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It was six in the morning. The light was cold and grey and clean, the light that comes from chalky high places not far from the sea. The Grappling Knotwort in Augusta Longbottom's garden was quietly and resentfully seeping back off the garden path in order to make way for the milkman.
There was only one figure at large in the cobbled street; a yawning small boy in a bright windcheater, wheeling a bicycle down the hill to the newsagents, on the way to start his paper round.
And then there was a gust of wind, and there were two figures. The small boy and the bicycle nearly fell over a low stone wall into a garden. Fortunately it was not Mrs Longbottom's garden, which had been known to strip bicycles to their component parts in three and a half minutes. The boy stared at the man. The man stared back, in a bored, arrogant way, and straightened his cuffs. "I want the Longbottom house," he said curtly.
"So did the developer for the new hotel up yonder, and she sent him away wit' flea in his ear," said the small boy resentfully. "And he were dressed proper. Number two, top o't hill."
The man hooded his eyes. There was something weird about those eyes, though the small boy wasn't sure what. In any case, the eyes were downright respectable compared to his hair, which was spiked up and spangled like an icy waterfall, or his clothes, which were like nothing that anyone in the village had seen since the visit of a gravely lost glam rock band in 1973. "Go about your business," he said silkily.
The small boy continued to gawp. The man conjured a silvery-blue ribbon from out of nowhere, and twined it about between his long pale fingers, which seemed to have twice as many joints in them as other peoples'. The small boy watched.
The man gave the ribbon a final flick. It twined itself between the spokes of the bicycle, which ran away down the hill. Instead of falling over as runaway bicycles generally do, it remained as upright as a gyroscope. The small boy blinked incredulously after it, swore, and set off in pursuit at a run, stretching out both arms aeroplane-fashion for balance down the cobbled slope.
The man smiled to himself and continued up the hill.
Augusta Longbottom was waiting for him. The Grappling Knotwort had made a ceremonial bulwark behind her and was writhing to a height of about ten feet, ably backed up by an auxiliary in the way of the cottage-roses that generally crowded round the gate. She folded her arms. Even at this hour of the morning, she was dressed in a fearsome abundance of bombazine and jet buttons, and radiated the sense of righteousness that came of having one's step scrubbed, one's washing out, and one's pinny folded away until teatime. She evidently did not think that this visitor merited the vulture hat, but she was carrying a large black parasol ornamented with what might have been stoats' tails, with a handsome spike at the top which came in handy for poking people with.
"I'll thank you not to be enchanting the Muggles," she snapped. "Everyone knows there's no such thing as wandless magic, and that being so, I don't want to know where you were hiding the wand or what you were manipulating it with. I've no patience for young wizards with dirty habits. I'll tell you now, young Neville's gone to London for the Chelsea Flower Show, so you won't be getting any cuttings out of him. You can write him a letter asking for an appointment, same as everyone else."
"I'm not a wizard," he drawled, and gave her the ruffling bow that befitted a monarch of her own kingdom. "What an impressive Grappling Knotwort you have there. Mine ran off to sea some time ago and I've never been able to retrieve it. May I come in?"
"I don't hold with creatures who have to be asked over the threshold." She peered at him with thin, clever dark eyes. "I'll say this for you, you're doing well to be out in the sunlight without so much as a smell of burnt bacon. Some kind of Charm in the greasepaint, is it? And what does a vampire want with me and mine?"
"You Southern pansy," added the small boy, who had retrieved his bicycle and was now panting resentfully behind a pillarbox.
Augusta Longbottom fixed the small boy with a glare that nearly withered the postbox's paint. "I'd like to know what cause you have to be poking your nose into my private business, you young sauce-box. And I'd like to know what happened to my copy of Practical Gardener that should have been here last Wednesday. You can tell Mr Kureshi I shall be down the hill to have words with him about that, not to mention the sell-by date on last week's biscuits."
The small boy retreated, abashed. Mrs Longbottom puffed the parasol out like a bellows, and nodded in satisfaction as at the slight distortion in the air that formed a bubble around them. "There, now. If it's blood you're wanting..."
"I'm not a vampire," he snapped, looking annoyed.
Mrs Longbottom regarded him with dark-eyed amusement and leaned on her parasol. "I thought you were dressed a bit too colourful."
He waved a hand at the village and the distant sparkle of the sea beyond. The lace lifted and fell elegantly at his sinewy wrist. "Through perils untold and tribulations uncounted, I have left the Castle beyond the Goblin City, to seek what was ours, and was stolen."
Mrs Longbottom gave a pleased little nod to herself, causing the large brooch on her high black lace collar to dip and rise again like an empress saluting its subjects at some kind of funereal durbar. "A long time since I've heard those right words. Ee, but you're tall, for a goblin."
"I'm not a goblin, I'm the Goblin King," Despite the soft menace in his voice, and the proud tilt of his head, he was as back-footed as the small boy had been; and he had a terrible feeling that Mrs Longbottom knew it. "During the Battle of Hogwarts, your son Neville Longbottom - "
"Grandson, and don't think to butter me up with sweet words, because it won't answer."
" - your grandson Neville Longbottom came into the possession of a certain sword, which had previously been returned to its rightful owner, my subject Griphook, by the word and promise of the wizard Harry Potter. I require that sword again. Unless you wish to enter into some other arrangement." He looked bored again, and dusted a rose-petal off his breeches.
"You needn't think you'll catch me that way. Neville's firstborn, it'd be, I suppose," Mrs Longbottom turned the hook of the parasol inwards and leaned over it like a cross between a wise old sea-captain and a Victorian soubrette. "Mind, at least that way it'd be in your interests as well as mine to see that he had one. But, no, it'd be much easier all round to see you had the sword back. Word and promise, you say?"
"I have Griphook's own testimony, given on his sickbed." His mismatched eyes grew cold, and his voice held something very like a sneer cradled within its softness. "Which may yet be his deathbed, given the way he was treated by wizards."
"You'll have to forgive Neville's friends. They're young."
"Somehow there is always someone to tell goblins that they must forgive the transgressions of wizards. I confess I'm surprised, though. I had you down as someone who had more concern for justice."
"Life ain't fair. I'm surprised you need telling that. Wait here."
Mrs Longbottom turned and tottered back through the Grappling Knotweed, which parted with ceremony to allow her through. She returned, twenty minutes later, bearing a silver sword ornamented with large rubies. The Goblin King was leaning against the gatepost twirling crystals absently between his fingers and making friends with the roses.
Mrs Longbottom brandished the sword at him. The roses hastily retreated out of the way. "I told you, no cuttings."
"I wouldn't dream of it." he assured her.
Mrs Longbottom dusted off the hilt of the sword with a large hanky. "Nasty showy thing, isn't it? I'd have expected better from a goblin craftsman. Not that you look like you've ever had your hands nearer a forge than to order rings from a goldsmith, and most likely leave him no payment but a bag of dead leaves into the bargain."
"I'd order rings tomorrow if you'd have me," he said, with another glancing, sun-off-water smile. "Wouldn't you do it? Come back with me and be young again? I can re-order time itself."
Mrs Longbottom made a tchuh noise with her mouth and nose, and looked away into the roses with her fine dark eyes. "If you could re-order my Practical Gardening I'd be more impressed with you. There's supposed to be a coupon for a bird-feeder. Third out of four, and that Kureshi no more use than wings on a toad. Now, if I give this sword back to you instead of demanding you summon your goblin Griphook to give evidence which I'd be well within my rights to do, and the Potter boy too - you'd be a pair, the only thing he's ever done right in his life is settle on a girl who's far too good for him - what'll you give me in return? And don't go offering my heart's desire, I'm too old to be taken in by that one." She peered at him, peevishly, over the shimmering edge of the blade. "Not that I'd call that difficult. Too old to be taken in by you probably means about twelve. Or fourteen, if you're unfortunate enough to be born Southern."
He looked at her. The light came down from the hills, marking the lines in his handsome, young-old face, and like a rushing little wind it was clear all of a sudden which of them was, by centuries, the elder. He bowed with one hand clasped in a fist at his heart - or, at least, where his heart would be on a human - and offered her a crystal.
She peered into it. "That'd do, right enough. What's that the soft young ha'porth's got on his head?"
He bent courteously close to look into it. The Grappling Knotwort hissed at him. "I believe it's a flaming Sorting Hat."
Augusta Longbottom muttered something in which the word 'flaming' featured prominently, as did the word 'indeed'. "Well, I won't say I'm not proud of him," she said, straightening up again with one lace-gloved hand to the small of her back. "And I'll thank you to take that sword away with you. It's got sharp edges, and I'll be expecting a firstborn great-grandchild, some time or other."
"We must hope your grandson meets a suitable lady at the Chelsea Flower Show." Jareth bowed for the final time. "Farewell to you."
She gave a small twitch of her wand and dismissed the anti-eavesdropping spell. The village was waking up; washing was appearing on lines, bleary figures were bringing in the post, and the woman at number five, who Augusta had always thought was a soft, lazy trollop, was standing on her doorstep stretching as she got the milk in.
When Augusta Longbottom looked again, the Goblin King had gone.