A/N: It's been almost two months since I published the last chapter. Life caught up and I realised my schedule of one chapter every two weeks was much too ambitious. I took some time off to plan out the rest of the story.

To recap, Ozland has just been in Dumbledore's office after bidding the Weasleys adieu, undergone the very-cleverly-written Ritual of the Time Cube, and woken up back in New Zealand.

#######

CHAPTER SIX

#######

[...]

STALIN:

I cannot abide by your superstition.

WIZARD:

Then I must repeat to you once more, our craft is ineffable,

And moreover not intended to be understood by man.

STALIN:

All is within the grasp of man! I have confidence that

In time man shall puncture the very firmament of the heavens

And violate the kingdom of God Himself.

WIZARD:

Such ambitions have been shared by cities whose names

Now read on tombstones.

STALIN:

Yet we are not a city, we are a civilisation.

WIZARD:

And as a city is to a civilisation, so will be past catastrophes

To the catastrophe that will inevitably result!

STALIN:

This magic, it resists scientific experimentation so?

WIZARD:

Tell me of what you mean by that term

Which rings so strangely to my ears.

STALIN:

It is to find within the turmoil of the universe

An underlying order; to lay bare the structure of

The celestial storm that surrounds us. It is

To find Newton in the path of Neptune,

Darwin in the Galapagos, and Marx in market capitalism.

It is to discern the nature of the cosmos and its atoms,

The arrangement of matter which gives rise to higher forms.

WIZARD:

I am afraid, dear General Secretary, that you shall find

That there is no underlying order to be found. That the

Inscrutability of wizardry will bring you to new heights

Of madness and frustration, as it has done to many before you.

Many have, of course, discovered arcane principles which

May be applied by practitioners of the craft, but I think

That you shall find that the low-hanging fruit have already

Been plucked, and that, in attempting to reach higher,

You may have an accident with your ladder and hurt yourself.

STALIN:

Then it is not only gold you ask for, but the suspension

Of our innate curiosity? A heavy price indeed.

WIZARD:

To sate one's curiosity before the well-beings of one's countrymen

Is perhaps a selfish and treacherous venture.

STALIN:

It is for their sakes that I wonder, not out of any selfish vice.

WIZARD:

Wonder?

STALIN:

The basis of our socialist system is the perfection

Of industrial techniques. To fully understand the principles

Which underlie the steam engine and the spinning loom

Is an important thing indeed. Without an understanding,

How can we perfect? Bereft of understanding, we would be

Condemned to see ourselves stagnate and stumble.

We cannot build communism through stumbling, hence

My concern over the implications of this supernatural marvel.

But more still, it would undermine the faith of every Soviet citizen

In the certitude of scientific fact, cast doubt on what mankind

Has so-far illuminated. What, say, of the principles

Of electromagnetism given the existence of Lumos?

What of the conservation of matter, given the existence of

A simple water-making Charm? Surely you can see how

Such a revelation would dampen the spirit of progress

And open the floodgates of religious reactionism!

WIZARD:

Then I must suggest, if the possibility has not

Already occurred to you, to walk on two feet.

STALIN:

Please elaborate.

WIZARD:

While magic will make every burden lighter by a thousandfold,

Your Muggle sciences will attempt to lighten every burden

Using reason rather than received lore. Eventually,

Should the words you have spoken to me be true,

A transition would begin, in which magic would be supplanted

By superior technological advances.

STALIN:

I must discuss it with Molotov.

[...]

– Belarusian University of the Arts play entitled 'Stalin's Dilemma' (performed 1986, translated by Yazhk [Dogthinker, Class III])

#######

"Imitative and unnecessarily florid. The heavy hand of Gosteleradio and Bolshoy's Dogthinkers have clearly dealt us another propaganda play." – radioyerevananswers885

"Angelika Savelievna's performance as Stalin was inspired." – Martsin Aleksiutovič, steel-worker, associate professor of sociology at the B.U.A

"[...] an exploration of a collision between dialectical materialism and the seemingly-insurmountable ideological challenge of magic that proved utterly tantalising." – Critic, Dogthinker [Class V]

"If this gets adapted into film, I would be happy to consult." – Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin [VERIFIED USER]

#######

THE SAME DAY – GORDON COATES MEMORIAL PARK, TERRITORY OF THE CELESTIAN UNORTHODOX CHURCH, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

"Well I'm sorry, Oz, since I've been trying to fucking reach you for the last five hours to tell you someone leaked Rushabh's suicide to the press before we could set up the official story and that, in accordance with time-honoured tradition, his fucking Unsealing Ceremony, you know, the one where they read out his successor for the position of Jupiter-Minister of the whole of New Zealand, is happening in Gordon Coates in twenty minutes and we're on the fucking guest-list."

"Oh," said Ozland.

"Yes," said Evelyn. "I thought you might say something like that."

Something felt wrong.

The procession was small and formal and held on the flat top of a hill overlooking a garden of flowers. A squat, marbly-coloured box could be found where an open casket would have been.

A man in factory-blue overalls went around, solemnly offering everyone a scoop of black ice-cream in memory of the recently departed, courtesy of Tip Top Ltd. Evelyn didn't know what flavour it would be. She suspected it would either be licorice or charcoal, and so politely declined.

As she and Ozland walked through the concentric semicircles to take their seats, the apprehensive voices became a low, subdued murmur like a pot being taken off a stovetop, going from boiling to simmering. There was a note of tension in the air. The CEO of Tip Top glanced at her, and when she turned to look back at him, he was staring resolutely forward.

As she sat, Ozland began shaking hands with people. He went from Wu Xilai, Commissar of External Affairs of the Red Dragons, to some high-ranking Nisango member to Henry van Nanseer, a mysterious-looking ThauCorp exec, all sitting in the innermost row. His handshake, Evelyn noted, could do with a little more work, but it seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect. The semicircles were divided down the middle by a black carpet, and after Ozland had finished shaking hands with everyone in the innermost row, he ambled down the carpet, briefly touching the nearest chair of each row. The tension began to unravel. The world exhaled. Everything was going to be alright.

(It was par for the course for semi-public gatherings like these, but Evelyn was slightly embarrassed to see a few people in the outermost rows attempt to discreetly touch their fingers to Ozland's cloak, as if divinity brushed off.)

And then he came back, and sat in the seat, and everything was completely silent.

Someone from the middle-row, probably the Mars-Minister of Rituals, rose and brought himself to the centre of the congregation. The Rituals Minister cleared his throat, a small, bleating noise, and began. "I stand before all of you in a special position, both as the executor to Rushabh's Celestian Will, and as," he said, too proudly for Evelyn's taste, "the Mars-Minister of Rituals for the North Shore City Region." He went on, listing trivial, unimportant things, stroking his beard self-importantly.

"So, this is it, isn't it?" It was a question, but Ozland had said it flatly – not that there was much intonative nuance you could put into a whisper.

"Chin up, Oz. You're about to make it big-time."

"Well, Rushabh might've passed the Jupiter-Ministership onto you," Ozland replied glassily. That stings.

"Just in case your absinthe-induced nostalgia-fog is preventing you from remembering things properly, he was off his damn nut," she shot back. "He might've passed it onto Kev. Or the Minister of Justice. Or some woman who did his fucking dry-cleaning back in '85."

"He wouldn't've."

"Of course he would not have," Evelyn made sure to enunciate each of the words individually, "he almost started a second game of nuclear chicken with the Church just to get you your General Affairs Ministership, so was there any point to you saying I might be the next Jupiter-Minister or did you just say that to be a hungover asshole?"

"I didn't mean it that way."

"Then how did you mean it?"

He apparently couldn't think of anything to say to that.

Evelyn sat back, satisfied, while the Minister of Rituals droned onward. She glared at him, tapping her watch suggestively.

The Minister cut off into a strangled silence. "– er, and he did many good things later on in his life, I'm sure. Rushabh came to New Zealand from Indonesia as a nuclear technician and departed our world as a cherished, senior figure in the Church, and other things along those lines, et cetera, et cetera. I wouldn't want to, er, detain such an esteemed congregation for longer than necessary, so I'll get to the Unsealing, shall I?" he laughed nervously.

Everyone brought out their earmuffs during a long, uncomfortable time in which the Rituals Minister took to the box with a gargantuan half-chisel half-hammer. There has to be a more effective way to seal a Celestian Will, other than putting it in a box. An intemperate elderly gentleman four seats to her left looked as if he were about to stand up indignantly and leave the Unsealing, but evidently decided it would be too awkward. His moustache jerked about on his face like an angry burlesque dancer.

The woman sitting to her right, the wife of the Chief Financial Officer of the Mongol Private Defense Corporation, slouched, fanning herself. "How long do these usually take?" she asked Evelyn in a loud drawl.

"Depends," Evelyn replied, having already decided that she disliked the woman's attitude, which she had evaluated separately from her being a 77-Church-following God-damned heathen whore bitch gold-digger who would inevitably be vaporized by the Celestians when the End Times came. "It's a hyper-regular metalloid nanocrystalline case from ThauCorp's labs."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Means it doesn't melt or buckle or warp, it shatters. All of the ridges, faults, and stress-lines from the . . . tool," she was on a fucking streak of knowledgeability and if she didn't know what the half-hammer half-chisel thing was called, it was its own fault for being so damn obscure, "nothing happens for a while, maybe a minute, two, five, ten, twenty – and then suddenly it bursts into little pieces like glass."

Madam Mignani had smoothly transitioned from obliviously gazing at the box to watching it in terror, jerking involuntarily with every hammer-chisel blow.

"There are some extra seats near the back," said Evelyn kindly. "And everyone's already seen you sitting in the front so it won't be a status blow or anything if you're worried about that."

She huffed. It was a remarkably articulate huff. It was a huff that declared 'I'm so high status I don't even have to worry about status'. The heathen-woman picked up her handbag and left soon after.

Evelyn smiled.

That was when the box shattered.

##

"So, it's the big day, huh?" Henry van Nanseer was almost jubilant as they shook hands.

"No idea what you mean," Ozland said, crisply.

The exec snorted. "The demented old fuck is dead, and we all know he favoured you as his successor. Drop the faux obliviousness."

"I'll thank you," he spoke in a low voice, "not to refer to the former Jupiter-Minister of the Celestian Unorthodox Church as a 'demented old fuck'. Rushabh was a mentor of mine, and I was very close to him."

Van Nanseer winked, but as Ozland held his cold glare, his face quickly fell blank. "My comments were inappropriate and uncalled for," he rattled off, "as a representative of ThauCorp's many New Zealand-based subsidiaries, I apologise wholly and unreservedly. We hope to keep doing business with the new regime." The exec paused, and then reached into his jacket. He took out a card and handed it to Ozland. "Could I give you my business card so we can keep in touch?"

Ozland held the card in his hand. It was cream-coloured with golden edges. He glanced back at Evelyn, who was busy dealing with an obnoxious Dragon-affiliated reporter, talking smoothly while making the 'please deal with this person' code-sign behind her back. Eventually an unsympathetic-looking pair of guards gently lead the reporter away. That Rushabh had killed himself was both good and bad: good in that foul-play wouldn't be suspected, and bad in that it wouldn't cast the upper echelons of the Celestian Church in a very favourable light. Evelyn must be pissed. I wonder how it got out?

"No, I'm afraid not." He flicked the card into the grass. Another moment of concentration, and it erupted into flames. It was good to remind people sometimes. Leaving an open-mouthed Henry van Nanseer behind him, he exchanged bland pleasantries with diplomats, statespeople, weapons dealers, gang leaders, ice cream execs, and donors, who all became a steady blur of suits and expensive watches. It barely required any thought at all, no more than walking or breathing.

It gave him some time to think, to push the dreadful unreality that was Hogwarts out of his mind. He'd maintained that wonderful illusion for a few minutes, thinking that maybe he could maintain his tenuous sanity by pretending it had all been a dream, before he'd rushed back indoors after Evelyn had hurled abuse at him, looking for his formal wear. In doing so, he discovered a merlot-red satchel, filled with all of his wands and all of his textbooks, left with a little note from Dumbledore whose exact wording he couldn't remember now. It was a potent reminder that nothing could ever be the way it had been before. In the early morning, there had been Rushabh's suicide. In the late morning, the defector-priest began floating around and recounting his alien-abduction story. And then, of course, in the evening, the owls had delivered him the letters.

You should be crying, or something, said an insistent voice in his head.

I don't really feel any need to cry.

So you don't feel sad that Rushabh died?

The thought occurred to him that no, he didn't. The thought bounced around inside his skull, becoming more and more hysterical. He didn't feel sad, or bad, or anything. He hadn't been drinking last night. In fact, up until he'd woken up at his house, he'd completely forgotten about Rushabh. Was that normal?

Maybe the naive eight-year-old Ozland still believed Rushabh's soul had been absorbed into the Collective Unconscious and that he hadn't died at all, that all he would have to do would be to wait for the Celestians to transport the followers of the Church to Planet Celestia and then Rushabh would be there, wondering what took him so damn long and would he go fetch another beer from the fridge?

A hush descended, and the Mars-Minister of Rituals came up to the front to deliver his speech. He could sense the oppressive, titanic weight of inevitability bearing down on him. He felt utterly powerless.

"So this is it, isn't it?"

##

The Rituals Minister brought out a long scroll. A beat of hesitation before –

"Evelyn Rawter."

"Yes?"

"That's what's on the paper," the Minister's face was gray and slightly sickly. "Evelyn Catherine Matchwell Rawter."

What?

She hadn't prepared for this, not at all.

Ozland looked merely perplexed, but kept clenching and unclenching his jaw in a way that suggested to Evelyn that the proclamation had rattled him deeply.

It occurred to her that everyone was staring in her direction. Say something, dammit!

She stood up. "This is highly irregular, but I will ensure that the succession proceeds smoothly and with minimal disruption."

Perhaps the words had flown out of her mouth a little too effortlessly. Ozland glanced up at her suspiciously, he probably suspected it was planned. But there wasn't anything wrong with preparedness, was there?

And then the realisation struck her with full force. I'm the Jupiter-Minister. She had to repeat it a few times like an affirmation, otherwise she wouldn't believe it.

Evelyn looked around. It felt as if there was some other thing, some other element that would be needed to complete –

"I assent to and fully support Miss Rawter's ascension to the Jupiter-Ministership," said Ozland glibly. "Rushabh's choice was unexpected, but I am relieved to see that the stewardship of the New Zealand division of the Celestian Unorthodox Church has been placed in capable hands. I will not contest the Ministership at this point."

Astonished silence turned into a hubbub of frenzied discussion. Cameras flashed from the back.

"Ozland, you're a goddamned idiot."

"What?"

"At this point?"

"Yes," he said, "at this point."

Evelyn rubbed her eyes, sitting down. "This is a fucking mess. You read the crowd right – they wanted something from you, but the way you did it suggests a whole equal-power dynamic. And then you had to add 'at this point' which basically says you're waiting for your opportunity to seize back the throne."

"I'm not – "

"The Church does not do unstable, the Church does not do drama. We present an image of strict internal unity, and we make an example out of people who don't tow the line. We have a single leader who is the central locus of the movement and their two lieutenants, not a dual-power system or a triad!"

"Jesus, Ev, calm down!"

She laughed bitterly. "Aha, cold, condescending, cool-cucumber Ozland. Don't fucking pretend to be the voice of reason, why the fuck aren't you more worried?"

"I . . . " Ozland seemed genuinely lost. "I don't know. I should be. I just . . . all of this," he sighed, leaning forward and cupping his hands together. His voice came out almost in a whisper. "I feel like I'm walking through a dream. You know I don't believe in, well, Him anymore, how do you think I felt when the priest who defected from the 77 Church started floating around in the interrogation room?"

"I would think that you would reconsider your unfaith and have more appreciation for the gifts that God has given you during your time on Earth."

"Maybe that was the intended result."

"Huh?"

"Look, shit, just ignore me. What happens next?"

She had to think about that one. "Today? Nothing. I'll stay on as Mars-Minister of Propaganda and Public Relations, you'll stay on in General Affairs. Tomorrow? God knows."

A series of beeps came from Ozland's pocket. He glanced at his pager. "Kevin wants to meet with me at Denny's, probably wants to rant at me again. Peace and love, I guess," he said, the standard greet-and-goodbye for Unorthodoxists. Ozland turned to leave, and carelessly elbowed his way through the stream of people leaving the service.

She waved a brief, polite goodbye. "Peace and love," she called out.

##

DENNY'S FAMILY RESTAURANT, WESTHAVEN HIGH-DENSITY URBAN LIVING ACCOMMODATION, NEW ZEALAND

The Denny's had molded itself to their daily meetings in the same way that the passage of air gradually erodes canyons. The prices of all the dishes they usually ordered had lowered over time. There was a straight line from the door to Table 14 with nothing else in the way (with the exception of the forest of potted plants that occluded it from all sides), and there were five slight indentations in the squishy seat around the circular table. The table itself could best be described as abstract art in the medium of coffee stains.

Kevin waited outside.

Ozland found him and all of his mannerisms utterly fascinating. He was always tapping his feet, unless he was talking. The longer you talked, the faster the tapping became. Every half-minute, he glanced at his watch and pulled at his sleeves. Throughout a conversation, he always clasped his hands together and leant forward, and then a few moments later, he would lean back, rocking back and forth like someone trying to keep upright on a dinghy being tipped by waves. He had the harried, flustered look of someone in a perpetual hurry.

As he and Ozland walked through the doors, he quickly counted the number of red tiles on the restaurant floor in a rapid flurry of numbers under his breath and straightened every napkin as they went past each empty table. He was clearly angry as they went up to the counter to order.

"I'll have the special soup," Ozland said.

"Too loud, can't you get quieter food?"

"A tall smoothie, then."

"Same issue. Slurp slurp slurp."

Ozland wondered if Kevin had a melting point, or if he was like one of those chemicals which stayed solid up until a certain temperature and then suddenly sublimed into a gas.

"Deep-fried, extra crunchy spring-rolls."

"Again, too loud."

"Actually no, I'll have all three, and Kevin will have mashed potatoes."

Kevin's face melted into confusion, as if he hadn't figured out that Ozland was deliberately spiting him, but seemed satisfied with the mashed potatoes. The woman nodded, heaped abundant praise on Ozland for a bridge infrastructure project he'd never heard of, and said she would send the bill to the Church. They went to sit down.

Ozland folded his arms and flicked his wrist. Everything went silent. "So, what is it? More problems with importing pickles from the Trans-Pacific?"

Kevin splayed out his fingers and seemed to glance at each in turn. "No. The end-month pickle imports from the Trans-Pacific Railway proceeded as expected. Seventy-six point seven tonnes, cash payment of one hundred and fifteen thousand undollars from the buyers. Two percent transaction fee. The bidding process begins later this evening, and the proceeds will be subject to the standard twelve percent import fee which will be added to the Vaults within three days." He paused, as if mechanically shifting into a different gear. "You killed Rushabh."

Ozland frowned. "Excuse me?"

"Rushabhhad been regularly requesting antidepressant medication for the past six months," Kevin somehow managed to carry off both anger and disinterest, "I reviewed the records. He rarely made public appearances. He only met with us in the morning sporadically. When he did, he seemed hungover and always left early. You made a phone call to him the night before he killed himself."

"But you said that I killed him."

Kevin folded and unfolded his hands before speaking. "Semantics. Did the murderer kill the victim or was it his knife?"

"Fair. Keep going." Ozland leant back.

The Minister of Logistics was unperturbed. "You made a phone call to him the night before he killed himself. You were aware he was in a depressive state. He drinks very heavily on Sundays. You were aware that in all likelihood, he would pass the position of Jupiter-Minister onto you. You were also aware that the correct prompting could make him commit suicide. Evelyn told me how you looked yesterday, when he informed you about his death. She said you looked like you were in shock. But it is easy to mistake shock for casual indifference, or for that matter, foreknowledge." He continued. "People tend to interpret social cues contextually rather than as probabilistic representations of internal mental states, which is where I believe her error in judgement came from."

Alright, I think I've had enough of this. He shook his head, putting on a resigned expression. "So it was you!"

"Excuse me?" Kevin seemed affronted by the sudden shift.

"I can't believe I didn't make the connection before. As Minister of Logistics, you control the inflow and outflow of every pill and tablet in the country. Your parents are doctors, professors of medicine – you carefully charted every single one of Rushabh's mood swings, his low ebbs, his depressive bouts, his behaviour, how he spoke, when he left – there was no single other man in Auckland more acutely aware of Rushabh's state of mind than you, Kevin. And how undervalued you felt! A brilliant mind, atrophying in the subordinated bureaucratic jumble that is the position of the Mars-Minister of Logistics for the North Shore City Region – what tragedy!

"Everywhere you saw a system running off-time, unused, underutilisation and overutilisation, bloated departments, corrupt ministers, fat to trim – but what could a man chained to his office do? And then a fantastic idea struck you! Rushabh, Ozland, Evelyn, Dom – the Commanding Ministers, people listened to them, didn't they? They gave orders, people obeyed. What good you could do if only you had a higher role! So one night, you adulterated one of Rushabh's antidepressants, and oh, it was so easy – too easy, to push Rushabh off the edge of the cliff. He was a nuclear-armed madman at the end of his rope, no-one would suspect a single thing! But a problem emerged – Evelyn and I would obviously want to cover up the suicidal aspect of it, possibly broadcasting it as a political assassination, and the title would go to me, not you, with no controversy.

"So what better a plan than, upon hearing of Rushabh's as-expected death, to leak the news before we had time to prepare? To throw a wrench into the propaganda machine and disrupt the – "

"Enough!" Kevin roared, "Minister Cunningham," he continued in a quieter voice, as if unsure of himself, his eyes unusually tense, "you may think that you can successfully run the Church using deception and clever wordplay as a substitute for practical and sustainable governance. You have never known anything but power, and the idea that you could lose power through misunderstanding the hegemonic mechanisms and the day-to-day systems underlying the perpetuation of your power, is, so far as I can see, a concept alien to you. Your fantastic delusions have entranced the Church, its upper echelons, and its followers, save for myself." He tilted his head. "You will find that reality can only be fooled for so long, and when the day comes, when it refuses to be fooled more, I will be ready to step forward to return sanity to the Church."

Ozland jaw had tightened, by a fraction of an inch. Maybe my improvised piss-take had an element of truth. "My phone call was to do with the updated uniform designs. Please don't interrupt my busy schedule with pointless murder accusations in future and keep your personal dislike of me separate from your work as a civil servant, you fuckingslice of shit," he shouted, abruptly standing up. He realised he was shaking.

Kevin only stared into his drink.

Breathe in.

He left the table, brushing away the potted plants.

Four second hold.

He strode at a quick clip across the diner, attracting curious looks.

Slowly breathe out.

He reached the door.

Six second hold.

He flung open the door.

Repeat.

Ozland cupped his face in his hands, leaning back against the grubby facade of the building. He had come out into a corridor, eight floors up.

The wall he faced bore a neon blue sign, the symbol of the Unorthodox Church. It was the letter C, bisected with the Christian cross, like a cent symbol. Below it was a tiny photograph of Saint Matchwell, along with a stylised illustration of Evelyn, her sunglasses tilted down quizzically. He was there too, in the form of a political placard stapled into the drywall.

Hundreds of thousands had fled to New Zealand during the civil wars across the Pacific in the seventies. Hyperdense Urban Living Accommodations were Saint Matchwell's prescription for the resulting crisis: ten levels of three by three metre cells, a thousand on each floor. Fifty thousand times denser population-wise than the surrounding city, HULAs were effectively human sardine cans. Each floor had a chapter of the Church. Since alternative reading material was scarce, HULA children learned to read through the Matchwell Revelations and the Celestian Messages, which was all for the best, really, in the end.

Ozland glanced up at the roof. Was it porridge, matted seaweed, tofu, or all three? Most of the HULAs had never been officially finished – people brought in their own materials and continued where contractors had left off. The dividing walls between apartments had been knocked down to make long, winding passageways lit by crude fluorescent tubes.

Judging by their pale faces, many residents hadn't stepped outside their HULA in years. A single undollar note could circulate around inside a single unit for a decade before passing outside to be exchanged for fresh vegetables, oil, machine parts, and livestock. Some HULAs had their own cute little gangs which divided up sections of floors as territory and occasionally had cute little gang wars with cute little body-counts, he had been amused to learn.

I'm distracting myself. This is a mess, this is a fucking mess and I made the mess, why did I make this mess?

The sound of sloshing water echoed through the corridor, and a blonde woman walking her poodle came from around the corner. She stopped when she saw him.

"Cunningham?" the woman asked with a disinterested Australian drawl. The poodle yapped.

Ozland stared back at her and eventually nodded.

"I've been told to give this to you." She brought out a yellow parcel from her handbag. "Correspondence," she elaborated, putting a cigarette in her mouth. "Got a lighter?"

"The den is a few minutes away," Ozland said, turning over the parcel in his hands warily. "Why couldn't they just mail me over the Red Mundial?"

"I just give the parcels, sweetie," the woman replied, continuing her stroll down the dark passageway. "Take that up with them when you see them, huh?"

Them?

The mystery didn't last for very long. The message had been typewritten on blue-cornered office paper.

His name was handwritten along the top – a touch of personality, but Ozland still had the distinct sense that the letter was just an end-product, spat out of a vast, indifferent corporate machine with a trillion moving parts that he would never be able to comprehend. It was as impersonal as a tax form.

Dear Mr. Min. Gen. Affairs 'O Wise Ldr. Of The 1000 Stars Hgh. Priest Gd.-King Ozland Cunningham,

We request your presence to discuss the possibility of ThauDevelopment – A Subsidiary of ThauCorp acquiring land in an area currently under the jurisdiction of the Authority of the Celestian Unorthodox Church.

Please meet us at the standard location.

Yours graciously,

Henry van Nanseer

Chief of Internal Coordination

ThauDevelopment – A Subsidiary of ThauCorp

#######

LEVEL 808, CENTRAL OFFICE, THAUCORP DEVELOPMENTAL AREA

Ozland had identified it, the vague sense of unease. I'm off my game. It was Kevin's murder accusation that had been bothering him. Why would he make himself a target? Was he recording the conversation? What was the point of saying it in the first place? There were too many unknowns and not enough answers.

The trip to the ThauCorp Developmental Area only put him more on edge. There were rumours about the Developmental Area: enormous towers reaching into the sky, underground facilities, biological weapons testing, mysterious abandoned buildings with flickering lights – it was a positive cornucopia of conspiracy and intrigue.

Naturally, it was only allowed because neighbouring paragovs like the Celestian Church were making millions of pounds from ground rent. ThauCorp also provided a natural buffer against Ātete, an indigenous land-reclamation guerilla army with a penchant for sudden waves of aggression.

"Ozland?"

He realised he'd zoned out. "Yes?"

They were in an office on the 308th floor, from which only the evening sky was visible through the windows. They were seated around a rectangular blue table.

"As I was saying," van Nanseer continued, pouring a thick dossier of documents onto the tabletop, "we're looking to lease the northern portion of Glen Eden for the standard fifty-year period."

"Why?" Ozland asked, frowning. "It's not contiguous with the rest of the Developmental Area, is it?" And why not just rent it on a monthly basis? It indicated that the Board had become confident in the stability of the Church.

The businessman seemed confused. "It's contiguous with Sunnyvale and Kelston. Rushabh drew up the deal earlier last month."

What the hell? He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright, go on."

Van Nanseer looked at him strangely and coughed. "We're prepared to offer thirty million British pounds."

"One hundred million pounds," Ozland said automatically. "An eighth of that in gold futures, a quarter in Negaloth shares, and another quarter in five-year Soviet bonds. Can you arrange that?"

Van Nanseer smiled. "I'll take it to the board. Pleasure doing business with you, Cunningham."

"The same," he replied, still distracted.

He took the metro back to his house unaccompanied (Evelyn would scold him later) and collapsed into bed.

Something felt wrong.

#######

FEBRUARY 3, 1931 – LEVEL MINUS FOUR, MINISTRY OF MAGIC

For eight seconds, everything was still.

And then life continued. In Diagon Alley, glasses clinked in celebration of Emir Quarfaad's visit to Britain. In Hogsmeade, butterbeer disappeared with a heavy glug down the throats of wizards and witches. In Malfoy Manor, the nobility made polite conversation as clocks chimed to midnight, eight seconds late.

But the jubilant atmosphere stopped at the iron door of the Department of Mysteries.

In the corridors, there was a heightened sense of dread. Paranoia had infected every passageway. Voices were lowered. Words were whispered softly.

Thirty minutes later, the Head Unspeakable was pacing frantically about in his office, with the growing realization that someone had done something wrong, and he would be the one to be blamed.

"Time stopped for eight seconds? You're certain?"

"Very, sir," Rookwood replied.

"Anyone we can blame?"

Rookwood pondered this. "Samuels, probably, sir. Without the special clock he invented, we wouldn't have noticed it –"

The Department Director gave him a blank look. "The special clock?"

"– the one that measures the number of seconds per second –"

"Ah, yes."

"– and the chances are one in an obsquatumatillion it'll ever happen again, sir. Just a minor surge in the Cup's thaumic output causing a buffer overflow in the Ward of the Thirteen."

Rookwood watched as his superior sat himself down at the bloodoak desk, cleared away mounds of paperwork, and started thoughtfully drumming his fingers on the worn surface, before it began to float gently up towards the ceiling. The Director leant in on the desk in a natural motion, keeping it pinned down to the floor, and then started floating along with the desk. Unwilling to concede defeat, he seemed to come to the conclusion that no embarrassment could result if he simply ignored it. The wizard was a few centimetres above the ground when he suddenly opened up with a rapid-fire barrage of questions. "Splinches at the temporal interfaces?"

"No –"

"Divergences in thaumometer readings?"

"Nothi–"

"Leyline breakages?"

"None that we –"

"Have the Unseelie risen once more from the twisting fractal depths of Tir inna n-Og?"

"Er . . . no?"

"So, to be clear," the Head Unspeakable intoned, floating still higher, "nothing, nothing which we would, in our duties as guardians of ancient lore, gatekeepers of eldritch horrors beyond the mortal ken of man, tamers of the raging primordial elemental forces, etcetera etcetera etcetera, nothing which we would be obliged to inform the Minister of in the upcoming budgetary session?"

"Well . . . I'll have to fill out a form, sir. Unintentional temporal malpractice. I, er, faintly recall," Rookwood said. (He was familiar enough with the form to have caught himself subconsciously tracing its outlines in the fogged window by his desk.)

"Good, good," the Director muttered distractedly, his head slowly nearing the ceiling. "I'm sure you're aware of what this looks like, Rookwood. It looks like we're overstepping the boundaries. It looks like we're mismanaging our mysticism, debauching our divine powers –"

"– I'm sure, sir –"

"– abusing the occult, exploiting our esotericism –"

"– I think I understand –"

"– perverting prophecy, ouch, corrupting our karm . . . er . . . karmicosity . . . yes, indeed." The wizard straightened his glasses, and sighed, head now planted firmly in plasterboard. From below, he had all the seeming of a bureaucrat ascended to a higher managerial plane of being. "Ward of the Thirteen, Ward of the Thirteen. Rookwood, why does that name ring a bell?"

"Erm, it's the ward that supports all the other wards, sir," Rookwood said, wondering if it would've been considered impolite to look up. "Merlin and a bunch of other fancy wizards whipped it up in the one-hundreds. It was, er, originally erected to defend us from the ice-mages of Orendel but, well, feature creep, I suppose. According to the ancient scrolls we looked at, the time-stopping component was meant to temporarily halt Daevite encroachment, but the only thing we found on the Daevites in the Department Archival Library was a small black book with a note stuck to it which said to never read it or bring it within fifteen metres of human blood."

"And this . . . defense mechanism . . . activated . . . why?"

Rookwood coughed. "The ward's only rated for twenty trillion thaums, but ever since we plugged the Cup into the central Nexus, it's been getting much more juice than it's rated for. The Great Enchanter was holidaying in Belgium when it happened so he dismissed it – otherwise we'd have been frozen forever."

"That bloody Cup has been causing a fair share of nuisance, hasn't it? Why don't we just smash the ruddy thing up?"

"Olymp Kagnarr from the ICW's Bad Things Division says if the Cup so much as gets knocked over, it would melt the Earth and a few other things besides."

The Director jolted in his seat. "Merlin, we have a potential Earth-and-other-things-besides-destroying artifact here?"

"Um, yes."

"Make sure to mention it in the budgetary session. I want them to know I'm as mad as a Mudlomper, unhinged as a broken door, semi-psychotic, away with the færies, and ready to melt the Earth and a few other things besides at a moment's notice, and then we'll see how long it takes for them to cut a few thousand Galleons from the damn DMLE."

"Noted. In the meanwhile, should I look into ways to discharge the thaumic surplus, perhaps to some trusted third parties?"

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Dear Editor,

I am SHOCKED and APPALLED at the HORRENDOUS quality of this year's home appliances! My light fixtures have stopped working, my deep freeze refuses to operate, my radio is stuck on one channel, and my toaster EXPLODED in a shower of sparks yesterday! In fact, not a SINGLE electrical device in my entire household is functioning properly.

SHAME on British corporations who use CHEAP and NASTY manufacturing methods!

So far, only Negaloth's appliances have proved functional and what a BEAUTY they are! Negaloth was kind enough to replace all of my appliances with patented Negaloth technology.

I urge readers to purchase ONE Negaloth device and see how BRILLIANTLY they operate.

Kind Regards,

Margaret Gullikson

– March 5, 1936 (Dorset Gazette)

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HOGWARTS, SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, REPUBLIC OF SCOTLAND – THE HERE AND NOW

Dawn came to Hogwarts. It washed over the gardens, tickled the stonework, brushed the tips of the towers, and eventually struck Ozland in the face with full force.

His first bizarre thought as he woke up was that he had been imprisoned. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all stone. Apparently, somehow he'd been taken back to Hogwarts and these would be his accommodations.

The one window, off in the far corner, was done in coloured glass: a knight wildly swinging a sword at a green dragon. As he looked closer, the dragon roared, and tessellated shards of red and orange glass erupted from its mouth. When he looked next, the dragon and the knight had rolled out a piece of cloth and were picnicking together on top of the hill. Then, once the last crystalline sandwich had been eaten, they were back at it again with renewed vigour.

Shaking his head, Ozland got out of bed. He looked around the room more. There was a door at the end, of course, but it was otherwise bare.

He went up to the coloured glass and tapped it. "Oi you, where're the showers?"

The small knight figure motioned at the door with its sword, but otherwise seemed to ignore him.

The door only lead to a corridor, and the corridor lead to a main passageway of sorts, layered with paintings on either side. Ozland was surprised there had been enough people in all of wizarding Britain's history to paint portraits of, although, he supposed, some of them might have been made up by the artists. (Which in turn implied that whatever process was used to make new paintings also created fully-fledged consciousnesses with their own memories and personalities as a byproduct.)

"I suppose I ought to ask again," he said.

"Ask what?" came a reply from his left. The voice sounded distant and had a slight reverb.

He looked to his left: there was a glum painting of a dimly-lit corridor, much like the one he'd come down. Hung up on one of its walls, rimmed with gold, done in little brushstrokes, was a tiny painting inside the painting – a princess, from what he could tell, dressed in florid blue. "Where are the showers?" he asked, fascinated.

"Come again?"

"Where are the showers?" Ozland said again, much louder.

"Oh," said the princess-painting, "you'll have to excuse me, the acoustics in this hall aren't that good. And why in the name of Merlin would you want to have a shower like a commoner?"

"What else would I do?"

"The Clean-Up Charm, naturally," the meta-painting replied, seeming confused.

"I don't know it."

"It's simple. Say 'Lasciato', and then do this."

"Do what?"

"What I'm doing with my wand right now, you dolt."

"Er, the brushstrokes aren't fine enough for me to see what's going on," Ozland said, embarrassed. "Just looks like a blurry squiggle to me."

The princess sighed. "I'll have to fetch the Meta-Man."

"Who?"

"The man who can go up and down painting levels."

" . . . how many of those are there, exactly?"

The meta-painting seemed to consider this. "Well, about eight hundred going down – I'm not sure how many there are going up, though. Are you a painting, by any chance?"

"Er, I don't think so."

"Think so or know so? And do you want me to fetch the Meta-Man or not?"

"If you would be so kind."

The princess left her frame, presumably in search of the mysterious Meta-Man.

It didn't take too long. The perspective of the painting started to look more and more wrong. Black lines bled and perspectives bulged, colours collapsed into sickly gray-greens. The brushstrokes in the painting began to wriggle like earthworms, knotting and melting until the Meta-Man took shape.

The Meta-Man, Ozland thought, wasn't really a man. He was a grotesque, brutal geometric abstraction, covered in charcoal veins. Nine pairs of blinking eyes roiled about on his body. The only thing that made him barely human was a red business-tie running down his front. Looking at him filled Ozland with the irrational fear that someday he would find out how to bleed into the real world.

As he watched with horrified intrigue, the Meta-Man somehow drew himself a hand, which then drew a brush, which drew another hand, and then a wide, thick-lipped mouth filled with uneven teeth. And then finally, a wand.

One of the Meta-Man's eyes drifted across its body to look at the princess-painting, who motioned with her wand. The Meta-Man copied. A twirl, then a vertical line from top to bottom.

"Lasciato," it growled. The canvas of the painting rippled and bulged.

"Thanks for all the help," Ozland half-squeaked, darting down the passageway.

###

After some time, tracing back his steps, Ozland realised he was lost. It was absurd – it had only been five minutes or so of wandering down a straight hall, but when he looked for the corridor he'd come from, he only found a grotty stairwell that kept on descending and descending until it came to an abrupt dead-end with an oil painting of an artist with a curly moustache, painting a self-portrait. Water dripped from the low ceiling.

"Excuse me," he said to the artist, almost only to break the dreadful silence, "I'm lost."

The artist kept painting, ignoring him until: "And where would you be trying to get to?"

It had the vaguest hint of a French accent.

"I don't know," Ozland replied, "I was hoping you'd help me figure that out, too."

"Ah," the painted-artist said, dipping its brush into violet gouache, "then you must first know what you want."

"Um, okay, that's useful advice in general, I guess – I just want breakfast."

"Go up the stairs, go down the corridor, and turn eight lefts."

At this point, Ozland wasn't going to bother questioning it. "Turn eight fucking lefts," he muttered under his breath, breaking into a jog.

The architecture of Hogwarts, however, was unwilling to accommodate the simplicity of lefts and rights. The end of one candle-lit corridor had a clear 90-degree left turn, but as he rushed closer and closer, it began straightening out, and by the time he'd reached it, it was a rightward U-bend that turned into a spiral stairwell. He opted to walk backward since technically it would still count as a left, and every revolution of the stairwell would be another turn.

And so he ended up crashing into Dumbledore, who was walking up the stairs.

"Ah, Ozland," he boomed, "a fortunate coincidence. Professor Trelawney is expecting us."

"I was just looking for breakfast – "

Dumbledore twiddled his fingers, and a white dining plate accompanied by a knife and a fork fell from nowhere, settling to float in front of him. The wizard proceeded to reach into the pockets of his robe, pulled out an unlabelled can, opened it, and poured steaming baked beans onto the plate. "Everlasting baked beans," he said, by way of explanation, "one of the exceptions to the Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law," and began snapping his fingers.

Two sausages, a hash brown, a poached egg, and a small saucer filled with green stew fell neatly onto the plate with each snap.

"Thanks," Ozland murmured, following Dumbledore. The plate kept hovering in front of him, and as soon as he'd reached the top of the stairs, he began digging in. (He wasn't confident that he could safely eat with a knife and fork and walk up a stairwell at the same time.)

They reached another stairwell going up, done in chessboard marble.

"So Professor Trelawney is the careers advisor?"

"Professor Trelawney is Hogwarts' Divinations Professor," Dumbledore said, fiddling with a knot in his beard. "Aside from her work in financial consultancy, crystal orb repair, relationship counselling, property investment, and insurance, she is our resident careers advisor."

"She can predict the future?"

"If only it were so simple." Dumbledore sighed, finally undoing the beard-knot that had been causing him grief and in doing so creating two more.

He asked Ozland to make sure he was standing on a white square, and using a staff that hadn't been in his hand until a moment before, he tapped at the chequered marble floor. Immediately, the square Ozland had been standing on began to separate itself from the rest, accelerating up the stairwell, causing the others around it to fly apart around it, like the tiles on a scrabble board after being violently shook.

The door was ajar. Ozland pushed, and Dumbledore followed.

Professor Trelawney's room was strangely comforting. It was wide and open, but felt curiously snug. Purple draperies, curtains and carpets were everywhere, and in the centre, there were about fifty evenly-spaced, circular tables – each with a kettle. It smelt strongly of cinnamon and oranges.

"Ah, Albus," came a voice from across the room. "What can I do for – no, of course, Master Dwimmersmith is here to have his potential career paths examined."

"Uncanny as always," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling, and then in a lowered, conspiratorial voice, "were it not for the fact that I scheduled this appointment – "

" – four weeks ago," Professor Trelawney said, "and I foresaw that you would schedule the appointment so I scheduled an appointment for you to schedule the appointment."

Dumbledore shook his head. "As I said, uncanny. Ozland, this is – ah, I've already introduced you – and Sybill, this is – hmm, I see introductions will not be necessary." At Ozland's uncertain look, he added: "Across from the tables, behind the curtain."

He then promptly vanished in a ball of fire (Ozland decided to put off thinking about that one for the moment).

The Divination Professor seemed to pride herself on her oddness, like most of the wizarding world. She had thick glasses that gave her eyes a bulbous look, and cultivated frizzy hair. Moreover, she was sitting in front of fifty cups of tea, all of them in the process of being stirred and refilled by some unseen mechanism. As Ozland sat himself down in front of her desk, he noticed her eyes were flitting from cup to cup, as if checking each one. After some time, she began furiously scribbling down notes on parchment.

"Tasseomancy – tea-reading, of course," Professor Trelawney said, profoundly, "but you already know that. You're wondering what I'm doing with fifty cups of tea, and you're also wondering how they're being stirred."

A long, dramatic pause followed this remark. "The answer to your second question is a combination of the runic transform of the Refilling Charm, which is fueled by Hogwarts' leylines, and a generic motion-effect Charm adapted to stir the tea. Would you like to know the answer to the first question, then?"

He nodded.

The Divination Professor told him to pick up a cup, take it in his left hand, and move it in a circle rapidly three times from left to right.

"Should I drink it now, then?"

"Don't be silly," she said, tapping the rim of the cup with her wand. The liquid immediately disappeared, leaving only light-green water at the bottom along with scattered fragments of tea leaves. "Now," the witch pointed to a series of little black clumps stuck to the side, "what do these look like to you?"

Ozland paused, considering. "A boat . . . and a cloud, oh and that one looks like a fox."

Professor Trelawney stared at him, in an odd, piercing way, as if she had divined some deep and unknowable truth and decided not to say it aloud. "Very good," she said slowly, "now, any of these symbols can represent any number of things. The fox is an opportunity, or a friend who has turned against you, the boat is a journey – physical or metaphorical, and the cloud is changing circumstances . . . usually for the worse. The meaning is amplified by the positional relations between the symbols, you see – impressive, certainly, but not useful or actionable."

"I see," Ozland said, barely keeping up. "But why would clumps . . . no, I have a better question – why would a clump of leaves that looked like a fox have anything to do with opportunity?"

"Why do fairy-tales have evil stepmothers? Why do stories have beginnings, middles, and ends? Why do birds fly in flocks, and why are buildings made of bricks? The fox is a unit, a symbol of the deep subconscious, and it is only through contextualising it, renewing it, as a symbol of opportunity or betrayal that it acquires a meaning, Mr. Dwimmersmith."

"But you could contextualise the fox to mean anything," he argued.

Professor Trelawney smiled for the first time he had seen her. "Precisely. Now, suppose a blacksmith wanted to know where he ought to set up shop in France? Would 'opportunity' and 'betrayal by a friend' suit his purposes?"

"I wouldn't think so." Ozland leaned forward, thinking intensely. "Oh, so you're constructing new interpretive systems. Ones that need more than one cup."

"Precisely. What you see in front of you, Mr. Dwimmersmith, is a General Diviner." The Divination Professor sat back, seeming utterly satisfied, and then suddenly frowned. "Or, at least, the beginnings of one. I suspect a few thousand more cups will be needed. The issue, unfortunately, is any system I design, I'll have to be able to remember in complete detail while I'm stirring the teacups – but a Universal Diviner would require a very large system indeed."

"That's quite the conundrum," Ozland said sympathetically. "Will this set-up be able to tell me about what career I should choose?"

"Career?" Professor Trelawney said, blankly. "Oh, yes." She lazily motioned with her hand, and a sheet of paper flew from the ceiling. "I'll just need to refresh," she murmured, scanning over the paper. "It's the trouble, every meaning-system has to be simultaneous and relational, so you won't ever be able to extract a simple English sentence from a Specific Diviner – all the tea-leaves settle down into clumps at the same time, after all. And each symbol-combination has to relate to the meaning somehow."

"Hmm."

Professor Trelawney put the paper down, closing her eyes and seeming to concentrate. "Twenty-five, up, stir, drain," she commanded. Half of the cups rose into the air and did exactly that. What was left was an enormous marbled pattern that stretched across a table.

The witch peered at the cups, consulted the notes, and looked up once more.

There was a long silence.

"Oh, dear. This has never happened before."

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