St Mungo's discharged him on a Tuesday. The Healers kept the bandages on his left arm and gave him a pouch of Nerve-Knitting Potion to take twice daily, which tasted like copper filings dissolved in vinegar and left his tongue numb for an hour afterward. The curse damage was healing slowly, the feeling returning in patches, his fingers tingling one morning and then going dead again by evening. The lead Healer said it could take weeks. Rowan didn't ask what happened if it took longer.

  Lawrence had barely left the hospital. He'd slept in the chair beside Rowan's bed for two nights running, eaten whatever the Healers brought him, and spoken mostly about what needed doing next. Clara was awake but confined, the tremor in her hands persistent enough that the Healers wanted another week of observation before they'd discuss discharge. She'd sent Lawrence to Rowan's room each morning with the same instruction: "Tell me what we're doing about the shop."

  Iris had gone home with her parents on the second day. She'd stood in the doorway of Rowan's room for a long time before leaving, caught between staying and being pulled away. Her mother's hand on her shoulder had been firm. Her father hadn't come in at all.

  She'd pressed a folded note into Rowan's good hand. Write to me. Every day. I mean it. And then she'd turned and walked out, and Rowan had watched the empty doorway for longer than he should have.

  The Flamels took him back to the shop.

  What they found was worse than he'd expected. The Prophet article had called it "significant damage," which was the kind of understatement that only worked if you hadn't seen the inside. The front door hung from one hinge. Scorch marks blackened the threshold where his trap array had discharged, and beyond that the runic inscriptions on the doorframe were burned out, the Thurisaz cores dead and dark. Inside, the display cases were shattered. Glass and silver fragments covered the floor in a layer thick enough to crunch underfoot. The counter where Clara had cut ginger cake three days ago was split down the middle. The ceiling above the main room had a hole large enough to see sky through, and rainwater had pooled on the floorboards beneath it, warping the wood. Every ground floor window array was spent.

  The workshop door was closed. Rowan opened it and exhaled. Weasley and Hecat had sealed the workshop with locking charms and a Protego Totalum after the attack, and the seals had held. Nobody had been inside. The athanor, the press, the transmutation station, the reagent shelves. All untouched. Lawrence's tools hung on their hooks exactly as he'd left them.

  "The structure is sound," Nicholas said, running his hand along the interior wall. His fingers found the load-bearing beam and traced it upward. "The damage is dramatic but superficial. The walls and foundation haven't shifted."

  "Can it be rebuilt?" Lawrence asked.

  "It can be rebuilt better."

  Lawrence looked at the wreckage the way he'd looked at the runic press schematics back in the Room of Requirement. His jaw set and his eyes moved across the debris with the systematic attention of someone already sorting it into categories: salvageable, repairable, gone.

  "How much time do we have before September?"

  "Eighteen days," Rowan said.

  "Then we start now."

  They started that afternoon. Nicholas and Perenelle handled the structural magic, spells that Rowan had read about but never seen performed at this scale. Perenelle cast a Stabilising Charm on the foundation that made the entire building hum for three seconds before settling into silence, and Nicholas repaired the ceiling with a Restoration Spell so precise that the new plaster matched the original down to the grain pattern. Where Rowan's Reparo would have approximated, Nicholas's magic remembered what had been there and put it back.

  By evening, the structure was whole again. The walls stood, the ceiling was sealed, and the rain no longer came in. What remained was the interior, and that was where Lawrence took over.

  Rowan brought up the wards on the third day. They were sitting in the workshop during a break, the noise of Lawrence's hammering filtering through the wall.

  "You wrote to Vorzak before the attack. You said the door wasn't closed entirely."

  Nicholas set down his tea. "I did. And it wasn't. But what I proposed was a standard commission, gold for services. Vorzak was willing to consider it personally. The problem was never Vorzak. It was the Council."

  "What would it take to get past the Council?"

  Nicholas and Perenelle looked at each other. The wordless communication they'd developed over six centuries passed between them in the space of a breath.

  "An offer they've never seen before," Perenelle said. "Gold from the Stone. There is nothing a goblin values more, and nothing they can get from anyone else."

  "Would you do that? Use the Stone?"

  "We've already discussed it," Nicholas said. "Between ourselves, while you were still in hospital. We'll produce what you need. Write to Vorzak with the offer and let us worry about the quantity."

  Rowan wrote the letter that evening.

  To Vorzak, Master Craftsman of the Goblin Forging Guild,

  I write to you on behalf of myself, with the knowledge and support of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel. Your crucibles, loaned to Nicholas, have served as the foundation of my alchemical work this past year. The quality of the craftsmanship speaks for itself.

  I am aware that the Goblin Forging Guild no longer undertakes ward-crafting commissions for wizardkind, and that relations between our peoples are strained in ways that make such a request difficult. I do not ask lightly.

  My shop on Carkitt Market was attacked three days ago by five dark wizards. My employee was tortured with the Cruciatus Curse. My owl was killed. The Ministry has declined to investigate. The only protections available to me through wizarding channels are inadequate against the level of threat I now face.

  In exchange for the construction of the most powerful wards your guild is capable of producing over my current property at Number Four Carkitt Market, and over any future properties I acquire for the duration of my life, I am prepared to offer one hundred pounds of alchemical gold, produced by the Philosopher's Stone and verified to any standard of purity the guild requires.

  I understand if this is impossible. I ask only that the offer be heard.

  Respectfully,

  R. Ashcroft

  He finished the letter, sealed it, and reached for the windowsill before he remembered.

  The perch was still there. Lawrence hadn't taken it down. The water dish sat empty beside it, and a single grey feather had lodged itself in the gap between the wood and the wall. Rowan stared at it for longer than he meant to. Athena would have been on his shoulder by now, nipping at the parchment, trying to read it before he'd finished writing. She'd have complained about the weight of the scroll case and then carried it anyway, because she was stubborn and proud and his.

  He pulled his hand back from the sill and went downstairs to find the Flamels' eagle owl instead.

  The same evening, he borrowed Clara's owl and wrote to Sophronia Inkwood.

  Miss Inkwood,

  You will have seen the Prophet's coverage of the incident at my shop. I assume you recognise the difference between what the article described and what actually happened, given that you have visited the premises and spoken with me directly.

  I would appreciate any insight you can offer into how a story so thoroughly divorced from reality came to be published under your editor's name.

  R. Ashcroft

  Inkwood's reply arrived the next morning. It was short and carefully worded.

  Mr. Ashcroft,

  I did not write the article. Barnabas wrote it himself, which he rarely does unless the subject is politically sensitive or the coverage has been specifically requested.

  I cannot say more in writing. What I can tell you is that the Prophet operates as a neutral paper when no one is paying for it to operate otherwise. The coverage you received from me was fair because no one had a financial interest in making it otherwise. Draw your own conclusions about what changed.

  If you are planning what I think you are planning, I would very much like to be involved.

  S. Inkwood

  Rowan read it twice. Inkwood had confirmed what Hecat had sketched out in the hospital room. The attack article had been purchased. And Inkwood wanted in on whatever came next.

  He filed the letter and turned his attention to the rebuild.

  Lawrence threw himself into the interior. He stripped the ruined display cases down to their frames, rebuilt them with wood from a timber merchant on Horizont Alley who owed the Flamels a favour, and designed the new ones wider and deeper than the originals, with integrated lighting slots that would hold luminaires at angles calculated to show the products at their best. He worked with a focus that Rowan recognised from the weeks before the shop first opened, except now there was something harder underneath it. The cheerful ingenuity that had characterised their partnership at Hogwarts had acquired an edge.

  Within three days, the shop was transformed. The front room was larger now, Perenelle's Expansion Charm applied with a sophistication that Rowan's earlier attempt couldn't match. The display area flowed naturally into a demonstration space where customers could see the luminaires working. The counter was new oak, heavier than the original, and Lawrence had built concealed compartments into it for wands, coin pouches, and anything else that might need reaching in a hurry. He'd reinforced the window frames too, and added iron brackets to the display cases that doubled as anchor points for defensive arrays. He hadn't said why. He didn't need to.

  The upper floor was transformed entirely. Where there had been a cramped flat with two small rooms, there were now three proper bedrooms, a sitting room, and a kitchen that Perenelle had equipped with self-stirring pots and a cold-storage pantry enchanted to keep food fresh indefinitely. Nicholas had added warming charms to the floors and weatherproofing to the windows. The whole building felt different. Solid in a way the original hadn't been.

  "This is too much," Clara said when they brought her from St Mungo's to see it. She was in a wheelchair, her hands steadier than they'd been but not steady. Lawrence pushed her through the rooms in silence, letting her take it in. "Rowan, this must have cost a fortune."

  "The Flamels covered the materials. Lawrence did most of the work."

  Clara looked at her son. Lawrence looked at the floor.

  "We want you to stay," Rowan said. "The upstairs isn't two cramped rooms anymore. You and Lawrence have proper bedrooms now, and there's a third for staff. This is your home as much as it is mine."

  Clara's hands, resting in her lap, went still for the first time since the attack.

  "You're serious," she said. Her voice was careful.

  "The arrangement stays as long as you want it to."

  Clara looked at Lawrence again. Something passed between them that didn't require words. The two rooms they'd been sharing above the old shop had been adequate, barely. This was different.

  "All right," Clara said. "We'll stay."

  Lawrence exhaled.

  The next morning, Rowan came downstairs early and found Clara in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with her wand in both hands, trying to cast a Lumos. The tip flickered once and went dark. She tried again. Nothing. Her grip wasn't steady enough for the wand movement, and even when she braced it against her knee, the spell wouldn't hold.

  She set the wand down when she saw him in the doorway. Neither of them said anything about it.

  The goblin response arrived on the fifth day after the letter was sent. The owl was not a hired post bird. It was a Gringotts courier owl, larger and blacker than any Rowan had seen, with a sealed scroll case chained to its leg and an expression that suggested it had been bred specifically to intimidate the recipient.

  The scroll was written in English, which surprised him. He'd expected Gobbledegook, or at least the formal hybrid script goblins used for inter-species correspondence.

  To the Wizard Ashcroft,

  Your proposal has been received by the Goblin Forging Guild and relayed to the Clan Council for consideration. The quantity and purity of gold described in your letter, if verified, would represent the largest single payment offered for goblin services by a wizard in living memory.

  The Council has agreed to hear your case in person. You are invited to present yourself at the Council Chamber beneath Gringotts Bank at the tenth hour on the twentieth of August. You may bring no more than two companions. You will carry no wands in the Council Chamber. This is not negotiable.

  Vorzak, Master Craftsman

  Rowan could smell the greed through the parchment. One hundred pounds of Stone-forged gold was obscene by any standard. The goblins knew it. He knew it. The invitation to appear in person wasn't courtesy. It was the Clan Council wanting to see the gold verified before they committed to anything.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "They want the gold verified in four days," he told Nicholas. "Will it be ready?"

  Nicholas's expression shifted into the particular intensity he reserved for alchemical challenges. "It will take two days of continuous work with the Stone. Perenelle and I will manage it."

  "I need you there. Both of you. The letter says I can bring two companions."

  "We'll be there." Perenelle's voice carried the calm of someone who had dealt with goblin politics for centuries and found it only moderately more irritating than human politics. "Nicholas speaks Gobbledegook. It tends to make an impression."

  "We were mediators during the Hogsmeade uprising," Nicholas said, answering the question before Rowan could ask it. "The Ministry needed translators for the negotiations in 1612. We kept the skill current afterward. It seemed prudent, given how often goblin-wizard relations deteriorate."

  On the morning of the twentieth, Rowan dressed in his best robes, put the letters of offer in his pocket, and met the Flamels at the Leaky Cauldron. Nicholas carried a leather satchel that clinked faintly when he moved. The gold.

  The atmosphere inside Gringotts was different from Rowan's previous visits. More sentries at the inner doors. Tellers who watched the human customers with expressions that sat somewhere between professional courtesy and open suspicion.

  Nicholas approached the head teller and spoke in Gobbledegook. The effect was immediate. Every goblin within earshot turned to look. The head teller's eyes widened before professional control reasserted itself. He responded in the same language, and a rapid exchange followed that Rowan couldn't follow.

  "We have an appointment with the Clan Council," Nicholas said, switching back to English. "Rowan Ashcroft, Nicholas Flamel, Perenelle Flamel."

  The teller studied the three of them. His gaze lingered on Nicholas, weighing him the way goblins weighed gold.

  "You will surrender your wands at the door to the Council Chamber. They will be returned when you leave. This way."

  They were led through doors Rowan had never seen, behind the teller desks and past the vault carts, into a part of Gringotts that no customer was meant to enter. The main banking hall fell away behind them. The corridors here were narrower, the ceilings lower, scaled for goblins rather than wizards. Nicholas had to duck at one point. The stone underfoot was older than anything in the hall above, rough-cut and dark, and the slope was steep enough that Rowan felt the pressure change in his ears. They were going deep beneath London.

  The torches on the walls burned with a blue-white flame that cast no shadows. Rowan passed doorways that opened onto rooms he could only glimpse: a forge, dark and cold, with an anvil the size of a dining table; a long chamber lined with what looked like weapons behind glass; a corridor that branched and branched again into darkness. The whole place had been carved from the living rock over centuries, each generation adding depth.

  A goblin sentry at a stone archway held out a brass bowl without a word. Rowan surrendered his wand. Nicholas and Perenelle did the same. The sentry examined all three with instruments Rowan didn't recognise, then stepped aside.

  The Council Chamber was carved from the bedrock itself, a circular room with a domed ceiling and seven stone seats arranged in an arc at the far end. Six of the seats were occupied. The seventh, at the centre and slightly elevated, held a goblin Rowan recognised immediately. Brakthir. The account manager who had processed his vault, run his ancestry search, and said May your gold multiply and your enemies fall before you on the day they met. He looked different here. The teller's desk had made him seem like a functionary. The stone seat made him look like what he apparently was: Gringotts' representative on the Clan Council. His expression made clear that he found this entire proceeding distasteful.

  Vorzak sat at the left end of the arc. He was smaller than Rowan had expected, given Nicholas's descriptions. Sharp-featured even by goblin standards, with hands that bore the calluses and burn scars of someone who had spent decades working metal at a forge. His eyes found Rowan immediately and stayed there.

  A goblin Rowan didn't know stood at a podium to the side. A clerk, or secretary. He read from a scroll in Gobbledegook, and Nicholas translated quietly.

  "He's stating the terms of the hearing. Your offer has been formally registered. The Council will vote after hearing from you and examining the gold. It takes a simple majority to approve or reject."

  "Can I speak English?"

  "They'll understand you."

  Rowan stepped forward when the clerk finished. He'd prepared remarks, but looking at the six pairs of dark goblin eyes watching him, most hostile, a few hungry, he abandoned them.

  "My name is Rowan Ashcroft. Five days ago, dark wizards attacked my shop and tortured my employee with an Unforgivable Curse. The British Ministry of Magic has declined to investigate. I am here because goblin wards are the strongest protections that exist, and because I am willing to pay what they're worth."

  He paused. The Council members' expressions hadn't changed. Nicholas stepped forward and opened the satchel.

  The gold caught the blue-white torchlight and threw it back. One hundred pounds of it, flawless, every ingot identical to the ones Nargok had tested at the teller desk months ago.

  Two of the Council members leaned forward involuntarily. A third's hand twitched toward the podium as though wanting to touch it. Vorzak's expression didn't change, but his eyes acquired a shine that had nothing to do with the torchlight.

  Brakthir looked at Vorzak. "Verify the purity."

  Vorzak descended from his seat and approached the satchel. He produced a set of instruments Rowan had never seen, thin glass rods and a stone tablet etched with symbols, and tested three ingots in rapid succession. The process took less than a minute.

  When he spoke, it was in English, directed at Rowan.

  "This is Stone-forged gold. The highest purity I have ever tested." He looked at the Council. What followed was in Gobbledegook, but the tone was unmistakable. He was telling them that the gold was real.

  The debate lasted nearly an hour. Rowan stood in silence while the Council members argued. Nicholas translated fragments: objections about setting precedent, concerns about Ranrok's faction viewing the arrangement as collaboration with wizardkind, counterarguments about the gold's value and the guild's right to accept commissions as it saw fit.

  The vote came without warning. The clerk called for it, and seven hands rose or stayed down in quick succession.

  Four against. Three in favour. Rejected.

  Brakthir sat back. Rowan knew that expression from the teller desk — the same controlled displeasure he'd shown when explaining that Gringotts didn't invest in Muggle enterprises. A pragmatist watching his colleagues make a decision he considered foolish. Vorzak's face was carefully blank, but his hands, folded in his lap, were white-knuckled.

  "The same faction that voted to dismiss the wizard staff," Nicholas murmured.

  Rowan's mind raced. He'd prepared for this possibility, spent hours in the hospital bed thinking about what the goblins might actually want more than gold. Gold could be earned and spent. What the goblins wanted, what they'd wanted for centuries, was what had been taken from them.

  "May I address the Council again?"

  The clerk looked at Brakthir, who waved a hand in curt permission.

  Rowan stepped forward. His heart hammered against his ribs but his voice came out level.

  "I understand the Council's decision. The gold is not enough. I'd like to withdraw it and make a different offer."

  Nicholas closed the satchel without being asked. The click of the clasp was loud in the chamber.

  Silence. The four who had voted against watched him. One looked bored. The others didn't. Nicholas shifted beside him. Withdrawing the gold was not something they'd discussed.

  "Goblin silver," Rowan said. "Artifacts made by goblin craftsmen that are currently held by wizarding families who consider them permanent possessions. The goblins have always maintained that such items are loaned, not sold, and that they belong to the craftsmen who made them. Wizardkind has never acknowledged this."

  The silence changed texture. What had been dismissive became very, very attentive.

  "I am offering to recover and return goblin-wrought silver artifacts from wizarding hands. Ten pieces, verified by the guild as authentic goblin craft, delivered to the Clan Council by the time I complete my education at Hogwarts."

  Two of the Council members began speaking at once. The clerk rapped the podium for order. Vorzak had risen from his seat, his careful blankness gone entirely.

  "How?" The question came from one of the four who had voted against. A heavyset goblin with deep-set eyes, nearly shaking with fury. "How does a wizard child propose to recover silver that our people have been attempting to reclaim for centuries?"

  "That's my problem to solve," Rowan said. "I'll sign a blood-bound contract. If I fail to deliver ten pieces of verified goblin silver by the agreed date, the wards revert to goblin possession and I pay a breach penalty equal to the gold I offered today — one hundred pounds, alchemical purity."

  The chamber erupted. Three Council members were shouting. The clerk had abandoned his podium and was arguing with Vorzak, who was ignoring him completely. Brakthir sat still, watching Rowan.

  Nicholas leaned close. "You understand what you're promising?"

  "Yes."

  "You have no idea how to deliver on it."

  "I have a place to start looking. Ten pieces in five years is manageable if I'm right about where to find them."

  Nicholas said nothing else.

  The second vote took twenty minutes of argument to reach. When it came, the heavyset goblin cast his vote against with enough force to make the stone seat vibrate. Two others voted with him. Vorzak, Brakthir, and a third Council member voted in favour.

  Deadlocked. Three against, three in favour, with one vote remaining.

  Lodgok. He sat at the far end of the arc, the goblin who had voted against the first time. He was lean where the heavyset one was broad, with the sharp features and ink-stained fingers of a merchant rather than a craftsman. He hadn't spoken during either debate.

  The chamber held its breath.

  "In favour," Lodgok said.

  The heavyset goblin turned on him, fury curdling into betrayal.

  "You turn against your own blood?" His English was accented but clear, spoken for Rowan's benefit as much as Lodgok's. "Your brother would spit at your feet."

  Something flickered across Lodgok's face. Pain, or anger, or both. He met the accusation without flinching.

  "My brother and I disagree on many things. I know the value of silver better than anyone in this chamber, and I have watched zealots nurse grievances for decades while our craft sits in wizard manors gathering dust." He looked at the heavyset goblin. "I will take a gamble over a grudge."

  "Four to three," the clerk said. "The motion carries."

  The objections were immediate and loud. The heavyset goblin and his two allies spoke rapidly in Gobbledegook, and Nicholas's face was impassive, but his translation came in a murmur.

  "They're calling it a betrayal. Grothek, the one who spoke, is saying that Ranrok will hear of this and that the crafting guild is lowering itself to deal with wizards on goblin terms. The other two are his allies. Brakthir is reminding them that the vote is binding under clan law."

  The blood-bound contract was produced by the clerk. It was written in both English and Gobbledegook on a single sheet of dark parchment that felt warm to the touch. The terms were stark: goblin wards of the highest quality over Number Four Carkitt Market and any future properties Rowan Ashcroft acquired during his lifetime, in exchange for ten verified goblin-wrought silver artifacts, to be delivered before his final year at Hogwarts. Failure to deliver the silver would result in immediate removal of all wards and a breach penalty of one hundred pounds of alchemical gold at Stone-forged purity.

  Rowan pricked his thumb with the ceremonial knife the clerk offered. A single drop of blood on the parchment, which the parchment absorbed completely. The ink glowed red for a moment, then settled to black.

  Vorzak signed as guild representative. Brakthir signed as witness. Lodgok signed as the casting vote, a requirement that seemed to irritate the opposition immensely.

  Grothek rose from his seat and walked out without a word. Two others followed. The door shut behind them with a finality that echoed in the stone chamber.

  "Ranrok's faction," Vorzak said to Rowan, speaking English freely now that the formal proceedings were over. "They would refuse to sell a wizard water if he were dying of thirst. The fact that you got the vote at all is remarkable." He paused. "I will supervise the ward construction personally." His eyes glinted. "I have not had a new project in three years. Do not bore me."

  They collected their wands at the archway and walked out of Gringotts into the morning sun without speaking. The noise of Diagon Alley swallowed them. Nicholas steered them to a bench near the fountain, far enough from the bank's entrance that no one was paying attention.

  Nicholas spoke first. "You said you had a place to start looking."

  Rowan glanced around. No one within earshot. "The Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. You know what it is?"

  "We've heard rumours," Perenelle said. "A room that becomes what the seeker needs. Most people assume it's a myth."

  "It's real. I found it in my first year. There's a configuration called the Room of Lost Things, centuries of objects hidden or abandoned by students and staff. I've been inside it. I've barely scratched the surface of what's there. Pureblood families have sent their children to Hogwarts for a thousand years. Things get left behind, things get hidden, things get confiscated and never returned. If even a handful of those are goblin-wrought, ten pieces is possible."

  Nicholas was quiet, turning it over. "It's a gamble."

  "Everything today was a gamble. This one has better odds than most."

  Perenelle studied him. "You've signed a blood contract with the goblin nation, Rowan. If you fail, you lose the wards and you owe them one hundred pounds of gold you don't have. And the goblins who voted against you will use that failure to prove that wizards can't be trusted. You won't just hurt yourself. You'll set back every goblin who argued in your favour."

  "I know."

  They sat with that for a moment. The fountain splashed behind them. Shoppers drifted past.

  "There's something else," Rowan said. "Not about the goblins." He looked at Perenelle. "Clara. The Healers don't think the tremor will stop. I think I've found something that might help."

  Perenelle's expression shifted. "Cruciatus pathway damage is structural. Standard healing magic doesn't reach deep enough."

  "I know. But I found a ritual in the Room of Requirement last year. The Ritual of Lunar Clarity. It permanently restructures magical pathways. The manual describes it as enhancing capacity, but the mechanism works on the pathways themselves. If it can restructure healthy pathways, it might rebuild damaged ones."

  Nicholas and Perenelle looked at each other. Something passed between them that didn't need words.

  "Your reasoning is right," Nicholas said slowly. "Ritual restructuring operates at a level Healing Charms can't touch. We'd need to study the specific procedure, but pathway reconstruction through ritual means is possible." He paused. "You do understand that rituals are classified as dark magic under Ministry law."

  It wasn't a question. Rowan looked at him.

  "The classification is recent," Perenelle said. "A century old, give or take. Before that, rituals were standard practice for any witch or wizard with the skill to perform them. The old families pushed the ban through the Wizengamot so the knowledge would stay within their bloodlines. Classify it as dark, strip it from the Hogwarts curriculum, and within a generation no one outside their families even knows the practice exists." Her voice was matter-of-fact. "We never agreed with the decision. Neither did most of the Continent. But in Britain, performing a ritual carries the same legal weight as casting an Unforgivable."

  "I'm not going to let Clara's hands shake for the rest of her life because the Ministry doesn't like old magic."

  "We didn't think you would," Nicholas said. "But you'll need to be very careful about who else you tell."

  "The problem is the moonstone," Rowan said. "I need two ounces of ritual-grade. The manual said Mulpepper's Apothecary is one of the only commercial sources, but that most dealers have never stocked it."

  "Mulpepper's is the only shop in Britain I'd trust with that claim," Perenelle said. "We've purchased from him before. If anyone in Diagon Alley has ritual-grade specimens, it would be him."

  "Then let's find out."

  They walked to Mulpepper's. The apothecary occupied a cramped frontage near the Owl Emporium, the air inside thick with dried herbs and something faintly sulphurous. Mulpepper himself was behind the counter, a wiry man with wire spectacles and stained fingers.

  Nicholas asked. Mulpepper listened, adjusted his spectacles, and shook his head.

  "Moonstone at that purity?" Mulpepper adjusted his spectacles. "I haven't had a specimen like that in seven years. Four ounces, sold it to a collector in Vienna for more than I care to say aloud. The waiting list has eleven names on it. I can add yours, but I won't promise a timeline."

  "How long for the last person who waited?"

  "He's still waiting. Put his name down in eighty-four."

  They left empty-handed. Nicholas offered to write to contacts in France, alchemists who might know of private sources. Perenelle suggested Knockturn Alley, where rare materials occasionally surfaced.

  "But if the best apothecary in Britain hasn't seen a specimen in seven years," Nicholas said, "I wouldn't count on either."

  Perenelle nodded. "We'll try. But you should think about other options."

  Rowan already was. Walking back toward Carkitt Market, his mind had gone to the only place he hadn't looked.

  The Forbidden Forest. He'd skirted its edges in first year looking for moonstone deposits, found nothing in the clearings near the boundary, and turned back when the terrain grew dangerous. The manual had said lowland deposits rarely achieved ritual grade. But deeper in, where the old magic ran thick and the moonlight pooled in places humans hadn't walked in centuries, the conditions were different. The mountains were the primary formation sites, and the Scottish highlands pressed close to Hogwarts. The creatures that had kept him away, thornbacks, mountain trolls, whatever else lived in those depths, were still there. But he wasn't the same boy who'd turned back at the tree line.

  He would find the moonstone himself. Whatever was waiting in the forest, he'd face it.