Category: The Magic Quill

A shout from nearby – a screech of cart wheels – then a party of goblins arrived at the point where Joe and Rigel stood. “What happened to the others?” barked a particularly gnarly goblin.

“What was that name again?” asked the goblin behind the teller’s window.

“Dr. Duane Mossy,” said Slavik, in a nearly perfect approximation of an American accent. He twitched his fake mustache and adjusted his fake eyeglasses.

The new headmistress sat in the back of the classroom, seemingly absorbed in the Journal of Early Wizardry Development, Vol. 937, No. 6, while the brand new Defensive Magic teacher carried on with his lecture. She sighed as she listened, reminding herself once again that no one would have expected it easy to introduce the new curriculum at Durmstrang.

The trees stood like vast pillars, and the rustling of their leafy canopy made for a special kind of silence – unearthly, churchlike, peaceful. The wandwright finished scattering his offering of woodlice to the bowtruckles, shouldered a bundle of straight green boughs, and began his trek towards the one-room home and workshop he had hewn out of a great hollow trunk within sight of the Wizards’ Highway.

Sadie had all but given up finding the Wizard Quarter of the city, not to mention Anatoly’s shop. But then a careening taxi forced her to flatten herself against a wall – and instead of meeting the wall’s resistance, she went straight through it as if through a bead curtain.

The fire flared green, and a robed figure appeared in it, spinning to a halt. Coughing slightly, Endora staggered out of the fireplace and wiped her sooty boots on the hearthrug.

Joe Albuquerque found the clown wizards quickly, but Il Comte had found them first.

Disguised as a juggler, Joe made his way to a Muggle street carnival where the three clowns had been lying low, doing non-magical magic tricks, and sometimes magical non-magic tricks, in hopes of having pocket change and (occasionally) ripe fruit hurled at them.

There was hardly time for a round of firewhisky after they arrived at the familiar, squalid back parlor at the Hog’s Head. Joe was immediately sent to find and warn the Clown Wizards about the return of Il Comte.