The Eighth House

The House of Mirrors

Illusionists. Able to refract light and manipulate magic around their bodies with frightening variety, Illusionists are able to become invisible, change face, and masquerade as something they are not. Experts in the art of deception, masters of this House are capable of extending these illusions beyond their own body, puppeteering visions and seemingly real events before the naked eye. Modern photo imagery reveals the lie, but historically, Illusionists were capable of turning whole courts and royal coups upon themselves. Preferring to act from the shadows, this House breeds ambitious politicians and the right hand of kings. 

Members of the Eighth House are known as Illusionists, The Unseen, The Faceless, Throne Makers, Doppelgangers, Viziers

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

“Better to go now,” said Shulgi, sweeping ahead. “If you’re on a timer. The students have access to the chamber from eight am. We’ll do this quickly, and eliminate a question for you.”

Merlin, Harry would have a chance to finally do something with his magic. He could test it out — in safe conditions, under an archmage. He felt dizzy from the reality of it, shy and excited.

They sped through the Guild, through its dark halls and glass-eyed animals, the stuffs looking suddenly friendly to Harry.

Beneath a stone archway, and along a dark walk, they reached a door unlike any other. No frosted glass, no wood or no stone, this door stood black and bare and so much like a meat freezer door that Harry stopped sharp with a frown. But the archmage swiped a key and the door opened in and Hermione stepped through with no fuss.

"It's the summoning floor," whispered Hermione. "Did you expect it to be like the rest?"

"Don't know what I expected." Possibly more marble and stone, or weird Jurassic Park offices.

The Hall of Chambers stretched ahead, a long, black corridor with more of those industrial doors punctuating the dark. Twenty one identical doors; all loomed before Harry like an eerie hotel. Or, like a nightclub, for between the doors by the ground, were those ruby-uplighters, and they cast a dim red light all along the hall. Harry felt like he was in some sort of game.

At the very end of the corridor he could spy Chamber One in gold.

It looks like a sex club, or something. He reasoned Shulgi would not appreciate the comparison.

Every single door bore a rounded glass window, like a ship. And walking past each, Harry was met by an impossible sight.

Through each window were biomes. Rich, fertile lands — even a desert, with stars reaching all the way to the ground. Chamber Twenty breathed mist and green light; a rainforest. He could scarcely see past the wet fronds of tropical trees pressing against the glass.

Chamber Nineteen was a coastal shoreline of pebbles, shingles and grey clouds. Eighteen an airy mountain path; in seventeen a single igloo hunkered in a snowscape. Right up to Chamber One at the end, whose window was blacked-out.

The archmage unlocked the door from a control panel on the wall. Hermione radiated excitement; she had peeked every room.

Inside the chamber, the archmage flicked on the lights.

Oh, not the chamber. They had stepped into a spartan ante-chamber or lobby, the chamber’s real door in front of them. The wall to the left held lockers for belongings; but to the right was teeming, filled floor to ceiling with racks upon racks of… ice skates. White ice skating shoes, labelled by size. The thick blades gleamed futuristically, sci-fi black.

A steady green light shone above the door. A timesheet or clock-in book hung from a hook, spiral-bound, and filled with various names, a pen on a chain.

“Sir,” said Hermione, peering through the glass window of the door ahead, whose handle was a wide metal wheel, again, like you’d see on a ship. All Harry could spy was darkness. “I think the floor’s gone.”

“The last group must have forgotten to blank the room. What did they leave it as?”

“Erm,” Hermione faltered. “It’s um, er.”

“Take these,” Shulgi said. “Loop them onto your wrists, in case you drop them.”

Harry blinked. He’d been handed two Nintendo switch controllers; but without the buttons, and all black. 

“Sure,” said Harry. “What are they?”

“Glide control,” said Shulgi. “What is your shoe size? Quick, now.”

Harry jumped. The door behind him was smoking. The exit's identical ship wheel spun and the door released a hydraulic hissing sound, sealing them in. “T-ten.”

A pair of skates dropped into his arms.

Hermione looked anxious enough to burst, her first day of flying all over again. She stood gripping her controllers, wide-eyed, short-breathed. Harry didn’t have time to ask her what was going on, because —

Another hydraulic hissing sound, the light went orange. The room filled with mist.

“Take a moment to acclimate yourselves,” said Shulgi, as his braid began to rise.

Harry started to rise. First his arms, then his knees, then his whole chest lifted out. His back bowed.

Oh my God. I’m upside down.  

Hermione floated next to him, wild-eyed, shaking her controllers back and forth like that’d help. Her hair plumed eerily, as though underwater.

Harry laughed, he couldn’t help it; this felt wonderful .

His tummy lifted, elevator-strange, and his hair all stood on his head. I’m a lava lamp.

The archmage pushed away from the digital panel. Now the door in front groaned once, hissed, and like a space ship, slid inwards and up. The door ascended into the roof, leaving Harry staring through a void. The light turned red.

“Your right hand goes forward and backwards, but also controls elevation,” lectured Hermione, shrill. “Left hand is meant to propel your body left or right—of course I—” She went straight into a locker. “I haven't done this before!”

Harry couldn’t hear. Blood was pounding in his ears. Arcing his controllers he threw his weight forward and ventilated air rushed his face. He did a quick spin. Turned himself over, and bobbed, upright.

Hermione, hugging a shoe rack, stared at him sourly.

“A natural!” enthused Shulgi, not wearing any skates or holding any controllers. He hung serenely in the air, his surcoat defying zero-g.

The archmage shot through the space door and into the void. Just inside he froze. Shulgi returned quickly and tore off the front sheet of paper from the clock-in book. He brought it up to his nose.

It's funny how swearing is the same in any language. You can always understand it. Harry watched curiously as the archmage flew into the chamber and vanished. After a second, Harry went in after him, pushing his controller and leaving Hermione to bounce against the lockers.

What he saw bubbled laughter up into his throat.

Harry floated high above an Olympic sized swimming pool, but no water; the pool was filled with brightly coloured plastic balls. A party-sized ball pit.

A tropical Tiki bar stood by the pool with a lopsided reed roof. Empty spirit bottles and beer cans littered the poolside, covering the deck chairs, and a crushed cider can rolled on the diving board.

At the bar a women’s bra hung from a beer tap. Off-white and stained, Harry spied a broken underwire poking through the fabric.

It’s a pissup, Harry realised. Oh my lord, of course. Lucius said his son was educated with the Guild. The Guild takes on kids when the family can afford it. So I suppose, that means… teenagers. Summoner teenagers.

… ahhhhahahahahaha.

The archmage hung in the air, high above the ballpit, making a high-pitched keening sound. His wide gold eyes stared at the pool, the bar, he took it all in: the soaked Guild hoodie, the Vodka bottle, the lacy knickers on the roof of one poolside umbrella.

The chamber shook. “I will kill them . I will rend their flesh from their bones.”

The archmage soared, magic coming off him in waves, spittle flying from curled lips. The whites of his eyes showed as he inhaled through delicately flared nostrils, a deadly gaze down his nose.

“Those flesh-greedy secretive idolatrous cockups …”

Harry swallowed his tongue to contain himself. Hermione finally got into the room, spinning freely in uncontrolled circles.

Magic pulsed lethally. The archmage whipped around as if to leave, fury clouding his focus. He stopped next to Hermione, took her wrist to check the time. Snatching her arm served the dual purpose of halting her spinning loops.

“We will rend later,” he intoned darkly. “For now, go stand on the… tiles.”

Harry touched down by the poolside next to an umbrella and beer-stained table. It was an effort to stay down; his knees kept lifting. His skates slipped on the soaking wet, which he didn’t really understand since there was no water. Then he spied a broken WKD bottle, and several upended spirits. In the pool the plastic balls shone stickily.

The second Shulgi landed, the wool train of his surcoat began to soak up alcohol, where he'd unknowingly stepped into a reeking puddle of sticky liquor. Harry observed as discreetly as he could, from under his lashes, and was rewarded by Shulgi's jerk of realisation, a full-body stiffening, accompanied by a slightly hysterical expression. He was breathing quickly, and kept muttering, sometimes in English, sometimes a language Harry didn’t know, his laughter tinged with an edge. 

Helicopter Hermione touched down. She spiralled closer and closer, like a whirlybird, controllers everywhere, til she could snatch at the table’s edge and, at last, hover floatily upon it, clinging to the stem of the umbrella like a carousel horse, so to keep her bottom down. 

She, too, stared, wide-eyed at the carnage, and shot a nervous look to her archmage.

“Have you —ever—used your—gift—before?” Shulgi ground out breathily. “Can you feel Death?”

“A little,” Harry confirmed. “Only recently.” He reached for his hair awkwardly. “I call it the Long Place.”

“Describe it.”

Harry did so, all the strange silence when it closed around him, and how space went syrupy and long, like everything was stretching away from him, he at the centre.

Shulgi frowned. "That is not how accounts describe it. That is closer to mind magic. Who of your parents was the necromancer?”

“My mother,” said Harry, after a pause.

Shulgi nodded. “Your father?”

“He was the mind mage.”

The archmage tilted his head and scrutinised him silently. “It is incredibly rare to be Dual-Housed — unlikely you are both. This might only be mind magic you are gifted by.”

Harry blinked. “Er. I can hear water, other times?”

“Ha! That’s better. That’s Death. Can you enter it?"

"Enter it?" said Harry, a chill touching his spine.

"No point staring at a gate. Stand here."

Harry jumped. Power flared from the archmage and swelled to touch the corners of the room; it wrapped right around Harry, comforting, hot. Shulgi ignored the lace knickers hanging from the umbrella.

Nervously, Harry complied. He found he could lock his position with the skates. 

Shulgi came to stand in front of him. “The chamber’s environment is controlled and will log any alterations in gravity. When I do this, close your eyes.” 

“Wait — what’s ‘this’? What do you mean, what should I —”

The archmage slammed the flat of his palm into Harry’s chest, and light exploded.

Harry shone supercharged, hyper-alive. He could barely see the room but all his limbs were bright, liquid and lovely. Shulgi withdrew his hand —glowing sickly neon blue— and brushed Harry’s hair from his forehead. He looked curiously at him for a moment, but pressed his palm to Harry’s hot skin, at a point between his eyes.

A warm egg yolk sensation crack-slid down Harry’s head, over his neck, all across his chest, warming him inside out.

“This will protect you,” said Shulgi, standing back to appraise his work. “It will keep your energetic signature hidden in Death. Better not to attract unwanted attention.”

Harry looked at his hands; his skin was shimmering in runes, a ghostly translucent barrier. They covered him in luminous shapes, glowed up his wrists, arms, light slid over his chest, too—for he pulled up his shirt to peek.

“Ignore your Long Place, for the time being. Lift your hand. You have a remarkable amount of power for someone untaught.”

“You can tell?”

Shulgi made him angle his hand sideways, so Harry was making a cut motion. He offered Harry rogue smile. “I can tell. Now, cut the air. Ah, ah. Here.”

He nudged Harry’s hand up. Feeling very silly, Harry made a cutting motion in the air. Nothing happened.

Shulgi sighed. “You have to cut, Harry.”

“I did!”

“No, you just waved your hand like Hitler. Cut.”

Harry narrowed his eyes and imagined his hand a blade, wreathed in that sharp blue light he’d seen the archmage use — pictured it extending above his fingers into a deadly point.

His hand grew hot. Power —neon and brilliant— erupted from his fingertips in a tuft of blue light. It lit up Shulgi’s face. 

“There, there!” cried the archmage. “Good, Harry; any visualisation will work. All the way to the floor, now: slice.”

As at the club, the world here unzipped. Alien light spilled in from a glowing crack in the air that opened wider and wider as Harry sliced his hand down. He had to crouch to reach the floor, wobbling on his skates.

“Ha, ha!” Shulgi snarled in delight.

“What is that?” whispered Hermione fearfully, her bottom lifting off the table.

And if they stood in a fairytale, it would have been no stranger: for the world had split. Like a seam opening, light spilled in from that gash to splash across the tiles on the floor. The torn place in the world lit up the umbrella table and Hermione's bobbing body in a queer half light. It cast dancing reflections over the tiles like the light of an aquarium.

“The Underworld,” said Shulgi. “Limbo. The World Across the Shroud. The Shadowlands. Etcetera. Harry, open it a little wider. No one can see anything.”

Harry flexed his hand and made a fist, testing his grip. He brought his hands together in front as to meet them in prayer, or steeple them. Very slowly, straining under the effort, he then dragged them apart, as if prizing open a doorway.

The zip bulged in the middle, opening a metre or more. Through the glowing gate stretched a nightmare landscape.

An alien, barren world. Grey and violet light writhed above, far above the land in a clouded umbra. Below the wild heavens spanned a wild but dead place. It looked like a wasteland. 

Twilight leaked from the land, flooded false daylight across the poolside where Harry backed up and stared.

He could not tell if those were trees. Trunks towered toward the sky, with no branches. The monoliths vanished into a mist, a black fog lit up by lightning, pale forks of heatless lightning that roiled with the clouds. Harry couldn’t see a sun.

But he could see a river. Not ten metres out, its bank embedded into cold grey earth.

“Off you go, Harry.”

Harry swung his head to Shulgi, paralysed. “M-me?”

“You are the necromancer. Very good, by the way.”

The archmage wasn’t looking at him. He had a stopwatch in his hand.

Hermione slid off the table and high-steppingley moon-walked over, her face ashen. “Is that death?” Harry couldn't help but notice her breath fogged incredibly white. Harry, meanwhile, sweat achingly hot.

“Mostly,” said Shulgi, fiddling with his clock. “No one knows what happens beyond the end of the river. Souls float through this place and they... move on; elsewhere. You’ll see people below the surface, if you get close enough. There’s a lot going on in the Shadowlands, different landscapes, creatures, but Harry isn’t going far. You just have a wander Mr Potter, get used to it. Go on, now.”

Shulgi waved to the landscape beyond as if Harry was only out on a country stroll.

The flaring purple sky was minutely captured in the glossy convexities of Harry's eyes. Lightning dazzled him. A soft exhale of air, and he took a single step forward. Then another, and another, and walked into that barren realm.

Harry stepped onto hard-packed white earth. Gravity felt normal here than by the pool, and so he stumbled, rebalancing on his skates.

His hands, Harry noticed, shone pale and sickly. Below the runes he had become porcelain, his knuckles white and strange.

Harry glanced back nervously. The archmage shot a smile at him, encouragingly, his tawny eyes narrowing. But he turned his chin and gestured on, to the river.

With no way back short of losing face and the reason they were here, Harry turned toward the river.

Crunch-crunch-crunch. It sounded like snow as he walked, high-stepping and coltish. But the dusty ground lay flat and hard and undisturbed. It did not take Harry long to reach the bank, the cracked ground broken through by weeds and tufts of a thin blue reed that Harry had never seen. Feeling both Hermione's and Shulgi's eyes on his back, Harry peered over the bank, and immediately stiffened.

Undressed bodies floated under pale green water. Shut-eyed and still. All along the riverbank the water glowed faintly, and the bodies passed, never breaking the surface. One group of older children went by together; but women, too, and men. The small and unmoving body of a baby, its eyes also closed.

Harry backed away woodenly, tingling all over. He turned from the river and swallowed. The doorway framed his route home, Hermione and Shulgi stood beyond. Then, Harry noticed movement out of the corner of his eye.

Just in front of the door, a little to the right, a platypus had escaped from life and was now waddling, unseen—since the audience had eyes only for Harry— toward the river.

“Hermione… Is that your familiar?”

"Pardon!" she called, hand to her ear. "I can't hear you properly. It's like your behind glass!"

"PLATYPUS," Harry mimed rocking a baby, then wondered what he was doing.

It worked, though. Hermione stared at him a dull moment, then lifted her hand to her mouth and spoke into it, before putting it to her ear. Whatever she heard in the box-hand wasn't good.

Hermione lifted her other palm to her mouth like a phone receiver; she spoke literal gibberish into this, too. Again Hermione listened. Then she swung a slow, horrified gaze up. “He’s not there!”

“No, he’s not,” said Harry.

He almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Floating down the stream on its furry back, without a care in the world, was the platypus.

Hermione made a strangled noise. She cast her arm out like a fisherman, and reeled in an invisible line. She even squared her weight, and tugged. Nothing happened. The platypus shifted its shoulders comfortably, and continued downstream.

Shulgi, unperturbed, only watched Harry curiously.

“I can’t summon him!” Hermione said, stricken, looking first at the archmage, then Harry. “Something's interfering with—wait, where are you—Harry! Don’t you dare get in the river you don’t know what—”

Harry stumbled toward the water, his skates slipping hurriedly.

Back in the doorway the archmage stuck out his arm. “Not you.”

“But Harry—”

“Is capable of walking this realm without physical harm. I do not think we summoners should be in Death, do you? Just as necromancers should not venture the Hunting Grounds.”

Harry raced upstream as fast he could, the skates making him gangly. He slid down the bank and plunged into… warm water. Like a bathtub, right up to his armpits, water lapped across his collarbone. He raised both arms high in surprise, the controllers dangling from his wrists. 

Very shortly, he was met by a familiar, and indignant, Squeak-squeak-SQUEAK!

“Look, I know —” Harry said. The creature thrashed, releasing more chipping squarks. “But that’s literal death.”

He scooped the familiar out of the water, and was about to make his way back, when a young boy's corpse bumped into Harry’s hip. The child’s eyes flickered, and then opened a slit. A bubble escaped his mouth. His watery brow creased in a frown, as though waking.

Harry splashed wildly, platypus held high. He almost went under in his haste to get away, having completely forgotten about the bodies. The water was no less tricky to navigate than actual bath water, blessedly, and so he clambered onto the far bank, shaking. Adrenaline-rich and high on a pervasive sense of something he could not quite name, Harry trembled with the platypus, who had finally gone pliant.

At the door, Hermione reached out frantically. Tears stung her eyes. “Oh, you stupid, stupid, pea-brained wombat!” 

The moment Harry was through, back into life, he began to float, and had to lock himself.

Shulgi said, “What you open, you must close.”

Heart still racing, Harry tried to pull at the air on either side of the rift, and found to his relief he could manipulate it like fabric — weird lubricant-slick fabric.

Harry wrestled with the slippery material, and found it self-adhesive. He could pinch it together; it wanted to be closed. As he worked the unnatural light died.

“Were those people?” he said at last.

Shulgi squeezed his shoulder. “Just the dead.”

“But are they dead? Their bodies —those can’t be their actual bodies— and you said — they haven’t gone beyond yet; they’re still in the river. What happens if you…”

Shulgi cocked his head, for Harry had trailed off.

“Pulled them out of the water?” the archmage asked. Harry met his gaze. “You’d need their physical corpse too, I imagine, somewhere near. Then, all sorts of stories. Goodness knows what happens in the school of zombism.”

“Zombies?” Harry blanched. “Not… resurrection?”

“No, Harry, not resurrection.”

Shulgi had Harry test several more times, opening and closing the deathgate while holding his stopwatch.

It confirmed a tiny, tiny time delay — not anywhere near enough to explain the gravity change at Lady Dolohov’s. 

“But,” Shulgi said. “That means it’s safe for you to open these gates beyond the chamber. Just be careful — listen out, make sure you’re not opening it straight into a river. You should be able to peek through if you thin the divide a little, you don’t cut it then, in that scenario you— oh, actually, another day. Gods, is that the time?”

Back up top, the door sealed with a misty hiss as they took off their skates. 

“Well, there you have it,” the archmage enthused, comparing his clock to one here. “It is minor, but we can safely say necromancy does indeed fit the theory. It affects gravity, but minimally.”

Harry looked up from unlacing. “So time changed, but not enough?”

“Exactly. Only by a few seconds. If you’re seeing as colossal a time difference as twenty minutes, it is not a deathgate that opened in that house.”

“Summoning, then,” said Hermione pointedly, looking at Harry.

“Likely, yes. A large summon. Harry mightn't be wrong, though; he could very well be detecting necromancy. Perhaps a necromancer is present in addition to a summoner. It’s hard to know what magic such a combination of casters would even do. But really, how your witness missed such a summoning, I’ve no idea. You don’t need a Sympathy Link. Summoning whips up all sorts of loud ambient noise. And if you say the victims were alive, too, during this mauling…”

Yeah. No screaming. Maybe their faces got chewed off too fast. Harry shivered, and shoved his foot into his boot.

Out in the corridor, they waited for Shulgi to finish up. Hermione hesitated, and looked to Harry.

“I wanted to apologise — for earlier.”

Harry blinked. “When?”

Hermione turned to him, her posture open and her lips pressed together.

“In Malfoy’s carriage. You know I want to do good in the world but that's — that's no excuse for being insensitive. I'm sorry, Harry. I shouldn't have said anything. There was a better time to bring up all that about elders, and vampires. I didn't mean to make it an opportunity to educate.”

A warmth was spreading through Harry's chest that had nothing to do with Shulgi's oppressively hot magic. He cleared his throat to steady his tone. “What brought this on?”

“Something the archmage said earlier. But it hardly matters; right now, what matters is we're in this. We've always been in this together, Harry.”

Harry's ears turned red. He felt all light and floaty, his chest expanding in a release of bodily tension. He ducked his head, rubbed at his nose. “Thanks 'Mione.”

That she would stand by him, despite everything that had changed for them after — well, despite their growing differences, it meant more to him than Harry could ever say. He felt impossibly warm throughout.

“And Harry? I know we don’t talk about this, I know I avoided your lectures and papers — but if you’d be willing to try again, I would like to hear about your research into natural feeding. I’m not saying I’ll agree but…”

Harry couldn’t stop grinning. “Yeah. And I’ll listen to what you say about the — wider community of vampires.”

“Later,” Hermione said firmly, her eyes soft. “Let’s talk.”

Harry nodded, on top of the world.

“Right,” said Harry, fey with it, aglow, and not really believing what he was about to say anyway: “Let’s go see if Luna’s a mass murderer.”

Hermione grimaced.

Through the black-red corridor, past the biome chambers with their windowed oceans and green rainforests, they journeyed out: to the Summoner’s Guild. Shulgi opened a final door and Harry was blinded by light. No more low service beams; the foyer flooded with enchanted daylight. Noise lifted the ceiling. Students loitered on the staircase, flooded the marble, wobbled beneath stacks of books and piles of scrolls.

The students closest to Shulgi stumbled nack, bug-eyed, as the door swung open. They looked to Harry, back to their archmage.

Shulgi searched the foyer immediately, to whispers that jumped from one student to the next. He swept through, hellbent, his glinting eyes narrowed dangerously.

The air charged with a sense of anticipation.

Amidst this chaos, a lean, handsome boy appeared —for the crowd parted to reveal him— perhaps seventeen, lounging without a care in the world on the end of the staircase, one knee up, the other dangling off its side. His hair topped him like a flame. Brilliant black hair and vivid green eyes, he was grinning cockily, laughing with friends — three boys and one girl, a redhead whose hand he was holding. It reminded Harry so much of the Marauders that he halted, breathless.

The boy didn't laugh long. His girlfriend noticed first. She turned to look; she looked the archmage in the eyes. A comical, almost panto change of expression. She tugged her partner's hand. Harry couldn't see whatever Shulgi's face read like, but he didn't need to. Power was suddenly slamming the room, bulging at the seams, flexing.

"Travers!"

Shulgi's voice had the desired effect; the boy froze, stiffened. His friends turned as one, in slow motion. At last the boy turned to look upon his doom. His face drained of all colour.

He intuited what had been discovered (or he just knew he shouldn't be sitting on the stairs like that), for he slid immediately down and stumbled. The wall of students parted in a wave; everyone moved away. Travers held his hands up in horror, placatingly, like Lucius’ driver to a spooked animal, a retort on his tongue. He didn't get the time.

Shulgi raised his hand, and out from it appeared an enormous, bloated beast. A toad, but twenty feet high, bulbous, stinking and green. Its shadow fell upon the student body, and the sea of open mouths. 

Shulgi was snarling. “Thinking only with your penis. You belligerent fucking idiot, what demented world do you live in that other summoners seem to avoid? You waste of flesh, you lagerlout git. What did you think would happen? Leave the room. Don’t tell anyone. Come back to it the next day. Why not! You barratrous, contemptible, criminal, deficient half-wit. If I were to tear out her unthinking uterus and fuck your ribcage with it would you be satisfied? Would you be less prone to flights of such opportunistic fancy that you would no longer narrow your entire world of logic down to the illegitimate, dyspeptic, stifling head of your own deviant and self-harmful cock?”

A crowd had gathered, jumping or craning necks, their excited faces peering around neighbours — down, too, from the walkway above.

It is hard to believe how incredibly angry Shulgi can get. Almost as hard, apparently, as it is to believe —

“ — how incredibly stupid you can be. Stupid as a stone that the other stones make fun of. So stupid that you have travelled far beyond stupid as we know it and into a new dimension of stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid cubed. Trans-stupid stupid. Stupid collapsed to a singularity where even the stupons have collapsed into stuponium —”

The blob-toad sucked the boy in, slowly, until the screaming, thrashing student was three-quarters way in, his leather loafers striking out, from the ends of his flailing legs. One fell off.

“Stay in there until lunchtime," snapped Shulgi. “And think about what you’ve done.”

They were told that Kingsley Shacklebolt was in the office at the far end of the cluttered suite of cubicles. All up the auror department, along central row, aurors were drowned in noise, lost under flying missives and teetering stacks of paper. Harry and Hermione had to dodge between tens of personnel, everyone stumbling between cubicles with slopping coffes and loose ties.

Pushing his head into the office, Harry found Kingsley bent over his desk, talking into a phone in the crook of his neck while he scribbled on a sheet of paper. Hermione eased in after Harry, and Kingsley glanced up, before gesturing they should wait.

Normally, Kingsley looked like a fit Black British detective who had spent his university days playing tennis, and lifting weights in the gym. What Harry saw today disturbed him.

Kingsley was exhausted. Big sagging bags hung from the auror's eyes and haunted his expression. No longer the bright African colours, the wicked-cut tunic; his grey robes were clean and pressed, and as tired as the mage.

Kingsley cut his phonecall, eventually.

"Lot on?" said Harry. The auror department must be under hell.

Kingsley looked at him strangely, an expression Harry couldn't pierce; after a moment, the auror sighed. "The church murder went viral. The whole department's in an uproar. Muggles won't stop phoning, and now we've got police down our necks. The Met have a source who says there are other, identical murders. So now, we've got a serial killer."

Harry winced. He told Nixon that. Fortunately, Hermione said nothing, electing not to mention the photographs Lucius had had possession of, which now lay in the depths of her expandible purse. Neither of them could risk a delay today and be questioned. She lowered herself into a chair; Harry could not sit, aflush with nervous action. Kingsley, also, did not sit. The Chief Auror ran his hand over his close-cropped coarse hair, looking frayed.

"A lot of people are sympathetic —or scared— but there's a growing faction out there saying it's justified.” Kingsley smeared his hand across his eyes. “The anti-vamp movement went crazy. There's this bastardisation of the BLM movement; people are calling it Human Lives Matter. It only started yesterday, but it's everywhere, all over social media. Too well organised for a bunch of teenagers. Every social platform was targeted, and the rhetoric they're pushing is worryingly clever. You don't have to look hard to see the agenda is violent."

Harry crossed his arms, unhappy with the hard look Kingsley was giving him. Harry had never supported outright violence.

After a moment, Kingsley broke his gaze. "We can't work out where it started, and they’re not just muggles. There's a mixed group working together from the shadows, dangerously well connected, and clearly keen on whipping up bloody murder. They've roused the muggle extremists as well as the mage crazies. We've all been swapped to this. So far, we only have a name."

Harry could feel Hermione's eyes boring into him. She must be thinking of Edward.

"Oh?" said Harry. "What's the group called?"

"The Hellsing Club."

Harry had never heard of it. Nor the HLM movement, but he'd been off social media for a few days since his life blew up, and Ron captured.

"After Van Hellsing, I presume," said Harry.

"We're guessing so. They've whipped people up; they've got all sorts online, even the werewolves - though they hardly need an excuse to bite on something that's anti-vampire.”

Kingsley was right; the werewolves would jump aboard eagerly. No need to prod much. There remained a disproportionate weighting of vampires in government, and various protective loopholes existed for the undead, especially in muggle law, while werewolves faced restriction after restriction in both worlds. When the supernatural world went public, the Ministry re-classified them to Beast.

Hermione and Kingsley were both looking at him - the topic must have changed. Harry had to scramble to recall it: "Now, we've got some changes you need to be aware of, regarding Lovegood."

"Lovegood, suddenly?" frowned Harry. "You always called her Luna."

Kingsley didn't immediately reply.

"When you speak to Lovegood, stay in the warded box. Don't step out of the box. Don't step out of the box for any reason, big or small."

Harry unfolded his arms, stunned. "Why? It's Luna. Besides, if it's only a warded section of the room, she can still reach out and touch us. Why would -"

"It's not for Lovegood," said Kingsley. "It's for her familiar. We don't know where it is."

Hermione frowned. "You think it would hurt someone?"

Again, Kingsley didn't comment.

"Has it gone rogue or something?" said Harry. "Because Luna wouldn't —"

"Familiars are incapable of 'going rogue'," said Kingsley. "They follow orders."

It took Harry a moment to realise what he implied.

"She wouldn't attack people," said Harry, looking straight at Kingsley. "You think she'd sic her familiar on us? That's insane. She knows us!"

"She knew her fiance, too."

Harry went cold. "You can't think she'd hurt Neville."

"Harry," said Kingley tiredly. "We know she hurt him. Their relationship is textbook how-to for isolation and emotional abuse. They lived out of each other's pocket, and then some. What we don't know, yet, is if she's the cause of his death."

Hermione's hand was plastered to her mouth, her eyes wide.

"We're reviewing Longbottom's case; it's been pulled off suicide. Lovegood came in for protective custody when Neville passed away, pushing for an investigation, claiming they were being hunted."

"Yeah exactly —" blurted Harry.

"But the parameters of her voluntary protection have changed. During the inquest into Neville's case, information came up concerning her relationship to the deceased, and the state of Lovegood's mental health during one particular period between them. A period that snowballed for its intensity, leading right up to his death."

"I don't understand," said Harry.

Kingsley gave him a sympathetic look, but said, "I know you'll have some back-and-forth with her, but under no circumstances are you to tell Lovegood any personal details about where you live, where you travel, where you spend your time. No defining geography at all, you here me?"

Harry felt alarm knocking in his chest and some denial too. But Kingsley barrelled on before he could even speak.

"Don't take anything she says to you personally. Ever since her custordy moved to involuntary, Lovegood's become non-compliant. She may use tactics to confuse and manipulate you. Ignore them. She's just trying to understand how she can best use your sympathy to her advantage."

"You're saying all this like she's convicted already," said Harry. "You can't know anything yet."

"That would be nice, Potter."

Kingsley smiled at him, but his eyes were dead.

The Ministry was fifty years behind the rest of the world. Protective Custody was in the same building as Criminal Detainment. At least they'd been searched; Hermione put her purse in a locker, and Harry hadn't anything on him except his wallet and keys, which, fortuitously, he'd had behind a zipper during the dragon attack.

Hermione flinched as the steel doors clanged shut behind them, and a bolt slid home. Kingsley walked a few steps ahead.

"Remember the rules," Kingsley said as they passed several empty cells. "Do not share defining features of where you live, where you frequent or where you work. Don't say where you eat out. Do not leave the warded barrier at any time. If Lovegood tries to touch you, you will be removed. Do you understand me?"

"I understand," said Hermione. Harry grunted.

They passed through another gate and left the natural light behind. Pale enchanted orbs fixed at intervals along the blank stone wall.

Harry said, "Why the worry about where we live and where we hang out? If you're not letting her out, she can't well knock on our doors."

Kingsley didn’t glance back. "Lovegood's ace card in all her Guild examinations, and the reason she passed her apprenticeship with such flying colours, is that she possesses a unique ability to send her familiar off at range, well beyond her."

"Er, is that not normal?" said Harry, realising Hermione's platypus wasn't with them.

She caught his look. "Oh, no, mine is still close. I send him to the corridor space. I didn't want him with us in the club. It's a between place where we can store them. Actually there's a fascinating history to the development of that inter-dimensional storage, all thanks to a Norwegian team back in 1809 when..."

Harry let her voice fill the hall with something less awful.

"Why can't it be there, then?" Harry asked when she was done. "Maybe Luna's is in the corridor place. Maybe it's not off killing — people."

"It's not here," said Kingsley. "A familiar is ejected from storage when a summoner is walked through certain wards. The corridor space Hermione is referring to is not a physical space somewhere far away; the familiar dematerialises and sits under the layer of the summoner's soul."

"It's... in you," said Harry in horror, looking at a vague space around Hermione's midriff. "The platypus is inside of you."

"It's not inside in the way of - oh," she snapped, blowing air out. "Harry, look where you're going!"

Harry was trying not to. The corridor here wasn't especially wide, and this part of the prison wasn’t empty. He was painfully aware of the inmates in the cells.

Some were standing or sitting or rocking to and fro on the ends of their beds in standard holding cells, with a wall of bars opening into the corridor. Others were closed behind steel with a single observation window of reinforced and enchanted glass, through which padded rooms were visible. While Harry was peripherally aware of the people in them, he didn't want to look properly.

Some of the cells had an extra room, such that you had to be clerked inside an observation chamber before you could go through another door into the cell.

Into one of these intermediary rooms they were led.

"She's kept in here," said Kingsley, as a prison orderly let them in. A big two-way mirror looked into Luna's cell. The orderly sat down in a swivel chair and otherwise looked at them with boredom.

"A'rite Kingsley?"

“Morning Bob, we have two visitors. They've been consented."

Bob shrugged from his desk, and jerked his chin to the inner door, which led into the room beyond. "You can take in her magazine for the week, might wake her up."

"We'll do that, Bob." Kingsley went to a safety deposit box by a tall metal cabinet.

Through the observation glass Harry could see a pale room that reminded him of those medical-experiment facilities in dystopian films where they kept supernatural children. It was not exactly a play room, but neither was it a traditional cell.

Galaxy mobiles and slowly rotating stars hung from the ceiling made of papier-mâché. A single white bed with a pink blanket; a round baby blue rug; a white table with some colouring things on it, two white chairs; a low bookshelf with books. The rest was spartan and clinical, the wash basin functional, potted with a single toothbrush and a bar of soap. The only other door was half open and showed an en suite.

Well, at least she's not in a cell. A real cell.

A semi-translucent ward split the room, leaving one half looking slightly undulant from this side. The magic cut right up to the bed, a few feet before it. Luna reclined against the headrest, her legs outstretched, her socks unmatched, one pink, one white. Beyond the ward her outline shimmered.

"That's a feywall," Hermione whispered. "Nothing tier five and under can get past it."

"It's a what?"

"A summoning ward. See the purple? It's a hallmark of our magic, actually why all our banners are... Oh. Harry. Look."

She had just spotted Luna.

Harry asked Kingsley, "What level's her familiar?"

"Five."

"Five!" Hermione's eyes bugged. "My familiar's tier one," she said uncertainly, in way of explanation. "It's so rare for tier two spirits to come forward during a bonding quest. Before the archmage said it was possible, I didn't know the higher ups even could. The denser the creature, the greater the pull of the Hunting Grounds, so I just presumed... but of course that's silly... familiars can stay in our world indefinitely... they don't drain energy... Keeping a large summon here would be no different than a small one if it was a familiar."

"How come they're different?" said Harry. "Familiars, I mean, from other summons."

"Well, partly because they're usually so small that they don't struggle as much against that pulling force. But mostly it's because, unlike any other type of summon, the familiar is tethered to this world by the summoner's soul."

"Your soul is keeping your platypus here?"

"It's perfectly safe; you can only ever have one familiar at a time. It's a two-way consensual bond, and there's tremendous benefit to the power drain on our part; for one, it let's us travel to their world. Not to mention the huge stability bonus to summoning a familiar provides just by being in the circle. Spells are so much easier -"

Kingsley handed them an issue of The Quibbler, the self-published magazine Luna's father produced.

"Bob, let them in. Remember what I said, you two."

The door shut after them. Looking at the large mirror, Harry could only see his own wild hair, then Hermione.

Luna gave them a serene smile. "Harry. It's good to see you. Have you finished with your p-H?"

"PhD," said Harry, with a small smile. "Last year. I got a formal post."

"Neville would be so proud."

Harry nodded, feeling empty.

"Luna," said Hermione, "We're here to talk to you about the murder of several healers from the Church of Eternal Life."

Harry scowled. Straight in, then. They took seats from the table, pulling them over to Luna's bedside, stopping just short of the ward.

Of course, thought Harry, Luna was surprised; "You're not here to talk about Neville?”

Her dreaminess cleared a little.

"No, we're actually — Luna, why are you here?" sidetracked Harry. "What's this about?"

"Harry," hissed Hermione. "We're not here to –-"

"Well it's nonsense!"

Luna agreed. "It is nonsense; no one understands a relationship from the outside. None of his friends had his back, not like I did."

Harry faltered. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, Harry," said Luna, "Don't worry; he knew you liked him. But you spent a lot of time telling him off for 'going on' about Herbology. Every time he was excited, you'd say he was doing it again."

Harry's face grew hot. "That's not true," he denied, realisation creeping up.

"You did," said Luna calmly. "You made him feel quite the bother."

Harry was starting to remember all the times Neville went on about some plant or other, knee-deep in the lake, while Harry lay on the bank, trying to hang out.

"And no one believed him when he said his parents were killed," said Luna serenely. "It wasn't an accident."

"Luna..." Harry croaked, his head feeling huge and stupid, his hands hanging like sandbags, "they died in hospital."

"To pneumonia," added Hermione impatiently.

"That's not real, though," said Luna. "It's made up by South African muggles to explain the giant mermaid killings. They're sixty feet long, you know."

"Just because you don't believe in science, doesn't mean it stops existing!" said Hermione shrilly. "Pneumonia is an entirely real phenomenon well documented by medical research."

Harry put his head in his hands. "Is this why he dropped off the planet? Neville thought we didn't like hanging out with him?"

"Maybe," said Luna. "I don't really know. He wanted me with him a lot, suddenly. I was worried about him; he made me worry. That's the only reason I needed to know where he was and who he was with."

Harry lifted his head slowly.

"Pardon?" said Hermione.

“That’s what they’re saying,” she waved to the two-way mirror. “That we were too close. But Neville didn’t want to go out. Everyone thought he was going crazy. I was the only one who didn't. That's the real reason he didn't spend time with other people. No one believed him about his parents."

"Probably because you filled his head with nonsense. They were immunocompromised," said Hermione. "Most of his family were; it's genetic, Luna. They got hit by a common infection. They weren't killed."

Reason Number Three why marrying into your own House creates problems, right after the elitism and xenophobia: inbreeding. Sickness. Persistent hereditary issues. For every prized bloodline trait, from pyromancy to summoning, for every innate strength that magic families bred for religiously over the middle era (and some still today), there came a handicap. A medical handicap. Narrow your breeding pool enough and face the consequences. 

The astralists were famous for coveting their dreamwalking, and their psychic abilities; the oldest of their families started to inbred themselves out of existence. The sharp decline of their House was a wake-up call for others; especially when muggle science began to pinpoint genetic immuno issues. Longer still for purebloods to act, and start marrying out. Neville's, the Eleventh House, was the unluckiest; the immune systems of the astralists had been hit for so long that by the time Harry met Neville, his family were the last. Like his grandparents before, his parents died of viral infection.

“No,” pressed Luna firmly. “They were murdered — slowly, over weeks, but murdered.”

“You filled his head with your medical paranoias,” snapped Hermione. “That’s why he stopped talking to everyone. That’s why —”

"You should be worried about green light," Luna said abruptly, turning to Harry.

"What?" Harry refocussed on her.

"A green light. It's what Neville's parents saw, before they got sick."

Hermione exhaled noisily. "Right. Well. We should go. Clearly, you don't know anything about what's going on in your own head, let alone the First House."

“But I do know,” said Luna. “Neville was being followed by people from the First House.”

“Now that is insane,” reasserted Hermione. “You loathe healers. Luna. You’re just trying to find someone to blame.”

“But they were healers — from the Church of Eternal Life!”

“Voldemort’s lot?” Harry sat up. “Voldemort’s lot were after Neville?”

That letter — in Lord Dolohov’s piano! Hadn’t Voldemort… and Neville’s House… What had it said? Harry wracked his brain. Bit of a long shot. They’d appeared in the same letter. Dolohov was told to shut down the research on vampires because… because Voldemort didn’t think vampirism was the answer. But hadn’t Antonin also said —what was it— that vampires were interested in Neville’s House? A bunch of vampires were gathering information, looking into records about the astralists… looking for survivors?

Why were the vampires studying Neville’s House? 

Could Voldemort have found whatever the vampires were searching for? Could experimenting on the vampires have accidentally brought up juicy info that — Harry’s brain hurt. He couldn’t see how any of this would make Voldemort want to kill Neville.

“Luna,” Hermione said, gently now. “Neville took his own life.”

“Neville was killed. We were being hunted! And no one believes me.”

What do the vampires seek? It troubles me. What in the records of the Eleventh House could interest the undead?

I have found something under the torture of one of these creatures. The vampires hunt for survivors of the Eleventh House. Their search is fevered and it is secret.

Why? What makes the vampires so obsessed? My Lord is apathetic to the mystery, now.

Lucius had said, carefully, ‘I do not know how apathetic he was.’

‘The Dark Lord was absent for weeks.’

“Neville was not murdered!” Hermione exploded.

“Voldemort’s healers killed him! And they used life magic to kill his parents, too!”

"His parents were sick," repeated Hermione angrily. "They got infected by a human adenovirus and died in hospital — of pneumonia ."

“Life magic can do that,” said Luna furiously..

Could it? Harry made a note to ask Voldemort; if the bastard would talk.

“No,” snapped Hermione. “It can’t. Voldemort’s followers might not be very nice but they had no reason to target Neville, or his parents. Besides which, the Eleventh House has been unwell for generations. They’ve been dying young for centuries, Luna. Voldemort wasn’t around then.”

That’s… true.

“Luna,” said Harry, “when did you notice Voldemort’s lot following you?”

“They just turned up. I kept seeing them. They were hiding, I think studying us.” 

“Right. But, when? When was the first time you saw one of Voldemort’s followers acting suspicious?”

Luna faltered. “A few months ago. Around Christmas.”

Okay, very recent. But, “Neville’s parents died years back,” said Harry thoughtfully. Voldemort wouldn’t even have a motive for stalking them. I guess we wouldn’t know what was going on years ago.

“I don’t know,” urged Luna. “But they must have been after his parents! And then they came for Neville.”

“I’m going,” said Hermione, standing, her hands up. “This is ridiculous.”

"Bye, Luna. It was — nice seeing you."

"Goodbye. I hope you enjoy your teaching year."

Harry heard the door unlock. Hermione stalked out.

"And Harry?"

Harry paused. Luna was sat where she had been on her bed with her hands neatly in her lap, and her odd socks.

"Do watch out. Healers are very rarely there to help."

She watched him serenely, an odd light to her eyes. Harry swallowed audibly, turned to leave, as Voldemort’s face floated into his thoughts.

"Don't I know it," he muttered.

It wasn't until they were in the taxi on their way to Voldemort’s church that Harry realised he had veered entirely off course. 

What was Luna's familiar?Where is it? How could Kingsley blame a beast when Neville’s body must surely have been—well, looking normal enough to be—logged as a suicide case? Ripped up animal victims weren't mistakable for suicide.

But... how did Neville die? How did he kill himself? Surely Kingsley could not mix up a suicide with a summoning attack, let alone the likes of a tier five summon. What ones Harry had now seen would tear a man apart. Won’t Nev's body look normal and…? Harry presumed he’d taken pills or, God…

He’d call Kingsley. For now, Harry would use his shiny new, safer death sense to look at this body in the church. He hoped answers lay there.

Now that he knew it wasn't the Long Place, Harry was eager to see if it helped. He was all too aware of the clock, and wanted to get as much done before he slept that night; better to go into dreams of Voldemort prepared.