There was an old gramophone in the house which never stopped playing.

It was a decrepit thing, ugly and ungainly, corroded and crackly. The burnished filigree around the horn was weathered and pockmarked, its wooden base holding a dusty, warped turntable. It was set atop a small, ornamental stool that hardly looked sturdy enough to support it. And always, always, the same record spun from dawn till dusk, unending.

Harry was in two minds about it: On one hand, the persistent sound was better than abject silence, but on the other… The damn thing had a habit of roaming about the house. It moved like clockwork: First thing in the morning, it was nestled down in the elbow of the basement stairwell; then, at midday, it was in the ground floor library, tucked between a bookcase and a sitting room door; and finally, in the afternoon, it would settle upstairs in the western dead-end corridor. In every alcove it sat, it stood sentry beside a closed door.

The music followed Harry everywhere, echoing over dusty banisters and into every hollow nook of the empty mansion. The songs were all oldies; some were crooning and sappy, with weepy strings or jazzy piano – the sort Aunt Petunia might listen to on Sunday mornings – while others were harsh and energetic, the guitars and vocals pitched loud amid a driving tempo.

There were fifteen tracks in total. Harry had taken the time to count them, to memorize their sequence, because he had absolutely nothing better to do.

It was driving him a bit mad.

Makes the Wind: A Prince Before His Castle | Chapter 1: Norwich