Contest winners: i6uuaq and greyniffler
Spanky’s tale continued...
“The day after Silver Conkling saw the Potters off, I found myself spread very thin. A trainee agent woke me with urgent news that Silver’s party had not returned, and there weren’t enough agents left to change the watch. I went up to Sir Lionel’s owlery at once and sent an owl to the RMB office in Blokebury, reporting on the situation, and another to Godric’s Hollow with a note asking if the Potters were all right.
“The return owls arrived almost at once. Blokebury promised to send reinforcements to relieve the watch and ordered me to begin investigating the disappearance of Silver’s party as soon as they arrived. While I was still reading this, the Potters’ owl arrived, assuring me that they had made it home safely and without incident, and when last seen, Silver, her team, and the elf-driven carriage were headed straight back to Mangeford. James had the foresight and kindness to send a little extra with his message: a rolled-up invisibility cloak, shrunk down to the size of a handkerchief.
“Ilona and I were the only agents who had not been on watch all night, so when the relief agents arrived I sent the night watch to bed and went off in search of answers, backed up only by my undetectible wife.
“I put on James Potter’s invisibilty cloak, and Ilona and I hopped on our brooms. We quickly retraced the route to Godric’s Hollow, where Lily forced on me a tied-up napkin full of biscuits, then slowly searched the fields and woods back in the direction of Mangeford. We were flying grid patterns over a wide, dense wood when I spotted movement below. I signaled to Ilona and swooped down for a closer look, expecting Ilona to meet me on the ground.
“I landed silently behind a tall, dark, figure that appeared to be prowling through the woods. As I drew out the knife Zophar Goode had given me, the figure seemed to be sniffing the air. I was just looking round to see where Ilona had got to when the prowler turned on me and swiftly aimed a long, silvery blade at my throat. With his other hand he whipped the invisibility cloak off me – a detail that added a whole scary dimension to the accuracy of my attacker’s aim. I swallowed slowly, my Adam’s apple nearly touching the tip of his knife, and forced myself not to blink.
“I found myself looking into an oddly familiar face – worried blue eyes, a firm unshaven jaw, lined and leathery skin, and a wild wavy tangle of salt-and-pepper hair retreating from the top of a sunburnt forhead. Though he was built entirely differently from his brother, I immediately realized that I was looking at Zichri Goode.
“’Drop the knife,’ he growled. I did as told. He didn’t even seem to look down, but his face darkened as the knife sank halfway up its blade into the ground. ‘That belonged to my brother,’ he said, in a whisper even more terrifying than his growl. ‘How did you come by it?’
“’I visited him yesterday,’ I said as Goode patted my right-hand pocket and took away my wand. ‘He gave it to me.’ I watched his face, thankful that he hadn’t thought of looking for the other wand in my left-hand pocket, and wondering if I would have a chance to draw it. He watched my face, searching for any sign that I was lying.
“’What were you doing there?’ he asked after we had studied each other for a while.
“’Rogue Magic Bureau business,’ I said. I waited until he had fished my credentials out of the inside pocket of my cloak before adding, ‘I was following up on a tip. It turned out to be nothing.’
“’Aren’t there rules against RMB agents accepting gifts from a suspect?’ Zichri Goode asked, with just a hint of wry humor added to his menacing tone. I didn’t answer. I guessed he had already worked out the way Zophar had bound me to keep Full Moon Kennel a secret.
“’What are you doing here?’ I asked, breathing a bit more freely as I pushed the point of Zichri Goode’s knife away from my neck.
“’Searching,’ Goode grunted.
“’So am I,’ I said. ‘Have you seen anyone in this area? Abraxan horses, maybe? A carriage? Or a house-elf?’
“’No,’ said Goode. ‘Have you seen a short, fat man with a lame leg?’
“’No,’ I said. ‘Why are you looking for him in here?’
“’He was expected at the Kennel yesterday. He always shows up three or four days ahead of the full moon, so he can settle his nerves before the place fills up with guests. His clotheshorse showed up this morning without him – ‘
“’Sorry?’ I asked. ‘Clothes-what?’
“’Clotheshorse,’ said Zichri Goode, impatiently. ‘Trunk with legs. Old-fashioned like, so I suppose a modern government wizard like you wouldn’t be interested, but very practical for a gimpy old werewolf like Mr. Nivol. It could only have walked out of these woods without him, if it had walked into these woods with him. He might have fallen down or...’
“’Or been attacked,’ I added grimly. ‘I think whatever happened to my people may have happened to your werewolf friend.’
“’And you suspect an attack?’ Goode said, somehow managing to look twice as intense as before. He handed my wand back to me and stooped to retrieve my knife from the ground. While he was looking down, I chanced to look up and saw a fountain of red sparks rising above the treetops from a way off.
“’There’s something going on over there,’ I said as he handed me my knife. ‘I’ll fly ahead on this broom and leave a trail of smoke; you follow it and catch up as quickly as you can.’
“Goode agreed, and I flew off, landing next to Ilona just as she was about to fire off another fountain of sparks. She looked very relieved when she saw me flying toward her.
“’What is it?’ I asked. ‘Tell me quickly, because Zophar Goode’s brother will be here in a moment and – ‘
“’Didn’t you see it?’ Ilona said, smacking the back of my head. She pointed upward, toward a tree over which I had flown only moments before. From above it had looked like a typical oak tree, shrouded in green leaves. From below I saw that the limbs seemed to have seized up in a spasm of agony. Caught in the branches was the crushed wreckage of a carriage. The carriage. Sir Lionel’s fancy, Abraxan-drawn carriage: small enough on the outside to fit in a little shed, yet large enough on the inside to carry the entire student body of Mangeford’s Private School for Young Witches and Wizards on a field trip to Hogwarts without weighing an ounce more than an empty carriage. The Dark Mark was painted on the driver’s seat with what looked like dried blood.
“Just seeing the carriage, with so many fond memories attached to it, destroyed like that was almost enough to make me cry. But now I also noticed that the tree branches were sprinkled with tufts of animal fur, horsefeathers, and blood. There were scorch marks on the bark, clusters of withered leaves, and even a long shred of wool from somebody’s robe. But no bodies, alive or dead.
“’I’m going to look inside,’ I said, shaking Ilona’s hand off my elbow. I climbed on my broom, noticing out of the corner of my eye that Zichri Goode was approaching.
“There was one body inside the carriage: the house-elf driver named Mitsy. The interior, designed to look like the drawing room in Sir Lionel’s house, was full of smashed bottles and art works, singed draperies, torn cushions, and cracked plaster. The carpet looked as if a herd of swine had stampeded through it, straight out of a mud wallow. Everything was tilted at a crazy angle, and the floor felt like it might give out under my weight.
“Mitsy opened her eyes, as I knelt beside her to check for life signs. ‘I knew Young Master would come back,’ she said faintly.
“I held her tiny hand and didn’t correct her. She had me mistaken for Sir Lionel’s son, a squib who had gone into the Navy the year I got into Hogwarts. Lionel Junior had only been back once, for his mother’s funeral the following year. I realized that Mitsy was too badly injured to survive much longer, so I let her believe whatever she liked.
“’Can you tell me what happened?’ I asked instead.
“Mitsy trembled, coughed a few times, and whispered, ‘Tree attacked us.’
“’How could it?’ I asked, looking out the gaping doorway at the branches of a very ordinary, though twisted, oak.
“’Ambush,’ said Mitsy. ‘Spell. Lots of shadows closed in. Shadows with wands. Flashes of light, loud noises – bangs, screams – I tried to save the horses, but the shadows got them too...’
“That was all Mitsy was able to say before she passed out again. A moment later her breathing became labored, and then it stopped altogether. She died holding my hand.
“I broke the remaining legs off a small table and levitated Mitsy onto it, strapped her down, and floated the makeshift stretcher to the ground before coming down myself.
“’I don’t know who is alive and who is dead,’ I said to a very agitated Zichri Goode, and indirectly to Ilona, when I touched down. ‘Everyone but Mitsy seems to have been taken away by whoever did this. Even the horses! They must have been Death Eaters, trying to get at the...hem.’ I caught myself in time and didn’t say ‘the Potters’ in front of Zichri Goode.
“’We know one thing,’ said Goode, pointing up at the dark mark on the driver’s seat of the carriage. ‘Somebody didn’t survive.’
“The abomination on the carriage made me seethe with anger. I remembered riding in it, with other members of the village school, to formal dances at Madame Hunsicker’s Dance Studio. Ariadne Hunsicker was a large, severe woman with long spindly arms and a habit of wearing a bustle, so that she often looked like a giant spider – a look completed by her habit of knitting lace while watching the proceedings over the rim of her pince-nez. Unfortunately, she also ran a finishing school for young hags. I still blush to think of those awkward evenings, standing in a tight, nervous group of boys around a punchbowl filled with vinegar and cod liver oil, while a group of horrid little hags preened and beckoned to us from the other side of the dance floor. Only the girls from our village had any fun, dancing the hextrot and the tarantacula all evening and taking turns leading each other. Suddenly those nightmarish, pre-Hogwarts experiences seemed like a sacred treasure that had just been desecrated. Plus, some of the best RMB agents I knew were either dead or being tortured by the Death Eaters. Four good agents, plus probably an innocent werewolf with a crooked leg and two beautiful, winged horses...
“’I need to stop at your place,’ I told Goode, when I had ground my teeth long enough to make my jaws ache, ‘so I can send an owl to Blokebury about this.’ I prepared to mount my broom again. Zichri put his hand on my arm.
“’Don’t fly angry, son,’ he said. ‘Think about this. The Death Eaters may like to inflict death and terror, but even they don’t get into a battle this big without a reason. What did they hope to get out of those people?’
“’That’s one puzzle,’ I admitted, trying unsuccessfully to shake my arm free of his grip. ‘Though I think I have a good idea about the answer.’ The Potters had just survived one attack; perhaps this one was meant for them as well.
“’You sound as if you have a few more puzzles on your mind,’ Goode said gently. His eyes bored into me, unnerving in their sharpness of perception. ‘Why don’t you tell me about them?’
“’Because I don’t have time,’ I snapped, feeling foolish as I said it.
“’But you do have time to go tearing off in the wrong direction because you haven’t thought clearly about what you’re really searching for,’ Goode said, even more gently than before. ‘If any of those people are still alive, they are depending on you to find them quickly. So think first – and I’ve found that talking things out helps you think them out.’
“I tried to pull away. Goode gripped my arm even harder. I chanced a look at Ilona, hoping I could get some time alone with her before I owled the RMB, but saw her shaking her head at me. Goode then answered another objection of mine before I even voiced it: ‘I have to trust you to keep my secrets, don’t I? Why shouldn’t you trust me?’
“’Trust me?’ I snorted. ‘Trust has nothing to do with it. Your brother put a binding on me.’
“Goode shrugged. Then, with his free hand, he held out his knife. I looked at it, shocked. He nodded his head encouragingly. So I spat on his knife blade, and he did the same. Then he loosened his hold on my arm, and I spoke. I told him everything that had happened, beginning with the walking broom tree, going right through my duel with Shmedly, the Potters’ narrow escape, and Silver’s successful mission to escort them home safely.
“’So the first puzzle,’ I said, ‘is how Shmedly got through the Fidelius charm over Sir Lionel’s safehouse. The second puzzle is how he deflected all my jinxes...’
“’Assuming this attempt to assassinate Sir Lionel is connected with the attacks on the Potters,’ Goode said pointedly.
“’But of course they’re connected!’ I cried. ‘I don’t know how, but the Romanian plot against Sir Lionel fits together somehow with the Death Eaters’ plot against Lily and James. It has to. In fact, I think the first attack on the Potters was never meant to succeed; it was to lure them into taking refuge at Sir Lionel’s safehouse, which they had also taken over...’
“I paused, suddenly struck by the nauseating thought that all this made Sir Lionel a very strong suspect.
“’But since you had already cleared them out of the safehouse,’ Goode went on, ‘they had to change their plans, hence this second attack last night...’
“’Which didn’t actually target the Potters,’ Ilona put in.
“’That’s right!’ I shouted, eagerly grasping an idea that could clear Sir Lionel of suspicion. ‘They didn’t – or couldn’t – or maybe didn’t want to – get the Potters last night. They waited until their escort was on its way back...’
“’Which gives you your third puzzle,’ said Goode, showing no sign of being confused by my outburst when he couldn’t have heard what I was agreeing to.
“’Yes,’ I said. ‘What did they want with two Abraxan horses, four RMB agents and an elderly werewolf who was just passing by? Why were they taken?’
“’They are trying to learn how to get past whatever is protecting the Potters,’ Ilona said.
“’That’s puzzle four,’ I said. Then, to help Goode follow my thinking, I hurriedly added: ‘Why don’t they just attack the Potters directly, if that’s what they’re after? What’s protecting the Potters?’
“’And the fifth puzzle,’ said Goode, ‘is: What did they mean to tell us by leaving this poor house-elf here?’
“’That’s no mystery,’ I said, glancing bitterly at Mitsy’s body. ‘To the type of wizards who would do this, house-elves don’t count as people. They probably overlooked her. In a way, she was lucky. It would have hurt her a lot more to see the Death Eaters making sport of her horses.’ I sighed.
“’Has this helped?’ Zichri asked. ‘Do you know where to start looking now?’
“As he said this, I saw something poking out of Mitsy’s tiny fist. I bent down and pulled it out. As soon as I unfolded it, I knew what it was.
“’Shetland lace,’ Zichri Goode said, looking over my shoulder. ‘My mother-in-law used to knit the stuff.’
“’Did she make it out of thread spun from cobwebs?’ I asked, testing the strength of the lacework against the edge of my knife.
“’Er, not that I’m aware of,’ said Zichri Goode.
“’Then yes,’ I said. ‘I do know where to start looking.’ I straightened up and told him, ‘Madam Hunsicker’s Finishing Academy for Young Hags.’
“While Zichri Goode looked concerned for my mental health, I thought the real fifth puzzle was: How did I just happen to think about Ariadne Hunsicker, before I saw a scrap of her lacework in a dead house-elf’s hand?”
+++DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #117+++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: How many of Silver’s team will Spanky save from the Death Eaters? (A) All of them. (B) All but Silver herself. (C) One or two. (D) Only Silver. (E) None
CONTEST: Describe something spooky (but not too graphically violent) that Death Eaters would do to a couple of Abraxan horses, while interrogating their prisoners.
[Originally posted 3/18/07]
Showing posts with label marauders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marauders. Show all posts
Friday, December 26, 2008
114. The Unusual Suspects
Contest winners: Dragonic, Linda Carrig, MsJunior84, voldemort_13, Celairiel, voldymortus, i6uuaq, and woot
Spanky’s tale continued...
“During the entire visit to Zophar Goode’s farm, Ilona hadn’t said a word. Other than a few moments when I thought Goode might attack me, when knowing that she was there to cover my back made me feel safer, I wondered whether it had been a good idea for her to come along. I decided the sights, the smells, the sad story of the place had effected her deeply. She didn’t speak until we got home.
“We were met at Sir Lionel’s gatehouse by Eglantine Conkling, the RMB agent I had left in charge. She had been at the Bureau since before I was born. Should have outranked me, but got demoted after the Prewetts were killed under her protection. Everyone at the Bureau called her ‘Silver’ because, twice in her career, she had destroyed a pack of rogue werewolves that was preying on Muggle villages. After the Prewett affair, the Daily Prophet gave her a new nickname.”
“I remember,” Endora put in sadly. “Eglantine Bungling.”
“It could have happened to anybody,” said Spanky. “The Death Eaters lured her away on a fake emergency. When she came back, the house was half destroyed and there were dead bodies everywhere, the Prewetts among them. She took full responsibility, but frankly, it wouldn’t have happened if the RMB had followed James Potter’s advice about equipping agents with charmed mirrors, so they could talk directly, instantly, and securely with the office. By the time her owl got to the office asking for advice, and the return owl came saying ‘Stay where you are,’ she had already gone and left the Prewetts unprotected. The only positive thing about it is that three Death Eaters died in the attack.”
“Tough wizards, those Prewetts,” Merlin grunted. “Dangerous when cornered.”
“Yes,” said Spanky. “But Silver was pretty dangerous too. If she had been there, they might have lived. She spent the rest of her career looking for a chance to make up for her mistake. And against anyone’s expectations, this little garden-security assignment turned out to be her chance.
“When I reached the gatehouse, Silver gave me a roll of parchment, which I had been awaiting impatiently, and also a slip of parchment, which I had not been expecting at all. She had read the latter, so I really didn’t need to see it. ‘Sir Lionel’s compliments,’ Silver recited, ‘and he requests your company in the upstairs parlor. He has guests, very private guests, who must need your services.’
“'What kind of guests?' I asked, noting the impatience with which Ilona was staring at the scroll in my hand.
“'Three people,' said Silver. ‘Man, woman, and very small child. Can’t tell you more; they wore their hoods up and, I suspect, some kind of anonymity charm.’
“'Thank you,' I said, giving Silver’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’ll relieve you as soon as I see what Sir Lionel needs.’
“As soon as we were out of Silver’s line of sight, I handed the scroll over to Ilona. She murmured something about seeing me at the summerhouse and went off across the garden. I went in the back door of Niblet House, up the servants’ stairs – which was a bit tricky, because they were built for house-elves – and knocked on the darkwood, sliding-panel door of the parlor. I waited until Sir Lionel said, ‘Come,’ and opened the door.
“James and Lily Potter were seated near the fire, their cloaks draped over the back of the sofa. Lily was feeding little Harry, who had grown a lot since I had seen him last. In the back of my mind – and this shows the extent of my divination talent – I thought, ‘There’s a boy who’s going to be big and tall when he grows up!’ James jumped up and wrung my hand in both of his, while Lily remained seated but greeted me with her usual frank but friendly smile.
“‘Please excuse my exposure,’ she said, though she had a respectable blind-spot charm protecting her modesty. ‘For some reason, I just can’t bear to say no when Harry wants to eat. It’s almost as if he’s fattening himself up in preparation for something...’
“’Perhaps an Arctic ordeal,’ James suggested teasingly. ‘He’ll need the blubber to stay warm.’
“Lily rolled her eyes. Laughing eyes.
“’My mother always said children are born with the sight,’ Sir Lionel said chattily. ‘If they seem to know something you don’t, they probably do.’
“’We’ll want to start buying warm clothes for him, then,’ James kidded, tugging playfully on the baby’s foot.
“’First, you’ll need a warm place to stay,’ said Sir Lionel. ‘And after your narrow escape this evening, it had better not be anywhere as public as this house. I keep a safehouse not very far from here. It’s my little secret, protected by a Fidelius Charm. It has only been used twice before, and only by people in whom I place complete confidence. So I trust you will be safe there. Mr. Spankison will go ahead of you to make sure it is safe, to light the fires, and so forth. Here are the directions.’
“Sir Lionel handed me a slip of parchment containing directions to the house in the woods that I had only been able to see from the inside. Now, suddenly, it appeared to my mind’s eye – where it stood, what it looked like, and its present condition.
“’Er,’ I said, clearing my throat nervously. ‘Sir Lionel, I’m afraid this won’t do.’
“’You astonish me,’ said Sir Lionel, looking at me with suspicion for the first time in my life. It hurt me deeply to see such a look on the face of my kindest benefactor – indeed, my godfather.
“’I’ve been in this house,’ I said, watching Sir Lionel’s face darken with wrath. ‘I can’t explain how I got into it, because I couldn’t see it until I was inside, but...well, I’m afraid both the secret and the house are busted.’
“’Impossible,’ said Sir Lionel, bluffly.
“’That’s where I dueled with Sid Shmedly,’ I added. ‘It was in my report...only, I couldn’t give the location of the house, because I never had a clear impression of how I got there.’
“’You never mentioned that the house was protected by a Fidelius charm,’ Sir Lionel accused.
“’I wasn’t certain of that,’ I said. ‘I really didn’t know what was going on.’
“Sir Lionel stood up and paced. My stomach tied itself in knots; I hated having him displeased with me.
“’All we need is safe passage back to Godric’s Hollow,’ James said. ‘We’ll be fine once we’re under our own roof. Nothing short of the raising of Atlantis could break those wards.’
“’I myself am powerless to help you,’ said Sir Lionel, still pacing. ‘But my friend here has some influence with the Rogue Magic Bureau. He may even have the authority to send a detachment of agents to guard you on your way. I shouldn’t wonder that, whether he has the authority or no, he can manage it somehow.’
“Stung by Sir Lionel’s remark, I politely asked to be excused so I could ask for volunteers. ‘I will lead them myself,’ I added.
“’No, you have important work here this evening,’ said Sir Lionel. ‘Have your people meet the Potters at the gatehouse in forty-five minutes. I will instruct the house-elves to hitch the Abraxans to the carriage. The Potters will ride inside; your people will ride on top. They do not need to know whom they are guarding.’
“’Understood,’ I said, and left.
“The house-elves were already leading a pair of winged horses down the drive, hitched to a closed carriage, by the time I had my team assembled at the gatehouse. Silver insisted on leading the team. The other three agents were youngsters just out of training; I had only known them for a few weeks. I finished giving them some pointers while half a dozen house-elves formed a pyramid so that the driver, an elderly she-elf named Mitsy, could climb up to her seat. I shivered to think of Mitsy having to fly that carriage through the chill night air, wearing nothing but a tea towel belted around her waist with a frayed piece of string.
“I finished giving the younger agents some last-minute dueling tips, then ordered them up onto the carriage while another house-elf guided two cloaked figures down the drive. The sleeping baby looked like no more than a bundle of clothes in the shorter figure’s arms, as the stooping house-elves formed steps up to the carriage with their backs. Instead of stepping on them, James lifted Lily into the carriage, then hopped in after her and closed the door. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and as a final touch I placed a Disillusionment Charm over the whole kit. The horses pulled the carriage out of the drive, flapped their wings, and ascended into the sky in an indistinct blur, which I could only follow with my eyes because I knew where to look. Then they were gone.
“Back inside the house, Sir Lionel showed me his copy of the roll of parchment that had come for me earlier. ‘Old Slughorn has finally responded to your questions about your duel with Shmedly,’ he said. ‘A tale I find even more fascinating, now that its setting has been more clearly explained. We are left with still more questions...’
“’Such as, How did Shmedly get into a house whose location only you could reveal?’
“’If you are suggesting,’ Sir Lionel started, then bit his tongue and started again: ‘He isn’t the only one whose...’ He faltered again.
“’I’ve never heard you trip over your tongue before now,’ I said.
“’I’ve never wondered whether I could trust you before now,’ he replied.
“I must not have done a very good job of hiding the pain this answer gave me. He had the look of a man who was trying to work himself up to an apology, but having little luck breaking the habits of a lifetime. While he struggled, I quietly suggested that I should read my own copy of Slughorn’s letter and discuss it with him in the morning. He agreed, and I went down to the summerhouse.
“Ilona was seething when I got there. ‘The name-dropping old gasbag finally deigns to answer your letter,’ she muttered, pacing the very narrow strip of floor between the bed and the old iron stove, ‘though of course he addresses Sir Lionel instead of you, and every time he mentions you in the letter it’s “the RMB agent.” He seems to have forgotten the autographed photo he begged off you when you went to the Owlympics. Or the dinner party he threw in your honor when you were promoted after the Penguarts affair. Or the crate of licorice wands you sent to him after you signed that endorsement deal.’
“’He was the one who set up that deal,’ I said, wistfully remembering my moment of fame and popularity, when wizarding children all over the country had been admonished to ‘Be a Double-Barreled Wizard with Licorice Wands!’ I added, ‘His connections, you know, with past alumni of the Slug Club. And you mustn’t forget that, since a certain genie’s curse drove me insane with the compulsion to search for you, I haven’t been quite the blue-eyed boy I was then. Forced leave of absence, forfeited medals, and so on. I’ve been persona non grata.’
“’I’d like to take a cheese grater to his fat, oily nose,’ Ilona fumed. ‘Non grata wouldn’t seem so bad. Good people don’t forget their friends.’
“’All right,’ I said soothingly, patting a spot on the corner of the bed, next to where I was sitting. ‘All right, so Slughorn isn’t good people. But he isn’t bad people, so let’s see what he says, eh?’
“Ilona threw herself backward on the bed, covering her eyes with one arm and extending the other toward me. I took the scroll from her and read it aloud. It said:
“’That wasn’t worth the wait,’ I said cheerfully. ‘The man doesn’t have a clue what we’re dealing with. None of those potions could have been what Shmedly used.’
“’He did make one good point,’ Ilona allowed. ‘That potion wasn’t necessarily connected with Shmedly’s spellproofness. It may have been meant for Sir Lionel.’
“’Yes,’ I agreed. ‘And maybe Shmedly’s old romance -- remember Jonquil? -- is still hanging around him. Maybe she’s hidden by a genie’s curse, and helping him fight his duels.’
“Ilona finally broke out of her sulk enough to laugh. ‘That’s just crazy enough to be true,’ she hooted.
“’It would be poetic justice,’ I chortled.
“I forget what we said next,” Spanky lied. “The next thing you’ll want to know about, happened the next morning....”
+++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Does Shmedly have any werewolf blood in his ancestry?
CONTEST: Describe an article of clothing with unusual, magical properties.
[Originally posted 3/8/07]
Spanky’s tale continued...
“During the entire visit to Zophar Goode’s farm, Ilona hadn’t said a word. Other than a few moments when I thought Goode might attack me, when knowing that she was there to cover my back made me feel safer, I wondered whether it had been a good idea for her to come along. I decided the sights, the smells, the sad story of the place had effected her deeply. She didn’t speak until we got home.
“We were met at Sir Lionel’s gatehouse by Eglantine Conkling, the RMB agent I had left in charge. She had been at the Bureau since before I was born. Should have outranked me, but got demoted after the Prewetts were killed under her protection. Everyone at the Bureau called her ‘Silver’ because, twice in her career, she had destroyed a pack of rogue werewolves that was preying on Muggle villages. After the Prewett affair, the Daily Prophet gave her a new nickname.”
“I remember,” Endora put in sadly. “Eglantine Bungling.”
“It could have happened to anybody,” said Spanky. “The Death Eaters lured her away on a fake emergency. When she came back, the house was half destroyed and there were dead bodies everywhere, the Prewetts among them. She took full responsibility, but frankly, it wouldn’t have happened if the RMB had followed James Potter’s advice about equipping agents with charmed mirrors, so they could talk directly, instantly, and securely with the office. By the time her owl got to the office asking for advice, and the return owl came saying ‘Stay where you are,’ she had already gone and left the Prewetts unprotected. The only positive thing about it is that three Death Eaters died in the attack.”
“Tough wizards, those Prewetts,” Merlin grunted. “Dangerous when cornered.”
“Yes,” said Spanky. “But Silver was pretty dangerous too. If she had been there, they might have lived. She spent the rest of her career looking for a chance to make up for her mistake. And against anyone’s expectations, this little garden-security assignment turned out to be her chance.
“When I reached the gatehouse, Silver gave me a roll of parchment, which I had been awaiting impatiently, and also a slip of parchment, which I had not been expecting at all. She had read the latter, so I really didn’t need to see it. ‘Sir Lionel’s compliments,’ Silver recited, ‘and he requests your company in the upstairs parlor. He has guests, very private guests, who must need your services.’
“'What kind of guests?' I asked, noting the impatience with which Ilona was staring at the scroll in my hand.
“'Three people,' said Silver. ‘Man, woman, and very small child. Can’t tell you more; they wore their hoods up and, I suspect, some kind of anonymity charm.’
“'Thank you,' I said, giving Silver’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’ll relieve you as soon as I see what Sir Lionel needs.’
“As soon as we were out of Silver’s line of sight, I handed the scroll over to Ilona. She murmured something about seeing me at the summerhouse and went off across the garden. I went in the back door of Niblet House, up the servants’ stairs – which was a bit tricky, because they were built for house-elves – and knocked on the darkwood, sliding-panel door of the parlor. I waited until Sir Lionel said, ‘Come,’ and opened the door.
“James and Lily Potter were seated near the fire, their cloaks draped over the back of the sofa. Lily was feeding little Harry, who had grown a lot since I had seen him last. In the back of my mind – and this shows the extent of my divination talent – I thought, ‘There’s a boy who’s going to be big and tall when he grows up!’ James jumped up and wrung my hand in both of his, while Lily remained seated but greeted me with her usual frank but friendly smile.
“‘Please excuse my exposure,’ she said, though she had a respectable blind-spot charm protecting her modesty. ‘For some reason, I just can’t bear to say no when Harry wants to eat. It’s almost as if he’s fattening himself up in preparation for something...’
“’Perhaps an Arctic ordeal,’ James suggested teasingly. ‘He’ll need the blubber to stay warm.’
“Lily rolled her eyes. Laughing eyes.
“’My mother always said children are born with the sight,’ Sir Lionel said chattily. ‘If they seem to know something you don’t, they probably do.’
“’We’ll want to start buying warm clothes for him, then,’ James kidded, tugging playfully on the baby’s foot.
“’First, you’ll need a warm place to stay,’ said Sir Lionel. ‘And after your narrow escape this evening, it had better not be anywhere as public as this house. I keep a safehouse not very far from here. It’s my little secret, protected by a Fidelius Charm. It has only been used twice before, and only by people in whom I place complete confidence. So I trust you will be safe there. Mr. Spankison will go ahead of you to make sure it is safe, to light the fires, and so forth. Here are the directions.’
“Sir Lionel handed me a slip of parchment containing directions to the house in the woods that I had only been able to see from the inside. Now, suddenly, it appeared to my mind’s eye – where it stood, what it looked like, and its present condition.
“’Er,’ I said, clearing my throat nervously. ‘Sir Lionel, I’m afraid this won’t do.’
“’You astonish me,’ said Sir Lionel, looking at me with suspicion for the first time in my life. It hurt me deeply to see such a look on the face of my kindest benefactor – indeed, my godfather.
“’I’ve been in this house,’ I said, watching Sir Lionel’s face darken with wrath. ‘I can’t explain how I got into it, because I couldn’t see it until I was inside, but...well, I’m afraid both the secret and the house are busted.’
“’Impossible,’ said Sir Lionel, bluffly.
“’That’s where I dueled with Sid Shmedly,’ I added. ‘It was in my report...only, I couldn’t give the location of the house, because I never had a clear impression of how I got there.’
“’You never mentioned that the house was protected by a Fidelius charm,’ Sir Lionel accused.
“’I wasn’t certain of that,’ I said. ‘I really didn’t know what was going on.’
“Sir Lionel stood up and paced. My stomach tied itself in knots; I hated having him displeased with me.
“’All we need is safe passage back to Godric’s Hollow,’ James said. ‘We’ll be fine once we’re under our own roof. Nothing short of the raising of Atlantis could break those wards.’
“’I myself am powerless to help you,’ said Sir Lionel, still pacing. ‘But my friend here has some influence with the Rogue Magic Bureau. He may even have the authority to send a detachment of agents to guard you on your way. I shouldn’t wonder that, whether he has the authority or no, he can manage it somehow.’
“Stung by Sir Lionel’s remark, I politely asked to be excused so I could ask for volunteers. ‘I will lead them myself,’ I added.
“’No, you have important work here this evening,’ said Sir Lionel. ‘Have your people meet the Potters at the gatehouse in forty-five minutes. I will instruct the house-elves to hitch the Abraxans to the carriage. The Potters will ride inside; your people will ride on top. They do not need to know whom they are guarding.’
“’Understood,’ I said, and left.
“The house-elves were already leading a pair of winged horses down the drive, hitched to a closed carriage, by the time I had my team assembled at the gatehouse. Silver insisted on leading the team. The other three agents were youngsters just out of training; I had only known them for a few weeks. I finished giving them some pointers while half a dozen house-elves formed a pyramid so that the driver, an elderly she-elf named Mitsy, could climb up to her seat. I shivered to think of Mitsy having to fly that carriage through the chill night air, wearing nothing but a tea towel belted around her waist with a frayed piece of string.
“I finished giving the younger agents some last-minute dueling tips, then ordered them up onto the carriage while another house-elf guided two cloaked figures down the drive. The sleeping baby looked like no more than a bundle of clothes in the shorter figure’s arms, as the stooping house-elves formed steps up to the carriage with their backs. Instead of stepping on them, James lifted Lily into the carriage, then hopped in after her and closed the door. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and as a final touch I placed a Disillusionment Charm over the whole kit. The horses pulled the carriage out of the drive, flapped their wings, and ascended into the sky in an indistinct blur, which I could only follow with my eyes because I knew where to look. Then they were gone.
“Back inside the house, Sir Lionel showed me his copy of the roll of parchment that had come for me earlier. ‘Old Slughorn has finally responded to your questions about your duel with Shmedly,’ he said. ‘A tale I find even more fascinating, now that its setting has been more clearly explained. We are left with still more questions...’
“’Such as, How did Shmedly get into a house whose location only you could reveal?’
“’If you are suggesting,’ Sir Lionel started, then bit his tongue and started again: ‘He isn’t the only one whose...’ He faltered again.
“’I’ve never heard you trip over your tongue before now,’ I said.
“’I’ve never wondered whether I could trust you before now,’ he replied.
“I must not have done a very good job of hiding the pain this answer gave me. He had the look of a man who was trying to work himself up to an apology, but having little luck breaking the habits of a lifetime. While he struggled, I quietly suggested that I should read my own copy of Slughorn’s letter and discuss it with him in the morning. He agreed, and I went down to the summerhouse.
“Ilona was seething when I got there. ‘The name-dropping old gasbag finally deigns to answer your letter,’ she muttered, pacing the very narrow strip of floor between the bed and the old iron stove, ‘though of course he addresses Sir Lionel instead of you, and every time he mentions you in the letter it’s “the RMB agent.” He seems to have forgotten the autographed photo he begged off you when you went to the Owlympics. Or the dinner party he threw in your honor when you were promoted after the Penguarts affair. Or the crate of licorice wands you sent to him after you signed that endorsement deal.’
“’He was the one who set up that deal,’ I said, wistfully remembering my moment of fame and popularity, when wizarding children all over the country had been admonished to ‘Be a Double-Barreled Wizard with Licorice Wands!’ I added, ‘His connections, you know, with past alumni of the Slug Club. And you mustn’t forget that, since a certain genie’s curse drove me insane with the compulsion to search for you, I haven’t been quite the blue-eyed boy I was then. Forced leave of absence, forfeited medals, and so on. I’ve been persona non grata.’
“’I’d like to take a cheese grater to his fat, oily nose,’ Ilona fumed. ‘Non grata wouldn’t seem so bad. Good people don’t forget their friends.’
“’All right,’ I said soothingly, patting a spot on the corner of the bed, next to where I was sitting. ‘All right, so Slughorn isn’t good people. But he isn’t bad people, so let’s see what he says, eh?’
“Ilona threw herself backward on the bed, covering her eyes with one arm and extending the other toward me. I took the scroll from her and read it aloud. It said:
Your Honor,"'That isn’t it,’ I grumbled. ‘When that table hit him in the windstorm, you could see that it hurt.’ Ilona waved me onward. I went back to the letter."
I have researched the types of potions that might meet the description that the RMB agent gave, and that might have the effect of making Mr. Shmedly immune to the agent’s allegedly accurate spellcasting. Before I get to my findings, though, I feel compelled to express my shock and regret at the choices Mr. Shmedly has made. At one point I was convinced that he had a promising career ahead of him. I assure you that I have no ties with Mr. Shmedly or his family at present.
And now more bad news. There are actually several different potions that could potentially be involved here; or perhaps a combination of potions, a tricky and dangerous art in itself.
First, there is the Achilles Unguent, generally a reddish-brown, oily mixture that, when rubbed into the skin, makes the body impenetrable for several hours. The Achilles Unguent has been known to guard against spears, rocks, swords, arrows, and such things, but I have never heard of it being tested against spells.
Another possibility is that the potion wasn’t actually protecting Mr. Shmedly, so much as impeding the RMB agent. For example, some vampires prepare a blood-red, fizzy concoction that I like to call Draculessence. Poured into, say, a town well, it causes conflict and disorder, which I am told the vampires find entertaining. I’m not sure I can support the rumors that they use this potion to “separate weak animals from the herd,” as it were. But sadly, there has been very little impartial scholarship on the subject of undead potionlore. Could not the agent have been, perhaps, confused and weakened by the potion that seemingly spilled on him?“’You weren’t,’ Ilona assured me as I continued reading."
Perhaps the RMB agent’s recollections were inaccurate. If so, and if the potion was actually dark brown instead of red, it might have been Liquid Armor. This was allegedly invented by Merlin the Hirsute as a metal-polish, to provide added hardness to the armor of certain knights he favored. The recipe was preserved in the 13th-century manuscript of Reverential Sneed, and I seem to recall Mr. Shmedly quoting from Sneed in one of his N.E.W.T.-level papers. According to Sneed, Liquid Armor can be applied to any material, including cloth, to make it as hard as steel. The advantage of adding this to steel armor was to make thinner, lighter armor just as strong as the heavy stuff.“I stopped reading at that point and stuffed the parchment into the stove. I enjoyed watching it burn.
Similar to Liquid Armor in its effect, but bright blue in color, is the concentrate of Shieldberry Juice. However, it definitely doesn’t provide protection against spells; it only protects the drinker from physical trauma. However, when mixed with an iron-rich vitamin supplement, it turns a dark, reddish-purple and causes an unusual side effect, discovered by the unfortunate Milo the Magnetic. If Mr. Shmedly has been taking this mixture, he may be more mineral than man by now. The only things that can hurt him, in that event, are powerful magnets and blast furnaces. So Mr. Shmedly’s claim that “vitamins” were responsible for his invulnerabilty may have been truthful.
One must also consider the gruesome possibility that the phial contained giant blood. It is difficult to say what would happen to a wizard who received infusions of giant blood. If he survived, it might make him impervious to spells. However, it might also destroy his ability to do magic. It might also account for the sickly, if not dead and rotting, odor that surrounded Mr. Shmedly. This could seriously compromise his health. Or, perhaps worse, it could make him smell like a giant.
None of these concoctions are known to scream when spilled. However, the scream may have come from the flask itself. Some of my potion-making equipment has been ensorcelled to tell me when a potion is ready, or when an ingredient has turned bad. There are days when my pantry is so full of mutterings that I can’t concentrate.
Please also consider the likelihood that the potion was not, in fact, connected with Mr. Shmedly’s alleged invulnerability. The building, or the room, may have been shielded by a defensive spell that would dampen the effects of any magic directed against the caster. The RMB agent may have been battling a very clever illusion.
There are even stories of certain wizards “slaving” their magic to another user, a type sorcerer who feeds off the magical power of others to become more powerful. If Mr. Shmedly has done this, I should be very concerned for him. He will have only a very limited amount of magic at his disposal, and using too much of it may result in loss of all powers or even shorten his life. However, one does hear occasionally of a witch or wizard who donated his or her powers to another, of their own free will, usually motivated by a fanatical belief in a “cause” represented by the receiving wizard, but occasionally given in exchange for certain gifts...such as invulnerability.
Lastly, far be it from me to question the reliability of the RMB agent involved, but when you consider certain gaps in his story, combined with spots on the agent’s record...
“’That wasn’t worth the wait,’ I said cheerfully. ‘The man doesn’t have a clue what we’re dealing with. None of those potions could have been what Shmedly used.’
“’He did make one good point,’ Ilona allowed. ‘That potion wasn’t necessarily connected with Shmedly’s spellproofness. It may have been meant for Sir Lionel.’
“’Yes,’ I agreed. ‘And maybe Shmedly’s old romance -- remember Jonquil? -- is still hanging around him. Maybe she’s hidden by a genie’s curse, and helping him fight his duels.’
“Ilona finally broke out of her sulk enough to laugh. ‘That’s just crazy enough to be true,’ she hooted.
“’It would be poetic justice,’ I chortled.
“I forget what we said next,” Spanky lied. “The next thing you’ll want to know about, happened the next morning....”
+++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Does Shmedly have any werewolf blood in his ancestry?
CONTEST: Describe an article of clothing with unusual, magical properties.
[Originally posted 3/8/07]
111. An Elopement Postponed
"Grand Prize" contest winners: voldymortus, jatibbal, zanaboo
Honorable mentions: i6uuaq, Norman Greene, pdhorner, swing667, dele, PotterPig, TWZRD, _houdini, charlottexgf, theotherminister, Dragonic, Poet, and rory86
The group of thinly disguised witches and wizards muttered to each other around the dingy parlor table. Once again, their leader was missing.
“I went by The Drains this morning,” said Joe Albuquerque, who was disguised as a Japanese tourist. “The doorman hasn’t seen him since Christmas. I tried to peek through the windows, but they were on screensaver mode.”
“What’s that?” Endora said while digging under her fake nose to scratch her real one.
“Tinted pitch black, covered by an unbreakable charm, and locked by the sort of spell that only a password can open.”
“Curious,” said Merlin, noticing the uneasy look that passed between Endora and Spanky.
“Then it’s a good job I found this note,” Sadie said cheerfully, pulling a thin, tightly rolled strip of paper out from under her veil — Endora shuddered to think where it had been hidden — and unrolling it between her agile hands.
“It says — ahem — ‘Esteemed colleagues, please be patient during my extended absence. I am deeply embarrassed to confess that my erstwhile mishap involving a waterfall, a crystal cave, and a hag wearing a tooth-studded vest has happened again. Though I do not think it will take long to escape, there are other things I must do before I can join you again. Until then, please continue to gather at the usual time and place, and amuse yourselves as you see fit. I hope that I can soon furnish you with a means of following my exploits. Yours in fellowship, H.’”
“Well, that leaves us nothing to do except drink and swap stories,” Joe said wistfully, though perhaps owing to the unfamiliarity of his new disguise, he looked oddly elated by the prospect. “Where were we last time?”
“I had just finished telling mine,” said Merlin. “There’s nothing else to tell about except odd jobs and broomstick races.”
“No, thank you,” Sadie muttered, rolling her eyes.
“I still don’t think we’ve heard all of Spanky’s story,” Endora chirped. “The last bit I can remember had to do with the night Harry Potter was born.”
“Oh, yes!” said Sadie enthusiastically. “That was when you located Ilona. Did you marry her right away?”
“Was it a lovely wedding?” Endora gushed.
“Were there any werewolves on the guest list?” Merlin suggested.
“Give,” said Joe, with an ironic flick of his eyebrow.
“All right!” Spanky cried, gesturing for peace with both hands. Then, after tugging his hood forward, he resumed his long-suspended tale with a sigh.
“After all the commotion with the Death Eaters, and the genie, and Harry’s birth, and so on, we were all questioned by Aurors and checked out by healers, and then there was a bit of cleaning up. By this time I had realized my mistake, in telling the genie that I wished to see Ilona again. No one else could see her; it was as if she existed for me alone. Had I been able to tell anyone that I could see her, they would have thought me mad; but some freak accident thwarted my every attempt to explain that Ilona was right there. A colossal thunderclap would come out of the clear sky, or a rack of pots and pans would come off the kitchen wall, or if I tried to sign it, a gust of wind would blow through the room and put out all the lamps.”
One of the oil lamps on the parlor wall flickered as if in sympathy with Spanky’s tale. He coughed and went on:
“I tried to write to Ilona’s parents about finding her, and wanting to marry her, but every time I got to that point in my letter, either the quill would drop a massive ink blot covering an entire paragraph, or a spark from the fireplace would ignite the page, or a draft would blow it out the window. Once, when I had done everything in my power to prevent these things from happening, I had actually finished the letter and was about to tie it to my owl’s leg when a huge bat flew down from the rafters and snatched it out of my hand.”
“The owl’s leg?” Endora gasped.
“No, the letter,” snapped Merlin, smacking the back of Endora’s head.
“My brother Festus,” said Sadie, “once tried to compete with the Owl Post Service, only using bats instead of owls.” She shook her head grimly.
“What happened?” asked Spanky, momentarily dropping the thread of his story.
“Turns out owls are a bit higher on the food chain,” Sadie said, and left it at that.
Before Spanky could question her further, Joe cut in: “At any rate, you were saying...?”
Spanky shook his head, shrugged, and continued: “It was a problem. We couldn’t get legally married. No one would license us to marry without seeing proof of the bride’s existence. Family, friends, ministers, judges — none of them could see her or hear her. We couldn’t even declare ourselves married, because there was no way to explain Ilona’s condition. The problem wasn’t merely making people believe, but even getting them to understand what was going on.
“Ilona didn’t want to start living together without getting married, but ever since the Owlympics she had been lonelier than a ghost. No one could see her, hear her, or detect her presence in any way; it was a miracle that she survived at all. Now, at least, one person recognized that she was there. It was the only way she could live. So we wrote out our vows on parchment — knowing that if anyone tried to read it, the parchment would probably crumble into pieces — signed and dated it, and sealed it with an ensorcelled wafer, ensuring that it could not be opened until after Ilona was freed from the djinn curse. From that time on, we considered ourselves married, and I was even able to speak of her as my wife, so long as I didn’t try to explain her whereabouts.”
Endora raised her hand tentatively. “So your marriage...”
“Wasn’t a matter of public record until after our Gringotts caper, when the third djinn finally removed the curse,” said Spanky. “That’s when the scroll was unsealed, and the Hogsmeade magistrate officially made our marriage license retroactive to the date we signed the scroll. You can’t imagine how many difficulties this has cleared up...our children’s schools, healers, neighbors...but never mind that now. The Potters had Harry, and Ilona and I had each other, and even though the times were pretty dangerous, we were all very happy.
“My supervisors at the RMB noted the improvement in my behavior, and I was allowed to return to full duty for the first time since the Owlympics. This made our living situation a bit more comfortable. Even better was when Ilona found out that, by leaving anonymous tips, she could continue battling dark magic, and was especially effective in ‘undercover’ situations because nobody could tell that she was there. This didn’t bring in any income, but she did it because she felt it was right. The RMB is only now recognizing how much she has done for them all these years.”
“Wow,” breathed Sadie. “But...er...what does this have to do with...?”
The dark hood turned slowly toward her, and Sadie gulped.
“What I mean is, do go on,” she said in a rush.
“My first RMB assignment following the Godric’s Hollow incident was the one that eventually put me on the trail of a Death Eater who planned to make Harry Potter’s first Christmas his last. I was put in charge of security for the British entrant in that year’s All-Europe Wizarding Garden Contest. The contestants were generally very wealthy, very fussy, very determined to win — and very concerned about their competitors spying on them, stealing their ideas, or sabotaging their gardens.
“That year, the British champion happened to be my old friend, Sir Lionel Niblet. I was already very familiar with his grounds, having played on them and even worked on them during my youth. I knew that half of my job would be easy: I wouldn’t have to work very hard to keep Sir Lionel out of trouble. Most of the RMB agents working the contest spent so much time keeping tabs on their hosts that the gardens mostly had to protect themselves. But Sir Lionel was a fair player, and his gardens had a good deal of protection of their own. So at first, the assignment looked like a pleasant vacation, even a honeymoon.”
“What kind of protection?” Merlin asked, before Joe could say, “And then what?”
“There were screaming gargoyles at intervals around the perimeter, and fence fungus that grew all over the walls around Sir Lionel’s prize garden.”
“Fence fungus?” asked Endora.
“When crushed, it gives off a gas that puts intruders to sleep,” said Spanky. “Also, they had stone scaregnomes, and flowers that sprayed an anti-pest venom, and medusa nettle hedges— ”
“I’ve seen those,” said Sadie, bitterly. “Stinging, clinging little gits, once they get a hold of you, only the voice of their owner will induce them to let go.”
“Very good deterrent for intruders,” Spanky agreed. “My favorite, though, were the pirate frogs that guarded the freshwater oysters and their transparent pearls. Any would-be pearl thief had only to hear the pirate frogs’ distinctive croak, which sounds closer to ‘Shiver me, shiver me, timbers, timbers’ than ‘Ribbit, ribbit,’ and he would run for dear life.”
“I thought pirate frogs were a garden pest,” Merlin remarked.
“Only if you don’t pay them tribute,” Spanky argued. “Then they plunder and pillage every flowerbed in sight. But throw a few galleons into their pond now and then, and they come over to your side. Good at pest control, too. After the pirate frogs moved in, he never had to spray against coin beetles.”
“What beetles?” Endora demanded, digging in her ear. “I thought you said coin beetles.”
“Beastly insects,” Spanky went on. “They were destroying Sir Lionel’s money tree.”
Sadie coughed up a mouthful of firewhisky.
“This even I’ve never heard of,” she wheezed, an awed gleam in her eye.
“They’re not as good as they sound,” Joe assured her knowledgeably. “All they do is exchange money; they don’t create it.”
“Exactly,” said Spanky. “If you need to change galleons into sickles, or wizard money into Muggle money, all you have to do is fertilize the tree with money, then pick the fruit and open it up and — voila! — the equivalent amount of whatever kind of currency you want is inside. Money trees give a much better exchange rate than goblins, but they’re hard on the soil and they suffer from a lot of pests, such as the spendthrift vine, embezzleworms, and inflationary fungus. They’re also very difficult to graft, so they’re close to extinction.”
“Where does this Niblet character live again?” Sadie asked with studied innocence.
Spanky ignored her. “There were a lot of rare treasures in that garden, a lot of good reasons for all that protection. Sir Lionel had one of the few Dentistrees ever found on British soil. He used to let the village children chew on its leaves, which did more for our dental health than monthly visits to the dentist would have. He had a Valenvine, which every year on the fourteenth of February produced a crop of chocolate-covered cordial cherries. He had a Truffle Bush, distantly related to the Whomping Willow, that was trained to dig up truffles, and a Flowsha Bush whose cuttings mimicked the favorite flower of anyone who looked at them.
“Sir Lionel always said the key to a harmonious and well-tended garden was to have the plants themselves do most of the tending. So he had spent decades cultivating self-fertilizing rosebushes, self-weeding aspidistras, self-trimming grass, and even a rare variety of self-filling fairy-feeder that, unlike the common type, didn’t actually eat the fairies. It was also a terribly comfortable garden to spend time in, with hammock vines around all the trees, providing a comfortable place to stretch out whenever and wherever one wanted to rest. Right next to the oyster pond was another pond full of everlasting ice, where Sir Lionel let the village children skate all through the summer. And the garden paths were shaded by a portable ceiling, which allowed sunlight to come through while keeping rain, acorns, and bird droppings off the path, and off the head of anyone walking the path.”
“It must have been a lovely assignment,” said Endora, dreamily.
“On the contrary,” said Spanky. “On the fourth day after I arrived, weird things started happening and from then on, I never had an hour’s rest. The first casualty was the broom tree...”
“I thought brooms were made, not grown,” said Joe accusingly.
“I’m not talking about the flying kind,” said Spanky. “I’m talking about a flowering shrub, related to gorse. Sir Lionel liked to pickle the flowers and serve them in a salad.
“The fourth morning of my assignment, I was awakened by a sharp tapping on the window above my bed. Ilona and I were sleeping in the summerhouse, which was basically a one-room apartment built over the potting shed. I looked out the window and saw the broom tree standing there, beckoning at me with its branches. It had uprooted itself and walked across the garden to knock on my window.”
“That’s odd,” observed Endora. Then she observed, “Huff!” as Merlin drove his elbow into her ribs.
“Yes, I thought it was odd, too,” said Spanky. “But that was nothing to the oddness I found when I dressed and went outdoors and found the broom sitting in a lawn chair with its roots crossed, holding my Daily Prophet open with its branches and apparently reading it with its bright yellow flowers. I suppose you can guess what I learned from this?”
“That you should never keep a walking shrub waiting,” Joe suggested.
“That the literacy of Daily Prophet readers deserves concerned attention,” Merlin put in.
“That Sir Lionel’s favorite salad is full of eyeballs,” gagged Endora.
“That your security problems were worse than expected,” Sadie added.
Spanky sighed, and said, “Fourth time lucky.”
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE for TMQ Nos. 112 and 113 +++
Contact Robbie through the CoS Discussion Forum, or through the Feedback System, to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue [EDIT: This discussion is now closed]. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters!
SURVEY for Chapter 112: Will the bad guy in Spanky’s story turn out to be his old nemesis Sid Shmedly?
CONTEST for Chapter 112: At the time of Spanky’s story, Ilona is not only invisible but actually undetectable to anyone except Spanky. This doesn’t mean she is completely helpless. What are some things she could do to help Spanky in a fight?
SURVEY for Chapter 113: In Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle claimed that Hagrid tried to raise “werewolf pups” under his bed. This raises at least two questions: (A) Was Tom exaggerating, or can werewolves be born by normal reproduction as well as through humans being bitten? (B) And if baby werewolves can be born that way, do they ever turn into people or are they always in their wild, hairy state?
CONTEST for Chapter 113: What do werewolves eat when they can’t have human?
[Originally posted 1/21/07]
Honorable mentions: i6uuaq, Norman Greene, pdhorner, swing667, dele, PotterPig, TWZRD, _houdini, charlottexgf, theotherminister, Dragonic, Poet, and rory86
The group of thinly disguised witches and wizards muttered to each other around the dingy parlor table. Once again, their leader was missing.
“I went by The Drains this morning,” said Joe Albuquerque, who was disguised as a Japanese tourist. “The doorman hasn’t seen him since Christmas. I tried to peek through the windows, but they were on screensaver mode.”
“What’s that?” Endora said while digging under her fake nose to scratch her real one.
“Tinted pitch black, covered by an unbreakable charm, and locked by the sort of spell that only a password can open.”
“Curious,” said Merlin, noticing the uneasy look that passed between Endora and Spanky.
“Then it’s a good job I found this note,” Sadie said cheerfully, pulling a thin, tightly rolled strip of paper out from under her veil — Endora shuddered to think where it had been hidden — and unrolling it between her agile hands.
“It says — ahem — ‘Esteemed colleagues, please be patient during my extended absence. I am deeply embarrassed to confess that my erstwhile mishap involving a waterfall, a crystal cave, and a hag wearing a tooth-studded vest has happened again. Though I do not think it will take long to escape, there are other things I must do before I can join you again. Until then, please continue to gather at the usual time and place, and amuse yourselves as you see fit. I hope that I can soon furnish you with a means of following my exploits. Yours in fellowship, H.’”
“Well, that leaves us nothing to do except drink and swap stories,” Joe said wistfully, though perhaps owing to the unfamiliarity of his new disguise, he looked oddly elated by the prospect. “Where were we last time?”
“I had just finished telling mine,” said Merlin. “There’s nothing else to tell about except odd jobs and broomstick races.”
“No, thank you,” Sadie muttered, rolling her eyes.
“I still don’t think we’ve heard all of Spanky’s story,” Endora chirped. “The last bit I can remember had to do with the night Harry Potter was born.”
“Oh, yes!” said Sadie enthusiastically. “That was when you located Ilona. Did you marry her right away?”
“Was it a lovely wedding?” Endora gushed.
“Were there any werewolves on the guest list?” Merlin suggested.
“Give,” said Joe, with an ironic flick of his eyebrow.
“All right!” Spanky cried, gesturing for peace with both hands. Then, after tugging his hood forward, he resumed his long-suspended tale with a sigh.
“After all the commotion with the Death Eaters, and the genie, and Harry’s birth, and so on, we were all questioned by Aurors and checked out by healers, and then there was a bit of cleaning up. By this time I had realized my mistake, in telling the genie that I wished to see Ilona again. No one else could see her; it was as if she existed for me alone. Had I been able to tell anyone that I could see her, they would have thought me mad; but some freak accident thwarted my every attempt to explain that Ilona was right there. A colossal thunderclap would come out of the clear sky, or a rack of pots and pans would come off the kitchen wall, or if I tried to sign it, a gust of wind would blow through the room and put out all the lamps.”
One of the oil lamps on the parlor wall flickered as if in sympathy with Spanky’s tale. He coughed and went on:
“I tried to write to Ilona’s parents about finding her, and wanting to marry her, but every time I got to that point in my letter, either the quill would drop a massive ink blot covering an entire paragraph, or a spark from the fireplace would ignite the page, or a draft would blow it out the window. Once, when I had done everything in my power to prevent these things from happening, I had actually finished the letter and was about to tie it to my owl’s leg when a huge bat flew down from the rafters and snatched it out of my hand.”
“The owl’s leg?” Endora gasped.
“No, the letter,” snapped Merlin, smacking the back of Endora’s head.
“My brother Festus,” said Sadie, “once tried to compete with the Owl Post Service, only using bats instead of owls.” She shook her head grimly.
“What happened?” asked Spanky, momentarily dropping the thread of his story.
“Turns out owls are a bit higher on the food chain,” Sadie said, and left it at that.
Before Spanky could question her further, Joe cut in: “At any rate, you were saying...?”
Spanky shook his head, shrugged, and continued: “It was a problem. We couldn’t get legally married. No one would license us to marry without seeing proof of the bride’s existence. Family, friends, ministers, judges — none of them could see her or hear her. We couldn’t even declare ourselves married, because there was no way to explain Ilona’s condition. The problem wasn’t merely making people believe, but even getting them to understand what was going on.
“Ilona didn’t want to start living together without getting married, but ever since the Owlympics she had been lonelier than a ghost. No one could see her, hear her, or detect her presence in any way; it was a miracle that she survived at all. Now, at least, one person recognized that she was there. It was the only way she could live. So we wrote out our vows on parchment — knowing that if anyone tried to read it, the parchment would probably crumble into pieces — signed and dated it, and sealed it with an ensorcelled wafer, ensuring that it could not be opened until after Ilona was freed from the djinn curse. From that time on, we considered ourselves married, and I was even able to speak of her as my wife, so long as I didn’t try to explain her whereabouts.”
Endora raised her hand tentatively. “So your marriage...”
“Wasn’t a matter of public record until after our Gringotts caper, when the third djinn finally removed the curse,” said Spanky. “That’s when the scroll was unsealed, and the Hogsmeade magistrate officially made our marriage license retroactive to the date we signed the scroll. You can’t imagine how many difficulties this has cleared up...our children’s schools, healers, neighbors...but never mind that now. The Potters had Harry, and Ilona and I had each other, and even though the times were pretty dangerous, we were all very happy.
“My supervisors at the RMB noted the improvement in my behavior, and I was allowed to return to full duty for the first time since the Owlympics. This made our living situation a bit more comfortable. Even better was when Ilona found out that, by leaving anonymous tips, she could continue battling dark magic, and was especially effective in ‘undercover’ situations because nobody could tell that she was there. This didn’t bring in any income, but she did it because she felt it was right. The RMB is only now recognizing how much she has done for them all these years.”
“Wow,” breathed Sadie. “But...er...what does this have to do with...?”
The dark hood turned slowly toward her, and Sadie gulped.
“What I mean is, do go on,” she said in a rush.
“My first RMB assignment following the Godric’s Hollow incident was the one that eventually put me on the trail of a Death Eater who planned to make Harry Potter’s first Christmas his last. I was put in charge of security for the British entrant in that year’s All-Europe Wizarding Garden Contest. The contestants were generally very wealthy, very fussy, very determined to win — and very concerned about their competitors spying on them, stealing their ideas, or sabotaging their gardens.
“That year, the British champion happened to be my old friend, Sir Lionel Niblet. I was already very familiar with his grounds, having played on them and even worked on them during my youth. I knew that half of my job would be easy: I wouldn’t have to work very hard to keep Sir Lionel out of trouble. Most of the RMB agents working the contest spent so much time keeping tabs on their hosts that the gardens mostly had to protect themselves. But Sir Lionel was a fair player, and his gardens had a good deal of protection of their own. So at first, the assignment looked like a pleasant vacation, even a honeymoon.”
“What kind of protection?” Merlin asked, before Joe could say, “And then what?”
“There were screaming gargoyles at intervals around the perimeter, and fence fungus that grew all over the walls around Sir Lionel’s prize garden.”
“Fence fungus?” asked Endora.
“When crushed, it gives off a gas that puts intruders to sleep,” said Spanky. “Also, they had stone scaregnomes, and flowers that sprayed an anti-pest venom, and medusa nettle hedges— ”
“I’ve seen those,” said Sadie, bitterly. “Stinging, clinging little gits, once they get a hold of you, only the voice of their owner will induce them to let go.”
“Very good deterrent for intruders,” Spanky agreed. “My favorite, though, were the pirate frogs that guarded the freshwater oysters and their transparent pearls. Any would-be pearl thief had only to hear the pirate frogs’ distinctive croak, which sounds closer to ‘Shiver me, shiver me, timbers, timbers’ than ‘Ribbit, ribbit,’ and he would run for dear life.”
“I thought pirate frogs were a garden pest,” Merlin remarked.
“Only if you don’t pay them tribute,” Spanky argued. “Then they plunder and pillage every flowerbed in sight. But throw a few galleons into their pond now and then, and they come over to your side. Good at pest control, too. After the pirate frogs moved in, he never had to spray against coin beetles.”
“What beetles?” Endora demanded, digging in her ear. “I thought you said coin beetles.”
“Beastly insects,” Spanky went on. “They were destroying Sir Lionel’s money tree.”
Sadie coughed up a mouthful of firewhisky.
“This even I’ve never heard of,” she wheezed, an awed gleam in her eye.
“They’re not as good as they sound,” Joe assured her knowledgeably. “All they do is exchange money; they don’t create it.”
“Exactly,” said Spanky. “If you need to change galleons into sickles, or wizard money into Muggle money, all you have to do is fertilize the tree with money, then pick the fruit and open it up and — voila! — the equivalent amount of whatever kind of currency you want is inside. Money trees give a much better exchange rate than goblins, but they’re hard on the soil and they suffer from a lot of pests, such as the spendthrift vine, embezzleworms, and inflationary fungus. They’re also very difficult to graft, so they’re close to extinction.”
“Where does this Niblet character live again?” Sadie asked with studied innocence.
Spanky ignored her. “There were a lot of rare treasures in that garden, a lot of good reasons for all that protection. Sir Lionel had one of the few Dentistrees ever found on British soil. He used to let the village children chew on its leaves, which did more for our dental health than monthly visits to the dentist would have. He had a Valenvine, which every year on the fourteenth of February produced a crop of chocolate-covered cordial cherries. He had a Truffle Bush, distantly related to the Whomping Willow, that was trained to dig up truffles, and a Flowsha Bush whose cuttings mimicked the favorite flower of anyone who looked at them.
“Sir Lionel always said the key to a harmonious and well-tended garden was to have the plants themselves do most of the tending. So he had spent decades cultivating self-fertilizing rosebushes, self-weeding aspidistras, self-trimming grass, and even a rare variety of self-filling fairy-feeder that, unlike the common type, didn’t actually eat the fairies. It was also a terribly comfortable garden to spend time in, with hammock vines around all the trees, providing a comfortable place to stretch out whenever and wherever one wanted to rest. Right next to the oyster pond was another pond full of everlasting ice, where Sir Lionel let the village children skate all through the summer. And the garden paths were shaded by a portable ceiling, which allowed sunlight to come through while keeping rain, acorns, and bird droppings off the path, and off the head of anyone walking the path.”
“It must have been a lovely assignment,” said Endora, dreamily.
“On the contrary,” said Spanky. “On the fourth day after I arrived, weird things started happening and from then on, I never had an hour’s rest. The first casualty was the broom tree...”
“I thought brooms were made, not grown,” said Joe accusingly.
“I’m not talking about the flying kind,” said Spanky. “I’m talking about a flowering shrub, related to gorse. Sir Lionel liked to pickle the flowers and serve them in a salad.
“The fourth morning of my assignment, I was awakened by a sharp tapping on the window above my bed. Ilona and I were sleeping in the summerhouse, which was basically a one-room apartment built over the potting shed. I looked out the window and saw the broom tree standing there, beckoning at me with its branches. It had uprooted itself and walked across the garden to knock on my window.”
“That’s odd,” observed Endora. Then she observed, “Huff!” as Merlin drove his elbow into her ribs.
“Yes, I thought it was odd, too,” said Spanky. “But that was nothing to the oddness I found when I dressed and went outdoors and found the broom sitting in a lawn chair with its roots crossed, holding my Daily Prophet open with its branches and apparently reading it with its bright yellow flowers. I suppose you can guess what I learned from this?”
“That you should never keep a walking shrub waiting,” Joe suggested.
“That the literacy of Daily Prophet readers deserves concerned attention,” Merlin put in.
“That Sir Lionel’s favorite salad is full of eyeballs,” gagged Endora.
“That your security problems were worse than expected,” Sadie added.
Spanky sighed, and said, “Fourth time lucky.”
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE for TMQ Nos. 112 and 113 +++
Contact Robbie through the CoS Discussion Forum, or through the Feedback System, to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue [EDIT: This discussion is now closed]. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters!
SURVEY for Chapter 112: Will the bad guy in Spanky’s story turn out to be his old nemesis Sid Shmedly?
CONTEST for Chapter 112: At the time of Spanky’s story, Ilona is not only invisible but actually undetectable to anyone except Spanky. This doesn’t mean she is completely helpless. What are some things she could do to help Spanky in a fight?
SURVEY for Chapter 113: In Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle claimed that Hagrid tried to raise “werewolf pups” under his bed. This raises at least two questions: (A) Was Tom exaggerating, or can werewolves be born by normal reproduction as well as through humans being bitten? (B) And if baby werewolves can be born that way, do they ever turn into people or are they always in their wild, hairy state?
CONTEST for Chapter 113: What do werewolves eat when they can’t have human?
[Originally posted 1/21/07]
Monday, December 22, 2008
54. Locating Ilona, Part 2
Concepts Contributed by: Vanessa, Richard, Gphoenix5, Jake, Bean and hpwestham13
As Spanky’s story continued, he and the Potters and other friends were in the house at Godric’s Hollow, surrounded by a wall of fire:
“And then I heard a voice that was really quite familiar—the voice of Eustace, the death eater who had imperiussed me before. The voice of Eustace, magically magnified from somewhere outside, said: ’You are quite surrounded by dampening spells. You will find apparition, floo powder, and portkeys to be quite useless. No one will escape alive unless you do as I say. And I say: James Potter, come out alone with the child, and we will leave everyone else unharmed. You have exactly thirty seconds.’
“'I told you,’ Sirius spat at James, and I saw him throw a poisonous look first at me, then at Lupin.
“'Nonsense,’ James snapped back. ‘I only wish I knew how they got through the spells.’
“'I believe you do know,’ Sirius growled.
“'I don’t care for what you are insinuating,’ I said, producing two wands from the inner pockets of my robes. ‘But this is no time to argue about it. I’m armed. And I’m with whoever cares to make a stand while the Potters escape.’
“'We are not running away from our home on the first night of our son’s life,’ James said furiously.
“'Your time is halfway up,’ Eustace’s voice roared.
“'I saw a passage down in the cellar,’ Lupin said, daring Sirius to fix him with a look of bitter distrust. ‘Peter, you remember where we saw it? You had better lead the women down at once. The child must be kept safe. Em, Dora, help Lily...’
“'Five seconds!’ Eustace bellowed as Pettigrew and the women hurried out of the room, levitating Lily’s bed between them.
“'I don’t know what to do now,’ groaned Sirius, as he counted the number of figures silhouetted against the blazing light from out the window. ‘There are too many of them. Even with Mr. Stricken-from-the-Owlympic-Records here...’
“'Your time is up!’ shrieked Eustace. ‘This is your last chance, Potter! Bring the child out now!’
“'I’ve got it,’ I said, lunging toward Lupin. He flinched away from me, but not before I had seized the bottle that he still held opposite his wand hand. I pointed my wand at the cork and it popped off, shattering a nearby window. But instead of wine, the bottle was full of old air and a vaguely sweaty smell. Everyone ducked as a loud bang filled the room, and suddenly a fifteen-foot-tall, pot-bellied, pale, ill-looking man stood over the place where Lily’s bed had been, nearly naked, his back bent double and his shoulders wedged against the ceiling.
“'Can’t a body get a few hundred years of privacy now and again?’ the genie said peevishly.
“'I’m quite in earnest!’ the voice from outside screamed.
“'You didn’t used to be covered in gold leaf?’ I asked the genie, my heart plunging into the colon region. ‘And you weren’t in much better shape a few years ago?’
“'You needn’t get all personal about it,’ said the genie, trying to cover a slight belch. ‘I wouldn’t have pulled the gold off, if I had a choice.’
“‘You pulled the gold off?’ I cried, feeling hope again.
“The genie looked irritated. ‘It’s a hard life, being the slave of a bottle,’ he said firmly, while a magnified voice from outside yelled, ‘We’re not going to wait much longer!’
“'I can well imagine,’ I said sympathetically.
“The genie seemed pleased, but said, ‘No, you can’t. There’s a lot of pressure involved. Especially once the spirits wear off, then you get bigger and bigger, and the bottle gets tighter and tighter. Luckily I found a loose scale of gold before I got wedged in too tightly, and managed to work it loose. Then I wished it to my brother in Brescia, who manages the affairs of a wealthy Comte. He was kind enough to send me a few drops of wine, every time I sent him a bit of gold leaf...’
“'The tight-fisted hunks,’ Lupin muttered ungraciously.
“'I’m not out here for my health!’ Eustace’s voice screeched. ‘Come out at once, unless you wish to see me in a bad temper!’
“'It was the best he could do, after all. There’s hardly room for a whole bottle inside that bottle. I drank a bit, shrank a bit, peeled off a bit more gold leaf, and so kept on until I ran out of leaf. It is such a relief to breathe fresh air again, and to be under a bit less pressure—though to be honest, you folks could stand to knock a few walls out of this place. Still, I hate to be seen in this condition. And that light is killing my eyes. Besides, you’re probably going to start making me grant wishes again, and that does SO make my head throb.’
“'I’m very sorry to inconvenience you,’ I said, as Eustace shouted, ‘Don’t make me count down from three!’
“'Ah, well, it can’t be helped,’ said the genie, wriggling around to make himself more comfortable. ‘I suppose you want me to do something about those wizards outside?’
“'That would be most agreeable of you,’ I replied.
“'I hate to rush you gentlemen,’ James said awkwardly, looking by turns at me and the genie. ‘The Death Easters seem to be setting up for something really nasty.’
“'You have to wish,’ the genie told me. ‘I don’t give freebies these days—not in this economy at any rate.’
“I took a deep breath, and said, ‘That Lord Voldemort’s followers would leave the Potters alone, er’—here I caught a glimpse of James’ alarmed face (I didn’t want to ruin his career, after all)—‘as far as their home is concerned,’ I added, ‘is what I wish.’
“'Done,’ said the genie, and the next moment the flames outside had gone, and the room suddenly seemed blind-dark in comparison. ‘That’s one,’ said the genie.
“'For two, I wish you would undo the enchantment that you put on my intended, Ilona Ilonera, so that I might find her again.’
“'Damn you, Spanky, I’ve been right here all along,’ said Ilona, wrapping her arms around me.
“You’ll forgive me for passing over the next few minutes,” Spanky begged of his audience in the back parlor of the Hog’s Head. By now Merlin, Joe Albuquerque, and Endora had taken their places as well. There was a general clearing of throats and muttering of “I quite understand” as Spanky swallowed a bubble of emotion that had started to rise in his throat.
But Sadie had to ask, “What was your third wish?”
“Oh, that,” Spanky said, looking sheepish. “I was so happy. I could think of nothing but to wish the genie free to do as he pleased. At once the bottle in my hands turned to dust, and with a sound like a thunderclap the genie disappeared. I don’t know where he went after that.”
“That was so noble of you,” Endora gushed, putting her invisible hand atop Spanky’s.
“It’s too bad that I let the genie go before I made sure my second wish had come out right,” Spanky said, discreetly withdrawing his hand from Endora’s grasp.
Sadie gasped. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the magic the genie had put over her was rather like our Fidelius Charm. The genie had revealed Ilona’s location to me, but as for everyone else...”
“You don’t mean...!” Endora stammered. “She’s not...”
“There’s no point even telling you that she’s sitting right next to me,” Spanky replied, gazing adoringly at his wife, who gave him a brave smile over her knitting. “You won’t even hear the words I am saying; that’s how serious it is to have a genie as your secret-keeper.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Harvey, anxiously. “I don’t know what those buffoons in the kitchen have dropped this time, but I didn’t hear the last thing you said. Would you repeat it?”
“Never mind,” said Spanky, still sharing a private smile with his wife.
Harvey and the others looked vaguely uncomfortable, and Merlin rather squirmed.
“Well, then,” Joe said brightly. “Let’s get back to our previous topic. Merlin, old man, weren’t you just saying how you told that Rigel character--”
“Ha! Yes,” said Merlin, picking up his cue. “I was saying, ‘Do you know what this goblin pit thingy is, you daft boater-wearing weasel? It’s our grave!’”
[Originally posted 6/10/05]
As Spanky’s story continued, he and the Potters and other friends were in the house at Godric’s Hollow, surrounded by a wall of fire:
“And then I heard a voice that was really quite familiar—the voice of Eustace, the death eater who had imperiussed me before. The voice of Eustace, magically magnified from somewhere outside, said: ’You are quite surrounded by dampening spells. You will find apparition, floo powder, and portkeys to be quite useless. No one will escape alive unless you do as I say. And I say: James Potter, come out alone with the child, and we will leave everyone else unharmed. You have exactly thirty seconds.’
“'I told you,’ Sirius spat at James, and I saw him throw a poisonous look first at me, then at Lupin.
“'Nonsense,’ James snapped back. ‘I only wish I knew how they got through the spells.’
“'I believe you do know,’ Sirius growled.
“'I don’t care for what you are insinuating,’ I said, producing two wands from the inner pockets of my robes. ‘But this is no time to argue about it. I’m armed. And I’m with whoever cares to make a stand while the Potters escape.’
“'We are not running away from our home on the first night of our son’s life,’ James said furiously.
“'Your time is halfway up,’ Eustace’s voice roared.
“'I saw a passage down in the cellar,’ Lupin said, daring Sirius to fix him with a look of bitter distrust. ‘Peter, you remember where we saw it? You had better lead the women down at once. The child must be kept safe. Em, Dora, help Lily...’
“'Five seconds!’ Eustace bellowed as Pettigrew and the women hurried out of the room, levitating Lily’s bed between them.
“'I don’t know what to do now,’ groaned Sirius, as he counted the number of figures silhouetted against the blazing light from out the window. ‘There are too many of them. Even with Mr. Stricken-from-the-Owlympic-Records here...’
“'Your time is up!’ shrieked Eustace. ‘This is your last chance, Potter! Bring the child out now!’
“'I’ve got it,’ I said, lunging toward Lupin. He flinched away from me, but not before I had seized the bottle that he still held opposite his wand hand. I pointed my wand at the cork and it popped off, shattering a nearby window. But instead of wine, the bottle was full of old air and a vaguely sweaty smell. Everyone ducked as a loud bang filled the room, and suddenly a fifteen-foot-tall, pot-bellied, pale, ill-looking man stood over the place where Lily’s bed had been, nearly naked, his back bent double and his shoulders wedged against the ceiling.
“'Can’t a body get a few hundred years of privacy now and again?’ the genie said peevishly.
“'I’m quite in earnest!’ the voice from outside screamed.
“'You didn’t used to be covered in gold leaf?’ I asked the genie, my heart plunging into the colon region. ‘And you weren’t in much better shape a few years ago?’
“'You needn’t get all personal about it,’ said the genie, trying to cover a slight belch. ‘I wouldn’t have pulled the gold off, if I had a choice.’
“‘You pulled the gold off?’ I cried, feeling hope again.
“The genie looked irritated. ‘It’s a hard life, being the slave of a bottle,’ he said firmly, while a magnified voice from outside yelled, ‘We’re not going to wait much longer!’
“'I can well imagine,’ I said sympathetically.
“The genie seemed pleased, but said, ‘No, you can’t. There’s a lot of pressure involved. Especially once the spirits wear off, then you get bigger and bigger, and the bottle gets tighter and tighter. Luckily I found a loose scale of gold before I got wedged in too tightly, and managed to work it loose. Then I wished it to my brother in Brescia, who manages the affairs of a wealthy Comte. He was kind enough to send me a few drops of wine, every time I sent him a bit of gold leaf...’
“'The tight-fisted hunks,’ Lupin muttered ungraciously.
“'I’m not out here for my health!’ Eustace’s voice screeched. ‘Come out at once, unless you wish to see me in a bad temper!’
“'It was the best he could do, after all. There’s hardly room for a whole bottle inside that bottle. I drank a bit, shrank a bit, peeled off a bit more gold leaf, and so kept on until I ran out of leaf. It is such a relief to breathe fresh air again, and to be under a bit less pressure—though to be honest, you folks could stand to knock a few walls out of this place. Still, I hate to be seen in this condition. And that light is killing my eyes. Besides, you’re probably going to start making me grant wishes again, and that does SO make my head throb.’
“'I’m very sorry to inconvenience you,’ I said, as Eustace shouted, ‘Don’t make me count down from three!’
“'Ah, well, it can’t be helped,’ said the genie, wriggling around to make himself more comfortable. ‘I suppose you want me to do something about those wizards outside?’
“'That would be most agreeable of you,’ I replied.
“'I hate to rush you gentlemen,’ James said awkwardly, looking by turns at me and the genie. ‘The Death Easters seem to be setting up for something really nasty.’
“'You have to wish,’ the genie told me. ‘I don’t give freebies these days—not in this economy at any rate.’
“I took a deep breath, and said, ‘That Lord Voldemort’s followers would leave the Potters alone, er’—here I caught a glimpse of James’ alarmed face (I didn’t want to ruin his career, after all)—‘as far as their home is concerned,’ I added, ‘is what I wish.’
“'Done,’ said the genie, and the next moment the flames outside had gone, and the room suddenly seemed blind-dark in comparison. ‘That’s one,’ said the genie.
“'For two, I wish you would undo the enchantment that you put on my intended, Ilona Ilonera, so that I might find her again.’
“'Damn you, Spanky, I’ve been right here all along,’ said Ilona, wrapping her arms around me.
“You’ll forgive me for passing over the next few minutes,” Spanky begged of his audience in the back parlor of the Hog’s Head. By now Merlin, Joe Albuquerque, and Endora had taken their places as well. There was a general clearing of throats and muttering of “I quite understand” as Spanky swallowed a bubble of emotion that had started to rise in his throat.
But Sadie had to ask, “What was your third wish?”
“Oh, that,” Spanky said, looking sheepish. “I was so happy. I could think of nothing but to wish the genie free to do as he pleased. At once the bottle in my hands turned to dust, and with a sound like a thunderclap the genie disappeared. I don’t know where he went after that.”
“That was so noble of you,” Endora gushed, putting her invisible hand atop Spanky’s.
“It’s too bad that I let the genie go before I made sure my second wish had come out right,” Spanky said, discreetly withdrawing his hand from Endora’s grasp.
Sadie gasped. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the magic the genie had put over her was rather like our Fidelius Charm. The genie had revealed Ilona’s location to me, but as for everyone else...”
“You don’t mean...!” Endora stammered. “She’s not...”
“There’s no point even telling you that she’s sitting right next to me,” Spanky replied, gazing adoringly at his wife, who gave him a brave smile over her knitting. “You won’t even hear the words I am saying; that’s how serious it is to have a genie as your secret-keeper.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Harvey, anxiously. “I don’t know what those buffoons in the kitchen have dropped this time, but I didn’t hear the last thing you said. Would you repeat it?”
“Never mind,” said Spanky, still sharing a private smile with his wife.
Harvey and the others looked vaguely uncomfortable, and Merlin rather squirmed.
“Well, then,” Joe said brightly. “Let’s get back to our previous topic. Merlin, old man, weren’t you just saying how you told that Rigel character--”
“Ha! Yes,” said Merlin, picking up his cue. “I was saying, ‘Do you know what this goblin pit thingy is, you daft boater-wearing weasel? It’s our grave!’”
[Originally posted 6/10/05]
53. Locating Ilona, Part 1
Concepts Contributed by: Lauren, Steph, ZapBrainigen, sarah, and Jessica Parker
As soon as they were settled in their back parlor, Harvey and Sadie resumed pressing Spanky for the story of how he freed his fiancee from the genie’s curse.
“But the others will soon make me repeat it,” said Spanky, “And then the tale will become as tiresome for you as it is for me.”
“Fear not,” said Harvey. “Sadie and I may need to use the plumbing at the Three Broomsticks by then. It’s bound to happen to us eventually.”
“But I’ve already been to the toilet this week,” Sadie objected, prissily.
“Shush,” said Harvey. “Come, now. It is intolerable not to know what happened to you next.”
Spanky opened his mouth to issue another objection; but, seeing that it would be fruitless, he resumed his story where he had left off, a week earlier, before being run over by a flock of wild tricycles.
“James Potter had handed out cigars to his friends Pettigrew, Lupin, and Black, and conjured another one for me. Together we walked up the lane to the Potters’ house, where we found Lily resting with baby Harry on her belly. The joy in her face lit up the room like daylight. She was not alone, either; her special friends, Dorcas Meadowes and Emmeline Vance were sitting by her, pouring tea. Emmeline extinguished our cigars with an irritated wave of her wand.
“'Look who we found sneaking around,’ Black said satirically. Lily and Emmeline showed surprise and delight at my appearance. Dorcas, of course, never took her eyes off Black the whole time he was in the room, but even she seemed surprised that I was there. Lily at once started asking me questions, mainly about the scuff-marks all over me, but James and Emmeline told her to take it easy, and I assured her that I was all right.
“'So it’s a boy after all,’ said Pettigrew, who, for some reason, looked distressed. He kept twisting his hands together nervously, and almost seemed to want to cry.
“'Yes, and how like his father he is,’ Lupin murmured.
“'In every way but one,’ James said, beaming with pride as he sat down on the side of Lily’s bed.
“'And he was born before midnight,’ Pettigrew added, even more miserably. ‘A July baby, almost to the last second.’
“'If you’re going to start reading the child’s fortune, I’m leaving,’ Black said with mock gravity.
“'I’m so happy for you both,’ Lupin assured the Potters.
“'I feel as if I haven’t so much lost a mother as gained a brother,’ Black said, even more facetiously.
“'Don’t be absurd,’ James cried. ‘You have a brother already!’
“'I hope you are not referring to that purblind creature who calls himself...’
“James stood up and seized Black by the shoulders. ‘You know who I meant,’ said James. ‘And that’s why I’m asking you, Sirius, to stand godfather to my firstborn son.’
“For the first time in all the years I had known Sirius Black, I saw him struck speechless. His lips moved, but no sound came. Everyone—except, I suppose, Dorcas Meadowes—was obliged to turn away and pretend to be interested in other things. I fidgeted with the quenched cigar that was still in my hand, praying that someone would speak up before the scene became quite embarrassing.
“'A toast!’ Pettigrew blurted.
“Everyone stared round at him. Emmeline was about to make a cutting remark, but Lupin came to the rescue and said it was a brilliant idea, and he asked Peter to help him browse the cellar. ‘Everyone always said Peter had a gift for finding things in cellars,’ Emmeline remarked after they had left, but James was in no spirits to let such a slighting remark go by. ‘I think it was a grand thought, Peter’s,’ said James. ‘Poorly executed, perhaps; but I do feel that the fullness of his heart was behind it. Besides, there are so many bottles down there, even I haven’t seen the half of them. If we don’t drink them, who will?’
“'What was that noise?’ Black said, moving swiftly to the window.
“'Oh, come away from there, Sirius,’ Lily sighed. ‘The danger is over now. Harry is already doing what the Death Eaters had threatened to prevent—he’s breathing the world’s air.’
“'Harry?’ I asked. ‘Is that his name?’
“'Harry James,’ Lily replied, stroking the small, towel-wrapped form on her belly. For a while we all stood there in wonder, watching the minute rise and fall of little Harry’s torso as he snored for the first time. All except Sirius, that is, who kept darting anxious glances toward the window.
“After a while, Pettigrew and Lupin returned, hauling between them a reed-basket filled with chips of no-melt ice and a clutch of wine bottles. ‘You won’t believe some of the vintages we saw down there,’ Lupin said brightly. ‘Some I’ve never heard of. Come, Sirius, have you ever seen a bottle quite like this?’
“I turned and looked at what Lupin had in his hands, and my insides went ice-cold. Sirius said no, he hadn’t seen anything from that label before, but before he was done speaking a strange voice said, ‘I’ve seen one like it.’ And I realized, as the strange voice spoke, that it was my own.
“But there was no time to reflect any further. For at that moment, all the windows blazed with a sudden, ghastly, flickering light—like the flame of something foul and poisonous, encircling the entire house in a blazing ring so intense, and so tall, that it still amazes me that the Muggles down the road didn’t see it.
"And then I heard a voice that was really quite familiar—the voice of Eustace, the death eater who had imperiussed me before. The voice of Eustace, magically magnified from somewhere outside, said:
“'You are quite surrounded by dampening spells. You will find apparition, floo powder, and portkeys to be quite useless. No one will escape alive unless you do as I say. And I say: James Potter, come out alone with the child, and we will leave everyone else unharmed. You have exactly thirty seconds.’
[Originally posted 6/3/05]
As soon as they were settled in their back parlor, Harvey and Sadie resumed pressing Spanky for the story of how he freed his fiancee from the genie’s curse.
“But the others will soon make me repeat it,” said Spanky, “And then the tale will become as tiresome for you as it is for me.”
“Fear not,” said Harvey. “Sadie and I may need to use the plumbing at the Three Broomsticks by then. It’s bound to happen to us eventually.”
“But I’ve already been to the toilet this week,” Sadie objected, prissily.
“Shush,” said Harvey. “Come, now. It is intolerable not to know what happened to you next.”
Spanky opened his mouth to issue another objection; but, seeing that it would be fruitless, he resumed his story where he had left off, a week earlier, before being run over by a flock of wild tricycles.
“James Potter had handed out cigars to his friends Pettigrew, Lupin, and Black, and conjured another one for me. Together we walked up the lane to the Potters’ house, where we found Lily resting with baby Harry on her belly. The joy in her face lit up the room like daylight. She was not alone, either; her special friends, Dorcas Meadowes and Emmeline Vance were sitting by her, pouring tea. Emmeline extinguished our cigars with an irritated wave of her wand.
“'Look who we found sneaking around,’ Black said satirically. Lily and Emmeline showed surprise and delight at my appearance. Dorcas, of course, never took her eyes off Black the whole time he was in the room, but even she seemed surprised that I was there. Lily at once started asking me questions, mainly about the scuff-marks all over me, but James and Emmeline told her to take it easy, and I assured her that I was all right.
“'So it’s a boy after all,’ said Pettigrew, who, for some reason, looked distressed. He kept twisting his hands together nervously, and almost seemed to want to cry.
“'Yes, and how like his father he is,’ Lupin murmured.
“'In every way but one,’ James said, beaming with pride as he sat down on the side of Lily’s bed.
“'And he was born before midnight,’ Pettigrew added, even more miserably. ‘A July baby, almost to the last second.’
“'If you’re going to start reading the child’s fortune, I’m leaving,’ Black said with mock gravity.
“'I’m so happy for you both,’ Lupin assured the Potters.
“'I feel as if I haven’t so much lost a mother as gained a brother,’ Black said, even more facetiously.
“'Don’t be absurd,’ James cried. ‘You have a brother already!’
“'I hope you are not referring to that purblind creature who calls himself...’
“James stood up and seized Black by the shoulders. ‘You know who I meant,’ said James. ‘And that’s why I’m asking you, Sirius, to stand godfather to my firstborn son.’
“For the first time in all the years I had known Sirius Black, I saw him struck speechless. His lips moved, but no sound came. Everyone—except, I suppose, Dorcas Meadowes—was obliged to turn away and pretend to be interested in other things. I fidgeted with the quenched cigar that was still in my hand, praying that someone would speak up before the scene became quite embarrassing.
“'A toast!’ Pettigrew blurted.
“Everyone stared round at him. Emmeline was about to make a cutting remark, but Lupin came to the rescue and said it was a brilliant idea, and he asked Peter to help him browse the cellar. ‘Everyone always said Peter had a gift for finding things in cellars,’ Emmeline remarked after they had left, but James was in no spirits to let such a slighting remark go by. ‘I think it was a grand thought, Peter’s,’ said James. ‘Poorly executed, perhaps; but I do feel that the fullness of his heart was behind it. Besides, there are so many bottles down there, even I haven’t seen the half of them. If we don’t drink them, who will?’
“'What was that noise?’ Black said, moving swiftly to the window.
“'Oh, come away from there, Sirius,’ Lily sighed. ‘The danger is over now. Harry is already doing what the Death Eaters had threatened to prevent—he’s breathing the world’s air.’
“'Harry?’ I asked. ‘Is that his name?’
“'Harry James,’ Lily replied, stroking the small, towel-wrapped form on her belly. For a while we all stood there in wonder, watching the minute rise and fall of little Harry’s torso as he snored for the first time. All except Sirius, that is, who kept darting anxious glances toward the window.
“After a while, Pettigrew and Lupin returned, hauling between them a reed-basket filled with chips of no-melt ice and a clutch of wine bottles. ‘You won’t believe some of the vintages we saw down there,’ Lupin said brightly. ‘Some I’ve never heard of. Come, Sirius, have you ever seen a bottle quite like this?’
“I turned and looked at what Lupin had in his hands, and my insides went ice-cold. Sirius said no, he hadn’t seen anything from that label before, but before he was done speaking a strange voice said, ‘I’ve seen one like it.’ And I realized, as the strange voice spoke, that it was my own.
“But there was no time to reflect any further. For at that moment, all the windows blazed with a sudden, ghastly, flickering light—like the flame of something foul and poisonous, encircling the entire house in a blazing ring so intense, and so tall, that it still amazes me that the Muggles down the road didn’t see it.
"And then I heard a voice that was really quite familiar—the voice of Eustace, the death eater who had imperiussed me before. The voice of Eustace, magically magnified from somewhere outside, said:
“'You are quite surrounded by dampening spells. You will find apparition, floo powder, and portkeys to be quite useless. No one will escape alive unless you do as I say. And I say: James Potter, come out alone with the child, and we will leave everyone else unharmed. You have exactly thirty seconds.’
[Originally posted 6/3/05]
44. Orel Suggestion
Concepts contributed by: Jessica Parker
Spanky's tale continued....
"Obviously, if there was an unforgivable curse on me and I didn't realize it, it couldn't be a killing curse or a cruciatus curse. That left only one option. But the only thing that troubled my mind was the difficulty of getting out of Gringotts when someone had stuck a 'for desposit only' tag on me. But you already know how that worked out. So before the day was done, I was on broomstick, bound for Godric's Hollow.
"I didn't quite get there, though. At the bottom of the road that leads up to the Potters' place, I ran into a No Fowl Play charm and was forced to land. Someone had evidently picked up on the danger to Lily Potter, and had set up spells around the place to keep uninvited guests from flying in. As I was poking around the hedge, looking for a way through, who should I meet but James Potter's best mate, what's-his-name. Now, considering that a year later, he went to Azkaban for betraying the Potters to their doom-are you all right, Sadie? Did something go down the wrong pipe? Can you talk? There, now. Well, as I was saying, in looking back I find it a bit rich that Sirius Black refused to let me come any closer to Godric's Hollow. He downright accused me of being disloyal to James and Lily! Then his friends, Lupin and Pettigrew, got into the act. It seemed they were patrolling the perimeter.
"'No one gets through,' they explained to me. 'Lily's having the baby tonight.'
"'You make it sound like a big security problem,' I said innocently. 'What would make you think they needed protection like this?'
"'Protection?' Lupin said, just as innocently. 'Who's protecting anyone? We're just here to make sure they have the privacy, peace, and quiet they need and deserve. Now shove off.'
"'I would like to help you,' I volunteered. 'After all, I care about James and Lily too.' In the back of my mind, somewhere, I wondered why I was bothering to be so devious. These were people, after all, that I had been trying to protect already! But I supposed that I didn't want to make too much of myself, so I waited humbly while Black sniffed around me, and Pettigrew studied me with those little beady eyes of his. My flesh crawled.
"'What's that in your pocket?' Black finally demanded. Not waiting for me to pull it out, he thrust his wand at me and cried, 'Accio!' A crystal sphere, about the size of my fist, flew out of the pocket. It was full of swirling smoke that changed color, like an oil slick, through all different colors of the rainbow-yet it seemed mostly black. 'What the devil is this?' Sirius gasped.
"'I'm a hippogriff if I know,' I said truthfully. 'I've never seen that before. But I just bought these robes this afternoon, in a hurry too. Maybe Madam Malkin left it in there by mistake.'
"Lupin seized the object and held it up to the dying sunlight. 'I know what this is,' he growled. 'The like hasn't been seen, even in Knockturn Alley, since the Grindelwald days. Up until the 17th century they used to destroy wizards merely for knowing what these were and how to find and use them. Even if I have misjudged Madam Malkin, whom I doubt would touch this thing with dragon-hide gloves on-even if she would, I am sure she wouldn't have let it slip into someone's pocket by mistake. The only folks who own these are as evil as Voldemort, or more so. And they are very careful with what they own, as a rule.'
"'You're talking in riddles,' I said angrily. 'Speak plainly and tell me what I am accused of. But I swear that, whatever it is, I know nothing about it.'
"'Where did you get this?' Lupin asked, still in that growling kind of voice that made me feel like standing very, very still.
"'I don't know,' I insisted.
"'This will loosen your memory,' Sirius barked. He aimed his wand at me and shouted, 'Lubrilabia!'
"But they had forgotten to restrain my hands, and I had both wands out and a shield set up before the spell left Black's wand. It ricocheted and hit Pettigrew in the face. Instantly, he began to wheedle and snivel.
"'Mother,' he said pleadingly, 'don't, please don't be ill. I promise I'll stay in then, and I won't go out and play with the other children, and I'll take care of you...' Then, as the rest of us stood by in shocked silence, he added in a piercingly feminine voice: 'Oh, Peterkin! You ungrateful, two-faced fiend! I just know that what you really want to do is to run out as soon as I close my eyes. And then what if I should wake and need medicine, or an extra blanket? I could catch my death of a chill. You don't really care, do you?'...'Oh, Mother, don't say that! Here, I will lie down beside you, so if you so much as stir, I can...'
"'Shut up!' Sirius shouted with a wave of his wand, and Pettigrew did so, looking smaller and more awkward than ever. For a long time we all just stood about, clearing our throats, trying not to look at each other. Then...
"'Spankison,' Black said, rounding on me with rekindled fury, 'put your wands away this instant, unless you are proposing to duel with me. And you might as well know that in my family, dueling is not a sport.'
"I hesitated, still holding my wands in a defensive way. 'So I am to stand down and let you curse me with impunity?' I spat. 'I don't know about your family, but where I come from, no one can spare the time or money to be a damned fool.'
"'I ought to break your neck,' Black roared.
"'Gentlemen!' Lupin exclaimed, in his quiet but unmistakably firm way. 'Sirius, old friend, hadn't you better explain what you are going to do, and why, on the off chance that the suspect you are about to interrogate turns out to be innocent? That way, you can let him walk away from the encounter, and no blood need be shed.'
"'I still want to know what that thing is, and what I'm supposed to be doing with it,' I insisted.
"'That's what we're all trying to find out,' Lupin replied quickly, with a quelling look at Sirius, who had been about to answer me. 'Now, lower your wands, and I guarantee that no ill will come to you-for now. Sirius, you'll want to let me do this. Hem! Spanky, I apologize in advance for this, but this spell simply has to be done. You know what it does as well as any of us.'
"'Certainly,' I said. 'Since it was an RMB agent who invented it, to save the cost of having a scribe take down a written record of witness interviews. It's a word-by-word replay of...'
"'All right, so we all know,' Black grumbled. 'Get on with it, Remus.'
"'Do you consent to be interviewed, then?' Lupin asked me.
"'Certainly,' said I. 'I have nothing to hide. So long as...'
"'Yes, I know,' said Lupin. 'So long as I limit the spell to relevant conversations within a time frame of, say, three days. Agreed?'
"'Agreed.'
"'For now,' Sirius added.
"Pettigrew didn't say anything. He was still looking pale and pained.
"So I lowered my wands, and Lupin hit me with the curse. And then it all came out-all the stuff I had been ordered to forget about, until I was in the same room with Lily Potter. It was weird hearing Eustace and Orel saying things, out of my own mouth, that I could scarcely remember hearing them say in the first place. But they had said it, hadn't they? The crystal globe was a device that belonged to Eustace. It was called a Styxberry, and among the ingredients used in making it were essence of boggart, puffskein livers, erlking blood, and the hair of a boojum-which I didn't even think existed. When smashed, it is supposed to unleash some kind of power that transports everyone in a thirteen-cubit radius to a realm where dreams and nightmares are real. It is basically a reality grenade, and its use, production, and possession have been banned by every wizard and goblin convention since 1549. Oh yes, and I was supposed to walk up to Lily Potter and smash it at her feet. That's what Orel's imperius curse was for.
"'Well, it's not his fault, really,' said Lupin, ruefully, after the interrogation was completed.
"'No,' Sirius agreed. 'But he can't be allowed near the Potters as long as that curse is over him. And since he didn't know it was on him in the first place, he won't have begun to fight it off. As soon as he sees Lily, even without this Boojumberry thing, who knows what he'll do to her?'
"'So what shall we do with him?' Pettigrew piped in.
"'I am sick to DEATH of being talked about, when I'm right here,' I observed. 'I might as well have stayed in that sack in Gringotts!'
"'What would you suggest?' Lupin asked Pettigrew, ignoring every word that I said.
"'Killing him would be safest,' said Pettigrew.
"'I know,' said Sirius, 'but we've discussed this before, Peter. That option is not to be discussed until all other choices have been eliminated. You see, Remus, what a bad influence you've been?'
"I'm sure the blame is entirely mine,' said Lupin. 'But Sirius is right. We mustn't harm Spanky, since he hasn't shown any disloyalty to James and Lily.'
"'Thanks,' I muttered. 'Now that I get to live, what are you going to do to me?'
"'I happen to have a very amusing idea,' said Lupin. 'You see, the danger is over once the baby is delivered. The terms of your enslavement were very clear: you were to destroy Lily Potter before she gives birth to the child. Since she is probably doing that as we speak, we only need to keep you here until James comes down the lane with his box of cigars. Ferula. There. Stand still, now. Struggling against the ropes will only increase your discomfort.'
"But something had come over me as soon as the magical ropes from Lupin's wand wound themselves around me. I began to fight and snarl and foam at the mouth like a mad dog. I ended up rolling about on the ground, trying to get my hands free, and only hurting myself in more places than I care to name. All I wanted to do was break free and get around the Potters' friends, and be there before the baby was born. But the ropes held, and after a minute or two of struggling, a kind of clarity came over me. I thought to myself, 'What am I doing? This is ridiculous. There's no reason that I need to see the Potters now.' And I stopped struggling. At the same time, however, the pain from my bonds cutting into my arms and legs increased by about fivefold. 'Ow!' I yelled.
"'That's the ticket,' said Lupin. 'I daresay he's getting over the curse now. And look, no sooner than necessary! Here's James coming now!'"
+++ Another Pause for RIDDLE TIME! +++
If anyone is still dying to know, here are the answers to the riddles in #43. Barbara's question was "What am I?" The answer-the human brain. Anonymous asked, "What work do I do?" The answer-he drives a truck (or lorry, if he's British). If you still don't get it, please don't complain to me. That's what the forums are for!
Here's a new riddle from Annatar, who claims that it is "much better than the herring one." You be the judge:
And while the rest of you dig through your memories for the best riddles you know, here are a few from literature. Let's see if you can spot where I got them from; extra credit for knowing the correct answer:
A.
"Out of the eater came something to eat,
And out of the strong came something sweet."
B.
"Alive without breath,
As cold as death,
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail yet never clinking."
C.
"What is this? One slew none and yet killed twelve."
[Originally posted 3/18/05]
Spanky's tale continued....
"Obviously, if there was an unforgivable curse on me and I didn't realize it, it couldn't be a killing curse or a cruciatus curse. That left only one option. But the only thing that troubled my mind was the difficulty of getting out of Gringotts when someone had stuck a 'for desposit only' tag on me. But you already know how that worked out. So before the day was done, I was on broomstick, bound for Godric's Hollow.
"I didn't quite get there, though. At the bottom of the road that leads up to the Potters' place, I ran into a No Fowl Play charm and was forced to land. Someone had evidently picked up on the danger to Lily Potter, and had set up spells around the place to keep uninvited guests from flying in. As I was poking around the hedge, looking for a way through, who should I meet but James Potter's best mate, what's-his-name. Now, considering that a year later, he went to Azkaban for betraying the Potters to their doom-are you all right, Sadie? Did something go down the wrong pipe? Can you talk? There, now. Well, as I was saying, in looking back I find it a bit rich that Sirius Black refused to let me come any closer to Godric's Hollow. He downright accused me of being disloyal to James and Lily! Then his friends, Lupin and Pettigrew, got into the act. It seemed they were patrolling the perimeter.
"'No one gets through,' they explained to me. 'Lily's having the baby tonight.'
"'You make it sound like a big security problem,' I said innocently. 'What would make you think they needed protection like this?'
"'Protection?' Lupin said, just as innocently. 'Who's protecting anyone? We're just here to make sure they have the privacy, peace, and quiet they need and deserve. Now shove off.'
"'I would like to help you,' I volunteered. 'After all, I care about James and Lily too.' In the back of my mind, somewhere, I wondered why I was bothering to be so devious. These were people, after all, that I had been trying to protect already! But I supposed that I didn't want to make too much of myself, so I waited humbly while Black sniffed around me, and Pettigrew studied me with those little beady eyes of his. My flesh crawled.
"'What's that in your pocket?' Black finally demanded. Not waiting for me to pull it out, he thrust his wand at me and cried, 'Accio!' A crystal sphere, about the size of my fist, flew out of the pocket. It was full of swirling smoke that changed color, like an oil slick, through all different colors of the rainbow-yet it seemed mostly black. 'What the devil is this?' Sirius gasped.
"'I'm a hippogriff if I know,' I said truthfully. 'I've never seen that before. But I just bought these robes this afternoon, in a hurry too. Maybe Madam Malkin left it in there by mistake.'
"Lupin seized the object and held it up to the dying sunlight. 'I know what this is,' he growled. 'The like hasn't been seen, even in Knockturn Alley, since the Grindelwald days. Up until the 17th century they used to destroy wizards merely for knowing what these were and how to find and use them. Even if I have misjudged Madam Malkin, whom I doubt would touch this thing with dragon-hide gloves on-even if she would, I am sure she wouldn't have let it slip into someone's pocket by mistake. The only folks who own these are as evil as Voldemort, or more so. And they are very careful with what they own, as a rule.'
"'You're talking in riddles,' I said angrily. 'Speak plainly and tell me what I am accused of. But I swear that, whatever it is, I know nothing about it.'
"'Where did you get this?' Lupin asked, still in that growling kind of voice that made me feel like standing very, very still.
"'I don't know,' I insisted.
"'This will loosen your memory,' Sirius barked. He aimed his wand at me and shouted, 'Lubrilabia!'
"But they had forgotten to restrain my hands, and I had both wands out and a shield set up before the spell left Black's wand. It ricocheted and hit Pettigrew in the face. Instantly, he began to wheedle and snivel.
"'Mother,' he said pleadingly, 'don't, please don't be ill. I promise I'll stay in then, and I won't go out and play with the other children, and I'll take care of you...' Then, as the rest of us stood by in shocked silence, he added in a piercingly feminine voice: 'Oh, Peterkin! You ungrateful, two-faced fiend! I just know that what you really want to do is to run out as soon as I close my eyes. And then what if I should wake and need medicine, or an extra blanket? I could catch my death of a chill. You don't really care, do you?'...'Oh, Mother, don't say that! Here, I will lie down beside you, so if you so much as stir, I can...'
"'Shut up!' Sirius shouted with a wave of his wand, and Pettigrew did so, looking smaller and more awkward than ever. For a long time we all just stood about, clearing our throats, trying not to look at each other. Then...
"'Spankison,' Black said, rounding on me with rekindled fury, 'put your wands away this instant, unless you are proposing to duel with me. And you might as well know that in my family, dueling is not a sport.'
"I hesitated, still holding my wands in a defensive way. 'So I am to stand down and let you curse me with impunity?' I spat. 'I don't know about your family, but where I come from, no one can spare the time or money to be a damned fool.'
"'I ought to break your neck,' Black roared.
"'Gentlemen!' Lupin exclaimed, in his quiet but unmistakably firm way. 'Sirius, old friend, hadn't you better explain what you are going to do, and why, on the off chance that the suspect you are about to interrogate turns out to be innocent? That way, you can let him walk away from the encounter, and no blood need be shed.'
"'I still want to know what that thing is, and what I'm supposed to be doing with it,' I insisted.
"'That's what we're all trying to find out,' Lupin replied quickly, with a quelling look at Sirius, who had been about to answer me. 'Now, lower your wands, and I guarantee that no ill will come to you-for now. Sirius, you'll want to let me do this. Hem! Spanky, I apologize in advance for this, but this spell simply has to be done. You know what it does as well as any of us.'
"'Certainly,' I said. 'Since it was an RMB agent who invented it, to save the cost of having a scribe take down a written record of witness interviews. It's a word-by-word replay of...'
"'All right, so we all know,' Black grumbled. 'Get on with it, Remus.'
"'Do you consent to be interviewed, then?' Lupin asked me.
"'Certainly,' said I. 'I have nothing to hide. So long as...'
"'Yes, I know,' said Lupin. 'So long as I limit the spell to relevant conversations within a time frame of, say, three days. Agreed?'
"'Agreed.'
"'For now,' Sirius added.
"Pettigrew didn't say anything. He was still looking pale and pained.
"So I lowered my wands, and Lupin hit me with the curse. And then it all came out-all the stuff I had been ordered to forget about, until I was in the same room with Lily Potter. It was weird hearing Eustace and Orel saying things, out of my own mouth, that I could scarcely remember hearing them say in the first place. But they had said it, hadn't they? The crystal globe was a device that belonged to Eustace. It was called a Styxberry, and among the ingredients used in making it were essence of boggart, puffskein livers, erlking blood, and the hair of a boojum-which I didn't even think existed. When smashed, it is supposed to unleash some kind of power that transports everyone in a thirteen-cubit radius to a realm where dreams and nightmares are real. It is basically a reality grenade, and its use, production, and possession have been banned by every wizard and goblin convention since 1549. Oh yes, and I was supposed to walk up to Lily Potter and smash it at her feet. That's what Orel's imperius curse was for.
"'Well, it's not his fault, really,' said Lupin, ruefully, after the interrogation was completed.
"'No,' Sirius agreed. 'But he can't be allowed near the Potters as long as that curse is over him. And since he didn't know it was on him in the first place, he won't have begun to fight it off. As soon as he sees Lily, even without this Boojumberry thing, who knows what he'll do to her?'
"'So what shall we do with him?' Pettigrew piped in.
"'I am sick to DEATH of being talked about, when I'm right here,' I observed. 'I might as well have stayed in that sack in Gringotts!'
"'What would you suggest?' Lupin asked Pettigrew, ignoring every word that I said.
"'Killing him would be safest,' said Pettigrew.
"'I know,' said Sirius, 'but we've discussed this before, Peter. That option is not to be discussed until all other choices have been eliminated. You see, Remus, what a bad influence you've been?'
"I'm sure the blame is entirely mine,' said Lupin. 'But Sirius is right. We mustn't harm Spanky, since he hasn't shown any disloyalty to James and Lily.'
"'Thanks,' I muttered. 'Now that I get to live, what are you going to do to me?'
"'I happen to have a very amusing idea,' said Lupin. 'You see, the danger is over once the baby is delivered. The terms of your enslavement were very clear: you were to destroy Lily Potter before she gives birth to the child. Since she is probably doing that as we speak, we only need to keep you here until James comes down the lane with his box of cigars. Ferula. There. Stand still, now. Struggling against the ropes will only increase your discomfort.'
"But something had come over me as soon as the magical ropes from Lupin's wand wound themselves around me. I began to fight and snarl and foam at the mouth like a mad dog. I ended up rolling about on the ground, trying to get my hands free, and only hurting myself in more places than I care to name. All I wanted to do was break free and get around the Potters' friends, and be there before the baby was born. But the ropes held, and after a minute or two of struggling, a kind of clarity came over me. I thought to myself, 'What am I doing? This is ridiculous. There's no reason that I need to see the Potters now.' And I stopped struggling. At the same time, however, the pain from my bonds cutting into my arms and legs increased by about fivefold. 'Ow!' I yelled.
"'That's the ticket,' said Lupin. 'I daresay he's getting over the curse now. And look, no sooner than necessary! Here's James coming now!'"
+++ Another Pause for RIDDLE TIME! +++
If anyone is still dying to know, here are the answers to the riddles in #43. Barbara's question was "What am I?" The answer-the human brain. Anonymous asked, "What work do I do?" The answer-he drives a truck (or lorry, if he's British). If you still don't get it, please don't complain to me. That's what the forums are for!
Here's a new riddle from Annatar, who claims that it is "much better than the herring one." You be the judge:
I saw four fine creatures traveling in company;Here is another reader's contribution (let's call him E. F.): "If a plane crashes on the border of the U.S. and Canada, where do they bury the survivors?" Er...I don't know, does that count as a riddle? Is there any simple way to distinguish between a "true riddle" and this kind of brain puzzler or trick question? I welcome your input on this.
Their tracks were dark, their trails very black.
The bird that floats in the air swoops less swiftly than their leader;
He dived beneath the wave.
Drudgery was in for the fellow who taught all four of them their ways
On their ceaseless visits to the vessel of gold.
And while the rest of you dig through your memories for the best riddles you know, here are a few from literature. Let's see if you can spot where I got them from; extra credit for knowing the correct answer:
A.
"Out of the eater came something to eat,
And out of the strong came something sweet."
B.
"Alive without breath,
As cold as death,
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail yet never clinking."
C.
"What is this? One slew none and yet killed twelve."
[Originally posted 3/18/05]
43. Trussed, Mussed, and Imperiussed
Spanky's tale continued:
"After they extracted me from the Pensieve, Orel and Eustace roughed me up a good bit. I had been feeling almost sorry for them until then, especially as Orel was so sure that You-Know-Who was going to fry him. But they were, after all, a couple of pure-blood twerps--no offence, Harvey, old man--who enjoyed nothing better than stomping on a half-blood upstart who had, besides, made their bosom friend Shmedly look bad at the Owlympics. 'This one's for blowing it for England,' said Orel, as he did something that made me cough up blood. 'And this one's for carrying two wands, like a great show-off,' said Eustace, who was working me over with a sort of riding-crop that had a breathing-mask attachment, presumably for taking Abraxan horses to high altitudes. 'And this one,' cried Orel, 'is for being a filthy spy, saboteur, and mudblood,' after which I saw stars.
"I remember dreaming of Ilona then. I dreamed that I had found her and rescued her, and we were going to be together for the rest of our lives. I felt peace and happiness for the first time in months. It was cruel to awaken from that dream.
"When I woke, I found myself bound inside a dark, suffocating sack. I managed enough wandless magic to loosen my bonds, then wriggled and squirmed until the sack I was in rolled over. I felt myself falling, then I hit the floor hard and saw stars again.
"When my sight cleared, I felt cool air on my face and saw a bit of light--not much. It hurt to breathe, because I had evidently broken a rib or two. And my eyes weren't too pleased with the sight they beheld, either. For glaring down at me with a mixture of bloodcurdling savagery and bureaucratic disdain, were four of the ugliest goblins I had ever seen.
"'It's awake,' said one of them. 'It must be alive, then.'
"'That can be fixed,' said the second goblin.
"'So put it back in the sack and let's get on with it,' said the third. 'The tracks are blocked all the way back to the thirty-fourth switch, and there are loads of deposits to be interred before business closes.'
"'We can't deposit this in a vault now,' said the fourth goblin.
"'Alive, dead, no difference,' said the second goblin.
"'Make up your minds quickly,' urged the third.
"'I think it's trying to speak,' said the first goblin.
"I bubbled out a few phrases about needing medical attention and being an agent of the RMB. The goblins weren't much impressed.
"'Listen, wizard,' said the second goblin. 'We have a sevenfold auditing system here. We have to account for every half-knut piece, or equivalent value, that goes through our hands. If we let you go, we'll be short the amount of value that was claimed on this deposit bag. If someone put you in a deposit bag to get you out of the way, that's an awful shame, but it's not our concern once the deposit has been put on the books...'
"'How much did they claim on the deposit slip?' I asked, as clearly as I could while trying not to breathe. 'Perhaps I can pay you for my own ransom.'
"'What have you got that's worth anything?' the third goblin scoffed. 'Surely your captors picked your pockets. Put him in the vault!'
"I felt about in my robes. The first thing I found was a wad of pound-notes which I kept about me for emergencies--and any time I would need Muggle money would have to be an emergency. Apparently Eustace and Orel had ignored it because they didn't know what it was, or anything soiled by Muggles was not worth taking from me. After counting it, and figuring an exchange rate ridiculously in their favor, the goblins said I only needed to give up another fifty galleons' worth.
"Next, at considerable cost in pain, I retrieved not one but two backup wands which I kept hidden in the lining of my robes. It was a wrench giving them up, after Orel and Eustace had snapped my regular wands, but that brought me within fifteen galleons of buying my freedom. Finally, having given them all clothes off my back except a suit of thermal underwear, the fourth and quietest gnome made an observation.
"'This human has a curse on him,' he said. 'Indeed, he has two curses on him. One is fresh...' The goblin sniffed me cautiously. 'Yes, it was just put on him recently. It could be worth something.'
"The second goblin sniffed me too. 'Nah,' he said. 'That's an unforgivable curse. You remember how the wizard ministry came down on us last time we trafficked in that kind! Back in the sack with him, then.'
"'No, wait,' said the first goblin, whose nosehairs had been tickling the back of my neck since the fourth goblin spoke up. 'Smell this other curse. He's been soaking in that one for ages. Months, possibly even years. It's a very odd kind of curse. I don't think a wizard put it on him. This could be worth mi--er...'
"I looked round at the second goblin, who was glaring at the one who had almost said 'millions.' Finally it barked, 'You, Pikestaff, get the milker. There, now, wizard. Once we get this curse sucked out of you, we'll be all even, and you can go.'"
"The milker?" exclaimed the wizard Merlin, as he returned to his chair after a long trip to the lavatory. "What did I miss?"
"Shut up," said Sadie, Endora, and Joe Albuquerque in unison.
"Do go on," Harvey said, addressing Spanky.
"Well," said Spanky, "I don't want to go into vulgar details, but after they lifted the curse, and had it appraised, the goblins were in such a good mood that they even sent me to see a goblin healer, free of charge. Then I withdrew a few galleons from my own vault on the way out of Gringotts, visited Mr. Ollivander--who was severely miffed to see me buying two wands again--and Madam Malkin, who laughed when I showed up in thermal underwear. Robed, armed, and refreshed by a stiff drink at the Leaky Cauldron, I rented a fast broom and made my way to Godric's Hollow with all dispatch. I didn't know what Orel and Eustace had up their store for Lily Potter, but I meant to stop them if I could.
"Unfortunately, I hadn't given enough thought to what the fourth goblin had said. You know, about the recent unforgivable curse which was still on me..."
+++ Pause for RIDDLE TIME! +++
Thank you all for continuing to mull over my riddles, and submitting new ones:
Maria of Denmark has an interesting theory about Riddle #27, or "How did Snape and Harry meet inside Snape's memory in the Pensieve?" Her guess is that while Harry's head is in the Pensieve, he only imagines himself to be walking around inside the memory he finds there. So when Snape grabs his arm and pulls him out of the Pensieve, Harry perceives it as though Snape was there with him inside the memory. But in reality, "Harry's mind is still clouded by what he saw," and it takes a while for him to recognize that he is no longer in the Pensieve. What do you think?
Reader Kara is desperate to know the answer to Riddle #26. Really, I don't know the answer! It's open for discussion! If you see Kara on the Forums, please be nice enough to share your theories with her about what a boggart really looks like.
And now, I am pleased to share the first few riddles that have come to me in response to my call for new and old riddles (not necessarily about Harry Potter) for us to share and enjoy. If you get a riddle out of a book, though, please tell me the name of the book's author and title, so they can share credit with you!
Thanks to Barbara for this riddle:
[Originally posted 3/10/05]
"After they extracted me from the Pensieve, Orel and Eustace roughed me up a good bit. I had been feeling almost sorry for them until then, especially as Orel was so sure that You-Know-Who was going to fry him. But they were, after all, a couple of pure-blood twerps--no offence, Harvey, old man--who enjoyed nothing better than stomping on a half-blood upstart who had, besides, made their bosom friend Shmedly look bad at the Owlympics. 'This one's for blowing it for England,' said Orel, as he did something that made me cough up blood. 'And this one's for carrying two wands, like a great show-off,' said Eustace, who was working me over with a sort of riding-crop that had a breathing-mask attachment, presumably for taking Abraxan horses to high altitudes. 'And this one,' cried Orel, 'is for being a filthy spy, saboteur, and mudblood,' after which I saw stars.
"I remember dreaming of Ilona then. I dreamed that I had found her and rescued her, and we were going to be together for the rest of our lives. I felt peace and happiness for the first time in months. It was cruel to awaken from that dream.
"When I woke, I found myself bound inside a dark, suffocating sack. I managed enough wandless magic to loosen my bonds, then wriggled and squirmed until the sack I was in rolled over. I felt myself falling, then I hit the floor hard and saw stars again.
"When my sight cleared, I felt cool air on my face and saw a bit of light--not much. It hurt to breathe, because I had evidently broken a rib or two. And my eyes weren't too pleased with the sight they beheld, either. For glaring down at me with a mixture of bloodcurdling savagery and bureaucratic disdain, were four of the ugliest goblins I had ever seen.
"'It's awake,' said one of them. 'It must be alive, then.'
"'That can be fixed,' said the second goblin.
"'So put it back in the sack and let's get on with it,' said the third. 'The tracks are blocked all the way back to the thirty-fourth switch, and there are loads of deposits to be interred before business closes.'
"'We can't deposit this in a vault now,' said the fourth goblin.
"'Alive, dead, no difference,' said the second goblin.
"'Make up your minds quickly,' urged the third.
"'I think it's trying to speak,' said the first goblin.
"I bubbled out a few phrases about needing medical attention and being an agent of the RMB. The goblins weren't much impressed.
"'Listen, wizard,' said the second goblin. 'We have a sevenfold auditing system here. We have to account for every half-knut piece, or equivalent value, that goes through our hands. If we let you go, we'll be short the amount of value that was claimed on this deposit bag. If someone put you in a deposit bag to get you out of the way, that's an awful shame, but it's not our concern once the deposit has been put on the books...'
"'How much did they claim on the deposit slip?' I asked, as clearly as I could while trying not to breathe. 'Perhaps I can pay you for my own ransom.'
"'What have you got that's worth anything?' the third goblin scoffed. 'Surely your captors picked your pockets. Put him in the vault!'
"I felt about in my robes. The first thing I found was a wad of pound-notes which I kept about me for emergencies--and any time I would need Muggle money would have to be an emergency. Apparently Eustace and Orel had ignored it because they didn't know what it was, or anything soiled by Muggles was not worth taking from me. After counting it, and figuring an exchange rate ridiculously in their favor, the goblins said I only needed to give up another fifty galleons' worth.
"Next, at considerable cost in pain, I retrieved not one but two backup wands which I kept hidden in the lining of my robes. It was a wrench giving them up, after Orel and Eustace had snapped my regular wands, but that brought me within fifteen galleons of buying my freedom. Finally, having given them all clothes off my back except a suit of thermal underwear, the fourth and quietest gnome made an observation.
"'This human has a curse on him,' he said. 'Indeed, he has two curses on him. One is fresh...' The goblin sniffed me cautiously. 'Yes, it was just put on him recently. It could be worth something.'
"The second goblin sniffed me too. 'Nah,' he said. 'That's an unforgivable curse. You remember how the wizard ministry came down on us last time we trafficked in that kind! Back in the sack with him, then.'
"'No, wait,' said the first goblin, whose nosehairs had been tickling the back of my neck since the fourth goblin spoke up. 'Smell this other curse. He's been soaking in that one for ages. Months, possibly even years. It's a very odd kind of curse. I don't think a wizard put it on him. This could be worth mi--er...'
"I looked round at the second goblin, who was glaring at the one who had almost said 'millions.' Finally it barked, 'You, Pikestaff, get the milker. There, now, wizard. Once we get this curse sucked out of you, we'll be all even, and you can go.'"
"The milker?" exclaimed the wizard Merlin, as he returned to his chair after a long trip to the lavatory. "What did I miss?"
"Shut up," said Sadie, Endora, and Joe Albuquerque in unison.
"Do go on," Harvey said, addressing Spanky.
"Well," said Spanky, "I don't want to go into vulgar details, but after they lifted the curse, and had it appraised, the goblins were in such a good mood that they even sent me to see a goblin healer, free of charge. Then I withdrew a few galleons from my own vault on the way out of Gringotts, visited Mr. Ollivander--who was severely miffed to see me buying two wands again--and Madam Malkin, who laughed when I showed up in thermal underwear. Robed, armed, and refreshed by a stiff drink at the Leaky Cauldron, I rented a fast broom and made my way to Godric's Hollow with all dispatch. I didn't know what Orel and Eustace had up their store for Lily Potter, but I meant to stop them if I could.
"Unfortunately, I hadn't given enough thought to what the fourth goblin had said. You know, about the recent unforgivable curse which was still on me..."
+++ Pause for RIDDLE TIME! +++
Thank you all for continuing to mull over my riddles, and submitting new ones:
Maria of Denmark has an interesting theory about Riddle #27, or "How did Snape and Harry meet inside Snape's memory in the Pensieve?" Her guess is that while Harry's head is in the Pensieve, he only imagines himself to be walking around inside the memory he finds there. So when Snape grabs his arm and pulls him out of the Pensieve, Harry perceives it as though Snape was there with him inside the memory. But in reality, "Harry's mind is still clouded by what he saw," and it takes a while for him to recognize that he is no longer in the Pensieve. What do you think?
Reader Kara is desperate to know the answer to Riddle #26. Really, I don't know the answer! It's open for discussion! If you see Kara on the Forums, please be nice enough to share your theories with her about what a boggart really looks like.
And now, I am pleased to share the first few riddles that have come to me in response to my call for new and old riddles (not necessarily about Harry Potter) for us to share and enjoy. If you get a riddle out of a book, though, please tell me the name of the book's author and title, so they can share credit with you!
Thanks to Barbara for this riddle:
I have thousands of eyes, yet I live in darkness, I have thousands of ears, yet only two lobes, I have no muscles, yet I rule two hemispheres, What am I?And here's another riddle that an anonymous reader passed along:
I am the undisputed owner of a piece of ground, on which anyone trespasses at his own risk; I will not answer for the consequences. However, there are three strange things about the land I own. First, though it is always the same size and shape, its location is always changing; it is never in the same place from one moment to the next. Second, it only belongs to me while I am doing my job; the minute I stop working, my property is taken away. And third, I can never set eyes on the land I own; for as soon as I can see it, it is no longer mine. What work do I do?Come again next week for the answers--and hopefully more riddles!
[Originally posted 3/10/05]
42. Orel Prevention
Concepts contributed by: Leah & Heather
Spanky’s narrative continued:
“I trailed Orel back to his flat in London, which he had filled with a lot of rare and dangerous stuff. One of the things he had was a Pensieve. I was surprised to see it, having read that Dumbledore had rid England of the things, with a few closely guarded exceptions. I had always wanted to mess around with one, and I must admit that I had never understood what was so dangerous about them. I was about to learn a very hard lesson.
“Orel used the Pensieve a great deal during the next few days, while his deadline for dealing with Lily Potter drew near. Finally he seemed to have stirred enough thoughts around in it that a plan took shape. At any rate, there was a sudden change in his mood, from listless anxiety to exuberant energy. When he rushed out of the flat, taking a sack of galleons with him, I decided that he was not coming back very soon, so I broke cover and stole into his flat.
“I quickly found the Pensieve and was delighted to find that Orel had rushed off without removing his thoughts and plans from the bowl. So I plunged in and had a look around. What I found made my blood run cold.
“Evidently, Orel and his associates had gathered a lot of information about Lily Potter, her habits, and her tastes. Orel had pieced together several of her most charming traits and planned his attack through them. For instance, Lily had a weakness for chocolate, loved children, and was constantly throwing money into every charity that appealed to her soft heart. So it seemed that Orel was going to do something dastardly to her in the guise of a Merlin Scout going door to door selling chocolates to collect money so that underprivileged little wizards and witches could buy spellbooks and potion ingredients.
“I knew I had to warn Lily and James. But before I could get out of Orel’s memory, something truly apalling happened. The scoundrel came home, sooner than expected, and made haste to stuff the thoughts in his Pensieve back into his brain. He did not even take the trouble to look for anyone who did not belong in his thoughts. He didn’t seem to know I was there. But I knew what was happening the moment I started seeing the world through Orel’s eyes. He was going to try to murder Lily Potter, and I could do nothing to stop it.
“Words cannot describe how desperate I was. I knew I was doomed whether Orel killed Lily or not. If he succeeded, I would never be able to live with myself, seeing it all from behind the killer’s eyes while powerless to stop it. Plus, James would no doubt hunt Orel down and destroy him before long. And if Orel failed, he was going to get sizzled by You Know Who, probably before I would have a chance to get out of Orel’s brain. Now any of us can imagine how embarrassing it must be to get caught poking through someone else’s memories in a Pensieve. But to escape detection, and get stuck into a person’s brain without any hope of getting out, is a fate I had never dreamt of!
“Things did not look good. I raced around among Orel’s thoughts, unable to get his attention, scarcely daring to try, hoping to find some lever that I could push to move him off his dangerous course. Meanwhile, Orel put a slight shrinking charm on himself, vanished his goatee, conjured up a Merlin Scout’s uniform, and stirred together a potion that was meant to look and taste like chocolate but have the effect of the Draught of Living Death. By the time he had wrapped up the chocolates in pretty little papers, I had only managed to figure out how to make Orel sneeze.
“That night, Orel slept soundly for the first time since I had been following him. I, however, was tormented by all the weird things going on in his subconscious mind. I huddled terrified in a corner, wondering whether the horrid things passing on every side were the afflictions of a guilty conscience, the fantasies of a perverted mind, mere dreams, or even memories of things he had seen in You Know Who’s service. He awoke early, dressed himself in the Merlin Scout’s uniform, gathered up his collecting box and his chocolates, and apparated to a trail in the wood near Godric’s Hollow. In a matter of minutes, Orel was knocking on the Potters’ front door.
“Lily answered, looking radiant as always--no, strike that--more radiant than ever! She was looking very pregnant with little Harry, but she did not seem to be slowing down at all. Her fingers and the tip of her nose were stained with potion ingredients, her hair was loosely tied up, and she held her wand as if the caller had knocked when she was in the middle of doing something that she couldn’t wait to get on with. But when she saw Orel, disguised as a Merlin scout, she forgot about being in a hurry, and beamed at him the way Lily always beamed at children.
“'Is it already that time again?’ she asked. She rubbed her hands together, apparently wishing her fingers weren’t so dirty, because she clearly wanted to pat Orel’s head. Suddenly Orel stood beside me, in his own brain, looking on. ‘The lousy mudblood had better not touch me,’ he growled.
“'You watch your mouth,’ I retorted, and that’s when he noticed me.
“'Who the blazes are you?’ Orel’s hidden self demanded, goggling at me. ‘And what are you doing in my mind?’
“'Please, ma’am,’ said the counterfeit Merlin Scout. ‘Won’t you spare a few galleons for young witches and wizards less fortunate than yourself? In return, we would like you to have a box of these fine nougats as a gift.’
“Meanwhile, the Orel within was trying to bury me in jagged pieces of memories, broken plans, buried dreams, and various other kinds of gibberish. Every time I tried to run from him, I found him in front of me. He was walling me up in his mind.
“Still, I could see and hear what Lily Potter was doing. She bit her lip and twisted her hands, evidently considering a box of those tempting chocolates. Orel, in his youthful form, kept telling her about the lovely caramels and the hazelnut creams. Just when I was ready to give up and let him wall me in—when Lily began digging in her pockets for loose coins—the commotion stopped.
“'I beg your pardon, ma’am?’ Orel asked her, almost forgetting to sound like a polite Merlin Scout.
“'I said, I don’t mind making a donation, but I really must say no to the sweets. I don’t know what they would do to the baby, you know. Ah! Here you go! That should be enough for you to have a box or two for yourself, and some to spare. Good luck, and give my best to Mr. Ladderhold, if he’s still troop leader.’
“'But I really want you to take the sweets,’ Orel insisted, holding the box out to her.
“Lily grinned. ‘That’s very nice of you, but the answer is no. Here, take another galleon. It’s really about those poor children, after all, isn’t it?’
“Orel was growing desperate. In his mind, he was seething with fury. ‘Take the chocolate, you cursèd Muggle,’ his brain roared, forgetting all about me.
“'But ma’am,’ the boy-Orel squeaked, ‘what am I to do with these sweets? I can’t go around selling them twice. People will say I stole the money, or overcharged someone.’
“'Well, if you’re that concerned about it,’ said Lily, ‘I will buy a box then.’
“'Excellent!’ Orel said, a bit too eagerly perhaps.
“'I’ll send it to Mrs. Gwinn up at Golden Branch Farm, just over the hill past the village there. Perhaps you would be so kind as to deliver them with my compliments? I can’t spare the time to go myself, there’s a good boy. Here, have a box for yourself, too. Would you like a receipt?’ With a wave of her wand, she gave him one, and gave him another one of her delightful smiles. ‘You really are the sweetest one they’ve sent round since we’ve lived here. What’s your name again?’
“'Philip Smith,’ lied Orel. His fingers trembled as he took the receipt from Lily. ‘The children thank you,’ he added, almost tearfully. In his brain, he and I stood viewing one scene after another of his destruction by You Know Who. In each scene, a hideous dark figure sneered: ‘You mean to say, she gave you money?’
“'Goodness, you really do care about those children, don’t you?’ Lily exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so moved by a donation of three galleons. What year are you at Hogwarts, then?’
“'Won’t you even try one?’ Orel begged. On a sudden inspiration, he ripped open one of the packages. ‘Here, have a caramel from the box you bought for me. Just a taste.’
“'Oh, no, I’ve had too many of those before,’ said Lily. ‘And I have to think of the little one. He’ll have a weakness for sweets in his own time, if I have anything to say about it, but that time is not yet.’ And now she actually did pat the boy’s head, potion-stained fingers and all.
“'Well, have a nice day,’ said Orel miserably, and he turned away. As soon as he was out of sight of the Potters’ house, he apparated to a smoke-filled parlor that had a stuffed mermaid on one wall, and the head of a hippogriff on another. Eustace put down his hookah, brushed a bit of dust off his smoking jacket, and stood up out of a very soft-looking leather chair.
“'I say, Orel, is that you?’ he cried. ‘I never would have put you down for a Phoenix Scout. You don’t look as if it went well. Tell me all about it.’
“'Just a moment,’ said Orel, striding over to the bar below the stuffed mermaid, and pulling yet another unregistered Pensieve out of a hidden drawer. ‘First, I want to introduce you to somebody.’
+++ RIDDLE TIME! +++
The Pensieve scenario in this week’s Magic Quill was inspired by some readers’ feedback about last week’s Pensieve-related riddle. So think about it—could this happen? If it did, it would mean that when Harry (for instance) stuck his head in the Pensieve, he was physically transported into Dumbledore’s or Snape’s memory; he didn’t simply stand there with his head in the bowl, experiencing everything in his mind. So if Snape hadn’t known to look for Harry, or hadn’t chanced to see him before stuffing the memory back into his head, Harry could have been lost in Snape’s brain! This is a major problem with the “physically entering the Pensieve” scenario. However, the other scenario (head only, and the experience of being inside the memory is an illusion) has even more problems, such as: (1) How does Harry see Dumbledore and Snape when they come into their own memories to fetch him out? (2) How is it that he sees and feels Snape’s bruising grip on his arm? (3) How can more than one person’s head fit inside the bowl? Etc.
Do you know any really good riddles (not just Harry Potter-related ones)? I would like to see them. The Red Herring one that the sphinx asked Merlin is the best one I know. Send me a cool riddle and I’ll see if I can find room for it in the story!
Finally, a belated thank you to everyone who kindly wrote to tell me how desperately they missed The Magic Quill while I was moving. No one is happier than I to find myself back at work with my friends at MuggleNet!
[Originally posted 3/4/05]
Spanky’s narrative continued:
“I trailed Orel back to his flat in London, which he had filled with a lot of rare and dangerous stuff. One of the things he had was a Pensieve. I was surprised to see it, having read that Dumbledore had rid England of the things, with a few closely guarded exceptions. I had always wanted to mess around with one, and I must admit that I had never understood what was so dangerous about them. I was about to learn a very hard lesson.
“Orel used the Pensieve a great deal during the next few days, while his deadline for dealing with Lily Potter drew near. Finally he seemed to have stirred enough thoughts around in it that a plan took shape. At any rate, there was a sudden change in his mood, from listless anxiety to exuberant energy. When he rushed out of the flat, taking a sack of galleons with him, I decided that he was not coming back very soon, so I broke cover and stole into his flat.
“I quickly found the Pensieve and was delighted to find that Orel had rushed off without removing his thoughts and plans from the bowl. So I plunged in and had a look around. What I found made my blood run cold.
“Evidently, Orel and his associates had gathered a lot of information about Lily Potter, her habits, and her tastes. Orel had pieced together several of her most charming traits and planned his attack through them. For instance, Lily had a weakness for chocolate, loved children, and was constantly throwing money into every charity that appealed to her soft heart. So it seemed that Orel was going to do something dastardly to her in the guise of a Merlin Scout going door to door selling chocolates to collect money so that underprivileged little wizards and witches could buy spellbooks and potion ingredients.
“I knew I had to warn Lily and James. But before I could get out of Orel’s memory, something truly apalling happened. The scoundrel came home, sooner than expected, and made haste to stuff the thoughts in his Pensieve back into his brain. He did not even take the trouble to look for anyone who did not belong in his thoughts. He didn’t seem to know I was there. But I knew what was happening the moment I started seeing the world through Orel’s eyes. He was going to try to murder Lily Potter, and I could do nothing to stop it.
“Words cannot describe how desperate I was. I knew I was doomed whether Orel killed Lily or not. If he succeeded, I would never be able to live with myself, seeing it all from behind the killer’s eyes while powerless to stop it. Plus, James would no doubt hunt Orel down and destroy him before long. And if Orel failed, he was going to get sizzled by You Know Who, probably before I would have a chance to get out of Orel’s brain. Now any of us can imagine how embarrassing it must be to get caught poking through someone else’s memories in a Pensieve. But to escape detection, and get stuck into a person’s brain without any hope of getting out, is a fate I had never dreamt of!
“Things did not look good. I raced around among Orel’s thoughts, unable to get his attention, scarcely daring to try, hoping to find some lever that I could push to move him off his dangerous course. Meanwhile, Orel put a slight shrinking charm on himself, vanished his goatee, conjured up a Merlin Scout’s uniform, and stirred together a potion that was meant to look and taste like chocolate but have the effect of the Draught of Living Death. By the time he had wrapped up the chocolates in pretty little papers, I had only managed to figure out how to make Orel sneeze.
“That night, Orel slept soundly for the first time since I had been following him. I, however, was tormented by all the weird things going on in his subconscious mind. I huddled terrified in a corner, wondering whether the horrid things passing on every side were the afflictions of a guilty conscience, the fantasies of a perverted mind, mere dreams, or even memories of things he had seen in You Know Who’s service. He awoke early, dressed himself in the Merlin Scout’s uniform, gathered up his collecting box and his chocolates, and apparated to a trail in the wood near Godric’s Hollow. In a matter of minutes, Orel was knocking on the Potters’ front door.
“Lily answered, looking radiant as always--no, strike that--more radiant than ever! She was looking very pregnant with little Harry, but she did not seem to be slowing down at all. Her fingers and the tip of her nose were stained with potion ingredients, her hair was loosely tied up, and she held her wand as if the caller had knocked when she was in the middle of doing something that she couldn’t wait to get on with. But when she saw Orel, disguised as a Merlin scout, she forgot about being in a hurry, and beamed at him the way Lily always beamed at children.
“'Is it already that time again?’ she asked. She rubbed her hands together, apparently wishing her fingers weren’t so dirty, because she clearly wanted to pat Orel’s head. Suddenly Orel stood beside me, in his own brain, looking on. ‘The lousy mudblood had better not touch me,’ he growled.
“'You watch your mouth,’ I retorted, and that’s when he noticed me.
“'Who the blazes are you?’ Orel’s hidden self demanded, goggling at me. ‘And what are you doing in my mind?’
“'Please, ma’am,’ said the counterfeit Merlin Scout. ‘Won’t you spare a few galleons for young witches and wizards less fortunate than yourself? In return, we would like you to have a box of these fine nougats as a gift.’
“Meanwhile, the Orel within was trying to bury me in jagged pieces of memories, broken plans, buried dreams, and various other kinds of gibberish. Every time I tried to run from him, I found him in front of me. He was walling me up in his mind.
“Still, I could see and hear what Lily Potter was doing. She bit her lip and twisted her hands, evidently considering a box of those tempting chocolates. Orel, in his youthful form, kept telling her about the lovely caramels and the hazelnut creams. Just when I was ready to give up and let him wall me in—when Lily began digging in her pockets for loose coins—the commotion stopped.
“'I beg your pardon, ma’am?’ Orel asked her, almost forgetting to sound like a polite Merlin Scout.
“'I said, I don’t mind making a donation, but I really must say no to the sweets. I don’t know what they would do to the baby, you know. Ah! Here you go! That should be enough for you to have a box or two for yourself, and some to spare. Good luck, and give my best to Mr. Ladderhold, if he’s still troop leader.’
“'But I really want you to take the sweets,’ Orel insisted, holding the box out to her.
“Lily grinned. ‘That’s very nice of you, but the answer is no. Here, take another galleon. It’s really about those poor children, after all, isn’t it?’
“Orel was growing desperate. In his mind, he was seething with fury. ‘Take the chocolate, you cursèd Muggle,’ his brain roared, forgetting all about me.
“'But ma’am,’ the boy-Orel squeaked, ‘what am I to do with these sweets? I can’t go around selling them twice. People will say I stole the money, or overcharged someone.’
“'Well, if you’re that concerned about it,’ said Lily, ‘I will buy a box then.’
“'Excellent!’ Orel said, a bit too eagerly perhaps.
“'I’ll send it to Mrs. Gwinn up at Golden Branch Farm, just over the hill past the village there. Perhaps you would be so kind as to deliver them with my compliments? I can’t spare the time to go myself, there’s a good boy. Here, have a box for yourself, too. Would you like a receipt?’ With a wave of her wand, she gave him one, and gave him another one of her delightful smiles. ‘You really are the sweetest one they’ve sent round since we’ve lived here. What’s your name again?’
“'Philip Smith,’ lied Orel. His fingers trembled as he took the receipt from Lily. ‘The children thank you,’ he added, almost tearfully. In his brain, he and I stood viewing one scene after another of his destruction by You Know Who. In each scene, a hideous dark figure sneered: ‘You mean to say, she gave you money?’
“'Goodness, you really do care about those children, don’t you?’ Lily exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so moved by a donation of three galleons. What year are you at Hogwarts, then?’
“'Won’t you even try one?’ Orel begged. On a sudden inspiration, he ripped open one of the packages. ‘Here, have a caramel from the box you bought for me. Just a taste.’
“'Oh, no, I’ve had too many of those before,’ said Lily. ‘And I have to think of the little one. He’ll have a weakness for sweets in his own time, if I have anything to say about it, but that time is not yet.’ And now she actually did pat the boy’s head, potion-stained fingers and all.
“'Well, have a nice day,’ said Orel miserably, and he turned away. As soon as he was out of sight of the Potters’ house, he apparated to a smoke-filled parlor that had a stuffed mermaid on one wall, and the head of a hippogriff on another. Eustace put down his hookah, brushed a bit of dust off his smoking jacket, and stood up out of a very soft-looking leather chair.
“'I say, Orel, is that you?’ he cried. ‘I never would have put you down for a Phoenix Scout. You don’t look as if it went well. Tell me all about it.’
“'Just a moment,’ said Orel, striding over to the bar below the stuffed mermaid, and pulling yet another unregistered Pensieve out of a hidden drawer. ‘First, I want to introduce you to somebody.’
+++ RIDDLE TIME! +++
The Pensieve scenario in this week’s Magic Quill was inspired by some readers’ feedback about last week’s Pensieve-related riddle. So think about it—could this happen? If it did, it would mean that when Harry (for instance) stuck his head in the Pensieve, he was physically transported into Dumbledore’s or Snape’s memory; he didn’t simply stand there with his head in the bowl, experiencing everything in his mind. So if Snape hadn’t known to look for Harry, or hadn’t chanced to see him before stuffing the memory back into his head, Harry could have been lost in Snape’s brain! This is a major problem with the “physically entering the Pensieve” scenario. However, the other scenario (head only, and the experience of being inside the memory is an illusion) has even more problems, such as: (1) How does Harry see Dumbledore and Snape when they come into their own memories to fetch him out? (2) How is it that he sees and feels Snape’s bruising grip on his arm? (3) How can more than one person’s head fit inside the bowl? Etc.
Do you know any really good riddles (not just Harry Potter-related ones)? I would like to see them. The Red Herring one that the sphinx asked Merlin is the best one I know. Send me a cool riddle and I’ll see if I can find room for it in the story!
Finally, a belated thank you to everyone who kindly wrote to tell me how desperately they missed The Magic Quill while I was moving. No one is happier than I to find myself back at work with my friends at MuggleNet!
[Originally posted 3/4/05]
41. Unfinished Business, Part 2
Concepts contributed by: Ally
Spanky’s tale continued...
“'So it’s all up with me, it is,’ said the first Death Eater. ‘I’m done for.’
“'Aw, don’t put such a sour face on things,’ said the other. ‘That’ll only make sure the worst happens.’
“'A lot you know,’ said the first. ‘You weren’t there when the Dark Lord sizzled the ones that failed. I saw it, every time. He sent them out, one by one, to stop this Potter kid being born, and they came back, one by one, to face the consequences for not managing it. And now You-Know-Who wants me to go. I’ll be a fritter before the week is out. A fritter on a stick!’
"'Now, Orel, you know better than to give up before you’ve tried. You just think about what you have to do, what the others tried, and why they failed; and then you’re sure to come up with some plan that will work!’
“'I’m telling you, Eustace, there’s something funny about the Potters. Something protecting them—something big. I might as well pop myself on a spit right now.’
“'All right, Orel, if that’s what you want. But before you do, perhaps you might think back over what all the other witches and wizards did, and tell me what happened. At least I can try to give you a suggestion that will work.
“'Well, it can’t do me any more harm than is coming anyway, so why not? First there was Iphigenia Crowe, who worked with Lily Potter, though they were not really confidential friends. Iphigenia thought Lily would consider it a surprisingly friendly gesture if she put on a high tea for Lily and all of her witchfriends, making sure that each of them brought some kind of gift, like self-rocking cots, self-cleaning nappies, and a feeding bottle that is always blood-warm. Iffie’s gift was a rag doll, which had button eyes sewed on to it. But under the button eyes, Iffie had secretly painted a pair of evil eyes that were cursed to cause all growing things that they looked upon to wither and die. She expected that, if it didn’t stop the baby being born, it would at least get him soon afterward.
“'Unfortunately,’ Orel went on, ‘Edwina Bridlethwaite was also invited, who, ever since a bludger hit her on the head and ended her career with the Tornados, had been unable to do any magic except by accident. And even more unfortunately, it seemed that Edwina’s magical accidents tended to work in favor of mudbloods like Lily Potter. Edwina was reaching across the tea-table to grab up the last dragon-paté sandwich, when the sleeve of her robe caught on the teapot—the ever-full kind, wouldn’t you know—and it spilled gallons of scalding tea over Iphigenia’s gift. The paint washed off the doll’s face, not that the doll was worth keeping after that anyway. The whole plot was ruined. When Iffie told You-Know-Who what had happened, he turned her into a chickpea and closed her up inside a set of matrioskhi, since she liked dolls so much.’
“Eustace shuddered audibly. ‘And then?’
“'And then,’ said Orel, ‘he sent Sir Humphrey Twigg.’
“'Oooh! I wondered what happened to him,’ observed Eustace.
“'Shush! So he sent Sir Humphrey, who, as you may recall, had a game leg. Sir Humphrey contrived to have a broomstick breakdown within a mile of the Potters’ house, and as he expected, Lily came running to help him before he had hobbled twenty paces. She brought him to her home and was going to use a pinch of floo powder to call a broomstick repairman, but Sir Humphrey jinxed the stuff so that it wouldn’t light. So Lily tells Sir Humphrey to make himself comfortable and takes his broom and tries to disapparate, but that won’t work either. Finally, she was forced to run out on foot and try to catch the Knight Bus to Hogsmeade, while Sir Humphrey lay down for a nap in the parlor, complaining of a headache. As soon as she was gone, he pulled out a skull-shaped flask full of a potion so evil that even You-Know-Who stammers when he speaks its name: Essence of N-n-n-n-...erm. You know what I mean.'
“'Nundu Breath?’ Eustace whispered.
“Orel giggled nervously. ‘That’s the one. The slow-release stuff that may take weeks to reach lethal levels. So Sir Humphrey sprinkled it in the four corners of the house, across every doorsill and windowsill, and into the hearth. Afterward, he felt a real headache coming on, and decided to go outdoors for some fresh air and a constitutional. He pulled out his cognac flask, took a pull on it, and realized at once that he should have let his house-elf learn to read. Evidently the little treasure had mistaken Essence of N-n-n-n-...
“'Nundu Breath.’
“'Ha! Ha! Yes, it had mistaken that for the bottle of cognac, which apparently looked very similar, and had poured each one into the wrong pocket flask. The skull-shaped one, which Sir Humphrey saved for skulduggery such as his business with the Potters’ eaves and threshold and hearth, had contained nothing worse than the finest French brandy galleons can buy. The silver flask with the Twigg crest, on the other hand, was full of N-n-n-n-n-...’ Orel faltered.
“'I get it,’ said Eustace.
“'Good,’ said Orel. ‘Sir Humphrey hurried back to the Dark Lord to make his excuses and to demand, in the name of his family line of noblewizards going back to Yves the Leper, that our master give him the antidote before the poison kicked in. No such luck! As punishment for his failure, Sir Humphrey was left to stand outside His Dark Lordship’s potions cupboard, game leg and all, while his illiterate house-elf was locked inside, trying to decipher the labels on a thousand potions. Needless to say, the house-elf was still looking for the antidote—if it was even there—when death caught up with Sir Humphrey.’
“'That’s pretty nasty,’ Eustace admitted.
“'Who was next?’ Orel mused. ‘Ah! I remember! It was Octavius Pidgeon. You remember him; he did a stretch in Azkaban for werewolf baiting, back in the early days of His Dark Lordship’s rise to power. He rigged a Daily Prophet Galleon Draw so that the Potters would win a free cruise on the H.M.S. Necromancer. Having seen what happened to Iffie and Sir Humphrey, and being a great fixer of betting games, Pidgeon knew better than to put all his eggs in one basket. He made several unrelated arrangements to do the Potters in, so that if one plot failed, another would go on. First, he paid off some merpeople and a giant squid to try to scuttle the Necromancer. Next, he made an arrangement with a kraken to produce an enormous wave that would force the ship onto a shoal, just off a desert island. Then, he made sure that the ship was going to stop at Easter Island, and he turned one of those standing stones into a golem with the single purpose of bashing the Potters to smithereeens. And finally, he reverse-conjured an unplottable charm and placed it on the crew of the ship, so that they would wander forever without ever getting to where they intended to go. That was only supposed to go into effect after they reached Easter Island, though.’
“Eustace whistled. ‘Quadruple failsafes. Octavius was a sure bet if there ever was one. So what went wrong?’
“'What didn’t?’ said Orel. ‘As near as I can figure, the kraken misjudged the timing of her tidal wave, and ended up dashing the giant squid and the merpeople onto a desert island, where they perished. Then the reverse-unplottable spell somehow got transferred to the golem, who, unable to tell where he was going, walked off a cliff into the sea. The Potters didn’t even get seasick.’
“'So what did the Dark Lord do to Octavius?’
“'I seem to recall that he was turned into a carp and released into a tank full of barracuda.’
“'Lovely.’
“'And the last time, the unlucky party was Tatiana Snelling. She tried the most direct approach. Everyone knew, since Witch Weekly did that write-up on Lily Potter, that she and James took a walk in the wood near their house every day after dinner. Tatiana disillusioned herself, sneaked into the wood with plenty of time to spare, and took up station in a leafy oak tree overlooking the path that led down to the Potters’ house. Well, as soon as that pair of Muggle-loving upstarts strolled into view, Tatiana aimed her wand right at Lily Potter and screamed that death curse we all know so well. Unfortunately, she forgot that she was in a wand tree, surrounded by loads of limbs and twigs and, I hardly need mention, bowtruckles. Her curse wiped out a whole branch of the bowtruckle clan that lived on that tree, but it didn’t even faze the hundred or so other bowtruckles that instantly rushed at Tatiana. She barely managed to escape with her life, but that was more than she could manage after the Dark One caught up with her. He turned her into a wood louse and added her to a bucket of wood lice that was going to be fed to the guardians of the Dark Lord’s pet tree...’
“'The one that is trimmed to a perfect likeness of our Master himself?’ asked Eustace. ‘What do they call that tree again?’
“Well, when He Who Must Not Be Named isn’t around, they call it Yew-Know-Who...’
“Eustace snorted with laughter, then composed himself, apparently out of consideration for his friend’s anxiety. ‘All right, so he gave old Tatiana a sporting chance. She could have gotten away...one out of a million wood lice, after all...’
“Yes, well, that’s all there is. I’m the next lamb to be sent to slaughter, and I probably won’t be the last. If potions, curses, magical creatures, and jinxed artifacts can’t finish this Potter child, I can’t think what will.’
“'And who,’ Eustace said, with a sly smile in his voice, ‘said those things can’t do the job? It wasn’t the magic that failed, Orel old pudding, it was the fault of the people who planned and carried it out. They all hatched plans with too many variables, and the variables got in their way. Iphigenia ran a risk by involving a whole roomful of unwitting accomplices, so she had no one but herself to blame when that washed-up Quidditch maven spilt tea on her jinxed artifact. Octavius tried to hedge his bets by calling on more than one magical creature to do his dirty work, but he did not bother with choreographing the operation as a whole. So it was entirely his fault when they tripped over each other! Sir Humphrey blithely let his plan pivot on the menial actions of a witless body-servant, when he should have trusted no one with any part of his plan; and Tatiana failed to take careful note of the lay of the land, and plunged ahead without careful preparation.’
“'So what can I do that will avoid their mistakes?’ said Orel, sounding hopeful for the first time.
“'Why, that’s simple,’ said Eustace. ‘First, come up with a simple plan, or maybe two plans, in case you need a backup. Second, see to every detail of the preparations yourself. Third, examine every square inch of the place where you want to hit the Potters. And fourth, make sure there’s no one else around when you put your plan into action, except yourself and James and Lily Potter. Oh, and one more thing. Whatever happens, come to me before you report to the Dark Lord.’”
“'Why?’ asked Orel.
“'Well, mainly, so that if you fail,’ said Eustace, ‘I’ll know what mistake of yours to avoid, in case His Darkness passes the assignment on to me...’”
+++ RIDDLE TIME! +++
Some of you readers have been keeping busy with the “unanswerable” riddles!
WHO DOES THE LAUNDRY ANYWAY? Rhiannon observes that Ron once said his mother would like a house-elf to help with the ironing. Maybe this, along with Dobby’s availability to pick up robes for cleaning, suggests that you can give clothes to a house-elf for the express purpose of cleaning them, without setting them free. Maybe it’s a matter of attitude, though. It could be like how a genie or psammead can turn your most carefully-worded wish into a dreadful curse, by willfully twisting what you meant—because the genie wants to harm you, or the psammead wants to be left alone. If a house-elf wants to go free, you can ask him to iron a shirt and he may interpret it as a pink slip. But if he loves working for you, you can leave any number of socks lying around and he will merely tidy them up for you, because leaving the house doesn’t occur to him. What do you think of that theory?
WHAT ARE LITTLE BOGGARTS MADE OF? Nicole suggests an even trickier riddle, from the “How Many Angels Can Dance On the Head of a Pin” Dept. If a Boggart is your worst fear, what do you see when you meet one? Does the boggart switch to your second-worst fear?
WHAT’S SO FUNNY, SIRIUS? Clara thinks the reason Sirius was found laughing after Wormtail killed all those Muggles and got away was that Sirius thought Wormtail had killed himself with his own curse. Maybe I’m not putting this right, so I’ll leave it to Clara’s own words: “I mean, if you were trying to kill the man that killed your best friend and he ended up killing himself when his own curse backfired, I'm sure you'd find it very ironically funny. I believe that's why he was laughing, because Wormtail was so stupid.” I don’t know. Are you convinced?
CRUMB! A reader named Victor points out that, in the so-called wandless magic which I so cleverly pointed out in Riddle 2, Dumbledore was actually using his wand. Drat!
THE SPY WHO PUKED ON ME: Andrea has a mind-bender that isn’t so much a riddle as a new “clue” for inquiring minds to wrestle with. In her words: "Madam Marsh has been on the Knight Bus every time Harry has. She also leaves the bus clutching her handkerchief or something to show that she feels ill. What are the odds that someone who feels that nauseuated would be a regular on the Knight Bus? If she does not ride the bus on a day-to-day basis, then who puts her on the bus to watch over Harry?”
And finally:
RIDDLE #27, FROM THE “SOMEONE’S BEEN EATING MY PORRIDGE” DEPT: Caren gives us a brand new Riddle! How did Dumbledore and, later, Snape, know that Harry was visiting their memories in the Pensieve? If Harry was really, physically “sucked into” the Pensieve, would they be able to see him by looking into the bowl themselves? Or wouldn’t Snape have a hard time telling Harry apart from James from an overhead view? And, “If the person simply has his/her head in the Pensieve, then how are they pulled out? Does their brain play a trick on them and make them think a person they do not have their eyes on is in the memory?” etc. You go ahead and try to figure that one out!
[Originally posted 2/24/05]
Spanky’s tale continued...
“'So it’s all up with me, it is,’ said the first Death Eater. ‘I’m done for.’
“'Aw, don’t put such a sour face on things,’ said the other. ‘That’ll only make sure the worst happens.’
“'A lot you know,’ said the first. ‘You weren’t there when the Dark Lord sizzled the ones that failed. I saw it, every time. He sent them out, one by one, to stop this Potter kid being born, and they came back, one by one, to face the consequences for not managing it. And now You-Know-Who wants me to go. I’ll be a fritter before the week is out. A fritter on a stick!’
"'Now, Orel, you know better than to give up before you’ve tried. You just think about what you have to do, what the others tried, and why they failed; and then you’re sure to come up with some plan that will work!’
“'I’m telling you, Eustace, there’s something funny about the Potters. Something protecting them—something big. I might as well pop myself on a spit right now.’
“'All right, Orel, if that’s what you want. But before you do, perhaps you might think back over what all the other witches and wizards did, and tell me what happened. At least I can try to give you a suggestion that will work.
“'Well, it can’t do me any more harm than is coming anyway, so why not? First there was Iphigenia Crowe, who worked with Lily Potter, though they were not really confidential friends. Iphigenia thought Lily would consider it a surprisingly friendly gesture if she put on a high tea for Lily and all of her witchfriends, making sure that each of them brought some kind of gift, like self-rocking cots, self-cleaning nappies, and a feeding bottle that is always blood-warm. Iffie’s gift was a rag doll, which had button eyes sewed on to it. But under the button eyes, Iffie had secretly painted a pair of evil eyes that were cursed to cause all growing things that they looked upon to wither and die. She expected that, if it didn’t stop the baby being born, it would at least get him soon afterward.
“'Unfortunately,’ Orel went on, ‘Edwina Bridlethwaite was also invited, who, ever since a bludger hit her on the head and ended her career with the Tornados, had been unable to do any magic except by accident. And even more unfortunately, it seemed that Edwina’s magical accidents tended to work in favor of mudbloods like Lily Potter. Edwina was reaching across the tea-table to grab up the last dragon-paté sandwich, when the sleeve of her robe caught on the teapot—the ever-full kind, wouldn’t you know—and it spilled gallons of scalding tea over Iphigenia’s gift. The paint washed off the doll’s face, not that the doll was worth keeping after that anyway. The whole plot was ruined. When Iffie told You-Know-Who what had happened, he turned her into a chickpea and closed her up inside a set of matrioskhi, since she liked dolls so much.’
“Eustace shuddered audibly. ‘And then?’
“'And then,’ said Orel, ‘he sent Sir Humphrey Twigg.’
“'Oooh! I wondered what happened to him,’ observed Eustace.
“'Shush! So he sent Sir Humphrey, who, as you may recall, had a game leg. Sir Humphrey contrived to have a broomstick breakdown within a mile of the Potters’ house, and as he expected, Lily came running to help him before he had hobbled twenty paces. She brought him to her home and was going to use a pinch of floo powder to call a broomstick repairman, but Sir Humphrey jinxed the stuff so that it wouldn’t light. So Lily tells Sir Humphrey to make himself comfortable and takes his broom and tries to disapparate, but that won’t work either. Finally, she was forced to run out on foot and try to catch the Knight Bus to Hogsmeade, while Sir Humphrey lay down for a nap in the parlor, complaining of a headache. As soon as she was gone, he pulled out a skull-shaped flask full of a potion so evil that even You-Know-Who stammers when he speaks its name: Essence of N-n-n-n-...erm. You know what I mean.'
“'Nundu Breath?’ Eustace whispered.
“Orel giggled nervously. ‘That’s the one. The slow-release stuff that may take weeks to reach lethal levels. So Sir Humphrey sprinkled it in the four corners of the house, across every doorsill and windowsill, and into the hearth. Afterward, he felt a real headache coming on, and decided to go outdoors for some fresh air and a constitutional. He pulled out his cognac flask, took a pull on it, and realized at once that he should have let his house-elf learn to read. Evidently the little treasure had mistaken Essence of N-n-n-n-...
“'Nundu Breath.’
“'Ha! Ha! Yes, it had mistaken that for the bottle of cognac, which apparently looked very similar, and had poured each one into the wrong pocket flask. The skull-shaped one, which Sir Humphrey saved for skulduggery such as his business with the Potters’ eaves and threshold and hearth, had contained nothing worse than the finest French brandy galleons can buy. The silver flask with the Twigg crest, on the other hand, was full of N-n-n-n-n-...’ Orel faltered.
“'I get it,’ said Eustace.
“'Good,’ said Orel. ‘Sir Humphrey hurried back to the Dark Lord to make his excuses and to demand, in the name of his family line of noblewizards going back to Yves the Leper, that our master give him the antidote before the poison kicked in. No such luck! As punishment for his failure, Sir Humphrey was left to stand outside His Dark Lordship’s potions cupboard, game leg and all, while his illiterate house-elf was locked inside, trying to decipher the labels on a thousand potions. Needless to say, the house-elf was still looking for the antidote—if it was even there—when death caught up with Sir Humphrey.’
“'That’s pretty nasty,’ Eustace admitted.
“'Who was next?’ Orel mused. ‘Ah! I remember! It was Octavius Pidgeon. You remember him; he did a stretch in Azkaban for werewolf baiting, back in the early days of His Dark Lordship’s rise to power. He rigged a Daily Prophet Galleon Draw so that the Potters would win a free cruise on the H.M.S. Necromancer. Having seen what happened to Iffie and Sir Humphrey, and being a great fixer of betting games, Pidgeon knew better than to put all his eggs in one basket. He made several unrelated arrangements to do the Potters in, so that if one plot failed, another would go on. First, he paid off some merpeople and a giant squid to try to scuttle the Necromancer. Next, he made an arrangement with a kraken to produce an enormous wave that would force the ship onto a shoal, just off a desert island. Then, he made sure that the ship was going to stop at Easter Island, and he turned one of those standing stones into a golem with the single purpose of bashing the Potters to smithereeens. And finally, he reverse-conjured an unplottable charm and placed it on the crew of the ship, so that they would wander forever without ever getting to where they intended to go. That was only supposed to go into effect after they reached Easter Island, though.’
“Eustace whistled. ‘Quadruple failsafes. Octavius was a sure bet if there ever was one. So what went wrong?’
“'What didn’t?’ said Orel. ‘As near as I can figure, the kraken misjudged the timing of her tidal wave, and ended up dashing the giant squid and the merpeople onto a desert island, where they perished. Then the reverse-unplottable spell somehow got transferred to the golem, who, unable to tell where he was going, walked off a cliff into the sea. The Potters didn’t even get seasick.’
“'So what did the Dark Lord do to Octavius?’
“'I seem to recall that he was turned into a carp and released into a tank full of barracuda.’
“'Lovely.’
“'And the last time, the unlucky party was Tatiana Snelling. She tried the most direct approach. Everyone knew, since Witch Weekly did that write-up on Lily Potter, that she and James took a walk in the wood near their house every day after dinner. Tatiana disillusioned herself, sneaked into the wood with plenty of time to spare, and took up station in a leafy oak tree overlooking the path that led down to the Potters’ house. Well, as soon as that pair of Muggle-loving upstarts strolled into view, Tatiana aimed her wand right at Lily Potter and screamed that death curse we all know so well. Unfortunately, she forgot that she was in a wand tree, surrounded by loads of limbs and twigs and, I hardly need mention, bowtruckles. Her curse wiped out a whole branch of the bowtruckle clan that lived on that tree, but it didn’t even faze the hundred or so other bowtruckles that instantly rushed at Tatiana. She barely managed to escape with her life, but that was more than she could manage after the Dark One caught up with her. He turned her into a wood louse and added her to a bucket of wood lice that was going to be fed to the guardians of the Dark Lord’s pet tree...’
“'The one that is trimmed to a perfect likeness of our Master himself?’ asked Eustace. ‘What do they call that tree again?’
“Well, when He Who Must Not Be Named isn’t around, they call it Yew-Know-Who...’
“Eustace snorted with laughter, then composed himself, apparently out of consideration for his friend’s anxiety. ‘All right, so he gave old Tatiana a sporting chance. She could have gotten away...one out of a million wood lice, after all...’
“Yes, well, that’s all there is. I’m the next lamb to be sent to slaughter, and I probably won’t be the last. If potions, curses, magical creatures, and jinxed artifacts can’t finish this Potter child, I can’t think what will.’
“'And who,’ Eustace said, with a sly smile in his voice, ‘said those things can’t do the job? It wasn’t the magic that failed, Orel old pudding, it was the fault of the people who planned and carried it out. They all hatched plans with too many variables, and the variables got in their way. Iphigenia ran a risk by involving a whole roomful of unwitting accomplices, so she had no one but herself to blame when that washed-up Quidditch maven spilt tea on her jinxed artifact. Octavius tried to hedge his bets by calling on more than one magical creature to do his dirty work, but he did not bother with choreographing the operation as a whole. So it was entirely his fault when they tripped over each other! Sir Humphrey blithely let his plan pivot on the menial actions of a witless body-servant, when he should have trusted no one with any part of his plan; and Tatiana failed to take careful note of the lay of the land, and plunged ahead without careful preparation.’
“'So what can I do that will avoid their mistakes?’ said Orel, sounding hopeful for the first time.
“'Why, that’s simple,’ said Eustace. ‘First, come up with a simple plan, or maybe two plans, in case you need a backup. Second, see to every detail of the preparations yourself. Third, examine every square inch of the place where you want to hit the Potters. And fourth, make sure there’s no one else around when you put your plan into action, except yourself and James and Lily Potter. Oh, and one more thing. Whatever happens, come to me before you report to the Dark Lord.’”
“'Why?’ asked Orel.
“'Well, mainly, so that if you fail,’ said Eustace, ‘I’ll know what mistake of yours to avoid, in case His Darkness passes the assignment on to me...’”
+++ RIDDLE TIME! +++
Some of you readers have been keeping busy with the “unanswerable” riddles!
WHO DOES THE LAUNDRY ANYWAY? Rhiannon observes that Ron once said his mother would like a house-elf to help with the ironing. Maybe this, along with Dobby’s availability to pick up robes for cleaning, suggests that you can give clothes to a house-elf for the express purpose of cleaning them, without setting them free. Maybe it’s a matter of attitude, though. It could be like how a genie or psammead can turn your most carefully-worded wish into a dreadful curse, by willfully twisting what you meant—because the genie wants to harm you, or the psammead wants to be left alone. If a house-elf wants to go free, you can ask him to iron a shirt and he may interpret it as a pink slip. But if he loves working for you, you can leave any number of socks lying around and he will merely tidy them up for you, because leaving the house doesn’t occur to him. What do you think of that theory?
WHAT ARE LITTLE BOGGARTS MADE OF? Nicole suggests an even trickier riddle, from the “How Many Angels Can Dance On the Head of a Pin” Dept. If a Boggart is your worst fear, what do you see when you meet one? Does the boggart switch to your second-worst fear?
WHAT’S SO FUNNY, SIRIUS? Clara thinks the reason Sirius was found laughing after Wormtail killed all those Muggles and got away was that Sirius thought Wormtail had killed himself with his own curse. Maybe I’m not putting this right, so I’ll leave it to Clara’s own words: “I mean, if you were trying to kill the man that killed your best friend and he ended up killing himself when his own curse backfired, I'm sure you'd find it very ironically funny. I believe that's why he was laughing, because Wormtail was so stupid.” I don’t know. Are you convinced?
CRUMB! A reader named Victor points out that, in the so-called wandless magic which I so cleverly pointed out in Riddle 2, Dumbledore was actually using his wand. Drat!
THE SPY WHO PUKED ON ME: Andrea has a mind-bender that isn’t so much a riddle as a new “clue” for inquiring minds to wrestle with. In her words: "Madam Marsh has been on the Knight Bus every time Harry has. She also leaves the bus clutching her handkerchief or something to show that she feels ill. What are the odds that someone who feels that nauseuated would be a regular on the Knight Bus? If she does not ride the bus on a day-to-day basis, then who puts her on the bus to watch over Harry?”
And finally:
RIDDLE #27, FROM THE “SOMEONE’S BEEN EATING MY PORRIDGE” DEPT: Caren gives us a brand new Riddle! How did Dumbledore and, later, Snape, know that Harry was visiting their memories in the Pensieve? If Harry was really, physically “sucked into” the Pensieve, would they be able to see him by looking into the bowl themselves? Or wouldn’t Snape have a hard time telling Harry apart from James from an overhead view? And, “If the person simply has his/her head in the Pensieve, then how are they pulled out? Does their brain play a trick on them and make them think a person they do not have their eyes on is in the memory?” etc. You go ahead and try to figure that one out!
[Originally posted 2/24/05]
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