Last chapter. Really truly.

Madam Ingrid narrowed her eyes when Harm's inert body drifted through the infirmary doors, conducted by Maurice's wand.

"Him again," she said. "He's sent his fair share of pupils into this wing, I can tell you. Thoughtful of you to do the same."

Maurice shook his head.

"Not you, then?" She gave him a sharp look, which he expertly blunted with impeccable placidity. "Though I wouldn't blame you if it were. Hold him up there for a while longer, will you."

She disappeared through a side door. Maurice settled into a chair to wait.

Soon enough, Madam popped her head through the doorway. "Still here? Do me a favor and bring him this ways."

She had prepared, in mere minutes, a steaming tub of Pepperup, which quickly turned into a lukewarm tub as Harm slowly thawed.

"Should only be a bit longer," she said. "Let me know when he's up and about." Madam bustled away.

In the end, he didn't have to let her know. After the predicted couple of minutes, Harm's eyes flew open. He rose from the rub like a soggy leviathan.

"I'LL KILL HIM, THAT SON OF A - "

It had been, Maurice reflected, a good decision to leave Harm's clothes on.

"Young man," came the voice of Madam, "kindly take your ranting elsewhere. This is a place of rest and recovery, both of which you seem to have had your fill."

Harm barely noticed as Maurice escorted him, dripping wet, out of the hospital wing. Madam, considering her job done, hadn't bothered to offer him a drying spell.

"He was waiting for me, I swear, he ambushed me, even though he pretended to be all nice and friendly after sixth year.

"All I wanted to know was, what the hell happened between you and Pitchiner, you idiot? There wasn't a scratch on him!" Harm paused momentarily for breath.

"Then he blasts me with his staff! Just for that! And we all thought he couldn't do magic! He was pulling one on us all along, pretending like he couldn't charm a pincushion - "

"Wrong magic," said Maurice.

" - and no one believed me and Feral when we said he did that blizzard back in - did you say something?" Harm appeared to see Maurice for the first time.

"It wasn't wizard magic," repeated Maurice patiently. Here it went...

Harm blinked. "So you do talk. What you think you know about Jack Frost, the forking mystery man?"

"Yes," said Maurice.

Harm snorted. "Listen," he said, "You know a lot, kid, I'll grant you that, but I did a whole month's research in an actual library and couldn't dig up anything on him. It's like he doesn't even exist."

"Not for wizards," said Maurice.

"Don't go Sphinx on me, kid."

"It's - " Maurice hesitated, not sure how well this explanation would work. It had even puzzled him, at first, and he still regarded it like someone who'd been presented with a sword forged out of Swiss cheese.

"It's Muggle magic," he finally said.

"Kimberly, you're crazy," scoffed Harm. "Muggles is the opposite of magic."

"Yes," said Maurice. "That's why they have to make their own."

"You're crazy," repeated Harm, but with less conviction. This was, after all, Maurice Kimberly, who'd aced every History of Magic exam ever wielded by Binns.

Maurice picked his words carefully, laying out his theory. (It was still just a theory, since he hadn't had the chance for in-field research yet.)

Only wizards and witches had magic. That was correct. So Muggles had had to improvise, to cobble together wehat miracles they could. A little bit they borrowed from creatures that were naturally magical, like leprechauns and pixies, but most of it they pulled from the sheer force of - Maurice hesitated, feeling the cheese soften under the grill - the sheer force of belief.

"Hold it," said Harm. "You're telling me that they do magic just because they think they can?"

Maurice nodded.

"I grew up around Muggles," Harm shuddered at the memory, "and they were definitely very non-magical."

"You're still thinking of wizard magic," said Maurice. "Muggle magic doesn't work like that, individually."

"And how do you know this, Kimberly?"

"I asked a Muggle," replied Maurice, "which you should have done, instead of aggravating Madam Pince. It's astounding what one can learn from a reasonably well-educated Muggle child."

Harm tried to hold on to a shred of the world as he knew it. "You can't just make magic out of thin air."

Maurice fixed him with his best penetrating stare. "And why not? Wizards do it every day. Haven't you ever wondered where our magic comes from?"

"From the blood," Harm answered triumphantly. "Everyone knows that."

"What about Muggle-borns? And Squibs?" Maurice didn't let go. Oh, well, as they said, in for a penny, in for the pound.

"Who was the first wizard, or witch for that matter,, and where did they get their magic? Again, any reasonably well-educated Muggle child could take one look and tell you it was genetics. But I see you have no idea what that means, and frankly, if all it takes to make a wizard is a bunch of chemicals, then I'd say that making magic from belief is just as good an explanation."

Maurice stopped talking. He had said what he had to say.

"I don't believe any of that stuff," muttered Harm.

But he was lying.

Monstrous and Thessaly Pike were delighted when their son developed a sudden interest in Muggle Studies. For one thing, it meant that he was actually seen outside his room during the summer, fraternizing with the local populace. Or trying to, anyway: when most of the local populace fled from his presence, Harm began to feel a slight twinge of regret at having burned his bridges too soon.

Nevertheless, he persevered, and eventually the Muggle parents were whispering that wherever those Pikes were sending their boy, it certainly was making a difference.

To the dismay of his Head of House, this sudden interest did not lead to a career in Muggle Relations. Harm ahad announced immediately after graduation that he intended to move to northern Siberia.

"What on earth for, my dear boy?" wheezed Slughorn. Behind him, hidden by his enourmous bulk, Maurice tensed and waited for the answer.

"Research," Harm said vaguely.

Slughorn glanced at his parents, who wore expressions of puzzled approval (and, it must be said, smelled strongly of dragon nip). Family of lunatics, he thought, and hurried away to ingratiate himself with more promising candidates. Maurice nodded to himself and melted back into the mass of happy ex-students.

So Harm moved to Siberia at the end of the summer, and the rest of his fellow Hogwartians went on with their lives. Ferris got a job in Borgin and Burkes, filling in on the increasingly frequent days when Mr. Borgin was not quite lucid enough to handle large sums of money. A few streets down, Appleby nights as a Gringotts guard. And not so far away, Lucretia Worthington was a Greeter at St. Mungo's, where she brightened the day of every sick wizard who walked through the doors, and annoyed the living daylights out of the female patients.

"And what are you going to do, young Kimberly?" Asked Slughorn when Maurice's commencement ceremony rolled around in the spring. The boy was by no means ambitious, but he did have a head for magic, oh yes, and talent tended to burn its own path through history.

"I'm traveling to the United States of America," replied Maurice.

"What on earth for, boy?!"

"Research," said Maurice, smiling a secret smile.

Slughorn was keenly disappointed. A wellspring of talent, marching off to a magical backwater. Students these days! No innovative spirit whatsoever.

He was surprised, not entirely pleasantly, when Maurice's first book was published the following year. It was an instant bestseller, read furtively by respectable wizards using respectable false covers saying things like, Gallons of Galleons: Taking control of your future fortune.

Maurice shook off his agent (establishing the seeds of a reputation as as an unpredictable eccentric), pushed one of the nice hardback copies into his carpetbag, and crossed an ocean to visit Harm.

He located Harm living in what could truthfully be called a shack on the outskirts of a tiny Russian village. He rapped on the doorframe, lest too much stimulus on the door itself should cause it to fall in.

Harm opened it, wearing a leer.

"Oh, it's you," he said, features relaxing. "I guess you have me all figured out by know. I save the jolly grin for the local kids," he added without a trace of sarcasm.

In response, Maurice held out his book. Harm took one look at it and groaned.

"Humping Hornbacks, couldn't you have called it anything else? And it's got your name on the front in big letters and everything."

The title was, Magical Thinking: Belief as a substitute for magic in ancient and contemporary Muggle society.

"The title is both appropriate and relevant," said Maurice.

"I'm getting close," said Harm. "I definitely saw him playing with the kids yesterday. Course, I didn't see much after that, since all six buggers decided to throw snowballs at me. Plus, someone iced all my locks and built a snowman on my roof."

"I'm going to track down that freak," muttered Harm, "and pump him for all the answers I never got."

Maurice recognized the obsessive gleam in his eyes. He saw it in the mirror every day.

The end. Really truly.

So, Harm devotes his life to tracking down the elusive Jack Frost, living in one numbingly cold environment after another. Jack, on his part, is delighted by the attention and goes out of his way to mess with Harm.

Maurice follows up Magical Thinking with a text on technomancy, and then another on the electromagnetic properties of spellcasting and how it affects the wave-particle nature of light, and becomes the world's first wizard of science. He achieves a cultlike following.

Slughorn is not amused.