When they were particularly stuck on some case or piece of research, Dennis went around the back of the fountain in the lobby, down the long, barely lit staircase behind it, around the corner to the left, along sixteen doors and through the seventeenth into the little garden. There weren't seats, exactly, but there was a rough and overgrown stone circle in the middle that you could just about perch on and Dennis did, unwrapping his lunch.

By rights the garden, situated in an enclosed courtyard between Ministry buildings, should have been strictly rectangular, but secondary walls had been added to turn sharp corners into curves. They tapered as they rose, making the place a sort of squat ovalish bowl. It wasn't exactly pretty, but it was certainly interesting -- and, besides, the walls had another peculiar property. They contained every noise ever made between them.

Dennis had discovered this by accident the first time he'd found the garden. His enthusiastic "cool!" had sparked off an echo about "waiting for tempers to cool" and his confused "who said that?" had come back with a conversation about book quotes. After a bit of experimenting with the walls -- sounding walls, he discovered, from an abandoned experiment by the department of Music -- he discovers that any phrase already in the store triggers a limited regurgitation of a random matching sample. Originally intended just for singing -- and Dennis would've really loved to hear that, choir answered by choir, harmonising with themselves -- they were abandoned because they didn't discrimate, recording and replaying everything until he stumbled onto them.

So now, as he eats, he recounts his research to the walls, and they pick up and sound back snippets of his previous monologues, of older conversations, random association that builds and builds until the walls outside break down the walls inside and he finds the flash of inspiration that lets him move forward. And if not, well, it's still really, really, really cool.

The forest far off across the fields had a white screen at its edge. Printed on its far side was a sweeping image of cute little semi-detached houses, large "New Property Development!" and "Coming Soon!" messages and a small "Meadowsweet development paid for by the Quantex Fund" message across the bottom. Just inside that, construction workers milled about, wearing the tell-tale blank expressions of Confounded Muggles. Three feet closer, the mist began, faint and thin. It became thicker as it moved away from the trees, and thicker still -- until, over what should have been the freshly dug foundations of a new housing estate and which was now a vast bowl of churning mud, the fog was a near opaque metallic shimmer, like liquid mercury.

"Shiny," said Grace, examining it through her omnioculars. "I have no idea what I'm looking at." She thumbed the lens selector, twisting the focus. The fog twisted and roiled before her, revealing nothing. ( Does anyone have any idea what I'm looking at it? )

A sombre silence filled the living room of Stepford manor, where Lady Stepford herself sat before the trio of Unspeakables, a tiny, frail, almost skeletal figure, her thin, white robes a sharp contrast to the dark green leather of the over-large chair she was perched upon.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you such unpleasant news," Dennis said.

"My husband," she repeated.

"Yes," Dennis said.

"He's--"

( Yes! )