Clara's letter arrived Monday morning, carried by her tawny owl that landed on Rowan's plate and stood on his toast until he took the envelope. Lawrence glanced over from his porridge but didn't ask. He knew the handwriting.
Rowan opened it at the table. Clara's script was steady on the left side of the page and shakier on the right, where her hand had to cross the midline. She wrote with her left now.
Rowan,
We sold forty-three luminaires this week. That's the third week running above forty. The Prophet article is still pulling people in and the waiting list has gotten long enough that I've stopped apologising for the delay and started quoting delivery times instead. Two weeks for desk models, three for the wall-mounted design Lawrence drew up before term.
The apothecary on Horizont Alley placed a standing order for three per month, which is our first wholesale account outside Diagon Alley proper. I've raised the price on the desk models by two Sickles and nobody's complained. More interesting: we received an owl last Tuesday from a woman in Paris who runs a magical household goods shop near Place Cachée. She'd read about the luminaires in a French translation of the Prophet article and wants to know if we ship internationally. I told her I'd write back once I'd spoken with you. There was also an inquiry from a wizard in Brussels, though that one was vaguer.
Eleanor is settling in. She's faster than me at the inscription work, which I'm choosing to find useful rather than insulting. She burned through a crucible last Tuesday by leaving the athanor unattended during the dissolution stage, which cost us a day's production and a lecture from me about process discipline. She took the lecture well. She reminds me of myself at that age, which is probably why I hired her. Even with Eleanor running the press at full capacity we can barely keep up. I'm thinking about whether we need a third pair of hands, though finding another muggleborn with the right skills who'll sign a contract isn't straightforward.
The wards held through a thunderstorm on Thursday. Whatever the goblins built into the wardstone, it doesn't mind weather.
My hands are the same. Some days better, some days worse. I've started doing the exercises the Healer recommended, though I can't tell yet if they're helping or if I'm just getting used to the limitations. I can hold a teacup now if I use both hands, which feels like progress and also feels like something a woman my age shouldn't have to celebrate.
Don't worry about me. Worry about your studies. And eat properly.
Clara
Rowan folded the letter and put it in his pocket.
"How is she?" Lawrence asked.
Rowan handed him the letter. Lawrence read it quickly, his eyes catching on the same lines Rowan's had. He turned the page over as though there might be more on the back, and Rowan knew what he was looking for.
"Her hands," Lawrence said.
"The same."
Lawrence handed the letter back and went back to his porridge. His jaw was set in a way that had nothing to do with breakfast. They had the moonstone. They had the other components. The new moon was nine days away.
After breakfast Rowan climbed the spiral staircase to Mole's office.
She was marking student essays and didn't look pleased about it. She set her quill down when he came in and pushed the stack aside with the air of someone grateful for an interruption.
"Mr. Ashcroft."
"Headmistress. I need to ask for something that's going to require some explanation."
"That's rarely a good way to start a conversation in this office. Sit down."
He sat. Mole responded best to directness. She didn't like being managed.
"I need to bring Clara Goode to the castle. Lawrence's mother. I've found a way to heal the Cruciatus damage, but I need your permission to do it here."
Mole's expression didn't change but her eyes sharpened. "What kind of healing?"
"A ritual."
The room went very still. Mole set her quill down slowly.
"Ritual magic is classified as dark magic under Ministry law. The same classification as the Unforgivable Curses." Her voice was level but her eyes were hard. "You're asking me to permit what the Ministry considers a dark magic offence inside Hogwarts. The answer is no."
Rowan had expected this.
"Clara was tortured with the Cruciatus until her magical pathways ruptured. St Mungo's spent two months treating her and told her the damage is permanent. There is no healing spell for this. She can't hold a wand. She can barely hold a teacup." He kept his voice level. "The ritual classification was pushed through the Wizengamot a century ago to keep the knowledge out of common hands. The Flamels told me as much. Most of the Continent never adopted the ban. The classification is political, and Clara's hands shake every day because of it."
Mole was quiet for a long time. Her fingers found the quill and turned it once, slowly. Rowan could see her weighing the Flamels' name against the Ministry's classification, and which one carried more weight in the room they were sitting in.
"You realise that if the Flamels are wrong about this procedure, or if your execution is less than perfect, I'm the one answering for it."
"I know."
"Where would you perform it?"
"There's a room on the seventh floor that can provide the controlled environment the ritual needs."
"The Room of Requirement."
That surprised him.
"I was a student here once, Mr. Ashcroft." She set the quill down. "Who else knows?"
"Lawrence and Iris."
"It stays that way. I'll have Madam Blainey present for medical oversight. She's discreet and she knows when to keep things out of her records. Nobody else." She met his eyes. "If word reaches the Ministry that I allowed this, I will deny everything, and you will not contradict me. Are we clear?"
"Yes, Headmistress."
"Mrs. Goode may Floo to my office on the evening of the new moon. I'll bring her to the seventh floor myself." She pulled the essay stack back toward her. "Bring me the ritual manual by tomorrow morning. I want to read it before I let this happen in my castle."
Rowan wrote two letters that evening. The first was to Clara.
Clara,
Your business decisions are sound. The wholesale account is good news and the price increase was overdue. Tell Eleanor the dissolution stage is unforgiving and she should set an alarm charm on the athanor if she can't stand over it the whole time. Lawrence says to write the temperature protocol on the wall above the station.
Write back to the woman in Paris. Tell her we can ship internationally but we'll need to work out the logistics and pricing for bulk orders. Get her name and what she's looking for. If there's enough demand from the continent, we should think about whether it makes more sense to open a second location near the French market rather than shipping everything from London. I'll be with the Flamels this summer and Paris is close.
If you need a third person, hire one. Use the same contract terms as Eleanor. The production bottleneck will only get worse.
I need you to come to Hogwarts. Lawrence and I have found what we've been looking for, and we're ready to try a healing ritual I've been researching since last year. The Headmistress has given provisional permission. The new moon is in nine days. You'll Floo to her office and she'll bring you to where we'll be working.
I know you'll say you're fine and the exercises are helping and I should focus on school. I'm asking you to come anyway.
Rowan
The second letter went to the Flamels. He included Iris's careful sketches of the cave runes, his own annotations, and a description of the mountain structure and its location relative to the centaur territory. He asked whether the pre-Futhark symbols matched anything in their collection. He also described the structure itself, how the magic was embedded in the stone without any runic inscription at all, and asked whether they knew of a wizarding tradition that worked that way. He'd watched Vorzak forge the goblin wards on the shop last summer and the principle was similar, magic built into the material rather than layered over it, but the construction looked nothing like goblin metalwork. Whatever tradition had built it was something else entirely. He sealed both letters and sent them with Athena, who took them with the resigned competence of an owl who knew the trip to Devon and back would cost her a full day.