A sudden, stabbing pain lanced through Hodge's mind.
In an instant, he felt as though he had become someone else entirely. Screams filled the air around him. He stood inside a building that resembled a church, though most of it had already been reduced to rubble. At his feet yawned a deep, dark crater. A wave of confusion washed over him.
Several people dressed in clerical robes were shouting and gesturing wildly at him. For no reason he could name, irritation flared inside him. With a sharp flick of his hand, he sent them crashing heavily to the ground.
The next second, Hodge found himself atop the roof of a building, balanced on the very tip of a white cross, gazing down with cold disdain.
The world outside had descended into chaos. The sudden explosion had stunned everyone—worshippers, tourists, passers-by. Traffic ground to a halt; horns blared, people shouted, whistles shrilled. Two young men were raising some sort of device. A flash of white light burst from it.
Acting on pure reflex, Hodge reached out and levitated one of the men into the air. He examined the strange object in the man's hand, then met the man's terrified eyes. Understanding dawned. This thing… it captured a person's external image.
Hodge fell into thought. Photography… was it harmful to him? Some kind of magic he didn't understand? Soul-stealing? A curse? He stared again at the man dangling in mid-air, legs kicking frantically like a toad gripped by the belly. Within seconds, the man's eyes rolled back in his head.
A moment later, Hodge released his hold.
A scream, abruptly cut short.
Something else caught his attention: shadowy figures appearing on the rooftops of surrounding skyscrapers, some near, some far. They had concealed themselves with magic—barely noticeable to ordinary eyes, but to Hodge they blazed like candles in the dark.
Whispers reached his ears.
"What is that?"
"No idea. It just appeared out of nowhere—seems to have come from that church."
"That was a church? I thought it was just rubble…"
"Ron, hush!"
"Sorry. What do we do, Harry?"
"Could be a dark wizard. Everyone, battle stations. I'll go probe first—"
Harry had barely taken a step when he yanked Ginny backward.
A tide of black mist poured from the indistinct figure, sweeping outward in every direction like a living thing.
"Fall back! Get back—watch the black mist!" Harry shouted. He raised his wand; a semicircle of Protego flared in front of him and Ginny. A hair-raising sizzle filled the air. Harry poured more power into the spell until the shield closed fully behind them, forming a perfect sphere.
He watched the black mist surge toward them—then, impossibly fast, it retreated. Through the haze Harry finally saw the man standing atop the cross, half his body swallowed by writhing darkness. The pressure rolling off him was unlike anything Harry had felt in years—not since Dumbledore, and even then only faintly.
The wizard fixed his gaze far to the north for a long, silent moment, then vanished.
A flurry of pops announced the arrival of more wizards Apparating in.
"What the hell was that?"
"That… thing?" Ron's teeth were chattering. The black mist had brushed him; for a terrifying instant it had felt as though every drop of magic in his body was about to boil away and abandon him forever.
"Harry." Hermione appeared beside them, her hair cut to a sharp shoulder-length bob, dressed in a crisp ladies' suit that made her look every inch the capable senior aide she had become. She pointed toward the distant crowd—even without seeing the face clearly, the fallen Muggle photographer was obvious.
"Everyone out of here," Harry said calmly, already the deputy head of the Auror Office. "Leave a team to secure evidence. I need to speak to Minister Bones immediately. Something's very wrong. That man came out of the church."
Hermione's eyes widened; she understood the weight of those words better than anyone—and their potential consequences. The existence of wizards was still only half-secret these days, and only the frantic cooperation between the Ministry and Muggle government had kept the International Statute of Secrecy from collapsing entirely. After today…
"Someone's hurt," Harry added.
"Looks like a Muggle?" Ron peered downward, shielding his eyes with a charm. "Leg's definitely broken."
"Alert St. Mungo's… let's move."
"Should we call in the Obliviation Command and the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad?" Hermione asked.
Harry hesitated. There was something he hadn't mentioned: for a split second, he had recognized the look in that stranger's eyes.
"Tell them to stand by. This isn't just a wizard matter," he said. Instinct told him it was far more complicated than a random dark wizard appearing in a church.
And he still needed to meet Hodge.
Meanwhile, at Hogwarts.
"He's here."
The moment Hodge snapped back from that strange vantage point in London, he felt it—an immense magical presence, greater and far more volatile than any witch or wizard he had ever encountered. It burned like a bonfire given flesh. The only thing that had ever felt remotely similar was a phoenix in full flame form, yet even Fawkes paled in comparison.
BOOM!
Every student and professor in Hogwarts froze as if time itself had stopped. A heavy weight settled over their hearts. They turned toward the windows. One sharp-eyed student pointed and cried out, "Look—Professor Blackthorn!"
Hodge stood in the grounds, locked in confrontation with a figure wreathed in darkness.
He studied his opponent warily. A memory from years ago—an odd, half-forgotten dream—rose unbidden: in it he had fought against Harry and the others, striking Ginny down with ancient magic. For a while he had feared he was someone's Horcrux.
But Hodge was no longer the half-trained apprentice who understood so little. He was certain now—his soul was intact, untouched. If not a Horcrux, then only two possibilities remained: time, or fate itself, had linked them across years, strongly enough for magic to trace the thread.
Suddenly black mist surged toward him, blotting out the sky. From the darkness shot a blade of intertwined purple-gold light.
Hodge flicked his wand with blinding speed. An identical purple-gold flare burst from his own wand tip. At the same moment, thick black mist erupted from his body, coalescing in mid-air into a monstrous entity at least seventy feet tall. With a shriek that split the air, a colossal, spike-covered dragon tail lashed out and scattered the oncoming darkness.
Information flooded back from the dragon-Boggart: it had struck true—and yet somehow missed entirely.
Hodge watched the figure reform a short distance away, reaching instinctively for divinatory sight. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. This wizard existed outside fate itself.
Which left only one conclusion: whatever stood before him was not human—at least, not in any ordinary sense.
"You are… Sebastian Sallow?" Hodge asked.
The name struck like a forbidden curse. The black mist shuddered violently. From the darkness came a thousand overlapping whispers, a cacophony of broken voices. Just when Hodge thought there would be no reply, a single rasping voice echoed inside his mind.
"That… was a name I once bore. Now… I am the messenger of God. I am… the Sacred!"
"No," Hodge drew a steadying breath, voice ringing with certainty. "You are the Obscura."