The letter arrived at breakfast.
An owl dropped it in front of Felix without ceremony, the same way the Hogwarts letter had arrived at Falker Manor three months earlier, and Felix unfolded the parchment to find a single line written in a hand he did not recognize.
Mr.
Falker —
Please come to my office at seven o’clock this evening.
The password is “Sherbet Lemon.”
— Albus Dumbledore
Felix read it twice.
Then he folded it and tucked it into his robes.
“What’s that?” Fred asked, leaning over.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing. That’s a letter.”
“It’s a letter about nothing.”
Fred looked at George.
George looked at Fred.
Neither of them said anything else.
They had learned by now that asking Felix questions was like throwing stones into a well — you heard a splash eventually, but you never saw the bottom.
Felix ate his breakfast and went to his lessons.
He spent the afternoon in the library, reading Andros’s notes, and the evening practicing speed casting in the Room of Requirement until his arm ached.
He did not think about the letter again until seven o’clock, when he left the Room and made his way up through the castle toward the Headmaster’s office.
The corridor leading to the office was empty.
Felix had never been to the Headmaster’s office before.
He had read about it, of course — the gargoyle, the spiral staircase, the door that only opened for the right password.
But reading about something and walking toward it were different things, and he found himself paying more attention than usual to the details.
The corridor was wide and quiet, lit by torches that burned without flickering.
Portraits lined the walls on either side, and most of them were asleep, snoring softly in their frames.
One of them — an old wizard with a long white beard and a pointed hat — opened his eyes as Felix passed and watched him until he was out of sight.
The gargoyle was at the end of the corridor.
It was larger than Felix had expected.
It was a stone creature, roughly the size of a small horse, with wings folded against its back and a face that looked like it had been carved by someone who had never seen a living thing before.
It sat on a pedestal at the base of a spiral staircase, and it did not move when Felix approached.
“Sherbet Lemon,” Felix said.
The gargoyle did not move.
Felix waited.
The gargoyle did not move.
“Sherbet Lemon,” he said again.
The gargoyle opened one eye.
“That’s the password.”
“I know.”
“You already said it.”
“I said it twice.”
“You said it twice because I did not respond.”
“And?”
“And I was thinking about whether to let you in.”
Felix looked at the gargoyle.
The gargoyle looked back at him.
It was a stone creature with a stone face, and yet there was something unmistakably smug about the way it was sitting there, as though it had been waiting all evening for someone to argue with.
“You’re a stone gargoyle,” Felix said.
“What is there to think about?”
“I am a stone gargoyle with a job to do,” the gargoyle said.
“I do not simply let anyone up the stairs. I have to be satisfied that the person asking is the person who is supposed to be asking. Otherwise, what is the point of me?”
“The point of you is to open when someone says the password.”
“That is part of the point. The other part is to be difficult.”
Felix stared at him.
The gargoyle stared back.
And then, without any change in its expression, it stepped aside.
“Go on, then,” it said.
“He’s expecting you.”
Felix did not move.
“Was that a test?”
“Everything is a test.”
Felix filed that away — there was something there, he was sure of it, but he did not have time to think about it — and stepped onto the spiral staircase.
It began to move the moment his foot touched it, carrying him upward past walls lined with more portraits and more sleeping wizards, until it finally stopped at a large wooden door.
Felix knocked.
No one answered.
He knocked again.
Still nothing.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The office was empty.
He had expected Dumbledore to be there.
He had expected the old man to be sitting behind his desk with his hands folded and his eyes half-lidded, waiting for Felix to arrive so he could say something cryptic and then send him on his way.
Instead, the office was empty, and the fire was crackling in the grate, and the portraits on the walls were snoring softly, and there was a tattered old hat sitting on a shelf in the corner.
Felix looked at the hat.
The hat did not look back.
He walked toward it.
He had not planned to.
His feet simply carried him across the room, past the desk and the silver instruments and the sleeping portraits, until he was standing in front of the shelf.
The Sorting Hat looked smaller than it had on the stool in the Great Hall, but it was unmistakably the same hat — the same folds, the same rip near the brim, the same tattered fabric that had sorted every witch and wizard at Hogwarts for a thousand years.
“You’re staring,” the Hat said.
Felix did not flinch.
He had been expecting it to speak.
Speaking to it again in an empty office was not strange.
It was just quieter.
“I was thinking,” Felix said.
“About what?”
“About whether you remember me.”
The Hat laughed.
It was a dry, rasping sound, the same laugh Felix had heard in his head on the night of the Sorting.
“Oh. Another Falker. Of course I remember you. I remember everyone. But you I remember especially. You are the one who would not tell me what you wanted.”
“I told you I wouldn’t mind Gryffindor.”
“You told me you wouldn’t mind it. That is not the same as wanting it.” The Hat shifted slightly on its shelf.
“Most children sit on my stool and beg me for the House they want. You sat on my stool and told me you were indifferent. I have been thinking about that for weeks.”
“Have you come to a conclusion?”
“I have come to several. None of them are flattering.”
Felix’s mouth twitched.
He picked the Hat up off the shelf and turned it over in his hands.
It was lighter than it looked, and warmer than it should have been, and there was something about holding it that felt like holding a piece of the castle itself.
“You should not be doing that,” the Hat said.
“Why not?”
“Because I am not a toy.”
“You’re a hat.”
“I am a Sorting Hat. There is a difference.”
Felix turned it over again.
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that I have sorted every student at Hogwarts for a thousand years, and I have seen things you cannot imagine, and I have kept secrets that would make your hair stand on end. And you are holding me like I am a piece of fruit you are considering buying.”
Felix set the Hat down on the desk and sat down in Dumbledore’s chair.
The Hat sighed.
“Now you are sitting in the Headmaster’s chair.”
“He’s not here,” Felix said, leaning back and folding his hands behind his head the way he imagined Dumbledore might.
“That makes it mine for the evening.”
“That does not make it yours.”
“He won’t know.”
“He will know,” the Hat said.
“He knows everything. He knew you were going to sit in it before you walked through the door. He probably knew it before I did.”
Felix considered that.
It was, he had to admit, probably true.
Dumbledore had a way of knowing things without being told, and Felix had spent enough time in the wizarding world to understand that some of it was magic and some of it was just the kind of attention most people never bothered to pay.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk.
“I have an idea.”
“I do not want to hear it.”
“You haven’t heard it yet.”
“I have heard enough of your ideas. You have been in this office for three minutes and you have already picked me up, turned me over, and sat in the Headmaster’s chair. I do not want to know what you are about to suggest.”
Felix leaned forward further, lowering his voice the way he did when he was about to say something Fred and George would appreciate.
“The next time someone annoys you during the Sorting,” he said, “you should shout Azkaban.”
The Hat was silent.
Felix went on.
“You could shout it, and then pause, and then say — oops. Sorry. I meant to say — and then sort them properly. Just imagine it. Imagine the look on their face. Imagine the look on everyone’s face. Imagine the parents hearing about it. Imagine the letters.”
The Hat was still silent.
But Felix could feel it thinking.
He could feel it turning the idea over the way he had turned the Hat over in his hands — examining it, testing its weight, deciding whether it was worth keeping.
“That is a terrible idea,” the Hat said.
“It’s a brilliant idea.”
“It is a terrible idea and I am not going to do it.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“I am not.”
“You’re still thinking about it.”
The Hat did not answer.
Felix leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
He could see it — the Great Hall, the first-years lined up in a row, McGonagall reading names from a scroll, the Hat on a nervous eleven-year-old’s head, and then, out of nowhere, the rip near the brim opening wide and the Hat shouting AZKABAN!
at the top of its voice.
And the kid’s face.
And the parents’ faces.
And McGonagall’s face.
He started laughing.
It was not a normal laugh.
It was a slow, quiet, sinister laugh, the kind of laugh that came from the back of the throat and did not quite reach the eyes.
He did not mean to do it.
It just happened.
The image was too good.
And then he heard someone laughing with him.
Felix opened his eyes.
Albus Dumbledore was standing in the doorway of his own office, laughing.
It was a strange laugh — high, breathy, and slightly unhinged, the kind of laugh that came from a man who had just heard the funniest thing he had heard in a hundred years.
His eyes were bright, and his beard was shaking, and he was laughing so hard that he had to lean against the doorframe to keep himself upright.
Felix stopped laughing immediately.
Dumbledore kept laughing.
“Professor —”
Dumbledore waved a hand.
“No, no, please, do not stop on my account. That was — that was magnificent. I have not heard a laugh like that since I was a boy.”
He was sitting in the Headmaster’s chair with the Sorting Hat on the desk in front of him, and he had just been caught laughing sinisterly in an empty office, and the Headmaster was standing in the doorway laughing at him.
He did not know what to say.
Dumbledore finally stopped laughing and straightened up.
He walked into the office, closed the door behind him, and sat down in the chair across from his own desk — the chair that was meant for visitors.
He did not ask Felix to move.
He did not comment on the fact that Felix was sitting in his chair.
He simply sat down in the visitor’s chair and looked at Felix with the same bright, patient expression he always wore.
“I heard you,” he said.
“From the corridor. I heard the Hat arguing with you, and then I heard you laughing, and I could not resist.”
“You heard the whole thing?”
“I heard enough.”
Felix looked at the Hat.
The Hat looked back at him.
Neither of them said anything.
“I am not going to shout Azkaban,” the Hat said.
“No matter how funny you think it would be.”
“I know,” Felix said.
“But you thought about it.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
Dumbledore watched the two of them with an expression of quiet delight.
Then he reached into the pocket of his robes and produced a small paper bag.
“Would you like a sweet, Mr. Falker?”
“What kind?”
“Cockroach Clusters.”
Felix declined.
Dumbledore looked slightly disappointed, and helped himself to one.
“Now then,” Dumbledore said, chewing.
“I asked you here because I wanted to speak with you. I had not intended to find you sitting in my chair with the Sorting Hat on my desk, but I find that the unexpected is often more informative than the planned.”
Felix did not answer.
He was still embarrassed.
He could feel his ears burning.
Dumbledore did not seem to notice.
Or if he did, he was polite enough not to mention it.
“I wanted to talk to you about your education,” he said.
“Professor McGonagall tells me you have been progressing faster than any student she has taught in decades. Professor Flitwick tells me you have a gift for dueling. Professor Snape tells me very little, which is his way of telling me a great deal. And Professor Vane tells me you watch the wand hand and not the face, which is the first thing a good duelist learns and the last thing most of them master.”
He paused.
“I asked you here because I wanted to hear it from you. Tell me, Mr. Falker — what do you want?”
Felix looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I asked. What do you want? Not what you think you should want. Not what your father wants for you. Not what any of your professors want for you. What do you want?”
Felix thought about it.
He thought about the Falker motto and the High Library and the dragon that had erupted from his wand.
He thought about Andros’s notes and the wooden figures and the eight techniques in Flitwick’s notebook.
He thought about Fred, and the promise he had made to himself, and the future he was determined to change.
“I want to be strong enough to protect the people I care about,” he said.
Dumbledore looked at him for a long moment.
“That is a good answer,” he said.
“It is also a dangerous one.”
“Why?”
“Because the people we care about do not always want to be protected. And because the strength we build to protect them can become a strength we use for other reasons.” He leaned back in his chair.
“I am not telling you not to want it. I am telling you to be careful. Strength is a tool, not a destination. If you forget that, you will end up somewhere you did not intend to go.”
Felix nodded slowly.
“Does the gargoyle always talk?” he asked, mostly to change the subject.
Dumbledore looked up from his sweet.
“Ah. You met him.”
“He was difficult on purpose.”
“He is always difficult on purpose,” Dumbledore said.
“He has been that way since I took this office. He does not get to argue with people very often — most people say the password and walk through without a word. But you stopped. You argued with him. He appreciated that.”
Felix filed it away and said nothing else.
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” he asked.
“No,” Dumbledore said.
“I also wanted to see you laugh. And I have. So we are finished for now.”
He stood up and walked to the door, and Felix stood up too and set the Hat back on the shelf and made his way to the door.
He was halfway through it when Dumbledore spoke again.
“Mr. Falker.”
Felix stopped.
“Professor McGonagall tells me you have been practicing speed casting every night in a room on the seventh floor.”
Felix did not turn around.
“She does not know what room,” Dumbledore said.
“Neither do I. But I know the castle, and I know that there are places in it that do not appear on any map. I am not going to ask you what you have found. I am simply going to tell you that you are not the first student to find it, and you will not be the last.”
Felix turned.
Dumbledore smiled.
“Goodnight, Mr. Falker.”
Felix looked at him for a moment.
Then he nodded and walked out of the office, and the door closed behind him, and he stood in the corridor for a long moment with his ears still burning and the image of Dumbledore laughing in the doorway still fixed in his mind.
He did not understand everything that had just happened.
But he had a feeling he would understand it later.