The momeirred awake, Magnus felt like he had been sleeping for decades.

  Everything in his body felt rigid, and just shifting sideways seemed to require more effort than was normal.

  Thehe memories of what had happened before he passed out hit him, he realized there should be nothing normal about it.

  With immense effort, he mao force his eyelids open but regretted it instantly.

  A blinding pain fshed through his head as an intense light hit him full on the face.

  He groaned as his hands shot up to reinforce the already shut eyes.

  "Fuck," he cursed painfully.

  Why the hell did it feel like he had been blind his whole life? Like he was only opening his eyes for the first time?

  And where was he in the first pce?

  Certainly not a hospital… which is where he expected to be after his st i.

  Well, there was the afterlife, or wherever people went when they died.

  But he wasn’t dead, was he?

  He couldn’t be.

  Pain.

  Pai life. So, somehow, he was still breathing.

  But not in a hospital… He would have reized that sterile smell.

  He could smell something stra certainly not the smell of an hospital

  Despite his eyes being shut, Magnus could tell there was someone else in the room. Maybe more than one; he couldn’t say exactly how many, but his instincts told him he was being watched.

  Slowly, he forced his eyes open and peered through the crack of his fingers.

  The pain fshed through his head as he glimpsed the light, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. Gradually, he removed his hands and waited for his eyes to get used to the light.

  He was in a room, alright… a strange room where everything seemed to belong to the 1900s. The design of the window… the weird charts…

  There was, however, no one else inside. Yet he could still feel he was being watched.

  The sensation was s that he felt like the watcher’s eyes were prig his flesh.

  His eyes suddenly rose toward the dull door as if hoping to catch the watcher unprepared, but there was no ohere.

  Right above the door ortrait of a weird-looking man with sharp eyes and a long silver beard. He was dressed in a bck pointed hat and even more weirdly shimmering robes that seemed to sway within the picture.

  Magnus decided it must be his eyes pying tricks on him. Maybe they were still not aced to the dazzling light seeping from the broad windows.

  He slowly sat up and pushed himself off the bed. His joints let out a sick crack as if they were not used to supp his weight.

  Magnus’ focus was still on the picture. It reminded him of Harry Potter.

  People dressed like this, didn’t they? Could he somehow have been rescued by someone who was a Harry Potter fanatic?

  It wasn’t until his eyes fell on the words written on the door that he realized just how weird things were getting.

  Even with his dim vision, the words clearly shone as if they had a light of their own:

  ST. MUNGO'S HOSPITAL FICAL MALADIES – CRITICAL AILMENT WARD

  Magnus felt his thoughts swirling with fusion as sudden awareness dawned on him.

  This… this was just too much, even for a die-hard fan. I mean, who the hell bels their room like a hospital ward?

  There were hundreds of fun o choose from. It could be Hogwarts, Quidditch, Shrieking Sharks, Hogsmeade… the list was endless.

  “Hello… ahere?” he called finally, feeling tired to figure things out. He could just ask.

  But, call as he might, there was no answer.

  “What if…” Magnus’ thoughts began to fill with even weirder suggestions.

  St. Mungo's? But… but that couldn’t be possible.

  Despite feeling very much awake, he wondered if even that wasn’t part of a dream. I mean, he could be dreaming of waking up while inside of a dream—a dream within another dream.

  Of course, he k. Mungo's. Who the hell didn’t? It didn’t matter whether you were a fan, which he was. The franchise was so big that one was bound to have e across something about it from one pce or the other.

  The trouble was… what was he doing here? The pce was nothing but a fial magical hospital in Harry Potter.

  Suddenly, that feeling of someone gring at him returned, and almost as if his eyes khe source, they automatically rose back to the framed portrait right above the words he had been mulling over.

  His already thunderi almost stopped.

  Magnus could have sworn that the posture the man in the portrait held was not simir to what he had seehan a minute ago.

  And… and he could have also sworn that the man had…

  “Did he just blink?”

  What the hell… was this some well-thought-out prank, or…

  “Of course I blinked, boy. What do you take me for, a statue?”

  Magnus let out a shocked scream as he staggered batil he fell onto the bed. His bulging eyes never left the portrait as he watched the robed man ogling him in distaste.

  “What in the name of Merlin is wrong with you, kid? You look like you’ve been kissed by a Dementor.”

  Magnus felt his thoughts shuffling and turning within his mind in a chaotic mix.

  Nothing was making sense.

  I mean, St. Mungo's, ented ceilings, robed portraits of a talking man… the evidence was all clear. But he… he would rather believe he was halluating instead of fag the logic.

  It couldn’t be. He simply couldn’t be within the Harry Potter world.

  The man ihe portrait was now stroking his beard, wordlessly gring at Magnus thoughtfully.

  “Where… where am I?”

  The question, though spoken aloud, was more a monologue meant for himself. But the dude in the portrait seemed to think it was addressed to him.

  His previously hostile—or rather disapproving—look morphed into some sort of empathy.

  “Aah… I see. It certainly makes sense. Poor child. Must have touched his brain...Poor chap, no wonder he looks so out of pce. He must have blown his sense aoor bloke.”

  Magnus sat there, his bidly frozen, as he listeo a talking portrait diagnose him.

  Not much of what was said made sense, but at least the guy had ohing right: he was certainly losing his mind.

  Was this how madness felt?

  “Certainly, certainly,” the man rumbled on in his sing-song voice. “The symptoms definitely resemble those of serious actal magic.”

  He was now looking at Magnus as if expeg him to blow himself into pieces any sed now.

  The staring game went on for close to a minute, with her of them willing to look away from the other.

  When nothing iing seemed to happen, the ma out a frustrated sigh.

  “I suppose ogling and bnk stares are part of the symptoms,” the man said, clearly failing to mask his disappoi.

  It was like he had been wishing—almost hoping—that Magnus would suddenly start blubbering senseless stuff, if only to t his diagnosis.

  “Oh, my beard… Yes, I should certainly alert the healer in charge that you are awake. Though she will hardly believe it… it’s been a whole…” He broke off, seemingly trying to recall something. “Yes… it should be a month sihey brought him unscious.”

  The guy turhen stopped and gave Magnus another scrutinizing look before he began to walk away from the damn portrait.

  Magnus would have recoiled further were it not for the fact that he was nht oher end of the bed with his back pressed against the wall. Instead, he watched helplessly, mouth agape, as the mainier and tinier before pletely disappearing from the framed portrait.

  “What the actual hell!”