Harry Potter on the ceiling rode Ron in circles thirty-seven times. The Chosen One raised his wand, and Hermione's face was somehow growing out of the polished wood.
She was chattering away, casting spells, helping the Chosen One defeat the evil King of Quidditch.
"Perfectly reasonable."
Iain lay sprawled on the floor, arms and legs spread wide, watching the mushroom-soup cinema unfold before him. Around him, the tables and chairs were cheering along enthusiastically.
The teacups and plates had grown arms and legs. Holding little forks and knives with eyes and noses of their own, they tap-danced in perfect rhythm to celebrate Iain's delight.
Even the chandelier had come alive.
"How are you feeling?" it asked him.
"Not great. I poisoned myself on mushrooms again." Iain's mind was still perfectly clear. It was just that his senses had drifted into a world other people could not touch.
"That's because you forgot wild pufferfish. Fight poison with poison, and the toxins cancel each other out." The ironwork face on the chandelier waggled its brows at him.
Its dangling crystals swished through the air like a tongue.
"Tsk, tsk. Sound logic. My hallucinations really are brilliant." Iain had a super-brain, after all, so random moments of enlightenment were hardly unusual for him.
He turned to the chatty furniture around him and offered a solemn reminder. "Keep it down a little. Your subtitles are covering the chandelier's subtitles."
"So the mushroom hunters really weren't lying to me after all."
Yes, Iain could see subtitles on everything now. He could even see subtitles floating beneath his wand.
"What in God's name is he?"
Inside the wand, Voldemort could not make sense of what he was witnessing. Combined with everything else that had already defied reason, he had begun to suspect that Iain might not be human at all.
Perhaps this thing was a monster Dumbledore had made through alchemy. No wizard should possess magic like this. Just by feeling things too strongly, he was giving life to dead objects.
"I need to get out!"
Voldemort had lost all interest in revenge. He had become convinced the creature wearing human skin was toying with him. The boy clearly knew who he was and had deliberately pretended to be Voldemort.
It was naked humiliation.
Yet fear had swallowed up all of Voldemort's pride. At this point he could not spare any energy to hate the thing insulting him. He only wanted to get as far away from Iain as possible.
The moment that thought formed, the wand lifted itself and shot for the window.
"Where do you think you're going? Cut it out. There are too many flashy, high-maintenance wands outside. You wouldn't be able to stay faithful." Iain raised a hand, and the wand flew obediently back into his grasp.
Because he could read the subtitles under the wand, he knew exactly what it was thinking. Holding it tight, he had originally intended to reason with it.
"Running away from home is bad form. Unless, of course, you're like that traveling frog and you're a travel wand, one that periodically brings me back gifts. Then we can talk."
Iain began lecturing the wand.
Unfortunately, though his head was full of slogans and speeches, the mushroom soup was hitting harder by the second. His vision blurred. His thoughts started dissolving into pleasant disorder.
"This is my fault, not the soup's fault. I'll still drink it again in the next life..."
Then, in the middle of his groggy muttering, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed unconscious.
"Now!"
Inside the wand, Voldemort seized the chance and tried to flee again.
But just as the wand began to rise, a pair of bony hands reached in from the side and clamped around it.
Through the wand, Voldemort felt as if he could see the pale fire burning behind those hollow sockets.
Empty.
Still.
And terrifying enough to make his soul shake.
That was pressure on the level of the soul itself.
"What are you supposed to be?!"
Voldemort shrieked in horror.
A moment later, his voice was drowned out by the sounds of handcrafted construction. The little skeleton had started using Iain's wand as a screwdriver while assembling a pair of bone wings.
...
Consciousness slipped away like water through spread fingers. Iain's thoughts sank again, passed through some impossible invisible boundary, and he woke once more in the familiar tomb.
He opened his eyes.
The same place.
The palace of consciousness.
Blue flames danced in iron sconces, lighting a corridor that stretched farther than sight.
"Right. Nearly forgot. Today's another seventh cycle."
Iain glanced down at himself. His skin was dry and slightly withered, but pale as snow, exactly the cold porcelain tone everyone loved. It just was not quite as fresh-looking as before.
"I wonder if the succubus lady brought me something to eat."
Still dealing with a mild case of soul-level mushroom poisoning, Iain was starving. It was not physical hunger. It was something deeper.
He had no interest in looking for the hidden Ultraman guards again. The guards that definitely existed were far too good at hiding. At this point, it seemed wiser to go find the succubus lady and collect a boxed meal.
He was not particularly worried about his real body.
His body had never let him down.
Ever since he was little, when he accidentally drank a bottle of cyanide the old groundskeeper had stored in a soda bottle and still bounced back after sleeping for three days, he had understood something important.
People with special powers were built different.
Of course, now that he was technically in a wizard's body, that truth felt even more obvious.
"I'm so hungry little Iain has shrunk three centimeters."
Once he climbed to his feet, he started back the way he had come. After some time, the corridor bent ahead of him.
He saw the mural-lined wall again.
And then he noticed something unexpected.
"Huh?"
Iain froze in surprise.
Someone was standing in front of the mural.
Not the succubus lady, but a young man with platinum-blond hair.
"What kind of budget do you have to have to show up with eighty percent of my catastrophic good looks?" Just from the man's profile, Iain could tell he had to be incredibly handsome.
"Who are you? How dare you break into my territory?"
His voice exploded through the corridor. Even the blue flames in the lamps twitched.
Something invading your brain was never a good sign. Iain's shock and anger clearly startled the intruder. The blond young man spun around at once.
"An inferius!"
The young man cried out, but his hands were faster than his mouth. He snapped up the oddly curved wand in his hand, a thing that looked like it had been carved from thorny briars.
"Stupefy!"
A bolt of red light shot from the tip and slammed into Iain's chest.
"Hm?"
Too slow to react in time, Iain glanced down at his own chest in alarm. He was worried the spell might literally put his heart to sleep.
Luckily, the idea had been his first.
The other man lacked both the insight and the craftsmanship to improve it.
The red light simply vanished into the chest of Iain's withered body, like a raindrop falling into desert sand, leaving nothing behind.
"Are you maybe being a bit unreasonable? This is my place. You broke in, and now you're attacking me?" Iain looked around for something he could use as a weapon.
Sadly, the corridor offered nothing but jars and bottles.
"No effect? This inferius has dragon-level resistance to magic?" The young man frowned and raised his wand again without hesitation.
"Then let's try this. Imperio!"
A strange pale blue flash flew toward Iain, one of the spells most wizards went pale at the very mention of.
"My stiff old corpse of a body!"
Iain instinctively tried to roll away, but this body moved like a pensioner. He had only just bent his knees when the spell struck him.
"Man, I miss my eleven-year-old reflexes..." Iain felt something brush the edge of his awareness, like a cat batting at a ball of yarn with one lazy paw.
Then the magic dissipated.
Nothing happened.
"How is that possible? Even an Unforgivable won't work?" The blond man's face changed. He took one step back, then another.
"Fiendfyre..."
He prepared to unleash his last resort, even if it meant damaging this priceless ruin.
But before he could finish the spell, his whole body locked in place.
"So it really was a Dark wizard. While I was drunk on soup and letting down my guard, he wormed his way straight into my head!"
How could Iain not be furious after being hit with an Unforgivable?
He had nearly scared himself to death.
His emotions surged.
In the next instant, the eyes of the dried corpse he controlled flared crimson.
The blond young man felt death press close enough to kiss his cheek.
In those glowing eyes, he sensed a force so overwhelming it bordered on the absolute.
The pressure locked his throat shut. The unfinished spell died in his mouth.