This Is a Dark Book

After three on Saturday afternoon, in an alley beside St. Mungo's.

Gavin stood there as a man dressed like a tramp crept up behind him, treading so lightly he might have been a thief.

"You're here?" Gavin said calmly.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come," the man said, sounding displeased. He kept glancing around, tense, as though hiding from someone.

"But you came anyway." Gavin turned to face him.

Mundungus Fletcher. The notorious thief.

"I don't usually come to hospitals," he said, his voice wary despite his strained attempt to sound casual. "Especially not to do business around one."

"That's why I told you to meet me in the alley," Gavin said.

"This alley isn't much safer than the hospital," Mundungus muttered. "I saw two people in uniforms on my way here. Who knows if they're from the Ministry of Magic?"

"They're St. Mungo's security guards."

"...Oh." Mundungus paused, then added quite naturally, "Still dangerous."

Mundungus looked both ways, then reluctantly pulled a book from his filthy old robes. It had a dark black leather cover, badly aged and worn at the corners. There were even marks on its surface that looked as though it had been scorched.

It hardly looked like something that would appear on the Hogwarts Library's official lending list.

Gavin took it and flipped through a couple of pages, his expression unchanged.

"Where did it come from?"

Mundungus immediately gave him a look that said asking too many questions was rude.

"A cousin of a friend of a friend cleared it out of an old house's cellar," he said mysteriously. "The original owner's been dead for years. Nobody's claiming it now. Don't worry, it's completely clean."

"You'd be more convincing if you didn't blink when you said that," Gavin said, unconvinced.

"I have a reputation to uphold."

"For charging a lot."

"That's still a reputation."

Mundungus puffed out his chest with pride.

Gavin couldn't be bothered to argue. "How much?"

Mundungus held up two fingers.

"Two Galleons."

"You sold me that alchemy notebook for one Galleon last time."

"That was because only half of it was legible," Mundungus said, sounding aggrieved. "This one's different. This one's complete."

Gavin put the book in his Dragon Hide Bag.

"Anything else?"

"No," Mundungus said. "Not for a while, at least. This sort of thing is rare to begin with, and what you want is especially obscure. Who in their right mind collects such ill-omened stuff?"

"You do."

"That's professional instinct," Mundungus protested at once. "Besides, obscure things are worth money."

He scanned their surroundings again. As if he had suddenly remembered he was still near a hospital, the wariness returned to his face.

"Right, I've delivered the book and got my money," he said. "If there's nothing else, I'm off. Around St. Mungo's, even the air smells like I could be dragged inside and made to register at any moment."

"You're not imagining it," Gavin said.

Mundungus's face changed.

"Are you serious?"

"No," Gavin said. "I just think leaving a little faster would be more in character for you."

Mundungus opened his mouth, then decided not to argue about it with a kid.

"Don't make me come near the hospital next time," he said. "There's something wrong with this place."

"We'll see."

"Whenever you say that, I get the feeling things will go badly."

With that, Mundungus wrapped his ragged robes around himself and slipped away like a fish that knew how to find every gap. In the blink of an eye, he had vanished beyond the mouth of the alley.

Inside St. Mungo's, on the Fifth Floor corridor of the Spell Damage Department.

Cordelia was reading in the corridor.

Cordelia's room was on this floor because no one could quite decide which department she belonged in.

The Artifact Accidents Department, Creature-Induced Injuries Department, Infection by Strange Microbes Department, Potions and Plant Poisoning Department, and Spell Damage Department all seemed unsuitable.

Yet she needed to stay long-term, so they had placed her in a quiet room near the corner of this floor. Gavin had only ended up next door because the hospital had been full at the time, with just one bed left here. Otherwise, the room beside Cordelia's was usually empty.

It had all been a coincidence.

Without looking up from her book, Cordelia said to Gavin as he approached, "You're a little late today."

Gavin nodded. "Yeah. I went to buy something."

"What was it?"

"A book."

Gavin didn't want to hide it from Cordelia, so he gave her a brief account of his deal with Mundungus in the alley. It made his reason for being late more convincing and, he hoped, would put her at ease.

"So what kind of book is it?" Cordelia asked curiously. "Another Muggle book?"

"A dark book." As if to lend his words credibility, Gavin pulled it out, waved it briefly, then put it back in his bag.

"I can see that."

"Then the cover design did its job."

Cordelia looked up at him, a faint trace of exasperation finally showing on her face.

"You know that's not what I meant."

Gavin sat down beside her. After a moment's thought, he decided not to hide it.

"It's about abnormal Dark Magic," he said. "I want to see if anyone in the past seriously documented anything similar."

"So you really are studying the Obscurus?"

"Of course. I always take my research seriously."

"Why? Are you really that interested?"

"I want to solve it." Gavin's expression turned serious, as though he were declaring a decision.

Cordelia lowered her gaze to the cover of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. After a while, she said:

"Everyone says there's no way."

"People usually speak only about what they know," Gavin said. "That doesn't mean there is no way."

"You always say that."

"Because in my experience, it's usually true."

"But you're not a Healer."

"They haven't cured you either."

The corridor fell quiet again.

Dibby happened to return from the other end carrying hot milk. Spotting Gavin from afar, Dibby's steps grew much livelier. But on drawing closer, Dibby sensed something delicate in the air and, with admirable professionalism, slowed down, pretending to be a piece of background furniture that had no business interrupting a serious conversation.

Cordelia wasn't angry.

She only blinked, very slowly.

"That was hurtful."

"But it's true," Gavin said.

"And you can do better than them?"

"Not yet."

"Then how can you say that?"

"They say there's no way because they can't do it," Gavin said. "I'm saying I haven't done it yet. That doesn't mean I never will."

That was what Cordelia found strangest about Gavin. He was always so resolute, so utterly confident in himself. He never seemed lost, doubtful, or inclined to retreat, as though no difficulty could remain unsolved.

"What if you fail?"

"I don't fail. I either learn something or gain something."

Cordelia turned her face aside a little, hiding the tiny change in her expression.

Dibby finally handed her the hot milk and said softly, "Miss, your milk."

"Thank you."

Cordelia took the cup, her fingertips resting for a moment against its warm surface.

Gavin drew the Dragon Hide Bag closer. As if he had just remembered something, he took out a stack of papers tied with string.

"What's that?" Cordelia asked.

"Letters and papers."

"Papers?"

"They're for Professor Roscoe. I'm wondering if mailing them from here would be faster."

"Who's that? Is he someone like Grandpa Dumbledore?"

"You could think of him that way." Gavin nodded. "I'm asking him to get me some books on Muggle psychology and hypnosis."

Cordelia finally looked up.

"You're even asking a Muggle professor for help?"

"Why not?" Gavin said. "The Obscurus may be a problem in the Wizarding World, but repression, self-loathing, self-denial, and psychological suggestion aren't unique to it. Muggles know a fair bit about how people drive themselves mad."

Standing nearby, Dibby's ears twitched.

"How do you know so much about Muggles? You gave me a Muggle book before, too."

"Of course. I spent my first ten years as a Muggle." Counting my previous life, I'm practically an old Muggle pushing thirty, Gavin thought.

"No wonder."

"What?"

"You speak differently from other wizards."

"In an interesting way, right?"

"In an infuriating way."

"..."

Gavin had the distinct feeling Cordelia had grown much livelier than before.

"Then you should be careful," Cordelia said suddenly.

"About what?"

The abrupt change of subject caught Gavin off guard.

"That book."

Gavin took out the dark book, puzzled. "You mean this?"

"Yes. Books in the Wizarding World aren't as safe as Muggle books, especially books on Dark Magic. They often carry curses, hexes, or some other kind of Dark Magic." Cordelia tried to make it sound less like concern for Gavin's safety and more like a lesson for an innocent little Muggle new to the Wizarding World.

Gavin nodded. He genuinely hadn't considered that. He had encountered very few truly forbidden books so far; the earlier ones had only been "gray-area" books. Their danger usually lay in what they contained, not in the books themselves.

Holding her hot milk, Cordelia watched him quietly for a while. Then she asked, as if in passing, "So you came all the way from Hogwarts today just to buy that book?"

"No," Gavin said.

"What else, then?"

"To see you," he said. "And pick up the book while I was here."

Cordelia lowered her eyes. Steam rose slowly from her cup, while the tips of her ears betrayed a faint blush.

"Don't meet with someone like that again."

Cordelia suddenly felt obliged to remind this "Muggle" about safety in the Wizarding World.

"Why?"

"He sounds dangerous. From what you said, it feels like he might trick Dibby into going with him and sell Dibby off at any moment."

Dibby's ears shot upright in fright.

"Dibby won't be sold!"

"I know," Cordelia said. "But a notorious thief could do anything."

Gavin nodded.

"Fair point."

"And," Cordelia paused, then added with feigned casualness, "you can just come straight here next time."

She began concentrating on her milk as though something inside the cup demanded her full attention.

Gavin smiled. He didn't tease Cordelia again, only nodded.

"All right. I promise."