Draco's boots are sinking into the ground. The moon seems to rise in leaps and bounds as Lavender claws at his shoulder, heaving and groaning as she tries to get her heels unstuck.
"Why don't you just take them off?" Luna asks.
"You'd want me to go barefoot in a moor?" Lavender asks, scandalised. "At night?"
"You could Transfigure them," Rolf Scamander suggests politely as he uses his significant height to help leverage her out.
Luna brought him along on a whim, seemingly, but once Rolf heard what they were doing, he'd leapt at the chance to be involved. Draco is not at the point where he'll turn down a Magizoologist's expertise lightly.
"They'd never be the same," Lavender complains. "You can't honestly expect me to sacrifice a pair of heels like that."
"You must not care about them too much," Parvati says, "seeing as you brought them to a moor."
Lavender goes quiet, gritting her teeth stubbornly and finally digging her way out again.
Draco's not sure he wants to know what history they're steeping in. He'll be surprised if they make it through the night without coming to blows.
It seems that Parvati's perspective on whatever happened is quite different from Lavender's, given that she greeted Lavender with a scowl that marred her pretty face so severely she was nearly unrecognisable.
Lavender's hesitant smile vanished a second after seeing that, and she's been whinging ever since.
"How much longer?" Draco calls ahead.
Scorpius and Teddy look over their shoulders. They've been leading the pack, with the help of Potter.
Potter and Teddy are using their magical eyes to try to find the most concentrated source of Wallygaggler magic. Scorpius is helping them not trip over things they can't see thanks to the magic.
"I think we're close!" Teddy yells back.
Scorpius flashes a thumbs up at Draco before continuing on.
"So, what do the Wallygagglers want with you, anyway?" Parvati asks, adjusting the rucksack on her shoulder for about the hundredth time.
"That's what we're trying to find out."
How many things could it be, really?
Maybe the Wallygagglers wanted world domination. Maybe they just liked seeing wizards suffer. He had no idea. He just knew that he had to see this through to the end. For his patients, and for Scorpius.
That was the crux of the issue. The Wallygagglers had found the very things that mattered most to him in this world, and if Potter's lack of a social life and huge stockpile of portraits are any indication, they've done the same to him.
He doesn't want to be toying about with omniscient beings, not in the slightest.
When they get a few metres from a small body of water that splits the land in half, Luna stops walking.
"It's time you all see the equipment I've brought along, just in case we run into our future selves during the visit." She pulls the chain of a Time-Turner out from the neck of her dress with both thumbs, displaying it to them all with deadly serious warning in her protuberant eyes.
"Where the hell did you get that?" Potter asks. "All the Time-Turners were destroyed, weren't they?"
Luna blinks at him in her mystifying way. "Someone had to make them in the first place, didn't they? What would stop them from making more?"
"Well, I ... I'm sure there's ... something."
She laughs until she's nearly breathless, tucking the Time-Turner back beneath her clothing. "You're always so sure of yourself, with no real reason to be."
"Thanks."
"You're very welcome."
"What do we need a Time-Turner for?" Lavender asks. She's got her arms wrapped around herself like she's worried the Time-Turner might leap out and attack them.
"Wallygagglers tend to interpret the conditions of agreements differently than we wizards do," Luna says. "In most old stories, Time-Turners were used to fix miscommunications."
"Miscommunications like what?" Potter asks.
Draco thinks back to the stories he'd heard as a child. "My elf read me a book, once, where the hero made a deal with a Wallygaggler: 'I'll help you as long as you don't harm me or my sister.' The Wallygaggler agreed, but then his friends roasted the sister alive. He believed that he'd upheld his end of the bargain because he hadn't been the one doing any harm, but, obviously, the hero didn't agree. Unfortunately, Wallygaggler magic is binding, nearly as good as an Unbreakable Vow."
"They'll be trying to trick us."
"No," Luna interrupts, "Wallygagglers aren't malicious by nature. They're just as variable as humans. The one in Draco's story was a villain, but they aren't all like that." She looks at them each in turn, until she's sure they've understood her message. "You just have to state everything explicitly, with no ambiguity, because they assume anything you leave out or misword is intentional, not because they want to pull one over on you."
"So, the Time-Turners?" Rolf asks.
"If any of us makes a mistake in our wording, and the Wallygagglers take advantage of that, we have to be ready to go back and fix it. We might also be interrupted at some point during this evening by our future selves, which is why it's important I tell you now."
Teddy says, "If we make changes in the future, we'll run into ourselves in the present, and our future selves would have also run into their future selves, which is how they'd know to come back for us. So how is making a mistake even possible?"
Draco thinks it's a rather good point, but Luna shrugs cheerfully and says, "Let's find out."
Then she spins towards the water and approaches it, stopping in the grass just moments before her boots get wet. She reaches her toe out and taps lightly, creating ripples in the still, glassy surface of the water. He watches the stars reflected from the sky dance in the aftershocks for a moment before a huge bolt of coppery light shoots up, wrapping around the opposing side of the moor like a thin, transparent barricade.
They wait.
From the darkness comes the rustle of dead foliage and a deep, rumbling series of chirps.
Rolf steps forward, chirping back.
On the other side of the water, so low to the ground that he doesn't notice it at first, a shape begins to take form.
It's as inconsequential as water vapour, barely distorting the air, but it rapidly becomes something short and squat, vaguely resembling a toad about the size of a cauldron.
It's tinted blue from head to foot, shiny eyes resting on stalks sprouting out of his head, with two huge tusks extending from each cheek.
Its eyes drag over the eight of them, first Scorpius and Teddy, then Lavender, Parvati, and Potter, then Luna and Draco. To Rolf, it gives something resembling a nod.
"You are the humans who received our messages?" Its voice is thin and rasping, and its mouth barely opens as it speaks.
"Yes," Luna says. "If I have your word you won't harm us, I'll break the wards keeping us in place, and we'll cross over to speak with you."
All at once, Draco realises that he cannot pry his feet from the ground. Scorpius is squirming anxiously, wriggling his hips as though he'll be able to work free, but the rest of them don't seem to notice or care.
The Wallygaggler's stout face pulls into a grimace, but it says, "I will not harm you wizards."
Luna eyes him with surprising shrewdness. "Nor us witches."
The Wallygaggler sighs. "Nor you witches."
"No one will harm us, not just you."
The Wallygaggler heaves an even greater sigh. "My species and I — as well as any allies — will not passively allow, nor be the cause of, harm to any of you wizen, on this night and any night henceforth."
"And any day," Luna says with rather too much enthusiasm, given that the Wallygaggler looks sorely tempted to break its oath already.
"And any day," it repeats dourly.
"So mote it be."
The spell on them releases, and Scorpius sighs in relief.
The water begins to glow a dull cerulean blue, and six golden-yellow stones surface, creating a pathway across.
Draco follows after Luna, the others behind him, Rolf taking up the tail.
"Why did it look so upset with all the clarification if it isn't going to try to hurt us?" Potter hisses lowly, just loud enough for him to hear.
"Wouldn't you be insulted if people always thought you'd weasel around your words to hurt them?"
Potter is silent the rest of the way as the Wallygaggler trundles ahead, leading them deeper into the knotted grasses of the moor.
They stop short behind a stack of round rocks that towers over the clearing.
It must be at least three metres tall. It reminds him of those pyramidal stacks of cannonballs at Chudley Cannons matches.
The ground begins to rumble, and Draco reaches back unthinkingly, grabbing onto Potter's arm as if the earth will swallow them up. He braces his legs for support, but his attention is focused on the stones, now shaking with vigour, dropping off of the stack and rolling onto the earth one by one.
They shake, and shudder, and begin to split down the centres, wisps of colourful light shooting up from the glittering insides.
Thundereggs. And from the look of it, the legends were right, and this is indeed where Wallygagglers form.
Pellucid figures rise over the openings of the rocks, varying in colour and size but all clearly the same species.
The light streaming from the rocks, now cracked open like geodes, coalesces into one band of energy, illuminating the sky like the aurora borealis.
He looks over at Potter, taking in the same awestruck expression on his face he knows he must be wearing. Potter's mouth is dropped open, his magical eye whirring around in a circle to get every detail, the other eye trained on the lead Wallygaggler. Potter looks startlingly beautiful at that moment, black curls glowing as blue as shards of lapis.
The light fades, and Draco looks away, facing the darkening clearing, watching as the Wallygagglers hop from the space above their stones to the ground. They land on their haunches and form a circle around a large basin in the grass, a cradle for a bed of water that reflects the half-moon in perfect clarity.
There is another pile of stones nearby that has gone undisturbed. They are as large and flawlessly round as the first ones were, but there's something off about them. They seem ... duller, somehow. The bottom ones, at least, have been lying there long enough for moss to grow on their sides.
"We are honoured by your presences," Scorpius whispers. Then, he seems to recover himself enough to think clearly. "What should we call you?"
The lead Wallygaggler's eyestalks swivel towards him, large and stolid. It opens its mouth and lets out a sound like a hollow click.
Scorpius echoes it, and the creature nods in acknowledgement.
"We have waited a long time to make successful contact with wizen," it says. "Come, sit with us."
Haltingly, they all move to fill in the gap in the circle the Wallygagglers left, sitting on the dewy grass with their legs crossed beneath them like schoolchildren.
Harry is on his right side, Parvati on his left.
Draco moves to spell the back of his trousers dry, but the lead Wallygaggler — Click — lets out a pained bawl.
"None of your magic here."
"No magic?" he asks. He doesn't tuck his wand away, not yet, and the Wallygaggler watches it like a loaded gun.
"The magic those wands produce is dangerous."
"I wouldn't hurt you," he promises.
"You wouldn't try to."
Click nods to Scorpius, jerking his head at the water in the centre of them.
"Tell me what you see, wizardling."
Scorpius scoots closer, peering into the milky black waters.
"Can I touch it?"
"Yes, but do not drink."
After a moment's hesitation, Scorpius dips his hand in and swishes it around.
The water lights up yellow around his skin, glowing and sparkling, utterly terrifying.
"Whoa," Scorpius breathes. He leans back. "I've never felt this much magic outside of an Enchanted object before."
Then he splashes a bit of water onto the grass. His brows draw to a furrow as it refuses to seep into the dirt, glowing without apology above the surface. "But I don't understand. Don't any nymphs live here? Or any other magical species at all? It feels sort of ... empty."
"There aren't any magical aquatic species left on the moor, child. Nothing with more sentience than algae. What you felt is magical castoff. Wizen have been funnelling the after-effects of their spells into a nearby stream for the better part of a decade, and every time it rains, the land fills with water, and the stream infects our pond."
"Nymphs can't be around our magic?"
Click considers him. He makes a low, popping sound, and one of the other Wallygagglers steps forward, a pink one. It shakes its head in protest.
Click makes a series of noises ranging from a low, dull hiss to a sharp clang, and the other Wallygaggler responds in kind.
Potter's making a face at them as if he can understand some of what they're saying and is trying to catch the rest.
When the Wallygagglers quiet, Potter hisses, heavy and abrupt. Everyone looks at him.
Draco's taken back to a memory of second year, hearing that same sound out of Potter's mouth. Now it's stilted instead of holding the hypnotic, melodious quality it had before, but the Wallygagglers seem to understand him well enough, eyestalks poised on his face.
Click hisses back.
"You speak Parseltongue," Potter says in awe.
"Wallygagglers are natural polyglots. We pick languages up with ease. It's been a long time since we've had cause to use Gobbledegook, Mermish, or Troll — let alone any human languages — but we converse with serpents from the earth land regularly."
"But you weren't talking in full Parseltongue just now, were you?"
"No. The language we speak is called—" He lets out a sharp, strangled choke. "You wizen call it Wallygaglen. It evolved from the same root as Parseltongue."
"You were saying you wanted to show us ... down?"
Click nods and turns to his companion. "Now that you know they can understand us regardless, might we speak openly?"
The other Wallygaggler's tusks quiver as it considers this. Finally, it says, "Yes."
Click pops his tongue — "is reluctant to let you in. He has never taken kindly to strangers."
Draco realises the popping sound is the second Wallygaggler's name.
"We don't want to intrude," Luna says. "But we'd love to see whatever" — she clicks — "wants to show us."
Pop makes a low sound deep in his throat, and the assembled Wallygagglers respond in kind. This seems to go on for quite a while until, finally, Pop nods.
The humans follow the Wallygagglers through the grass and beyond the wall of rocks. They tuck and roll into a hole in the ground, no more than a metre wide.
When Draco lands at the bottom, his feet hit the dirt softly, ankles supporting his weight without issue. Any fall this deep should hurt, but it doesn't.
The space is dark as pitch, so he grabs hold of whoever's hand is in front of him and whoever's is behind, letting himself pull and be pulled on a walk he cannot determine the length of. Time feels oddly flexible, minutes slipping and stretching, bending sideways when he isn't looking. Hours are seconds just as surely as they are centuries.
He walks for a thousand years, but when light breaks at the end of the pathway, his legs have only just begun to hurt.
Slowly, the faces around him come into focus.
He's holding onto Teddy's arm at his back, Luna's at his front. Scorpius is leading the pack, with Potter, Lavender, Parvati, and Rolf in order behind him. They step out into a cavern so quickly it feels as if he missed a step. He looks back over his shoulder, sure that the passageway will have disappeared, but it is still resting there, waiting for them to return.
The sides of the hollow are packed dirt, a huge cavity in the earth carved out to make a home. At the centre of it all is an overhang of soil and branches, compressed into a mass resembling a wasp's nest. From within it, yellow light peaks out like a lantern.
There's a loud, whooshing sound in his ears. It's what he heard that day looking at Potter's portraits with his Reveliospecs, the same feeling of being deep underwater, only now, when people speak, it's as though they're there with him.
The cave branches off into several other pathways, and he makes a careful, subtle mark on the ground pointing to the entrance of the one they came through.
"Welcome to Lightninglen," Click says.
"Lightning?" Rolf asks.
"From which thunder is born, from which we arise."
Draco spins in a slow circle, trying to take it all in: the towering ceilings, the drip of water from the mass at the centre of the room.
Click notices him looking. "This," he says, shuffling closer and pressing a webbed, knobby hand to it, "is what I wanted to show you."
"Is it the basin?" Lavender asks. "The one we saw above."
"It is, indeed."
"Wow," Scorpius breathes. "You can see the magic."
"Not just any magic, wizardling. The magic pulled from your kind."
"Unnatural," Pop adds. "Reckless and dangerous." His words are even clearer than Click's. Pop seems to have forgotten nothing of English, despite pretending otherwise. His voice also lacks the distinct croakiness of Click's, making him sound entirely human.
"I don't understand," Parvati says. "What's so bad about the way we do magic?"
Click is still looking at the bottom of the basin as if he's lost in thought, but it's he who speaks. "Many species have found ways to tap into magic. But wizen have taken advantage of it unlike any others, creating conduits through which to channel the energy."
"You mean our wands?" Teddy asks.
"Mostly. Once you've got them, your wands, you cast spells that rip magic from the Earth's core too soon. All that buildup means that, when the spell hits its target, the magic stays in the victim's system for years. If you're unlucky enough to run into the waterfall at the goblin bank, that washes it away, and it ends up here."
"The Thief's Downfall?" Potter asks. "The enchantment at Gringotts?"
Draco has gone underneath that a few times when he's retrieved something from the Malfoy vaults. He's never thought much of it. Obviously, the goblins would want to wash away enchantments on visitors, especially when the Imperius Curse and Polyjuice Potion exist.
"Yes. You wizen are responsible for the laws that dictate that the excess water must be delivered to our moor once it's been used. Charms, jinxes, hexes, and curses — anything at all — they end up here." He pats the side of the basin.
Draco thinks again of the untouched pile of rocks, and he can understand now the exquisite care with which they were arranged.
"How many of you have been lost?" he asks quietly.
Click looks at him for the first time with soft eyes, something Draco hadn't even noticed was missing.
"One hundred and thirty. And we were not a large pod to start with. A local werewolf pack caused trouble as well. Once they drank from the streams, they couldn't contain all the magical energy. We are not natural prey, but now they attack every full moon."
Draco's breath catches in his throat. One hundred and thirty. He feels sick, physically ill at the thought.
Beside Scorpius, Teddy's eyes are fixed on the ground, his shoulders tense.
"You wizen have not responded to our distress calls until now," Pop says. "We could not go any longer without forcing contact, so we used whatever methods we had to."
Everyone is still, basking in the quiet horror of the moment. They were never trying to punish him, or Potter, or Scorpius. They were just trying to reach out to the only humans who might care.
"Why haven't you ever left?" Rolf asks. "Gone to get fresh water, or tried to contact us in person?"
"We cannot leave the moor," says Click. "This is where generations of us have made our homes. Not only that, we cannot travel more than one hundred metres from our shells. We are sorry for the distress we've caused, but we could not get your attention in any other way. And we wanted to connect with the next wizen representative." He looks at Scorpius. "Will that be you?"
"Maybe," he replies, voice hesitant. "But I don't know if I'll win. Your efforts to get in contact with us ... they kind of complicated things."
Click considers him impassively. Pop's face scrunches in distaste.
"What would you even want him to do?" Lavender asks. "Even as liaison, I doubt he'll be able to convince Gringotts to get rid of their protections. We can't just funnel it to some other sorry sops, either."
"We do not know the workings of your kind, your government. It has been many years since we've come into contact with wizen. I am one of the few among us who can still speak the tongue. But I come to you humbly to ask for help because this is a problem I cannot solve."
Draco feels himself losing touch with the moment. He and the other humans can't solve the problem either. This is beyond their reach.
But he hears Scorpius agreeing.
"We'll help."
He starts to protest the choice of words, but Luna beats him to it.
"We will try to help. We'll endeavour to get an audience with the Ministry of Magic. That is all we promise."
Click's neck expands like a bubble, growing so large it looks as if it will pop, and then he lets out a low, bellowing sound that echoes through the whole cavern.
The rest of the Wallygagglers chirp excitedly, their throats filling and throwing cries magnified a thousand times into the air.
Scorpius presses his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound, but none of the rest of them bother.
It's over soon enough. Click thanks them heartily.
"We should take a sample," Teddy says. "Of the water. We need to know what spells are inside it, or at least get a good idea."
The Wallygaggler nods. "That's agreeable."
They're dismissed in short order. On the way out, Draco scuffs away the mark he'd drawn in the ground, glad they hadn't needed it after all.
The trip back through the tunnel feels quicker and slower all at once. They make the climb up through the hole with relative ease, but clumps of dirt break off beneath Draco's fingers, and a furious beetle twitches its antennae at him after it struggles to stay standing on the edge.
Finally, Harry and Rolf help haul him up, and then they turn to help Teddy after him.
They walk in silence back towards where the basin sits above ground.
On the horizon, the foreboding edge of a forest shifts in the wind, large black smudges of a giant's thumbprint against the sky.
Teddy looks at the rest of them helplessly. "I, er, does anyone have a bottle I could put it in? Usually, I'd conjure something, but I'm too worried that would contaminate the sample with other magic."
Parvati digs around in her rucksack for a moment and straightens up, tossing him a small jar.
"What was in this?"
"Just some lip stuff. Will it do?"
He shrugs. "Guess we'll find out."
Carefully, Teddy unscrews the lid and sinks the jar beneath the water. A large glug of air rises to the surface, and he pulls it out again, capping it and stuffing it in his pocket. "I'll start testing it as soon as I get to my lab tomorrow."
The wind rises, nipping at Draco's ears. The boughs of the trees seem to shiver, a few whispering leaves fluttering loosely to the ground.
They exit the moor in silence.
As if a spell is broken once they cross the water, everyone begins speaking at once.
"Werewolves," Teddy says numbly. "We can't possibly get the pack to leave an area they've claimed; it'll never happen. And they'll keep attacking until there are no Wallygagglers left if all that excess magic stays in their systems."
"One hundred of them dead," Rolf murmurs. He shakes his head.
"If someone could just find a way to treat the Wallygagglers after the curses are active, a way to neutralise the energy once it's in their bodies, we could avoid this whole mess with the Ministry and the goblins, couldn't we?" Parvati asks beseechingly.
Lavender frowns. "What's the likelihood of that?"
"Slim to none," Parvati says. "If I could invent something that neutralises all the spells in someone's body, I'd be a legend the world over."
"Will everyone's prostheses go back to normal now?" Scorpius asks. "Now that the Wallygagglers have successfully made contact with us?"
"They never agreed to that," Luna says lightly.
"But why would they want to keep doing it?"
Potter eventually pulls Draco to the side, his grip insistent.
"The goblins will go ballistic if we try to convince them to take down a protective barrier," he whispers. "The second the Ministry hears about this, they'll try to hush the whole issue. I don't know precisely what that means for all of us, but I have a feeling it'll be the worst for you and Scorpius."
Draco nods. He was thinking the same thing.
"We have to be ready to go public with this once the Wizengamot denies our proposal," Potter says.
"What? Potter, what would we even be proposing? We don't have any ideas here. What we have to do is talk everyone here out of whatever ridiculous plans they're crafting right now, plans that will put a target on every one of our backs."
"No way. I'm not giving up."
"It's a bigger problem than you seem to realise! Perhaps in thirty years we could figure out a way to redirect the castoff or layer enough counter-curses and anti-jinxes over the water to make a difference, but not any time soon ... it's too much."
From across the way, Luna is yelling for them. "Harry, Draco, are you ready to leave? I set the Portkey to depart in one minute!"
Potter looks at him hard, his face set. "I'm in this now, all in. Not just because of you or Scorpius, but because there's a real problem that needs solving. There are creatures asking for our help, and I'm not letting them down. Step back if you want to, I'll understand, but you're not talking me out of this."
Without another word, Potter turns away, joining the others, already toiling at their plans to solve a problem they don't even fully understand the scope of.
Not just because of you.
It takes Draco nearly the full minute to remember to follow after him.