The orphanage yard gradually fell quiet again.
Iain stood where he was, looking at the lawn now perfectly restored, looking at the little daisy swaying in the night wind, looking at Dumbledore's back as he disappeared through the doorway.
He took a deep breath, turned, and walked toward Mrs. Hawke.
Mrs. Hawke stood at the end of the corridor with her back against the wall. At some point, a glass of water had appeared in her hand. She watched Iain approach, her expression strangely complicated. Not anger. Not fear. Something softer than that. A feeling many people assumed orphans were incapable of having.
"Mrs. Hawke..." Iain stopped in front of her, choosing his words carefully as he spoke in a tentative voice. "There are some things I need to tell you."
Mrs. Hawke nodded and did not urge him to hurry.
"I... I'm probably a wizard, and all the chaos tonight happened because my magic went out of control." The moment the words left his mouth, Iain suddenly felt a good deal lighter inside.
"I mean... an actual wizard. The sort who can do magic. Mr. Dumbledore's school teaches magic. I wasn't trying to hide it from you, I just didn't know before. I mean, I only found out tonight. And the things that happened tonight... those things climbing out of the ground..."
Iain began explaining everything in detail.
Mrs. Hawke set down her glass of water.
Then, to Iain's surprise, she actually let out a small sigh of relief.
"Oh, thank heaven, it's only wizardry. For a moment I thought it was some kind of disaster. I thought it was war, or some biological weapon, or one of those... those dreadful things they show on television."
There was an unmistakable note of relief in her voice.
Her ability to accept things was almost absurdly strong.
Iain froze.
That was not the reaction he had prepared for.
He had been ready to be doubted, feared, perhaps even disliked. It had never occurred to him that all of that had simply been his own persecuted imagination running wild.
Damn it, I knew it. That fever when I was a kid, the doctor must have fried my brain with those painkillers.
"Iain, this isn't the Middle Ages anymore... Besides, when my mother was younger, she told me she knew a few wizards too." Mrs. Hawke rose to her feet, her eyes falling on the little daisy in the yard, as if remembering something from a very long time ago.
"In the last few years before she passed, she came down with a strange illness. The doctors at the hospital looked at her for months and couldn't fix it, but a wizard gave her some herbs."
"She took them for about three months, and the illness went away. So there must be good wizards in the world too, don't you think?"
Mrs. Hawke sounded almost as if she were comforting Iain in return.
Just then,
"My ancestors were wizards too!"
A voice cut in from the side.
Iain turned and saw that Old Tom had somehow wandered over without anyone noticing, a shovel slung over one shoulder.
His face carried a deeply inexplicable pride.
"My grandmother's grandmother, so I was told, was a witch. She could call the wind, make crops grow better, and people from all over the village came to ask her for help. Then church folk started making trouble for her, so she ran. Came to London, married a blacksmith, and from then on stopped doing any of that. But the bloodline's still there, right?"
After saying that, Old Tom even gave Iain a wink.
"No wonder all your cats and dogs adore you," Mrs. Millie added, poking her head in from nearby, still clutching the handkerchief she had been crying into.
"So that's it. You're a druid. I thought you were just naturally good with animals. I daresay your ancestors must have had some connection to Merlin!"
Mrs. Millie was not only a Christian, but also deeply fond of traditional fantasy stories.
"To be honest, I always knew Iain was bound to be a wizard someday." Old Tom had now launched into discussion with his two coworkers and friends.
Why their acceptance threshold was so absurdly high, nobody knew.
It far exceeded that of ordinary people.
"Why's that?"
Mrs. Millie dutifully played along.
"Because once, ages ago, he was standing around by himself thinking, and when I asked what was on his mind, he stared at the statue you brought in and asked me whether the Crucifixion could be called a nail-based machine."
"It took me ages to figure out what he meant!"
Old Tom sighed in admiration.
Mrs. Millie's expression froze instantly. She was, in fact, just a little offended on the spot.
"Your headmaster is still waiting for you," Mrs. Hawke said quickly, hurrying Iain away before Mrs. Millie could launch into one of her furious lectures and a full round of evangelizing.
Iain already knew her well enough for that, so he immediately bolted back toward the orphanage building.
He hurried down the corridor.
Past the doors that still had lights on behind them.
Past the old photographs hanging on the walls for years.
Past the window he walked by every day without ever really looking at it.
And then he arrived once more at the door to his room.
The door was not fully shut. It had been left slightly ajar, leaving a narrow gap. Warm yellow light spilled through it, exactly the same as it had before he accidentally triggered the orphanage's very own zombie incident.
This was the room Iain had lived in for years. It was simple, and after its previous occupant left, it had stood empty for a very long time. The old wardrobe still bore scorch marks from some fire long ago.
And yet whenever he stepped inside, Iain always felt a certain peace.
"Professor, I'm sorry."
Iain pushed the door fully open.
Dumbledore was standing beside the desk.
Quite clearly, Dumbledore had managed to get all the children back to sleep in impressively short order. As for how exactly he had done it, best not to ask. In any case, the room now contained only Dumbledore.
"You used a very powerful form of ancient magic just now."
Dumbledore did not turn around. He was busy interacting with Iain's old cat.
His phoenix, Fawkes, meanwhile, was helping itself to Iain's supply of dried herbs. As a self-taught veterinary enthusiast, Iain often preferred using herbal remedies on animals anyway.
After all, you could dig most of them up for free in the countryside.
"Uh... I didn't really know what it was. It just sort of appeared in my head all at once. Are you saying this magic of mine is... somewhat traditional?"
Iain knew this moment had been coming sooner or later. As he explained, he deliberately used the phrase traditional magic in hopes of covering up the far more alarming truth of ancient magic.
Mostly because even he thought the spell felt dark.
Ancient dark magic sounded like the sort of thing that made people recoil in horror.
Traditional magic, on the other hand, sounded noticeably less terrifying.
"That is one possibility."
Dumbledore did not deny Iain's phrasing.
He still had not turned around. He simply stood by the window, head slightly lowered, looking at something on the desk.
"How much do you understand about this magic?"
The oldest storyteller at Hogwarts turned then and glanced at Iain, those eyes still unreadable, while the familiar gentle smile remained on his face.
"Uh... I'm only a child."
Iain was genuinely stuck, not deliberately trying to play that card. It was simply that the mood had brought things to exactly this point, and strictly speaking, the statement was true enough.
He really only knew that it could make the dead crawl out on their own.
If anything, he privately felt it ought to have some stylish name like Ancestral Dance of the Graves.
"That is magic which truly disturbs the sleep of the dead. Terrible, powerful, and not to be gainsaid."
Dumbledore spoke slowly.
"I suspect the original creator did not intend it merely as a way of commanding the dead..."
Dumbledore was one of the greatest masters of speaking in riddles the world had ever seen.
He seemed to be explaining something to Iain, and yet also seemed to explain nothing at all.
Just as Iain was preparing to launch into a full reading-comprehension analysis of the old man's words, hoping to extract one, two, or three useful conclusions from them,
Dumbledore abruptly continued.
"I believe that before term begins, you should leave with me for a while. I will find you somewhere quiet and help you learn how to control your abilities."
Before Iain had even finished processing that sentence, the next one followed immediately.
"But before that, indulge the curiosity of an old man..."
Dumbledore lightly tapped the open notebook lying on Iain's desk.
"The writing here is Aramaic. An ancient sacred language."
Dumbledore's fingers brushed slowly over the page.
Very slowly.
As though touching something precious.
Something fragile.
"If it is not too intrusive, would you tell me where you learned it?"
Dumbledore's tone remained calm as ever.
Only,
there was the faintest tremor in it.