eyebrow. “I would.”

Hermione waited awkwardly, looking like she was trying not to press or bombard the archmage with questions. Harry felt proud of her.

Shulgi pulled away from his desk. He strode purposefully up through the long room, the train of his duelling coat billowing. Sleeveless, it was one of those things that hung as decoration. The archmage flicked his wrist once, twice, three times, like a conductor ordering a musical lift.

Harry swallowed; three of the crystal balls glowed white-hot from their tables. The globe on the summoner table; the globe for the astralists, and finally, the globe for…

“The Twelfth House,” said Harry.

Hermione was frowning.

“Indeed, although the last is debatable. We do not have a necromancer to kindly ask. It is a theory of mine, however, that opening a rift into Death could disturb gravity.” said Shulgi. “Summoning high creatures, always. Even Astralists could impact gravity with enough of them — opening a gate into dreamland. In short: dimension magic. 

“Gravity is relative to a dimension, with all its different galaxies and universes. Change the dimension, or open a portal into another, and you are rarely going to matchup gravities. It frightened people that any House should bear such power. Of the three Houses that affect other dimensions, two lie dead.”

Shulgi stopped at his own House’s display. He tugged the vapour out, but it did not rise; the mist sunk and gathered on the floor to spread between their feet.

Harry stepped back as the mist coalesced and spun, slowly upon itself, until it became a whirlpool.

A sinkhole appeared. Harry peered over, taking a step forward, and in surprise found himself gazing down into another chamber. The ground of the office had simply vanished, and Harry was looking down as though through someone else’s ceiling.

Below Harry, a shadowed creature hunched in a glowing diagram. Multi-ringed and almost white, the pattern shone with shifting violet runes. Another figure came into view — a summoner, panting, hunched over. He or she did something in the air, made a sign, and Harry had the impression the two were talking, though he could not hear the words. The shadowed entity stood. He thought it stood on two legs, but its arms were absent.

Goosebumps pebbled Harry’s skin, the hairs on his arms foresting up.

“What is that thing?” he said.

The instant the words left his mouth, the scene vanished, as if it had never been. Thick fog swept across the hole, and filled it, until Harry could no longer see another room, the hunched creature, or the diagram, nor its brilliant light. 

“A Blue Wraith,” said Shulgi. “It is a tier four summons.”

He waved his hand, and the mist separated one last time. Harry inhaled, his eyes dilating.

A medieval village appeared — a busy market square, a stone well — it was all so clear. Even the brown wagon track. A town replaced it, the image suddenly warping, but in that same era. Next a city, Rome, the crowd gathered in front of the Vatican; and from each scene, as more and more locations spun, a summoner was screaming from a pyre, their robes wet in oil and hair burning up, the pendant of the Guild melting to chest skin, a riot of faces and bleeding mouths. The screams didn’t sound human anymore; it left each man and woman howling, a guttural animal note of despair.

Shulgi swiped his hand, and the glass ball cleared. The mist vanished. 

Harry stared at the stone beneath his feet, his sight going out. After the blinding light of the bonfires it took time for the detail of the floor to return. Beside him, he could sense more than see Hermione clasping her hand to mouth.

Harry had never stopped to consider that other Houses might have faced their own persecution. The healers went to war against the summoners, he could vaguely recall from History of Magic; the most religious of them joined the muggles of the Church to burn the summoners as heretics. Even today, clerics accused the Second House of demon worship.

Summoners, Astralists and Necromancers. Three Houses that affected other dimensions, and at least two of them gravity changers.

Harry dragged his gaze down the room, to the orbs on the furthest two tables, their white glow having faded. Three Houses, two down, one to go. He couldn’t shift the image of the pyres, burned onto his retinas.

And then there were none .

Shulgi said, “It is easy to damn that which we do not know. And there is ought else more alien than another soul’s world.”

Harry thought of the creatures in the cabinets of the museum, and felt ashamed.

“As to your query, I can only reliably comment on astralism and summoning. To what degree deathgates alter gravity no one knows. You’d need death magic to test. And, regrettably, there are no necromancers.”

Harry missed whatever Hermione said, and by the time he’d lifted himself from his own thoughts, Shulgi was talking.

“Somewhat. When a summon enters a contract with this world, they bind themselves in fealty to their master. But a part of that contract is an agreement to bind mastery to me. I have the perk of being able to snatch control, therefore, and override a dangerous summoning; but also some significant drawbacks.” 

"Drawbacks?" said Harry distractedly. 

“I share a claim to the responsibility of anything that goes wrong. It’s an internal check to reduce corruption in the Guild, and prevent an archmage from over-reaching, or not maintaining control over their House. A criminal charge for a Guild summoner is a criminal charge for me.”

“Oh…” said Harry gloomily. “You might want to know about this, then.”

“What?”

Shulgi folded himself into his chair like a throne, almost sideways, his foot up on a footrest beneath the desk. With a flick of his hand, he conjured two chairs.

Harry sank gratefully down.

Hermione hesitated. “We’re investigating a string of murders. We think it might be a summoner.”

Shulgi’s expression darkened. “What makes you think that?”

They filled Shulgi in on the murders, going into detail about the time delays, gravity and Lady Dolovhov’s cat. Harry described the body in the church, and the state of the other victims.

Hermione had, somehow, saved her purse; her phone; and the case file with Lucius’ photographs.

The archmage held silent throughout. When Hermione was done, the colours in the room thudded, and the air was undulant again and hot.

“I was thinking it might be a… Guild summoner,” said Hermione timidly.

“Not possible,” said Shulgi automatically. He set down his wine, fingers at its stem. “I’d know.”

Hermione faltered. “Well, it’s just — it would have to be pretty powerful magic to make those sorts of time differences. Surely, no one outside of the Guild could even cast this level of —”

“I am hyper-aware of a Guild summoner calling anything in this country from the high tiers,” Shulgi bit. “Unless they do not belong to the Guild, or were expelled, I would know. And there have been no upper tier summons this month, nor the last; we have exams soon, so the advanced students are all overclocking and magic hoarding.”

“How many summoners outside the Guild could do this?” asked Harry.

Shulgi met his gaze unhappily. “I… do not know of any,” he admitted reluctantly. “Summoning requires mentorship. It cannot progress beyond tier two without a teacher; it is not a natural school as, say, elementalism. Therefore we don’t really have rogues in this country. What’s more: we curtain peek in Britain; summoners are curious when they feel Calls, we can all sense it quite far away. Everyone knows when a group is whipping up power for a big Call. It’s all the student body can gossip about.”

“Could we see the record for anyone expelled?” offered Hermione.

“You can, though it’s short. We don’t accept apprentices who cannot abide by rules, nor play well with others; you need temperament, potential and drive.”

“That just makes our job easier,” reassured Harry. “It will be faster to narrow down suspects.”

Shulgi nodded absently. “Where did you get these?” he said, sliding out one of the photographs. He leaned forward, boots thudding softly on the floor.

“The vampires are investigating it,” said Harry. “The victims are all newly embraced. Violleta’s lot.” 

The archmage's eyes fastened to the same point Harry had been, back in his office; namely, the abundance of First House symbols in every victim’s home. “Are these Guild healers?” he looked up in surprise.

Harry nodded. “They were. Apparently, the House of Life won’t deal with them anymore.”

“No it wouldn’t,” murmured Shulgi. “Not under its new leadership.”

Hermione straightened. “New leadership? Isn’t Lord Voldemort the archmage?”

“No. It is against Guild regulation to house vampiric members. Even a Head of House must step down.” Shulgi tilted his head. “Or be forced down.”

“That’s horrendous,” scowled Hermione.

“Who stepped up?” interjected Harry.

“Dolores Umbridge.”

“What!” cried Hermione. 

For a second Harry was confused. Who? Then he remembered: Umbridge, the fluffy pink lady from the Ministry. She’d been on campus with her niece. 

“Indeed. Quite a strange woman, and not really up to the magical task. But she filed a strong case against Voldemort, claiming mandatory abdication on grounds of vampiric annulment. He has not come forward to protest.”

No, Harry supposed he couldn’t.

Shulgi looked closer at the photographs. “Nothing under tier five could do this.”

Hermione’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “Tier five?”

“Or higher.”

“Can anyone even summon those alone?”

“They can — though what makes you think this isn’t performed by a group? It’s unlikely a solo practitioner; they would need an exceptional level of power. You’d be looking at our highest conjurers; myself; or someone with a very dangerous familiar.”

Hermione, frowning at the photographs, whipped her head up in shock. “A familiar? But familiars have to be tier one or tier two!”

“No,” said Shulgi. “It is rare, but a high summon can sometimes choose a mage as their master. Familiars do not have to be standard Kith, those spirits are merely the most common. I know of one summoner off the top of my head, in fact, and she was banned from the Guild earlier this year.”

“Who?” they both said at once.

“Luna Lovegood.”

“What!” Harry’s mouth fell open. He felt like he’d been physically slapped. She cant have been expelled. I don’t understand. “Why?” pressed Harry.

Beside him Hermione looked incredulous, but not for long; Harry unhappily noted how quickly she warmed up to the idea that Luna might dreamily forget rules, or disregard social norms. Rule breaking had ever been a hard line for Hermione.

“For near-lethal injury of her fellow students,” muttered Shulgi. 

Harry blinked. 

“That’s not possible,” he said automatically. “She wouldn’t ever hurt someone. She can be a bit — confused sometimes —“

“I do not think it was malicious,” said Shulgi. “But with certain familiars, they cannot be left to roam unchecked. They’re not pets. Miss Lovegood rarely followed Guild policy, including, unfortunately, those put in place to safeguard other students. It is difficult when one’s familiar is unlike everyone else’s; but she was offered support and guidance for how to store it at night, tame any aggressiveness and handle its unique diet, all of which she dismissed. Miss Lovegood regularly let it out of dimensional storage, loose into the dormitory. She claimed the creature felt uncomfortable. Twelve students almost died.”

Harry lowered his eyebrows, a stubborn tic in his jaw. He could feel his stomach quivering.

He shook his head. “No. That’s not Luna.”

He mentally replayed all the images he had of her: ditzy, dreamy, not all there Luna. Not this. 

“We should at least go speak to her,” said Hermione. “If we can’t ignore Edward as a lead then we can’t ignore —”

“Fine,” snapped Harry, not wanting to go into it now. “Thank you,” he said to Shulgi, sounding stilted, but ashamed of his outburst. Harry took a swig of his wine.

“You are welcome, Harry.”

“Sir,” said Hermione, “before we leave, might we use Chamber One?”

Hermione said it so casually that it looked a bit comical.

Shulgi slid a shrewd amber gaze to his newest summoner. “Chamber One? Why specifically that chamber?”

Hermione rambled out an excuse. Harry didn’t understand the terms, but even he wouldn’t have believed it, and he wasn’t an archmage. He forgot his friend couldn’t lie for toffee.

"It's booked," drawled Shulgi. Harry's heart sank. "For three days."

"Oh," Hermione said, her shoulders sinking. "Is there any way we — I realise formality is —"

“Give me a reason, Miss Granger,” said Shulgi cryptically. He watched her over the lip of the wine glass, fingers idled on its stem. “A good reason, mind. I could eject the morning students, and provide you permission regardless, even assign you a couple conjurers to set up."

“Pardon?” said Hermione, reeling. "Oh. Please! Yes. Although I —we— I was hoping to do this without help, actually," added Hermione nervously.

"A bold move, but why not?"

"Harry and I —"

"Have no complimentary magic. As you know, an alchemist has no place in a summoning chamber. Only three Houses would even benefit from dimensional wards. And two are long gone from this world."

"Well, you see —"

"Let's say I believe you; and I tell you the room is booked. Let's say I think you're lying; and I let you use it. Give me a reason, Miss Granger.”

Hermione's breathing was shallow, her eyes as wide as saucers. She stood like a deer caught in headlights.

"Now. Why do you need to use it?"

Sometimes, something like this happens and there it was: you’re in. You snap a decision and there’s no turning back. It’s a level of improvised wildness that has saved Harry countless times. Soldiers knew it, acrobatics too; you push past a certain line and there you are; you’re committed, you’re doing it, you’re in, come what may, over the unknown drop and into a place beyond. 

Harry could pinpoint all the biggest changes in his life back to a moment as this — the exact moment a decision forked his road.

“I’m not an alchemist,” said Harry. “And I need to see if necromancy triggers gravitational shifts.”

“Now that,” said the archmage, his tiger eyes on Harry. “Is a good reason.”