It was turning out to be a relatively peaceful evening. The residents of the famous moving castle were crowded around the hearth, Sophie knitting a hat for Morgan as Howl and Calcifer try to teach the boy their saucepan song.
Howl shakes his head as Morgan shrieks out something like, “Saucepan fat.”
“No, it's sosban fach.” The wizard corrects, ruffling his hair.
“Sosban fat!”
“Close enough.”
Sophie laughs and drops a stitch. “Bother! Get back on there, you!” She snaps at it. The yarn unravels sheepishly and creeps back onto the needle.
“There's someone at the door,” Calcifer breaks in.
“Where?” Howls inquires, hopping to his feet and sitting Morgan on his shoulders. “Kingsbury? I never should've added that entrance back.”
“No, not from anywhere in Ingary.”
Howl frowns. “From Wales?”
“I believe so.”
“I didn't know people could reach the door in Wales!” Sophie exclaims, setting down her knitting. “You haven't seduced another girl, have you?”
“Your doubt in my faithfulness wounds me, Sophie,” Howl places his hand on his chest dramatically.
“Sosban fat!” Morgan roars.
Sophie snorts. “Just get the door.”
Howl does so, turning the now-hexagonal knob at the top black down. It reveals the familiar, if nameless darkness as usual. The wizard frowns.
“Wales!” Morgan says helpfully, pointing. “Aunt Meg! Unk Gare! Nell! Mari!”
“Neil,” his father corrects absentmindedly. He leans forward, and suddenly a flash of white bursts into the castle, straight at Howl's face. The wizard jumps back, overbalancing Morgan. Sophie leaps to her feet, shedding yarn and needles, shrieking, “Floor! Soften up under Morgan!”
The toddler lands safely, and Howl slaps at the white thing until it settles on the top of the workbench. It's a large snowy owl, with a red envelope in its beak. Sophie scoops Morgan up, and turns to her husband. “What in the world?”
He's frowning. The owl thrusts its neck towards him, trying to give him the letter. Howl steps back.
“No, thanks. Don't want it.”
“Howl! Why is an owl in our castle?” Sophie demands, lifting Morgan higher on her hip.
“You can't slither out of this one, Howl,” Calcifer decrees, floating over.
“Owl!” Morgan yells.
“Just take the letter,” Sophie sighs.
“No, that's a bad idea.”
She ignores him and reaches for the envelope and opens it. As soon as she pops the flap, it floats out of her hands.
“HOWELL JENKINS!” booms a man's voice, “DUE TO YOUR PREVIOUS AVOIDANCE OF OUR CORRESPONDENCE, WE AT THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC HAVE RESORTED TO DESPERATE MEASURES. WE APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE.”
The letter then bursts into flames. Before it even stops burning, Howl is dragged into the hearth and vanishes in a flash of green light.
Sophie, Calcifer, and Morgan stare blankly at where Howl had been. There's a silence, then Morgan shrieks, “Dad!” And bursts into tears.
Sophie swears violently in Welsh, and glances at Calcifer.
Howl stumbles out of the fireplace with as much dignity as he can muster, his blue and silver suit grey with ash and dark hair flying every which way. He straightens up to blink his green eyes at the gathering of wizards around him.
“Howell Jenkins?” inquires a short, squat witch, gazing at him with frog-like eyes.
Howl dusts himself off with a flick of his long sleeves, “nope, you've got the wrong guy. Good-bye.” He smiles winningly and spins around.
“Oh, I don't think so,” smirks the froggy witch, vanishing the fireplace. “We at the Ministry of Magic never make mistakes. Come along.” She turns on her heel, and Howl has no choice but to follow her.
“What just happened?” Sophie cries to Calcifer. The fire demon flickers uncertainly.
“I'm not sure.”
Sophie snorts at that, and whirls to the owl still perched on the workbench. “You! Take me to my husband! Immediately!”
The owl cocks its head, Sophie just glares harder. “I mean it, bird! Take us to Howl.” Without waiting for an answer, she strolls through the blackness into Wales.
Howl stares distastefully around the court chamber, eyes landing on the hard wooden chair in the center. “Take a seat,” booms an all too familiar voice.
Howl brushes his hair back and glares up at the Wizengamot. “Is this really necessary?”
Cornelius Fudge glares. “Sit.” A wave of the minister’s wand bullies Howl backward into the chair, where he (Howl) immediately slouches down disrespectfully.
“Howell Jenkins, you have been called before the Wizengamot to answer the charges laid against you, which will now be read. Dolores?”
The frog-like witch stands up and opens a notepad, “Hem-hem…”
Sophie steps out into a pouring rain, and glares wetly as Calcifer floats an umbrella towards her. She grabs it, and marches towards Megan's house.
“I have to do something,” she explains hurriedly when Howl’s sister opens the door. “Howl’s been kidnapped.”
“Howell Jenkins, you are hereby accused of 63 counts against the International Statute of Secrecy. These charges include: 44 uses of a Disillusionment Charm in plain view of Muggles, casting an Animation Spell on a castle and parading said castle before Muggles, up to 8 cases that we know of of the use of experimental magic without authorization, collecting with Unregistered Magical Creatures, the conjuring of exactly 3 dozen toy rocking horses in the presence of Muggles, illegally peddling your magical skills, and finally, selling your soul to the devil…?” Dolores ends the last phrase in a question,eyeing Howl over her pink reading glasses.
“How do you plead?” Fudge queries, and the entire Wizengamot turns to peer at Howl, who does what he does best: he slithers out.
“Oh Sophie!” Megan cries, flinging the door open. Behind her in the hall, Sophie can hear the faint sounds of Gareth swearing violently.
“What in the world?”
The older woman brushes her hair out of her face, “it's these letters! They won't stop coming out of the chimney! They're addressed to you, but we don't know how to get you in the castle, and the letters won't stop coming! Oh, please help!”
Sophie pushes Morgan into her sister-in-law’s arms and stomps down the hall.
The sitting room is swept up in a whirlwind of letters, flying out if the hearth, bursting through the windows, great, ridiculous quantities of letters, storms of them, swirling around. Sophie snorts loudly, her fists on her hips. “Stop this!” she shrieks, “stop this at once!”
The letters stop. One floats into her hand. It is, in fact, addressed to her. In green, spidery handwriting, it reads:
Mrs. Sophie Hatter-Pendragon-Jenkins
The Door to Nowhere
Wales
Britain
The World
Sophie opens it cautiously, hopping this one won't explode or scream at her. It doesn't. It opens like a regular letter.
‘Dear Mrs. Hatter-Pendragon-Jenkins,’ the letter reads, ‘I am deeply sorry for not warning you and your husband before he was arrested,’ “Arrested?!” Sophie scoffs, “more like kidnapped!”
'though I suppose it is better to say kidnapped, if I can count on the ministry. Anyway, you are doubtless worried about your husband. This letter is a port-key. It will instantly transport you to London. You will arrive in front of a phone booth. Enter the booth and await further instructions.
Sincerely,
Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Order of Merlin (first class)
Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards
Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.
Sophie blinks at the title. The letter begins to glow, and Sophie feels a yanking in her belly, and a rushing in her ears.
“Where's Dumbledore?” Howl asks.
“That is not for you to know,” Fudge begins, as Amelia Bones puts in,
“He was voted out of the Wizengamot.”
“That's too bad.”
“Doubtless you thought he would get you out of another sticky situation,” Fudge smirks. Howl gives him an offended glare.
“I'll have you know, sir, that Albus Dumbledore has gotten me out of exactly zero sticky situations.”
“Hem-hem,” Dolores Umbridge clears her throat, rising to her feet. “Mr. Jenkins, the charges against you claim you sold your soul to the devil. A very… accusatory… if not, perhaps, metaphorical, choice of words. Care to enlighten us?”
Howl picks lazily at his cuticles, not even glancing her direction. “No, that wording is completely true… and very, very wrong, of course.”
“Could you expand on that?”
“It was my heart, not my soul.”
Sophie lands with a bump and a string of curse words, Calcifer laughing meanly at her discomfort. She seats at him and clambers into the phone booth.
“Welcome to the Ministry of Magic,” says a woman's disembodied voice, “please state your name and destination.”
“Sophie Jenkins,” Sophie says firmly, “I'm here to get my husband back. And Calcifer the Fire Demon.”
“Very well. Please take the badges given to you. We will now proceed.”
Sophie hands Calcifer his badge and pins her own to her chest as the phone box begins to creep downwards.
“What about the charge of peddling your magical skills?” Umbridge inquires, taking down a note.
“Let it be perfectly clear,” Howl smirks, “that I have never in my life willingly agreed to do work for another person. Of any kind.”
Sophie finds herself in a crowd if strangely dressed people, so she pats at her own skirt and says, “listen up, clothes! Change so you look similar to everyone else’s!” Her dress blues and shifts into a robe of the same blue as her dress. She nods in satisfaction, then marches up to the reception desk.
“I've come to get my husband back,” she declares to the lady behind it. “Only I've never been to the Ministry of Magic before and have gotten a bit turned around. Could you help me?”
“What's his name?”
“Howl - Howell Jenkins.”
The receptionist flips through a book. “Ah, yes, Howell Jenkins. Brought in for a hearing before the Wizengamot. Saffy!”
A tiny, wizened creature with green eyes the size of tennis balls pads forward, clad only in a smock made from a tea towel. Sophie tries not to stare as the receptionist instructs this… creature… to bring her to Howl.
“Come along, Mistress Sophie! This way.”
“The replication of rocking horses is hardly worth a hearing,” Howl insists, “and, technically, I was not, in fact, the one who cast the spell.”
“Who did?”
“I believe, Cornelius,” Albus Dumbledore enters the chamber, blue eyes twinkling behind his half-moon spectacles, “that Howell Jenkins never cast a spell in the presence of Muggles who weren't already aware of the Wizarding World.”
“Dumbledore!” Fudge drew himself up (it was very anticlimactic), “you were voted out of the Wizengamot! You have no right to be here!”
“I am here as a witness, Cornelius,” Dumbledore says calmly, “a witness and a suggestion of punishment. And it's a very good idea indeed.”
Fudge looked smug, he certainly thought Dumbledore was backing him up.
“As you know,” the headmaster continues, “we can't very well send him to Azkaban, and fines are obviously doing no good, I propose to appoint Howell Jenkins as a professor at Hogwarts.”
“What?!” Howl and Fudge exclaim in unison.
“He can't possibly!” The Minister continues, “the students!”
“Will bother me!” Howl complains, “I hate being bothered!”
“I know,” Dumbledore smiles serenely. “And you hate being pinned down to anything. This will do you good.”
Fudge was drinking in the distressed expression of Howl's face. He raised his gavel.
“Howell Jenkins, I sentence you to one year of teaching at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, active immediately.”
With that, the Wizengamot files out, and just in time, too, for the doors to the chamber fly open once more and a very frazzled, very angry Sophie stomps in. She brightens when she spots her husband. “Howl! You're all right!”
He gives her a mopey look, “I've been sentenced.”
“To death?”
“To teaching.”