137. Death by Aromatherapy

Contest winner: greyniffler

Joe Albuquerque had walked around the hogshead barrel in the late Bette Noir's vault for the 100th time, occasionally pausing to knock on it or to try some other means of guessing what it contained (short of opening it), when something started to happen in the very corner where he had been hiding when the barrel was delivered.

Sadie stepped away from the pile of enormous money bags and joined Joe on the far side of the barrel. Together they watched from behind a rack full of fur coats as the jumping-juniper barrel rocked itself back and forth. Nearby, a sack writhed and shuddered as if someone was trapped inside it. Sadie chewed the end of her veil. Joe watched with his fists clenched. A few minutes earlier, he had been disguised as a money bag only a few feet from the one that was now coming to life. Now his attention was focused on who might be coming out of it, focused to razor keenness by the hope and dread of seeing a woman he had loved and lost many years ago.

So when an entirely unknown person came out of the bag, he almost cried out with relief. Or, perhaps, disappointment.

The unknown person was preceded by a fountain of galleons, shooting out of a burst seam below the neck of the sack. This was followed by a hand, which tugged on the outside of the sack to make the rip wider; then an arm, and another; then the head and shoulders of an extremely thin young man; and finally the rest of him, flowing out of the coin-clogged sack in one rapid movement. This, Joe was certain, was no one he had ever met . . . yet there was something familiar about him. Joe watched silently, meaning to learn as much as he could about this newcomer before revealing himself.

Meanwhile, Sadie had recognized the signet ring on the young man's finger. She nudged Joe and pointed it out.

Oblivious to their presence, the young man chanted some very precise shrinking charms, reducing the size of the great wriggling barrel until it would fit in the palm of his hand. He pocketed this. Then he prised the lid off a crate and pulled out a glass votive holder. This was evidently not what he needed. The youth put the votive back and opened another crate. This one was full of squat, beeswax candles. With a grin of success, he sealed the crate and shrank it until it would fit in his other pocket. Then he went back to the split money bag and burrowed into it. A moment later his kicking legs disappeared into the pile of coins still remaining in the sack, and the sound of rattling galleons ceased.

"Who was that?" Sadie blurted before the last echo had died. "And where did he go with - er - whatever it is?"

"Only one way to find out," said Joe, pushing the rack of furs aside. He began digging in the sack of galleons, and quickly struck upon a wooden surface. Clearing the coins away, he found that, on the inside, the sack was only one end of a canvas lining of a chest or strongbox of some kind. The lid on top was unadorned wood. Even with all the contents scraped out on the floor of the vault, the chest was too narrow to accommodate someone of Joe's size. He pulled his head out of the split sack and looked at Sadie. "You might be scrawny enough," he remarked.

"Thank you very much," she snapped. She stretched and flexed, throwing her bosom out as if to prove that she had one.

"Well, maybe if we wrap a tight bandage around your chest," Joe conceded.

Sadie seemed mollified. "That's all right," she said. "I can get through some tight spaces. Let me see what you have there."

Before Joe could stop her or discuss their plan of attack, Sadie swarmed into the sack headfirst and was gone, slamming the lid of the chest behind her.

Swearing, Joe pushed the lid up and tried to see out of the top of the strongbox. "Sadie," he hissed. "What are you doing?"

When he received no answer, Joe sat back on his heels and waited. After a while he grew bored, so he opened the crate of votive holders the young stranger had rejected. These were narrow glass cylinders, open at one end, and decorated with a painting of some medieval saint cradling a wounded bird in his hands. Beneath the picture, a short rhyme was picked out in curly, thread-like letters:

Here is the bird that never flew.
Here is the tree that never grew.
Here is the bell that never rang.
Here is the fish that never swam.

This meant nothing to Joe. He sighed, went back to the corner behind the fur coats, wrapped one of the coats around him, and took a nap.

What Sadie found when she emerged from the narrow strongbox was a lady's bedchamber in a very fine, old house. There was no mistaking it, even with dustcovers over everything and the windows veiled by smothering curtains. The draped shapes included a four-poster bed, a chair beside a workbasket, a wardrobe, a dressing table (on which the strongbox was situated), a cold, dark fireplace, and a washstand. The dust covers were a good idea; they were heavily soiled with dust, as was the floor, except where the young man's feet had come and gone.

Sadie carefully stepped in the youth's footprints and followed them across the dusty floor. Slowly, mindful of even the tiniest creak, Sadie pulled the door open and peeked out into the room beyond. Again, smothered windows and dustcovers over all: a lady's sitting-room. Beyond that was a deserted hallway, from which dim light and the sound of voices filtered as if from some distance. She crept along the hallway, looking into the rooms she passed. In some, the curtains were pulled aside, revealing an improbable variety of vistas. From a child's day-nursery she saw a winter landscape with snow on the ground and trees glittering with icicles. From a small library, the windows gave a view of a gravel driveway, green lawns, towering hedges, and an iron gate. The music room (where a piano and violin seemed to have been abandoned by their players only a moment ago) commanded a view of a khaki-colored waste dotted with cactus, agave, and sagebrush. But the view that made the breath catch in her chest was in the dining room.

It wasn't so much the vast window overlooking the Thames at night, with the lights of the city in the distance; nor was it the painting on the other side, the painting of a Dark Lord of recent (but not blessed) memory; nor the vase of shriveled, putrid-smelling flowers under it. What made Sadie draw back around the corner was the vast figure wedged into a massive chair at the head of the dining room table, surrounded by a crowd of platters and tureens from which it ceaselessly ate while the skinny youth from the vault stood by his elbow, speaking.

"...exactly as planned," the young man was saying just now. "I will begin infusing the napple cordial into the candles tomorrow. Then, with..."

"Today," belched the monstrous figure at the head of the table.

"All right," said the youth, scarcely looking put out. "Today. Then, with the St. Mungo commemorative votives stuffed with suicider-scented candles, we can proceed to the next stage. The healers will find the missing crate of votives, conveniently but plausibly misplaced in their regular candle-supply closet. The fundraiser will proceed as planned. Every do-gooder wizard this side of the Channel will buy one to support the hospital's expansion project. Next thing they know, St. Mungo's will be flooded with unexplained comas. That's when you will - er..."

"You'll see," gobbled the thing beside him with a wicked gleam in its little eyes. It continued feeding while the young man fidgeted nervously.

"Surely, Uncle," the lad cried out at last. "That is to say, Auntie - or whatever - surely the plan has ripened to the point where I'll need to know what comes next."

A huge, meaty paw slapped the young man, knocking him headlong into a heap of discarded crockery. "Be still," the paw's owner warned, his wobbling face turning puce with anger. "When Uncle or Auntie is ready to reveal that he or she still lives," it continued, in defiance of its ordinarily ravenous appetite, "the world will know soon enough what we want. Until then, give us a reason to doubt your loyalty, and you will become" - the speech broke off in favor of a long, rich belch - "an item on the menu."

As soon as Uncle or Auntie Leslie had resumed stuffing, the skinny youth picked himself up and limped out of the room, passing within inches of the stuffed panda whose shadow concealed Sadie. She gripped the bear's fur, eyes wide as saucers, trying to make sense of all that she had just seen and heard. After several minutes of uninterrupted gross noises coming from the adjacent room, Sadie plucked up her courage and slipped back down the hallway, in search of the lady's bedchamber from which she had somehow entered the stronghold of a dark wizard whose death had been reported long ago.

Five minutes later, Sadie knew she was lost. She recognized none of the rooms she looked into, and now some of the doors were locked. Backtracking didn't help; when she went back to a door she was sure had been, moments earlier, a dairy stocked with rounds of cheese and brimming butter molds, it had become a breadroom thick with the smell of cooling loaves. As she wandered, discouraged, through increasingly unfamiliar corridors, Sadie's ears picked up to the sound of approaching footsteps. She threw herself through a door...

...stumbled, in near-darkness, down half a dozen brick steps...

...and only realized she was outdoors when a flash of lightning brightened the sky. Sadie turned around, quickly reestablishing her bearings, but it was too late. The door she had come out of was on the retreating side of a rough-hewn, wooden shack. A shack that was running away from her at surprising speed, running on ten thousand chicken feet.

Sadie said something not very dainty and began to race after it.

+++ Double Challenge for #139 +++

You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! First, go to the forums, or send Robbie feedback. Then, in 250 words or less, answer the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]

SURVEY: How did Joe and Sadie get into Vault 1036 at Gringotts? (See chapters 135 and 136 for more background.) A: The goblins let them in because they had a warrant from the RMB. B: Joe had a key because Bette Noir gave it to him. C: They hid inside a deposit bag. D: I dunno, some type of magical means of entry. (Suggestions are welcome.)

CONTEST: Describe a clever, magical security measure that could trip up even an experienced burglar like Sadie.

[Originally posted 5/25/08]

136. Fistley Confunded

Contest winner: Dragonic

Titus Fistley lay giggling on the floor of his cubicle, surrounded by laughodil bushes. As his mirth subsided, he lifted a leaf on a nearby plant and read aloud from its underside: "Question: How many Dark Lords does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Three - one to try and do it with his best curse, and be stopped by an infant; one to try and do it by possessing a willing minion, and be stopped by an adolescent; and a third to take matters into his own hands and screw in the lightbulb . . . which then falls out and steals his wand! Ah, ha ha ha ha ha!" Tears ran down his face.

By this time of night, faces had stopped appearing in the doorway, looking in on his breathless laughter with a mixture of concern and revulsion. The wall torches had dimmed, and the hovering light-bulb plants had drifted off to some shady corner to rest. There was barely enough light left for him to read by. So when an owl flew into the cubicle and perched on the corner of his desk, Fistley did not see it. And since, at that moment, he was laughing at a series of uproarious knock-knock jokes about the Hogwarts Houses, he did not hear its wings flapping either. So he was quite startled - in truth, he screamed a bit - when the bird pecked his elbow.

Fistley took the letter proffered by the owl and squinted at the elaborate wafer seal on it. It seemed a pity to break it, but as he was too tired to charm it off, Fistley bit through it and spat out the wax over his shoulder. The moment he opened the letter, however, his moist, puffy eyes went blank. He read aloud his instructions from Lee Shore, esq., in a voice as glazed as his eyes. Then, after murmuring "We hear and obey," he chewed up the letter and swallowed it.

He moved like a sleepwalker through the vast labyrinth of the Abraculture Office, gliding effortlessly around obstructions while staring straight ahead. The olives on a seeing-eye olive tree turned to follow him as he passed. An elephant ear plant (which remembered every word ever spoken to it) perked up at the sound of his footsteps. Orchids sniffed at the hem of his robe, and some Mexican jumping beans went very still as he passed the bush on which they lived. Triffids, Devil's Snare, and Malagasy man-eating trees jerked against the stakes that held them firmly in their soil. Cattails hissed, dogwood blossoms whimpered, and a horse-chestnut tree whinnied softly.

Titus Fistley floated deeper and deeper into the maze of planters, terraria, digging tools, and sacks of fertilizer until he came to a region of barrels, hogsheads, butts, and firkins, stacked in long shelves. These contained spirits and extract distilled from the myriad herbs and fruits catalogued by the office. Here casks of cow-parsley cordial ruminated contentedly; essence of milkweed curdled as it aged; jars of buttercup ghee glowed with purity; a barrel of mead, inadvertently left open, provided the ministry's bee population (which worked to keep the plants pollinated) with an opportunity for a loud, drunken party; and in one grossly ill-judged experiment, a cask of guevara - a blend of Cuban rum and guava brandy - bubbled quietly, fermenting rebellion.

Still deeper Fistley drifted, his feet barely touching the ground. He passed, without hesitation, through the illusion of a solid, stone wall that had been charmed to feel solid to all visitors but those with a high security rating. With a single touch, he opened the door of a vault that was only supposed to admit people of Deputy Minister rank or higher. He passed numerous top-secret liquors, and vials containing the last residue of priceless and irreplaceable potions, heading directly for a dank and gloomy stairway - which he began to descend, unconcerned by the fact that it was booby-trapped to drop anyone without a special warrant from the Queen directly into a deep, dark dungeon. He flicked aside spectral signs (modeled after will-o-the-wisps) that warned about the approaching danger of hazardous substances.

In some corner of his mind he knew what was down here. Here were acids that could eat through any substance known to man; since only a substance unknown to man could hold them, it was imperative that no one ever visit them and find out what it was. There were sneezing powders that could make a man's head explode; lotions that could make a woman so repulsive that the sight of her was fatal; a salve that, if poured into one's eyes, would result in maddening visions; a flatulence cure that had been recalled after turning several users into human weather balloons; and a vaccine against deception, which had the side effect of destroying a person's imagination. There was even a balm for unhappiness there, but no one remembered what disastrous results it caused; it had always been considered too horrible to discuss. But at the very back of the cellar were a number of bricked-in vaults. The next-to-last one - beside a vault filled with clumsy masonry and decorated with the graffito "Fortunato wuz heer" - was guarded by a last will-o-the-wisp warning sign: "DANGER: NAPPLE CIDER - HIGHLY TOXIC."

Fistley touched the brick wall with one finger, and it collapsed in a pile of dust around his feet. Within the vault was a stack of firkins - 70 imperial gallons, each - covered in a coating of dust. He coughed slightly, and for a moment almost emerged from his trance, if the brief look of confusion in his eyes could be taken so far. But his eyes glazed over again, and he pointed an ink-stained finger at the nearest barrel. It lifted itself off its shelf and levitated out of the vault, following its mesmerized master up out of the cellar and back through all the stacks and storehouses of the Abraculture office.

All was still and dim when he arrived in the hooper's shop. The jumping juniper cask was easy to discover by the way it incessantly rolled from side to side. Fistley gave a flick of his wrist, and the bung flew out of the napple cider barrel. A funnel levitated over the hole in the waiting juniper cask, which trembled but otherwise held still while it was being filled. The latter was only a hogshead, somewhat over fifty gallons' capacity; so not all of the contents of the firkin went into it. When the hogshead was full, Fistley stoppered it, and vanished the firkin with its remaining contents.

The jumping juniper barrel was soon rocking back and forth on the bed of a levitating, zero-wheeled cart, which he effortlessly towed to an enormous, freight-sized fireplace. A fistful of Floo Powder ignited green flames in the hearth, and Fistley guided the cart and the hogshead into them . . . and then out of a similar fireplace in a cavern bustling with heavily laden goblins.

"State your business, please," growled a particularly hideous specimen with a squashed nose.

"Take this to Vault 1036," Fistley said blankly.

"Very well," said the goblin, after consulting a clipboard. "Have a pleasant day. Now shove off."

As soon as Fistley had shoved off (taking the cart with him), the squashed-nose goblin screeched at a goblin with cauliflower ears. Cauliflower Ears rolled the hogshead barrel to a nearby rail platform and, with the help of two other goblins and an enormous prybar, managed to wedge it into a large ore cart. The three goblins - Cauliflower Ears, Wrong-Way Elbows, and Braided Eyebrows - steered the cart to Vault 1036, where they deposited the barrel.

As soon as the vault door slammed, a sack of money in the corner lifted, then fell aside, proving not to be a sack at all, but an artfully designed wizard's robe. A wizard stood up in it, looking so like Thierry Henry that it could have been no one but Joe Albuquerque. From the shadow behind him emerged a stiff and groaning Sadie, still in her veil and black leotard.

"There's the delivery we expected," Joe said grimly, pacing around the enormous barrel, which even now was rocking from side to side, stirring its contents.

"I wonder what's in it," Sadie yawned.

"Whatever it is," said Joe, "she won't be long in coming to get it. Then, perhaps, I will believe" - his voice faltered - "believe Bette Noir is alive."

Sadie touched Joe's arm gently. "You never expected that you would see her again," she whispered.

Joe's face, or rather Thierry's, darkened. "Neither," he murmured, "does she."

+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE +++

Help decide the shape of The Magic Quill's plot line! All you have to do is visit the forum and leave a brief comment with your answers to this week's survey and challenge. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]

SURVEY: From page 2 of the record-shattering discussion on TMQ #133, which of the following idea(s) would you like to see in Chapter 138? (Please, vote for only 2 or 3 ideas at most!).

• A: Harvey meets Yevrah, his evil double from a backwards, bizarro-universe.
• B: Yldemhs (Bizarro-Shmedly) visits our universe.
• C: Gratefruits are used to counteract napple toxin. (Note: Someone please remind me what previous chapter they were in!).
• D: Rashrooms (mushrooms that make you feel reckless).
• E: Beet-ems (vegetables that beat anyone who trys to eat/touch them).
• F: Leekys (Leeks that give the eater an irresitable urge to go to The Leaky Cauldron).
• G: Feral Root/Kennel Root (Fenel roots that make the eater wild).
• H: Slow-Dates (Dates that when consumed, make everything seem slower).
• I: We meet the original Merlin as a child, only beginning his long career of living backward through time.
  J: Shout-kraut (a screaming cabbage).
• K: Wrestle Sprouts / Rassle Sprouts (help me with this one).
• L: Self-pitting olives.
• M: Self-spitting (self-seeding) watermelons.
• N: Collared greens (veggies that help you arrest someone).
• O: Plants growing out of control due to an out-of-control acceleration spell.

CONTEST: Name a well-known figure that you would enjoy seeing a disguised wizard impersonate. Again, if you can't stop at just one, please limit yourself to 2 or 3 suggestions!

[Originally posted 5/4/08]

135. The Spy Who Jinxed Me

Concepts contributed by Dragonic, greyniffler and Linda Carrig

The house-elf looked in at the bathroom door and uttered the filthiest oath it knew - which translates into English as "Socks!" The steady drip of water from the pipe that ran along the ceiling was falling on the floor that the elf had mopped not half an hour ago, while the bucket that he had placed under the drip stood bone-dry, eight inches away from where the drops were falling. The creature grumbled as he mopped up the puddle and repositioned the bucket so that each drop fell in its center: TINK . . . TINK . . . TINK. Then it went about its previous errand of picking bits of ash and dust off the priceless Persian rug in Master's study, which had to be done by hand, speck by speck.

The house-elf grumbled about this, too. He liked to grumble, actually. He grumbled about the absurdity of Master's explanation of why Carpet had to be picked rather than swept - something about the sweeper causing wear and tear on the rug's ancient, delicate fibers - when it was manifestly obvious that Carpet was of the flying variety. Anyone could tell this by the way it kept wrinkling in the middle or curling on the edge, at just the right time and place to trip a body up. And the way Master anchored it down with heavy objects, like the ornate marble lampstand, and the enormous alabaster vase - formerly a spittoon, now home to a flourishing umbrella tree that already sported an unripe crop of walking sticks. And yet, these things often moved from one place to another when no one was in the room; and on one memorable occasion, the wing chair on the corner of the rug nearest the window had fallen into the hearth and started to burn, all by itself. The elf nodded and grumbled with satisfaction as it crawled around, picking barely visible specks out of the rug. Carpet was alive enough - and Master's spell barely kept it asleep. Running a sweeper over it would probably tickle it awake. Then, no doubt, one would see more exciting disturbances than a singed chair or a crop of walking sticks rattling in the tree where there was no wind whatsoever.

When the rug was finished, and all the fibers had been smoothed down from north to south, the house-elf walked out of the study in search of its next job: straining fish droppings out of the aquarium, which were then to be spread with exquisite care over the . . . "Braces and garters!" cursed the house-elf, spotting the puddle on the bathroom floor as it hurried past. Once again, the bucket was nearly dry, this time over a foot away from where the water was falling. Why would someone move it? The house-elf's grumble turned into a snarl as it scrubbed the tile dry and put the bucket where it belonged.

This done, the snarling house-elf cleaned the fish tank and spread its dreck in a thin, consistent layer over the roots of Mistress's favorite plants in the garden. Nearest the house was the barnacle tree, whose barnacle-like fruit opened in late summer to reveal a newly hatched gosling. Below that, along the gazebo path, was Mistress's raskovnik patch, a type of grass whose blades could open anything closed or locked, and which treasure-hunters had all but picked to extinction. Close to the wall at the bottom of the garden lived a flowering fern whose blossom opened one night each year and brought good luck to whoever picked it. And finally, wiping the fish dreck off his hands, the house-elf passed through the postern gate and spent a good hour combing the fleeces of a grove of borometz plants as they baaed and grazed and swayed on their stems.

His snarling subsided to a grumbling as the house-elf circled round the side wall of the garden to the kennel, where it let out the simurgh for its three-times-a-day exercise. The creature barked and chased its tail gaily, getting the lead tangled up with the elf's legs, before launching itself into the air on powerful wings and flying up and down the length of the garden, snapping at birds in flight and marking each chimney it passed. The house-elf sighed at this, but as this was rather an improvement on grumbling, one might suppose the simurgh's behavior cheered him up. Fortunately, he had a very long lead on the beast, so he was eventually able to reel it in and take it indoors for its bath.

He rolled his eyes as they entered the bathroom. Once again, the leaky pipe was dripping on the floor. This time, however, there was no need to wonder who would move the bucket out from under the leak. It was the leak that had moved, half a yard closer to the toilet since the elf had last gone by.

There was no point in clearing it up now. With strength belying his small size, the house-elf engaged the simurgh in a heroic struggle and, at last, succeeded in wrestling the great winged dog into the bath. The simurgh dripped miserably, its rejoicing considerably dampened, as the elf shampooed it, combed it for fleas, toweled it dry, and brushed it all over. Then, with a furtive look over his shoulder, the house-elf banished the simurgh to its kennel with a snap of his fingers, a loud POP, and an abruptly silenced yelp of surprise. This left another mess for the house-elf to clean, and for once he forgot to mutter as he mopped up spilled bubble-bath, feathers, and dog hair.

An hour later, the house-elf lay face-up along the top rung of a tall stepladder, trying to find the leak in the ceiling pipe and fix it. He loosened connections - got squirted in the face - tightened connections - hammered - screwed and unscrewed the brackets that held the pipe up - caulked - tried everything he knew how. The leak only seemed to drip when he wasn't looking for it. He gave up, lined the floor with buckets from one end to the other, and went off to cook supper.

As soon as the house-elf left the bathroom, a tiny voice said something like, "Whew! I thought we'd had it back there!" It was very muffled, so one can't be quite sure. The pipe on the ceiling began to rattle, shake, and bang around in its brackets. Condensation flew in all directions. Water squirted out of every joint. Something inside the pipe made a slow, laborious progress toward the ell above the toilet tank. Then it rattled around the ell with even more violence. Finally the water in the toilet tank gave a "plop" - something in the water gave a fishy cough - someone in the tank said, "Thanks for the ride" - and the porcelain lid over the tank began to lift slowly off.

A pair of eyes peered out through the gap under the lid. No one was around. The lid rose higher, and beneath it rose the head and torso of a young woman wearing a wetsuit. A demure veil covered her entire face below her eyes. Her eyes, however, were anything but demure.

Slowly and silently, the catfish burglar climbed out of the toilet tank, unconcerned by the fact that she couldn't possibly fit inside it. She unzipped her sweatsuit, tossed it back into the toilet tank, and replaced the lid over it. Under the wet suit, she had worn a black, form-hugging leotard that looked virtually identical to the wetsuit. The form it hugged was firm yet feminine. She moved gracefully, silently, with an alert, listening look in her eyes. Before she reached the door, she knew there was no one in the corridor outside; so she darted directly into the nearby study and began a methodical search of the desk.

Her ears perked up: voices approaching. Seconds later, a barrel-chested man with a bushy beard swept in with a younger, leaner woman on his arm. From her perch in the walking-stick tree, concealed by her leotard that had taken on the same pattern of colors and shadows as the branches around her, the burglar recognized the woman and almost gasped.

"But my dear niece," said Bushy Beard, "I still do not understand - why the urgency? You were going to inherit it from me by and by. Rather soon, I should think."

"You know I would never ask this but in the direst emergency," the woman replied. "Please, Uncle Radu, do not ask me to explain what need this is. All you must know is that it exists."

Radu shook his head. "But you, Ilona? Even you would use this?"

"It will work if you give it to me freely," said Ilona. "I do not need to wait for the inheritance."

"That is not what I mean. Can anything be so urgent? I ask you. You, who entrusted it to me with the strongest warning that it was never to be used!"

The younger woman started to reply, hesitated, and cast her eyes downward in shame.

For some reason, this was all the persuasion Uncle Radu needed. He opened the humidor on the bookcase behind his desk and pulled out a slender cigar. Peeling the label off, he revealed a silver ring that he now removed and handed to Ilona. Then he bit the end off the cigar, snapped his fingers, and used the flame on the tip of his thumb to light the cigar, puffing firmly.

"It is yours from now on," the old man said. "I am too old and weak to shoulder such a responsibility. I hope - I hope you will consider any other way to do the thing that you must do. This artifact tries you, tests you always. Once it finds your weakness, it will push there, harder and harder. I fear that once you start using it . . . "

"Everything will be fine," said Ilona. She kissed her uncle three times. "Thank you, Uncle."

Sadie waited until they had left, then had a fit of coughing that rattled the walking sticks in her tree. Before the house-elf could come in and investigate the disturbance, she had climbed out the window above the desk. Climbing down the smooth wall of the house, swimming across the inky, icy moat, and scaling the slimy wall that surrounded the moat were no problem for the catfish burglar; but after jogging four kilometres over uneven terrain in the darkness of an overcast night, she had a twisted ankle and a stitch in her side, and she almost missed the camp. Spanky caught her just in time to keep her from plunging off a cliff into the swift river.

"Did you get it?" he asked.

"I got there too late," Sadie reported miserably.

Spanky looked stunned. "What happened?"

She was about to tell him when Ilona came out of the tent, carrying a cup of chocolate and a plate of biscuits. Ilona faltered at the sight of the hatred in Sadie's eyes.

"Well?" cried Spanky.

"She got out of there fast, didn't she?" Sadie said acidly.

"Who got out of where?" Spanky said, looking from one woman to the other in befuddlement. "What are you talking about? Ilona and I have been right here ever since you left."

"Then there must be two of her," Sadie said, plunging through the tent door and jogging Ilona's elbow into the bargain. "And the other her has the ring," her receding voice added, before a slamming door (in the two-bedrom bungalow inside the tent) cut off any further conversation.

Ilona gave a cry of dismay and spilled the chocolate on the ground. "What can she mean? How would I...? I mean, even if I could, why would I...?"

Spanky gathered his wife under his arm and ushered her inside. "Nevermind," he said. "It's all coming together now. We know only one person who could pull off a caper like this: Joe Albuquerque. Only, he wouldn't. But I would be surprised if dear Joe didn't know someone else who could. Where did you stow that floo powder, dear?"

Meanwhile, camped just across the river and a few dozen yards upstream, another Ilona Spankison relaxed into a chair and began to peel her face off. A new face emerged from beneath the old one - a face whose owner Joe Albuquerque didn't know existed. Which was too bad, really, considering that they had more than talent in common. The slender, smooth-faced young man admired the signet ring on his finger with a bitter smile. He didn't spend much time admiring it, though. He had work to do.

Dear Mr. Fistley, he wrote, Please have a barrell of suiCider transferred into jumping juniper casks, to ensure the potion is continuously stirred, and delivered to Gringotts Vault 1036. Mention my name at the front door, and the goblins will take the casks from there. Then forget all about this matter. Destroy this letter immediately. Cordially, Lee Shore, esq.

The young man grinned as he dripped a wafer of sealing wax on the letter and embossed with the signet ring, knowing that even if the letter went astray, he could not be touched. His real name, after all, was not Lee Shore.

It was Chat Noir.

+++ A NOTE FROM ROBBIE +++

Perplexed? All right. Go back and look at The Magic Quill chapters titled "Titus Fistley," "Madrigal Unchained," "The Catfish Burglar," and even farther back to "The Bette Noir Affair" and "Meet Joe Albuquerque." Don't despair at not remembering all this. I wouldn't remember it either, if greyniffler and Linda hadn't brought it all up in the discussion on TMQ #133. It took me a while - yes, me! - to track down the details of the chapters they were referring to. So if I can do it, so can you!

In the meantime, enjoy this DOUBLE CHALLENGE, by which you can help determine the shape of TMQ Chapter 137...

SURVEY: Which previous Magic Quill villain is Chat Noir working for? (A) Minimillian. (B) Il Comte di Bestemmia. (C) Avarice Exion. (D) Bette Noir. (E) Uncle or Auntie Leslie. HINT: Don't worry if they're supposed to be dead.

CONTEST: Supposing that some wizards share the same religious practices as many Muggles, name and describe a particular sin, saint, miracle, or shrine that is especially significant to churchgoing wizards.

[Originally posted 4/20/08]

134. Hot Ice

Contest winner: Quercitron

Mrs. Ahmed scouted ahead (by sticking her head through the outer door of Harvey's flat) and reported: "It's a jungle in there."

"That many of them?" Joe Albuquerque growled in his disguise as General Patton. "It won't take them long to wreck the place."

"No," said Mrs. Ahmed, her vague form flickering with irritation. "I meant, everything has been taken over by vines. Grape, by the look of it."

"Oh," said Joe, suspending his mental calculations about potential casualties on both sides. "That's a hippogriff of a different color. What about people? Did you see anything going on?"

The see-through lady shrugged. "Just one bloke, it looked like, pulling down vines and rifling through the cupboards."

The word was passed, and Harvey came forward. "Well?" he said.

"I think a frontal assault will do," said the general, pitching his whisper so it could be heard all the way down the hallway - the recently constructed hallway off the back of the lobby of the high-rise apartment building known as the Drains - the hallway where each door led to a different floor, so that stairs and elevators were no longer needed. The people at the back of the line, near the street door, could hear Joe Albuquerque's rasping voice as he announced: "People! Bear in mind that your job is not to be cursed for your country, but to curse some other poor wizard for his. On my signal...CHARGE!"

The door imploded into the flat. A monocled wizard with a frowning moustache, a walking-stick topped by a silver cat's head, and a silk ascot fashionably printed with an illusion of cascading water in motion, glanced up from his business with very little concern, then resumed pulling vines off the wall above the fireplace. As Mrs. Ahmed had reported, the walls, ceiling, floors, and furniture were nearly invisible under a carpet of Vitis Leprosa, except in areas where the ascot-wearing interloper had done his work - areas that looked bare and scarred. The vines kept going into a rather small sack that hovered in front of the wizard, holding its mouth wide open as he stuffed more and more vines into it; the sack never seemed to grow full.

All this Harvey took in as the wave of his supporters swept him toward the intruder. The monocled man seemed little concerned by the approaching mob. The reason for his unconcern became clear a moment later, when Harvey, Joe, and Spanky - all at the front of the line - tried to tackle the man, and missed.

After several frustrating passes, Harvey stood back and watched what was happening. Every time someone surged toward the monocled man from one side, he suddenly came out on the other side without seeming to pass through the middle, where the stranger continued calmly stealing the fruits of Harvey's long journey through time.

Harvey tried to call everyone off, then tugged on Joe's shoulder - just before the latter dived back into the assault line - and got him to bellow, "STAND DOWN!" Then he approached what he took to be the edge of the stranger's invisible bubble of invulnerability, and said: "A word with you, sir."

Monocle gave him a slow look with one lifted eyebrow, then nodded and offered his hand to Harvey. Harvey took it, and was suddenly in another place - a gentleman's study paneled in dark wood and crammed with trophies. Not stuffed bears and mounted fish; no, a different kind of trophy - shiny, complicated machines that gyred and gimbaled and hummed; potions that bubbled and frothed inside sealed jars; a clock with two pendula swinging at right angles, passing through the same point at the bottom of their swing, yet never touching each other; an incandescent dark-bulb standing next to a prism that refracted its plain, radiant darkness into an anti-rainbow of unimaginable hues; and standing on one small table, an autographed photo showing a portly, bearded man (somewhat similar to Hagrid), whose signature read: "To one character who never let me put one over him - all the best, Robbie Fischer."

"Who are you?" Harvey asked, feeling himself on thinner ice than ever.

"I am the Reality Sorcerer," said Monocle Man. "The Magistrate of the Laws of Nature. The Judge of the Intangible, the Jury of the Illogical, the Executioner of the Impossible. I am the Counter of Contradictions, the Midwife of the Inconceivable, the Spell-Checker of the Inexpressible . I am the Censor of the Ineffable and the Squeezer of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I am the Plumber of Paradoxes - you would be surprised how often they get stopped up. I am He Who Assays the Iron Content of Irony. I am He Who Checks the Thread Count of the Fabric of the Universe. I am the Warlock of Wisdom, the Sage Mage, the Popinjay of Punctiliousness, the Lifetime Honorary Recorder of the Islington 'Are You There, Moriarty' Society, and the Number One Supporter of Pride of Portree (annually since 1982). Those are merely my official titles, however. My real name is Robertus Magnus Carolus Johannes etc. etc. etc. de Quipthorne-Westbrookfieldstonehillcrestwoodsmillburyington the Sixth times Two to the Eighth Power, K.B.E., Ph.D., Order of Merlin, First Class. You may call me Bobs."

Harvey blinked. "Is that all?" he asked.

"Well," said Bobs, "My schoolfellows once voted me 'Most Likely to Become a Mystical Hermit,' and I am listed in the Who's Who of Wizardry in the Lower Thames Valley, but I don't like to boast."

"Well, I'm Mr. H. Harvey of the Harvey & Sons' Wall Magic Harveys. I would like to know what business..."

"Have a seat," Bobs interrupted, with the casual air of one not used to listening to others. He conjured up a tray crammed with cups, pots, spoons, a sugar bowl, a milk boat, and a plate of biscuits. "Coffee or tea?"

"Coffee, if you please. I was saying, what right have you..."

"Please forgive me," said Bobs, before dropping what looked like a couple of ice cubes into Harvey's coffee. "It's my house-elf's half-day off, so the pot has gone lukewarm. Hopefully these will help." Clink, clink.

"That's quite all right," Harvey lied. "But may I ask..."

"Milk?" the other man cut in. "Sugar? Perhaps a dash of Irish whisky?"

"None of the above, thank you. But perhaps you could tell me..."

"I hope you don't mind that the biscuits have flaxseed in them," said Bobs. "I find they aid my digestion. Do try your coffee before it gets cold again!"

Harvey, perplexed, sipped his coffee and found it piping hot. "But I don't understand," he said. "If it was lukewarm before you put ice in it..."

"Hot ice," said the Reality Sorcerer with an airy smugness. "When one is charged with stopping the magical world disrupting the Laws of the Universe, one confisc-... that is to say, one comes across some truly amazing things. I don't know what I would do without cold fire during the summer, for example. And this hot ice - so handy, melting in cold liquid, giving off heat as it does so - was invented by the same wizard. Pity I had to destroy him. If more people found out how to make these things, the laws of thermodynamics would be in jeopardy - and all life on this planet with it."

Harvey swallowed discreetly, then blurted out: "What business have you in my flat, and what gives you the right to tear down my vineyard?"

"I should think that would be perfectly obvious," said Bobs. "You have already risked enough with your foolish Draught of Merlin..."

"I was about to destroy every trace of it," Harvey snapped. "I understand the danger, and I have it well in hand."

"I am not interested in your silly potion," Bobs said, almost laughing (but not quite smiling). "It is this thousand-year grape that you planted at the far end of your round trip through time. I cannot allow you to make wine with it."

"What could happen?" Harvey cried. "Could it be worse than a time paradox?"

"As falling off a cliff is worse than stubbing your toe," Bobs assured him. "But you can hardly know what you are working with; nor can you formulate the Essence of Merlin on your own. Both potions belong to the lost art of Yves the Leper. So, if you do as you planned and destroy the Essence, and, if you turn over every twig, leaf, and berry of your cultivar for secure disposal and study, I may not have to destroy you."

"You forget where I've been - and when I've been," said Harvey. "I've learned a great deal in the matter of not being destroyed."

"Don't make this hard," said Bobs, with a pained expression. "I so hate to be forced to threaten large groups of relatively innocent people. Though, to be sure, I spotted one Miles O'Roughage back there, among your little army. One of these days I may be forced to come for him as well. It would be rather like killing two augureys with..."

"I have put a substantial investment on the line," said Harvey. "You can't just go around confiscating things on which so much depends. I must have some kind of compensation."

"Compensation!" the Sage Mage's monocle fogged up. His moustache bristled. "Don't you know who I am?"

"You made that quite clear," said Harvey. "So clear that I suspect you know what has gone into this project, and what depends on it. We are discussing a major portion of the wizarding economy - several large fortunes, the assets of some important businesses - besides the trials and travails of the people who have carried it this far. Did you know some of my people spent years escaping from Gringotts to prepare for this? And knowing as much as you seem to know of things, you must perceive the broken state of health - physical, mental, and magical health - in so many of my supporters..."

"All right!" groaned Robertus Magnus. "I shall restore full value. Merlin knows I can afford it, what with my formula to turn plastic poker chips into galleons. And when we return to your flat, you will find all your friends restored to their, shall we say, 'baseline' condition, mad though they may be in that natural state. Do you have a personal goblin at Gringotts? Very well, have him write to my goblin and they will settle the financial side of the deal. Spit and shake on it?"

And so a magical contract was sealed, and within a few hours Harvey and his party had taken over the entire Hog's Head. Mrs. Ahmed, once back to her fully visible form, had beaten everybody in Spanky's therapy group in an armwrestling tournament. Mr. O'Hare had lost his orange fuzz and looked glum and sheepish until Mrs. Yenta offered to dance with him. Rigel grew up quite suddenly into a disreputable-looking man of about 30, and was now slow-dancing with Sadie while Miles O'Roughage, Anatoly, and the illustrated wizard from Minsk looked on glumly. Siobhan was singing with the band, head thrown back and mouth open wide, while her father Niall wished (to no avail) that she weren't quite so tone-deaf. Mr. Surdo sat next to him, wincing, and trying to stuff napkins into his ears, while Mr. Sphaeris slouched over his firewhisky, not feeling like doing anything in particular. This made a striking contrast to Mrs. Sedulus, who had gone behind the bar (much to the innkeeper's annoyance) and was cleaning everything from the mugs to the floor with grim determination. "This place is disgusting!" she was frequently heard to say.

Among the happiest members of the party was Ilona Spankison, who beamed at her husband, her eyes brimming with tears, as he spell-sparred with Joe Albuquerque and Merlin, deftly defending himself with a wand in each hand. But no one watched these goings-on with greater satisfaction than Harvey, who sat between Ilona and Endora at the corner table, complacent with the success of his plan. As he had hoped, Robertus Magnus had paid off every knut that the Vitis Leprosa adventure had cost him and everyone else - going all the way back to Orion Olmandson's standing debt toward Merlin, whom he had retained to look after his son before their first Gringotts caper; to say nothing of the money he had invested in Spanky's education, channeled through his cousin Lionel Niblet, whom Spanky still believed to be his benefactor. And at last, Harvey was rid of all the receipts he had collected during his 3,000-year trek up and down the mountain of time, which had been reimbursed with interest.

In short, he was the wealthiest wizard in the world, though much of his wealth was already held in trust for the people who had helped him. Some day they would find out how very, very rich they were... but not until Harvey had extracted one more favor from them. For now he could finally afford to carry out his most ambitious plan... He smiled, and seeing his look of satisfaction, Endora and Ilona widened their grins and hugged him from both sides.

"It turned out all right!" said Endora, who for once was not ashamed to show her remarkable nose in public.

"Everything is as it should be," Ilona sighed.

Harvey nodded, and added in a softer voice: "So far, so good."

+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR #136 +++

Don't worry. We're not skipping #135 (as if...!). In order to get things back on track, I am going to use some "leftover" ideas from the incredible discussion on TMQ #133 to generate the magic of #135. So this "Double Challenge" isn't for the next chapter, but the one after that. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]

SURVEY: Which female character of The Magic Quill should feature in the next big plot line?

CONTEST: Come up with a brief joke such as one might find in a wizarding joke book. Anything on the order of "Knock, knock?" or "How many house-elves does it take to change a light bulb?" or even "A hag walks into a bar" is welcome, but PLEASE keep it clean - and PRETTY-PLEASE keep it short. More than one winner may be selected.

[Originally posted 4/6/08]

133. Titus Fistley

Contest winner: Dragonic
Runner-up: greyniffler

Miles O'Roughage sat with the briefcase on his knees on an incredibly hard chair, jammed into a corner between a potted palm-oil palm and a frosted glass door with the words DEPARTMENT OF ABRACULTURE: PATENT OFFICE stenciled on the other side of the glass. Every time someone opened the door, the glass banged Miles' knee painfully, without being damaged itself. The palm-oil palm kept nudging his arm until he dug a sickle and a few knuts out of his pocket and dropped them on its roots; afterward the sound of the palm's roots counting and burying its hoard was enough to drown out the coughing of a sickly, yodeling flytrap in a hanging planter on the other side of the door.

The herbologist sighed, reflecting that magic could sometimes be tiresome. Here he sat in the most uncomfortable chair in a waiting room where he had spent a net two years of his life (though not all at once), steadfastly ignoring a dispute between two other wizards who were both trying to patent the same herb -- either as wurtha-mint (sachets of whose leaves were meant to lend a wizarding home the smell of fresh money) or as catburglarnip (guaranteed to keep thieves docile until help arrived). Not for the first time, he wondered whether he might not have been happier tending an apple orchard or a rose garden, instead of advancing the world's knowledge of magical plants.

Finally the door at the far end of the office opened by itself, and the flytrap yodeled: "NEXT!" before subsiding into another fit of coughing. Dr. O'Roughage plunged through the dark doorway before the arguing wizards could settle on which of them should go first.

As he crossed the threshold, he immediately found himself well inside an enormous, open-plan office. The central area was crammed with cubicles separated by vine-choked trellises; potted trees moved up and down the aisles, pushed by trainer-wearing roots that arched over the rims of their pots, and gathering in rustling groups around watercoolers filled with Miracle-Gro (the wizard recipe, not the Muggle kind whose name is but wishful thinking). Surrounding this area, shelves loaded with seedling trays, glass planters filled with transparent soil, and preserv-o-vac specimen jars marched off into the gray distance in every direction.

The air above the cubicles was filled with one of Miles O'Roughage's proudest inventions: a cross between a paper-waterbomb bush and a hydrolysis hydrangea, which bore dirigiblefruit year round -- hollow sacs filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen so that the plants hovered over everyone's heads. Treated with puncture-proof and fireproof spells, the dirigiblefruit plants also had incandescent tulip bulbs attached to the bottom of their planters by permanent sticking charms, providing ample light for all, and (Miles shivered with pride) all of it through the arts of thaumatobotany.

A throat cleared itself nearby. Miles looked round and found that, as usual, he had been transported instantly to the first available cubicle...and, as too often in the past, that cubicle belonged to a thin-lipped, baggy eyed, pockmarked wizard of middle years, an ample middle, a less than ample comb-over, and a chatwood-veneer name tag that, both in writing and aloud, proclaimed the unwelcome tidings: "Hello! My mame is TITUS FISTLEY, your friendly abracultural patent counselor."

"You again, is it?" Fistley sneered, echoing Dr. O'Roughage's thoughts word-for-word. "Didn't I reject your last application?"

"I still don't understand that," O'Roughage said bitterly as he moved into the cubicle. "I had filled out all the forms correctly, and tied the bundle in the exact shade of red-tape you have always required in the past."

"To be sure," Fistley said with a look of nostalgic satisfaction. "But the knot had twelve corners, whereas I require no more or less than eleven. Also, one end of the tape was one-tenth of a millimeter longer than the other. With the volume of work that goes through this office each day, we have no time to waste on people who aren't sufficiently motivated to observe the forms and conventions. Well? Have you anything new to show me, or is this a social visit?"

While Dr. O'Roughage counted backwards from twenty to settle his temper, someone in a nearby cubicle had a sudden fit of laughter. Fistley looked irritated. His visitor, however, took courage from this sign -- particularly when several other voices joined in the laughter from several directions and distances.

"I was requested," O'Roughage said calmly, "to bring another specimen of my Laughodil, to allow for further study of its interesting properties."

Fistley's face darkened. "I should have known you were behind this," he growled, as another voice nearby gave way to laughter like a pig's snorting. Even a passing tree rustled its branches as if chuckling.

"I take it you haven't examined the plant yourself," O'Roughage said, unlocking the clasps on his briefcase with a wave of his hand. He pulled the lid up, reached down into it until his elbow appeared to be passing through the top of Fistley's desk, and emerged again with a small shrub in a cube-shaped stone pot. The leaves were a glossy, dark green on top, but had a parchmentlike texture beneath. "All you have to do is lift one of the branches," the inventor proudly explained, "and read the words that appear on the underside of the leaf. Every leaf has a different joke."

"Sophomoric humor," Fistley said sourly, "to judge by the sort of punchlines I hear repeated around the coffeepot. Hardly the sort of joke I find funny, usually."

O'Roughage shrugged. "And yet everyone who reads one appreciates the joke, somehow."

"That's a concern," said Fistley, looking suddenly happier in a way that made Miles uneasy. "They go on laughing about the joke all day, too. It's like some sort of intoxication. Suppose there is an oil-soluble toxin in the leaves, something that rubs off on your fingers when you handle the plant, and makes you susceptible to..."

"I have ruled that out," snapped O'Roughage. "It's all in the paperwork. The plant simply knows how to tell a good joke."

"That's preposterous."

"That," O'Roughage said smugly, "is magic."

Disgruntled, Fistley reached toward one of the branches of the Laughodil...but before his fingers touched a leaf, the trellised walls of the cubicle shook with the report of a sudden Apparition. Both men gaped up at the wizard who now stood at the end of the desk, wand drawn. Dr. O'Roughage thought he looked vaguely familiar.

"You must come," said the wizard, beckoning toward Dr. O'Roughage.

"Come where?" said O'Roughage. "What is going on?"

"The Drains. Harvey's flat. You are needed at once." "To do what?" O'Roughage squinted at the intruder, trying to place the slight accent in his speech. "Do I know you?"

"I am Slavik," said Slavik. "Friend of Merlin, friend of Sadie, friend of yours."

"Ah," said Miles O'Roughage. "That makes us friends, three times removed."

Slavik raised one finger, as he often did when motioning Durmstrang students to be quiet and listen. "We are all friends of Harvey. And you are needed to help prevent the end of the world."

"Pish," Fistley said, in a remarkable show of courage for a man so seized by shock that he had lost control of his bladder. Taking a deep breath, he added: "You do not have an appointment. Please remove yourself."

"All right, I'll go," said O'Roughage. Leaving his plant and his briefcase, he stood up and grabbed Slavik's elbow. When the two of them Disapparated, the report caused Fistley to let go of his bowel as well.

Wiping his shiny face with a shaking hand, Titus Fistley took a moment to catch his breath. Since Dr. O'Roughage hadn't walked out of the cubicle, the office door didn't immediately summon another applicant; so Fistley took advantage of his first moment of leisure in a long, stressful day, to reflect on his shortcomings as a coward, a Squib, and a bureaucrat of phenomenal pettiness. He seldom allowed himself the luxury of despising himself, so he wasn't much used to it; therefore, naturally, he didn't like it. So, tentatively, Fistley reached again toward the Laughodil...read the bottom of a leaf...giggled softly...and then burst into tears.

+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE! +++

SURVEY and CONTEST rolled into one: Who will they find in control of Harvey's flat? (A) A completely new villain: _____ (name and describe). (B) A previously seen villain from The Magic Quill: _____. (C) Someone we thought was a good guy, but who has crossed over to the dark side: ______. [EDIT: This discussion is closed.]

[Originally posted 2/17/08]

132. Harvey Face to Face

Contest winners in ABC order: Dragonic, Echoreyn, greyniffler, h_morgan, Linda_Carrig, PotterPig, Snuffleupagus, TWZRD, and zanaboo

[Transcript of group session on Lewis Bell Ward at St. Mungo's]

HEALER: All right, Mr. Sphaeris, let's hear from you. Have you learned what started you on the road to this place?

PATIENT SPHAERIS: I suppose it was my wife's cooking.

HEALER: Is that so?

SPHAERIS: You have no idea what an awful cook she is. She can burn water. Her bangers and mash taste like tinned sardines with a side of sweaty socks. The neighbors have complained about the taste of her tikka masala getting into their food. Fresh meat begins to turn when it sees her coming. I'm only alive today because she can give food poisoning food poisoning. Once, while pulling a batch of croissants out of the oven, she dropped one and it went right through the floor, then cracked a six-inch concrete slab in the cellar.

HEALER: I see. So all this is your wife's fault?

SPHAERIS: No. She does her best. Only, I couldn't take it any more. So I asked a friend for help. He mentioned a friend of a friend, who was an ace potioneer. I went to my friend's friend's friend's place and explained my problem. He offered me a free sample of Saborlite.

HEALER: Ah, yes!

SPHAERIS: He told me to mix a little of this powder with a cup of water, and anything I ate for an hour afterward would taste just like water. And it worked! I was able to eat anything my wife cooked without choking, and she was so much happier...

HEALER: But that isn't all the Saborlite did, was it?

SPHAERIS: Well, no.

PATIENT SPANKISON: The RMB has tagged Saborlite as a "gateway potion."

HEALER: Exactly. It establishes a form of dependency that leads you to other habit-forming potions. Go on, Mr. Sphaeris.

SPHAERIS: Well...I knew I shouldn't have, but I decided to try mixing the Saborlite into something with more flavor than water. I would slip over to Madam Puddifoot's for a cup of chocolate, tip the powder in, then go home for dinner, and...

SPANKISON: And everything tasted like chocolate.

SPHAERIS: I ate more and more of my wife's food. I must have gained fifty pounds in three months. I knew I had to keep using the Saborlite, because my wife's cooking was just as bad as ever and I did like a good chocolate. So I went back to my friend's friend's friend, and he gave me another potion.

HEALER: Ah! Let me guess. Gravis Reducto?

SPHAERIS: How did you know?

HEALER: Mrs. Ahmed here had that little problem with Coco Replenis, don't you remember? Take one sip of the potion and a chocolate drop appears in your mouth every hour for six hours? Take two drops, and you get two chocolate drops an hour, and so on.

SPHAERIS: Really? I wouldn't have minded that.

PATIENT AHMED: Neither did I, so I took bigger and bigger doses till I was all but choking on the stuff.

SPHAERIS: Er...who said that?

AHMED: Then I had your problem, and needed to drop some weight. And it was Gravis Reducto with me, too.

SPHAERIS: I'm sorry, but...where are you?

AHMED: Not the result I was looking for, was it? I'm as fat as ever, only no one ever complains that I'm standing in one's light these days. Here, I'll move over to the wall, where the light will be between us...

SPHAERIS: Dumbledore's nose! I didn't know...I can see the wall through her...!

AHMED: Be thankful you stopped in time.

SPHAERIS: I didn't even start. The git gave me the wrong potion. It was mislabeled. Whatever it was, every time I took it I couldn't stop doing the next thing I did. I took a sip of it before fixing the nib of my pen, and before I could stop myself I had whittled every quill in the house down to nothing. Everywhere I went, if I saw a quill, I pulled out my penknife and hacked at it till it was gone. I couldn't stop myself, because while I was doing it I was delirious with joy.

HEALER: The term for this effect is PISCES: Potion-Induced, Sorcerous-Compulsive Excitation Syndrome.

SPHAERIS: I destroyed all the pens at work, so they sent me home on forced sick leave until such time as I should ask, in writing, to come back. But as long as I had this obsession with trimming quills, I couldn't write anything. I got thrown out of Gringotts, Flourish and Blotts, and the stationer's, who now has a thick-necked fellow guarding the door, looking out for me. Meanwhile, I tried another couple of doses of this so-called Gravis Reducto...

HEALER: Oh, no.

SPHAERIS: After the second dose, I went walkies with the dog. For once I didn't feel in any hurry to finish the walk, which at first made the dog happy. But then I couldn't stop walking, until the dog was so tired that he made me pick him up and carry him. Which is no small matter, when you have a Bassett hound. I had to carry that fat beast twelve miles. Felt like my back had been flayed with hot wires by the time we got home. Then, as soon as I set him down on the floor, I had an urge to take him out for another walk! Poor animal only made it half a mile that time, then he bit me so that I dropped his lead, ran home, and hid from me. I spent half a week on my hands and knees, trying to get him to go walkies with me, while my wife sneaked out with him whenever my back was turned - or when an owl would come with a load of owl-order quills for me to shred.

HEALER: And you took this potion one other time?

SPHAERIS: Yes, but that time I took too much of it, and then I couldn't stop drinking it, so I took it all. Afterward I had an agonizing thirst for the stuff, and all I wanted to do was get to that potioneering git and buy some more of it. But I couldn't get anywhere, because I found myself repeating everything I did. I had to turn the doorknob five times to the right, three times to the left, and repeat eleven times before I could open a door. I couldn't use the toilet without first lifting the lid and setting it down eighty-eight times. I opened and closed the curtains until they fell apart. I scrubbed a hole in my teacup. I shaved myself bloody, cut the grass till the lawn was bald, and spent one whole afternoon opening and closing my zipper. That's when my wife Stunned me, and I woke up here.

HEALER: And right lucky you are. Do you know what that second potion was?

SPHAERIS: Not what that faint lady took, I reckon.

HEALER: No, it wasn't Gravis Reducto; it was Training Potion.

SPHAERIS: Eh?

HEALER: When it was first invented, Training Potion was meant to help people break bad habits, or to form good ones. But the proper dosage is one drop, diluted in a cup of water. The next thing you choose to do, or not to do, will then become a lifelong habit. Unfortunately, Training Potion turned out to be incredibly dangerous. Do the wrong thing after taking it, and you're messed up for life. Take a bit too much, and the result is PISCES. Take a great deal too much, and the potion itself becomes a habit. It's ironic, really, how such a well-intended elixir caused more torment than the problems it was meant to address.

SPHAERIS: But there is a cure, isn't there?

HEALER: No, I'm sorry. Your case is hopeless. All right, let's welcome Mrs. Yenta back to our circle. Mrs. Yenta has been fighing an addiction to Polypense Potion, which does what, Mr. Dillworth?

PATIENT DILLWORTH: Depending on what you put into it, it enables you to witness a past event from the point of view of another person, or object.

HEALER: And what danger of this potion did you learn about, Mrs. Yenta?

PATIENT YENTA: You lose touch with what's going on around you, that's what. Got the ingredients out of proportion and spent six hours thinking I was a tree overlooking my neighbor's garden, when I meant to be experiencing Mrs. Next Door's thoughts and feelings. When I came out of it, burglars had cleaned out my whole house, while I stood there like a statue, powerless to stop them.

DILLWORTH: It must have been very frightening, waking up in an empty house like that.

YENTA: Actually, the frightening bit was that the burglars stole me, thinking I was a priceless sculpture. I had to blast my way out of a cargo container and Obliviate half a dozen dock workers.

SPHAERIS: Serves you right, in my opinion, you nosy cow.

YENTA: You weren't asked for your opinion. Anyway, this is the third time this has happened. Can't see any way to stop it, since the ringleader of the burglars is my late husband's nephew, who always seems to know when my mind is elsewhere. Poor Herbert had a soft spot for the boy, wanted to make sure he was provided for, so he left a loophole in the house security spells, just for kin.

DILLWORTH: If you closed the loophole, you could go on being a nosy cow with no risk.

YENTA: I have considered that, but there was one other side-effect...The whole time I was that tree in the back garden, a woodpecker was hammering on my head. I had a headache for three days, and my ears are still ringing. No, it's time to quit. Only...well, Mrs. Next Door has such a colorful love-life. It will be hard.

HEALER: We're all here to support you.

SPHAERIS: Except me, that is.

YENTA: That's all right, dear. Your case is hopeless.

HEALER: All right, who else haven't we heard from? We have, er, Mrs. Sedulus, who discovered a heretofore unknown side-effect of Mrs. Skower's Magical Mess Remover. Mrs. Sedulus?

PATIENT SEDULUS: Oooh. Shiny. You're shiny. You, too. Everything is sooooo shiny.

HEALER: Are you with us, Mrs. Sedulus? Perhaps you can explain why you're wearing two pairs of sunglasses in here?

SEDULUS: Can't see anything without them. Everything becomes a blaze of glory. Ooooooh!

YENTA: I don't understand. I've used Mrs. Skower's Magical Mess Remover for years, and nothing like this has ever happened to me.

HEALER: Yes, but evidently you applied the potion to the object that needed to be cleaned.

YENTA: You don't mean...she didn't drink it?

SEDULUS: I wish you would keep your mouth shut. Your teeth are so bright, they hurt my eyes.

YENTA: But that's absurd! There are warnings on the label!

SEDULUS: I have a horror of dust, dear. Had to do something.

YENTA: Yes, but the thing to do is get rid of the dust, not dose yourself with a potion that makes everything look shiny!

SEDULUS: That's easy to say when you don't have a horror, I say a horror, of dust. And really, please, lips closed.

YENTA: Is there any hope for her?

HEALER: Yes, of course. Mrs. Skower is whipping up a batch of the antidote right now. But Mrs. Sedulus is here to redirect her...

PATIENT O'HARE: She's here for vocational rehabilitation.

HEALER: Sorry?

O'HARE: She used to char for me. Worst charwitch I ever had, never so much as touched a dust-rag. Seemed to think getting soused on cleaning fluid would make everything look cleaner than it was, but it doesn't work on other people, you see. Daft old biddy.

DILLWORTH: And yet, here you are, in the same predicament as the rest of us - including her. A little less of the superior tone, if you please.

O'HARE: I did not choose to come here, and I don't have a problem.

DILLWORTH: And I'm sure that orange fuzz all over you is completely normal.

O'HARE: I don't know what you're talking about.

YENTA: Sure you do. You look like a walking peach.

HEALER: Mr. O'Hare was hospitalized against his wishes, at his family's request.

O'HARE: I don't see how it is anybody's business. If I want to grow a little hair...

HEALER: Yes, but Hauston's Hair Potion is supposed to be rubbed on your scalp. You took it orally, hence the orange fuzz all over, and the cravings. It's intoxicating, isn't it?

O'HARE: I have nothing to say.

HEALER: You may not want to say anything to us now, but you will be going through withdrawal pains soon. We're all here to support you.

SPHAERIS: Except me.

HEALER: Yes, all of us except Mr. Sphaeris.

SPHAERIS: I mean, face reality, man. Nobody wants their husband or father to look like a shaved orangutan.

HEALER: Now that's enough.

O'HARE: You're just envious.

SPHAERIS: Too right. I can't stand the fact that my skin lacks that freshly upholstered look. And that healthy, glow-in-the-dark color must really come in handy when you come to cross a busy street. Better than a traffic policeman's vest, it is.

HEALER: Mr. Sphaeris, one more remark and I must ask you to leave.

O'HARE: Don't worry, it's all right. Anyone can see he is with child to try the same look on himself. Of course, I doubt it would look anything like as distinguished on him as it does on me.

HEALER: Oh, my. Don't tell me you've been taking Charisma Potion as well?

O'HARE: Of course not. My personal magnetism is perfectly natural. People have always found me irresistably attractive.

YENTA: Ha!

PATIENT SIOBHAN: Chngh!

SEDULUS: Shiny.

HEALER: This is even more serious. Even a small overdose of Charisma Potion can result in delusional self-infatuation. I've seen it before - the effects are irreversible. I know of a case, here in St. Mungo's right now, whose effects persist even after the patient's long-term memory was wiped out.

PATIENT NIALL: I wish my memory of this bunch of loonies...

HEALER: No! Niall, don't!

NIALL: ...could be wiped out.

HEALER: [Profanity deleted]! Who removed the [profanity deleted]'s [profanity deleted] lip seal?

NIALL: Excuse me? Are you all right?

HEALER: Linguetta Legata! That should hold you for a while.

NIALL: Mmmf? Vrrf hnng fffft?

HEALER: You're in the Lewis Bell Ward at Saint...oh, never mind. We'll fill you in later. And that brings us to our last new patient, Mr. Surdo. Would you like to share your story with the group? ... Mr. Surdo? Hello? ...

PATIENT SURDO: What did he say?

HARVEY: He wants you to say something about what brought you here.

SURDO: Oh. Beg pardon. I had an ear infection with a cough, so I browsed around the apothecary for something to make me feel better. There was a small section labeled "Hearing Remedies," and one of them sounded like it would be good for coughs, as well...

HEALER: What was it called?

SURDO: Eh?

HARVEY: He asked what it was called.

SURDO: Er...Kophos something...

HEALER: Whoops. It wasn't kophos epilektika, was it?

HARVEY: He asked if it was kophos epilektika.

SURDO: Yes, that's it exactly! How did he know?

HEALER: It's an ancient liquor that used to be given to men on their wedding night. Its name means "selectively deaf..."

SURDO: I'm terribly sorry, but I can't hear a word you're saying.

HEALER: It makes you unable to hear the voice of anyone you find annoying.

SURDO: What is he saying?

HARVEY: He says there's nothing wrong with you.

SURDO: Poor fellow. Must have lost his voice. Hee hee.

HARVEY 2 [charging into room]: So! There you are!

SPANKISON: Harvey! It's you too! Both of you!

HEALER: I say, this is a closed session, you can't...

HARVEY 1: What are you doing here?

HARVEY 2: Gathering reinforcements. Something has gone wrong at the Drains. I should ask you the same thing.

HARVEY 1: I'm just recuperating from a bit of time-travel fatigue. You're supposed to be in the Crystal Cave, aren't you?

RIGEL: I let him out.

HARVEY 1: Did you?

HEALER: Who is this? I must protest. Underage visitors are not allowed on this...

RIGEL: Bite a sock, sawbones. I'm older than you are. That is, I would be if I hadn't taken all those Yesterday Pills...

HEALER: Aha! Potion abuse! You'll be admitted...

RIGEL: Shut it.

HARVEY 2: You know, Harvey, I've been a bit irritated with you for the past five or six centuries.

HARVEY 1: Really? Why, Harvey, what ever for?

HARVEY 2: Must you ask? You shut me in that miserable cave, after all the help I was going to be to you.

HARVEY 1: I think you'll find that you're quite wrong. I let you out of the cave. Rigel here is the one who put you in.

RIGEL: What?

HARVEY 2: How's that?

HARVEY 1: Nothing sensitizes you to the subtleties of cause and effect quite like living backwards in time.

HARVEY 2: This is a waste of time. We can argue about it later. Everybody who can wave a wand without hurting himself had better come with us. We have to storm a penthouse flat.

SPHAERIS: Will there be quills there?

HARVEY 1: Hundreds of them.

SPHAERIS: I'm in, then.

SEDULUS: Shiny.

RIGEL: Hey! Hands off!

SURDO: I'll go.

DILLWORTH: Count me in.

YENTA: Me too.

HEALER: I say! This is quite out of order!

O'HARE: Linguetta Legata!

HEALER: Mmmmf!

O'HARE: Thank you for that. It makes me feel dangerous. Take me with you!

HARVEY 2: All right. Anybody else?

[pause]

HARVEY 2: Spanky?

SPANKISON: I don't know. I can't control my powers. I may use deadly force without meaning to.

HARVEY 1: If you realized what's at stake here, you might consider it worth the risk.

RIGEL: Er...what exactly do you have hidden in your flat?

HARVEY 1: Well...

HARVEY 2: Leftovers.

RIGEL: Leftover what?

HARVEY 1: Er...

HARVEY 2: Well...

SPANKISON: Oh. That.

HARVEY 2: You see our problem.

HARVEY 1: I...that is, we...did all that we could not to interfere with history. But we had a lot of close calls.

HARVEY 2: It's a wonder we didn't blow up the universe.

SPANKISON: Yes, I see. In the wrong hands...

HARVEY 1: The Essence of Merlin could wipe out history as we know it.

[even longer pause]

O'HARE: Oh, my! We're about to save the world!

YENTA: That's right. You're going to look good. That's what matters.

SPANKISON: Well, let's go then. But everyone had better stay behind me.

[Originally posted 2/3/08]

131. Scratching Post

Contest winner: h_morgan

The stone door slid open with hardly a sound. Rigel and his companion stepped out into the starry night, led by the light at the tip of Rigel's wand. As they emerged from the shelter of the cliffside, seven goblin faces turned toward them from around a folding table where they were playing exploding snap, close to the edge of the still, misty lake.

"At last," said the goblin with the longest nose, rising from his seat. Quickly the creatures closed in on the man and boy, surrounding them tightly.

"I don't care what you want!" Rigel yelled. "I'm not going back in there!"

"We already have what we want," said the lead goblin.

Long-fingered hands brushed Rigel's face. Sharp-toothed grins leered at him. Tough little arms held him and the man in an all-but-suffocating embrace. But there was no move toward the entrance to the crystal cave, where all manner of goblin-desired treasures must lie.

"I don't understand," Rigel gasped. "What is this all about? Does this man owe you money?"

"Money!" snarled a particularly ugly goblin. "We would never take money from master!"

As one, the goblins stepped back from the two wizards. Each extended a long, sharp claw and poked it into the top of his own head. The night was filled with the sounds of air hissing out of punctured, inflatable goblin disguises. The goblin bodies collapsed, and out of them came seven beaming house-elves, nearly as ugly but infinitely friendlier.

"Master has returned," said the house-elf with the biggest nose, and he ran to embrace the grown-up wizard's legs.

"There, there," said his master. "It is good to see you too, Dinty. I have missed all of you."

Lifting up his head, Harvey breathed the night air deeply and added, "It is good to see the sky as well."

Rigel clutched his head, bemused. "They were your house-elves all along! I thought they had come from Gringotts to ent-t-tomb me for my sins!"

"Yes, their disguises were rather clever," Harvey said proudly, failing to notice the boy's traumatized stammer. "I expect they've been following Joe Albuquerque since I went away. I shall give each of them a tin star to pin to his pillowcase" - for the house-elves all wore pillowcases with the seams ripped for their heads and arms to poke through - "and free reign to prepare a feast to celebrate my return."

"Master is too good to us," Dinty fawned. Rigel silently agreed.

Harvey rubbed his palms together. "Now, let's go home. Shall we Apparate together? To The Drains, then, on three. One, two, three..."

Rigel, though currently too young for an Apparition license, still knew how since his previous adulthood. Nevertheless, he winced as he felt the constricting, smothering sensation of Apparition. It lasted only a fraction of a second, before an even stranger and more unpleasant sensation took its place. Feeling like a cork shooting out of the neck of a champagne bottle, Rigel fell back onto the lakeshore under the starlight. All around him, bodies popped out of nowhere and slammed into the ground with cries of surprise and dismay.

"That's never happened before," Harvey said, picking himself up. "Someone must have set an anti-Apparition spell around The Drains. I shall have a word with the caretaker as soon as we get home. Meanwhile, there must be a wizard-dwelling within a few miles of here. From there we can use the Floo Network, perhaps."

Man, boy, and house-elves began to march back along the cliffside, retracing the route by which the supposed goblins had carried Rigel the day before. The house-elves whispered among themselves, pointing out signs along the path that no wizard could see, until they came to a cottage in a clearing in a wood.

The ground around the cottage was planted with herbs, turnips, pumpkins, and marrows, guarded by not one scarecrow, but a dozen. The scarecrows were ghastly, huge, animated things with fur and fangs, claws dripping with blood, and slavering mouths from which mangled feathers occasionally dropped: clearly the work of a wizard or witch. Rigel had never seen anything like them. Even the house-elves seemed subdued as they approached the cottage door. The woods around the clearing were strangely silent; perhaps owing to the effectiveness of the scarecrows, not one bird's song could be heard.

Harvey knocked on the front door. Whoever lived there must have sensed their approach, because the door immediately opened. Rigel was astonished as, quite unconcerned, Harvey walked into the dimness beyond the door. Hesitantly, the boy followed - but the house-elves stayed outside in a nervous cluster.

The owner of the house may have been male or female; it was hard to tell. He or she stood tall and bone-thin, wrapped in patched and threadbare robes, with long, dirty, white hair hanging in tangled profusion over his or her face. The strangest aspect of the cottager's appearance was the steel mesh-reinforced birdcage over its head - or perhaps it was the swim goggles it wore over its eyes, overhanging hair and all.

The cottage itself was equally strange. Strange skins dangled from the ceiling, along with nets full of small skulls. The tables, shelves, walls, and mantel were crammed full of unusual items: pixie-sized weapons, fragments of an enormous eggshell, a string full of deadly looking talons, a feathered wing mounted by itself, bird skeletons held together by wire, a large number of pipes and whistles in all sizes, runes written in blood on bamboo blocks strung on leather thongs, and stones with holes through them.

Rigel made up his mind to stay close to the door.

"I'm terribly sorry to intrude," Harvey said, taking in the cottage, its owner, and its bizarre contents as if none of it surprised him. "I've had a minor travel mishap, and I would be very grateful if you could assist me in sending for help. Is your fire hooked up to the Floo Network?"

The cottager pointed to a velvet bag dangling by a string next to the hearth. It was embroidered with the symbol of two crossed wands. Harvey took the bag off its hook, found that it was empty, and put it back.

"Well, you seem to have run out of Floo powder," he said cheerfully. "I will gladly see that you get a supply of it, if I could only borrow your owl."

The silent cottager flinched, and spoke at last in a nasal voice that confirmed, at least to Rigel's ears, that its owner was a woman. "I won't have an owl in this house," she said.

"Then," Harvey went on, not sounding at all discouraged, "is there any way you can help us send a message?"

The crazy old witch pointed to a cupboard door. Hesitantly, Rigel opened it. Then he jumped backward and nearly upset a table full of wooden figurines, as a plump beagle popped out of the cupboard with a gray and white cat on its back.

Immediately the dog began to bark - but not in the pointlessly disruptive way Rigel normally associated with dogs. Within a few woofs, Rigel recognized the tune of a song Celestina Warbeck had sung on the Wizarding Wireless the previous evening. The cat hopped onto the kitchen table and began to dance, its rear legs cleverly matching the steps of its front legs.

Rigel swallowed. "I never..."

"Tie your note to Puss's tail," the witch rasped. "He won't like it, but he'll know what to do."

Harvey pulled a small roll of parchment out of his hat and wrote quickly with a pen the witch proffered him: "To Agent S. Spankison, RMB - I have returned, but suspect that trouble awaits in my flat. Please gather the usual forces and meet me at The Drains at your earliest convenience. Your humble etc., M. Harvey, esq." This he rolled up as tightly as possible and tied firmly to the cat's tale while Rigel held it.

The cat yowled and scratched Rigel up and down both arms, then darted out the door in a furious gray-white streak.

"Thanks for the help," Harvey said smoothly, while Rigel clutched his bleeding arms. "We'll just be off to the train station, then. I will have that Floo powder delivered by...er, courier, I suppose. And if you ever need anything, please contact me." He handed the witch his card.

The witch shook her head. "Never go to London these days," she said. "Have a horror of pigeons. Birds of all kinds, really."

Rigel wondered that birds didn't have a horror of this witch, thinking of the wing trophy, the string of talons, and the horrible scarecrows outside.

"Be that as it may," Harvey shrugged.

"My parents were eaten by a roc," the witch explained. "Saw it happen when I was very young."

"I quite understand," said Harvey, bowing his way backward out the cottage door. "Pay a call by Floo, anytime. Cheers, then."

He waited until he and Rigel were well away from the cottage, following the house-elves and their invisible signs, before giving a low whistle. "I've seen too many witches or wizards end up like that," he said. "Filthy rocs."

+++ QUADRUPLE CHALLENGE! +++

Contact Robbie through the Discussion Forum or by feedback to share your ideas about how the Magic Quill should continue. Survey answers that get the most votes, and contest answers that Robbie chooses, will be in the next two chapters! [EDIT: This discussion is closed.]

Survey for TMQ #132: How can Harvey be in St. Mungo's and with Rigel at the same time? (A) It's just one of those odd things that happens when you mess around with time travel. (B) The one with Rigel is an impostor. (C) The one with Rigel is someone else who has been made to look like Harvey, and who actually thinks he is Harvey. (D) Two words: magical cloning.

Contest for TMQ #132: Describe a potion that a witch or wizard could find habit-forming.

Survey for TMQ #133: Which of Rigel's old Gringotts-escape mates should come back next? (A) Karl, the survival expert. (B) Jaan, the wandsmith. (C) Anatoly, the animated tattoo artist. (D) Slavik, the DADA teacher at Durmstrang. (E) Boccachiusa, the mime wizard. (F) Subito, the vertically challenged clown wizard. (G) Pagliai, the leader of the clown wizards.

Contest for TMQ #133: Describe a magical plant and its properties, including both advantages and disadvantages over a similar, non-magical plant.

[Originally posted 1/20/08]