They were skeletons, walking completely of their own accord, with scraps of bloody flesh and strips of cloth dangling from their bones. They each held some sort of blade in one hand, and a roll of parchment in the other, both outstretched towards where Harry and Fan were standing.

Or had been, rather, as they both backed away promptly in revulsion at the sight of the advancing hoard. Harry didn't even know what he was doing before he had swung his travelling stick around, hit the end with the handkerchief tied to it with a decisive bang on the stone floor to dislodge the bindle, then spun the stick around so it was held between both of his hands, like a sword.

He blinked at the wooden pole now in front of him in confusion.

"What are you planning on doing with that?" Fan asked from beside him, her own hand raised with the lamp, as if hoping the light might keep them at bay.

"I've not got a bloody clue," Harry admitted in a shaky voice. He wasn't sure how he'd made his hands move like that, it was as if they'd had a mind of their own. Which made no sense? It wasn't like he had ever held a sword before?

The skeleton hoard though stopped a few feet from them. Although their weapons were still raised, they made no move to swing them down, and Harry held his breath. Instead, they all stamped their left foot in union, turned so they were all facing outwards in a circle, then let the parchment sheets they were holding roll down to reveal a poster.

"HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?" the script demanded in bold, menacing letters that suggested there was a ransom involved, rather than a reward for safe return. But then Harry looked at the picture that each of the posters bore, and his stomach dropped into his shiny black boots.

As the skeletons didn't seem to be attacking, several people were peeping out of the corners of their windows, and some were even brave enough to crack their doors open an inch or two. They all gawked at the image the skeletons were displaying, and one by one began to shake their heads. "No," was the general consensus. They had not seen that boy.

But Harry had.

"That's him," he whispered into Fan's ear, desperately hoping the skeletons didn't notice. Just because they weren't being violent yet, it didn't mean that they wouldn't if given half a chance.

"What?" she hissed back, not taking her eyes off of the repulsive circle of cadavers.

"My boy. On the poster."

Fan squinted at the illustration, then her eyes widened. "Blond hair?" she asked.

It was just a line inking, but from the way they had hardly shaded the boy's hair, it certainly looked like it could be blond, so Harry nodded. But it was more than that. He felt like he would recognise the cut of those cheekbones, the curve of that mouth, or the sweep of those long eyelashes anywhere in all the lands.

"He's real," he whispered.

"He's in a whole world of trouble," Fan breathed back. Unfortunately, they must have done something to catch the invading skeletons' eye, as the one closest to them suddenly snapped its head around and took three swift steps towards where Harry and Fan stood, brandishing the wanted poster with renewed vigour.

Harry jerked in anticipation, but his feet remained planted and he kept his stick held high. Not that it would do much if the skeletons decided to attack, but it made him feel a little bit better at least.

The skeleton obviously couldn't speak, but Harry felt its dark eye sockets boring into him with such intensity there was no mistaking what it wanted to know as it shook the picture of Harry's boy again. "What?" Harry snapped, throwing his shoulders back and not daring to even blink. "I've never seen him before, I have no idea where he might be." Technically, he thought that might even be true.

The skeleton glared suspiciously at him for another minute, and Harry refused to let himself squirm. He wasn't going to give anything away about his boy if he could possibly help it.

Eventually, the skeleton slowly lowered its arm, and after one last bony glower at Harry and Fan, it rolled up the poster once more, and beckoned for its fellows to follow it into the other side of the mist, carrying on in the direction they had been walking before they had come to a stop. Harry and Fan pressed back against the nearest building wall, and watched silently as they marched on by.

"Phew!" Fan exclaimed in relief, blowing out a lungful of air as they finally vanished, and the fog began to dissipate behind them too. "I thought that was going to get unpleasant there for a moment."

"I think it already did," said Harry gravely as the sun broke through, burning off the last of the mist that had been lingering.

"Harry, Harry!" a little voice chirped, and he looked up to see Rocky flying through the air as fast as he could, before tumbling to an emergency stop and toppling into Harry's outstretched hand.

"Rocky?" he cried as the small robin panted. "What's wrong, did you see the skeletons?"

"And then some," Rocky scoffed, flapping his wings as if to shake out a cramp. "Did you seen what they were carrying?"

"Apart from mighty big swords?" Fan asked.

Harry fished up his handkerchief bundle off the floor to sheepishly reattach it to his travelling stick. What had he been thinking, trying to defend himself and Fan like that? "The wanted posters?" he asked, and Rocky nodded. "Yeah," he sighed in affirmation as he propped his stick over his shoulder again, ready to go. "Yeah that was the boy from my nightmare, or as close as I can be sure."