Hagrid glanced up at the flame of the torch he was carrying, and shook his head. “Sluggy is goin’ t’ have yer killed, mate.”

  “Why won’t he kill me himself?”

  Hagrid shook his head. “Too cunnin’, too wary. Mark me words, Sluggy will hire some freelance bloke...”

  “Pish-tosh.” Harry waved the words away. “Slughorn loves me, mate. I’m his golden boy.”

  Hagrid choked. “Mate,” he said sardonically, “You used the man’s entire stock of dittany..,”

  “I was lucky he had so much on hand.”

  “...,his next-to-last Phoenix Flint, and his only Phoenix Feather!”

  “Yeah, that last one has me a little worried. Everything else can be replaced with money..,

  Hagrid snorted, “A right LOT o’ money!”

  “.., but the Auror’s Office will have to call in a big, international-level favor to replace that.” Harry looked up at the dark sky and said, firmly, “Official Business!”

  He ignored Hagrid’s questioning look, and went on, “How far to the.., what did you call it? The Magic Desert?”

  “Just aroun’ th’ end o’ this ridge. Atter we pass tha’ murtherin’ great oak tree, we’ll be in sight o’ th’ outer edges.”

  “Well, let’s do something about that.” Harry raised his wand and started walking slow circles around Hagrid and the hounds. Slowly and sonorously, he began intoning spells

  “Protego Maxima.”

  “Fianto Duri.”

  “Repello Inimicum.”

  “Salvio Hexia,”

  “Cave Inimicum.”

  Hagrid whistled, a low, almost bass rumble, much like a foghorn would sound. “Well, tha’ should do it, all righ’. but ain’t we abou’ ter walk away from all o’ it?”

  Harry gestured at the torch Hagrid was still holding. “That’s one of the reasons we need the Flame. Its protective property absorbs the effects of the spells, and they remain with us as we move along.”

  Hagrid nodded, “An’ th’ other reason, or reasons?”

  “Those are still up in the air, for now. A lot of this is guesswork.” He looked at the hounds. “Okay, pups, we need you to stay close. Doesn’t have to be too close, I walked a nice big circle.”

  “They got it, Harry.” Hagrid said, then addressed the dogs, “Pups! Black Watch, ten yards out.”

  Direfang immediately took up station directly behind them, Fang Jr. and Sweetfang spread forward, right and left respectively. They ended up 120° from each other around an imaginary circle centered on Harry and Hagrid. They immediately started scanning their sectors. Direfang was pacing in a elongated Figure-8, keeping his attention mostly on their rear, while intermittently checking their positions.

  “Brilliant,” Harry said, admiringly.

  They passed the oak. The tree canopy began to close in above them, as the ground cover changed from low scrub to thickets and brambles, getting higher, darker and more dense.

  “We’re gettin’ close ter where things started gettin’ bad,” Hagrid whispered. Well, he probably thought of it as a whisper, anyway. “Shouldn’t we douse th’ light?”

  Harry spoke in a normal tone, “If I have everything right, no one should be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or otherwise sense us, or the pups.” He paused. “Admittedly, I can’t think of a situation where the sense of taste would be relevant, but there you have it. Let me know if that ‘smothering’ feeling comes over you.”

  The small group continued on. Hagrid finally spoke up. “We jus’ passed where we turned back las’ time. I don’t feel nothin’, an’ I don’t think the pups do, neither.”

  “That’s good,” Harry said. “I wasn’t sure this would shield as well as conceal us, but it seems to be working.”

  They crested a small rise. They couldn’t see into the hollow, the trees in the grove were too closely-set. What they could see was...

  “Light,” muttered Hagrid.

  “Lights,” said Harry. “Lots of lights.”

  The light filtering up through the leaves and branches of the large copse kept shifting. That argued for multiple small light sources, moving around on or close to the ground. The light seemed diffuse, not like the beam from a torch. And something was off. What was it?

  “There’s no colour to it, but there is a sense of colour. It’s like I’m seeing it with something besides my eyes.” Harry hesitated. “Hagrid, stay put. I’m going to duck out of the circle for just a second to check something.”

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  Hagrid shook his head. “I don’t think tha’s a good idea, Harry.”

  “Right out, right back.” Harry suited deed to words. As he broke the plane of the protections, he gave an involuntary gasp, and ducked back quickly. Behind him, Hagrid grunted in surprise.

  Harry hurried back to Hagrid’s side. “What? What did you see?”

  “You firs’,” said Hagrid, cautiously.

  Harry shrugged. “The lights were gone. Just gone. A dark night over darker trees.. You?”

  “Yeh lit up. I mean, yer entire body lit up, like yeh were a wand tip, an’ somebody shouted ‘Lumos.’” Hagrid was looking strangely at Harry, as if he expected him to explode at any moment. “An’ it was all in tha’ colour tha’ isn’t a colour.”

  Harry stilled. His next words came in a whisper.

  “The Colour of Magic?”

  ***

  They were still staring at each other, when Sweetfang gave out a small growl. Hagrid looked over at her sharply, and then looked to where her muzzle was pointing.

  “Something’s coming!” He basso-whispered again, forgetting momentarily what he had been told about the protective circle. “Where is it, Sweetie?”

  Sweetfang stayed on point, until they could see what she had noticed. A small light source was coming out from under the trees of the grove, into the slightly more open space under the small rise they were still standing upon. They couldn’t make it out at this distance.

  The glowing thing was headed in a general way for them, Its movements were irregular, many stops and starts. It was casting from side to side, for all the world like a foxhound trying to pick up a scent.

  As it came nearer, Hagrid gave a little start. “Tha’s a Niffler! What’s one o’ them doin’ out here?” He watched it closely. “And it’s black, jet black all over, even th' eyes an' bill. Where have I heard o’ tha’?” He muttered this last to himself. “An’ it’s lookin’ fer som’thin’. But there’s no... treasure...?”

  Sudden inspiration lit his black, beady eyes. “It’s not lookin’ fer treasure, Harry. It’s lookin’ fer magic!” Inspired, he went on, “When y’ popped out o’ th’ circle, it mus’ have sensed yeh, and come huntin’.”

  “Well,” said Harry. “It can’t have me. But if it blunders into the circle, we’re in trouble.”

  “Gotta idea.” Hagrid started searching through his multiple large pockets. “Harry di’ y’ gie tha’ drop-fall pear back ter me?”

  Harry thought for a second. “I don’t.., No, I stuffed it into a pocket when I pulled out the roasts.” He checked his pockets. “Here.”

  Hagrid took the wrinkled remnants of the pear, and turned back to Direfang.

  “Here, boy. Give it a good lick.” The massive hound looked at him, gave the doggy equivalent of a shrug, and did as he was told. Hagrid dropped the pear on the ground.

  “Now, le’s back away 'til it’s out th' circle.”

  The group did so, with the dogs maintaining station flawlessly. As the edge of the protective circle crossed over where the pear lay, it came to, well, guess it had to be called ’light.’ It wasn’t a bright flare, as Hagrid had described the effect on Harry. More patchy and pulsing, and apparently much weaker.

  Down the hill, the platypus-looking head came up for a moment, looking around uncertainly. It continued the casting about behavior.

  When it finally found the pear, the beaver-sized animal sniffed at the dried-up thing, and rolled it back and forth a bit on the ground. It then stilled, focused on the pear. Through the wards, Harry’s senses were muddled and dulled, but he felt the faint pulse of a magic spell. He could not identify it, blocked away as he was, but when it repeated, he knew it was the exact same spell each time.

  The niffler looked a little disappointed, Harry thought. How it managed that with most of its face covered by a duck-like bill was a mystery. It sat up on its haunches and went still again, beak slightly raised, and eyes closed. Nothing happened.

  Nothing continued happening for about ten minutes. The first notice they had was when Sweetfang gave out her warning growl. There was nothing visible, but her eyes were fixed on a point above the ground and moving toward them.

  The niffler opened its eyes, looked up and back at the same point as Sweetfang. As the point got closer, Sweetfang’s growl started ratcheting up. Hagrid laid a hand on her shoulder, and the growling stopped.

  Harry strained, trying to detect something through his muted senses. What he detected instead, was an absence of anything. The point in the air approaching was not just empty, it was beyond empty. It seemed to pull at his magical senses, like some vacuum in the world of spirit.

  As the.., whatever.., came near, the niffler dropped to all fours, backing unhurriedly away from the pear. The unknown effect was right above the slightly glowing piece of fruit.

  For the first time, they saw something. As the phenomenon dropped onto the space where the pear still glowed, the ‘light’ coming from it began to pulse. It glowed and faded, and it drained away into fractal shapes that shrank and disappeared.

  When the last of the light was gone, Harry half-expected the process to cease. Instead, there was quite a bit of time when nothing appeared to be happening.

  This time it was Direfang who alerted. He had been maintaining his patrol pattern, giving an occasional look to the others. He slowed, coming to a stop facing the niffler, the pear, and the whatever.

  He began to growl, as well. His growl made Sweetfang’s sound like a child shaking a sheet of tin, mocking a real thunderstorm. His hackles came up, making him look half again his huge size. As the great, bone-crushing teeth appeared from behind the snarling lips, Harry was suddenly sure that he never wanted to see that force of nature coming at him.

  Hagrid immediately moved to the boarhound’s side, kneeling beside him and putting a great arm around the dog’s shoulders. He wasn’t trying to restrain Direfang, Harry saw. The dog had not made a move toward what was going on outside the circle.

  Hagrid said, as quietly as he could manage, “It’s okay, boy. We’ll fix it. Yeh warned us, an’ we’re ready. Good dog.” The growling stopped, the hackles slowly lowered, and Direfang’s lips relaxed to cover at least some of the great carnivore teeth.

  “Hagrid?” Harry said. “Look at the pear.”

  Hagrid looked over. The pear was going away, as well. Not draining away like the light, but as if it was sublimating into nothingness.

  “Tha’ there,” muttered Hagrid, “.., is entirely too wisht fer a thick West Country boy, magic er no.”

  If they had not been watching so closely, they might have missed the final, most uncanny touch. Some blades of scrub grass had bent when Hagrid dropped the dried pear, and a small shoot of some flower had been crushed. These showed a very faint glow of third-hand magic. These sublimated away as well. The effect then somehow went into reverse, and slowly, out of nothing they could sense, the affected things were recreated. They weren’t perfect copies, (Harry didn’t think the shoot was even from the same kind of plant), but it certainly didn’t appear as if the site had ever been disturbed.

  The.., whatever.., drifted up and away, headed back to the grove, as evidenced by Sweetfang’s following eyes and pointed muzzle. The niffler sniffed around for a moment. It then sat back up on its haunches, slowly scanning around the whole area. Again, reading emotion from the fuzzy face with the duck-like bill was surmise at best. Harry still thought it looked worried. Dropping to all fours, it scurried off, taking a much more direct path back than it had come by.

  Harry and Hagrid looked at each other. Harry sighed.

  “Oh, this is bad."