Author's Note: I haven't really been in the headspace to be producing new chapters for Abhorsen-in-Waiting: The Philosopher's Stone, so I have been editing parts one and two of the series instead. There aren't any major changes to the story itself, however, I have removed many of the spelling mistakes and hopefully the grammar mistakes that existed before. If you see anything particularly noticeable still remaining please let me know.

The river island of Abhorsen's Ait was not an overly large place. The whole of it being slightly larger than a football pitch. However, it was inhabited. Not that this was readily apparent due to the thick copses of willow, ash, and elder that shielded the only house from view. As a matter of fact, the only portions of the house that were visible from the banks of the river were the chimneys through the topmost branches of the trees.

On the night that our story begins, there silvery wisps of smoke rising from one of the chimneys. It was coming from the fireplace in the study on the house's second floor. The room was filled with a warm flickering light. Not only from the fire burning in the grate, but also from the squat candles burning low in their brass sconces.

The walls of the study were lined with overflowing bookcases whose shelves groaned beneath the weight of heavy leather-bound tomes, stone tablets, and papyrus scrolls. The far side of the room was occupied by a large, rosewood desk with short scaled legs and a quartet of beady-eyed dragonheads, who were each gripping a corner of the writing top in their flame filled maws. Scattered about the desk's surface were various bits and bobs: a silver inkwell, goose feather quills, rolls of parchment, and other less mundane items.

Adjacent to the dragon desk, and nearer to the fire, stood an ornate perch with a large raven drowsing atop it. Around the bird's left ankle was a minute bangle. The band of which was engraved with curious sigils and adorned by a small silver bell.

Opposite the raven's perch was the owner of the house, the current Abhorsen of Abhorsen's Ait. His name was Aster Evans and he had only just managed to nod off as well. His tall frame was stretched out the full length and beyond of the overstuffed sofa he was laying upon. His feet, in their thick woolen socks, were propped up upon and dangling over the arm of the sofa that wasn't serving as his pillow. On the floor, laying precisely where it had landed after it had slipped from sleep addled fingers was an age worn copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

By all appearances Aster's sleep seemed peaceful, even if it had been a long time coming. The only outward sign that it might be less than restful was the faint flexing of this long fingers – much like how a cat might knead at a blanket with its claws – as he dreamed.

Unfortunately, he wouldn't be asleep for much longer. One of the peculiar devices atop the dragon desk, a glass spinning top balanced on its point, suddenly began to spin and emit a shrill whistling noise.

Both Aster and the raven awoke with a jolt. The device – a Sneakoscope – had begun to produce brilliant flashes of red light.

"Confounded contraption. What is it at this time of night?" the raven demanded, her voice a low contralto with the barest hint of a croak.

"If I were to make a guess, Fea. I would say it's because we have a guest," Aster replied wryly, silencing the Sneakoscope with a flick of his wand. "And it seems to be a rather unfriendly one at that."

There were few things alive in the world that would register as a threat to an Abhorsen's wards, but there were plenty that were dead. After all, to wear the mantle of Abhorsen was to have an uncommon affinity with death, because all Abhorsens were necromancers even if they weren't the usual sort.

"You don't say," Fea remarked with an irritated clacking of her beak.

Aster paid her no mind as he shoved his feat into his heavy leather boots; knotting the laces with a sharp series of tugs.

Heaving himself to his feet, he made a beeline to the fireplace, or to be more precise, to the objects resting upon the mantel piece. The first was a saber, which he belted at his waist with deft movements. Second was a bandoleer of mahogany colored leather. A hand's breath wide, both it and his sword belt carried the faint scent of beeswax. Along the length of the bandoleer hung seven tubular leather pouches. The first was near the size of a small pill bottle with each consecutive pouch growing larger until the seventh, which was almost the size of a jam jar. The bandoleer was designed to be worn across the chest with the pouches hanging down. Aster slid it on over his head and felt its chill weight settle against his chest. Each of the pouches contained within it a silver bell with a pale handle made of yew. These were the tools of Abhorsen.

Aster took a deep breath to center himself. Then he left the study, made his way down the stairs to the ground floor, and headed for the door. He paused only once to seize his woolen great coat from its place on the hatstand in the entryway and shrug it on.

Once outside, even with the natural protective properties of running water to act as a shield, he could feel the presence of death growing stronger with each step he took along the flagstone path that led to the southern side of the ait. He didn't stop walking until he reached the narrow, pebble strewn beach.

By the light of the moon, Aster could clearly see the dead thing that had tripped the wards on the bank opposite. The creature – a geist, if he wasn't mistaken – looked like little more than a condensed shadow, as if someone had cut a vaguely human-shaped figure out of the night sky while carefully choosing a piece without any stars. The geist had no features at all, but Aster could see its head weaving from side to side, as though whatever senses it had were quite limited. Curiously, Aster noted, the geist was carrying what appeared to be a completely mundane sack in one of its four-fingered hands; the material of the sack a stark contrast to the geist's surreal flesh.

Knowing there was little he could actually do about the giest while still on the ait, Aster drew his wand from within his sleeve and began to wave it in a complicated pattern; all the while, speaking the low rolling syllables of the invocation that would summon the bridge to the riverbank. As he spoke, the slick surface of the Thames began to churn and froth as the alder wood pilings imbedded into the riverbed began pushing themselves up through the water; twisting into the shape of an ornate bridge that spanned from beach to bank.

While the water settled itself to its new course, twining about the alder piles, Aster started across Hallow's Bridge. His green eyes never wavering from the figure of the geist as it began to pace in apparent agitation. Slowly lifting one clumsy leg and swinging it forward, resting for a moment, then swinging the other a little past the first in a lumbering, rolling motion, which was made all the eerier due to the shuffling noise it created on the leaf strewn riverbank.

Aster stopped a meter back from the geist, keeping his feet firmly planted upon a section of Hallow's Bridge that left him standing above the protective flow of the river. He allowed one of his hands to fall to the hilt of his sword and thumbed the blade a finger's-breath free of its scabbard. Freeing the sword as he had would allow for a swifter draw should he need it. He hoped he would, but he hadn't survived this long b being careless.

Then, prepared as he could be, Aster crossed the remaining distance between himself and the geist; moving from the bridge to the bank and from Life into Death with the same step. The rush of the Thames behind him transforming into the gurgle of the Wellspring as he crossed over. The river of Death was as cold as it always was as it flowed about his legs, eager to pull him over and carry him away. Aster exerted his will, and the cold became simply a sensation, one without danger and the current merely a pleasing vibration about his feet. The light, what there was of it, was gray and featureless, stretching out to an equally flat horizon. In the distance, Aster could hear the roar of the First Gate.

In front of him stood the geist; as close to him now as it had been in the living world. Now though he could see its true shape clearly as it was no longer shrouded in the aura of death that had cloaked it. It was still impossible to tell exactly who or what the geist had been in life, time and perhaps the metamorphic properties of the water in the Fifth Precinct had changed its form to that of something only vaguely humanoid with an appearance closer to that of an ape than those of a man. Aster examined the creature carefully. Noting the milky glaze of its eyes. A feature that gave it the appearance of something that was either only semi-intelligent or enthralled.

The geist shuffled forward and Aster noticed something that made a cold fury rise up within his breast. Attached to the creature's back and running down into the river itself was a black thread. Somewhere, beyond the First Gate, or even further, that umbilical rested in the hands of an Adept. As long as the thread existed the creature would be under the complete control and mercy of its master. Someone who could use the geist's senses and spirit however they saw fit.

Before the geist could take another shuffling step forward, Aster held out both his hands, and clapped, the sharp sound echoing for longer than it would have anywhere else. Then, before the echo could fade, he whistled several notes. The whistle echoed as well, sweet sounds within the harshness of the handclap.

The geist's reaction was immediate. It flinched at the sound, then took a staggering step backwards and attempted to muffle the sound by covering its ears with it's four-fingered hands. As it did so, it dropped the sack and Aster cursed himself for having not noticed it before. Such obliviousness in a neophyte might be excused since there were very few inanimate objects that could exist in both the realm of the living and the realm of the dead, but for a necromancer as experienced as he it was simply sloppy.

He watched warily as the geist lunged forward, plunging itself into the water, as it searched frantically for the sack. It found it almost at once, but not without losing its footing. As the sack surfaced, the current forced the creature back under. Aster felt a twinge of pity as he watched the creature struggle against the current that would take it further into death where it belonged.

Then something completely unexpected happened. Something so shocking that Aster nearly lost his own footing. As the geist's head broke the surface once again it cried out: "Father! My messenger! Please I must speak with you!"

The geist was speaking with the voice of Aster's youngest daughter, Lily.

Aster swore, his hands immediately seeking the third bell on his bandoleer, which he drew from its pouch. The geist seemed to sense the power waiting restlessly within the bell because it began to struggle against the current with a renewed vigor. In Aster's hand the bell seemed to be trying to ring itself as it gave a twitch of its own accord against his palm, but Aster was well used to this tricksome bell and brought it under control, swinging it backwards, forwards, and then in a sort of odd figure eight pattern. The sound, all from one bell, were very different to each other, but somehow similar nonetheless. They made a little marching tune, a calling ring, the clatter of approaching steps on cobblestone.

The geist, now caught in the grip of Aster's spell, regained its footing and began slogging back up the river; the sack still in hand. Once it was within touching distance Aster stilled the clapper of the bell with his fingers and returned it to the bandoleer.

"Speak," he demanded of the geist, his voice ringing with a power of its own as his hand came to rest atop the pouch that contained a bell slightly larger than the one he'd just used. The threat in the motion was clear – speak now, or be made to.

"Thank you for preventing my messenger from being pulled beyond the First Gate," said the geist, once again speaking with the voice of his daughter. "I wouldn't have had the strength to send him forth again and it is urgent that I speak with you."

"Surely there are easier ways of contacting me," Aster joked half-heartedly, a leaden feeling taking up residence in his stomach. If the messenger truly was Lily's, and he had no reason to doubt that it was, then she herself was somewhere within death and unable to return to the realm of the living. And there were only two things that that could mean: either she had been trapped by something that should have passed beyond the Final Gate, or she herself was dead.

The geist shook its head, then spoke. Its words chilling Aster's blood in a way the river hadn't.

"Voldemort has come to Godric's Hollow."

As Lily's voice washed over him, a vision took root in his mind; vivid images of the events she was describing were blossoming behind his eyes as though the memories of the attack were ones he'd lived through himself.

"The wards fell and we knew it had to be him. We tried to use the floo to escape, but it was blocked – just as it had been with the McKinnons…. James told me to take Harry and run – that he would hold him off as long as he could…. I could hear the Dark Lord laughing as he murdered my husband…. I was in the nursery with Harry when he came for us. He told me to stand aside – that he only wanted to kill my son – but I refused! He tried anyway, but I got in the way of the spell – that spell – and now I'm dead and he's alone with my baby, Daddy! Please you've got to save Harry!"

Towards the end, as her voice became shrill and frantic, Aster wrenched himself from the memory as green light began to flood his vision, but, even then, he felt the echo of his daughter's death. He wasn't the only one effected by the memory of the Killing Curse; the umbilical attached to the geist's back was writhing in the ater like a beheaded snake.

"Please, Daddy, you've got to get Harry!" wailed the geist, trying to shove the sack into Aster's hands. "You must save him!"

"I will, Lily," he swore, reaching out and plucking the sack from the geist's fingers. "I swear I'll get Harry."

All at once the geist's movements stilled and it allowed the current to take hold of it once again. Aster watched, fingers white knuckled around the neck of the sack, as the geist began to drift away. He heard it utter a quiet, "thank you," as it was carried through the First Gate, which roared as it always did when something passed its falls.

Heart heavy, Aster turned and began making his way back against the current to a point where he could easily return to life.

As always, he felt a wave of nausea rise within him as the warmth of Life returned to his death-chilled body. The sensation was familiar enough that he could ignore it and instead focus his attention on the sack he now held in his hand.

The geist was gone. Its manifestation in the living world having vanished as the spirit animating it had pasted beyond the First Gate. The only sign that it had ever been there at all was the little mound of grave mold at Aster's feet. It too would disappear with the dawn.

"What did it want?" asked Fea as she alighted upon Aster's shoulder, dislodging the layer of ice crystals that had formed the moment he had crossed into Death.

"It had a message for me from Lily," Aster replied woodenly. "I took it."

With almost mechanical movements he opened the sack and reached inside. From touch alone he could tell that there were three things within. He drew them out one at a time. First was a dagger just a little shorter than his forearm. He didn't need to draw it from its scabbard to know that all along the silver-steel blade would be sigils for breaking and unraveling, written spells that were especially useful for the dispatching of things already dead – the cabochon cut emerald set into its pommel told him immediately that this was his daughter's dagger. The weapon she had chosen when she had become the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.

He attached the dagger to his belt beside his sword and returned his attention to the contents of the sack. The next item he retrieved was also a tool meant for the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. It was a set of panpipes made up of seven small silver tubes, ranging in size from the length of his little finger to a little shorter than that of his hand. Each tube had a corresponding sister in the bells that hung from his bandoleer.

He slid the panpipes into one of his coat pockets, then reached into the sack for the final item within. The carved wooden handle of a wand met his searching fingers and with a muffled sob he drew it out of the sack. A ten and a quarter inches long willow wand rested across the palm of his hand. At its core was the heartstring of a Hungarian Horntail.

Every weapon Lily had had upon her at the moment of her death she had sent to him, so that he might attempt the impossible.

"Fea, I think it's best we get to Godric's Hollow as fast as the thestral flies," he said to the creatures of magic that was perched upon his shoulder.

Fea didn't say a word. Instead she leapt from her perch with a faint tinkling of the bell attached to her ankle. In the air, her dark form became an amorphous shadow, then touched down upon the ground before her master in the shape of a draconian winged horse with a coat as black as her feathers had been and moon-pale eyes. As always, her shadow danced across the ground in shapes that only rarely matched her current body.

Aster gave her shoulder a brief pat of gratitude, then swung himself upon onto her back. He secured his legs around the barrel of her middle in the way that would least interfere with the beating of her wings and threaded the reins of her silver bridle through his fingers. Within moments they were aloft; the first light of dawn shining against their backs as they few towards Godric's Hollow. Each hoping that they wouldn't be too late.