Dorridge tapped a reply against the clasp, asking how many people were with Venn. She waited through a long silence before writing down the returning knocks.
"One living," she said at last. "His wording."
Ron looked at the evidence case. Percy had the unpleasant impression that the space inside it had become deeper while nobody was watching, though the broken velvet still lay flat against the bottom.
Dumbledore asked Dorridge to establish whether Venn could move. The answer came in short groups of knocks, interrupted twice by a scrape that travelled through the brass clasp.
He could reach the case's other handle. He could not cross the line beyond it, and the water rose whenever he tried to step over rather than under.
Hermione frowned. "Under what?"
Dorridge tapped the question. The reply took so long that Percy began counting the intervals between knocks instead of the knocks themselves, until the final group arrived and Dorridge set down her quill.
"The lintel. He says it has fallen."
Kingsley moved the culvert photograph closer. Percy looked at the shallow arch above the drain. The broken lintel might be part of that opening.
"We're bringing the case back," Dumbledore said. "We will not attempt to pull a man through a damaged connection in my office."
"That would've made a memorable school photograph," Percy said. Ron made a noise suspiciously close to a laugh.
McGonagall gave him a look. It lacked her usual force, which worried him more than a proper reprimand would have.
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Dumbledore said Percy should remain at Hogwarts. Percy argued that he could identify the ordinary water near Venn. Ron watched the clock while they discussed which part of the work required him.
Dumbledore wanted Percy to remain within Aequor's reach. Percy pointed out that the guardian had shown him Venn for a reason, and Hermione interrupted both of them to ask whether that reason had definitely involved travel.
They tested the case first. Percy described what he felt without touching its water, and Dorridge confirmed each detail against Venn's knocks before anybody changed the plan.
The water on the far side was moving in pulses. Between them Percy could sense an ordinary shallow flow under an obstruction, while during each surge the direction folded in a way that made him nauseous.
"He needs someone who can tell the difference," Percy said. "You don't have to put all three of us beside it."
Harry's mouth tightened. He looked at Hermione, then at the covered fragment on the opposite table, and didn't pretend he missed the point.
The final arrangement sent Percy and Ron with McGonagall. Dumbledore, Kingsley, and Dorridge would control the recovery, while Harry and Hermione remained at Hogwarts with Flitwick, far from any attempt to complete the three locks.
Ron checked the rope before agreeing to come. He had used the same signals in the lower passage and could keep them clear during the recovery.
Harry stopped Percy at the door and caught his sleeve.
"If it shows you that place again, tell someone."
Percy knew which place he meant. "If I start looking sentimental, Ron's authorised to hit me."
"I'll use judgement," Ron said. "Mostly about where."
Harry let go. Hermione handed Ron a blank card and told him to write down anything that changed, leaving the decision about what mattered to him rather than filling it for him first.
They travelled by Portkey from the edge of the grounds. Percy arrived in a wet field with one hand on a rusted bucket and a renewed dislike of transportation that involved his stomach trying to escape through his ear.
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The lane looked too small to have swallowed a person. Two hedges enclosed a stretch of broken tarmac, and beyond the Ministry cordon a sheep watched the arriving party with an expression Percy recognised from several teachers.
Ordinary traffic had been diverted. Dorridge's people stood well back from the culvert, working from fixed markers on dry ground and reporting each measurement aloud before writing it down.
Kingsley showed them the nearest marker. A plain iron peg stood beside a chalk line, far enough from the ditch that the soil beneath it remained firm.
"Nobody crosses this without being attached," he said. "Nobody follows a person they cannot see continuously from here."
Percy looked at the culvert. Water moved through its mouth, and for the first few breaths he felt exactly what he ought to feel: a shallow ditch, runoff from the field, mud caught behind stones.
Then the pulse came. The stream stretched away from him without increasing in size, and somewhere along the impossible length a man shifted his weight beside something heavy.
Percy sat on the bank as the pulse passed. McGonagall crouched beside him.
"Describe it."
He did. Venn stood in water barely above his ankles, but a deeper current passed behind him, and Percy couldn't tell whether the shape across the floor was a fallen lintel or something his senses were trying to turn into one.
Dorridge placed the empty case beside the iron peg. She tapped the clasp, received a reply, and asked Venn to remain still while they found the ordinary flow again.
The pulse weakened. Percy followed its retreat without pulling, holding to the ditch water nearest the road rather than chasing the larger pressure beyond it.
"Now," he said. He pointed at the left edge of the culvert. "There's a straight piece now."
Kingsley passed a hooked pole through the opening. He used his hands instead of his wand, and Percy watched the hook disappear farther than the width of the road could possibly explain.
Something struck the metal. Kingsley stopped immediately while Dorridge asked what Venn had touched, and the reply confirmed that the hook had reached the strap of his evidence satchel.
"Keep it there," she said. "We're sending a rope along it."
Ron fed the line through a loop on the pole. His hands moved steadily, but Percy could see the tension in his shoulders whenever the rope paused against stone.
The next pulse arrived before Venn could secure it. Water rose around the pole, Kingsley's grip shifted, and Percy felt the straight section begin to bend.
"Back a foot," Percy said. "Don't pull it out. Just give it room."
Kingsley obeyed. The pole slid towards them, the rope slackened without falling free, and the pressure passed with a sound like somebody breathing into a bottle.
From under the road, a man coughed. The sound was so ordinary that Percy felt tears sting his eyes before he knew why.
----------------------
They needed three more attempts to get the rope secured. Nobody called the pauses wasted time, and nobody told Venn to hurry when his fingers failed on the first knot.
Dorridge talked to him through the clasp while Kingsley held the pole. She gave simple instructions, checked the replies, and corrected him once when he tried to wrap the rope around his wrist instead of beneath his arms.
Dumbledore watched the culvert mouth with his wand ready. McGonagall held the rope behind Ron and took the weight when it tightened.
Percy listened to the water. The pulses were getting closer, though he couldn't tell whether their work had caused that or whether somebody far away had noticed a loose connection.
The next opening lasted long enough for Venn to crawl. Percy felt his hands enter the shallow flow, then his shoulders, and the rope acquired a living weight that made Ron brace both feet.
Venn's face appeared beneath the arch. His hair was wet against his forehead, and he had tied a strip of cloth over one ear. His lips moved without producing a sound.
Dorridge knelt behind the chalk line. "Elias, stay low. Follow the rope."
Venn looked straight at her. He opened his mouth, but the first sound that came out was a dry rasp, and Percy watched him choose to crawl rather than spend another breath trying to speak.
His shoulders cleared the stone. One hand reached the bank, and then the water behind him darkened.
Percy felt the deeper current turn. It wasn't pushing Venn back into the passage; it was moving with him, using the space his body had made beneath the fallen lintel.
A second hand appeared beside his ankle. The fingers were pale, perfectly shaped, and attached to nothing Percy could feel in the water.
Ron kept both hands on the rope when he saw the pale fingers. He called to Kingsley without letting the line slip.
"Something behind him," Ron said. "No weight on it."
The hand caught Venn's boot. A voice rose from the culvert in Dorridge's own tone, telling Kingsley to stop pulling because the officer was caught.
Dorridge didn't turn. "My instructions come from here. Keep him moving."
Percy reached for the shallow water already beneath Venn's chest. It answered easily, and he flattened it against the stone instead of trying to seize the thing following behind.
The grip on the boot tightened. Venn kicked once, lost the boot, and slid forward as Kingsley and McGonagall drew the rope across the chalk line.
Dumbledore dropped a slab of road stone over the culvert mouth. The motion was precise, guided from the dry bank, and it landed between the grasping fingers and the ordinary ditch water with a crack that travelled through Percy's teeth.
The pale hand folded into the dark. Percy let the shallow current go, and the ditch became a ditch again so suddenly that he nearly tipped face-first into it.
Ron caught his collar. "On this side, idiot."
Percy sat back hard in the mud. "Excellent rescue manner. Very reassuring."
----------------------
The healer knelt beside Venn. Dorridge gave his name and the time he had been missing, then moved back so the healer could examine him.
Venn kept one hand clenched. When the healer asked him to open it, he shook his head until Dorridge crouched beside the stretcher and promised to hold whatever he had been carrying.
It was a brass tally, bent at one corner. Three short lines branched from a stem on its face, and beneath them somebody had scratched two marks with a point too blunt to make proper letters.
Hermione would have wanted to examine it. Percy found himself grateful that she was a castle away from anything offering new words.
"I lost the vial," Venn said. Dorridge told him they knew where it had gone. "You can give the report later. Let the healer check you first."
His second sentence stopped the healer's hand. Venn gripped Dorridge's sleeve and made her lean closer to hear it.
"Two more. Beyond the drain."
Dorridge's face stayed steady. She asked whether he'd seen them, and Venn answered with a small nod before closing his eyes against the light.
A woman and a younger man had been on the other side of an iron grille. They were dry, standing in a room that had no visible floor beyond their feet, and neither seemed to hear him when he called.
"Breathing?" the healer asked.
"Didn't move. But the woman blinked."
Percy looked at the covered culvert. Venn had crossed back. Two people might still be beyond the grille. He asked Dorridge whether their descriptions matched the missing shop workers.
Dumbledore asked the healer to stop the interview. Venn tried to speak again anyway, struggling until Dorridge put her hand over his and told him the others had been counted.
Only then did he let go of the brass tally. Percy watched his fingers uncurl and thought of Ron counting three at the top of the stairs.
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They returned to Hogwarts without the evidence case. Dorridge kept it beside the blocked culvert under guard, refusing to bring an uncertain doorway into the castle merely because it had helped them once.
The brass tally travelled inside a plain covered box. Flitwick met them at the boundary and checked it before allowing it past the grounds, while Harry and Hermione waited beyond him with questions they visibly tried to keep in order.
Percy told them Venn was alive. Hermione covered her mouth, Harry shut his eyes, and Ron sat on the nearest patch of dry stone as though somebody had finally removed a string holding him upright.
"One boot short," Ron said. "Otherwise better than when we found him."
Dumbledore described the grille and the two figures. Hermione wrote down the woman's clothing and the younger man's position beside her, leaving room for their names.
Percy placed his muddy hands flat on the table. He could still feel the pale fingers gripping Venn's boot, not through his power but through the ordinary memory of having seen them.
"It let him get to the opening," he said. "Then it tried to come with him."
"It used the open space behind him," Dumbledore said. "We will need a barrier ready before the next person crosses."
Harry looked at the covered tally. The cold at his scar had sharpened when Percy entered the room, though it hadn't become a voice or a vision.
"He's angry," Harry said. He pressed his palms against his knees and waited until they stopped shaking. "I don't think it's about the officer."
Beneath the cloth, the tally clicked once against its box. Percy felt the lake answer from far below the window, and the connection was far clearer than anything the distant Yorkshire ditch should have been able to carry.
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Yeah, this arc might last for another 48 chapters (around there). So... Leave a comment and GIVE ME YOUR GLOBU- Ahem, I mean stones. Please. Please. please. please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasegivemeyourstonesgivemeyourstonesgivemeyourstonesgivemeyourstonesgivemeyourstonesgivemeyourstonesgivemeyourstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstonesstones
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