"Summer vacation has begun. You can rest for a while and enjoy yourselves."
That was what Mr. Rowle said.
But Gavin soon discovered that Mr. Rowle's idea of "rest" came with a detailed set of conditions.
The library door had to stay open.
Dibby brought Cordelia tea every fifteen minutes.
Cordelia had to return to her room before ten.
Gavin had been assigned a room on a different floor, supposedly because it was larger and got better light.
Even the chairs in the garden had been replaced. The new ones were all visible from the window of Alaric's study.
And the old benches had been replaced with pairs of separate chairs—
With a large flowerpot between each pair.
Gavin also noticed that Mr. Rowle kept appearing nearby to watch them in secret.
Whenever they spotted him, he pretended he was passing by, then came back a few minutes later.
Gavin felt that Rowle Manor was turning into a Rule Horror story.
That morning, two owls arrived one after the other and dropped two report cards into the same oversized jar of jam.
One letter landed sideways across the rim. The other plunged straight into the strawberry jam and slowly began to sink.
Cordelia rescued it before the jam could silence it for good.
"Yours."
Gavin took the letter stained with red jam.
Just like that, it seemed, their school year had ended without either of them there.
Professor McGonagall had written earlier that, given Gavin's recent release from emergency detention and Cordelia's need for prolonged rest, neither of them had to return to school for the last few days.
The final exams they had missed would be marked as absences for now. That would not affect their promotion to third year, and the dates for their resit exams would