#sadishappiness

McGONAGALL may be going on triple digits in age, but she hasn’t missed a step, her wand is out in an instant.

McGONAGALL: HOMINEM REVELI--

MYSTERIOUS VOICE (from off): No, no, it’s all right, I’ll do it.

And then, rippling into visibility-- comes SALLY SPARROW. She looks very tired, and she looks like she’s been crying.

McGONAGALL: Salamandra? It’s been decades! My centaur friend always speaks highly of you but I never thought I’d see you again with my own eyes!

SALLY (sniffling): And I-- never thought I’d have to see this room again. Yeah, Ivan, I remember that night, too. I remember everyone we’ve lost.

IVAN produces a handkerchief from the pocket of his robes and puffs it over to SALLY with a waft of Aeromancy.

IVAN: I’m so sorry, Sally. But what’s happened? What’s brought you out of hiding?

SALLY gratefully catches the hanky and dabs at her eyes, but her expression is no less shattered.

SALLY: All these years I’ve been seeing them off from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters in September, and off again from Hogsmeade in June, making sure they got here safely, and back again. It was my solemn duty. My sole reason for leaving my woodland sanctuary, the only human permitted in The Forest. And I-- I never thought to take the train. I never thought to guard them on the train!

IVAN and McGONAGALL share a stunned, horrified look.

Its fingers resting in the water, the pool ripples to show scrying images of events elsewhere. Specifically, the great and winding labyrinth that guards the front door of ISLINGTON’s undercity citadel.

The maze is chaotic, winding jaggedly through time as well as space, composed of bits and pieces of London’s streets and roads and alleyways seemingly ripped from various eras-- here a Roman road, here a Norman battlement, here Victorian cobblestones, here 1950s pavement-- and crammed together in a madman’s mosaic.

And through the maze struggle four figures with upheld wands lit by Lumos.

CLAUDE RAINS. And with him, three Tears of The Phoenix, of whom ROMANA would be the fourth, the secret order hidden within The Order of The Phoenix:

RUPERT “RIPPER” GILES.

EVELYN ALVAR.

And SVLAD CJELLI, not yet named DIRK GENTLY, who appears to be leading the way through the twists and turns.

RIPPER: You know what I think?

EVELYN: Lay off of him, Ripper.

RIPPER: No, listen. (he takes a drag on a cigarette, flicks it off into the darkness) I think-- I think you’re not completely harmless. Just mostly harmless.

SVLAD appears to ignore him, but the struggle on his face and in his eyes is evident.

RIPPER: I think you’re not completely powerless. But you’ve been telling everyone-- Dumbledore included-- how good you are-- how unjust it was that you got accused of cheating in school-- how finely honed your bluddy smeggin’ holistic awareness is-- that now you’re finding yourself having to live up to your own press, to show everyone you’re as good as you said you were-- even though you’re not that good. You have to live up to your billing as Dumbledore’s secret weapon. And I think that panics the bleeding fuck out of you, dunnit?

EVELYN: He got through the ordeal at Blackfriars. That should count for something. That should count for everything.

RIPPER: He only got the chance because I fought the monk with the big stick and you guessed the riddle. And why are we jumping through all these hoops again? Serpentine said we could get there through The Angelus.

SVLAD (mumbles): Too dangerous.

RIPPER: Pffff. Too dangerous. Dangerous compared to this? Compared to that so-called bloody ordeal, with the nice cup of tea and the wall of shame? How dangerous could something be called “Angelus?”

SVLAD: Part of an eclectic, tasteless collection of angelic-themed artifacts. Any one of them could have been enchanted against us. Golems hidden among them. Too dangerous. (Don’t know why angel statues seem dangerous; enemies forgotten from Antiquity, or deja vu for something that hasn’t happened yet. But dangerous.) Much better to use my extensive knowledge of The London Underground to our advantage and approach by an unanticipated vector.

RIPPER (snorts): “Extensive knowledge.” You stared awkwardly at Dumbledore’s scar for five minutes.

SVLAD: It’s quite a handy scar.

Fumbling in his pocket for a moment, SVLAD then holds up an ornate key.

SVLAD: Besides. This way we have leverage.

CLAUDE: Do you lot always grizzle this much?

RIPPER: Piss off, Rains. You’re only here because you can halfway handle yourself in a fight and we’re a woman down. Not for your opinions.

CLAUDE: Fantastic. No wonder I prefer working with No-Majs these days.

ISLINGTON shifts his fingers in the water, and the image shifts.

MR. CROUP and MR. VANDEMAR stand just outside the oaken front doors of ISLINGTON’s citadel, between the labyrinth and the compound. ISLINGTON gazes out at them through a mirror set into one of those doors.

CROUP: Good evening, sir. Or is it good morning at this point?

VANDEMAR: Mourning. I do like it when they mourn.

ISLINGTON: They’ve entered the labyrinth. Engage and destroy them. Extricate the key the “detective” is carrying and bring it to me.

CROUP experiences a micro-moment of hesitation at the idea of entering that labyrinth, but just as swiftly dismisses it.

CROUP (grinning): Oh my dear sir, we shall do so with alacrity, efficiency, and utmost enthusiasm. One could even colloquially qualify it with all due accuracy as religious zeal.

VANDEMAR: Thou shalt kill.

ISLINGTON: Charming. Just see that it is done.

Another flourish of fingertips in the pool, and the scene changes again.

Once more we see The Tears of The Phoenix (featuring Claude Rains) skulking through the maze-- this particular section looks not unlike Whitechapel, circa 1888.

EVELYN: --besides, even if he is the charlatan you claim he is, Rupert, he’s still... he’s still doing good. He’s doing good things. It’s not like he’s leaving Romana in that creature’s clutches.

RIPPER: Of course! He doesn’t get bragging rights if he doesn’t help. And bragging rights bring in the paying customers. All... two of them?

SVLAD stops walking sharply.

SVLAD: All of you. Quiet for a moment. I-- I think we’re being hunted.

RIPPER snorts.

CLAUDE: It’s not that fucking Beast, is it? I thought you had a talisman against that.

SVLAD: No, no. There’s human intelligence involved. Or should I say, inhuman.

And then CROUP and VANDEMAR are behind them on that Victorian street, just suddenly just there, CROUP rubbing his hands and VANDEMAR cracking knuckles adorned with rings made from bird skulls.

CROUP: How astonishingly astute for a man so imminently immanently deceased. “Inhuman” indeed.

VANDEMAR explodes from his position with superhuman speed, driving with hands like claws for RIPPER’s throat--

RIPPER doesn’t flinch, with reptilian speed of his own he draws a baseball bat out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket and with a flourish, ignites it with flame, swinging it hard for Vandemar’s head, swinging for the bleachers.

VANDEMAR stops to catch it with one hand. He grunts, perhaps surprised at the impact, perhaps intrigued by the smell of his own flesh sizzling, but he does not feel pain. Then he backhands RIPPER five yards down the street.

CLAUDE snarls and flashes out his wand, firing a hail of arrows that thud audibly into VANDEMAR’s side and stick there, quivering. VANDEMAR turns to glare at him.

VANDEMAR: Only got the one suit.

CLAUDE: Bring it here, I’ll stitch it up.

VANDEMAR flips the burning baseball bat in his grip so that he’s holding the handle, and then hurls it flipping end over end at CLAUDE--

--CLAUDE dives aside, hitting the ground with a roll and a grunt, and then turns Invisible.

VANDEMAR grunts, cocks his head as though listening, wolflike, and inhales sharply through his nose.

In one horrifyingly fast, fluid movement, he snaps a knife out into his hand and whips it--

--it sticks in mid-air and CLAUDE roars in pain and surprise and fury, CLAUDE is seen to flicker there around the knife but fades again--

VANDEMAR licks his lips but then RIPPER hits him with a

RIPPER: BOMBARDA!

from behind and blows VANDEMAR through the side of one of the Victorian buildings.

RIPPER: RAINS! Go for back-up! Get back to the lift, get help!

CLAUDE (from off): What? You got him, he’s down!

Grrrrrrowling, VANDEMAR emerges from the hole in the building, dusting himself off, gritting twisted, jagged teeth at RIPPER.

CLAUDE (from off): Bloody fucking Hell.

The blood-slicked knife clatters to the cobblestones and there’s the sound of pelting feet.

RIPPER’s wand flicks and the bat jumps to his free hand with a nonverbal Accio. He meets VANDEMAR’s gaze.

RIPPER: Right, then. Consider myself an expert on Dark Creatures. Dunno what species you are so I’m just gonna have to dissect you.

VANDEMAR roars and pounces at him.

Meanwhile, CROUP has closed in on EVELYN and SVLAD. SVLAD has his wand out, but EVELYN stands between CROUP and SVLAD with her wand poised, defensive stance-- she’s seen the hunger with which CROUP has regarded SVLAD and she likes it not at all.

CROUP: Come now, Mr. Cjelli, is it not unseemly to take shelter behind a woman? To let her do battle in your stead? Tut, tut, chivalry will never recover from such unconscionable breaches. You have in your possession a key very much desired by my employer. Simply give it, and further bloodshed, histrionics, and ravenings may well be yet avoided.

EVELYN: Chivalry is dead, huh? Well, whoever you are, I don’t much like being treated like I’m beneath your notice.

CROUP: I am an assassin, dear lady, the very finest of murderers, and Svlad Cjelli is the very particular individual upon which my esteemed employer has his most focused designs. Now, you are neither hunter nor warrior, bravo nor bodyguard, what pray tell elevates you to the level of my notice?

EVELYN: Well. You’re right. I’m not his bodyguard.

She whips her wand vertically up in front of her face with the point level with her crown chakra. A wind roars down that Victorian street and all of a sudden, EVELYN is overlaid with the astral image of a woman virtually identical, but with long white hair and eyes the color of amethyst.

She is manifesting her past life, the powerhouse SIOBHAN GALATEA.

EVELYN & SIOBHAN (simultaneously, echoing): But I am.

CROUP’s eyes widen in legitimate startlement, a feeling entirely unfamiliar and forgotten to him.

CROUP: I... I know you.

EVELYN & SIOBHAN (simultaneously, echoing): Know me again.

And then EVELYN/SIOBHAN hits him with a blast of coruscating violent violet energy and blows him clean out of this district and into a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon side-street.

EVELYN/SIOBHAN whirls to face VANDEMAR, who now holds RIPPER up by his throat, strangling him one-handed in mid-air and watching for the light to go out of his eyes.

She grimaces, and flashes EVELYN’s wand, and every bone in VANDEMAR’s body shatters and cracks and with a roar of defiance and anger, but surprisingly not pain, VANDEMAR crumples, dropping RIPPER on his ass in the process.

The air twitches and CROUP appears beside VANDEMAR-- for where one is, the other can appear also --rather the worse for wear, struggling to stand.

CROUP: We... we are the finest cutthroats in all of time and space, all of human history, before you were walking upright we were the ones killing you in the dark with blades of obsidian and rock--

RIPPER jumps up to his feet and hits CROUP so hard in the head with the burning baseball bat that it shatters to splinters with the impact.

Already steamrolled by EVELYN/SIOBHAN’s attack, CROUP takes this last hit like a champ, and then drops in a heap beside his structurally-compromised partner.

RIPPER (disdainful, to the unconscious CROUP): You talk too much.

SVLAD: We have to hurry. It’ll know we’ve bested its cronies. Romana’s essence is of the essence.

SVLAD starts hurrying through the maze again, without so much as a thank you to RIPPER or EVELYN/SIOBHAN for saving his arse.

EVELYN/SIOBHAN does not seem to require a thank you, and follows with grim power and grace.

RIPPER (squints): Nonsensical ponce. “Essence is of the essence.” Bluddy Svladspeak.

And then he, too, follows.

ISLINGTON draws its fingers out of the water, and shakes droplets off of its hand.

ISLINGTON: Most displeasing. And supposedly unprecedented.

It turns to regard ROMANA.

ISLINGTON: My dear. We shall have to dispense with pleasantries, I’m afraid.

ROMANA (grim, growling): You should be. Afraid. As soon as I get my breath back.

ISLINGTON: Ah, yes. The fearsome wrath of the Aeromancer. But I have known power over wind and wave sufficient to unleash cataclysm and apocalypse. Please forgive me, Madam Dvoratrelundar, if I am not breathlessly cowed.

ROMANA: If it’s to be torture, you will be sorely disappointed. I can handle torture.

ISLINGTON: What? No, messy business. Unsavory, unsanitary, unnecessary. Had I dire, unavoidable need of such things, I would make use of employees such as the ones you have already encountered. No, no, no, Heavens no, I would never. I’m not sure if I could even say the word.

Beat.

ISLINGTON: But it just so happens that I require something, and extracting it from you will be more agony than your exquisite mind can stand.

ROMANA narrows her eyes.

ISLINGTON: Your soul, my dear.

ROMANA: I am to suffer a Dementor’s Kiss, then?

ISLINGTON: Oh, nothing so backwater or underevolved. I’m going to rip it out of you.

It approaches, leisurely and yet swiftly all at once.

ISLINGTON: Long have I been denied my true home, the place I belong. But I will return in glory, and I will take the throne for my own. I am assured of victory, but a little forethought and strategy could not possibly go amiss when I am so direly outnumbered.

It draws close to ROMANA’s left arm. ROMANA glares at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of pulling fruitlessly away from him.

ROMANA: What significance could my soul have in the face of such things?

ISLINGTON: Oh, your soul specifically, next to no significance at all. But each soul individually-- oh, you mortals have no concept of the power contained in each and every soul. I am told the equivalent is a “suitcase nuke?” In any case... I can reach into your flesh and interact with your soul. Forcibly draw that power into myself. And with every soul I become ever so much more assured of my victory.

ISLINGTON reaches up with a single fingertip, a single fingernail, and touches it to the skin of ROMANA’s left arm, bared and unmarred...

...digs that nail into the skin as it traces a shape upon her, first one shape, then another, searing white light sizzling out of her skin instead of blood in the track of its scratch.

Agony wrenches ROMANA’s features, her mouth opens wide for a scream, but the pain is just so much that she cannot draw breath and this tiny agonized sound comes out instead, her eyes bulging in her head.

Even her impregnable reserve shatters in comparison to this pain.

And yet ISLINGTON makes idle chit-chat, conversational, almost cheerful, as it etches agony upon her skin and upon the core of her being.

ISLINGTON: Long centuries have I been imprisoned here, watching over the bowels of this London as penance for my “sins.” I am London’s guardian. But this Voldemort, this “Dark Lord,” he has asked me to look the other way, to stand aside as he carries out his agenda. In return, he provides me with the souls I require as ammunition for my homecoming campaign, it’s very much a win-win. He’s provided me, oh, about one hundred and sixteen so far.

Its hand moves away from ROMANA’s arm.

There, burned, scarred into her flesh, beyond all hope of healing or removal, molecularly embedded into her corporeal form on a spiritual level, are the words “UNIT 117.” He has Marked her, just as another angel once Marked the murderer Cain.

ROMANA slumps, wheezing, the chains clattering, eyes shuddering in incomprehension, so filled with agony even that she cannot cry or cry out.

ISLINGTON moves around in front of her.

ISLINGTON: Oh, now, Romana Dvoratrelundar. Don’t be so disheveled and hopeless. The extraction of your soul goes to serve a far greater purpose. A new order, on Heaven as it is in Earth. Besides. We haven’t started yet.

It plants its palm upon her stomach, and white light like the corona of a sun pours out from her skin where it touches her, where it forces its fingers to merge into her... white white light light light...

...and now, now she screams, the pain before was so much that she could not scream and this is so much more over and above that pain that it comes right around again and now she cannot scream enough.

Elsewhere in ISLINGTON’s keep, the front doors blast off of their hinges. 

ISLINGTON stops. And rolls its pearly grey eyes as it draws its fingers back out of ROMANA as easily as it had taken its fingers out of the pool water moments ago. 

ISLINGTON: How terribly inconvenient. Begging your pardon, my dear. I believe I have some uninvited guests. 

Behind it as it turns away, ROMANA slumps so hard against the chains that hold her up that she very nearly dislocates her shoulders. 

ISLINGTON has time to take one step before one of its oaken front doors streaks into the room and it pauses just long enough to blow it to splinters with the wave of a hand. 

And then RIPPER and SVLAD and EVELYN/SIOBHAN are standing there, having crossed the distance from the doorway at blinding speed that even CROUP and VANDEMAR would perhaps find impressive.

ISLINGTON purses its lips.

ISLINGTON: It is written that the great sin of Sodom was its lack of... hospitality. Though I have known of perfectly hospitable cities that were elsewise worthy of total destruction. In either case, I am afraid that you have me quite at a disadvantage. I have no wine ready from my stores to take more company today. 

RIPPER: That’s all right, mate. I’m more of a firewhisky man, m’self. 

And he lashes out with his wand, unleashing a cannonblast of flame that ISLINGTON simply stops on the palm of an upraised hand. 

RIPPER: Jesus wept.

ISLINGTON (chidingly): Language, my boy. Don’t blaspheme.

Another casual wave of a hand and RIPPER is blown headlong into one of the iron pillars, crying out as his shoulder cracks with the impact.

EVELYN & SIOBHAN (simultaneously, echoing): It is a fine line between vanity and invocation. You may wish to pray now.

EVELYN/SIOBHAN steps forward, and her hair begins to billow with power, and her very aura crackles, and she unleashes from her wand and an outstretched hand a whole storm of lightning where RIPPER had only discharged a single thermal strike...

ISLINGTON holds up both hands, and grits its teeth, and takes half a step forward into the shattering, shuddering display, spilling sparks to either side of itself as it walks forward into the thunderbattle. 

And then it gestures, sharply, and the lightning storm parts like a fabled sea, and then slams back inward into EVELYN/SIOBHAN, and it visibly crackles through all of her chakra...

...she staggers...

...her wand drops from her grip, and the image of SIOBHAN suspended over her dissipates, and she is just EVELYN again.

EVELYN: Oh... ow. How...?

ISLINGTON: Such a fragile thing is human memory. How easily you forget what you were just thinking about, ruin your own concentration. I’m sure it’ll come to you in a moment.

ISLINGTON then turns to arch an eyebrow at SVLAD.

ISLINGTON: Now. Mr. Cjelli. You were saying something about... leverage?

SVLAD: Yes. We have the key, Islington. You have the door, right here with you in this very prison. All you need is a key. And an opener. I can give you the key. And then you’ll be so much closer to your goal. Just let us go, and you can have it.

ISLINGTON: I believe you have gravely miscalculated, Svlad Cjelli. You have the key, but you have no leverage. All I see here are three more souls to empower me on my crusade. And then I can just pluck my key from your cooling body as it stares bereft into oblivion. I drowned fair Atlantis for its ignorance, its arrogance, The Tower of Babel all over again. What makes you think that I will not do the same to you mere handful? Drown you in the energy of your own souls?

SVLAD: Because you’re an angel.

ISLINGTON: I’m afraid you’re assigning me some very provincial concepts of goodness and mercy based on a long-standing misconception or two regarding my celestial species.

SVLAD: Nothing of the kind. You are an angel. So you are old, older than Creation, billions of years old and older by human reckoning. You have seen the superstrings laced between the dimensions, watched as electrons, planets, galaxies were set spinning in their orbits. You know, you must be brilliantly, sublimely aware of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, how all quanta are entangled. You must know how taking one action will lead to one consequence or another. How exquisite that perfection must seem to your incomprehensible senses.

ISLINGTON: No, it’s quite dull and dirty. The colors are all faded and the music is insipid. But I suppose, yes, I perceive causality on a level that would shatter your minds to behold a fraction of it. Your point?

SVLAD: My point is. You know what will happen to you if you hurt me. If you hurt any of us. If you take this key from us by force. You must know, you must have that enlightenment, that vision of Life, The Universe... Everything.

ISLINGTON frowns. 

ISLINGTON: What could you possibly be babbling on about? You’re just stalling.

SVLAD: Almost certainly. I’ve been accused very recently of being a seller of snake oil and an artist of confidence. But then again, there’s the off-chance I know exactly what I’m talking about, and can you take that risk?

ISLINGTON: What know you of risk, you frail little thing-- I don’t even need to kill you, I can just stand here and watch you age to death, that’s how much I risk being around you, that’s how little threat you pose to me.

SVLAD: Oh, yes. You have all the time in the world.

And then. ROMANA gets her breath back.

ROMANA surges to her feet, wraps her hands around the chains and hauls herself up off of the ground in a fierce jump, kicking her feet sharply towards where ISLINGTON is standing-- cutting loose with a gust of hurricane force.

ROMANA: KIAAAI!

It actually staggers ISLINGTON for all of a second, and it whips around, gesturing, blasting ROMANA back so forcefully that her chains shatter and she hurtles into the great black door, slumping to the floor, clinging to consciousness by some miracle.

But she’s distracted it. Between her and SVLAD, they’ve distracted ISLINGTON. Just. Long. Enough.

CLAUDE: Oi! Arsehole! I’d tell you to go to your room, but apparently we’re already here. Not much for furniture.

ISLINGTON whips his head back around to see CLAUDE RAINS standing there, holding his bleeding shoulder but standing still grimly and determinedly, he’s not that easy to kill. 

And CLAUDE is not alone.

CLAUDE: I brought help.

ROMANA stirs feebly, and looks up, and her eyes struggle to focus on the man standing with CLAUDE.

ROMANA (a slow smile through the pain, oooooh, you’re gonna get iiiiiiit): ...Sifu.

Standing with CLAUDE, staff in hand, is a monk bald of head with a chinstrap beard and dressed in ornate orange robes. Upon his golden-pink skin there are winding tattoos of soft sky blue, arrows tracing the meridians of his chi along his arms to his hands, and up his back to his forehead, the arrowhead ending at his crown chakra.

This is Master AANG, of The Eastern Air Temple.

Aeromancer, Pyromancer, Geomancer, and Aquamancer. Wizard of Mass Destruction.

AANG: I was gliding around searching for you guys over the city when I was harassed by a pigeon. Never been harassed by a pigeon before.

CLAUDE: I’m quite good with pigeons. London’s got loads of ‘em.

ISLINGTON: This is all such a waste of time. 

And ISLINGTON unfetters a storm of power that defies comprehension, pours it roaring towards the waiting AANG...

...AANG bends and flows and throws it back in the angel’s face without even batting an eye.

The battle is joined. 

The very foundations of London threaten to shudder and crack.

SVLAD darts to EVELYN’s side, helps her up, his own wand comes up and points at ROMANA.

SVLAD: ALARTE ASCENDARE!

ROMANA is blasted upwards, high towards the ceiling, and with a snarl of effort she gestures Aeromantically, adding the force of a gust of wind to her arc... propelling her through a gap in the tidal-force energies to land beside SVLAD and EVELYN, where she staggers, almost crumples-- stays standing-- impossibly.

RIPPER manages to shove himself to his own feet, the bleeding CLAUDE is there to help him stand, they stagger together under the quaking temblors unleashed by AANG and ISLINGTON.

AANG and ISLINGTON move closer to each other, blinding power pouring at each other, spirit magic bending spacetime and rippling gravity, slowly, slowly, step by step... the power arcing and squalling between them like two auroras colliding in the sky.

AANG: RUN! I CAN HOLD HIM! BUT YOU NEED TO RUN!

ROMANA opens her mouth to roar in protest, but AANG shoots her a look over his shoulder. A silent look. Speaking untold volumes.

Untold lifetimes. 

And he winks at her, and he grins.

Exhausted beyond all reckoning, she manages a tiny, tiny, smile with tears billowing in her eyes, and she turns and she urges her friends with her...

...everyone’s so badly injured but everyone helps each other run.

The doorway seems miles away, but they pour everything they have into this dash and the candles and pillars whip past... 

...in the distance, ISLINGTON roars in triumph...

...they dive out of the doorway just in time for a great explosion to sound in the distant chamber, an explosion big enough to crack a tectonic plate, and the passageway and doorway are filled with rocks and dust and crashing stone.

ROMANA stares, horrified, at the way they’ve just come with no way back.

It’s a loss so great that none of the others can begin to know what to say to her, how to comfort her.

But then she closes her eyes. And breathes. And finds her Steady.

ROMANA: Sic transit gloria mundi.

ROMANA opens her eyes and wipes away one last tear.

ROMANA: He had a wife and young children. I shall have to inform them.

RIPPER (solemnly, for once): Whatever you need, love. We’re here.

EVELYN: First things first.

RIPPER grunts in protest and swears like a stevedore as EVELYN casts a Healing spell that pops his shoulder back into shape, causes his collarbone to knit. She’s an artist, she’s good at anatomy.

EVELYN: Is it over, then? Please God tell me that’s over.

She turns and casts another spell on CLAUDE’s wound, suturing it.

He winces, but nods gratefully.

SVLAD: Well.

They all turn and look at him.

SVLAD: We need to bring the key back to The Black Friars. With any luck, they’ll be just as happy as we are to pretend none of this ever happened.

RIPPER (with a weary groan): Strewth. Got that right.

SVLAD: Additionally, Islington still requires an Opener to operate its door even should it regain the key. And we can work to keep any Openers safe from it. The infant Timothy Hunter is watched over by The Trenchcoat Brigade, that should be sufficient. I must contact Portico’s people, make sure he takes measures to protect his family, perhaps bringing in The Marquis de Carabas. And according to centaur Divination by my compatriot Firenze, still another Opener will be born in the next year or so. We shall have to keep an eye out for them, whoever they are.

CLAUDE: Yeah, good luck with that, you lot. I’ve got to be getting back to The Colonies. I’ve got word that that bloody bogtrotter Samuel Sullivan’s crossed The Pond to do Voldemort’s bidding over there, can’t let him run amuck.

ROMANA: Thank you for your help, Claude, in any case.

CLAUDE salutes her, nods to EVELYN, squints at RIPPER and SVLAD... and turns Invisible. He’s gone.

RIPPER: Fought more than my share of demons. That can’t’ve been a really real bloody angel though, eh? I mean, it can’t’ve been.

SVLAD: I’m quite sure it really was. The Angel Islington was appointed guardian of Atlantis in the time of Antiquity. And when it went mad, it brought about the cataclysm that drowned that mighty, progressive civilization. Sank an island twice the size of Greece.

SVLAD pauses. He’s obviously not in a hurry to deliver more bad news.

SVLAD: And if the stories tell it truly... just as Lucifer rebelled with a third of the angels of Heaven on his side... Islington did not act alone.

Beat.

SVLAD: It had help.

And suddenly the pool ripples, and ISLINGTON takes its fingers out of the water, it’s been watching this conversation. It looks at the water dripping off of its hand, and then it looks up, and it fixes its gaze on us, the audience, glares back at us from beneath its furious eyebrows.

And we can see there in its face, every last jagged broken inch of its madness, and not a single twinge of regret, its fury lain naked before us in just that single look.

And then SALLY SPARROW sits bolt upright in her bed in the dark and screams and tears are running down her cheeks.

********

August 31, 2020. Sally’s Cabin in The Forbidden Forest.

There in the darkness with her as she stifles sobs, claps a hand over her mouth, something moves beside her... and there’s a gleam of a golden eye, and a blue one, side by side...

KURT DARKHOLME swiftly moves to her side, holds her in lithe, strong arms, rocks her gently as she weeps and shakes and finds her own way back to being steady.

SALLY: ...it’s... it’s all right. It’s all right. It’s gone now, I just remember... I just remember these... these grey eyes. Staring into my soul. Into my... core.

KURT draws back from her, searching her face.

KURT: Mein Liebling. For all the tragedy that has befallen your waking life, your dreams should be a refuge, not a source of new terror.

SALLY smiles at him wearily, gratefully, takes his eerie-fingered hand and squeezes it.

SALLY: You really are too good to me, you know. You’ve been so... patient. With everything.

KURT: You have lost many loves. Too many. And in priestly studies we are taught the true value of... waiting. The eternal verities of virtue. I can wait as long as you need. You are worth it.

SALLY laughs a broken laugh, touches her forehead to KURT’s, closing her eyes, a hand on the black shirt he wears over his tattooed chest.

SALLY: And yet. If you wait around me long enough, the same thing’s just going to happen to you. I’ll lose you just like the others. Just wait and see.

KURT: You’re not going to lose me without a fight.

SALLY (patting him on his arm): I imagine that’s so. And it just makes me all the more grateful for you. And all the more sad that I’ll see you go.

KURT realizes he can’t say anything to convince her; they’ve danced in circles around this too many times. All he can do is be there for her and steadfastly prove her wrong.

He kisses her on her forehead, and she blinks back another tear.

SALLY: You should get going. Go help T.J. get ready for tomorrow. I’ll see you at King’s Cross? Got to make sure the kids get on the train safely like I do every year.

KURT grins at her, and eases off of the bed, gives her hand one last squeeze.

KURT: Good night, my dear. Their guardian angel.

And with the BAMF of his own brand of Apparition, he’s gone.

His last word hangs there in the dark with that telltale puff of sulfur, and SALLY hugs a pillow to herself, staring to nowhere for a long long time.

Perhaps she hasn’t forgotten her dream after all.